Alive: Stress Management for Transformation (SMT)

Welcome to the world of Alive, where your initiative to better manage your stress can bring you the health and happiness you deserve. Imagine a life where stress just fades away. With a little patience and persistence, this life is yours!

What is Stress?

Stress is a normal emotional, mental, and physical reaction to what’s happening around us. Some degree of stress is good. It keeps us on our toes, challenges us to grow and adapt to new situations, and protects us in times of crisis. Too much stress can be quite harmful.

Why Focus on Stress Management?

Unmanaged stress harms us emotionally, physically and socially. Over time, we get irritable or tense; we feel dissatisfied or overwhelmed; our relationships get strained and suffer; we become fatigued and prone to illness. This is why learning how to manage stress is so important.

Stress management is a set of tools for managing life. Though we can't stop stressful situations from occurring, we can learn how to deal with them calmly and more effectively. When we are able to consciously respond, instead of continuously react, to our stressors our experience of life is easier and more pleasurable. This new way of being increases vitality and productivity as well as promoting restful sleep, sharper concentration, improved relationships, and a heightened sense of wellbeing. As we develop an awareness of how stress enters and sharply affects our lives, we are better able to counteract any negative effects and less likely to become triggered.

Alive uses heart rate feedback, similar to biofeedback, but intended for individuals to increase their awareness in a non-clinical setting.

What is Heart Rate Feedback?

Heart rate feedback allows you to visually observe moment-by-moment physical changes brought about by both stress and relaxation.

As you train with this exciting technology, you will observe firsthand how the way you think and feel is expressed by various parts of your body.

Change happens both consciously and unconsciously — simply by training with heart rate feedback on a regular basis, you will encourage positive changes in your mind and body that will reduce stress and ease tension. Heart rate feedback is a powerful tool to help you manage your stress naturally and effectively.

Training Enhancement Exercise:

Becoming More Aware of My Life Stressors

Successfully using Alive’s heart rate feedback for stress management includes being willing to bring the stressful areas of everyday life to the forefront of your mind & identify your stressors.

Reflect on...

What triggers stress in my life?

  • From an approach of curiosity and lightness, take some time to think about your life.
  • Notice the specific situations, places, people, and activities that seem to cause you stress.

In your Notebook

Make a list of these stressful situations, places, people, and activities.

Visualize and experience each stress trigger (stressor).
Assign a level of intensity for each (from 1 – 10; minimal to severe, lowest to highest).

Use Your Breath as a Stress Smoother

Stressful moments often cause unnatural breathing patterns which intensify your stress.

The way you breathe can either decrease or increase your stress level. Natural breathing is known to be helpful in lessening stress and anxiety and smoothes your heart rate.

  • Make a mental image of a low intensity stressor from your list.
  • When you begin experiencing it, begin to breathe naturally.

Practice breathing less stressfully and more naturally:

  • Enjoy a longer, slower exhale
  • Let go of your tension as you exhale
  • Expand your abdomen on your inhale (don't breathe too deeply)
  • Consciously lower your shoulders
  • Recall a joyful moment that makes you Smile!

Alive in Your Life

Over the next few days notice when you are affected by any of those stressors.

Practice using effective breathing techniques to smooth your stress.


Use heart rate feedback to see which stress management techniques really work!

The above off-screen SMT exercises are quite valuable on their own. However, they were created to be used with heart rate feedback to get maximum stress management benefits. For instance, by using the on-screen display that shows your heart rate and relaxation levels, you can find out which breathing methods most effectively help you relax!

Breathing is a key to reducing stress, but it is only one of six main stress smoothers that SMT trains you to develop and use in your everyday life. Stress smoothers lessen the negative effects of your stress on your mind and body, allowing you to be calmer, think more clearly, make skillful choices, and handle challenges without becoming overwhelmed.

The full Alive SMT package includes training with Alive on-screen Workshops, Games and Environments. Here are examples of the many ways that the breathing stress smoother is used in Alive SMT:

  • Alive Workshop trainings help you find ways to breathe that are best for you: Ways to Breathe, Optimize Breath Pacer, Paced Breathing and Advanced Breathing. Click here to enjoy a free audio mindfulness workshop!
     
  • Alive’s On-screen Coach teaches you a variety of breathing techniques and reminds you of them as needed. As you practice you get continual heart rate feedback so you know when you are successful.
     
  • Discover your Optimal Breathing Pace. The Alive Coach determines your personal optimal breathing rate.
     
  • A Pacer Graph showing your optimal breathing rate is on each Alive training screen.
    At the bottom of all Alive trainings you will see a graph that shows the breathing rate that is best for you. Following the Pacer Graph during Alive trainings trains you to then be able to use this whenever you become stressed.
     
  • Use Alive Trainings to practice Breathing as a Stress Smoother for any stressor:

Example of an Alive Heart Rate Feedback Training

Alive Environment Breath Spirals

This training shows your stress levels on-screen and requires Alive and the Alive heart rate sensor.

In this environment you use your breath to smooth your heart rate, making the music louder and expanding the particle wave.

  • Practice breathing with the breath pacer until you feel calm and reach a heart rate smoothness of over 50%.
  • Imagine a situation or a person that has been a stressor. Notice how your stress shrinks the particle wave and quiets the music.
  • Relax and smooth your heart rate to make the beautiful images and lovely music come alive.