7 Simple Steps

How To

De-stress

in

7 Simple Steps & Feel Better Immediately

By Amy Doublet

wellnessalchemist.com

1Stress

Can Kill You

You've seen the news reports.

Stress is bad for you.

But it doesn't really hit home, unless it does just that, hit you at home.

It was a Monday morning. My husband, Chuck, wakes me up, weakly saying he thinks he needs to go to the hospital. I look at him, he can hardly breathe. He's gasping for air with the worst asthma attack I've ever seen him have. I quickly jump out of bed, rushing to put on some clothes and get him to the hospital. He weakly croaks, “I think we have to call an ambulance.” Now, I'm really freaking out. Chuck hates to make a big deal out of anything, to say that he needs an ambulance and not to drive there ourselves is really scaring the shit out of me. I dial 911. While we wait, he apologizes to me, saying he's sorry. While I had been in a training class over the weekend, he had been worrying and stressing over his job. There were a bunch of issues that were bothering him and he needed to get a lot of things done first thing in the morning. He said he tried going to work a few hours


earlier but it took him 20 minutes to do the 2 minute walk to the car. Chuck realized that even if he made it to work, he wouldn't be able to do anything so he finally, and reluctantly, called his boss saying he couldn't make it in. Struggling to make it back to the house from the car, he just sat on the sofa to rest, waiting until the doctor's office would open so he could make an appointment. By the time Chuck had woken me up, he had sat there for 4 hours, struggling to breathe and still stressing about work. We found out later the muscles for his breathing had begun to be exhausted and that they just weren't working anymore. When he woke me up, he was literally suffocating...

Stress, Anxiety, and Depression is a SAD Way to Live Today, everybody is stressed out about something.

It's common, it's everywhere.

But common is not normal.

Like the old saying attributed to mothers everywhere, “if your friends are jumping off of a cliff, would you jump also?”


But that's what we do everyday with stress.

Everybody around you is stressed and overwhelmed. We don't stop to think that what we are doing might be wrong.

You don't want to be the one to complain about the stress because everybody else is also dealing with it.

So, you just grin and bear it.

You just knuckle under and deal with it.

You look forward to weekends, holidays, and vacations, hoping that you will be able to relax enough so that you can go back on Monday and hit it hard again.

But the days off don't help, do they?

Like my husband, Chuck, you still worry, stress, and think about all of things that are on your plate.

You might even work on your days off, telling yourself you “just have to get a few things done and then I’ll relax”.

You’re like that stage performer. He’s rushing back and forth trying to keep those plates spinning.


You’re doing the same thing, hoping and praying that the plates don't all come crashing down on top of you.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to be like that.

You can stop the spinning plates forever.

In fact, by the time you are finished with this short little book, and with a little practice, you will never again have to be stuck in the endless loop of stress, anxiety or panic.

Yes, you heard me right. You will never need to be stressed out again.

I promise you that when you finish reading this book, you will have 7 simple steps to follow that will forever free you from the ravages of stress.

So let's get to it…

What Are YOUR Stress-Triggers? Stress-triggers happen every day.

Do any of these sound familiar?

• Worrying about bills and your finances

• Stressing out to make a deadline at work

• Arguing with your partner, children, or coworkers


• Struggling with rush hour traffic in your daily commute

• Remembering past events that continue to gnaw on you

• Feeling out of control

Yes, you deal with stress every day.

It can be a single big event, like getting laid off, or many small stressful dings, like day-to-day traffic, that add up over time.

For some of us, stress can feel like complete disasters, leaving us spinning out of control in a downward tailspin of anxiety, panic and depression.

It's can feel like you are going through life with a 50pound rock on your shoulders.

Weighing you down.

Turning like every little project into a huge chore.

Making life miserable.

But, it's not your fault.

In fact, in a scary kind of way, life has conspired against you to actually create more stress in your life.

The World Isn’t Designed to Promote a Stress-Free Life wellnessalchemist.com

By default, the world is a stressful place.

Everything and everybody is pushing you around, vying for your attention. Pulling and screaming at you to worry about this and that.

And we are conditioned to be constantly on alert to this high-strung cacophony.

Each and every day since you were a child, you were taught to hurry up and do what you were told.

To ignore your feelings.

Follow the rules.

Be like every body else.

And, don't complain about it.

Success, you were told, was to work long and hard. Put your own needs lasts and to put everybody else's needs before you.

At work, you were often expected to push yourself to the limits of physical and mental exhaustion.

Ignoring the needs of adequate sleep, relaxation, and rest.


Stuffing your emotions down and keeping your nose to the grindstone.

You were conditioned to follow this path of “success.”

But nobody warned you about the cost of this path to your health, happiness, or well-being.

And even if you did read about how stress can kill, nobody seemed to take it seriously enough to actually do something about it.

They just nodded their heads, looking up for a moment in resignation, then back down to continue their daily grind.

Sound familiar?

With all of this soul-sucking despair, it's not surprising that addiction to alcohol, drugs, pornography, gaming and reality-television is running rampant in the world today.

Anything to numb us from the pain we are suffering through.

But You Don’t Have to Live This Way


What if I told you that not only is stress killing you but it is also killing your ability to be creative, productive, and successful?

It also limits your ability and capacity for intimate relationship, severely stifling connection with others, including your kids and family.

What if I told you, not only is stress bad for you but it is also terrible for all of the goals that you set for yourself.

It even effects how your body functions. It especially effects how your body functions.

What if I told you that living a stressful life, not only guarantees not having a successful life but even if you did attain the goals you seek, the stress would prevent you from enjoying it on any level?

The toxic load of stress will eventually cause serious physical and emotional illnesses.

Crazy, isn't it?

So. Congratulations for taking the first steps to regaining your life!

This is the first step in making yourself the priority and not everything else around you.


This is the first step in forever not allowing stress to control you but instead freeing yourself from stress.

When you learn how to deal with stress from the root cause, you can transform your life.

From the way your body ages. To the way you connect in relationships. Your physical health and vitality.

Plus, you will have more energy, focus, connection, creativity and peace. This short guide, How to De-Stress in 7 Steps, is the beginning of a new-game changing process.

So let’s get started…

Here are some important principles of the 7 Steps: • Your ability to tune into your body and it’s inner senses is of utmost importance. You will want become aware of whether an actual survival response is occurring or not. You will need to become aware of your responses to the situation, so your body can respond accurately. • Learning how to become present and how to quiet your mind. Our minds often go to “what-if” or what I like to call “what’s wrong attention” (often, either past or wellnessalchemist.com

future focused ) vs. being focused on the here and now (present).

• Allow your body to process and move however it needs to so that it can release stress on a biological level. Allow emotions to arise as well. Trust the process, allow your “gut” knowing to have a voice.

At least for now let go of needing to know all the “whys” of how this all works. (Believe me I know how hard that is alone!) I’m condensing years of study into as simple as possible method so you can get to feeling better immediately.

It’s simple, it’s also very powerful!

The truth of this will become more obvious as you proceed with practice. Over time, the tools here will become second nature and you will excel at managing stress in a healthy way.

Important Tip before beginning: Even though you are using cognitive abilities and practicing mindfully this is largely not a practice for the higher brain.


For these steps to effectively help change pathways in your brain you must bring yourself INTO your body sensations. It’s not simply a mental exercise.

This is about Feeling NOT Thinking. The stress is taken in and registered by your body not your cognitive mind, so it must be released through your body, (I hope that makes sense!) Remember this is a new language I’m teaching you, be gentle and kind to yourself. It takes practice.

I will further explain the language of sensation in step 3 as this is so essential to the process. Don’t worry it will be simple. Easy peasy, eventually.

I know you want to feel better now so I will give you the 7 steps and then after that I will go into detail and explain why they work.


The 7 Simple Steps to Destress 1. Pause At the first sign of you feeling stress, STOP whatever you are doing (if you can do that safely).

Simply say to yourself, “let me pause for a moment...” you can then continue doing or thinking whatever it was you were doing.

When you tell yourself (and your brain) that you are taking a moment to pause, it gives the brain permission to continue it's previous function BUT without adding any additional stress.

Saying “pause” to yourself grants permission. If instead, you say to yourself “stop" your brain may rebel. So saying pause is much more effective, for most people.

2. Take a Moment to Feel (Developing Your Felt Sense) This is where it may be more challenging for you.

Society does not value feeling, especially compared to thinking, and that's a key source of the problem.


You were taught to power through problems, and the stress.

You were not advised to take the time to actually feel what is going on inside of you and the situation.

Steps 1 & 2 are ridiculously simple but can be very hard for many people.

Taking the time to do just these 2 steps will have a huge impact in the long run, so simply PAUSE & FEEL what's happening.

Also, please know that it's absolutely okay if your felt sense is limited, maybe even nonexistent.

That is expected with our societal conditioning, that's why you are reading this book.

3. Notice Your Body and It’s Sensations As you take the time to pause and to start feeling what is going on, you may begin to notice sensations in your body. Subtle clues to how you and your body are responding to your stress.

You may notice,

Tingling, vibrations, or waves


Areas of warmth or coolness

Emotions such as rage, anger, sadness, or disgust

Physical and/or emotional numbness

Maybe there’s tension in your neck, shoulders, chest, jaw or belly

If you are like many people, you might not be able to feel or notice anything.

That's Ok.

Don't worry, you are simply giving yourself an opportunity to develop a new awareness of what is going on with yourself and your body.

SOMETHINGS THAT YOU CAN FOCUS TO DEVELOP AWARENESS.

If you're sitting down, • can you sense your butt sitting in the chair?

• can you literally feel the contact of your sit bones on the firmness of the chair?

• the pressure of your back against the backrest?

• how the backrest supports you?

• the weight, or lack thereof, of your feet on the ground

• is the weight equally distributed?

• is there more pressure on one foot meeting the floor than the other?

If you're standing, wellnessalchemist.com

• notice how even your feet are supporting your weight.

• do you have weight on one side more so than the other?

• are you leaning to one side more?

• do you feel like you're leaning back or forward?

Do you feel any tension in or on your body? • where is it?

• is it dull?

• heavy?

• sharp?

• tingling?

• or some other sensation?

Just take the moment to pause and notice.

All you're “doing” is noticing what is going on.

It's possible, you may feel some discomfort. Do your best not to avoid it or push it away. Just be with it for the moment and notice it.

Whatever it is that you notice, stay with the physical awareness of it. Those sensations are giving you vital clues to your health and well-being.

It is just that we were never taught to notice and honor those feelings and sensations.


4. Self-Awareness For this simple step, I'm going to introduce third-person awareness (also known as the witnessing state)..

The simplicity of steps 1-3 are muddled by an inability to just notice, without putting some kind of label to it.

It is so easy to fall into the trap of good/bad, right/wrong, happy/sad, and on and on.

It turns simple noticing into judgement, curiosity into criticism, acceptance into antagonism.

And it prevents you from freeing yourself from worry, stress, and anxiety.

What we are talking about here is not that you don't care about what's going on, you are just pausing to notice what's going on and putting off any kind of assessment of it to later.

Your focus for now, as you pause, is to slowly start to come back to your self. To orient back to your body and it's sensations. To just notice and re-connect to your Self.

By doing this you may experience your body in a completely new way.


It may be uncomfortable at first but that is completely normal and one reason why it is not done. At the first sign of discomfort, many people will dissociate (fancy word for tuning out). It’s a natural survival response.

Dissociation keeps us out of body because something is too overwhelming.

But it doesn't solve anything and in the long run it keeps us out of the present and stuck in the past or future (which I discuss further in my 21-day program).

We are simply introducing how to become more present here.

So stay with me.

As you become more aware of your body, especially if its uncomfortable to do so, try squeezing various joints, your writs, elbows or knees. Or, try rubbing your hands together vigorously, see yourself doing this by looking at your hands. Look at the details of your hands, the texture of your skin, nails, fingers, the folds of skin around your knuckles maybe.


You will make it to the other side by taking a moment to breathe. (Having said that, don't worry we're not about to do another panic triggering breathing exercise.)

5. Attention on the Breath You may have noticed on the web and television, news about meditation and breathing.

And while, many of the stories are well-meaning, for reducing stress, some of the techniques are not wellsuited.

Many will say, “...take a deep breathe, relax, and calm down.”

But this is not completely accurate instruction and thankfully, this is where some of the latest scientific research comes in.

When you inhale, your heart rate naturally increases and when you exhale, your heart rate decreases.

When you are feeling stress, anxiety, or worry; when your heart rate goes up, many people associate this feeling with panic.


So can you imagine why telling someone to take a deep breathe might not be the best thing if they are feeling stress?

In fact, it creates the exact opposite result and can actually induce additional more stress, panic, and anxiety.

So, again, just breathe without any additional effort, and just notice the breathe.

It's another step toward gaining mindfulness on what is going on with you and your body.

6. Now, Once Again, Pause... Yes.

Take another moment to pause, notice, and develop more self-awareness of what is going on.

You may be noticing a certain calming affect from Steps 1-5. If not, that's fine. Keep practicing.

You may also still be feeling the lingering affects of adrenaline (the stress hormone) still coursing in your body but it will only last for about 10 minutes or so.

So just pause and notice, give yourself time to settle.


You are seeking a “better” feeling state. Not necessarily “good.” Just better. Remember this is just the beginning of a process in changing neuropathways

in your brain around a treat response. It’s just the beginning….

Better is better. You're not looking for a silver bullet here.

You're simply developing the skills and habits to successfully release stress as it occurs in your day-to-day life.

7. ORIENT TO THE ENVIRONMENT So far, these steps have had you focus on your internal process, something sorely missing in today's society.

Now that you've laid out a strong foundation for internal awareness, you can now begin to observe what's going on around you.

Where are you right now?

Stop, look around. Is there anything interesting in the environment? Anything appealing to look at?


Again take a moment to be curious, not critical.

By taking the time to notice, without judgement, you engage the non-cognitive part of the brain and the nervous system.

You are able to notice that you are safe, that there is no life-threatening danger immediately around you.

As you continue to orient yourself to your surroundings, once again, tap into how you are feeling in your body.

Some physical things that may occur:

• your breathing may soften

• your muscles may start to relax

• your shoulders may lower

• your jaw might be a little less tense

There may even be some emotional releasing, like crying or gentle tears.

If this happens, do your best to allow the tears to flow, don't hold them back. It is just another way that you can turn your body into a toxic dam.

And it will break, eventually...

Other emotions may also surface, like anger or rage. Again don't judge, just notice how these emotions create a physical response.


Allow the emotions and the physical sensations to express themselves, when you are in a witnessing state they are contained. You don't need to act on them, just notice them.

Summary of the 7 Steps 1. Pause

2. Feel It and Develop Your Felt Sense Awareness

3. Notice Your Body and It's Sensations

4. Self-Awareness

5. Attention on the Breath

6. Once Again, Pause

7. Orient To The Environment

How Can Something So Simple Be So Effective? Many of my clients have a need to know why they are experiencing what they are going through and why does somatic therapy work.

It's part of a deeper need, to feel safe. To explain to their satisfaction that this will help, that they are not wasting their time, or that they just need to know how it works.

So here we go...


First a little biology lesson, or more specifically, a neuroscience lesson.

Most people think that they have one brain, when in fact, they actually have three.

While the triune (three-part) brain model is not completely accurate, it is a close enough example for people to get a sense of how the brain works.

The most primitive part of your brain is called the lizard brain, it it at the very base of the skull, and along with the spinal cord, it is in charge of your survival.

The most basic needs are regulated by the lizard brain; feeding, hunting, reproduction.

This area of the brain is where the fight-flight-freeze responses originate from.

Surrounding the lizard brain, you have the limbic structure. Also known as the mammalian brain.

Here is where the roots of emotion and motivation come from. It is where the maternal nurturing instinct arises.

Also, desire for communication, sense of community, and reproductive behavior are triggered here.


Layered onto the limbic brain, you have the pre-frontal cortex.

Evolutionally, this area of the brain is the youngest. It is where abstract thought comes from. Also giving you the ability to create and utilize language, planning, and imagination.

And while neuroscience and brain structure is fascinating, it is necessary so that you understand why stress does not go away and is slowly killing you.

Stress is a natural response to threats.

Either real or imagined.

And they get processed in the lizard brain. That is where the survival mechanism is managed. The fight-flightfreeze responses and they are not at all cognitive.

All too often, you are told to manage that stress with thinking, talking, visualization, etc. All cognitive processes which happens in the pre-frontal cortex, a completely different section of the brain.

Different parts of the brain are needed to do different tasks.


You don't send a message to one guy hoping the other guy gets the message. It doesn't work that way.

The lizard brain works through and with the body, that's all it knows, survival. • Feeding

• Fighting

• Fleeing

• Fucking

All body stuff.

The pre-frontal cortex is literally stuck in it's own head

• Thinking

• Dreaming

• Worrying

• Hoping

• Planning

All out-of-body stuff.

The reason why the 7 simple steps work so well, they get you out of your head and back into your body.

It gives the skittish little lizard in you a chance to take a moment to pause, breathe and listen (to orient) to what is being communicated.


The language of the lizard brain is sensation. So to communicate effectively by tuning into your body, you can calm the lizard and effectively ward off stress.

It's called Caveman Syndrome.

Our lizard brain was wired to help us to survive. We are here today because that part of our brain would quickly determine if we were being threatened, then if we were it would send the rest of the body into high alert.

The adrenal glands rush adrenaline to the muscles so they could react very quickly, the heart speeds up, as well as the lungs, bringing more blood and oxygen to the body.

Blood vessels to the muscles expand while those to other parts of the body constrict.

Vision and hearing range narrows down so that periphery is limited while focus is increased.

All of this, and more, happens almost instantaneously when we perceive a threat, like a tiger lurking in the bushes, to be imminent.

And after the threat was dealt with, then the ongoing stress triggers would release themselves with shaking, crying, yelling, and exertion.


All body responses and sensations which the lizard brain responds to.

Today, you are no longer a caveman, but unfortunately your lizard brain doesn't know the difference.

Again, any time a threat seems to be looming, your early warning system kicks into high gear; • that idiot on the freeway weaving in and out of lanes

• your boss yelling at you about some inane drama

• mass media news telling you to be afraid of some “disaster”

• looming bills and rising cost of living

All of these stressors, while maybe not life-threatening, still get you into high alert (and might be turning you into a lizard!)

But unlike, our caveman ancestors, we don't get to kill and eat the tiger that threatens us.

We just grin and bear it.

We put our heads down to the grindstone.

We do what everybody else does. Don't complain and keep on getting on.


And all of the thinking about it, talking about it, or hoping it will go away doesn't quiet the early warning system.

All it knows is fight or flight.

Not laying on a couch and talking the problem away. Remember, the cognitive brain does not communicate to the lizard.

The good news:

The 7 simple steps work because it is a direct communication system to your lizard brain. It allows you to Pause, the fight-flight-freeze response.

Notice, that the threat is not going to kill you.

Breathe, to allow the adrenaline and blood to slow down, calm down, and reset. This is the beginning of changing the way your nervous system responds to stress.

This is not about thinking, but instead about feeling, both physically and emotionally.

This is about getting out of your head for a change and tapping back into your body.

Something we don't give enough credit for.


In our over-caffeinated, go-go-go world, we don't allow ourselves the opportunity to just pause & notice.

And it's slowly, sometimes not so slowly, killing you.

These 7 Steps are the most helpful as soon as you experience yourself in a stressful situation. It’s also good practice to stop at any random time throughout your day and bring your attention to your surroundings.

Notice anything pleasant like your favorite color.

The more you can practice this the more you will be skilled at releasing stress before it becomes toxic.

Who Am I and Why Should You Care? My name is Amy Doublet.


I am a Somatic-Trauma Therapist

I have helped hundreds of creative artist, entrepreneurs, and entertainers; including A-list Hollywood actors, powerful attorneys, and Grammy award-winning musicians.

I also work with like you, who may be struggling to connect with your dreams and passions. Stress, fear, and worry holding you back from realizing your true gift. A gift that needs to be shared with the world.

I can help you with that.

I have been in private practice and training in the healing arts for over 20 years. One-one sessions are personalized with a specific process that works just for you as an individual.

I've been working with wacky and effective healing modalities since 1997. Wacky to some, yes, but amazingly the science, and specifically, neuroscience, is now catching up and supporting my wackiness. Finally!

You can learn more about me, my magic, and how I can help you to heal and teach you how to become your own healer at WellnessAlchemist.com


When wired well and in good health, your nervous system and brain does know the difference between you being chased by a vicious animal and a stressful work related deadline (which isn’t life threatening). Which is why I’ve created my signature 12 week online group class called The Brilliant Body Brilliant Mind, How to transform your nervous system and rewire your brain. Because of it, people have had life changing and profound improvements.

Wait! What Happened to Chuck?!? We left Chuck hovering over our bed, trying to wake me up, barely able to breathe and literally suffocating next to me. I ran to the phone to call 911 and thankfully the paramedics arrived quickly. They took his vitals and laid him down on the gurney. They told me if we had waited any longer, they would've needed to put a tube down his throat to feed him oxygen directly. But luckily, they didn't need to. We got into the ambulance and rushed off to the hospital, or at least as rushed as we could being in Los Angeles morning rush hour traffic.


It was all I could do to not scream out the window to the cars just stopped in the middle of the road, but I was too busy holding Chuck's hand, praying he would be alright. When we got to the hospital, Chuck had already started stabilizing from the treatment given to him by the paramedics. He stayed in the hospital for 5 days, the doctors wanted to make sure that he wouldn't have another episode and that he was adequately recovered. And all that work that he was so stressed about? It got taken care of. Did the company care that he was in the hospital? Sure, but at an arms-length king of way. What was most important was that Chuck finally realized that he couldn't keep living his stressful life that he had, assuming that it was just normal. It was his wake up call. His cusp moment where he finally understood that the stress could kill him and that he needed to do something different. He now makes himself the priority and while he still gives it his all while at work, he now leaves it at work. AND, we get to take at least one 3-week vacation a year, just him and I. Something he never could've imagined that he could do…


Final Tips…for your practice How much time will this take?

This is an entirely new language it takes more effort and time when you first learn.

At first it may take 5-10 minutes. Everyone varies depending on your ability to tune into your bodily sensations and learn this new language.

You can do it in minutes or a few seconds with skill. Eventually they won’t be “steps” but an automatic response to being in the moment with stress, allowing it to flow through and out of you.

Amy, this is way too silly, it’s way too simple to work.

Hey, I get it. It’s wacky, simply nuts.

It’s so simple and it work. One thing it’s not is airy-fairy hippy-dippy.

It’s backed by science, specifically, neuroscience. Which is explored more in my deeper work and online programs.


We’re keeping it simple here so you can get immediate relief.

Generally, we make things so much more complicated than they need to be. I often wonder if it’s an addiction to drama, a belief that things have to be hard….oh, that’s in the other program. Stay on track Amy…

The fact is, these 7

steps are to help you realize just

how simple and easy it is to de-stress and begin the process to heal. It is a beginning, one that will help guide you with the basics in helping your nervous system function with greater ease.

I also felt really silly in the beginning and very skeptical because of the simplicity especially compared to other more complex techniques out there in the market.

Can I do this wrong? How will I know? Fantastic question.

There is no right or wrong. Let yourself off the hook from all the pressure you probably put on yourself.


Allow yourself to metabolize the language of sensation and this new way of tuning into yourself. It takes practice. Lots of practice.

In reality these 7 steps are just the beginning to fully release stress and the toxic load your body carries from years of overwhelm.

So go easy, be gentle with yourself and curious about this process. Curiosity helps your body have a greater ability to release stress.

What if overwhelming emotions surface or difficult memories bubble up or worse my body experiences more pain?

Our natural tendency is to more towards pleasure and away from pain, at least many times we think we are.

But, as you may realize by now, your body is telling another story.

Memories, body sensations and/or painful emotions may surface to serve as a message that something is left undone. It’s in our interest to befriend them and explore what they are trying to communicate, so we can heal and move on.


Stuffing them does not resolve anything, in fact it creates more pain and toxicity which leads to disease.

If unpleasant emotions, memories or body sensations arise, which they will, allow a natural breath, just breathe naturally. Simply notice the unpleasant temporary condition, notice it is temporary and follow the 7

steps.

Pain is a communication of trapped sensations trying to work their way out of your body, psyche and nervous system.

Be patient with yourself and stick with these 7

steps

practice daily because, as you know, we are faced with stress everyday.

At first it may take 5-15mins of practice, eventually you can zoom through the steps in a minute or less. It will become super simple.

These 7 steps offer a perfect place to start so you can learn how to fearlessly settle your nervous system and tame the survival instincts that took over your life. Get back to the land of living without the toxic stress.
