Stress Management and Resiliency Training (S.M.A.R.T.)
The course introduces practical tools for stress management through relaxation, stress recognition and coping strategies, along with supporting science. It is suitable for adults and here, it is aimed at health professionals who will gain new tools for helping others.
The Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART) program is an 8 week educational skills based program for groups. The program has been running in America for many years and was developed at the Harvard based Benson Henry Institute, presenting methods evolved from Dr Herbert Benson’s studies of the relaxation response first characterized in his research on blood pressure at Harvard in the 1970’s. Dr. Benson discovered that, just as we have a physiological mechanism for responding to stress, we also have a physiological mechanism which reduces the stress response. This mechanism can be elicited intentionally. Dr. Benson called this ‘eliciting the relaxation response’. The program teaches participants how to elicit and practice the relaxation response. Stress awareness is also learned, which helps to prevent escalation of stress in daily life.
The practice of these methods enables participants to create new habits and skills, which favor the reduction of stress. Many methods are presented so that individuals can find and practice the ones that best suit them.
Stress management is one of the 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine. Learning to understand stress mechanism both experimentally and didactically will open up better choices for us in our own lives and enable us to offer help to our patients which is grounded in our own experience.
In order to register please send an email to drmiriammaisel@hotmail.com, with your name, postal address (for receiving the manual) and quoting you BSLM membership for £30 off.