Wellness/Stress Management Services

We believe in treating all problems from a holistic perspective and offer wellness services designed to help individuals better manage anxiety, chronic pain and illness, sleep disturbances, fatigue, high blood pressure, headaches, and improve self-esteem. These techniques combine to address the different components of stress, cognition, behavior, emotion, and physiological response and in a comprehensive manner. Although the techniques described below are often integrated into psychotherapy, we also offer them as a standalone service. The wellness services we offer include the following:

Stress Coaching

In an interview process, we will evaluate your responses to various situation-specific stressors to ascertain your coping styles. We will discuss the adaptive and maladaptive aspects of these coping responses. The stress coaching process works on helping you expand the areas where you cope well, and strengthen the areas where you have greater difficulties.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

This program is based on a type of mindful meditation developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, molecular biologist and founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts’ Medical School. Mindfulness meditation involves focusing on whatever a person happens to be experiencing at the time and learning to experience anything calming, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. It was designed to help patients cope with such diverse symptoms as stress, anxiety, chronic pain and illness, sleep disturbances, fatigue, high blood pressure and headaches. Examples of Mindfulness Meditations: Body Scan, Sitting Mindfulness Meditation, and Hatha Yoga.

Diaphragmatic Breathing Training

The practice of diaphragmatic breathing is beneficial because it activates the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). The PNS is responsible for calming and de-activating the body. It is the opposite of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) which is associated with the "Fight-or-Flight" arousal response. When dealing with stress, we are seeking to decrease arousal and increase relaxation. Proper breathing is an important channel to improved emotional health and regulation.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

A series of exercises designed by the physician Edmund Jacobson for his tense patients. This method emphasizes the relaxation of the voluntary skeletal muscles by contracting a muscle group and then relaxing it, progressing from one muscle group to another until the total body is relaxed. Individuals eventually learn to recognize tenseness and continuously relax whatever part of their body that is needed. You will be taught how to utilize this technique in session and then apply it in other facets of your life.

Autogenic Training and Guided Imagery

A self-generating or self-induced relaxation technique. This method uses mental concentration exercises to bring about sensations of warmth and heaviness in the limbs and torso and then uses relaxing images to expand the relaxed state. You will be guided through various scripts involving targeted imagery and visualization designed to facilitate relaxation. This is another great portable skill that can subsequently be applied on your own.

As one can see from the description of the services above, we offer a holistic approach to targeting stress and improving your overall sense of well-being. The above techniques combine to address the different components of stress, cognition, behavior, emotion, and physiological response and in a comprehensive manner