Frequently Asked Questions
Our body holds a lot of information that can help us navigate stress. Because we live in a “heady” culture, we often neglect this useful information, only noticing stress when it’s too late. The great thing is that everything the body provides is very practical and concrete, which makes it easy to use!
Absolutely and emphatically: No.
While our body has timeless wisdom, it would be nothing without our brain. But we are suggesting that all of us would benefit from a little less time just in our heads or just in our bodies. And that having practiced accessing the information that the body provides can increase our ability to access our brain when we need it most: during critical, stressful events when our frontal lobe is typically compromised.
That can happen pretty quickly! Most of the exercises will provide you with immediate feedback as you are doing them, and you can use that awareness in your daily life. In challenging situations it can take a little more practice to use the skills that the exercises are developing. The more deliberate and frequently you find opportunities to practice, the sooner and more profoundly you will notice results.
The lesson video(s) runs from 10-15 minutes. The exercises attached to each lesson take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. And the daily practice takes 5-10 minutes on average each day. If you do each lesson on a weekly basis, think of it as an extra hour or so each week for a total of 8 weeks.
We do not consider this an “either/or” situation. The skills you develop through this course are the foundation for implementing evidence-based resilience training and burnout prevention strategies, including:
- Awareness: Knowing when you or another is stressed
- Communication: Maintaining open, non-judgemental communication
- Empowerment: Feeling engaged, interested, motivated and effective in your work
- Prioritizing: Knowing what is most important and meaningful to you and being able to act on that
- Control: Having a sense that you are in the driver’s seat
- Balance: Engaging in leisure, social and general non-work activities in addition to your work day.
Unlike other courses, we generally don’t provide tactics, strategies, a list of how-to’s or dos and don’ts. We focus on how you can utilize and maximize the information that’s inherently available to you.
It’s a fantastic starting point! But to answer your question, well . . . No.
Diet and exercise (not to mention sleep) are key players in overall health and wellness, and stress relief and burnout prevention. But if they were enough, then you wouldn’t be reading this 😉 Even high-performance athletes have information in their bodies that they may not access. This isn’t about the condition of your body, it’s about how you relate to your body with your brain.
Organizations play a key role in preventing burnout and increasing resilience. But the efforts that organizations make may fall short if we don’t have the skill to put those changes into practice. And with those skills we are more likely to communicate our needs and be empowered to present our own ideas about how to increase workplace satisfaction.
Once you have developed and practiced with your awareness, no extra time is needed from your busy schedule to include it into your workday. The tools we provide in the course will become consistently present. And once you have a sense for it, you will find yourself practicing in the space of seconds at a time and feeling the benefits!
Definitely! Although we target students and people in the service field this course can be beneficial to everyone that works in a demanding environment and wants to leave work feeling satisfied and energized.