Stress is in the air as we get ready to go back to school. We need to help our children navigate this stress, and we do this best by first learning how to bust our own stress. Keep reading for a time tested strategy to help manage our stress.

UNDERSTAND & UTILIZE DEEP BREATHING:

The body can live many weeks without food, days without water, but only a few short minutes without  breath. The Hebrew word for breath can be translated as “Spirit” or “Mind.” In other words, through God’s breath of life we have been created! In the Gospel of John (20:22), Jesus breathed on His followers and gave them His Holy Spirit (Jesus’ very life)! Breath is very sacred, to breathe is to pray!

One of the greatest blessings in my life is that I have been a part-time stay at home dad since 1999. What a gift. I remember the baby stages (I love babies, but the sleepless nights are nasty…God bless all the parents of infants reading this right now!)

When an infant sleeps, what part of the infant’s body moves?

The tummy, and very rapidly because the infant’s heart rate is higher than an adult’s heart rate. Why is that important?

Because when we are fresh from God, as an infant, we know exactly how to breathe! We take full body breaths and it goes deep down into the lung which moves the diaphragm (a parachute shaped muscle that separates the chest from the gut). As air is forced to the bottom portion of the lung the diaphragm expands and the belly button pops out.

This is important because it can increase oxygen absorbption and help the heart (and every other organ in the body)!

The strategy of deep breathing is so rooted in our bodies and in Scripture that it feels too familiar to be helpful, but that is not true! Taking deep breaths can be an amazing way to help manage and lower stress.

Once we understand that the deep breaths are important we have to utilize this knowledge and teach our children. Here is how you can do it:

Lie down on your back and put a hand on your belly button and a hand on your chest. When we take a deep breath, the only hand that should more is your belly button hand. I teach count to three: 3 seconds in, hold for 3, and 3 seconds out. Once you know how to deep breath you can teach your children to pop their belly buttons out as well!

Then, take and teach the next step: when you feel any stress take a couple of deep breaths. It sounds like a cliché, but I just explained why it is critically important. It can slow our heart rate, it can interrupt the stress hormone sequence in the body, and it can help our thinking become sharper. All this from deep breathing! No wonder why it is hard-written into the wisdom of the infant!

God bless your deep breathing. Peace.

Further Reading: Back to School Stress Busters: Part 1, Back to School Stress Busters: Part 3

“Don’t make your amygdala any bigger” I tell my children (and myself) when stress is high. Then, like clock-work, comes their response: “Daddy, we know….to you everything is about the amygdala,” and then we have a good laugh.

Do you and your children know the vital importance ofkeeping your amygdala the size God desires? If not, please keep reading.

Before we go further here is a full disclosure: I think if kids can learn a phrase like “to infinity and beyond” a kid can learn parts of the brain at an early age because it will help them for the rest of their life! In this blog lets talk about two parts of the brain that are physically connected: the amygdala and the hippocampus.

The amygdala is a small almond shaped part of the brain that is critically important for emotional learning and strong emotions like fear or aggression. The amygdala highlights negative emotions and increases stress hormones in our brain and body, this is hard wired and keeps us alive in emergencies. The problem comes when we make everything an emergency and get stressed out over the small things in life and never allow the brain to “re-set” itself and relax.

The hippocampus is a major memory center and involved in all thoughts, it is physically connected to the amygdala. That is important because as stress increases and if we don’t take time to de-stress the amygdala can actually get larger! As the amygdala gets larger, the hippocampus gets smaller!

Unchecked stress can literally make the part of the brain that says “fear” become larger, while the part of the brain that tries to help in thinking is shrinking. Are you seeing anything wrong with this picture?

When we don’t take time to de-stress our amygdala can actually get larger from the stress hormones, and before we know it the hippocampus becomes smaller our memory and some thought processes can get slower and slower. So what do we do? We make daily de-stress time a priority.

So how can we de-stress: name it, re-frame it, and tame it (read part 1 about teaching our kids to de-stress), deep breathing (part 2), daily laughter, excersize (which creates calming chemicals in our brain), playing MarioKart with your children (especially when I win), always see things in perspective: when we do it keeps the amygdala in check, tell yourself positive truths of who you are: you are a child of God and God loves you, and make sure you never send yourself negative messages…that will only serve the amygdala.

One last tip to lower stress, and it is the most important: pray every day and devote time to just sit and let God love you! God is so in love with us, we are God’s children. When we recognize and act on this basic truth we can help to de-stress every day, and then we can teach our children to do the same.

So tonight, instead of turning on the Ipad, TV, laptop, Ipod, or anything else with a screen on it, just simply sit down and let God love you by sitting quietly and telling yourself over and over again that “I am God’s child and I am good.”

God bless our efforts in keeping our amygdala the size that God intended. Peace.

Further reading:  Back To School Stress Busters: Part 1,  Back To School Stress Busters: Part 2