These emotional management tools developed by the Institute of HeartMath (IHM), a not-profit research organization, provide students with practical techniques designed to help them neutralize or transform negative, reactive emotions and behaviors in the moment, allowing them to replace emotional imbalance with increased resilience and emotional stability. The intended benefit of these techniques is to counteract or altogether prevent destructive psychological and physiological responses to stress and to promote a wider range of proactive responses in stressful situations. The techniques have been used successfully with children, adolescents, adults and families in a variety of settings. Previous applications include: facilitating improvements in reading skills in learning-disabled fifth and sixth graders; facilitating a substance abuse recovery program in teenagers; and helping migrant families better integrate into American culture, improve academic skills, reinforce family connectedness and enhance the ability to cope with challenges such as violence, poverty, fear and isolation.
Freeze-Frame® enables
individuals to intervene in the moment that stress or an emotional reaction
is experienced. In essence, the technique instructs one to consciously
disengage from negative mental and emotional reactions as they occur by
shifting one's attention to the physical area around the heart, where many
people subjectively feel positive emotions, and then self-generate a sincere
positive feeling state such as appreciation, love or care. This prevents
or reverses the body's normal (and frequently destructive) stress response
and changes the bodily feedback sent to the brain, thus averting physiological
and psychological wear and tear. As a result of Freeze-Frame, one can think
more objectively and clearly and often transform an inefficient, emotionally
draining response to a proactive, creative one. With practice, this tool
can be used effectively in less than one minute.