Transforming Stress for Teens ─ The Heartmath Solution for Staying Cool Under Pressure

It’s stressful being a teen! In Transforming Stress for Teens, leaders from the world-renowned Institute of HeartMath and Clemson University’s Youth Learning Institute team up to teach overwhelmed and stressed-out teens how to use HeartMath skills—proven-effective tools and techniques to help you manage daily stress and anxiety, and develop resilience by managing emotion.

The teen years are a time of significant change and growth, and teens face numerous stressors like homework overload, conflict with friends and family, balancing school and other responsibilities, and dealing the all-too-common feeling of being left out or of not belonging. Emotions can “drain your battery,” and many teens struggle when it comes to managing their everyday stress. Some withdraw or even turn to destructive behaviors in an effort to feel better.

Following the success of Transforming Stress, this book is the first to provide teens with the life-changing, proven-effective HeartMath skills for reducing stress. Using these practical evidence-based concepts and techniques, this book will help you manage stress by showing you how to manage your emotions. And with these emotion regulation skills, like the relaxing heart-breathing technique, you’ll feel calmer, be more confident, think more clearly, bounce back from challenging situations, and enjoy life with a new understanding of what’s really important to you.

Transforming Stress for Teens will help you recognize the mental, emotional, and physical impact of stress, and guide you toward finding balance, clarity, and self-assurance with the proven HeartMath tools. When you feel better, you do better—this book will show you how.

Rollin McCraty, PhD, is executive vice president, director of research, and fellow of the American Institute of Stress. He holds memberships with the International Neurocardiology Network, American Autonomic Society, Pavlovian Society, and Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, and is an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University. He and his research team regularly participate in collaborative studies with other US and international scientific, medical, and educational institutions. McCraty is an internationally recognized authority on heart rate variability, heart rhythm coherence, and the effects of positive and negative emotions on human psychophysiology. He is widely published.

Stephen W. Lance, MS, is an experienced HeartMath instructor, and has over twenty years of experience in the field of youth development. Lance serves as executive director of Clemson University’s Youth Learning Institute, which serves over 25,000 youth annually in diverse programs ranging from innovative schools, group homes, camping programs, and academic field study experiences.

Jeff Goelitz is currently a program developer, senior trainer, and education specialist with the nonprofit Institute of HeartMath. He regularly consults with education professionals, mental health specialists, and parents around the United States and Canada to help improve the well-being of youth, parent/child communication, and classroom climate and performance. In the last fifteen years, he has created and contributed to numerous educational curricula and programs designed to improve social and emotional learning, with work including The College De-stress Handbook, articles, and webinars on a variety of topics as a regular stress solutions expert on www.howtolearn.com.