One of my most memorable guests at Canyon Ranch was a man named Mark (names have been changed to protect privacy). He showed up in my office feeling that he was facing a 14-day sentence at Canyon Ranch in Tucson. Here he was, in his mid-30s and a rising star in the restaurant industry, but he was a man in trouble, and with no idea as to what to do about it. He talked so fast that I’d thought he’d turn purple as his story spilled out of him. He was about 40 pounds overweight and drank heavily – alcohol was the only thing that helped him unwind after his hectic, 14-hour days, he said. He’d been dragged to Canyon Ranch by his wife, who’d visited us three months earlier.

“I am very stressed out and if I don’t get a handle on this soon, I’ll probably be dead before I turn 50,” he said. He repeated a key phrase to me several times: “I feel so stressed.”

Mark’s profession was a hectic and demanding one, for sure, but the real problem was his response to the stress in his life. He needed to learn to recognize the onset of stress and his body’s natural reactions, and then work on managing those reactions in a healthy way. I recommended that he work with the specialists in Life Management, and, specifically, that he experience biofeedback. It’s one of the amazing, high-tech tools Canyon Ranch offers, and I’ve seen it do great things for guests.

Biofeedback works on the principle that, by using the power of our minds, we all have the innate ability to control physiological responses in our bodies. Once we understand our automatic physiological responses, we can train ourselves to recognize them and use our minds to influence them in a positive way. Athletes use biofeedback to improve their performance, and people have successfully used it to get control of stress-related health conditions like panic-attacks, migraine headaches and irritable bowl disease.

Canyon Ranch offers two primary biofeedback services: Biofeedback is a two-session service that, with the help of instruments that measure your physiological responses, teaches you to recognize what stress feels like and trains you in techniques for handling it. Heart-Mind Magic focuses on your heart rate and the influence that breath can have on regulating it. Both were very useful to Mark.

He spent three sessions learning about his body, his mind and his stress response. He also learned to meditate. By the time he left, he was able to use meditation, guided imagery and breathing techniques – instead of all those cocktails – to handle some of the stress in his life. It was a great beginning. He plans to return to Canyon Ranch and make more profound changes in his behaviors around eating, exercise and alcohol consumption.

Learning about biofeedback started as an exploration and ended up being transformational for Mark. Have you had a similar experience? I’d love to hear about it!