Stress Eraser

[Recovery Soon]

I just ordered it for $129.99 including shipping and tax.

Not sure where you're at, or if they ship outside the US...but this is the cheapest price I could find for a new one.

Brookstone claims $99, but their online store has been out of stock for a while.

In any event, here's the link:

http://www.thedealsite.com/stresseraser.htm

[niaholt]

Efly,
I got mine from Amazon .com cheap for $99.00....they wont ship outside the USA so I got a US friend to ship it to me in OZ. Here is the Stress Eraser home site. Read the tutorial it is helpful as the instructions with the book are not very enlightening. http://stresseraser.com/;jsessionid=7C3 ... 7373.web16
Now I am experimenting still and all of you with them will have your own journey with it. I dont get stressed if I find I cant score points as I am soooo relaxed I feel I cant be anymore relaxed with soft music playing in my ear. Could not do the music thing in the beginning. However I have worked out today that early morning 7.30 am is when I cant get it to calm me down at all....no matter how many times I try. I FEEL calm tho. I believe this is to do with my abysmally low cortisol levels.....my heart pounds and my BP is high when I try walking at this time of day. At night when my cortisol level is near normal it works well....that is my thinking....I could be wrong.

At 10.30am today when the Cortisol level is getting higher, I used it quite successfully... scored lots of points nicely spaced triangles.I then went for 10 min walk and tried it again on return with the same good results. The funny thing is my husband has a very slooow heart rate and extremely fit. It could not register his heart rate at all after several attempts. I dont know what to make of that.

I never thought of saying STOP STOP as I feel I am not being negative, just super concentrating on breathing, trying to "crack it" to score. I will try this idea and see if it helps. You can put it on with a noise bip tone for the score... absolutely calm...dull bip = 3 points.. becoming calmer= 2...if you are in stressed state it gives you a louder bip=1. I dont look at the screen now I just concentrate on breathing and let the bips look after themselves and peek every couple of minutes.

[Emergo]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the replies and keep those experiences coming. I'm not a cynic, but it feels to me that keeping track of your breathing is a stressor itself. But I'd be the first to admit that I'm wrong. Besides that - it would mean that the quite heavy breathing form the AoL course might be contra-productive!

Most interested in this topic!

E

[niaholt]

You keep listening to your breathing with Guptas meditation. After you "learn" this I think you will just breathe the right way without concentrating like you do with his meditations...You have to concentrate just like you do when you learn any new breathing technique like Pranayama. I dont know about the AOL contradicting....all you are doing is trying to get relaxed .

[fox]

With the stress eraser you don't need the stop technique!
Ashok's stop-technique is actually a feedback-system. It gives you feedback, when negative thoughts occur.
(Or rather, you yourself give feedback to your body-mind, that now 'something is wrong', and hence you stop it.)

With the Stress Eraser this is not necessary, as it is already a bioFEEDBACK system. It simply gives you immediate feedback, via visual, or auditory signals-cues whether you are really relaxed or not.
It is so sensitive, that it even notices when you think!! Just a small thought, and the wave usually gets worse.

To make it clear:

1.) Triangles always appear, even when you're not relaxed.

2.) The triangles on top of the screen indicate when you have to breathe out. (After about a week or so, you will probably only use the auditroy mode, where a beep indicates that you have to breath out.)

3.) The pitch of the beep indicate how relaxed your breath (and hence you) was:

a.) High pitch beep: You're tense.
b.) Medium pitched beep: You're somewhat relaxed.
c.) Low pitched beep: You're relaxed.

This always sounds overly complicated - it is not. In fact it is the easiest to handle biofeedback device I have ever tried.
(This was my hobby when I was younger, I tried quite a few of them.)

When you manage about 10 low pitched beeps in a row for the first time, it will automatically occur to you, how it feels when you're REALLY relaxed! WE HAVE FORGOTTEN!! Our bodies are super-sick, we must not forget that...many of us are type A people, always stressed, tense, nervous....before ME/CFS that was, now we are even worse!

So as soon as you feel how it feels to be really relaxed, the automatic feedback-loop within your body-mind will trigger in, and you will literally relearn relaxation!!

Enjoy!
fox

[annie]

I just payed the customs duty on mine, it will be here tomorrow. I will try very hard not to let it stress me out getting to know how to use it!!
Are you people who are using it already experiencing any relief from your me / cfs symptoms? maybe it is too early to tell.

[niaholt]

I am having some success with the stress Eraser. It helps when you read all the instructions.!!! I have fast paced adrenaline running a lot of the time anyway and have difficulty slowing it down. This week I got a Methyl cobalamin B12 shot........I have been like a rocket ever since. Consequently the adrenaline pumped like crazy and yesterday I could not calm myself down.

Last night before bed I read the Stress Eraser site and I tried blowing air out on the exhale thru "pursed" lips and it WORKED. I kept it up for about 1 hour and was calm when I went to bed. That did not let me sleep tho as I was too wired from the shot still 3 days later. It is now 5.30 am day 4 of the shot and I am still up wanting to go like a a rocket. Unfortunately everything I ingest like vitamins etc make me soooo sick. Who knows from here but the energy feels great.

Usually of morning I have great difficulty getting myself to calm, (very low cortisol) so this morning I thought I would go straight into doing Stress Eraser by "pursing" my lips and it did not work well for me. My natural slow breathing normally was doing a better job. So each situation has to be assessed I guess. I must be lot calmer this morning with only 4 1/2 hrs sleep, (too hyped last night from B12) so I guess each situation has to be assesseed.

I like what the Stress Eraser site says to keep on trying quote:

" the wave reflects the activity of your vagus nerve, which extends from your brain to your heart and branches out to your major organs. The vagus nerve is the primary nerve in your parasympathetic system, which activates your body’s natural relaxation response. Because the vagus nerve is governed by your brain, distracting thoughts actually appear as a “break” in your StressEraser wave."

[annie]

i have been using my lovely new toy for four days now. couldn't get a reading from index finger (arthritis in joint i think) anyway the booklet said one could use another finger, whew!
i found, to my surprise, that to get a good score, i had to breath more deeply than usual, far more deeply. sometimes it feels strained but up pop the lovely 3 dots. i wonder if i have not had enough air /oxygen in me for all these years.
i am finding that using it picks me up when i am feeling tired, though it doesn't help if having a sleepless night.
early days i suspect, but i am pleased i shelled out all the £££ on it. love the look of it and the dinky little case!
i'm doing about 150 a day, is this far too little? it takes about 5 sessions, variable times.

[fox]

Hi Annie,

see, I told you guys that it is a cool little device!
150 points for you as a starter is very good. Don't overdo it in the beginning, the body must get used to the intake
of more oxygen, it's quite a change! Gradually increase the number of points. Currently I am doing between 300 and 600 a day.

When you wake up in the night, it uses more to relax again, about 200 points I noticed, sometimes 100 points is also enough.

I guess for healthy people, only 50 points or so would be enough to relax them again upon awakening at night.

And: " i wonder if i have not had enough air /oxygen in me for all these years."

Hell, YES! With ME/CFS we breath much too shallow...probably even before due to stress, and of course that's horrible for our health.

By the way, you can use all the fingers, you can also change the device, and use the fingers of your other hand!

Keep us updated.

[JR]

Hey all--

I got my Stress Eraser a few days ago and have played with a bit each day. For the first couple of days, I didn't find it too difficult to get the three squares and a relatively non-jagged curving line. Tonight, however, I feel like I'm doing the exact same thing and my lines are really jagged, and the triangles are coming very fast. I don't feel more stressed than usual. Any thoughts on why this might be happening? I've just finished eating dinner and was wondering if it could be a food allergy or something that was affecting my HRV...?

[Recovery Soon]

GOt mine yesterday.

It really is a cool looking device= I love the leather case.

I scored 100 points on my first try in about a half hour. Admittedly, I'm a long term meditator, and also had just gotten back from a nightly meditation sit.

But I'm interested to see if it remains this easy for me.

If so, what does that say about the amygdala theory and my CFS?

My nervous system seems A-OK from this device so far - if so...how can my the sympathetic nervous system be my problem????

(BTW- at first I wasn't sure it would be good for a regular meditator, because I am already practicing. But I think the stress eraser is really good at reminding you to breathe and relax in daily life, as opposed to just when you're on the cushion. I think this will create a real continuity of practice- it certainly worked today).

[niaholt]

Hi JR,
That is just my experience too. I feel I am doing the exact same thing and I get flat lines and crooked hills....no points Today for example I feel really stressed with nausea and trying to load songs onto a new IPOD...I felt frustrated. Went to bed and lay down and used the ERASER and I had near perfect points. Yet this morning after meditation I did not....This I dont understand. My cortisol is low in the mornings so I put my morning low scores down to that but some mornings now I have scored so dont know what to think.....

I find the only way for me to get triangles when they WONT happen is to "purse"my lips and that slows the breathing way down....

[fox]

I guess the Stress Eraser always reflects how much relaxed you are at THIS VERY MOMENT!
So, even you you have been meditatin for 2 hours, and feel very relaxed, as soon as you stop meditating,
stress comes in again, and you start breathing to fast again, and the device will give you immediate feedback, that NOW you are not relaxed anymore!

That's probably our illness, even when relaxation is there, as soon as you do something else, stress comes in again, breathing becomes too fast and irregular again.

So I guess the trick is to learn to breathe slowly all the time - and the Stress Eraser should help that greatly!

[Recovery Soon]

I continue to enjoy this device.

Any down time becomes like a game- and the prize is a much calmer mind.

I'll need a few weeks to really know, but the last 2 days have been very pleasant using this thing.

[annie]

I too am very impressed by this device. I don't really understand when it goes all over the place, but don't let it worry me and it seems to settle down. I noticed that when I smile I often get 3 dots!
I see there are quite a few items on you tube about it.
I wish it was cheaper and more easily available in the u.k. I would like to give / recommend it to more people.
I do feel more relaxed, it could become addictive but it may gradually restore my breathing into something like normality then I won't need to use it so often.
Thank you for the good tutorials and for mentioning the thing in the first place.