Unstressed: How Somatic Awareness Can Transform Your Body's Stress Response and Build Emotional Resilience

In the midst of daily stress and turmoil, this book exposes the power of our emotions to heal us—and offers new hope for reclaiming contentment, connection, and a greater sense of well-being.

Do you feel stressed out during the day and lie awake at night worrying? You’re not alone. In today’s hectic, fast-paced world, stress and anxiety have become a default way of being—as natural to us as breathing air. And because stress is an inevitable part of life, one of the most important things you can do for yourself is to learn how to manage and heal it.

This book offers proven ways to help you counter the negative effects that stress has on the body and mind. You’ll also discover practical skills and clinically proven strategies grounded in mindfulness, neurobiology, and positive psychology to help you cultivate deep sense of emotional resilience.

Using the author’s innovative HEART tools (Heartful Engagement And Re-focusing Training), you’ll learn to manage stress by harnessing the power of positive emotions—such as gratitude, compassion, empathy, and hope—leading to a feeling of expansiveness and possibility, and a lived sense of calm, happiness, and vitality.

Alane K. Daugherty, PhD, is a stress expert who teaches courses in stress management, emotional health, embodied spirituality, health and well-being, and the psychophysiology of contemplative practice. She is codirector of the Mind and Heart Research Lab—a psychophysiology lab and stress management and emotional health facility at California Polytechnic State University, Pomona. She also serves as research consultant for the Center for Engaged Compassion at Claremont School of Theology. She routinely speaks and conducts seminars, workshops, and retreats on stress management and cultivating emotional resilience.

Foreword writer Habib Sadeghi, DO, is founder of Be Hive of Healing Integrative Medical Center in Agoura Hills, CA. With a master’s degree in spiritual psychology, he specializes in treating chronic diseases and their trauma-based, emotional cofactors. He specializes in osteopathic, anthroposophical, environmental, psychosomatic, family, and German new medicine; and integrative psychosynthesis. He is author of The Clarity Cleanse and Within.