Learn how to manage and reduce stress around the holidays and beyond!

By |Published On: April 28th, 2021|
feeling overwhelmed

Interview with Willow Rose Gahm and Cedric Mauchien, founders of eResonance who share different tools and methods on how to manage stress and anxiety!

We are creatures of habit. Even the habits that don’t serve us still give us a sense of comfort. They’re a well-known territory that makes us feel secure and in control.

In the past few years I’ve noticed that stress has also turned into kind of a habit for me. I’m so used to feeling stressed most days that I can’t really live without it. Perhaps you’re thinking, “How can stress be a habit when it’s not a pleasant thing?”

Have you read Joe Dispenza’s book “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself”? If you haven’t I highly recommend you give it a try. In the book you’ll discover that our feelings and emotions create chemical reactions to which our cells and body can get so addicted that they start looking for ways to recreate those chemical reactions.

As well as creating certain chemical reactions in your body, stress also makes your body very acidic, and acidosis is the root cause of disease.

Do you ever stop to ask yourself why you’re stressed? What causes stress in your life? Is there a way to get rid of your stressors?

The first time I asked myself, “Why am I stressed?” I was shocked to find out that the stressor was not someone or something outside of me! Instead I discovered it was my own way of thinking and reacting to things like the news, or what my neighbour told me, or my worries about the future, etc. 

I was so addicted to the feeling of stress that I would wake up on certain days feeling terrible without an obvious reason! Or even on a perfect day, I would always find something or someone to pick a fight with, in order to raise my adrenaline and cortisol levels. When I looked at my friends it appeared they weren’t much different than me. I began to see that we’re a society driven by stress, fear and all kinds of stimulants that make us either feel like the victim or the one in charge of our circumstances.

“Something needs to change!” I thought. “I need to change!” and I need to learn to manage stress in order to feel good again. 

managing stress

Just like everything today, there’s a lot of information about stress on the internet and yet it’s not always easy to find the one thing that can help you really manage stress. I personally have explored many ways to manage my personal stress levels. After several months of soul and internet searching, I found eResonance. They’re a small company in Zurich, working with individuals and groups to support and help people reduce and deal with stress, panic and anxiety. They do this through a personalized journey or through different, more general stress release tools. 

The founders, Willow Rose Gahm and Cedric Mauchien, are also trained and working with EPR Biofeedback Device, which communicates with the body using GSR (Galvanic Skin Response). This response system reads the body at biological speeds, providing results within minutes as opposed to days or weeks. It’s an emerging technology based on the science of Quantum Physics and considered to be very accurate.

Tsitaliya: Why do you think life has become so stressful for most of us?

Willow Rose: As humans, our nervous system is designed to protect and reward us. When something good happens we release hormones for happiness such as oxytocin, and when danger occurs we release hormones such as adrenaline & noradrenaline. Today, the minor stressors such as little sleep, deadlines, and running for a tram all trigger this flight or fight nervous system response, even though the stressor is not life or death threatening.

The combination of having our nervous system triggered all the time causes a human pattern, which has trained the body to be on high alert. Once we are trained to be in high alert, it is difficult for the body to relax and come back into balance. This is because the body begins to think that this stress is the new “normal”.

Today with Covid, we are on more high alert than ever. As this our body’s nervous system of fight or flight stays in the red zone, for longer periods of time, it begins to turn off non “necessary” bodily functions, such as digestion, and blood to the extremities etc. This in turn causes longer term stress and damage to the body and the psyche.

This is why it is so important that we take time out of our busy schedules to stop, step back and take time for self-care and relaxation. Bring the body back into balance and recharge it. When we are balanced, the body is able to heal and restore.

manage stress

Tsitaliya: What is eResonance and why did you start your business? What is your personal why to start a business that deals with stress?

Willow Rose: Everything started when I had the beautiful idea, sparked through my own experience with holistic medicine. I discussed it with my partner with one focus in mind, how we can support women in the best way possible. We then created eResonance to focus on stress reduction for the individual. Through our business we deliver a variety of services to our customers to support them in their own journey. Especially with our work as biofeedback therapist and through our global initiatives, we support the individual to develop their own personal tool belt for stress, panic and anxiety.

Our main community is women who are dealing with either stress, panic or anxiety on a daily basis, or who have dealt with shock, trauma or loss. We help the individual to facilitate stress reduction on their own and find their own personalized list of tools to reduce stress most effectively. The healing process is so individual and personal, that it is very important to find YOUR way to manage stress that fits for you. We also work with the individual to strengthen their own intuition as often with stress, panic and anxiety, one begins to search more outside themselves then within.

We provide our customers the possibility to reduce their stress through essential oils, community initiatives, biofeedback, essential oils and more.

Essential Oils and stress

Tsitaliya: Why did you choose to work with essential oils? People choose all kinds of ways to deal with stress – exercise, dance, meditate. What other tools do you offer to manage stress? 

Willow Rose: My journey with essential oils began as a child and my experience of them strengthened as I fell ill over the past 5 years. I saw the power that they had to calm me before an operation or to help ease my worry, or help me to sleep. Already being a biofeedback therapist,I had used essential oils within my practice since we had had basic training on them during my biofeedback education, I always saw how useful they were, especially for women in reducing stress and anxiety.

With the combination of all of these factors, I decided that I wanted to add aromatherapy to my education, as I saw just how powerful the simplicity of pant aromas were.

Since discovering the power of essential oils for stress reduction, I personally use essential oils in many aspects of my life. A beautiful room freshener, in cleaners, before bed with vanilla a lavender for sweet dreams, and I always carry a lavender roll-on with me in my purse and travel case so that when I begin to feel stressed, I can take it out and apply my aroma care perfume, and I know that it will naturally sooth away my worries!

Further Stress Tools:

However, as mentioned, this is not all that we do: we also have a large focus on EPR biofeedback, stress reduction sets, stress reduction card decks, such as our eArt Community project, and we have a few exciting projects coming up as well, including a eBook to help individuals reduce stress, panic and anxiety. Our focus is really to support women in reducing stress, panic and anxiety through a variety of tools and developing their own stress reduction “tool kit”.

Stress reduction essentials

Tsitaliya:  You offer several programs to manage and reduce stress, can you share how it works?

Willow Rose: One of our main goals besides supporting the individual to develop their own sustainable stress reduction tool kit, is to support women in knowing that they are not alone in their journey and that many others are working through the same things and that they are. To support them in knowing that there are holistic, and sustainable methods for individuals to reduce stress and that through practice and attention, they can come back to themselves

We want to support individuals to know that they can handle the stresses of everyday life on their own. This is why we started initiatives such as eArt2020.

We also work with various local and global organizations to support individuals. We work with a couple clinics in the USA, through donations.

We go to the individuals home to provide biofeedback sessions for stress reduction, pain management and training.

We also are working with some local companies, such as Yoga Tribe Zurich to offer workshops on daily stress reduction techniques.

We are developing an eBook to support women with stress, panic and anxiety through global cooperation

Our programs are based on the crowd community to develop well being package for the community such as eArt2020.

Workshops in stress reduction, essential oils and self care, developing your own tool kit for self care.

Essential oils (organic and pure), providing a stronger performance and effectiveness.

tools to manage stress
reduce stress with christens

Tsitaliya: Do you have any advice for women especially, who live with enormous pressure to succeed at everything today? How do we deal with everyday stress before it becomes too late and we end up with burnout or other serious issues?

Willow Rose: My best advice: It is all about ​self-care and prevention.​ This is so key! Taking time for self care, time for you. You are really your greatest gift. When you put time into yourself, you have time and energy to give. When you don’t you become tired and worn out and it can eventually lead to burnout or health issues.

Take the time for you. Take care with what you eat, how you sleep, your inner dialogue and how you are speaking to yourself. Take time to exercise, to eat healthy, to get out into nature. Take time with your loved ones, to journal, to be creative and to let your love for life shine and grow.

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About the Author: Tsitaliya Mircheva

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Tsitaliya is a writer and fashion journalist for more than 20 years. She founded Mums in Heels 10 years ago and keeps growing and evolving together with her community or fashionable mums and responsible consumers. Fashion and Wellness are her most favourite topics to write about.