Jones and Maiz offer encore presentation of ‘Taming Anxiety’
Tense? Anxious? Consumed with worry? Can’t relax?
Join Virginia Jones and Holly Maiz for “Taming Anxiety,” the latest in the Secret Signals Seminars’ series of educational and experiential workshops, to learn to tame the worried beast within.
“Taming Anxiety” will take place on Wednesday, March 30 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Sanibel Community House, located at 2173 Periwinkle Way.
In this three-hour workshop, Jones and Maiz give you concrete tools you can use to handle anxiety as well as provide an understanding of when and how these work, why other approaches may not be successful and why it is so very hard to change. Interventions will focus on sensations, thoughts and behaviors. Depending on the participants this may include movement, sound, laughter, biofeedback, cognitive strategies, behavioral changes, mindfulness meditation and breathing.
Participants will also become familiar with the sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous system and how and why our brain is so good at creating anxiety.
“Physiological systems that have developed in our species for tens of thousands of years need to be adapted to the world we live in,” explained Jones. “In our time, obesity, high blood pressure, and debilitating back pain are a bigger threat than a wild animal that wants to make you tonight’s dinner. “
The seminar will focus on how to “tame the beast”: how to relax the parts of us that are not needed for a task. Your mind can be active while the rest of you is not. Conversely, your muscles can be working while you maintain a quiet mind and relaxed breathing.
“Often there are sensations that can tell us we are idling too fast – just like our car,” said Maiz. “If we focus our awareness on sensation instead of on thoughts – these are signals that can show us how to intervene, how to interrupt the cycle or release the built-up tension. That’s why learning the language of sensation – the wisdom of the body – is so important.”
Psychotherapists Holly Maiz and Gini Jones bring different but complementary perspectives to their workshops. Before their psychotherapist training, Maiz was a dancer and Gini Jones was a biology teacher. Holly is a body/mind psychotherapist with specialties in addiction, eating disorders and optimal aging, and training in the instruction of Yoga, QiGong and Pilates. On Sanibel, she works with groups and individuals. Jones is a licensed clinical psychologist with specialties in health psychology, anxiety and panic disorders. Also trained as a biofeedback therapist, she is in private practice on Sanibel. Together, they bring a well-rounded knowledgeable view of your biology and psychology to help you make successful life-style changes.
To register for “Taming Anxiety,” please include your name, phone number and e-mail. Call or text 239-699-4545, e-mail SecretSignals@yahoo.com, snail mail to P.O. Box 821, Sanibel, FL 33957 or use “contact us” at www.SecretSignals.net. If you are pre-registered, the cost — payable by check or cash at the door — is $35 or $15 if you took the seminar in December 2010. The cost is $40 is you are not pre-registered.
Visit their website www.SecretSignals.net for more information on this seminar and on the future seminar “Mindless/Mindful eating” which will be in early April.