The Four Elements

Ready to reduce your stress? 📉

Just one of the many great aspects of Happio’s signature therapy group programmes is that you are taught evidence-based skills. These skills are informed by literature or research within the topic area and demonstrated to be effective. Once learning the skills you can incorporate these into your daily life to help you effectively manage and improve your mental well-being. For each signature therapy programme one of our psychotherapists, psychologist or coaches has carefully selected skills to teach you that are unique to the group's needs. This means that once you have completed the therapy programme, you have the knowledge and confidence to successfully implement these skills. These are life-long skills and you learn a variety of different skills throughout the duration of each programme. 🙌

With Christmas just around the corner and many people’s stress and anxiety levels at an increasing high📈. There is no better time than the present to learn a new stress-reducing exercise that you can try out and determine whether it works for you, and potentially add to your ever-growing toolbox🧰.

👉 Melissa Cliffe has developed Happio’s Stress and Anxiety Programme. Melissa is a UKCP-accredited psychotherapist, academic lecturer, writer, and group facilitator👏. One of the many techniques she has chosen to teach members of the Stress and Anxiety programme is the “Four Elements Exercise for Stress Reduction”. So let’s take a look…

✍️ Four Elements Exercise for Stress Reduction🌍💨💦🔥

👉 This exercise has been created by Elan Shapiro who is the founder of EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy). It has four stages to move through. These stages are the following elements earth, air, water, and fire. It is a simple exercise you can do anytime.

👉 Earth 🌍 - In this stage your attention is directed outwards to the reality of safety in the present moment. This stage is designed for you to become grounded and feel safe and secure in the present moment. To be grounded in safety in your present reality you ground yourself by feeling your feet firmly on the ground and your body supported by a chair. Look around and notice three new things, this is to anchor you in the present. These can be any three new things, for example, three different colours of something or three different objects. You can also make contact with your body such as by tapping your hand on your leg.

👉 Air 💨– In this stage your attention is directed inwards to your centre. Air reminds us to breathe which can be hugely centering. You can do your favourite breathing exercise here. If you are unsure, try and breathe in through your nose for four seconds, hold for two seconds, and then breath out for four seconds through your mouth. Repeat this several times.

👉 Water 💦 – In this stage, your attention is directed towards producing saliva and coming calmer, focused, and more in control. Do you have saliva in your mouth? When you become stressed and anxious your mouth can often become dry. This is part of our fight-or-flight response. It is our sympathetic nervous system telling our digestive system to turn off. So by creating saliva in your mouth you are telling your body that you can relax and it is ok to switch your digestive system back on. All you need to do is bring a bit of saliva into your mouth.

👉 Fire 🔥– In this stage, your attention is directed to the feelings of safety, security, and calmness within your body. This stage lights up the path of your imagination. You can imagine a safe place, somewhere you have been before or somewhere you feel would evoke feelings of safety and calmness. Or, you can imagine being with someone you trust and feel safe with.

👉 Butterfly hugs 🦋 – Place your right hand on your collarbone above your heart, and the left hand crossing it to rest on your opposite collarbone. Tap left and right alternately with your fingers in a slow heartbeat cadence on your collarbone.

✍️ Additional Tips when Practicing the Four Elements 🌍💨💦🔥 👉 The four elements sequence has been designed to start from the feet and moves upwards (e.g., to the stomach and chest area, to the mouth and throat, and to the top of the head). 👉 As you enter each new element, continue to review the previous element. For example, as you continue feeling safe and secure and can feel your body grounded into a chair (earth), you also feel centered as you continue to breathe in and out (air) and feel calm as you produce saliva in your mouth (water), etc,. 👉 You can use a rubber band on your wrist to gently stretch and release to stop negative thoughts and help you to ground yourself quicker in the present. This is referred to as thought-stopping.

Is The Four Elements Exercise effective?🧐

Yes!!✅👏 Previously research has explored if the Four Elements exercise is effective. 96.55% of participants expressed complete satisfaction with the application of the four elements for coping with stress (EMDR technique) (Aziraj-Smajic and de la Fosse 2021). Out of these participants, 80.46% reported experiencing high levels of stress, 55.17% reported they were in the risk zone for the development of burnout, 17.24% that they are significantly at increased risk, 6.89% feel severe involvement with burnout syndrome and 1.15% of participants were in the phase of complete burnout. (Aziraj-Smajic and de la Fosse 2021). This indicates the technique is effective even for those experiencing high levels of stress and burnout! Participants were also able to easily accept and adopt this technique (Aziraj-Smajic and de la Fosse 2021).

Have a try and see if this exercise works for you. If you’d like to learn more skills and exercises take a look at Happio’s signature therapy programmes. 🤗