Marie Bainbridge

Marie Bainbridge, a Vietnam Veteran Bronze-star recipient, uses the Anchoring Heart Technique when her PTSD is triggered. However, she says she also uses it in many ordinary situations: “I can be impatient in traffic. If I’m in a store and someone is blocking the aisle so noone can get around them, I want to huff and puff and complain about their self-centeredness. Now, I use the Anchoring Heart Technique to cultivate patience, courtesy, and self-control. It really helps.”

People can also use the Anchoring Heart Technique with others. People often need anchoring and security, especially during times filled with uncertainty. If a calm person places their open hand on an unsettled person’s sternum, it can often help him/her feel secure, more stable, and less anxious. Place your hand firmly on the other person’s heart and just breathe deeply to induce calmness. This often helps the other person feel more connected with themselves and more secure in their own skin.

 

An alternative form of the Anchoring Heart Technique is to approach the heart from behind – in other words placing your hand firmly on their back between their shoulder blades. This conveys a feeling of “I’ve got your back.” It can be used with people you don’t know well when placing your hand on their heart would be too intimate or too invasive.

Ralph Ozmun

Ralph Ozmun was the Volunteer Coordinator at Smoky Mountain Home Health & Hospice. After learning about the Anchoring Heart Technique at a Soul Injury conference, he went back to his agency and provided an inservice on the topic. Below is what he writes about what happened following the inservice:

“The next day one of our nurses and her assistant went out to change the wound dressing on a patient. As the patient became combative, the aide said to the nurse, ‘Let’s try that anchoring heart thing Ralph told us about yesterday.’ The nurse placed her hand firmly, but tenderly, on the patient’s heart, and speaking his name she softly said, ‘breathe, breathe.’ The patient immediately calmed down and allowed them to change his wound dressing without further incident.

A few days later, another nurse Debbie, happened to be in the waiting room of our local hospital emergency department and witnessed an elderly woman in hysterics as the ambulance personnel were wheeling her in the entrance. Debbie walked up to them and asked, ‘Do you mind if I try something I just learned about?’ With permission, she knelt down, placed her hand firmly but tenderly on the woman’s heart and softly said, ‘Breathe, breathe.’ The woman’s frantic behavior calmed almost instantly. Even her countenance had changed; the look of wide-eyed panic had been replaced with an accepting calmness.

As you can imagine, the ambulance personnel, as well as those in the waiting room, were amazed by what they had just witnessed, and asked Debbie ‘What did you just do?’ Nurse Debbie taught the Anchoring Heart Technique to everyone in the waiting room, some of the emergency room staff, and the ambulance personnel.

A few days later, Debbie was asked by a doctor’s office to come explain Hospice services to the staff. During the inservice, the office staff told Debbie what a bad day they were having. Some related how that, even before arriving at work, frustrating and stressful events had occurred. The more the staff talked, the more evident it became to Debbie that they needed a moment of self compassion. So, she led them through the 3 steps of the Anchoring Heart Technique. When they finished, the staff remarked with almost disbelief, how much lighter they felt, as if a weight or burden had been lifted.

At the next doctor’s office she called on, Debbie related what had happened at the previous doctor’s office. That staff asked her to lead them through the Anchoring Heart Technique. When they had finished that staff also remarked how they felt lighter and yet stronger.

Due to the responses she received that day, Debbie asked the  marketing department to design a flyer describing the 3 steps to the Anchoring Heart Technique. The flyer was used as an educational tool during the month of February, which is American Heart Month.”