Are you holding your breath, even just slightly? Are you leaning forward, tensely anticipating the next problem to land in your email inbox? Most of us, without realizing it, hold our breath while we’re at our desks or at work. Take a moment now to lean back in your chair and take a few deep slow breaths. Shallow breathing while we’re responding to emails is just one of the many ways in which we’re unconsciously contributing to the stress response in our bodies.
Personal and societal stress add up in our bodies every day. We wake up with it, carry it with us like heavy luggage, pile on more throughout our daily routines, and wrap ourselves in it as we fall asleep. Even if we are not aware of it.
New York Times best-selling author Dr. Elissa Epel is back with a plan to turn stress into strength in her new book,
THE STRESS PRESCRIPTION: Seven Days to More Joy and Ease. As a leader in the fields of stress and biological aging, she is acutely aware of the ill effects of stress
on our health. But her research also explores how we can transform our relationship to stress—how we can stress better, viewing stress as an exciting challenge rather than a threat, and how we can find true relief from feeling overwhelmed.
Over the course of 7 days, THE STRESS PRESCRIPTION will transform our stressful lives into a more regenerative joy that helps us surf the daily challenges and experience deeper rest states.
Featured Speaker:
Dr. Elissa Epel
Elissa Epel, Ph.D, is a Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Psychiatry, at
University of California, San Francisco. She is the Director of the Aging, Metabolism, and
Emotions Center (www.amecenter.ucsf.edu), Associate Director of the Center for Health
and Community and the NIDDK UCSF NORC, member of the National Academy of Medicine,
and past President of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research and Co-Chair of the
Mind and Life Institute Steering Council. Epel is leading a Mental Health Council, as part of
the UC wide Center for Climate, Healthy and Equity, focusing on climate distress to
activation.
Elissa studies psychological, social, and behavioral processes related to chronic
psychological stress and health, and how to apply this basic science to scalable
interventions that can reach vulnerable populations. She studies processes that accelerate
biological aging, with a focus on overeating and metabolism, and cellular aging (including
the telomere/telomerase maintenance system). She and her colleagues develop and test
interventions that combine behavioral, psychological, and mindfulness training. Currently,
she is testing short term interventions to improve stress resilience and physiological
homeostatic capacity, to slow aging. She co-leads studies funded by NIA, NCCIH, NIDDK,
and NHLBI, including an NIH funded national Stress Network, and an Emotional Well Being
Network, and has been involved in National Institute Health initiatives on reversibility of
early life adversity, and Science of Behavior Change.
Epel studied psychology and psychobiology at Stanford University, and clinical and health
psychology at Yale University. She completed a clinical internship at the Palo Alto Veterans
Healthcare System and an NIMH postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF. Epel has received several
awards including the APA Early Career Award, Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research
Neal Miller Young Investigator Award, and the 2017 Silver Innovator Award from the
Alliance for Aging Research and noted by the web of science as a highly cited researchers
for interdisciplinary publications. Epel co-wrote with nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn,
The Telomere Effect (2017), a NYT bestseller under Science, which is translated in 30
languages. In 2022, she wrote The Stress Prescription, on science based fundamental
practices to reduce stress and increase well being.
Her work has been featured in venues such as TEDMED, NBC’s Today Show, CBS’s Morning
Show, 60 minutes, National Public Radio, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wisdom 2.0,
Health 2.0, and in many science documentaries. Epel led the creation of expert written
web-based resources and short videos for pandemics and other crises, including
psychological first aid and mental health issues at www.cope.ucsf.edu. 