By: JEAN PIERRE NDAGIJIMANA
PUBLISHED: December 21, 2015 at The New Times

Stress is a word that is used frequently in our daily life. However, have you ever stopped to consider what stress physiologically actually is? The scientific research on stress is very complicated. However, to put it simply, stress is our brain-body’s response to the perceptions (our interpretations) of what is going on in our environment. This interpretation of our environment is complicated and is based on what is happening ‘right now’ or Ubu a word we like to use. Even to say the word Ubu is calming. Your interpretation of what is happening in your environment is heavily influenced by what has happened to you in the past and what you have learned to do from those experiences.

For instance, if you are riding a bike or driving a car, or walking on the side of the road and someone in a car or motorbike almost hits you, your brain-body automatically responds due to your perception and interpretation of a threat in your environment. The stress hormones instantly respond with no thought, sending out messages that you need to pay attention to what is happening and take action for your safety. You may notice after the danger passes that your hands or legs are shaking, your breathing may be rapid, your heart is racing and that your mouth is feeling dry. This is from adrenaline and other stress hormones that have just helped you take action and focus. Next time you have an experience such as this, notice how long it takes your brain-body to regulate your stress response and return to what we call Gap of Calm. It can take a while for this to happen.

We use the combined words brain-body to emphasise that the brain and body are partners and make an incredible team. Our brain is not able to survive without the body and the body cannot survive without the brain. It is not that stress is bad or good. It is the accumulation of stress and how we deal with it that can cause health problems over our lifetime. Pressure and demands from the long list of things we are doing with work, school, family and relationships can cause an accumulation of stress with no rest until we manage to realise that now, this moment, is not stressful.

Changes in health from stress may be hard to notice. We may not even associate our health problems as being influenced by our stress response.

Jean Pierre Ndagijimana is the founder/director Talk Recovery Training-Rwanda

Published on 31, March, 2015, 10:25am

While the activities for the 21^st Commemoration of Genocide Against the Tutsi commenced TRT Rwanda/I-UBU Ltd trained university students from the University of Rwanda Huye campus in order to enhance their skills on how to help themselves and other people who may experience heightened stress reactivity during commemoration and after.

In an interview with IGIHE newspaper, Jean Pierre Ndagijimana, the Director of UBU-Ihangamutuzo (I-UBU)Ltd and Talk Recovery® Training TRT-Rwanda, said that Ubu Training was founded to help people achieve a desirable health condition of their brain-body through coaching, educating and training in order to help people create peace and find the gap of calm from stress. In daily life it is important for well-being to learn stress regulation techniques.

He said, “Generally when we face a threat or a stressor whether in memory or in the moment our fear works as a trigger igniting stress hormones critical for focus and survival.

He continued by saying that, “When stress is prolonged and sustained the person lives in the brain-body stress reactivity for an extended period. This can be due to sustained threats or an unsupportive environment in a person’s daily life. The overload of those stress hormones over an extended period without effective intervention tools to regulate the reactivity, that can lead to dangerous health problems”.

Ndagijimana states that Stress is ordinary in our life, however, when stress becomes chronic prolonged and sustained, it can cause dangerous problems to health, including chronic headache, chronic fatigue, high blood pressure, forgetfulness, problems in the stomach, hiccups, restlessness, chronic back pains, etc.

He continued saying that TRT Rwanda/I-UBU Ltd focuses on simple skills necessary to find the gap of calm in the brain-body in order to regulate stress hormones so that people can improve the quality of their health.

Ndagijimana said that they use different strategies to help people have tools to manage their stress and thorough education and training may be able to recognize and regulate their stress reactivity both from daily stressors and stressors that may be stimulated from the past.

Ndagijimana, continued saying that “when a person faces a threat or stressor it can take time depending on the impact of the stressor and the length of time the stressor continues for brain-body to find a gap of calm moving out of heightened stress reactivity. The person’s senses sight, touch, taste, sound, smell, balance and more all are capable of stimulating memories from the past and this can triggers heightened reactivity as if the memory is actually happening in the moment.

The Director of TRT Rwanda/I-UBU Ltd concluded that normally it is human senses which inform to the person about the information for each moment, he said “when there is a trigger to the dangerous experiences which are kept in our memories, the human senses provide information to the brain-body the same information as it did when the person met the real threat. Immediately the brain-body reacts to the imagined threat as if it is a real threat present at the moment, as if the threat is happening in the now or UBU”.

TRT Rwanda/I-UBU Ltd coaches people on how to stay in UBU (Now/in moment).

UBU TRAINING gives simple scientifically based strategies to train people how to develop successful habits of noticing and regulating stress reactivity. People can be trained to recognize the moment and the responses from memories of what happened in the past. He agree that most times if a person is given an ability to discover that a typical brain-body reaction is not based to the real threat but to the imagined threat from the past, that habit of recognizing and regulating can help to reduce or prevent the risk for heightened stress reactivity.

It is the second time that TRT Rwanda/I-UBU Ltd has trained university students from the University of Rwanda on self care and how to help others regulate their stress reactivity, as in 2014 also it offered the same training to University students from the same University. The current one closed March, 28, 2015.

UBU-Ihangamutuzo (I-UBU) Ltd provides activities that aim to offer trainings on stress regulation in Rwanda through a public health perspective.

See Talkrecoverytraining.com for more information.