John Davidson...

John Davidson is broadly trained and experienced in a variety of techniques that effectively manage stress and support peak performance for both adults and children.

An attorney for 33 years, John sought ways – like many other business people in stressful professions – to maintain his own health and find balance in the midst of the stress common to his profession. Over twenty years ago, John began to explore meditation, diet and intensive exercise as tools to control stress and improve his professional performance. During this time, he also explored such now familiar techniques as qigong (the traditional Chinese slow movement, or moving meditation) and yoga, both of which he has practiced for over 15 years.

Research has for many years supported the use of meditation – and more recently, qigong and yoga – to reduce the adverse health effects of stress. Regardless of the style of meditation, all traditions of meditation teach attention skills. As a regular meditator for over twenty years, John became interested in the relationship between attention, stress and health. Adopting a tool known to Native Americans, John explored during the 1990's the intensive meditation experiences sometimes called vision quests. In recent years, vision questing has become a resource tool for many corporate executives seeking sophisticated tools for deepening leadership skills.

In 2003, John deepened his exploration of tools to address stress in two ways. First, he investigated research and technology developed by the HeartMath Institute showing how a simple shift of attention to the heart, combined with a controlled breathing rhythm and the experience of positive emotion in the heart, could stop the adrenal response associated with unhealthy stress. In 2004, he became a licensed provider authorized to coach the HeartMath System® and teach proper use of the HeartMath technologies.

In 2004, John was certified by the New Mexico Academy for the Healing Arts to practice cranial/sacral therapy, a gentle, hands on technique which induces a deep state of relaxation. He has provided this for clients since that time, and has instructed the technique to students of massage therapy as a guest lecturer at Trinidad State Junior College’s Alamosa campus in southern Colorado.

In the course of these studies, John also encountered teachings that relate to death and dying, including his personal experience of a near death-like experience. He pursued deeper understanding of this sensitive subject by attending various workshops, including trainings conducted by Joan Halifax, a nationally known educator of healthcare professionals on the process of being with the dying and their families. This background of training, in combination with the other techniques employed by HeartWorks, provides effective ways of dealing with the stress that accompanies the process of grieving.

In 2006, through further research, John came to understand that many people – children and adults alike – suffer an inner ear disorder that greatly affects the ability to pay attention and adequately process auditory information. While there are several contributing causes for this disorder, a central and ongoing cause is stress. An investigation of this disorder led him to Advanced Brain Technologies, a Utah company that produces music based auditory stimulation to assist people to listen more effectively and better process sound.

This investigation helped John understand a question that had arisen during his international travel. In 1998, John participated in a trek through the poor rural farming country of central Nepal. Starting in 2000, John also spent several months in various regions of Peru with a variety of anthropologists and traditional healers, visiting poor rural and remote villages that, like Nepal, are also being negatively impacted by the stress of globalization.

During these trips, John was struck with the apparent emotional health of children in these remote and economically depressed areas, in contrast to the increasing emotional struggle of children in his own rural community in northeastern New Mexico. He began to feel that the stress of living in America, with its huge emphasis on consumer technology and the relative abandonment of music, art and outdoor play, was having a greater negative impact on children than mere poverty. In particular, it appeared to account for much of what we are beginning to see as pervasive attention deficits, learning disorders and some disorders on the autism spectrum among American children.

As a result, John became sensitized to the need to provide tools and support to children and adults in our own rural and urban communities, who are deeply stressed and impacted by the rapid changes wrought by the rapid social transition from agrarian and industrial economies to the age of information technology and globalization.

In 2007, John became a certified provider of The Listening Program, Advanced Brain Technologies’ highly effective and accessible music program. In this same year, he developed a heart centered meditation technique that combines with ABT’s music, cranial/sacral therapy and the HeartMath Systems® technique to provide clients with a fast-track learning technique for dealing with stress and improving attention skills.

During the 1990's, John also served on the New Mexico Commission on Higher Education for nine years and the White House Commission for Presidential Scholars for six years. His interest in education led him in 1997 to lead the creation of a unique model for delivery of higher education services to his rural community in northern New Mexico – The Learning Center. As of January, 2008, the Learning Center was taken over by New Mexico Highlands University, a successful conclusion to an interim solution. John also served on Governor Bill Richardson’s higher education policy transition team. In 2007 John received the New Mexico Distinguished Public Service Award.

This background in education, along with many years of teaching as adjunct professor for various institutions, led John to see applications for stress management and attention skills training in schools and colleges. In 2007, he began to introduce these technologies in that arena.

Throughout these experiences, it has been John’s passion to share his knowledge of attention skills with children, adults, families, and communities. In Peru, one hears the saying that our work in the world is of no value unless it “grows the corn and feeds the children.” Just as this Peruvian sentiment springs from the heart, so does the emerging scientific investigation into the field of heart intelligence inform the new science of stress management and peak performance.

John’s particular strength is the translation and combination of diverse techniques into simple and practical ways of dealing with stress in our modern, technological and high pace culture. “Humans have been healing themselves in effective ways for thousands of years,” John says, “and that knowledge need not be lost to us. Science is not only developing new techniques, but also beginning to recognize the value in the practices that have been immigrating to our shore from abroad for many decades, and it is important to find ways to translate these practices into practical and accessible programs for people who are busy and stressed so they can feel better and get better control of their health and lives.”

The use of diverse techniques at the same time, John believes, has a synergistic effect that is greater than the sum of the parts, facilitating rapid change. In this sense, John is a generalist in this practice, rather than a specialist, just as he approached his law practice. “Specialization has provided great technological leaps in our society,” John says, “but we must be generalists to assume responsibility for the course of our own lives.” It is important, as author Paul Pearsall suggests, that we develop a science of everyday living.

John emphasizes one notion above all others: “We can’t control the world around us, but we can control our relationship with it, and we do that by acquiring skills that change our relationship with life in positive ways.” For John, these are heart skills. HeartWorks offers the opportunity to learn these skills.

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