The founder of HeartMath®, Doc Childre, has written a free booklet called De-Stress Kit for the Changing Times. It offers a series of basic practices to help manage stress during periods of challenge and uncertainty. Ten tips are summarized here:

Communicate and interact with others. One of the most important things you can do is communicate your feelings to someone or to a community of people sharing the same experience. Then engage in caring about others and offering emotional support. When people gather to support each other, the collective whole multiplies the benefit to the individual.  

Reopen the heart feeling. It's normal at the onset of a crisis for heart feelings to shut off, especially during the shock and anger phase. A good way to reopen your heart feelings is by offering kindness and compassionate support to one another or by volunteering to help others in need, even when you are in need yourself.  

Practice appreciation and gratitude. Commit some time each day to sending genuine feelings of appreciation to someone or something—be it children, pets, family members or whatever you can feel sincere appreciation towards. Genuine appreciation activates the body's biochemical systems that help to diminish stress and stabilize your psyche.  

Decrease drama. Constantly spinning thoughts of blame, anger and “doom and gloom” projections about the future can make things worse, draining energy from solutions and increasing levels of stress hormones through the body. Practice reducing drama, but try not to judge yourself or others for creating it. People are doing the best they can until they get more stable and secure. Try to proceed with compassion through all your interactions.

Manage your reaction to the news. In a time of economic and global instability, it's important not to compound stress by projecting worst-case scenarios as you watch the news. Attempt to stay neutral. It can be helpful to manage the amount of news you watch in a week.  

Pray or meditate. This can make attitude adjustments easier, especially as you center in the heart and try to find a more objective state. Prayer and meditation help quiet the mind and can bring you new perspectives. Research has shown that radiating appreciative or compassionate feelings has a beneficial effect on the hormonal and immune systems.  

Practice heart-focused breathing to reduce stress and anxiety. Practice breathing while imagining your breath passing in and out through your heart area or the center or your chest. The key to making this exercise effective is to generate the true feeling of calm or balance, which is handy for reducing anxiety, anger and mild depression.  

Sleep. This is especially important during times of increased stress. Prescription medicines can help, but it's worth checking out alternative methods prior to that. The Internet offers may suggestions for improving sleep, including exercise and stretching.  

Exercise. Exercise won't take away your reasons for getting stressed, but it strengthens your capacity to manage your stress with less energy loss.  

Reduce comparing now with the way it was. One of the hardest things for any of us not to do after a crisis or major change is to compare the way life was before with how it is now. That's okay initially as we move through shock, grief or deep loss. Eventually, it is time to move on. With self-compassion and patience, make a genuine heart commitment to practice recognizing some of your thoughts and feelings of comparison with the past—then shift your focus to something that doesn't bring you down and leave you with a depressed feeling. When this is done from the heart and not just the mind, you are transforming feelings—not repressing them.

The Institute of HeartMath is an internationally recognized nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to heart-based living—people relying on the intelligence of their hearts in concert with their minds to conduct their lives at home, school, work and play. HeartMath has been researching heart intelligence, stress and emotional management for more than 17 years and applied its findings to practical, easy-to-use tools that have been scientifically developed and tested. The entire De-Stress Kit for the Changing Times booklet is available by clicking here.