 I am Emma Stafford, Integrative Nurse Practitioner at Hackensack Meridian Integrative Health and Medicine. I'm here today to talk to you about the SMART program. SMART is an acronym for Stress Management and Resiliency Training. This is a program that has come to us from the Benson-Henry Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital that will teach patients self-care practices on how to manage their daily stress. We will learn to regain control through a variety of mind-body principles. Research has shown that the safest and most effective way to reduce stress is through mind-body medicine. This program will help participants be able to understand the connection between stress and physical and emotional symptoms. They will discover the importance of healthy eating, restorative sleep, and physical activity. So what happens when our body perceives stress? We have a stimulus. Let's say somebody says something to us that upsets us. When we feel very stressed and threatened, our reaction will be different and we'll be thinking from the more primitive part of our brain, the amygdala. But when we practice these mind-body interventions that you will learn in the SMART program, we think from the higher part of the brain, from the executive functioning brain and we have what we call top-down thinking. At each session we will present different tools. We will see how stress affects us and how we respond to stress and then we'll learn adaptive strategies. We'll have fun. It's an environment that's going to be very interactive. We'll be telling our stories to each other and I think it'll be a wonderful opportunity. It will be life-changing for you and a life skill you can use forever.