The Heart’s Hidden Role in Healing Stress & Trauma – Free Class with Jorina Elbers, MD
When stress has become chronic, its effects can feel as though they are showing up everywhere at once — in anxious thoughts, restless sleep, brain fog, emotional overwhelm, physical tension, or a sense that your system never fully settles. Understanding these patterns through the nervous system can open a more compassionate way of responding to what your body is experiencing.
Neurologist Jorina Elbers, MD, offers a physiology-based perspective on how the nervous system adapts to prolonged stress and trauma. Rather than beginning with the question, What’s wrong with me?, she invites you to consider what your body may be communicating and why protective responses that feel confusing can have an understandable purpose.
You’ll explore the science of heart-brain communication and why Dr. Jorina sees the heart as an important pathway for supporting nervous-system regulation. Her HeartMath® approach brings together neuroscience, emotional awareness, and practical methods for cultivating greater coherence between the heart, brain, and nervous system.
Dr. Jorina will also guide you through Heart-Focused Breathing®, a simple HeartMath® practice for interrupting the stress response and cultivating greater calm, resilience, and emotional balance. The session offers a practical way to experience these ideas rather than only understand them intellectually.
Why Attend “The Heart’s Hidden Role in Healing Stress & Trauma”
Anxiety, brain fog, restless sleep, exhaustion, digestive difficulties, physical discomfort, and emotional overwhelm can feel unrelated when they appear in different parts of life. Dr. Jorina explores these kinds of experiences through the lens of nervous-system regulation, helping you consider how prolonged stress can influence both emotional and physiological patterns.
Her approach shifts attention away from self-judgment and toward understanding what the nervous system may be trying to accomplish. With a background spanning neurology, physiology, trauma recovery, and HeartMath® methods, she translates complex science into practical ways of recognizing and responding to stress-related patterns.
The heart is central to this perspective because Dr. Jorina teaches that heart-brain communication can play an important role in regulating the nervous system and strengthening resilience. By combining clear explanations with a guided Heart-Focused Breathing® practice, the session gives you a practical way to explore greater coherence in real time.
What You’ll Learn
We’ll begin by looking at how chronic stress and trauma can shape the nervous system, so you can understand why protective responses may continue even after the original challenge has passed. You’ll explore Dr. Jorina’s physiology-based perspective on why reactions that seem confusing can make more sense when viewed as adaptations rather than personal failures.
From there, you’ll explore the connection between the heart and brain, which means looking beyond the brain alone when considering emotional and physiological regulation. Dr. Jorina will explain how HeartMath® practices work with heart rhythms and coherence, so you can see why the heart plays such an important role in her approach.
Along the way, you’ll be guided through Heart-Focused Breathing®, and then you can experience how a simple practice can be used during moments of anxiety, overwhelm, depletion, or disconnection. The session connects the science with an immediately usable technique, so the ideas become practical rather than remaining purely theoretical.
- How prolonged stress and trauma can influence nervous-system patterns throughout the body
- Why protective responses can make more sense when viewed through physiology rather than self-judgment
- How heart-brain communication relates to emotional and physiological regulation
- Why Dr. Jorina considers the heart an important pathway for calming the nervous system
- What coherence means within the HeartMath® approach
- How small moments of coherence can influence the way you think, feel, and respond
- Why resilience is presented as a skill that can be strengthened
- A practical HeartMath® framework for emotional self-regulation and heart intelligence
- How to practice Heart-Focused Breathing® when you feel anxious, overwhelmed, depleted, or disconnected
Who This Is For
This event may be especially relevant if chronic stress has left you curious about why your body and emotions respond the way they do. It speaks to people navigating anxiety, overwhelm, exhaustion, restless sleep, brain fog, or other stress-related experiences who want a clearer understanding of nervous-system regulation without adding more self-judgment.
It is also a good fit if you are interested in neuroscience, heart-brain communication, emotional self-regulation, resilience, or HeartMath® practices. Dr. Jorina introduces complex ideas in practical language and guides a simple breathing practice, making the session approachable for people who are new to HeartMath® as well as those already familiar with nervous-system work.
- People curious about how chronic stress and trauma can affect the nervous system
- Those who want a physiology-based way to understand stress-related reactions
- Anyone interested in heart-brain communication and emotional self-regulation
- People looking for a simple practice they can use during stressful or overwhelming moments
- Those interested in strengthening resilience through HeartMath® practices
- Beginners and experienced learners interested in practical nervous-system regulation
About Jorina Elbers, MD
Jorina Elbers, MD, is a board-certified neurologist and Medical Director at HeartMath® Institute, where she helps translate the science of heart-brain connection and nervous-system regulation into practical tools for everyday life.
She has specialty training in pediatric stroke and previously served as an assistant professor and practicing neurologist at Stanford University, combining clinical care with academic research.
Dr. Jorina’s clinical research has focused on the impact of chronic stress and trauma on the nervous system and on how dysregulation can contribute to physical and emotional symptoms. She now runs a private practice in Santa Cruz, California, working with adults and children experiencing stress-related and “medically unexplained” symptoms.
Her approach integrates heart rate variability, emotional awareness, brain-body techniques, and HeartMath® practices. Through her teaching, she is known for making complex science accessible and practical while offering a compassionate, physiology-based framework for understanding nervous-system responses.
Endorsements
“Dr. Elbers provides life-altering therapy. There’s no other way to phrase it. I chose to see Dr. Elbers because of a multiyear struggle with debilitating anxiety in which I tried every form of talk therapy, allopathic medication, and naturopathy, as well other holistic medicines and treatments, to no avail. However, after just a handful of Brainspotting sessions, as well as HeartMath work, I felt completely transformed. I was able to move past emotional and psychological barriers that had prohibited me from enjoying life for years. Dr. Elbers’ unique skill set and clinical knowledge, as well as her personable and empathetic approach, allowed me to feel completely safe while undergoing treatment. She is a remarkable healer in every sense of the word.”
“I can’t say enough good things about Dr. Elbers. She helped me get through one of the most challenging periods of my life. My condition improved in a short period of time. Her approach to healing is unique, and I had great results from the few visits I had with her. She is a doctor who has empathy for her patients and is kind and caring. I highly recommend Dr. Elbers if you need special care and resolve with your health issue. I am grateful to have been in her care.”
“Dr. Elbers combines her expertise with a truly sincere and compassionate presence. Through Brainspotting, she’s helped me process experiences that fueled the anxiety that had kept me from moving forward and being fully present in my own life. I feel like myself again and wake up feeling confident and at peace. Her guidance is calm, caring, and deeply effective.”
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Register to receive event access details and reminders, the recording, and access to the final replay presentation on Saturday, September 12, at 12:00pm Pacific Time.
- Sep 12 2026
- Expired!
- 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: Sep 12 2026
- Time: 8:30 pm - 9:30 pm
More Info
- Worldwide
