The Centered Heart: Evidence-Based, Mind-Body Practices to Stress Less and Improve Cardiac Health

＂Instead of trying to find time in your day for self-care, yoga-therapist Amendola suggests scheduling your life around your practices, aiming for a stress-free, healing existence. Under her expert guidance, this not only seems enticing but possible.＂ - Booklist, Starred Review

Stress is often the first domino in chronic illness and disease. Too often, however, doctors have little training or information to offer patients about managing stress.

In The Centered Heart, yoga therapist, stress management expert and senior trainer for Ornish Lifestyle Medicine, Susi Amendola, navigates the intricate relationship between stress management and overall health. She invites readers into transformative experience with the ancient and time-tested somatic practices of yoga that have been shown to improve cardiac outcomes as well as outcomes from many of the chronic diseases that plague our society.

Developing a daily stress management practice that includes gentle movements, breathing, relaxation, meditation, imagery, compassion, and a connection to nature gradually shifts awareness to an internal locus of control. Practitioners will feel better, connect with their innate inner wisdom, and come to understand that through lifestyle choices they control they can be their own first line of intervention.

While we may not be able to affect what is happening around us, with the wisdom and insights offered in The Centered Heart, we can make a difference in the quality of our own lives, change the way we react to stress, calm our hearts, and reclaim our health.

Susi Amendola is an Internationally Certified Yoga Therapist who brings over 40 years of experience utilizing Yoga to help others heal. She holds an ERYT 500 with Yoga Alliance as well as a C-IAYT with the International Association of Yoga Therapists. She currently serves as a Stress Management Specialist for Ornish Lifestyle Medicine, a Medicare approved intensive cardiac rehab program. As Founder / Director of Yoga Now in Omaha, Nebraska, she currently teaches classes and trains teachers. Susi has developed yoga-based stress management programs for schools, businesses, and hospitals throughout the country. Susi has contributed over 150 articles to Ornish Living Magazine. She has been a guest speaker and presenter at yoga conferences, businesses, and many symposiums on health and wellness. She lives in Omaha, NE.