"I'm not going to tell you to relax, because that's not what I want you to do," shares Dr. Sara Gottfried right off the top of her Speakeasy at Wanderlust Colorado. In her talk on managing cortisol (and thereby stress levels), she emphasizes that her version of reducing stress, "is a much more advanced physiological state [than relaxation]. When you entrain your and sympathetic nervous system (the half that deals with "fight or flight") with your parasympathetic nervous system (the half that does "rest and digest") you are better able to manage your stress. It's about perception and being about to rise above the fray and look more objectively at your own stressors and how you dance with them." From Wanderlust Colorado 2013