When learning to perform an exercise or to hold a position for an extended time, many people are taught to count through them or to count for a period of holding time.  When you are counting seconds, your attention is drawn to the time remaining and you tend to focus on the pain you feel as your muscles ache and start to shake, instead of the performance of the exercise itself.  This causes you to 'suffer'.  When you learn how to relax in and through the positions, you will reap the far reaching benefits of which the exercise is meant to create.

In order to relax, one must breathe deeply.  It is best to practice through a demonstration in order for you to realize the experience of this deep breathing technique.

Sitting at rest, with your back straight in a chair.

Breathing through solely the nostrils, inhale completely, hold for a count, then exhale and hold for a count.  Take the air into the bottom of the lungs first, allowing it to travel upwards, expanding the ribcage and lastly your chest.  If doing it correctly, you will notice your belly expanding first, then you'll feel the air pushing out the ribcage and your back.  You may likely yawn sometimes.  That's a good sign.  It means that you are expanding your lung capacity. Continue to breath this way and as you start to get your rhythm, each time you take another breath, you will naturally start to breath a little slower.  With this relaxed mindset, you will be able to go a little further or hold a little longer with ease.

Please apply this deep breathing technique to one or more of the following exercises and stretches and notice how your body responds. You will feel it relax 'through' the discomfort and pain your muscles may be experiencing.

1. Hamstring stretch: Simply sit on the floor with feet open in a V.  Inhale reach up, exhale bend forward reaching toward the toes.  Stay low and ease up just a bit as you inhale, then on the exhalations allow yourself to move forward.
2. Chair: Stand, Bend the knees into sitting position, stay in this imaginary chair and extend your hands above your head, straighten out the arms and reach for the sky, look up. HOLD, the position and KEEP BREATHING.
3. Floor Bridge: Lying on the floor with knees bent, slowly lift your hips and torso off the ground and get as much height as you can by inching your shoulders underneath you and slightly squeezing the glutes. HOLD, the position and KEEP BREATHING.
4. Plié: Stand with the legs widened about 4 feet apart. Inhale as you lower, Exhale as you rise.

Please apply this technique to all your exercises always.  You will notice that your muscle memory and strength and mind clarity will improve.  If you simply apply this deep breathing technique anytime, anyplace you feel stress, it will dissipate. 

          Finding balance in your life is not always an easy task.  It's like juggling an apple, a firestick, a flower, and a razor.  Time waits for no man and you never know what awaits the next corner.  In this day and age, due to overwhelming world circumstances that hit us in the face daily with sensory overload, learning to find peace within, is essential. In the face of economic and financial ruin of the nation, many of us have been slapped in the face and are dealing with the same plights in our immediate everyday struggles of survival and existence in this society.  We are trying to just figure out how to get work to put gas in the car, to pay for the car, to get to a job we don’t have, to get food to put on the table, to have a table to put the food onto, to keep a roof over our head, and circling back to put shoes on our feet and clothes on our back to find the job that pays for the roof, and to get the education that leads to the job that doesn’t pay enough to pay for the car or the roof or the table or the shoes or the education that we need to get the job that leaves us no time to get the education to get a better job than the job we have just trying to survive.

          In this circle of chaos, one of my dearest friends has declared what he deems a 'mental health day' to be a part of their lifestyle.  This is defined as a day where when he or his wife, make a conscious decision to stop 'fighting the stress' and give in to a day of mental rest.  This means that they do nothing that puts pressure of productivity on themselves and they do not allow feelings of guilt enter their emotions for doing so.  It could be for example: staying home and cuddling in front of a movie, reading a book, going for a bike ride, exploring a local park with a 3 hour walk, sleeping, going to lunch with a friend, cooking,  whatever it is, to rest the brain of the extremely stressful situations of regular everyday life.  This is a day whereby one may wake up 'on the wrong side of the bed' and is in an immediate funk that one just can’t seem to shake off.  Symptoms are feelings of: Depression, Irritability, Grumpiness, being Moody, Angry, Temperamental, Impatient, Belligerant, Gloomy.  Instead of wallowing in these feelings, they have decided to make lemonade out of their lemons.  I like their adopted lifestyle incorporation. I’ve adopted these days too from time to time.  You see, we all need to find ways to cope with life’s anxieties. We must learn to not drown in stress and hold on to moments of clarity.  When our life force is in a positive vibration, we begin to sing in harmony with the universe and we gain fruitful wisdom.  We sync ourselves to that music by simply participating in activities that make us ‘feel good’.  A healthy habit to form is to allow yourself ‘mental health moments’.  If you are not able to give yourself a full day…give yourself these mental health moments.  They are bits of meditation.  Meditation is good for your soul, body, and mind.  It can help you get out of your funk.  These mediation bits will help you restore balance in your life.  Make room for them in your lifestyle.  Make an effort to share these moments with people you know… bring them into your meditative moments… positive energy grows exponentially quick.

          This has been demonstrated in the fact that they have been more productive lately than they have when they were focused on the stress.  They are physically healthier now too.  They’ve been tapping into their passions and making progress by applying their abilities.  They surround themselves with friends and family on a regular basis and communicate their feelings which helps motivate them to stay focused on their strengths. Although, they still face the chaos of life’s unexpected turns, they’ve learned to place their focus on the positive moments and they deal with struggles in smaller increments instead of by letting a big picture of doom crowd their life.  Remember the law of attraction is always at work!

Moderation, moderation, moderation…. Balance, balance, balance. 

It can be done. It will be done.
 

There's a definitive connection between living well and healthfully and having a cheerful outlook on life.  The universal law of attraction is always in action.  If you dwell on negative you inevitably draw more negative into your life. 

But I didn’t actually feel as if my body had changed.  I still felt great up unless I did something of exertion. I went to my doctor and got a check-up.  I told him that I was getting short of breath when I did something that required exertion, for instance I noticed these symptoms greatly when going out dancing (also far less these days!) or running up my stairs at home or doing a quick paced yoga.  He asked how many flights I was running… I told him about 3-400, he told me there was nothing wrong with me and that I was fine…”Anyone who can run that many stairs doesn’t have a lung problem.” 

Boy! It didn’t take very long for my body to change.  Within a matter of a couple of months, my body has suffered the consequences of not getting enough cardio respiratory exercise.  I had to consider that my body did change a bit and that I needed to recondition.  I realized that I needed to do something, but I didn’t have the living space, nor the money to purchase a cardio machine.  So I started running up and down my stairs at home.  Albeit boring, when it’s cold out, something is better than nothing.  I do my own variations of kickboxing, butchered dancing, and combo cardio fitness routines.  Now, when I incorporate cardio into my workouts, I have no choice but to listen to my body when it works a little slower and gets tired a little faster and my heart doesn’t beat as fast as it used to when doing the workouts.  

I know I’ve gotten older, and by nature, the heart slows down, but I WANT TO BOOGIE on the dance floor like I used to.  The good ‘ole days had me dancing my ass off, nonstop for twelve hours, to my favorite djs. I haven’t yet worked up to my former levels, but I’m not giving up.  I know that when I jump off the wagon, I have to get back up.  The longer I stay off, the longer it takes for me to get back to where I left off. It doesn’t pay.  It pays to stay on.  A lot of times it’s tough to keep riding, but quite frankly, the consequences of jumping on and off are greater that just getting through those tough short moments and hanging on.  So my advice to you all, is to STAY ON THE WAGON, no matter what.  Hey- we all jump off, but GET BACK ON, no matter what.  Your body and mind will be so grateful, you WILL reap the benefits.  TRUST ME, I KNOW. And YOU KNOW it too.  IF YOU LISTEN TO YOUR BODY WHISPER, YOU’LL NEVER HAVE TO HEAR IT SCREAM.

     Research shows that individuals who are not sleep deprived have an increased capacity to lose weight and keep it off. Sleep reduces stress hormones, important for fat loss and in maintaining good metabolism.

      Sufficient rest and recuperation effectively reduces our stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol has many functions. It helps the body use sugar (glucose) and fat for energy (metabolism), and it helps the body manage stress. Cortisol levels can be affected by many conditions, such as physical or emotional stress, strenuous activity, infection, or injury. When we are sleep deprived, cortisol levels rise. Cortisol controls our appetite. When cortisol levels are high, it can often make us feel hungry even when we have eaten enough.  It also raises blood sugar and insulin levels and results in increased fat deposition around the abdomen. To further complicate the situation, high cortisol can negatively affect our sleep patterns, making it difficult to fall or stay asleep when we finally do go to bed. This increase in stress hormone also has detrimental effects on other aspects of our endocrine system, like thyroid gland function which governs our metabolism.

      Normally, cortisol levels are very low at bedtime and at their highest just after waking. This pattern will change if a person works irregular shifts (such as the night shift) and sleeps at different times of the day.  Cortisol levels are also affected by pregnancy, physical and emotional stress, illness, hyperthyroidism and obesity. Certain drugs can also increase levels, particularly oral contraceptives (birth control pills), hydrocortisone (the synthetic form of cortisol), and spironolactone. Adults have slightly higher cortisol levels than children do. Hypothyroidism may decrease cortisol levels. Drugs that may decrease levels include some steroid hormones.

     Cortisol production regulates your immune system on a 24-hour cycle. This is why many times congestion or your cold or flu symptoms get worse at night. As cortisol levels drop at night, your immune cells become highly active. The immune cells kill large numbers of bacteria and viruses, causing greater mucous production. As a result, you experience more congestion and coughing as your body attempts to get rid of the mucous.

     At daybreak, when cortisol levels rise, the activity of the immune cells tapers off. The immune cells then reset and recondition themselves in preparation for the next nightly cycle.
    

     Problems arise when cortisol levels are out of balance-say, when you fly to a different time zone-thereby compromising the cycle of immune function.

     While cortisol is an important and helpful part of the body’s response to stress, it’s important that the body’s relaxation response to be activated so the body’s functions can return to normal following a stressful event. Unfortunately, in our current high-stress culture, the body’s stress response is activated so often that the body doesn’t always have a chance to return to normal, resulting in a state of chronic stress.
    

     To keep cortisol levels healthy and under control, you can learn to relax your body with various stress management techniques.
Sleep is a most valuable and restorative resource that is vital to wellbeing and stress management. Unfortunately, stressed and busy people tend to get less sleep than they need. Overthinking and anxiety can make sleep difficult and wake you up at night. Anxiety keeps your mind busy as you imagine threatening scenarios and become preoccupied with finding solutions. That racing of your mind can rob you of sleep by keeping your levels high, making sleep harder to achieve.

     Sleeping problems are almost always involved in mental disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, as well as head injury. And symptoms are strongly influenced by the amount of sleep a person gets. Difficulties may arise from the drugs used to control symptoms of a disorder, or from changes in the brain regions and neurotransmitters that control sleep.   

     You can make lifestyle changes in order to keep your body from reacting to stress in the first place. Involve yourself in things such as yoga, writing in a journal, exercise, listening to music, dancing, guided imagery, sex, breathing exercises, gardening, cleaning, building, and creating art. All of these things are proven to be helpful in relaxing the body and mind.  Experiment and find something that works for you, then DO IT on a REGULAR BASIS.  It could be as simple as just taking a walk around the neighborhood for a half an hour a day.