Ten Things To Do To Decrease Stress #8

Another way to relax is with Yoga. This gets you in touch with your body so you can relieve the stress within. Yoga incorporates many aspects which will help you relax, such breathing, flexibility and strength. I've spent this entire week in a very stressful environment where we started each day with at least an hour of Yoga. It's unbelievable how much this helped all of us to cope with the stresses of the week.

Being in touch with your inner self even for a short period each day will help you find that calm, relaxing point to bring a feeling of well-being to you.

There are a plethera of yoga DVDs out there, get one and spend some time taking care of you.

Breathing Art

If you are in a yoga class or a meditation class, you have learned that breathing is important. Learning to work with your breathing can be as healing for you as a medication. In fact, it is likely more beneficial than most medications.

If you've never taken a yoga or meditation class, I would highly recommend that you do so, just to learn about breathing. Concentrating on breathing takes you away from your constantly busy mind and makes you present to this moment as you breathe.

How to Beat the Economics of Staying Well

Do things that will make you healthy and keep you healthy. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Eat smaller portions of meats, chicken and fish, filling up on good green and bright colored vegetables.

Remember to fit exercise in. You don't have to go to the gym or spa to do this. Walking is free. Walk for 60 minutes a day without stopping. Practice Yoga at home. You can get a DVD to help you begin, or find a program on the TV. Jump rope, any piece of rope will do, you don't have to go buy a special jump rope.

Laugh every day for 10-15 minutes. The earlier in the day you do this, the better, but any time is better than not at all. See my previous posts in April regarding laughter.

Breathing

Yes we should be breathing! Besides sustaining our life, breathing in slow rhythmic patterns can do other things for us. For one thing, if you are doing slow controlled rhythmic breathing, it will shift the mind's attention to breathing and away from pain. Hence it is a great pain reliever. But it also means that you are getting more oxygen into your lungs, into your blood stream and out to the cells. Hyper-oxygenating cells provides a healing environment. This is why we use hyperbaric chambers to heal wounds that are not healing.

Now your breathing in a slow rhythmic pattern will not provide the same kind of oxygenation as the hyperbaric chamber, but it will increase the amount of oxygen available to cells. The thing to remember is to do this several times a day. You can do this when you're sitting at a stop sign, or when you sit down to eat, take a couple of minutes to do some slow rhythmic breathing.

Those of you who take pilates, yoga or tai chi have been taught if not the importance, at least how to do slow rhythmic breathing. If you are someone with arthritic pain, consider getting into a yoga or tai chi class to learn the rhythmic breathing and you will find some relief for that arthritic pain.