Blood Pressure

I've talked about exercise and blood pressure before, but here is a little different slant to it. A study out of Italy demonstrated that listening to rhythmic music such as classical, Celtic, or Indian for 30 minutes a day while concentrating on breathing was beneficial to lowering the blood pressure.

Interestingly enough, I have been doing a thing I call bounce and shake for weight loss. It follows along the lines of native American dancing. I don't have a problem with high blood pressure, but I feel confident now that I likely never will.

Back to the breathing part and music, try that as a way to unwind at the end of the day. Listen to a classical piece of music and meditate. The research indicates that the music helps you slow down and deepen your breathing.

Easing Arthritis Part 2

Let's start with the basics, like breathing. Yes, breathing can really help ease the pain of arthritis. Slow, controlled breathing really relieves the pain of arthritis because your focus shifts to breathing and not on the area of pain. If you combine this with any form of easy stretching like yoga or tai chi, the relief can be phenomenal.

I have some patients who take pilates and one of the things that is taught with those classes is breathing. If you have a lot of arthritis you may not want to do pilates, but you can certainly learn and use the breathing that is taught.

Little Things That Can Imporve Heart Health #3

Now you've started to exercise which will help lower things like cholesterol. But more importantly, the exercise will increase the strength of your heart and take away some weight which is adding stress to the heart.

The heart needs lots of oxygen to stay well. So now before you take your 10 minute walk or lift your weights, take 2 minutes to deep breath slowly. This will help prepare you for your walk or to lift the weights. At night before you go to bed or as you are going to bed, sit and take 10 slow deep breaths. This will relax you and take the stress away from your heart. Deep breathing can also help you lower your blood pressure.

More tomorrow.

Inflammation and Other Helpful Things

While food is the first things to look at, there are other things you can do to help with inflammation. Exercise is extremely helpful. What I hear most often from patients is that they can't exercise because they have arthritis. Not true.

Use your joints so that they don't stiffen up. Simple exercises work to keep joints functioning. begin with stretches especially of the affected joints. Start walking if your knees or hips are affected. Start slow and work up the time to 20-30 minutes. The biggest obstacle to overcome is starting. You don't have to go to the gym and work on 10 machines or get a trainer. Start simple and build upon that.

Lastly, breathe! Breathing can shift you mind's attention from the area of pain to breathing. This is often a great pain relieving technique. Mild forms of stretching such as tai chi, yoga, and beginning pilates which emphasize breathing can also relieve arthritis pain.

Ten Things To Do To Decrease Stress #5

Remeber the old song lyric "Slow down you move to fast, got to make the morning last." Well that was great advice especially if you are stressed. As we become more and more stressed we tend to put ourselves in hyper-gear! This just increases our stress. So slow down. Take a deep breath as I mentioned yesterday before you do something. You have time, don't feel like it is crushing you to death.

If someone comes to the door, take a deep breath before you answer it. If you are headed into a meeting, take several deep breaths before you enter the room or before they come in to meet with you.

Take it down a couple of notches and you'll live longer and healthier!

Ten Things To Do To Decrease Stress #4

Here's something you can do anytime to decrease stress. Take a slow deep breath. We tend to breathe shallowly when we are under stress. This can lead to feeling even more stressed. So wherever you are, think about your breathing and take 5-6 slow deep breaths, feeling your chest rise as you inhale and feeling the tension in your shoulders and neck release as you exhale.Stre

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.

The Art of Breathing Part 5

Learning to use breathing as a relaxation tool is easy. The next time you are feeling stressed about something or you have some unwanted tension, or you're feeling impatient because you are in a long line, try the following:

Stand, sit or lying in a comfortable position, with your back straight, draw in a deep breath and count to 5 slowly. As you begin to exhale, let your muscles begin to relax. Repeat this 2-3 times until you are feeling completely relaxed. While you're doing this, imagine your favorite most relaxing relaxing place in the world. Natural scenes not only include the scene but the sounds that go with that scene, as well as smells.

The Art of Breathing Part 4

Some of you may experience breath holding. To determine this, pay attention to the transition between inhalation and exhalation. If you feel a little "catch" between these two, and you find that you have a slight difficulty in initiating the exhalation, you may be breath holding. This tends to happen most often during exercise.

You can reduce the breath holding by consciously relaxing the abdomen at the end of the inhalation. It is particularly important to breathe during exercise since you are increasing the demand for oxygen in the body. Be aware of how you breathe during exercise.

The Art of Breathing Part 3

Today I want you to lie down on your back and let your body just assume it's relaxed breathing rate. Now as you exhale, count the length of your exhalation. Don't force an exhalation or inhalation, just breathe as you normally would in this relaxed state and once again count the length of the next exhalation.

The first exhalation that you counted should be shorter than the second exhalation. If it is not, you may be an overbreather. As a test try to shorten your inhalation. If that causes you to feel distressed or stressed or uncomfortable, you are probably an overbreather. Since it is hard to not manipulate these tests, you may want to have somebody count for you when you are not aware of your breathing.

This particular piece is important as far as sleep goes. If you are having trouble going to sleep, become aware of your breathing and consciously make the exhale longer than the inhale. before very long, you will be asleep.

The Art of Breathing Part 2

Yesterday you became aware of what type of breather you are. Now, still lying on your back, put your hands around your lower ribs. Continue to breathe in your normal fashion, focusing on your hands. What you should feel is an effortless expansion of the ribs as you inhale and slow recoil as you exhale.

If you ribs remain motionless, your breathing is too shallow even if you are an abdominal breather. Many times people who are chest breathers will not feel any movement of the lower rib cage when they do this, because they are by nature of the way they breath shallow breathers.

Shallow breaths do no use the full capacity of the lung and decrease the amount of oxygen available to the blood stream and hence the rest of your body.

The Art of Breathing

Most of us just taking breathing for granted. We don't really spend much time thinking about it, we just breath. But there is an art to breathing. Taking a little time each day to think about your breathing will help you in many ways.

First just become aware of what type of breather you are. Lying on your back, put one hand on your chest and one hand on your abdomen. Just think about your hands and become aware of the movement of your hands. If the hand on the chest is moving and the one on the abdomen is not, you are a chest breather. If the hand on the abdomen is moving more than the hand on the chest, you are an abdominal breather.

Why is this important? Chest breather's are less efficient in their breathing. If you are an abdominal breather, you are filling the little air sacs in your lungs down to the bases of the lungs which is more efficient and gives your body more oxygen to work with.

Breathing and Fitness

We all know that breathing is essential to life. What you might not be aware of is that when you exercise, you need to be even more aware of your breathing. Athletes who don't perform up to their ability usually do so because their minds freeze rather than their body failing them. The important link here is that when you are exercising, concentrate on your breathing as well. Taking slow deep breaths will help keep your brain well oxygenated and functioning.

The things that happens to many of us is that we will take a gasp of air when we are trying to do something physically difficult and then we hold our breath. This doesn't help you perform at your best, so remember to concentrate onn breathing.

If you need a quick boost stop, take 10 slow deep breaths. On the inhale, say to yourself "I feel calm and powerful." On the exhale, say "your name."

#3 Healthy Habit

Getting fresh air. This may be a little more difficult if you are a city dweller. There is some good news even for those who live in metropolitan area. Pollution has decreased in cities over the last 30 years. Life span for individuals living in cities has increased by about 10 months. I know this is not very much, but at least it is something. And it also speaks to the fact that getting out of the city is a good thing now and then so you can breathe some fresh air.

The other piece here is to cut pollution in your area in any way that you can. It's not just he environmental impact, but it's good for you and your loved ones as well.

Lung Cleansing

We might not think about cleansing the lungs, but they too need to get rid of as much toxic waste that builds up there as well. You probably know what the next thing is that I'm going to say. If you are a smoker, you deserve to stop and help your lungs to cleanse. If you live or work with a smoker who smokes around you, you deserve to get away. Second hand smoke is as bad as smoking. The free radical damage from just one cigarette is astronomical.

Whether you are a smoker or not, there are ways to help cleanse the lungs. If you live in the city, this is more difficult, because cities are rife with air polution and other toxic chemicals. Finding the cleanest air that you can in your environment and taking several deeps breaths will help you remove polutants from the lungs. This will not take a great deal of time, but you need to take a few minutes and really concentrate on breathing deep and exhaling just as deeply. If you can get into an environment where there is less or no polution that is even better.

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.