Amazing Low-Tech Stress Relief

"Now just lie back on your mats and place the two balls under the very top of your trapezius muscles.  That's right.... Now slowly push up from your feet, lifting your pelvis off the mat..."

It all sounded so easy as Amanda, our Yoga instructor, gave the directions.  Easy until the pain set in!  


"Holy s_ _ _ that hurts!" was all I could think.  Just like having a massage therapist's magic fingers dig right in.  Fortunately, I could use my body to control the level of discomfort.


That's the genius of Yoga Tune-Up technology - using Yoga balls to mimic a great massage up and down your back or pretty well anywhere else you need it.  And it's a lot cheaper than massage therapy, that's for sure!


The yoga balls are basically small rubber balls the size of a tennis ball.  If you squeeze them, there's certainly some "give" to them, but they do have a definite firmness.

I sure found a lot of knots to work out of my muscles - hence the pain factor for me.  Of course, it didn't help that I'd done my weight routine just before Yoga class either - I'm sure that contributed a few knots!  


As the class went on, we gradually moved the balls farther down the back, hitting the rhomboids, erector spinae, latissimus dorsi, and "the gluts".  At the end, we really did feel very relaxed (and not just because it felt so good to stop!).

The beauty of Yoga balls is also that you don't have to know much at all about traditional Hatha Yoga to benefit from them.  If you need to relieve the physical and psychological tensions built up in your muscles, you can do it right away with just about no training.  

Have a Look at this Excellent Demo:

Here at Global Resilience Solutions, we're always looking for easy-to-use tools to help you improve your health, dissolve your stress and relax you more.  And Yoga Tune-Up's ingenious little balls are a prime example.  No need to wait to see a massage- or phsyio-therapist to get those knots out of your muscles.  You can do it anytime!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger 

Breathing Your Way to Superb Health

You can learn a lot about a person just by observing how they breathe...

• When they're relaxed, whether standing or sitting, can you hear their breathing?
• Do their shoulders and chest rise when they inhale?
• Does their lower abdomen move at all?
• Are they inhaling or exhaling through their mouth or their nose?

All these are key questions that can tell you volumes about their physical health and, for that matter, their emotional health and how they relate to their body.

Compelling Reasons for Breathing Right:

Simply put, your body-mind organism has been designed to breathe in a particular way, and if you knock that natural breathing out of whack, you'll eventually reap the consequences.  The breathing that's natural to the human person is what's sometimes called "Normal Abdominal Breathing".  Why should you bother with it?  As Bill Nye the Science Guy loves to say, "consider the following";

• It enhances the circulation of blood, lymph fluid and energy (chest breathing restricts all of them)
• It takes the burden off the heart (chest breathing makes your heart work harder)
• It massages your lower digestive tract, leading to more efficient elimination of toxins (chest breathing leaves your lower digestive tract stagnant and sluggish, leading to auto-intoxication)
• It calms the emotions and reduces the energy-sapping "inner dialogue" (chest breathing tends to increase negative emotional content)

Practicing Basic Normal Abdominal Breathing:

Getting started is super-simple.  You can start with the following exercise while sitting or standing, and later graduate to doing it while walking:

1. Keeping your chest and shoulders relatively stationary, expand your lower abdomen outward as you inhale through your nose
2. Contract your lower abdomen as you exhale through your nose
3. With each breath, use your mental attention to feel the breath sink down to your lower abdomen
4. Breath at whatever pace is comfortable for you - this should feel completely gentle, natural and unforced, even if it seems a bit awkward at first ;-)

Once you've got the hang of that, you can experiment with these auxilliary practices (NOTE: If you have high blood pressure, please consult your physician first):

1. As you inhale, instead of just expanding your abdomen to the front, allow your waist to expand all the way around, as if it were a big inner tube
2. As you inhale, relax your perineum completely and feel the breath move all the way down to it and push against it.  Then, when you exhale, pull up on the perineum, more or less as you would doing a Kegel exercise (the Kegel or PC muscle exercises have lots of other health benefits I don't have time to get into here). 

Breathing and Your Personal Resilience:

Proper breathing can dramatically increase your physical health on all levels, balance your emotions, reduce your stress and, over time, utterly transform your relationship with your body.  It's pretty hard to overstate the benefits of paying attention to your breathing.

Of course, its real value comes when you transition from doing Normal Abdominal Breathing as an exercise for a few minutes a day to making it the "default setting" for how you breathe all day long. 

To get the whole story on how to do that, go to this website:

http://www.harapower.com/

Now, go enjoy a few good lung-fulls of fresh air!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Putting "Strength in Your Belly"

"If there is no strength in your dantien, vices such as jealously, envy, anger, greed and distrust appear."
~ Okado Torajiro

We could also add "stress", "anxiety" and "fear" to the list.

Everything I've shared with you over the past week has been to prepare you for today.

If you've been practicing this stuff daily you can't help but feel a whole lot better. That would be impossible. Our problem these days is that nobody will practice anything consistently and diligently. Instead, they just dabble, and dabblers don't get results in any area of life.

Okay, so we've already talked about your breathing and how you need to learn Normal Abdominal Breathing in order to stop creating stress accidentally.

When you're practicing this kind of breathing during meditation, you want to bring your breath down into your "lower dantien". Dantien means "elixir field" and it's your body's main energy storage area just below your navel. This will help you to put strength into your dantien, as Torajiro says above.

It's easy to feel the breath filling the dantien because your abdomen is actually expanding as you inhale.

We've also talked about how you can learn to integrate your mind, breath and physical movements into one. The next part of that equation is to learn to move from the dantien. In other words, you should feel every movement you make coming from the dantien, as if it moves a nano second before the rest of your body.

That kind of movement may seems strange to you, but keep in mind that all of Tai Chi (and other internal martial arts) and most of Qi Gong are performed just this way.

Go "play" with these approaches and you'll soon experience a world of difference!

~Dr. Symeon Rodger
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Disclaimer: This material is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition, nor toreplace the advice of qualified medical practitioners. You should not engage in any of the exercises suggested here without consulting your physician, particularly if you have anychronic medical issues or have reason to suspect these exercises could cause injury to you. If you are pregnant or think you might be, do not attempt any of these breathing or movement exercises without the express permission of your medical doctor and a licensed practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
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The Second Key to Inner Harmony, Health and Energy

Last time we talked I introduced you to one of the most fundamental methods for cultivating deep levels of inner peace and harmony. And I promised to show you how to take that to the next level.

Okay... by now you've had time to practice a bit of "Normal Abdominal Breathing". And, let me guess, you found it "awkward"??

If so, don't worry. Anything you're not used to will seem that way at first and the right way to breathe is no different. Of course, if you've had any experience before with such things as Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Yoga and even if you've been properly taught how to sing, this kind of breathing won't be anything new to you.

You may have noticed how easy it was to feel peaceful and relaxed while you were sitting and doing your meditative breathing practice, and how quickly that state disappeared the moment you got up. That's the catch...

How do you keep your mind centered and your breath relaxed while you go about your daily tasks?? Is it really possible?

Yes, and it's simpler than you think. It still takes practice and persistence, but it really can be done. And here's the method that so many ancient traditions have used so successfully for millennia in one form or another:

1. When you get up from your sitting practice, do your best to continue your Normal Abdominal Breathing.

2. The important thing here is to "watch" your breath. In other words, do what you can to keep your mental attention on your breathing, just quietly following it and turning away all other thoughts.

If you're new to abdominal breathing and this new-to-you breathing pattern presents an obstacle for you, just forget about it entirely for now and watch your breath. Forget about whether it's abdominal or not, whether you're doing it right or not. Just pay attention to the ebb and flow of your breathing.

Your mental focus on your breathing should be "light" and natural. Don't focus so hard you tense up. As you can probably guess, that kind of defeats the purpose ;-)

3. While you're focusing on your breath, you'll eventually notice physical feelings of harmony all over your body. You may notice various parts of your body and skin seem to "breathe" in conjuction with your inhaling and exhaling. Feel free to pay attention to those feelings as they arise.


Combining Energy and Spirit

Although many traditions used this procedure, only the Taoists gave it a name. They called it "combining energy and spirit". What's that mean?

Simple. "Energy" is your breathing, since breath relates to and controls energy (Qi). And "spirit" is your mental attention.

This simple procedure - paying continuous attention to your breathing - is so profound that it was often referred to as "the true path". Why? Because by doing it for a few months you could easily:

1. Banish negative emotions - all your doubts, fears, confusions
2. Gain complete control over your inner world (and therefore a lot more control of your outer world, since the former dictates the latter)
3. Increase your love for all people and all creation naturally, without much effort
4. Eliminate stress and discover levels of inner peace you didn't know existed
5. Regain your health and banish diseases arising from emotional factors

Let Me SIMPLIFY This For You...

All you need to do is get used to watching your breathing with your mental attention. It's that simple.

Of course, at the beginning you'll lose track of your breathing every time something distracts you - a chance conversation, spilling your coffee, memories of a negative emotional state, or just about anything else.

As long as you persevere, though, it won't be long before you can even do intellectual work like writing this article without losing track of your inner world!

Next time, I'll show you how to reduce some of the unseen stresses you're putting on your physical body. Until then, enjoy the wonderful practice of "combining energy and spirit".

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

The First Key to Inner Harmony, Health and Energy

As I was saying...

Over the next few days I’m going to show you exactly how I approach cultivating deeper levels of inner peace and harmony, based largely on the wisdom and actual practices of Authentic Ancient Traditions. There are several pieces to the puzzle, but I’ll give them to you one at a time.

As I said earlier this week, the purpose of all this is to take you to a level of internal harmony and equilibrium that surpasses what you experience every day (as if that would be hard!) and that probably exceeds anything you remember experiencing at all.

And, of course, it has a few wonderful side effects, like more robust health and immunity, more energy, greater control of your moods and emotions and lots more.

To learn about the first step in the process, keep reading…

RELAX AND BREATHE…

The first thing is that you’re not going to find DEEP inner harmony or deep levels of relaxation until you connect with your breathing.

The first part of that is learning to breath properly, because if you’re habitually breathing high in your chest, you’re artificially creating low-level anxiety on an ongoing basis. It’s like having one foot on the accelerator while the other one’s on the brake.

So you need to return to natural breathing, the way kids breathe before they’re taught the wrong way to do it. That means that when you inhale, your lower abdomen should expand and when you exhale it should contract. If you notice your shoulders rising when you breathe, you’re definitely breathing into your chest, which over-stimulates your rational mind (that means it stirs up thoughts and emotions) and wastes lots of physical energy too.


BASIC DIRECTIONS

1. Go find a place where you can sit with your back relatively straight. It doesn’t particularly matter if you’re sitting cross-legged in some form of meditative posture or if you’re on a chair.

2. Close your eyes and call to mind your mental image of inner harmony, the one we talked about last time.

3. Then practice the “Normal Abdominal Breathing” outlined above for a few minutes. If your mind wanders, just bring it back to your breathing. Just do your best to keep your mental attention on your breathing. When a thought says to you, “you’re not doing this right,” pay NO attention to it.

4. Repeat as often as you can during the day. You can even do it during corporate meetings (without closing your eyes, of course. No one will notice), while standing at the bus stop or when you’re taking a walk.


Remember to renew your decision to make cultivating increased levels of inner harmony your main objective for the next few days, __________. That’s indispensable.
Tomorrow we’ll talk more about the dramatic effects of the practice I’ve outlined above and I’ll show you how to take it to the next level.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

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Disclaimer: This material is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition, nor to
replace the advice of qualified medical practitioners. You should not engage in any of the
exercises suggested here without consulting your physician, particularly if you have any
chronic medical issues or have reason to suspect these exercises could cause injury to you.
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