It came out of nowhere. I was in the middle of a consult with a potential new member when it started.

That morning, I’d woken up feeling a little weird. I was in a good mood and life was good… but something was off. Then when we were sitting in a consultation (which is a totally normal daily occurrence), I felt a sensation that I’d never experienced come over me. I was suddenly panicky—as if something was really wrong. I felt this strange wooziness like I was going to pass out. I could no longer focus. It got so bad that I had to leave the room.

I was terrified. My thoughts were racing. I felt like I was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. The people around me could see me but had no idea what was going on in my body. I felt like running away and I had no idea where I was going.

I excused myself, leaving Dr. Dangovian to continue the consult, and walked out into the hallway where I proceeded to pace back and forth. When being inside became too overwhelming, I went outside.

I needed air.

I needed something.

Nothing This Extreme

After pacing around the building outside I had this overwhelming feeling that I needed to leave. I went inside and told my brother Curtis (our office manager) that I needed to leave, I was having a panic attack, but I was going to be fine. Then I went to my car.

I started driving. I didn’t have a destination in mind. Instead, I just felt like I needed to go somewhere. I kept telling myself if it didn’t pass I would go to the emergency room.

After I had been driving for a few minutes, Curtis called me and asked if I could walk him through how to finish up paperwork from the consultation I excused myself from. I started explaining to him the steps and then told him I was going to come back to help. He asked me if I was sure, and I said yes I can do it.

It was such a strange feeling. I had a heightened sense of awareness of my thoughts and the sensations in my body but I had no idea what was happening or where it came from. I was able to distract myself from the feelings and thoughts when I focused my energy on a familiar routine, but as soon as I allowed my body and mind to become still, the overwhelming feeling of panic came back to me. I was sure my blood pressure was through the roof. I was sure my heart was racing.

If you have felt this you know exactly what I am talking about. And if you haven’t you will never fully understand what this experience is like.

I’d experienced episodes of anxiety in the past, but nothing this extreme.

Dr. Dangovian called me right after the consultation ended. He wanted to check in with me because I would never just bail on a meeting. He was worried that I’d had a family emergency. When I told him about the experience, he said, “What if we took your blood pressure right now and it was normal?” I told him that I knew it wouldn’t be normal. He replied that he knew exactly how I was feeling.

“If it happens again,” he said, “don’t try to run from it. Instead, lean into it.”

That thought hit home with me. Built into us is a “fight or flight” response. When I started feeling this overwhelming sensation that I was going to pass out… I got up and started pacing around to “run away” from the feeling. When my thoughts were racing in a circle of “impending doom”… I distracted my thoughts by diving into a daily routine.

I was not allowing myself to feel what was going on. I was too afraid of what feeling it would lead to.

But, I knew he was right. I also knew that if he thought something life-threatening was going on, he would have taken action. This gave me the reassurance I needed to lean into the thoughts and sensations.

The sensations of panic started to disperse the moment I began to allow myself to feel them. The thoughts kept coming, but I just observed them without judgment.

For the next few weeks I had moments of heightened anxiety, but to be honest, I felt grateful for them. I started viewing each moment as a blessing.

Why? Because my body was telling me to pay attention.

I allowed myself to really experience all the sensations. I started listening to my body at a completely new level.

Round Two

Some background: for as long as I can remember when things are going exceptionally well… I freak out. It seems counterintuitive… you should freak out when things are in crisis, but that’s just not how I am wired. In the weeks leading up to my panic attack, things weren’t just going well—they were going GREAT.

My Dad had some minor health issues come up, which is stressful and scary, of course, but we took care of everything early, which, over the long term, is a blessing for his health. Everything we were going through was even strengthening our relationship. Business was going great. We were in a steady flow of expansion. One of our team members would soon be going away to school and our other team members were stepping up into new roles and doing amazing work. With all that was going on, I couldn’t have asked for things to be any better!

In the past, I would start feeling moments of that “impending doom”… like, what if this all goes away and I lose everything? I would isolate myself for a day and then dive back into work to distract my thoughts. I would make myself so busy that I didn’t have time for that feeling.

Luckily for me, my work allows me to help other people which is extremely rewarding. The downside to that is… it is very easy for me to justify sacrificing my well being to help others. (I am always working to achieve that healthy balance).

When I had the panic attack, it was almost as my body was saying I AM GOING TO BE LOUD ENOUGH THAT YOU CAN’T IGNORE ME!

The second one was far worse than the first. I was getting ready for bed after a relatively uneventful day. Suddenly, the feeling came back. And it was even louder. My heart was racing. That nameless dread was back, this time with a vengeance. This time, I felt like I needed a non-biased opinion that this was, in fact, anxiety and not something worse.

I drove myself to the emergency room without telling anyone I was going. The whole way there, I tried to take Dr. Dangovian’s advice. I tried to lean into the fear. I tried to force myself not to fight it, but instead let it wash over me, fill me, let it do whatever it was that it was doing and then (hopefully) pass. But no matter what I did—no matter how hard I tried to lean into the fear—it only got worse.

The attending doctor finally confirmed my suspicions and said that yes, it was a panic attack. His aloofness about what I was experiencing actually made me feel calm. He essentially said, “All you need is Xanax.” Now, of course, I wasn’t going to take it! There are natural ways to deal with anxiety, but knowing that it was anxiety—and that I was experiencing a panic attack—allowed me to feel peace.

Since then, I haven’t had any full-blown attacks. But I still feel one kind of waiting along the periphery sometimes. Overall, both experiences were terrible.

But, here’s the thing…

I am super grateful for them.

I learned something significant.

The Lesson

I’ve talked to members who’ve struggled with anxiety in the past. In those conversations, I was able to speak reasonably intelligently about causes and solutions. But now I understand that I didn’t understand their experiences. Not really.

It’s the same thing with friends and family members who’ve had heart problems. They’ll express their apprehension about getting a stent put in, for example, and since my business partner is a cardiologist, I’m able to describe exactly what’s going to happen and reassure them that it’s a relatively simple, relatively low-risk procedure.

But I didn’t understand their fear. I didn’t understand their worry. I didn’t understand how it feels when you think you’re dying. But, now I at least have an idea. For all the terror, for all my inability to just lean into the fear and embrace the experience in that moment, I got something very valuable out of it.

I have more empathy. And for that, I’m eternally grateful.

Want to learn how to calm your anxiety naturally? Download your free eBook here: The 7 Habits of Highly Healthful People: Cultivating Awareness

The post A Lesson in Leaning in appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

January 3, 2018

Welcome to Part 3 of our Health Kickstart series. Read Part 1: Frame Your Day here, and Part 2: Speeding Up here.

This series is designed for people who want to get healthy… but just can’t seem to get any traction. Sometimes getting started is the hardest part. So, the goal here is to give you a step by step plan to do just that. Each part of the series will provide you with a simple, easy action to take each day. Before long, if you stick with it, the steps within this plan will make a big impact on your long-term health.

Watch Part 4 Now!

Or, read more below…

Have you ever left work, gotten into your car, driven the whole way home, and then realized that you couldn’t remember even a single thing about the trip?

That happens to all of us periodically. But, some people go through their whole lives like that. Moment to moment, forgetting what’s happened even a few seconds, minutes, hours ago. Moving through time without really ever making a sincere connection with the world, others, or even their bodies.

The solution?

We need to learn to slow down.

Because, not only does it increase our awareness of others, our surroundings, and what’s actually going on inside ourselves, slowing down is also necessary to reduce stress in our lives.

When we’re going and going, often we can’t even feel the stress… until, that is, it catches up to us. I have a good friend who works almost constantly. After a few days of chest pains, she went to the ER. She was diagnosed as being just a day away from a heart attack.

She’s 26.

So, we need to slow down. If you left your cell phone on for a week straight without plugging it in, what’s going to happen? Same thing with your body. Without pausing to recharge often, we crash. And remember my friend from before?

Sometimes that crash can be potentially fatal.

Yoga and meditation are a great way to slow down, but if you’re just getting started with our Health Kickstart plan, that might be a little too much, too quickly.

Instead, choose one of the following and do it for five minutes each day this week.

1. Deep, Purposeful Breathing

Deep breathing is a great way to slow things down and recharge.

Give this a shot:

Exercise: The Body Breath

1. Take a big deep breath. Inhale and then hold it. Notice where your center of gravity is located. For most people, that center of gravity will be high up in the body, making you more top-heavy. We call this a “face breath,” and it’s great for keeping your balance out of whack.

2. Now stand up straight, with your feet four inches apart and flat on the floor.
3. Push your feet into the floor and squeeze up— squeeze your ankles, your calves, thighs. Pull your belly button IN and continue squeezing up— through your lower back, middle back, upper back. Your body will naturally inhale.
4. When your lungs are full, pause. Be aware of what it feels like to be full of this life force. Be aware that taking this breath is the most important thing you will ever do.
5. Now, reverse the sequence and squeeze down, focusing on each part of your body as you do, from your upper back down through your ankles and into the floor. Your body will naturally exhale.
6. Pause for a moment at the bottom of your exhale, and notice how it feels not to breathe.
7. Wash, rinse, repeat. As you concentrate on and become more aware of your breath—we’re talking habits here, after all!—your capacity for taking in and pushing out your breath will increase as you continue to build this into your daily routine.

2. Easy Meditation

Meditation tends to bring up images of a wizened old man sitting criss-cross-applesauce up on some mountain ledge somewhere. But it doesn’t have to be nearly that involved.

Try this:

Find a quiet spot. Wear some comfortable clothes. Sit and close your eyes. Breathe deeply.

Now, sit with your thoughts. Observe them. Put space between them. Understand what they are, where they are going, and focus on recognizing that your thoughts are moving you to different places.

The more you practice this, the better you’ll get at it. You’ll begin to understand how your brain—and your thoughts— affect your body… and vice versa.

3. Intentional, Internal Awareness

We don’t like being alone with our thoughts, these days. Which is one of the reasons why we’ve created a culture of distraction. It’s easier to skim your Facebook feed than look inside and see what’s really going on.

Don’t get me wrong. No judgment. I’m guilty of this as well.

But cultivating an awareness of what’s going on inside us can be great for our health. What are you holding on to? Which thoughts do you not want to face? What are the tensions inside you causing you distress?

I’m not expecting you go super deep, super fast. Instead, just spend a few minutes with these questions. Relax and just listen to yourself.

4. Journaling

We’re good at making things up. Our brains fill in a lot of gaps that our memory leaves out. Which means, it’s hard to get an accurate view of what your actual habits are if you don’t write them down as they’re happening.

That’s why journaling is so important. It gives you a very accurate view of what your “normal” behaviors are.

So, spend five minutes today and write down your thoughts. Or what you’ve eaten that day. Or even just a list of goals you have for yourself.

So, whichever of these tools you choose to use, the key is this: Spend five meaningful minutes a day on it. Health just doesn’t happen. It only happens when you’re intentional about chasing it down. It only happens when the good habits override the bad ones.

Health is just another word for the momentum that happens when these simple steps stop being something you think about and instead just sort of take over, moving you forward on your health journey.

We’re looking to build these habits with this Health Kickstart plan, and the way to do that is to take each part, start small, and build from there.

Want more great information about the foundations of a healthy life and learning to slow down? Download our new eBook The 7 Habits of Highly healthful People for FREE right now, right HERE!

Listen to Part 3 Here:

The post Health KickStart Series #3: Slow Down appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

November 14, 2017

We get this question all the time… How do you get your mind calm, free of those racing thoughts, and allow yourself to just be? Here are three steps to achieving just that!

Our world is a hectic, noisy one. And although you’ve probably heard that it’s healthy to spend time each day in meditation, knowing where to start can be a challenge. So here are three ways to dial down the world around you and just BE…

1. Know that it’s not always easy to do

I’ll admit it. Even after years of yoga and meditation training, and I still have problems turning off my brain sometimes. I tell you that as encouragement. Things get busy, stressful, and your mind starts racing.

Sometimes even thinking about meditating, if only for a few minutes, just feels like too much. Like that silence is impossible to face.

So, even when you know all the techniques, it still takes practice. And again, if I can learn to do it, so can you!

2. The Body Breath

Try this exercise:

1. Take a big deep breath. Inhale and then hold it. Notice where your center of gravity is located. For most people, that center of gravity will be high up in the body (a “face breath”), making you more top-heavy.

2. Now stand up straight, with your feet four inches apart and flat on the ground.
3. Push your feet into the floor and squeeze up— squeeze your ankles, your calves, thighs. Pull your belly button in and continue squeezing up— through your lower back, middle back, upper back. Your body will naturally inhale.

When your lungs are full, pause. Be aware of what it feels like to be full of this life force. Be aware that taking this breath is the most important thing you will ever do.

Now, reverse the sequence and squeeze down, focusing on each part of your body as you do, from your upper back down through your ankles and into the floor. Your body will naturally exhale.

Pause for a moment at the bottom of your exhale, and notice how it feels not to breathe.

Wash, rinse, repeat. Continue to do this and, with practice, your mind will clear, and you’ll have far greater control over your thoughts.

3. Label Your Anxieties

So much of your health starts in your head.

We have a member who is prone to having a feeling like she is going to pass out. We found that if she says it out loud—”I feel like I’m going to pass out”—whenever the feeling comes, just putting words to it is enough to allow the sensation to pass.

Your mind is a fantastic instrument. It’s capable of far more than you probably give it credit for.

When you need to shut your brain off, just breathe. Just be okay with what’s happening. Put a label on it.

Say, “My thoughts are going crazy. There’s no reason for it, and it’s okay.”
Saying it out loud can have amazing effects. Reducing the anxiety to what it really is—a tiny worry, a moment of panic, a thought that won’t stop running through your head—puts it in its place and makes it small enough for you to handle.

So, the next time your brain just won’t shut off—no matter what you do—pull up this post. Recognize that what you’re feeling is normal. That everything is okay. Do a few deep grounding breaths. And then put a label on those thoughts. Put them in their place.

Then relax…

And just BE.

The post Flipping the Switch: How to Turn Off Your Brain… and Just BE appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

July 27, 2017

It’s always amazing to me to watch a yoga class come in stressed and harried… and then watch them leave an hour later, relaxed, lighter, and happier.

It’s also amazing that recent studies have shown that the happiness bump you get from yoga and meditation lasts days… or even week!

And why does it have such a lasting effect?

Because it literally changes the structure of your brain!

The Amygdala

In a study by Harvard Psychology professor Sara Lazar, researchers scanned the brains of people practicing yoga over the stretch of a few months.
What they found was this: Yoga actually shrinks the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that handles worry and stress.
So when the amygdala shrinks, your stress shrinks too. And when you’re less stressed, you’re happier.

Cortisol

A study done at UC Davis called the Shamatha Project found that yoga and meditation drastically reduced the amount of cortisol in the participants’ systems. Cortisol is often referred to as the “stress hormone.”
Lower cortisol equals lower stress equals (you guessed it!) more “happy.”

The Calm Side of the Brain

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin ran two groups of highly stressed people through an 8-week meditation program. Some of the group completed it, while the other portion did not.
At the end of the study, they scanned each person’s brain. They were surprised to find that those who’d completed the program had much more activity in the left prefrontal cortex. Among other things, the prefrontal cortex is where calmness and happiness are generated.

Better than Pills

A study done at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that in people with high levels of anxiety, meditation produced results that were akin—and sometimes better than—prescription antidepressants.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Whereas drinking a sugary drink gives you a short boost in mood—it’s not only terrible for you, the crash afterward leaves you feeling worse than before.

Meditation and yoga, though, produce a lasting happiness that’s not just emotional. No, it’s also physical.

So, if you’re feeling down, go do some yoga. Or find someplace peaceful to meditate.

And if you’re already pretty happy today, then go do some yoga or meditate, and ride that wave of happiness for months into the future!

To be happy, you need to be healthy. Download our free step-by-step guide to getting healthy… and staying that way! Click to download The 7 Habits of Highly Healthful People NOW!

The post Meditate… and Get Happy! appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

September 22, 2016

Do you feel good?

Right now, at this moment, do you feel good?

As a cardiologist now halfway through my third decade of practice, I’ve noticed two things about the possible answers to that question.

The first: Most people don’t feel good.

The second: Sadly, most people don’t even know what feeling good feels like.

Living in this toxic culture, eating what we eat, racing through our day, and rarely stopping to take inventory of what out bodies are telling us—most people I’ve talked to over the years have been miserable for so long that they have no idea what it means not to be miserable.

It’s sad. Heartbreaking, really.

And although there is no one cure for this problem, there are some systematic steps you can take to at least begin to understand what feeling good is like.

The good news here is that once you understand that feeling, you’ll want to preserve it. You’ll want to keep feeling good.

Here are two of the things we teach our members at the Wellness Training Institute. They are steps in a larger process, but they really all fall under one category: Getting Quiet.

Awareness

I preach awareness constantly. And there’s a reason for it.

Health is built upon the integration of the body, mind, and soul. If all of those things are working together, then you are healthy. It’s as simple as that.

One of the best ways of getting those things working together is through a practice of mindfulness… about everything you do.

It makes a lot of sense: To do something, or make something, or even consider choosing one thing over another, it takes a certain amount of concentration. It takes information. It takes awareness. You have to know that something is there, or that there’s even the potential of a choice.

The way to do that is to become quiet. To sit inside an individual moment. To understand where your body is in relation to the rest of the universe. To watch and listen for what’s actually going on inside your body.

It’s also about documenting what you do. We use a gratitude journaling exercise with our Wellness Training Institute members. It’s a highly effective way to force someone to pause, to look for the positives in their lives, and it sets them up to find more positive things throughout their day.

It’s about getting the mind quiet, calm, and ready to choose life over death, one minute after the next.

Want more great information about the foundations of a healthy life? Download the first installment of our NEW 7-part eBook series The 7 Habits of Highly Healthful People for FREE right now, right HERE!

Elimination Diet

An elimination diet is used, first and foremost, to quiet the gut. What I mean by that is this: By taking out potentially reactive foods from your diet (foods that might be causing problems, either by themselves are in a cross-reactive way with other, non-problematic foods), we can get your body to a place where it can just work the way it needs to.

A good example of this is gluten. For a lot of people, gluten doesn’t cause much of a problem. But for those whose bodies react to it, that reaction is usually pretty extreme.

So, by removing gluten from the diet for a little while, the body—the gut—can quiet down and get on with the business of doing its job.

Just like cultivating awareness, an elimination diet allows things to reset, to quiet down. It also allows you to understand what your body needs—as well as what it doesn’t.

It’s probably not an accident that in most cultures (but not ours, for the most part) there’s a time of fasting. For some, it’s a day. Or a week. Or, like Ramadan, a month.

They seem to know something that we don’t here in our culture. There’s power in putting the brakes on constant consumption. There’s power in letting things get still to the point where we can sense things, hear things. There’s power in just shutting things down for a time—for the body, mind, and soul—and just getting quiet.

So, how do you feel? If you feel great, then great!

If not, I would encourage you to come to our FREE Wellness Dinner Seminar. We’ll eat a good meal together, and we will give you a ton of great information about how you can get quiet and take that next step to getting healthy and staying that way!

The post The Power of Getting Quiet appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

September 16, 2016

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.” — Eckhart Tolle

One of the hardest things to do in this day and age is slow down. Our phones constantly distract us, there are screens everywhere begging for our attention, and life doesn’t exactly allow you to just hit the pause button.

That’s why it’s so important to develop a habit of present moment awareness.

A lot of people tend to think about life in one of two ways: History or future. We spend a lot of time thinking about things that have happened to us over the years, both good and bad, and spend almost as much time—if not more—looking forward. Plans, fears, schedules, responsibilities… the list is endless, and it is always coming directly at us.

But there’s also another way that life is happening… in fact, it’s really the ONLY way life is happening. And that’s in the moment. That’s really all we have. The past is gone, the future isn’t here yet, and so all we have is the now.

So, why is it important to practice present moment awareness?

Glad you asked.

There are a couple reasons.

1. You are Alive

One, to live at optimum health, we have to first live. And since being alive means being alive in this one and only moment, then any alternative is really going to be a chore. In this moment, you are alive. The world is real and vibrant and awe-inspiring and all around you. Every tiny atom moves within this moment. Every wave of light is pulling a million different colors from every shining thing across the universe. Everyone alive on this planet is alive inside this moment. Everything within this moment simply is.

2. You are Built for Wellness

The second reason why developing present moment awareness as a habit is such an important principle for a healthy life, is that so much of our health is dependent upon how we see the world. How we experience it. And because it is so easy to simply drift through each second of every hour of every day until we’re old and frail and wake up one morning wondering where our lives have gone… it’s vital to our very wellness to begin to understand how we are tied to the earth, and to each other, and to every molecule vibrating out its own song within its narrow arc.

A habit of present moment awareness ties you to the world around you. It also ties you to your own body. Rushing around from one thing to the next with no real mind to how your body is feeling—or what it needs—is a fantastic way to invite sickness. Instead, present moment awareness gives us insight into what’s going on inside us. That pause from our worries, regrets, fears, and feelings of being overwhelmed disappears under the weight of that one single moment, and we are lighter for it. We get a sense of ourselves. We understand what our body is feeling, how our thoughts connect, and also begin to develop an inner sense of what our bodies are telling us.

Some of those signals might be just simple pleasures. Other times, we may receive warning signs. Our bodies know what they need, and also know how to communicate those needs to us. We are only tasked to listen, and then respond.

Why We Don’t Like the Moment

I think a lot of us tend to avoid spending time mindfully within our moments because we’re afraid. Afraid that there might be something wrong. Afraid that an old buried fear might rear its ugly head and ruin our day.

Or, we’re just afraid of the quiet simply because it’s so foreign to us. A quiet, mindful moment doesn’t come with a user’s guide. There isn’t an app for it. (Not really.) It’s unstructured. It forces us to be alone with our thoughts… and some of those thoughts aren’t pleasant. Without distraction as a salve, old wounds can emerge.

I get it: It can be a frightening proposition.

But stay with me here: Simply because present moment awareness opens us up to possible negative feelings, that isn’t an argument against practicing it. The tradition of yoga isn’t about avoiding negative emotions. Instead, it works hard to confront them, find the source, identify everything that fear connects to inside our minds, and then deals with all of that in isolation. It effectively short circuits that negativity.

Sure, you’re going to be sad sometimes. Or angry. Or hurt. Or lonely. All of these emotions are a huge part of the human condition. Present moment awareness isn’t going to rid you of everything negative. Instead, it’s one of the best tools we have to deal with it in a way that allows our bodies, minds, and spirits to process it all to make us healthier, happier, and much more fun to be around!

How do you practice present moment awareness? Comment and share below!

(If you want to get started cultivating awareness—or check out the technique we use with our Wellness Training Institute members—you can check out this post detailing a step by step beginner’s guide.)

The post Why You Should Practice Present Moment Awareness appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

September 1, 2016

Life can be overwhelming. Jobs, families, the daily grind of just being alive.

It can be hard.

That’s why it takes an intentional plan to keep yourself centered and calm. So much of our lives are spent just reacting to things. In order to be healthy, we need to flip that equation and plan our days out to be proactive in the face of whatever stressors come our way. It sounds strange to speak about staying centered, calm, at peace as work—but that’s really exactly what it is.

So much of what we do lies in the overlap between our minds and the rest of the world. How we think and feel about the world determines, in a very real way, how we live our lives. Adding powerful habits into your daily flow can have life-changing effects on all aspects of your health.

Here are 7 ways to take action and optimize your daily routine for optimum health.

1. Gratitude Journal

Spending a few minutes each morning writing down three things you are grateful is no small thing. It’s easy, yes, but the impact is enormous. It’s so important, in fact, that this is one of the first habits we begin building in our members at The Wellness Training Institute. Before dietary stuff, before breathing and meditation, before anything.

The reason for this is because a Gratitude Journal does (at least) two key things.

One, it gets your mind set for the day. Even if you’ve gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, focusing on tangible positives in your life will get you calibrated to spend the rest of the day looking for silver linings despite whatever storms might be looming.

Secondly, it’s an easy habit to build. And once you get this habit down, you’re able to build other healthy habits on top of it.

So, take five minutes each morning for the next two weeks and write down three things you are grateful for. It’s that simple.

(To learn more about why a Gratitude Journal is such an amazing tool, check out this post.)

Want more great information about the foundations of a healthy life? Download the first installment of our NEW 7-part eBook series The 7 Habits of Highly Healthful People for FREE right now, right HERE!

2. Lunchtime Meditation

You don’t have to be the Dalai Lama to meditate. No mountain tops required.

Here’s the deal: Meditation sounds like this big scary thing. It sounds hard. It sounds boring. It also might sound like something that someone like you wouldn’t ever do.

The reality, though, is that meditation is really just focused on two things:

One, meditation is about what we call “mindful breathing.” This is the simple action of concentrating on your breath as you inhale and exhale.

Breathing correctly can relieve — if not eliminate altogether — our depression and anxiety. Our minds are constantly under attack from our senses, our thoughts run crazy, and distraction is the norm. Breathing correctly puts all of this back in balance, grounds us, and puts our bodies at ease.

Two, meditation has a lot to do with cultivating awareness. This is simply the act of sitting with your thoughts, observing them, putting space between them. You separate out all the thoughts you have, as they come, focus on how they connect, how they make you feel. And with each one, once you’ve seen it for what it is, you release it and allow the next one to come.

Meditation, at its foundation, is just combing these two things—mindful breathing and cultivating awareness.

Simply set aside ten minutes in your day to find a quiet spot, close your eyes, breathe deeply, and relax with your thoughts.

3. Time Out Your Breath

Breathing is the foundation of a healthy life. Without air, you literally die. And learning how to breathe the right way is one of the most important steps you can take in your health journey.

The key is to get it positioned inside your day as something that eventually becomes a habit.

Here’s a great way to do that:

Set a timer for a few times a day. Whenever the timer goes off, take ten deep body breaths.

It’s that simple.

Commit to this technique, and you’ll be surprised how more relaxed you feel throughout the day. It makes a huge difference.

4. Schedule Your Calm

Another habit to begin to develop within your daily routine is to be very mindful of what points in your schedule allow you to kind of “get away” and do something relaxing.

Your drive home from work or the store, for example, could be a good time to shut out the distractions and be alone with your thoughts. (Provided, of course, that you can do this and still navigate, you know, traffic.)

Scheduling out a walk after dinner, or in the morning before you jump full bore into your day, could also be a good way to find some peace and work through your thoughts and feelings.

Whatever you choose to do, just do it. Schedule it in and commit to it.

5. Retrain Your Triggers

Remember that Pavlov guy and his dogs? By teaching his pooches to connect in their minds the sound of a bell with a bowl of kibble, he found he could get them to salivate on cue.

You can do the same thing with your stressors (minus the drool).

Here’s how it works:

Figure out one of your stressors. For this example, let’s say it’s a phone call from your boss.

Next, attach a sound to that stressor. In this case, it would be the sound your phone makes when he calls you.

Take that sound and use it as the timer we used in #3 above. Whenever you hear that sound, you do something relaxing (like take 10 deep body breaths, for example).

Do this for a few days. Within a week you’ll find that the very sound of the phone will trigger your body to begin to relax. So when your boss calls, instead of your sympathetic nervous system turning your head into a pressure cooker, your body will automatically relax, allowing you to deal with what you need to from a proactive position of calm.

6. Remind Yourself to be Happy

Negativity is a feedback loop. A couple things go wrong, your mood starts to go south, and before you know it, you’re caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of GRUMP.

Being mindful about taking a few moments out of each day to remind yourself to be HAPPY (because, after all, happiness really is a choice) can work wonders in keeping your spirits up and ready to face the next challenge.

Schedule it in. Stick to it. And soon it will become a habit.

7. Two Good/Two Bad/Let Go

How a particular morning starts off often has a lot to do with how you closed down your day the night before. If you go out binge drinking in the evening, for example, you’re almost guaranteeing a rough start to tomorrow. It works in a positive sense as well.

At the end of each day, write down two good things that happened that day.

Next, write down two things you wish you’d done better. Forgive yourself. Commit to yourself that you’ll try better tomorrow.

Finally, write down two things you’d like to accomplish the next day.

Then close the book on the day. Let go of it all. It’s all history now and tomorrow is a new day.

Shut it down for the night, get a great night’s sleep, and then get up again tomorrow, one day closer to the calm, centered, healthy life you’ve always longed for!

The post How to Optimize Your Daily Routine for Optimum Health appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

August 26, 2016

I don’t have to tell you that as a country we are “stressed out.” You hear it all the time. Whether we’re worried about the political climate, aging, our jobs, all the uncertainties related to our families… the list is infinite.

The US is, by some accounts, the most stressed-out culture in the history of the world. In a report last year from the American Psychological Association, over seventy percent of Americans who responded stated that they regularly feel both physical and psychological effects due to stress.

So, most of us are feeling it.

Stress, of course, isn’t a bad thing. Not at all. Stress itself is just a word for resistance. And if you’ve ever lifted weights, ridden bike, or tried to learn a foreign language, you know that no growth happens without resistance. Our response to stress is a natural reaction to stimuli that, at its most basic level, forces our bodies to be alert and able to move away from life threatening situations.

What we’re really talking about when we talk about being “stressed out” is the feeling of being overwhelmed.

However you refer to it, stress reduction has become big business in America.

For example, here’s one “solution” called the Ostrich Pillow:

The “Relaxation Beverage” Industry has also been gaining momentum over the last few years. Brands like Slow Cow and Just Chill offer cans of fruit liquid infused with ostensibly natural ingredients purported to offer a calming effect.

The problem with this approach—looking like a dork while napping in public, consuming what amounts to pop with a few extra suspect ingredients, or dropping thousands of dollars on this— is that none of these “solutions” really addresses the root core of what’s causing us to feel overwhelmed.

All of these things really only address the symptoms.

To beat feeling overwhelmed—and all the long term problems associated with chronic stress—you have to learn how to relax.

Here are four ways to do just that:

1. Breathe

Learning how to breathe is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. Breathing seems like it should be sort of a given… you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know how to breathe, after all. But breathing the right way is something that most of us haven’t ever been taught.

All health begins with the breath. So learning how to breathe is vital.

If you want to learn how to breathe the right way, click here to download our ebook The 7 Habits of Highly Healthful People; the first chapter has a step by step guide to forming a habit of proper breathing.

2. Quit Being So Judgey

Things that happen are simply things that happen. They are facts. They exist in reality for only a moment, and then they are gone.

Where we begin to start feeling overwhelmed is when we allow those things to affect our minds, our emotions. Our negative reaction to certain things is just that: A reaction. How we feel about something is what causes us to feel overwhelmed. The thing itself is just a thing. To be free of that feeling of being overwhelmed requires that we understand this.

This approach to our thoughts as valueless is one of the goals of meditation. Instead of closing your eyes and just zoning out, meditation is active in creating separation between your thoughts, understanding that each thought is just that: One thought.

You are then able to hold that thought, examine it, observe it from any distance, and then allow that thought to disappear.

Getting to the point at which you can get into a comfortable position and just observe all the things that are causing you feel overwhelmed—and then just let those things drift off—will get you into a relaxed state.

So much of what overwhelms us is our habit of letting our thoughts take over and begin running the show. We should instead understand that even bad events aren’t permanent. It’s fine to feel bad about something—guilt, a loss, physical pain—but we can also let those things go and find the next thing that is, inevitably, coming to us.

3. Feel the Magic

The world is amazing. It really is. Life is amazing.

I walked out of my office yesterday and was stunned—and awed, really—to see that although the sun was out and bright, rain was falling all around me. It looked like there was rippling wall of glass where the light shone through the streams of water.

It was incredible. But at the same time, I very well could’ve missed it. I could’ve half-noticed it and continued on going to wherever i was going, thinking about whatever else I had on the agenda that day.

Instead, I chose to stop. To observe.To wonder. To experience.

Our lives often get in the way of our life.

One of the best ways to keep from feeling overwhelmed is to just form a habit of experiencing life for what it is. Take a moment just to appreciate the sheer complexity of the world. Think about all the systems that have to work in concert to keep your heart beating, or the rain falling, or the fact that we’ve put people on the moon but can’t, with any real certainty, figure out why light is both particles and waves.

Life is glorious. And we’re at our best when we are experiencing it directly.

4. Find Your First Step

There are a lot of places to start when you want to relax. You can take a walk, go for a bike ride, sit in a quiet room with your eyes closed, slice vegetables, talk to a close friend, go for a swim… the possibilities are endless.

But the thing you need to figure out is what works for you. You need to find your first step towards relaxation.

I’ve had a number of Wellness Training Institute members and cardiovascular patients over the decades who’ve told me that trying to breathe deeply when they’re completely overwhelmed just doesn’t work. They are essentially so upset that they have to, say, go for a walk.

It’s important to know how you work. And begin forming good habits around the way you’re built.

How Not to Relax

If I haven’t made this clear yet, I’ll state it outright: Relaxation is an active process. It takes work.

Vegging out on the couch binge-watching hours of Netflix isn’t relaxation. Instead, it’s a passive search for distraction.

Distractions are everywhere these days. We are bombarded. Getting away from all of that is vitally important to building a habit of relaxation.

There’s nothing wrong with Netflix, of course. But in dealing with the feeling of being overwhelmed, running toward distraction—instead of away from it—isn’t going to solve your issues. It only delays them.

So, figure out what works for you in dealing with stress, make it a habit, sit back, and start enjoying life.

Eventually you’ll get to the point where you realize that you don’t need anything external to allow you to feel peace. You have all the tools inside you.

All you have to do is take a deep breath and look for them.

Keep chill and carry on!

The post Chill: How to Relax appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

August 23, 2016

There seem to be a lot of things out there these days that can kill us: Pollution, global warming, terrorism, super-bacteria… the list is long.

But if you look at what really poses dangers for us, statistically speaking, it’s how we choose to live day-to-day.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) the top five preventable killers in the United States are heart disease, cancer, lung disease (like emphysema and chronic bronchitis), stroke and unintentional correctly-prescribed medication overdoses.

Each of these don’t just happen to us out of the blue. Instead, they are often a result of our habits. Smoking, obesity, lack of exercise, a diet high in…well, garbage.

So it makes sense that one of the first things you’d want to do to get yourself healthy and stay there is change the habits that pose the most risk… and replace them with healthier ones.

But change is hard. Or, at least, it is if you don’t have the right information. You can’t take any steps toward forming new habits unless you know where to start.

At the Wellness Training Institute, we teach our members to begin at the beginning. Which is: Nutrition.

Why Nutrition?

What do you think of when you hear the word nutrition?

Most people’s minds jump straight to food. Which is true.

But that’s not the whole story.

Nutrition, at its most basic level, is defined as the act of getting sustenance from what’s around you. And it’s not limited to just food. Breathing, for instance, is nutrifying yourself with the things in the air that sustain you. Cultivating a sense of awareness around both your body and your environment works to nutrify your thoughts.

Before you begin figuring out how to replace your bad habits with good ones, you need to understand that everything you do for your health has to be a step toward nutrition.

Nutrition is about creating a relationship with the earth’s energy. It’s also about connecting with your own body.

What’s interesting about viewing your health in this way is that it makes it very clear that, within every moment, you are always either moving toward life or toward death. There is no middle ground. That kale leaf is a signpost toward life. That cigarette moves you three more inches towards death. There’s no such thing in life as stasis. Everything is moving, all the time, one way or the other.

When you learn to gain sustenance from gaining energy from the earth, from your food, your breath, even your thoughts, you are effectively choosing life over death with each passing second.

You don’t consciously choose to do this, or at least not all the time. Often, you make choices without even thinking about them.

What I’m talking about are, of course, habits.

Habits dictate whether you are working toward life or toward death.

Which brings up the question: How do you form the type of habits that can get you healthy and keep you there?

Here are three great suggestions to get you started:

1. Awareness

One of the most valuable things you can do for your health is to create a sense of awareness. What this means, in its simplest form, is that you let the world quiet down around you and listen to what your body is telling you.

The reason for why this is important is simple: You don’t know what your habits are unless you take a little time and figure that out.

And you can’t identify the bad habits until you know what they are.

The best way to begin building this awareness is to start a journal. Write down what you do every day. Write down what you eat. Write down how the food makes you feel. Write down your thoughts. Start each day writing three things you’re grateful for in a gratitude journal.

This seems like a small, insignificant thing. But we’ve found that documenting what you do and how you’re feeling each day gets your mind right—and your thoughts nutrified—in ways that can’t be accomplished in any other way.

You’ll be amazed at how many things you do without even thinking about it.

You’ll also be amazed at how easy this habit is to form and how effective it is as a foundation for building better habits upon it.

2. Surround Yourself with Nutritious People

This is not a call to become a cannibal. I promise.

(You shouldn’t even be eating meat, let alone people meat.)

Instead, it’s the idea that negative people and toxic relationships can have a huge impact on your ability to start and maintain healthy habits.

Just like you would eliminate certain foods that might be wreaking havoc with your digestive system, in the same way you should put a little distance between friends, family members, and co-workers (to the point that that’s possible) for a little while. You’re not shunning them entirely and forever. Instead, you’re just giving yourself a little space to begin to let your emotions heal and seeking out more positive people to spend time with.

After a while, as with an elimination food diet, you can begin adding those negative people back into your life after you’ve gotten healthier.

And, who knows? Maybe some of your positive energy will spark a desire to change in them as well!

3. Find What Energizes You

One of the problems with starting out on a “diet” or trying to get healthy is that it can often feel like you’re reinventing the wheel. You’re eating different, strange food. You’re forcing your body to move in ways it’s not used to. You’re cutting out all the things that gave your life structure before and sort of flying blind.

The end result, as you’ve probably experienced, isn’t health. Instead, it’s frustration.

One of the ways you can prevent this from happening—and form some great habits along the way—is take a look at what you documented in the first step above, find what healthy actions you are already doing, and then just double down on them.

Chances are, those healthy habits are going to be things that you enjoy. If you eat a salad three times a week, start eating six instead. If you take a walk a few times a week, begin working a walk into your routine daily. If you find yourself vegging out in front of the TV every evening, take a half hour of that time to sit in silence and practice awareness.

The point is this: You don’t have to change everything all at once. In fact, you shouldn’t, because that’s not how we as humans are built. We have habits for a reason. The goal is always to maintain what’s good and then add more of that.

Health is not a baby-with-the-bathwater proposition. It’s gradual, deliberate, and—baby step by baby step—transformative.

I hope these three ideas for beginning to form healthy habits meets you where you are on your health journey. I also hope you’ll take them to heart.

Health isn’t an end goal. Instead it’s a path toward wholeness. And every little habit counts along the way.

The post How to Develop New Habits that Transform Your Life appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

June 3, 2016

Cultivating awareness is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. Just like knowledge is power, knowing yourself—what motivates you, what stresses you out, what makes you afraid, what truly makes you happy—is the first step in the journey to living your best life possible.

So, great! But… how do you do that?

Here are four simple steps to getting to know yourself—and being conscious of what is actually going on inside the complex animal that you are!

Develop a Meditation/Mindfulness Practice

We live in a world full of distractions. From the internet, your smart phone, the tv blaring in the background… the volume knob on you daily life is set to eleven by default.

That’s why it is important to learn how to sit in silence and focus inward.

It sounds like a big job, but with a little practice, you’ll see the benefits in no time.

How to do it:

Find a quiet spot. Wear some comfortable clothes. Sit and close your eyes. Breathe deeply.

Now, sit with your thoughts. Observe them. Put space between them. Understand what they are, where they are going, and focus on recognizing that your thoughts are moving you to different places.

The more you practice this, the better you’ll get at it. You’ll begin to understand how your brain—and your thoughts— affect your body—and vice versa.

Journaling

Humans are really good at making things up. Our brains fill in a lot of gaps that our memory leaves out. Which means, it’s hard to get an accurate view of what your actual habits are if you don’t write them down as they’re happening.

That’s why journaling is so important. It gives you a very accurate view of what your “normal” behaviors are.

This can take a number of forms. Food journaling is a great way to keep track of what you’re putting into your body. If you want to be healthy, it’s easy to forget that you binge-ate a box of Twinkies at 2 AM last night. In fact, your brain wants you to forget about it because otherwise you’ll feel guilty about it. It’s a cognitive dissonance issue.

So, keeping a food journal gives you both an accurate view of what you’re actually eating, and also holds you accountable to your own health, since whatever you eat you have to write down.

Exercise Journaling works in a similar way.

You can also just write down your thoughts. Knowing—and seeing—what you are thinking is a great way to get a gauge on who and where you are personally. Knowing your thoughts raises your consciousness, your awareness, and will positively impact your health.

How to do it:

Turn off your phone. Get a pad of paper or a blank journal. Schedule out a time each day to just sit for five minutes and write. Figure out a time where you know there will be no distractions. Make it as easy as possible for yourself to succeed. And don’t stress out about what you’re writing. Just get it down within the set timeframe and then move on with your day. You can look back later—hours, days, even weeks— and see what you’ve written. You’ll be surprised at how valuable this exercise is in raising your awareness.

Breathing

You can go approximately one whole month without food before you die. You can survive for three whole days without water.

Without oxygen, however, you won’t last six minutes.

That’s how important air is.

So it makes sense that learning how to breathe correctly would be vitally important to both your health and your awareness.

Believe it or not, but you’re probably not breathing correctly. Most people breath with their faces, which results in a very shallow breath. Good breathing happens from the ground up.

How to do it:

Sit or stand with good posture, keeping your back straight and your feet flat against the floor. Exhale down into the floor, concentrating on fully emptying your lungs. When you take your next breath, push your feet into the floor as you inhale. Squeeze all the way up through your body, imagining that the breath is filling you completely. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Goal Setting

Health doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It also doesn’t happen just by yourself. You need community, because community breeds accountability.

Goal setting is important for a few reasons. You’ll never get to where you want to be if you don’t know where that place is. Goal setting is also good because in the process of setting those goals, you’re also strategizing about how to get there.

How to do it:

Say your goals out loud. Write them down. Let others know what your goals are and ask them to hold you accountable to reaching them. Just getting a little air under your words makes a big difference. Set both short term and long term goals, and put realistic milestones between them. Make your goals attainable and measurable.

And then work each day to meet them!

I hope this post about how to cultivate awareness has opened your eyes a little to how important it is to understand what is going on inside of you. Meditation and yoga have been around for thousands of years for a reason. There’s something integral to who we are and how our bodies function that relates directly to our thoughts. Getting into the habit of tracking with what’s going on inside of yourself is key to living the life that you’ve always dreamed of.

The post 4 Simple Steps to Cultivate Awareness appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.