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!

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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.

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!

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July 21, 2016

You wouldn’t know it from the way the job title is used these days, but the root word for “doctor”—from the Latin docere (pronounced DO-key-ray)—means “to teach.”

Which sums up nicely one of the biggest problems with today’s American medical system.

When I was a young man—eighteen or nineteen, tops—I went to my doctor and asked him how to be healthy. He looked at me as if I were crazy, and told me to come back when something went wrong.

TO TEACH
That’s not teaching. That’s not even helpful. A doctor should be there— docere— to teach.

Which is one of the foundational reasons for why I started the Wellness Training Institute. To teach. To show my patients and Wellness Program Members how to reverse what’s wrong with them—or to prevent it outright.

I have patients coming in all the time with issues that could’ve been completely eliminated if only they’d known a few key things when they were younger.

And one of the conditions I come across time and time again—and one that breaks my heart simply because it isn’t the inevitable outcome of just getting older—is metabolic syndrome.

WHAT IS METABOLIC SYNDROME?
Metabolic syndrome is a little bit of a touchy area among diagnosticians, only because it can be a little slippery to define. But because I’m a doctor who’s decided to embrace the classical definition of the title itself, I’ll attempt to define it here.

Metabolic syndrome is sort of an umbrella term that covers a number of conditions that lead to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, as well as a wide range of autoimmune disorders. Metabolic syndrome also covers thyroid disease (Grave’s disease, for example, or Hashimoto’s), high blood pressure, dimention, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Osteoporosis. And many others.

The key here is that none of those things that falls underneath this particular umbrella is anything you’d ever want to have. All of this stuff is bad with a capital B.

The other key here is that these conditions account for a huge portion of deaths in America every year.

And each and every one is preventable. They are all lifestyle-related.

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!

THE 5 SNEAKY SYMPTOMS OF METABOLIC SYNDROME
Here are the five main signs that you might be developing metabolic syndrome. Sometimes people experience each of them. Other times, it’s only a couple. The point is that if any of these apply to you, it’s time to take a good, hard look at what habits have led you this far.

Here are the five symptoms:

1. Abnormal craving for sugar
This goes above and beyond that craving for the occasional Snickers bar. It’s a total and unrelenting desire to stuff yourself with the substance that, when put into a gas tank, completely destroys an automobile.

2. Unexplained belly fat
This doesn’t mean that you wake up one morning to find that aliens have abducted you, stuffed you to the point of popping with goose down, and left with no explanation. No need to contact either Mulder or Scully. This is when you’ve gained weight, tried to get it off in ways that have worked in the past, but that inflatable pool toy you now call a gut just won’t disappear.

3. Brain fog
You might feel a little off. A little slow. Thinking becomes hard. In fact, you often find yourself thinking about thinking, which just makes things worse.

4. Excessive fatigue
Have you ever had mono? Do you remember how tired you felt? This feels the same, only with none of the making out beforehand.

5. Irregular sleep patterns
You are tired. It’s 4 AM. So very tired. But you can’t sleep. But now it’s noon. Let’s get some lunch. Lunch sounds good. But you are still so tired. So very ti…

WARNING SIGNS
By themselves, these conditions are sort of irritating. No one likes brain fog. Nobody would willing want to walk around with an extra tire around their midsection. Irregular sleep sucks.

But when you see these annoyances for what they are—symptoms—you may start to get a glimpse of what’s to come. A glimpse of what’s actually happening inside you. They might not just be little annoyances. They might actually be honest-to-gosh warning signs.

The good news, of course, is that to a great point, metabolic syndrome is reversible. For most people, lifestyle changes—especially if the symptoms are caught early on and new healthy habits are formed—can change course pretty drastically.

TOO LIGHT TO NOTICE/TOO HEAVY TO BE BROKEN
The underlying theme here, of course, is that all kinds of diseases—metabolic or otherwise—are completely preventable. All it takes is education up front. Knowing the end result of what today’s habits are going to lead to is a powerful form of prevention.

Education is key.

But habits are sneaky. You don’t always even know they are habits. Warren Buffet has paraphrased the 18th century British poet Samuel Johnson on a number of occasions to just this point: “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” I think that sums the dilemma up nicely.

It’s the job of the younger person to take care of her older, future self. So, if good habits are formed—and if those habits are shaped by doctors who are doing what they should be, namely, teaching—a whole world of hurt and heartache will be saved down the line.

If you are younger (in your 20s, maybe or 30s) and one or more of these signs is flaring at you, take action now. The younger you are, the easier it is to change direction. Catch it now, act on it, and change your habits, and you will be surprised at how different your future will look.

But maybe you’re past that. Maybe those symptoms are already manifesting in a big way. If so, I would encourage you to begin taking steps to reverse it. Switch to a plant-based diet, join a yoga class, or just quit drinking pop.

Whatever.

Just start somewhere. And then find someone who knows what they’re talking about to help you along through the journey ahead.

THE SIGNS ARE THERE FOR A REASON
Don’t ignore the warning signs. Each of the five symptoms above is unpleasant. But compared to what is coming down the line if you don’t do anything, any one of them will feel comparatively like a vacation.

Don’t be complacent. Don’t be reactive. Be proactive.

Just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean you should be feeling any worse.

Give the body what it needs and it will take care of you for a long, long time.

Just remember: No one can give you back your health. That’s why they call it “your health.” It’s yours. You own it. You can throw it away, or you can take a small step right now in the right direction and, even with that first small step forward, begin creating a future that’s much, much brighter.

(If you really want to get serious about preventing or reversing metabolic syndrome, I would encourage to attend one of our FREE educational dinners. It’s a great starting point, and you’ll walk out at the end far more enlightened than when you started. I’d stake my title as Docere on it. Plus, it’s FREE.)

The post The 5 Sneaky Signs of Metabolic Syndrome appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

June 21, 2016

When you think about yoga, what comes to mind?

For most people, it’s images of young women with ponytails sitting on the floor twisting themselves into human pretzels. Or maybe old men with long beards sitting atop a mountain for months at a time.

And there’s nothing wrong with either of those images. Yoga’s been practiced for a long, long time by a lot of different people.

What’s important to understand, though, is that just because you might think of yoga in terms of peppy young chicks or wise old men, it doesn’t mean that yoga is ONLY for those types of people.

Yoga Reimagined

I believe wholeheartedly that yoga is for everyone. And I also believe that yoga is something that shouldn’t just happen in a class.

And—in fact— forget about turning yourself into a pretzel! Yoga doesn’t have to be hard, or painful, or even all that intense.

There’s a better way.

But before we get into the specifics of what I’m talking about, let’s take a look at what yoga is really all about.

What is Yoga Really?

Put simply, yoga is a method to transform your physiology—your actual bodily makeup—with intention.

The goal is to change the behavior of the physical structure of your body.

It’s about creating a connection between your mind and body so that your thoughts can kind of get out of the way so that your stress response system pushes pause and the body can get to work healing itself. It’s not about stopping your thoughts, but about putting space between the thoughts.

Science is only now starting to understand what these physical changes look like—and how and why they happen. Studies have shown that practicing yoga can positively affect brain function, lower stress and inflammation, lower your blood pressure, improve your sex life, effectively treat back and neck pain, manage blood sugar levels in diabetics, make your bones stronger, get you to a healthy weight (and keep you there!), and even drastically reduce the risk of heart disease.

Just to name a few.

Traditional yoga does this, of course, but it does so in a way that, frankly, can be pretty darn uncomfortable.

Re-learning the Basics

A quick story: I once went to a meditation retreat and we spent a lot of time there sitting outside on pillows. We were directed to adopt certain yoga poses while the leader led us through guided meditation. A lot of those poses were terribly uncomfortable, even painful. We were directed to grit it out, so to speak, and keep meditating through the pain. I tried to muscle my way through it because, well, I wanted to be a good meditator. A great meditator, in fact. “Be the pain,” said the instructor. I tried to do just that. The results were… mixed.

At the end of each day, I would look across the room and see this group of people looking like they’d just come through a war. Their backs, necks, and knees hurt. When they saw that, unlike them, I wasn’t in visible pain, they asked me why. Being a practicing cardiologist and someone who by then had spent a long time looking for holistic, natural ways to heal my own body, I got the chance to take these veteran yoga practicers through an impromptu clinic on how to sit.

How basic is that?

Even with all their experience, they had never learned the basics of how to sit properly!

Sit Stand Stroll: A Revolution

So, the reason I came up with the Sit Stand Stroll is because no one is taught how to sit, stand, or walk with proper body alignment. In this system there are three basic elements of meditation: walking meditation, sitting meditation, and standing meditation.

As humans, we spend most of our day doing one of these things: sitting, standing, or walking.

And if you have ever taken a yoga class, you know how good you feel after the class is done. You feel at peace, you feel whole, you feel revitalized.

So I thought: what if we could take yoga out of the classroom—something we do just once a day, or once a week—and put it back into the position in our lives that Buddhism teaches? What if it could be a part of our daily lives?

There’s an energy that is always flowing in our bodies. Every moment of every day, we are either getting better or getting worse. There’s no such thing as just “coasting along.” And the most vital energy flow we have is grounding energy. We get this by thinking grounding thoughts, eating grounding food, taking grounding breaths, making grounding actions, etc.

With Sit Stand Stroll, then, by learning how to sit in a way that grounds you, stand in a way that grounds you, and walking in a way that grounds you, you get to reap the benefits of feeling like you’ve just come from a yoga class… all day, every day.

It’s revolutionary stuff. By learning the Sit Stand Stroll techniques, every movement we make during the day grounds our energy.

For example, stand up and take a breath. Which muscles do you use to take that breath? Most people breathe with their faces (called, aptly, a “face breath”), which is a shallow breath. We teach our patients to to breathe in a way that pushes the air down through the abdomen, down through the legs, through the feet, and into—you guessed it!—the ground.

By just using this one simple-to-learn and easy-to-do technique, more oxygen floods into your lungs, your blood, and throughout the rest of your body.

And you didn’t even have to change clothes, go to a yoga studio, or break a sweat to do it!

Our patients come as they are, in their regular clothes, and we teach them the Sit Stand Stroll techniques that they can take with them and use throughout the day.

I like to call it “portable yoga.”

Next Steps

As a culture, we’re in pretty big trouble health-wise. The stats are too depressing, so I won’t detail them for you now. But you get it.

We’ve gotten away from living not just in this world, but with this world, and it’s time that we changed the way we see our health—and how we view ourselves.

Will Sit Stand Stroll answer all those problems? No, not by itself.

But along with getting our diet back on track, getting our stress down, and facing down our biggest and worst habits, Sit Stand Stroll, I’m convinced, is a great place to start.

Don’t just take it from me, I have a list of hundreds of current and former patients that would agree with me.

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!

The post Sit Stand Stroll: A Yoga Revolution appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

June 11, 2016

In a previous post, I talked about how important it is for your health, no matter what state your well-being is in these days, to start from the ground up. 

What I mean by that is health and wellness begins when we direct our bodily energy down through our feet and into the earth.

So, here are the top 10 techniques for doing that. In my experience, these have been effective for a lot of people. They’re also very practical, very easy, and don’t take up a ton of space in your day.

When you’re feeling scattered, out of sorts, or just blah, pick one or more from this list and try it out!

1. Breathe deeply using your body for breath rather than your facial muscles (this is difficult at first which is why Sit Stand Stroll is so critical). With every breath, imagine that each worry or anxiety dissolving into the air around you.
2. Eat or drink something healthy. Concentrate on the sensation. Is it hot or cold? Sweet or bitter? What’s the texture like?
3. Sit and just be in the moment. Keep your eyes closed and just feel what your body is doing.
4. Do some simple yoga positions.
5. Imagine yourself in a safe, comfortable place, and concentrate on the details around you.
6. Take a piece of paper. Write down ten things you are thankful for.
7. Read the first paragraph of a book out loud to yourself. Concentrate on your own voice. Feel the sensations in creates in your body as it travels up through you and out into the world around you.
8. Have lunch with a friend. Eliminate distractions. Concentrate on just being together.
9. Take a bath or shower and focus on the sensations of the water.
10. Pick up and hold something soft and comfortable. Focus on how it feels and how your body responds to it.

Have another idea? Let us know!

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!

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