Healthy Ageing Begins With Positive Thinking
It has been proven in a multitude of studies held in recent years that the value of positive thinking on our health is tantamount. The power of the human mind in fact controls how well we perform in all functions of our life.
How to think positive
Many people wander the earth believing they the lack the strength and power to achieve their goals. Sadly, it is this negative mechanism that holds them back. You can gain motivation and live an increasingly healthier life by simply telling yourself – I can do it. Anything you put your mind to can be achieved. As is often quoted, Thoughts Become Things. Desire it, Think it and Achieve it.
How to tell self I can do it
You have to be in control of your thoughts, actions, behaviours, etc by building your power of the mind. Nevertheless, if you do not put your mind to it and you decide that you do not want to take the necessary actions, then you are only living a life filled with shortcomings. Your negative reflections will defeat the purpose of getting your thoughts in control. Procrastinating or saying I will do it later, is another negative reflection. This procrastination leads to laziness. Laziness leads to weak minds and bodies which may gradually build up to medical problems. Fatigue, boredom, stress can result and we all know the outcome that these symptoms can cause. Simply tell yourself, I want this desire, I can have this desire and I will do what it takes to achieve this desire.
Take control of your thoughts. If you want something badly enough you will do what you have to do to get where you want to be. You need to make a goal and stick to it. Create plans that help you to reach your goals, and take action each day to achieve. Break your goal into tiny steps and reward yourself each step of the way to maintain your motivation. When you give up, it is a sign that you lack faith in yourself and therefore provides a clear indication of weakness. You need faith to stay strong and to stay on track to achieving your goal. As well, you need positive thinking to strive. Strive for success with positive thoughts and you will succeed.
Good results
Having a positive attitude will give you a jump start to a healthier life. Keep on pushing. Do not stop once you get started, but instead keep going until you finally reach your goal. When times get hard and you don’t think you can go on just remember – I can do it. By affirming with positive affirmations, your head will stay up and your mind and heart will remain open. Don’t dwell on something you can’t change, rather focus on the things you have power to change.
How to continue positive living
To stay positive you have to admit your feelings and express them. If you feel depressed or frustrated, just say it aloud. But, don’t stay there. Acknowledge your frustrations, accept them as a challenge, but then move forward. Any challenge you encounter can be turned into an opportunity, and is presented to you for you to eventually receive your higher purpose. Stay in control, express what you feel in the moment, thank that feeling for allowing you to find the strength required to overcome the challenge and then move on.
Many books, videos, dvds and messages are available to set your mind and your life in a positive direction. Use these tools if you need mentoring along your journey to instill positive thinking in your world.
Just remember you can achieve whatever you desire and keep your mind set for the good and positive things and not the negative. This will make you feel better and ultimately make you a happier person. If you are happy, you will have a healthier life. Don’t forget to create a goal. Chunk your goal down into smaller steps and enjoy the rewards along the way.
Positive thinking will allow you to live the life you desire and provide you with absolute health and happiness.
What more could you ask for in life?
Danette Hibberd. Wellness Coach. NLP Practitioner. Author – From Flutter to Fly, Inspirational Quotes to transform you. http://www.fabat40.com Total wellness for women 40 yrs plus
http://www.alternatively-healthier.com
Discover the benefits of natural and holistic living.
Anxiety and Breathing
There are many causes of anxiety. Food additives, sugar, adrenal dysfunction and other internally consumed substances. Situations in life that are threatening or seem so will cause anxiety. The idea you do not have enough time is a huge cause of anxiety.
Taking on too many projects or responsibilities invites anxiety and we too often forget we chose and often can un-choose. Spending too much money, getting into debt and worrying about that will cause anxiety. Eventually a certain level of anxiety becomes a 24/7 occurrence that we sort of get used to. How sad.
Add modern stressful living as well as past traumas resulting in vast numbers of people over reacting and even imagining things that do not really exist as threats or stresses or exist at all.
When the breathing is not allowed to stay in balance every reaction to life becomes distorted or negatively magnified. This breathing based distortion is what we call Unbalanced Dysfunctional Breathing, Unrevealed Dysfunctional Breathing or Unbalanced Deep Breathing.
Another aspect is when your mind interprets something that is negative and your unbalanced breathing over-reacts in an unbalanced way and that makes your nervous system get over-stimulated and anxiety heads towards panic, high blood pressure, migraine, hot flashes, ulcers, constipation, heart attacks or strokes.
What to do?
Generally the first line of defense if to remove a negative stimulus. The caffeine you ingested is driving you up the wall? Stop drinking caffeinated beverages. If there is snake in the area, remove the snake or leave the area. If this is impractical, (your boss is the “snake” or he/she is just so exciting you just cannot sit still), you take life saving prescription drugs that make you nervous, you can try to reduce your anxious reaction(s) by the way you are breathing. You can consciously both rebalance and slow your breathing down and reduce the anxiety level; at will.
This can be quite helpful but is often a temporary approach and your body may need more oxygen in the first place so slowing the breathing down may not be a good idea albeit a momentary quick fix and even life saving. The long term best approach is to manage the immediate anxiety and then change/develop your breathing so that it automatically adjusts and you stay calm and do not get anxious in the first place. “Courage under fire” might be one way of looking at it but it is really more about relaxing, feeling safe and or centered inside due to the way you breathe.
When your breathing over-reacts in an unbalanced way your body often tightens in several areas. You hold your breath or breathe shallowly to try to stay in control which only worsens the situation by creating oxygen deprivation and more tension which heightens the stress response and then the tension sets in to stay. This further restricts respiration and produces shallow, rapid distorted breathing.
Shallow breathing numbs our feelings and traps the anxiety inside, blocking smooth energy flow, which in turn triggers more physiological or psychological arousal, sending us up the anxiety and confusion escalator and then possibly down into depression, malaise and confusion. We see what is often called psychosomatic illness greatly stemming from this.
One of the best ways to handle any episode of emotional stress is simply to feel the feelings but make sure you keep breathing in a certain manner. Breathing naturally and well grounded (though many do not know what that really feels or looks like) allows us to feel our feelings and address the anxiety more rationally.
The entire autonomic nervous system (and through it, our internal organs and glands) is largely driven by our breathing sequencing and balance. By changing our breathing we can influence millions of biochemical reactions in our body, producing more relaxing substances such as endorphins and fewer anxiety-producing ones like adrenaline and higher blood acidity.
Mindfulness of the breath is so effective that it is common to all meditative and prayer traditions. But changing it fast enough so as not to require a long term stay in an institution, ashram or retreat center may be more practical for many.
Slow the breathing down naturally and if it is properly balanced you will feel less fearful of almost everything. Slow it down by holding it back and you may feel a little less anxious initially but if continued set up a breathing pattern disorder aka UDB and may continue to distort your nervous system responses in ways that only time and circumstance will present.
The following breathing exercise is particularly good for reducing anxiety, and lifting depression. It is temporary but it can help a lot and give one hope and direction for greatly improved success.
The Squeeze and Breathe. All rights reserved. Permission to copy granted when source is given as michael grant white.
Firstly understand that the lungs are smaller at the top.
This means that it is pointless to breathe into the high chest because there is very little lung volume compared to the lower lobes.
The mid chest and lower rear lobes are where the major volume is. The back of the trunk from mid back to waist is where the lower lobes most often allow for the most expansion. But tensions in the low back restrict expansion so we must both access and challenge the area in the following way.
For breathing that is calming, centering and energizing all at once.
Standing and knees slightly bent is preferable with tail bone tilted gently forward or supported by a small round pillow as above or a NADA Chair, Sit out near the edge of a fairly hard surfaced chair, stool or arm of a couch with feet flat on the floor, or stand.
Both of these positions need an erect but not stiff posture. Be “tallest” with your chin slightly above the horizon and slightly tucked in. If you stand, bend your knees slightly so as to unlock them.
Let your tongue lightly touch the roof or your mouth and your jaw relax. Relax your belly. Let it hang down. Let go of any fear of having a “pot belly” or not having “washboard abs”. .
Place your thumbs over your kidneys (below your back ribs and above your pelvis. Wrap your fingers around your sides towards your belly button as if you were getting a front to back firm grip on your sides. Get a good full fingered grip by squeezing your fingers and thumbs together gently but firmly, then nose breathe a long slow deep 4 second in-breath, breathing into your squeezed fingers forcing them apart with your in-breath, against the tension that the squeezed fingers are constantly making.
In other words, using the force of your breathing-in to widen your fingers and thumbs against their attempt to stay tensely closed.
Then relax your grip and slow down the exhale so it lasts at least 8 counts. Never tighten the belly to extend the exhale. Simply slow the speed of the out-breath. Always keep the belly relaxed.
If you could not last the 4 count inhale or 8 second exhale try repeating it/them with a shorter count until you can achieve the 4 and 8.
1. How did that feel? Relaxing. Energizing? Anxious?
If you felt dizziness, light headedness, confusion or anxious it may have been counting too fast or you did not squeeze in the right place or strongly enough and then breathe into the squeezed thumb and fingers to separate them against their will. Stop and recommence in a minute or two after the dizziness/excessive energy has subsided or integrated within you.
Feel better? Calmer? Energized? Calm and energized at the same time? Anxious? If anxious try to lengthen the exhale count while keeping the inhale count the same or smaller. Example: a 4 count inhale and 10 count exhale or 4 count inhale and 12 count exhale. A 20 count exhale should be eventually attainable but for some it might take weeks or months to develop. Remember to never tighten the belly to make the exhale last longer.
Just let the air out much slower but make sure you do not tighten the belly muscles. You should eventually feel a calming and energizing throughout your entire body.
If that is not the right feel or timing then experiment with the same inhales but longer or shorter exhales until you discover a comfortable one that you can repeat for five to ten minutes preferably every waking hour.
The above is very powerful but still a temporary approach. If it helped you stay calm or energized even just a little bit I urge you to look more deeply into developing optimal breathing.
Michael White is a health educator, author, breathing development specialist, public speaker, vocalist, and CEO of Breathing.com and the Optimal Breathing School. He has helped thousands transform their lives through correct breathing and nutrition. Visit http://www.Breathing.com
How to Reduce Weight Safely
Without straining or tiring yourself, you can walk off 12 pounds a year.
Diet quacks announce triumphantly that it takes 35 miles of hiking to lose 1 pound of fat. Who has the time or energy to stroll 35 miles, say the faddists. No one, of course, except perhaps a boxer in training, and chances are that he’s in better trim than you or I. At any rate we hope so, for his survival.
It’s true that we don’t take daily 35-mile jaunts. However if we walk 1.2 miles more per day than we do now, our strolls will add up to 35 miles each month. This amounts to a pound of weight each month, or 12 pounds a year. Chances are that during your ascendancy to obesity you did not gain this much in a single year.
“Walk, do not ride”, might very well become America’s slogan in routing obesity. Every time you pace off a mile you burn up about half an ounce of food – and it does not matter very much how fast or slowly you walk. The athlete who blazes a mile in slightly less than four minutes grabs the headlines, but the businessman or housewife who ambles the distance in half an hour gains equal benefits without heart strain.
The time has come to stop debunking exercise. If we have to debunk anything, let us debunk the mechanization which has padded so many American housewives with unnecessary fat.
Altogether it is safe to say that the wonders of mechanization make a difference of about 1000 calories a day to you as a modern housewife. Seven thousand extra calories add up to 2 pounds a week. Now it is quite true that you do not gain 104 pounds a year. You eat less food than your mother did because you utilize less energy.
Besides, you could not gain as much as 100 pounds because each new weight gain requires more calories to maintain obesity. The heavier you are, the more you must eat to keep that unattractive fat, and even the most obese people have their limits of food consumption. However, most housewives have not reduced their intake of food in proportion to their reduction of activity around the house. It is reasonable to assume that in many cases weight gains of 10 to 15 pounds a year are attributable to the replacement of human energies by machines.
Exercise Can Help You
I am not pleading for a return to the “good old days” of endless washing, cleaning, and cooking. Your new leisure should be used to make your life richer and more interesting. The hours of freedom should broaden your personality but not your hips. They should provide healthful physical exercise as well as mental stimulation. An occasional eighteen holes of golf, for example, involves about 600 calories of walking, swinging, and despairing. There are added bonuses of muscle tone, and a healthy complexion painted by sun and wind is most attractive.
For the nongolfer, walking is the exercise supreme. Not so long ago the walk was a social grace. You and your husband, strolling arm in arm through city and country, can gain a new appreciation of your surroundings and of each other. In the process you become trimmer at the rate of 75 to 100 calories per mile.
Dancing is another form of enjoyable exercise usually discarded well before middle life. This is an especially delightful way to shed 170 calories an hour. It is likely that a renewal of the dancing which was so important before marriage will lead to a rebirth of grace, agility, and coordination. In any case you will gain more from an evening of fox trotting than an afternoon at a charm school – and the bill will be much less.
It is quite true that exercise without regard to eating habits may be of no consequence in losing weight. But the combination of moderate exercise with moderate dieting is irresistible. In fact it is imperative.
As little as 30 minutes of exercise per day will do wonders for your waistline.
Long Lost Manuscript Resurfaces Providing You With The Secret To Losing Weight With The Free Low Fat Diet!
Click here for FREE online ebook!
http://www.freelowfatdiet.net/
Five Ways To Keep Your Weight Loss Goals
Anyone who has been on a weight loss program knows that it is really difficult to stay on the routine after a few weeks. It is important to remember that everyone has setbacks; it comes with the plan so to speak. When you have a setback, it is important that you work through the difficulties and get back on track and continue with your routine. Many people feel that once they have fallen out of the routine, they cannot get it back. This is completely untrue. Getting back on track is just a matter of having the right attitude.
Getting back on track may not be as easy as it sounds. There are a lot of different ways to accomplish this; however having the information regarding different methods of motivation can only help you. Even if you do not want to. It is important that you force yourself back into your routine.
1. When you mess up, pick yourself up and continue on. This is a good mantra. Write it in big letters and post it everywhere; on your computer at work, on your refrigerator, in your pantry, even on your exercise equipment. It is important to remember that it is alright to mess up and eat the wrong things or even skip your exercise routine. It is equally important that you get back on the plan as soon as possible. If you workout a little longer than usual, you may feel that you have made up for the mistake.
2. It is important that you reward yourself for the goals that you meet. You have made a serious commitment to losing weight and you reach each milestone, reward yourself with a little trinket or something special. Remember that the reward should be a non-food item; you do not want to blow the reason for the achievement. The reward can be anything that makes you happy.
3. Something that may give you incentive to keep your weight loss routine is to take out pictures of yourself when you were thin. Many people feel embarrassed by old photographs, however they can be a great source of inspiration when it comes to losing weight. Looking at yourself when you were thinner and healthier can make all of the difference on the world. You can also take out pictures of yourself after the weight gain and place them side-by-side. When you feel like giving up and throwing in the towel, compare the pictures and decide which one you want to be. The overweight person who is miserable and self-conscience or the happy thin one.
4. Losing weight can be a lonely experience. Studies have indicated that when you have someone to exercise with, you are more likely to stay on the routine you have set. You motivate each other and look forward to the time that you spend together exercising and chatting. The time just flies by and your routine is finished. In no time, you can be achieving your short term and long-term goals. It is however very important to choose the right partner, you do not want to end up with someone who wants to chat more than exercise or someone who is not dependable.
5. There are a lot of people who feel that they have to weigh themselves everyday. Experts believe that this can be the death of an exercise routine and why so many people give up early into their schedules. If you feel the need to weigh yourself, it is recommended that you do so once a it is also important that you realize that you will be building muscle tone and this may appear that your weight loss routine is not working. It may take a while before you see any results, however it is critically important that you keep up with your routine.
Many people who start an exercise routine expect miraculous results overnight. This does not happen, no matter who the person is. you will ultimate realize you are losing weight when your jeans do not need to be button when you put them on.
Ken Black is a well known writer on the subject of weight loss. If you want to lose weight in the fastest way possible, go to http://www.weight-loss-discovery.com and check out the supplement reviews page.