Breathing: The Real Secret To Stress Relief
It has never occurred to most people that something they do everyday, every night – continuously – can be a source of powerful stress relief.
I remember when my father’s friend was doing an awards presentation. For entertainment he said he was going to test how observant we were. He then told us NOT to look at our wrist watches and asked questions about the color, the type of watch is was, were the numbers Roman Numerals or regular English numbers and so on. NO ONE was able to answer all the questions.
Another, better known, story is about Christopher Columbus. When Columbus arrived in the new world and landed on his rowboat…the natives could not see his ship out at sea! Their familiarity with their environment and the ocean in particular was such that they couldn’t perceive the ship. An elder medicine man who had the flexibility of perception had to describe the ship to his fellow tribesmen before they could see it.
This same familiarity applies to how we perceive our breathing.
Our breathing is something that we have become so familiar with that we are almost completely unaware of its effects. Consider this, our breath bridges our conscious and unconscious i.e. unconsciously we are always breathing and at any time we can consciously focus on our breathing.
This is important to remember because all our emotional states are reflected in our breathing. If we are stressed our breathing tends to be shallow and focused in our upper lungs.
In fact jerky breathing itself will actually increase anxiety and stress. While when we are relaxed we tend to breathe fully into our belly. Practicing belly breathing (diaphragmatic breathing) can be extremely beneficial.
Simply knowing this can make a big difference like remembering to breath deeply if you are stressed to feel better. In other words, you had an unconscious shallow/jerky breathing pattern when you were stressed and by consciously taking control you can choose a breathing pattern that is better for your mind and body.(which would be diaphragmatic breathing)
In Yoga, breathing is considered to be so important that before any task a yogi first prepares his/her breathing. Proper breath control is considered the key to healthy living. In fact, learning to do proper diaphragmatic breathing has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety permanently.
Diaphragmatic Breathing
Sit or stand with your back straight, put your hand on your belly and breath in a slow and deep pattern. Don’t try to overfill the lungs or empty them – just breath softly – expanding your belly on the inhale and contracting on the exhale. Keep your attention focused on your breathing. You will find that your mind will tend to drift. That is normal. Simply return your attention to your breath when you notice you got distracted. Allow the relaxation from this breathing pattern to spread through your body and just enjoy yourself.
Practicing diaphragmatic breathing on a regular basis will alleviate stress and give you the ability to manage your stress better. All because of some deep and slow breathing.
By Abbas Abedi
Learn how to reduce your stress in 2 minutes, remove stress with a thought and more from my free e-course “4 Days to Break Free From Stress”. Join now by visiting, Free e-Course
Mock rescue exercise turns real
Mock rescue exercise turns real
A Nigerian plane carrying more than 30 disaster response officials crashed in the oil hub of Port Harcourt in what was supposed to be a mock rescue exercise, but there were only a few minor injuries.
Read more on Independent Online
Diet Pills – a Real Life Account
Following is a real life account of an obese person who was about to die due to his overweight and related diseases. The story is how he got rid of the problem of obesity. We are bringing the story here with the hope that definitely the story will encourage people to lose extra weight and become disease free. Let us read the story in his own words.
Hello! I am an ordinary citizen and actually no story is generally written by any one about an ordinary person like me. However still I am writing my experience with the hope that this may encourage others to fight the curse of obesity.
Even a few years back, I was an obese person. Actually my obesity started from my child hood. It is true that 40 percent of teen age boys and girls in America are overweight and obese. I was also among one of them during my childhood.
My body weight continued to increase abnormally compared to my age and height as I grew older. At my age below 25, my body weight increased to an alarming level. This overweight made me slow, not so smart and lazy. I felt always difficulty in breathing. My blood pressure increased unnecessarily. Also there were some symptoms of type-2 diabetes in my system. Really I was scared and could not find any way to get rid of my problem of overweight.
Also my sexual power was reducing day by day and I felt ashamed to my beautiful wife for not being able to satisfy her sexual desire.
I was thinking to adopt some weight loss programs with regular exercise by visiting Gym and take a session under the instruction of an experienced person.
However, I saw the program was too rigorous to adopt. So I did not join and this made me very much upset and I thought that there was no respite from my excess weight which would ultimately kill me in my immature age.
I heard the name of Phentermine diet pills. But I was not sure about their effectiveness as there were floods of advertisements in TV and Internet about cheap Phentermine diet pills and I thought all bogus.
But when I felt that my body weight would kill me one day and seeing no other way, I took the advice of a doctor who prescribed me to buy Phentermine diet pills.
He assured me that everything was not bogus. Actually phentermine
diet pills are prescription drugs and should be taken through a prescription of an experienced doctor. There are some suitability criteria for Phentermine diet pills and there are some side effects of it which should be closely monitored by a doctor.
The doctor also advised me to take controlled amount of balanced diet with some light exercise during morning and evening which were suitable for me.
Seeing no other way, I followed the doctorâs advice and started my weight loss program with Phentermine diet pills, balanced diet and regular exercise. After a few weeks I felt the real miracle. My body weight started to reduce.
My joy knew no bounds. I was so excited and thrilled to see my body weight reduction! This encouraged me to adopt a bit more rigorous exercise with the advice of my doctor and my body weight gradually came to the accepted level without disturbing other functions of my body.
At present my body is perfectly fit. All my symptoms of weight related disease disappeared as soon as my body weight came down.
I want to warn people that you may get spam mails from internet stores regarding Phentermine online. You should not be enticed to buy Phentermine online although they appear to be cheap. I have found other diet pills that are just as good and infact sometimes beter and have listed them all on my web page!
