The Simple Art of Anti-Stress Breathing

Your stress levels affect your breathing, but by changing your breathing you can flip things around and affect your stress levels - here’s how…

For many of us modern life equals chronic stress. We live with stress daily, we accept it as normal and when we talk to each other of our pressures and concerns we say: “tell me about it!” In other words, I have my worries and you have yours and such is life. But over time, chronic stress eats away at us from the inside, it makes our muscles rigid and tense, it weakens our digestive system, and impairs our immune response.

When Stress Feels Normal

When stress feels normal we forget how to relax and we forget how to breathe. We get used to muscle pain and tension. We may develop mystery abdominal pains as we upset the balancing energies of our bodies, our sleep becomes disturbed and we find it hard to sit still and take life in.

One easy way to start to unravel tension and lower your stress levels is to learn to tune in to how you breathe and start making some gentle adjustments.

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The Undernourished Majority: Is the 5 a Day Recommendation Passing You By?

Here in the UK, the Health Food Manufacturer's Association has been looking into how we're doing when it comes to eating the government recommended 5 portions of fresh fruit and vegetables a day. After surveying over 3,000 people they found that over 80%  were not following the guidelines and were not eating enough fresh fruits and vegetables.

This undernourished lifestyle is big business for the health supplements industry who are finding that millions of adults prefer to supplement their health with vitamin pills rather than eat a balanced diet high in fresh foods.

HFMA nutritionist Dr Marilyn Glenville has commented that: "With only 15 per cent of women and 13 per cent of men eating the recommended five-a-day fruit and vegetables, it is important that people are trying to keep themselves in good health by using supplements on a daily basis."

I disagree. Ayurveda (the ancient Indian system of health) advises that if we want to stay healthy and posses energy then we should eat that which naturally contains vital energy - or prana. That vital bio-energy is not as readily present in pills and powders as it is in fresh fruit and vegetables eaten as God and nature intended.

If people are lacking fresh foods in their diet, the answer is to find ways of introducing more, ways that are convenient and palatable. When your body is given fruit juices or lightly cooked vegetables it knows instantly what to do with them to benefit you, to keep you strong and give you energy. Swallowing a multi-vitamin tablet with a quick mouthful of water is not the same.

Salad head Photo by: ·Theresa· 

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3 Ways to Avoid a SAD Winter

Millions of people living in the Northern Hemisphere suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D). Here in the UK, I’ve yet to meet anyone who relishes the fact that it gets dark an hour after we pick the kids up from school.

As we alter our clocks and acknowledge the fact that summer is gone and we have weeks of long dark evenings ahead, many of us begin to feel the urge to hibernate. We get sluggish and sleepy and we resent the lack of light. Sometimes we feel anxious or mildly depressed as the weeks roll by and we wait for spring to lighten things up again.

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Are You In Tune with Autumn?

Autumn, the season of crisp mornings and colourful  leaves. It’s also the season to really look out for your health.

Ayurveda offers a wealth of advice on staying in tune with the seasons to keep your health balanced and free from the stiffness and sniffles that Autumn can bring. Here are some natural foods to look out for to keep in step with the season and look after yourself.

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Is Stress Keeping you at Boiling Point?

Did you ever notice that it takes a long while for a small flame to heat a pot of water, but once a pot of water is hot, even a very big one, it can be kept simmering with the same small flame. Big pot, little flame, and the water is rolling and bubbling and hot, hot, hot.

Now, what if the pot represented you, the water represented your inner thermostat, and the flame, your day to day stresses?

Looking at stress in this way clearly shows that when you're already running hot, the smallest heat can get you to simmering, or even boiling point. The hotter you already are, the greater the influence of any additional heat. And the cooler you are, the longer it takes for that little flame to have any noticeable impact at all.

To hover between hot and boiling point is hazardous to your health and disastrous to your quality of life.

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