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Break Up With Stress – Part Three – Release Tension & Relax

Pandiculation, Progressive Muscle Relaxation, and Guided Savasana: Besides being a new word you can impress your friends with, pandiculation is good for you! It’s like nature’s reset button to relax your muscles and reboot your brain. I imagine you have seen a cat or a dog jump off the couch and do what looks like a full body yawn. It’s a simple move that we humans and nearly all animals have been doing since the beginning of time. It results in more relaxed muscles while having greater muscle control and coordination. There are three steps to pandiculation: 1. a voluntary contraction 2. a slow lengthening 3. complete relaxation So what does this do? It resets the length of your muscles, not just in the muscle fibers but also at the level of your brain. It’s different from stretching because it is active, not passive. Lengthening a contracted muscle sends a message to your sensory motor […]

Break Up With Stress – Part Two – Abdominal Breathing

Break Up With Stress Week Two, Abdominal Breathing: In order to release stress you must turn on your parasympathetic nervous system so your body can down-regulate. This is often referred to as “rest and digest.” There are several ways to dump stress, this week we cover one of them, abdominal breathing. These days most people live with their system on overdrive. One reason is the tendency toward quick, shallow breathing, primarily in the chest area. This elicits a “fight or flight” response. You can you learn to use your diaphragm to slow down and deepen your breath and stimulate the “rest and digest” response. Anatomy of the Breath: Your diaphragm is a dome shaped muscle that lives in the base or your rib structure. It separates your heart and lungs from your internal abdominal organs. When you inhale your diaphragm is supposed to move down into your abdomen. This causes the […]

Break Up with Stress – Part One – Soften Your Eyes

Did you know that your body responds to stress involuntarily by tensing your muscles? Over time tightness builds up, restricts your movement, and causes you not to feel free in your body. Holding on to that stress around for a while starts to wear on your nervous system. It’a a heavy load for your body-mind to carry around. It affects your breathing pattern, your mind’s ability to focus, and your ability to sleep soundly. All these things inhibit your health and well-being. The good news is that you can teach your body to unwelcome stress from sticking. Welcome to my four part series, “Break Up With Stress.” Each week I will share techniques you can use to discard stress and improve your health and well-being. This newsletter series leads up to my annual Summer Solstice workshop, Dynamic Rejuvenation. Join me for a practice of active restorative poses on […]

Relieve Stress Daily For Optimal Health

It’s impossible to completely escape stress in your daily life. You may not know this, but not all stress is conscious. Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls all of your bodily functions. And it is constantly running under some level of stress. To achieve optimal health your body, mind, and nervous system need to dump stress every day. If you don’t download your stress, it accumulates and causes more complex issues over time. Stress can manifest in a variety of ways. It’s common to show up as tension and tightness in your body. Do you wake up tired or feeling sore and stiff? Maybe you think it’s caused by your busy schedule, your yoga practice, or another workout. It may be true that you are sore from exercise and that your job is stressful. You have deadlines, responsibilities, and spend long hours sitting at the computer. But I […]

Your Spine & Backbends

A healthy spine is the key to a vibrant life. Yogis, Osteopaths, Chiropractors, and many doctors agree that you are as young as your spine is flexible. Unfortunately, back pain has become an epidemic in our culture. This is mainly due to poor posture, weak back musculature, and limited movement in the spine. The spine has a few critical functions. First, it is your central column of support. It stabilizes your body and holds you up against gravity. Building strength in the muscles that sleeve your spine is important to support good posture, keep you powerful during life’s activities, and prevent injury. Your spine also houses your spinal cord. Think of it this way – your brain is not just in your head. You have so much brain that it flows all the way down your spine. Nerve endings exit from every one of your spinal bones called vertebras. This […]