Senior Fitness Fun

Gym related injuries – Pain Control

Author: admin

More gym memberships are purchased in January than in any other month of the year. It’s a naturally occurring phenomenon that coincides with the top New Year’s resolution — to get in shape. Although intentions are good and efforts are valiant, in the first weeks of 2010 there will be more gym-related injuries than in the rest of the months combined.

Here are the top 10 exercises to avoid and the reasons to avoid them.

Behind-the-neck presses. Also known as military presses, this position jeopardizes the rotator cuff. During this exercise, the rotator cuff is prone to strains and tearing. Anyone who has undergone a course of rotator cuff rehab can tell you this exercise is one to skip.

Deep squatting. The American population has enough trouble with its knees and doesn’t need more. During a deep squat, the thin cartilage of the kneecap grinds against the thigh bone and can wear down easily. Once worn, the knee will become inflamed and painful and may cause problems for long periods of time. A better squatting option is to make sure your knees never pass a right angle.

Seated leg extensions. Especially for women who suffer from kneecap issues much more than men, the leg extension machine will grind the kneecap against the thigh just like a deep squat. Unfortunately, there is no adjustment that can make this exercise more user-friendly. It’s best to avoid it altogether.

Seated stomach curls with heavy weight. Many gyms will have a machine that allows you to push your chest forward while in a seated position to strengthen your abdominals. This causes sheering between the vertebrae and often results in a disc injury. A better option is to do high-repetition, low-intensity crunches on a mat.

Shoulder shrugs with heavy weight. A popular exercise with men, shoulder shrugs can have a devastating impact on your neck. Aside from the possibility of injuring a disc, it puts a heavy strain on your ligamentous and muscular system. This often leads to neck pain that persists for several months at a time.

Short-step lunges. If you’re going to perform a lunge, try to take a big step. Short-step lunges cause sheering in the knee and ankle joints, often leading to arthritis and pain. Longer strides will enlist the help of your buttocks and hamstrings and ensure minimal stress is placed through the sensitive cartilage bearing the weight.

Straight-legged dead lifts. Dead lifts are probably the most dangerous exercise for the lumbar spine. The torque placed through the discs that line your spine often surpasses 1,000 pounds — even if you’re doing low weight. Your disc will tolerate between 600 and 1,200 pounds depending on your body type. Pushing the limits of this exercise almost certainly guarantees a high probability of injury.

Wrist rolls. Another popular male exercises is to take a heavy bar and curl the wrists to build the muscles of the forearms. Far too frequently these weight-lifters develop carpal tunnel syndrome and have the potential of doing serious damage to the nerves in the wrist. A better alternative is to purchase a grip ball and do some squeezing when you have a free minute.

The clean-and-jerk is a useful exercise for football players who play at a competitive level, but a dangerous exercise for anyone new to exercising. Many people hurt their back and shoulders all in one motion, so it’s probably better to leave this one aside.

Bench pressing for maximum weight. Unless you’re an ultimate fighter, you won’t have much use for lifting several hundred pounds once. Don’t dislocate your shoulders or strain your neck; work with a weight you can handle and build your strength slowly over time.

What to do if you suffer a gym related injury

If you have suffered a gym related injury visit http://www.paincontrol.co.uk

Pain Control stock a number of Supports and Braces for Pain Control and Pain Relief

Martin Roche
Pain Control
http://www.paincontrol.co.uk

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/fitness-articles/gym-related-injuries-pain-control-1780560.html

January 25th, 2010  |  Posted in fitness  |  No Comments »

Keeping Love Alive

Author: admin

How do those folks in arranged marriages keep love alive?

In our culture, so rich with the Disney Dynamic of Prince Charming finding Cinderella, and living happily ever after with the help of the Fairy Godmother and her magic or the Hefner version, Go Do It, it is anathema to think of arranged marriages.

Our parents or a marriage broker arranging our marriage? As my five year old says, “YUUUUCK!”

But Robert Epstein,Ph.D. in a recent Scientific American Mind article challenges the yuck factor.

He says that based on longevity and happiness, those arranged marriages beat our Disney and Playboy/Playgirl arrangements on two very important criterion, happiness and longevity.

Those disgusting arranged marriages last 95% of the time, even with divorce as an option, while our versions last 50% of the time in their first, second, and third iterations, and the participants in the arranged marriages, who may have met once prior to their ceremony, report increasing happiness across the years.

Epstein argues that the growing happiness is because those couples make a regular effort to build intimacy.

Now wait a minute, you mean intimacy is not what we did when we were in the stage of love described very well by Helen Fisher,Ph.D. as romantic love, which is driven by three parts of the reward system of the human brain? (The lust, love, and trust systems?)

You mean love letters agonized over for hours, drenched in perfume/cologne, long phone calls, e-mails, or texts in today’s romantic life, staying up all night, flying off to Paris on a whim, those are not the foundation of intimacy?

No.

Epstein would say that all those things we in the West associate with love are totally unnecessary to intimacy, happiness, and keeping love alive.

What is necessary according to Epstein are regular practices of exercises like what he calls soul gazing, where the participants sit fairly close together and stare into each other’s eyes to see the other’s soul.

Julie and I have tried that and it does do wonders for our closeness.

Epstein also suggests another exercise, heart rhythm synchronization, which I really like because I have used something similar for several years.

In my version, using a heart rate variability biofeedback tool called Heartmath, I teach each of the participants how to access the affiliative and cooperative brain in their hearts, and make their own heart rate variability coherent, which feels excellent by the way, and then I have them come together and get hooked up to separate computer, get themselves coherent, and then hold hands.

(Your heart has a very sophisticated nervous system, sets its own beat, and this heart intelligence can learn and make decisions separately of any other brain we have).

Keeping Love Alive Heart Beat by Heart Beat?

What those couples see is a “heart beat” of their relationship emerge which moves into an out of coherence based on the thoughts and breathing patterns of the participants.

Couples learn that heart rate variability coherence is incredibly dynamic, and that it changes very rapidly.

In other words the relationship heart beat could be adjusted heart beat by heart beat.

Keeping love alive is easier in small increments, and it is not anywhere near as loud at this early stage of adjustment.

John Gottman,Ph.D. has been studying couples at his ‘love lab’ for 30 years and has put together a workshop that he calls The Art and Science of Love, which includes a number of written and video exercises for couples to do together.

The idea is for couples to learn the behaviors that Gottman has observed his Masters of Marriage doing. Those behaviors, once learned, are repeated for keeping love alive too.

Those Masters achieve something akin to what those couples in arranged marriages achieve, which is a happy and long marriage.

That marriage may have begun in Helen Fisher’s romantic stage, but at some point, the Masters of Marriage moved into some conscious choices.

For example, Gottman suggests that 69% of marital issues will never be resolved, so we can move into the behaviors which Gottman says destroy intimacy like contempt, stonewalling, defensiveness, and criticism, or we can negotiate an arrangement that works for today, and renegotiate as needed.

To me, that sounds like moving into and out of heart rate variability coherence.

Helen Fisher’s Solution?

Helen Fisher,Ph.D., has given us a new road map of what most of us with some life experience sometimes avoid as foolishness, which she calls romantic love.

This stage of love can of course move into something deep and rich, and Professor Fisher says we have the best chance of doing that with a compatible personality type.

We can have romantic love and more if we narrow the odds.

Her research has indicated to her that humans fall into four personality types, each governed by a neurotransmitter or hormone, and chemistry is best with a compatible personality type. Wonder how her personality quiz stacks up to the marriage broker results?

So there you have it, what those lucky people in arranged marriages do to keep love alive.

Michael S. Logan is a brain fitness expert, a counselor, a student of Chi Gong, and licensed one on one HeartMath provider. I enjoy the spiritual, the mythological, and psychological, and I am a late life father to Shane, 10, and Hannah Marie, 4, whose brains are so amazing. http://www.askmikethecounselor2.com

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/fitness-articles/keeping-love-alive-1776228.html

January 24th, 2010  |  Posted in fitness  |  No Comments »

Discover 3 Vital Tips to Get Ripped and Lean Faster

Author: admin

Building muscles has not been the easiest task to accomplish despite regular and hard work-out schedules along with experimenting new types of supplements and workouts. It is necessary that 95 percent exercises for abs that are done regularly at the gym to be multi joint and compound exercises as these lead to a better chance of getting the lean, powerful and ripped look.

1. The various requisite focus exercises are:-

• horizontal press for upper body (bench press, dips, pushups),
• horizontal rows for upper body (bent-over barbell rows, one arm dumbbell rows, seated cable rows),
• vertical pull for upper body (pull downs, chin ups, pull ups),
• vertical press for upper body (overhead barbell and dumbbell presses, kettle bell or bar bell clean and presses),
• squatting movements for lower body (overhead squats, front squats, bodyweight squats, back squats),
• dead-lifting movements for lower body (Romanian dead-lifts, sumo dead-lifts, regular dead-lifts),
• single movements of leg for lower body (lunges, jump lunges, step-ups, etc.),
• core and abdominal exercises (they are also important, but they still are second priority after the major multi joint-movements of lower-body and the upper-body. It is noted that major core and abs exercises would be worked itself from most of the major multi jointed exercises anyhow.)

There remaining left part, i.e., 5% of the remaining exercises for abs should focus on the single-joint exercises such as the triceps and calf presses, lateral shoulder raises, shoulder shrugs, etc. However, it is noted that these exercises are only to be done after the primary focus has been taken care of in the form of multi-jointed drills.

2. It is advised to train intensely with dedicated hard work 3 to 4 days a week, ranging from 45 to 60 minutes for each of the weight training work-out. Keeping the work-outs longer in comparison to sixty minutes can lead to the trigger of excess catabolism, which is very harmful. For staying anabolic, the body needs to be trained hard and with loads of intensity, which is sufficient to lead to the trigger of muscle growth during the best abs exercise.

3. One should only eat clean whole foods of respectable quality instead of the highly processed and over hyped supplements such as bars and powders. A nice quality and quantity of protein, which is the mainstay of the diet for abs, can be best collected by the human body from the real whole-foods only such as meats, eggs, vegetables, seeds, nuts, fruits, etc., and not from the protein-powders which have been processed, meal-replacements and bars, which are chemical laden.

Gerry Jameson

http://exercises-for-abs.net/

Gerry Jameson is 41 years old, happily married with two daughters and living in Dundee. His passion is personal development especially if it comes to improving health and weight loss

He struggled to lose weight for years until 2007 when he achieved his goal and ditched 43 pounds in total.

He managed to change his diet, fitness level and most importantly mindset which resulted in dreamed weight loss.

Now his intention is to help others who struggles as he did in the past to achieve their goals.
http://exercises-for-abs.net/

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/fitness-articles/discover-3-vital-tips-to-get-ripped-and-lean-faster-1772507.html

January 24th, 2010  |  Posted in fitness  |  No Comments »

Jenny McCarthy Says High Heel Shoes Are “In” On The Ellen Show

Author: admin

On a recent episode of Ellen, Jenny McCarthy was one of the celebrity guests. When they introduced her she came walking in wearing a pair of 4-inch high heel shoes, which seemed very difficult for her to walk in. When she sat down the first thing Ellen asked her was why she was wearing shoes that were so difficult to walk in and Jenny replied that these are the only shoes she can find right now because very high heeled shoes are what is “in”.

Although we all know that heels can make a woman’s legs and butt look flattering, wearing high heel shoes definitely has its share of disadvantages as well. The first thing to realize about high heel shoes is that no matter what size you are wearing those shoes are too small for your feet! High heels don’t have laces to hold you feet in so in order for these shoes to stay on your feet you must wear shoes that are too small for you in order for them to suction your foot into the shoe will you walk.

High heel shoes can lead to many foot and ankle problems. One of the most obvious problems that many women are very familiar with is blisters. When you wear high heels you have a greater chance of developing blisters on your feet because the shoes are too small for you. This causes the shoes to rub on your usually bare skin creating blisters.

Another common injury that occurs from wearing heels is ankle sprains. A lateral ankle sprain is the most common type of ankle sprain which occurs when the outside of your foot rolls under you causing stretching and tearing of the ligaments in your ankle.

The last common injury that high heels cause that most women are not aware of is bunions! Studies have shown that women who wear high heel shoes have a greater incidence of bunions. If you notice yourself starting to get a bunion then stop wearing high heel shoes immediately. If you choose to ignore this problem then it will only get worse and eventually your foot will no longer be able to fit into those cute little high heel shoes that you like so much.

Even though high heel shoes are undoubtedly fashionable right now they can leads to some serious foot and ankle injuries. It is understandable that women may be required to wear high heels at certain points during the week but the key is to try and minimize the time when you are cramming your feet into your high heeled shoes.

Dr. Andrew Schneider is a podiatrist in private practice in Houston, TX. He is dedicated to maintaining the health and safety of the feet of his patients and educating the public on foot health. For more information about foot health and solving foot pain, including informative videos, and to order Dr. Schneider’s FREE book, visit his website and his blog “Keep Your Feet Feeling Young.”

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/fitness-articles/jenny-mccarthy-says-high-heel-shoes-are-in-on-the-ellen-show-1771293.html

January 23rd, 2010  |  Posted in fitness  |  No Comments »

Truth About Abs – Burn Stomach Fat Review

Author: admin

How do we lose the fat in our stomach and get the abs that we want. We are always amazed by the abs of fitness trainers and muscle builders. You wonder how they got it and maintain having those abs. How you wish you will have the same abs as theirs. Is there really a secret in getting those abs? Of course there is.

Click Here For Truth About Abs Instant Access Now!

If you want to know the truth about abs, then here is the truth that you will discover. Learn more about six pack abs through “ The Truth About Six Pack Abs Program”. What is this program and what difference does it have compared to other fitness programs? This a direct and simple approach on getting six pack abs. Nothing complicated, you will learn more about the program and how you can gain those abs.

In this program, you will discover the foods that burn belly fat that will surely shock you. You will learn more about the “health” foods that you should not be eating at all. How you can eliminate your junk food cravings that we must admit composes a big percentage of our diet. Aside from that one will also get to learn workouts that are unique to burn belly fat.

Take note that this program does not use any fat burning supplements or pills. This also does not advocate sit ups or power crunches. It does not even uses cardio workouts or any kind of gadgets. Sounds impossible, but how does this program do it? Well, basically still the same but the difference is that it is not merely diet and exercise but also the attitude which is the secret to achieving the goal.

If you want to discover the truth about abs, then try using this program now. Easy and simple approach to a beautiful body. No need to spend on expensive diet pills, gadgets and workouts. All you need is a simple, comprehensive and fun approach in achieving six pack abs. Try this program now and be amazed with the results.

Click Here For Truth About Abs Instant Access Now!

This author writes about How To Burn Stomach Fat Fast and Quick Way To Lose Belly Fat.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/fitness-articles/truth-about-abs-burn-stomach-fat-review-1767495.html

January 22nd, 2010  |  Posted in fitness  |  1 Comment »

Stretching Muscles and Stretching Minds Creates Happier Results

Author: admin

My women’s softball team won a decisive victory over the Valle de Oro Valley Girls yesterday. Woo Hoo! In the five years that we have played this team I think we only beat them one time.

After the game we share soft drinks and socialize with the other team. I talked to one of the players and remarked on her speed running the bases. Now mind you, this is a woman who is probably at least 60 years old. We shared tips on how to improve our skills and stay healthy.

This is particularly important to me as I was playing with an aching hamstring. Of course the most important advice to prevent this painful malady (a pulled muscle) is to stretch. I don’t like to stretch. I’ve always enjoyed sports, but I have never been able to touch my toes without bending my knees. Describing my body as inflexible is a gross understatement. I go through the motions of this important warm up (our team always stretches before our games as well as our practices) but I don’t like it. Never have. But now I will put more effort into the process. There’s nothing like a little painful reality to change a habit.

I can’t help but think how stretching before a game, or any time, is a good analogy for life. In order to be your best, you need to prepare. This goes for mental, as well as physical, exercise.

However, most of us have such busy lives that it is easy to forgo the little things that don’t seem 100% necessary for the immediate result we are trying to achieve. In my lifetime, the word “instant” became synonymous with “better.”

But is it?

We want “instant” solutions for our health problems, instant solutions from our leaders, instant weight loss and the list goes on and on. The reality is most of our problems (and that includes our country’s) did not happen over night. Solutions will not happen overnight either.

It’s like my aching hamstring. If I want the muscle to perform well, I need to stretch it. After all, I sit in front of a computer most of the day writing. The most activity it gets is when I scratch it, or take a break to eat or use the bathroom. But when I go out to play ball, I think I’m just going to get out there and run to first base like I did when I was 12 years old. Well, my body laughed at my arrogance and now I have a physical reminder that I need to prepare myself more before I go out and play.

However, stretching doesn’t always apply to physical activity. I recently asked myself, “How often do I resort to the status quo in my thinking, or in other activities in my daily life? Am I extending my reach by pursuing my dreams, expanding my network of friends, acquiring more knowledge, or developing my compassion? Or am I satisfied to go along with the status quo?”

I recently read an article on dialogue by Buddhist Philosopher, Daisaku Ikeda. He recently wrote this on the topic of dialogue in the January 15, 2010 issue of the World Tribune:

“Dialogue is not simply two people asserting their opinions, nor is it just a simple exchange of words. Through conversing, we can gain a shared insight into each other’s point of view and intent. It is also a process of creating something of new and positive value.”

In our book, Erase Negativity and Embrace the Magic Within, there is a chapter that discusses the importance of dialogue. For many of us, dialogue is a bit of a stretch from how we usually communicate. However, communicating in our old patterns will not bring us the fresh results that most of us want in our relationships and interactions with others.

So think about stretching, both physically, emotionally and when communicating. It will take some time to develop new habits and methods, but happier results are sure to follow. Or, you can ignore my advice and follow my bad example of running around and pulling a muscle. Whether it’s sports or life, why not try a little stretching? You may surprise yourself with what you gain. And all you have to lose is the misery of having (or being) a pain in the backside.

Sally Marks is the president of Marks Public Relations and the co-author of the self-help book, Erase Negativity and Embrace the Magic Within. Check out her blog at www.erasenegativity.blogspot.com.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/fitness-articles/stretching-muscles-and-stretching-minds-creates-happier-results-1762417.html

January 21st, 2010  |  Posted in fitness  |  No Comments »

Gain Confidence Naturally And Effectively

Author: admin

The ability to gain confidence is something we all worry about. That is because we know the problems inherent with lacking self-confidence. Look at it this way, would you prefer to be around someone that lacks confidence or someone that is known for possessing a great deal of self confidence? It pretty much goes without saying that a person with strong self-confidence is the individual that you will want to be around. After all, such a person is an asset in many ways. Would you not want to be such a person yourself or would you merely want to hang around people that possess such traits? More than likely, you want to be someone that is confident. Of course, this raises questions regarding how to build confidence. Here is a look at some of the means in which this can be procured:

The ability to gain confidence will be rooted in how you perceive yourself. You do not want to entertain or deal with mental processes that can undermine the benefits that can be procured from positive thoughts. Slow down the emergence of such negative thought patterns and you will see the potential to gain confidence is significantly improved. So, stay on positive thought patterns all the time and you will see an improvement in confidence.

One way to defeat the negative thought patterns that bring down one’s image of oneself is to look towards positive thought patterns and mental images. This is, essentially, a means of turning the negative issue of improper thought patterns on its head. Pushing out the negative thoughts that impede the mind and replacing them with positive ones will promote the potential to gain confidence. And this is most definitely what most people will find positively impact and helpful towards their ability to prevent the negative issues of weak self-confidence.

Yet, there will still be those individuals find it complex to halt such images in their mind. Honestly, the process is not so much complex as it is ingrained into one’s mental state. That is, when you have to deal with perpetual negative thought patterns, it becomes extremely difficult to reverse such thoughts PROVIDED you do not do what is needed to minimize their impact. Reversing such impact can be obtained as long as you tap into the power of the subconscious mind. It is the power of the subconscious mind that will create negative thoughts. Conversely, it will be the power of the subconscious mind that will open the door to reprogramming such images to make them far more positively impact.

Taking a series of small steps to improve a person’s ability to gain confidence will ultimately make the process much more likely to succeed in a positive manner. Far too often, people will try to take steps that are simply too unrealistic. They want to see results overnight and this is never a means of succeeding at the process to gain confidence. Rather than put yourself through such an invariably disappointing process, taking several small steps at “rewiring” your outlook on life will be a much better plan.

So, yes, it is definitely possible to gain confidence easily, naturally, and effectively. You just need the right method and one that will deliver the much-needed results that you so desperately seek.

T S Gill is a researcher. His main focus is to help people to gain their self confidence naturally. For more information and guidence please visit: http://www.gainyourconfidence.com/

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/fitness-articles/gain-confidence-naturally-and-effectively-1758288.html

January 20th, 2010  |  Posted in fitness  |  No Comments »

A Six Pack Diet Is Essential To Get A Six Pack

Author: admin

A strong body is desired by all. Each one desires to look good .The question that lurks on is how to get a six pack?  You might think it to be natural by seeing men flaunt it on T.V or you tube. Do you think there are just crunches to do or there is a real secret for six pack abs? Read on to know more. There is no real quick method to get a six pack ab, but there are smarter ways for the same. The first is to have a balanced meal plan for 5 to 6 times in a day.

The main thing to be practiced is that an exercise schedule has to be observed regularly. You have to exercise to get a six pack ab.  Dedication is the keyword to victory. You need to have a extremely intensive workout regime where all the muscle groups can be targeted. This can be accomplished with weight training. Since you have your natural abs below your fat, you will have to undergo a cardio program which will help to remove body fat. A high intense interval training program or HIIT plan is very effective.

It is essential to have a six pack diet. An effect of this will be the impressive abs and will also impact your energy levels to sustain the challenging exercise regimen.  If you give your body a healthy and lean diet, you body will also react by becoming stronger and well defined. Healthy diets are therefore a crucial part if you are eager to know about how to get a six pack. A good diet will boost your metabolic process and in return cut extra fat.  

The program of how to get a six pack is efficient only when you have a customized ab routine; simply because specific people require specific exercises.  Among the workouts to obtain a six pack you can begin with the arm to feet “V’ crunch. This is for the lower six pack abs. You should do twenty repetitions and then proceed to the next one. The next one is the hip raise. Lie on your back and then lift your hips towards the ceiling. Be sure to also keep your soles upward. This is a complete under body lift. Do twenty repeats for this exercise.

Do you want to  know how to get a six pack ab? The answer lies with the crossed knee crunch that most of the individuals are uninformed of. Lie down like you do in a normal crunch and then take one foot in an angle of 90 degree over the other leg. Now you will find your body in a P shape. Next step would be to touch your elbow to the knee in a crossed manner. Do fifteen repeatings on both the sides. A side plank for 30 seconds is the other secret for six pack abs. After this lift your legs by resting on your back. You should hold and lift your legs a few inches above the floor. This facilitates to burn fat enormously.

If you want to know how you can get those sex sick pack abs, the you must visit http://bestsixpack.com/ or click on Six Pack Diet

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/fitness-articles/a-six-pack-diet-is-essential-to-get-a-six-pack-1755908.html

January 20th, 2010  |  Posted in fitness  |  1 Comment »

Stress Management Exercises

Author: admin

One on my favorite stress management exercises is to ask my counseling and anger management clients to imagine themselves getting up from a really good nights sleep, and to note how refreshed they feel as they pull the covers off, and move their body toward the next right thing to do.

We go through finding a number of descriptive words to describe how they are feeling and the hormonal bath they have going on, and the words that come up are refreshed, relaxed, comfortable, ect.

Then I ask them to imagine themselves as the pivot their body out from under the covers but before their feet touch the floor while still refreshed, to imagine having a large unpaid bill to deal with, and I ask them to again tell me what they feel, as they switch the thought from relaxing, refreshing sleep, to unpaid bill.

Most of those same clients report that the feeling switches to anxiety immediately, and they can go from relaxed to stressed out anxiety at the speed of a thought.

Then I ask them to imagine back to just waking up refreshed, and I ask them what happened to the stress feeling related to the unpaid bill and to a person, clients report that the stress is gone or greatly reduced.

That simple exercise illustrates two key components of stress management exercises, the speed at which my body works to prepare itself for a problem solving effort, or an actual emergency, and how thoughts impact physiology.

Paul Ekman,Ph.D. in his work on cataloging facial expressions reports that across cultures humans respond to a look of contempt with a powerful hormonal stew featuring hormones like adrenalin and cortisol in 1/25th second, which is about 2 and 1/2 times faster than I can blink my eyes, and that is without an interpretive thought.

So my stress management exercises must teach me to monitor the inside of my body frequently, so my powerful hormonal stews do not drive a behavior before I make a decision.

I like to call that process ‘awareness gives me choice’.

The next part of the stress management exercise that I mentioned above is to recognize the impact of thoughts on feelings.

My thought as I wake up is about how refreshed I am and the feeling state following that thought is quite comfortable, which changes to a quite uncomfortable feeling state when I switch my thought to the unpaid bill.

So to change my feeling back to a comfortable feeling means changing the thought, changing my breathing, or utilizing a technology like Heartmath, which is a biofeedback tool which teaches me to manage the time between heart beats.

Stress management tools, up until the discovery of the heart’s own nervous system, have always been about breathing and mindfulness, and they are effective, just not as effective as fast as Heartmath, or heart rate variability biofeedback.

I discovered heart rate variability biofeedback in an EEB Biofeedback listserve about 11 years ago, and determined to learn more about it. (EEG biofeedback works at a speed of HZ or cycles per second. If Heartmath could come close to that speed, what a powerful tool to have available).

I bought it and learned it in about 3 hours, or six 1/2 hour sessions. I have used it with clients since and have had only one client take more than 10 sessions to learn it.

Heart rate variability biofeedback actually combines the thinking and breathing technologies with computerized feedback, which allows you to manage the time between heart beats within a heart beat.

The new field of neurocardiology has determined that the heart has a brain of its own which learns and makes decisions independently of any other brain I have, and I can invoke that coherence on any given heart beat should I so chose.

With a tool like heart rate variability biofeedback, stress management exercises become proactive rather than reactive.

In other words, I can practice the easily learned heart rate variability biofeedback process anytime I want, perhaps every five minutes, for two whole heartbeats, to cue a very pleasant feeling good physiology which has some real impact on my brain, opening up the higher perceptual centers for high level brainstorming.

I think this physiology is akin to what Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi wrote about in his book called FLOW in 1993.

His book said to me that if we can determine the components of flow, then we can duplicate it on demand, and life flows.

Well, heart rate variability biofeedback gives me a quick and powerful tool to use on any given heart beat to relax my body and open my brain.

(It does not pay any bills, just changes my physiology.)

So now my stress management exercises involve regular thinking and breathing practices, which take as little time as two heart beats (I can feel it!)to change my inner physiology to coherence, and my body gets used to that, and does not tolerate unnecessary stress for long before reminding me to cue my coherence.

I am literally managing my happiness/stress/distress/eustress/eustasis very frequently in short bursts, which takes into account the human orienting response.

Since the discovery of the heart’s own brain, the entire neuroscientific community has had its dogma overturned by the discovery of two capacities of the human brain, called neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

Both capacities can be enhanced by attending to what are generally being called the ‘pillars of brain fitness’, or physical exercise, nutrition, including lots of omega 3 fatty acid, sleep, stress management, and novel learning experiences.

Neurogenesis is the term used to describe the growth of new neurons every day. However those new neurons do not survive prolonged exposure to stress hormones, which gives added importance to using stress management exercises to maximize the growth of new neurons, which migrate to the memory centers of your brain, making neurogenesis something I want to enhance.

The authors of Brainfit for Life describe this process in great detail.

So my stress management exercises and brain fitness combine with my personal and professional life very easily. Isn’t that having your cake and eating it too?

Michael S. Logan is a brain fitness expert, a counselor, a student of Chi Gong, and licensed one on one HeartMath provider. I enjoy the spiritual, the mythological, and psychological, and I am a late life father to Shane, 10, and Hannah Marie, 4, whose brains are so amazing. http://www.askmikethecounselor2.com

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/fitness-articles/stress-management-exercises-1750238.html

January 19th, 2010  |  Posted in fitness  |  No Comments »