The Miracle of Conscious Breathing

When I ask graduates of my Yoga-Based Stress Reduction Training what they find most helpful from the course, conscious breathing is usually at the top of the list. I have also found this to be true in my own experience.

The first time I discovered I can use my breathe to influence my physiology was by chance, years before I began studying yoga. During a stressful episode, I experienced a bout of rapid heart beat that returned to haunt me periodically through the next few years. I wore a heart monitor for testing purposes, I went through the stress test for heart problems, and I took medication for a while. What really helped me, however, was somehow, instinctively, I would lie down and breathe slowly. I discovered that the exhalations helped my heart to slow down and return to its normal rate. I stopped the medication and managed my rapid heart beats with my breath. After a while, the problem stopped completely.

It was only after I began delving into the phenomenon of stress years later that I learned that the heart, the breath and the mind are linked in a manner that affect each other, and studying yoga taught me even more ways that the conscious breath can be used to influence physiology. I began teaching my psychotherapy clients how to use conscious breath to manage their anxiety and depression. Out of that work evolved my Yoga Based Stress Reduction Trainings and my Breathe Better courses.

Stopping Self-Torture

When my daughter was tweleve years old, I let her ride her bike down to the neighborhood shopping center about a mile away. Without being conscious of it, I was churning out worrisome thoughts. I imagined her getting hit by a car, getting lost, getting abducted, etc. etc, until I found myself in tears. That occasion was when I first became aware of the amazing power of the thought process and it's connection to our emotional state. I managed to totally upset myself when nothing was actually happening except in my imagination!!!

I began identifying this phenomenon in myself and in the clients I worked with. It's quite amazing how many of us and how often we torture ourselves by our negative thinking! You can test this out for yourself. The next time you feel badly, think back and trace your thoughts. Most of the time you'll find a connection between the two. Even when something negative is happening, our thoughts invariably add embellishments that make us feel worse.

Undisciplined thinking is like a puppy that is not housebroken. Once we can identify how our thinking is upsetting us, we can learn to interrupt that thought process and stop suffering more than is necessary.

One Thing at a Time

Did you know that multi-tasking is stress inducing? Our brain is made in a way that it can only tend to one thing at a time. When we are doing several things at once, our brain switches back and forth continuously. Over time the brain tires and we feel stressed. A study actually showed that blood pressure was higher for people who habitually multi-tasked.

Since mistakes and accidents are more likely to happen when we multi-task, doing more than one thing at a time may actually be less efficient. Because we become desensitized to how we feel, multi-taskers might no longer experience how stressed they might actually be while thus engaged. If you habitually multi-task, try just doing one thing at a time for one hour and notice what that might be like for you.

MY CD

Mind agitated? Feeling Uptight? Can't sleep??

Yoga Nidra is the most effective way to relax the body and the mind. It relieves insomnia, anxiety and other effects of chronic stress. It has been found that thirty minutes of Yoga Nidra provides rest equivalent to three hours of deep sleep.

Yoga Nida is also a restful but deeply beneficial for those recovering from chemotherapy and chronic illnesses.

This CD is available at

http://www.figgardenpress.com and

http://www.FigGardenYogaStudio.com

MY BOOK

Would you like to have a QUIET MIND and a HEALTH BODY?

They are not as difficult to acquire as you might think if you take small steps, one at a time.

Knowing that stressed out people have trouble concentrating, I wrote this book without any technical terminology. Complex ideas are presented in simple language with everyday illustrations so they can be grasped with minimal effort.

Amongst other topics, the book includes a chapter on sleeping better and one on weight management, two prevelant problems in our stress-filled society today.

If you would like more information about my book, visit http://www.figgardenpress.com/

Reviews of the book can be found on

http://www.amazon.com/

Stress is a Matter of Perception

Even though my book on stress reduction was just published, I forgot to practice what I preach on my trip to Egypt. I had managed to pick a travel company that was careless in itinerary planning. Plans were changed at least once daily, seldom for the better. In Middle Egypt, where tourists seldom frequent, my husband and I were told the car, driver and guide to take us on our next leg was unavailable and we had to take the train on our own.

By that time we had been fighting unexpected and undesirable changes for a whole week, usually a losing battle. Suddenly it occured to us that we were contributing to our own stress when we refuse to accept the inevitable. So we changed our perspective and decided to just go with whatever happened next and consider the unexpected train trip as an adventure. After all, nightmare trips of today can become good travel stories of tomorrow.

The train trip was pretty bad, a far cry from what we had contracted and paid for. But with our change in attitude, we just laughed about all the mishaps. Even though the travel professionals we paid let us down, the Egyptian people unconnected with tourism were wonderfully helpful, and that was a good experience we would not have had otherwise.

Besides a good travel story, this experience has also become a good illustration to use in the stress reduction trainings I offer, of the difference between stress that is unavoidable and the self-created stress we add to it by our state of mind.

Nancy Tan, LCSW
Author: QUIET MIND, HEALTHY BODY: The Art of Low Stress Living
www.FigGardenYogaStudio.com