Office Exercise Series: Chair Twist for Energy and Immunity

Welcome back mind-body students!

You may recall the office exercise series we did on the blog a while back, which focused on keeping you productive and healthy at work. Well, we've got even more exercises for you to try at the office when you're taking a break and re-energizing to get more done.

This week, it's the chair twist! A great way to take stress off your lower back, improve posture, help regulate energy and focus, and keep your immune system working as it should.

Remember to breath deep!

Can't Meditate? Clean Your Room!

People ask me some variation of this question all the time: "Are there any tips you have for how to meditate? I just can't get my mind to sit still no matter what I try."

And the answer is "Of course I have tips for how to meditate!" I've written about them on the blog before. I've written about them so much, in fact, that I have a whole category of posts dedicated to meditation tips.

But all those tips are about how you meditate, or what you should do while meditating. What if I told you that you could do something before meditating that could improve your meditation practice? It might seem strange, but this really works.

Clean your room. Or even better, clean your whole house.

You might be thinking, "What? I close my eyes when I meditate. I can't even see if my house is messy or not." But that's not completely true. Your mind internalizes the area that you live in. Even if you aren't paying attention to the mess, when you are in a messy house your mind functions differently (and not in a good way).

In fact, there are several studies now showing that a cleaner home can lower your risk of heart disease, reduce stress hormone levels, and improve sleep. How interesting that all of these benefits are also benefits of regular meditation.

The reality is that your mind worries about the mess in your home. That mess makes you stressed and scatter-brained, which leads to an even messier house. It is a vicious cycle.

Luckily, most people find cleaning their living space to be very easy. A chore, yes, but an easy one. It isn't like meditation, which takes a while to become proficient in. Nearly everyone knows how to clean a space up.

As soon as your local landscape is more organized and orderly, you will find that your mind is more focused and relaxed. And one of the secrets to meditation is that relaxed and focused minds are better at it than messy and scattered ones. That's why many people find meditation so difficult at first. It's a lot like exercise in that way: it's difficult at first because you haven't done any, but the only way to improve is to keep practicing.

But hey, if you can get a boost just by cleaning up your house, that's good too.

Happy Stretching!

Dissolving Your Persona Through the Face

Each person who we deal with in life sees certain faces of ours at certain times. These faces we use, usually five or six of them, help us get the things we want. Most of the way we communicate is non-verbally. The people you speak with figure out how you are feeling, and what you want, by watching your face.

Unconsciously, you know this. So you make the faces that will help communicate. Everyone does this with their face, and even though you don't notice it, you are reading peoples' faces all the time.

For example: You want your kids to do something. Maybe they need to clean their room and you tell them as much. When you are speaking to them, you will probably have an expression that communicates authority. That's your "authority face." Or maybe you have had a long day at work, so you ask your spouse for a massage. You aren't going to use your "authority face" for that, because it won't work. Instead, you use your "sweet face."

Because everyone's life is different, some more difficult than others, our faces can be molded by the expressions that we make over and over. Some people look like they are frowning even when they are not sad. Others look like they are smiling when they aren't actually happy. Sometimes people are born this way, sometimes it is because the person has spent a lot of time frowning or smiling.

As people get to know you, and as you continue to make certain expressions, your personas develop. This is how people will recognize you, because you use these personas frequently around them. When you use a different persona than usual with someone, it may bother them. They will tell you "You don't seem like yourself."

We spend a lot of energy keeping up these personas, and it is healthy and liberating to let go of them for a little while and exist as purely as possible. The best technique for doing this is the Face Meditation. To really experience the melting-away sensation in your soft tissues, combine this with the Sunset Meditation in order to cooling the energy from head and face and better relax the muscles.

By visualizing the melting of the "icy" layers of the face into water and steam, and pulling the fiery face energy down the energetic baton and into the lower energy center, you are removing the distraction that your personas create and shifting your consciousness from "persona" or "image" focused to "body" focused.

Because your lower energy center can't hold "authority" or "sweetness" or "shyness" and so on, your mind will naturally let those facades go as it moves from the head to the lower abdomen. You will be centered in your body, and experience an energetic, even enlightening feeling.

Feel free to practice other visualizations that might help you in this process. Once you have practiced this, you can even do it briefly throughout the day to de-stress.

Happy Stretching!

Breathe Easier: Tai Chi Inspired Techniques

This week, I have a very short blog post here on the website because I did some guest content on a website called www.wellforce.org, an online resource put together by a community of hospitals and medical centers to provide better health care to people in Massachusetts.

I encourage all of you to check out the Wellforce website and read about them. And while you are at it, you can read the special content about breathing easier that I provided for them, including Counting Breath meditations and "progressive relaxing" practice.

I hope you enjoy! And Happy Stretching!

Evening Meditation: Cleanse the Body & Mind

Filling the body up with positive, nourishing energy is only half of a whole meditation practice. The other half is the cleansing of negative energy and impurities. That is what meditating with the setting sun is all about.

For the best results, you should be facing west when you do your evening meditation. If you can do it outside in the cool air, and hear the crickets and tree frogs begin to chirp, that is even better.

Unlike morning meditation, when our minds are rested from a night of good sleep (hopefully), evening meditation begins with our minds running around and busy. We are still experiencing our higher brainwave patterns that help us be productive at work and school, but which make it hard for us to relax. Many people don't know how to wind-down after work, bringing these active brainwaves into a calmer state. This evening meditation is meant to give you the skills to reduce your stress levels at the end of the day, which will lead to more restful sleep, and thus better morning meditation.

Then, better morning meditation gives us plenty of energy for the day, so we return home feeling less stressed, and we can wind-down more easily. It's one big healthy cycle!

Mediation Practice During Sunset

Find a spot where the sun will shine about 30 minutes before sunset, standing or sitting down on a firm chair. Lengthen the spine, and open the arms and palms to face the horizon. It is the same stance you would take to feel a nice cool breeze. 

Begin to scan the body for the aches, pains, stiffness, and other impurities. Become conscious of them and imagine them dissolving. Like I always say: ice to water, water to gas. Melt the impurities and negative energy with the breath.

Breath deeply through the nose, and when you breath out, visualize the negative energy being pulled out of the body by the force of the setting sun.

Where the sunrise meditation is about pulling energy in, the sunset meditation is about surrendering energy. It is about letting go, which is why it is such a great practice for after work and relieving stress. 

At first, the impurities and negative energy will leave slowly, but over time, as you learn to fully surrender to the force of the setting sun, you will find that the negative energy leaves much more quickly. Begin practicing for 5-10 minutes, and work your way up to 20 or 30 minute sessions.

Happy Stretching!

Morning Meditation: Nourish Your Organs and Spirit

Nourishing the whole body using the rising sun is an ancient meditation practice. Using this meditation between sunrise and noon will strengthen and upgrade your energetic and immune systems, and at the same time nourish your internal organs, strength the core, and awaken your spirit.

The practice involves facing east and directing your Third Eye area toward the rising sun, leading the sun's energy in through the Spiritual Valley and down the center of the body, all the way down to your lower energy center. This meditation can be done standing or sitting, indoors or outdoors.

Meditation Practice During Sunrise

Find a spot where the sun will shine about 10 minutes before sunrise, standing or sitting down on a firm chair. Lengthen the spine as though the top of your head was connected to the heavens by a string and create space for your internal organs.

Have your feet solidly on the ground to make a strong connection to the ground and reduce the stress on your joints. Visualize the connection of your energy with the earth energy coming up from the ground.

Place your hands one on top of the other below your belly button right in front of your lower energy center. Remember to wrap yourself with a blanket or coat on cold days to keep the energy inside the body and prevent its dispersal into the air as extra heat.

Breath deeply through the nose, feeling the energy travel in through your forehead, down through your chest and stomach and into your lower abdomen. When you breath out, visualize the negative energy leaving your body through the breath.

Repeat this for as long as you are comfortable, paying attention to the warmth that spreads through your body. Visualize the warmth spreading all through your organs, even into your extremities all the way to the tips of the toes and fingers.

And that's it!

Happy Stretching!