Mindfulness

Many of us spend our waking time sleepwalking, we perform our daily activities on autopilot and we are unaware of what is happening around us. Every day our minds are flooded with a constant stream of thoughts ranging from mundane and boring tasks to more deeper thoughts about life in general. According to popular research, there could be a many, or more than 60,000 thoughts each day, and these often-repeating day after day.

Each of these thoughts will stimulate a response, we will determine if it is a good thought, a neutral thought or an unpleasant, uncomfortable thought. This assessment with then set up a chain reaction in the physical body, particularly the nice and unpleasant thoughts, often quite subtle, but occasionally obvious. Many of us carry around a lot of physical tension, simply because we are continually processing these uncomfortable thoughts.

We may be a passenger in a car, for example, and thinking about the past, we may not notice the scenes around us, the weather, the environment we pass through, the colours and the activities before our eyes, as we are so absorbed internally. Mindfulness helps us to reclaim each moment, to live in the present so that little passes us by and most importantly, to decouple our minds from the noise in our head.

A certain amount of automatic activity isn’t bed though, it allows us to remember things, and to plan. However too much dwelling on the past or future means that our most valuable time, the present, is lost.

Cultivating mindfulness or learning to develop mindfulness is the act of keeping yourself anchored in the present moment, noticing every sensation and every detail of what is going on around you and in your space.

If you are writing a letter mindfully, (as I am writing this article) you will notice everything about it. The words as they appear on your screen or from the pen, the smell of the fresh sheet of paper before you start writing the sound of the keyboard as you press the keys or the resistance of the pen as it glides across the paper. You feel the pressure of your fingertips on the keys and the sensation of typing or the feel of the pen in the hand and the grip between your fingers. The more you engage, the more you connect, and nothing escapes your immediate attention. You develop a deeper sensitivity to real time and awareness. You see everything, feel everything and your immediate senses are primed, you develop a sense of peaceful detachment. You don’t need to analyse, judge or fix anything, you simply watch and feel.

When we live in the present moment everything takes on a new meaning. Colours are brighter and more vibrant, objects appear in striking detail and the sounds you hear sounds become clearer, our sensations are intensified. Mindfulness can be cultivated with mindfulness meditation, try this whenever and wherever you can:

Pull your mind away from wherever it is and concentrate on what you are doing in that moment, it doesn’t matter whether you are standing up, walking, or sitting down. Whatever you are doing, walking home, to work, eating, showering, start doing it with al of your senses engaged.

Smell the fragrance of the air around you, taste every mouthful of food you are eating, feel the sensation of water against the skin as you wash. Ask yourself what you are doing and what you are experiencing and feeling in that moment.

After a short while, you will probably find your mind trying to distract you as thoughts surface. Just notice these thoughts, you may not recognise this at first but be patient. When you find yourself drifting and thinking, gently bring your mind back to the present moment. This will draw the mind into the ‘alpha state’ where we are more passive and open to our feelings.

Stay here as long as you are able and come back here as often as you can.

Yoga is a mindful activity, the origin of yoga was simply to calm the busy mind. This process has stood the test of time and is as relevant now as it was 5000 or so years ago.

Arthritis restricts movement, whereas yoga increases range of movement, Fact.

Historically, people with joint pain and swelling were advised by doctors not to move, the rationale was "If it hurts, don't move it." We now know that inactivity is one of the worst responses for someone with arthritis.

Arthritis restricts movement, whereas yoga increases range of movement, Fact.

Osteoarthritis is the leading cause of pain and disability in the UK and an estimated 8.75 million people over the age of 45 have sought treatment for this condition.

Osteoarthritis, a painful and often debilitating condition caused by decades of wear and tear on the joints, is considered to be one the side effects of living longer. By the time we reach age sixty-five, X-rays for at last a third of us will show some signs of osteoarthritis, the most common of a group of diseases collectively referred to as arthritis.

Arthritis is so common in our culture that most people consider the pain and discomfort it brings to be a normal part of aging. Arthritis makes normal activities increasingly painful and difficult.

The word arthritis means "joint inflammation, which may include pain, stiffness, inflammation and damage to joints. Joint weakness, instability and visible deformities may occur, depending on the location of the joint involved.

Arthritis is classified into two main types. Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disorder, resulting in stiffness in the joints and muscles, joint erosion, and pain. Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disorder that erodes the cartilage in joints, which leads to bones rubbing together. Osteoarthritis frequently occurs in people who are overweight or whose joints are painful from extreme overuse.

In spite of the prevalence of arthritis, be careful not to jump to the conclusion that your achy joints are necessarily due to it. Overuse and injuries can also result in tendonitis, bursitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and other fairly common conditions that are unrelated to arthritis.

To remain healthy, muscles and joints must move and bear weight or they will lose strength. This weakness, coupled with joint swelling, will make the joints unstable. Joints in this condition are vulnerable to dislocation, increased injury and pain. Thus, regular gentle movement helps to reduce pain and to maintain mobility.

Physical movement promotes health in many systems of the body. It increases circulation, which in turn reduces swelling and promotes delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the tissues. With immobilisation, a cycle of deterioration begins.

Because movement is crucial to so many physiological processes, the arthritic person's overall health tends to deteriorate without it. The normal functioning of the immune system declines, infections and illnesses occur, and the person often becomes frustrated and depressed. This cycle is self-perpetuating.

When someone comes to me with arthritis, and they have the green light from their medical practitioner, I teach them how to practice yoga with the support of yoga props, (objects, such as a wall, a sturdy table or a chair, a folded blanket, a firm pillow, a strap or other items that makes practicing yoga safer and easier). Yoga props are especially helpful for older beginners who may have balance problems.

Medical professionals are increasingly advising regular gentle exercise for people with arthritis because it tones muscles and reduces stiffness in joints. Yoga is an ideal form of exercise for this because its movements are fluid and adaptable. Yoga loosens muscles that have been tightened by inactivity, stress and tension. In yoga, we progress gradually, beginning with simple stretches and strengthening poses and advancing to more difficult postures only as we become stronger and more flexible.

If necessary, you can begin with gentle movements while sitting in a chair or lying on the floor. You can gradually add weight-bearing standing postures, with the support of a wall, counter or table, wall ropes, chairs, blocks, and other props.

The weight-bearing yoga standing poses are among the key poses for safely increasing range of motion in all the joints as well as increasing strength and flexibility. Yoga standing poses are valuable for strengthening the quadriceps without wear and tear on the hip and knee joints.

Practicing yoga can help improve respiration throughout the day. Calm, slow, rhythmic breathing helps to release both physical and emotional tension by flooding the body and brain with oxygen. The regular, daily practice of deep relaxation is restorative to every cell of the body.

I encourage those of you with arthritis to seek the help of an experienced teacher who can help you learn to distinguish between good pain and bad pain and to make yoga part of your daily life.

My own popular chair yoga classes are helping many people that are restricted in their movement, to feel better in themselves.

Breathe better, manage your stress

Before you start reading, if you are ok to do so, please take a deep breath.

When I ask people to take a deep breath, they invariably puff their chests, fill the lungs to the top and lift the collarbone. The body is using the costal (rib) muscles and accessory muscles to take this breath. Nothing wrong with this but let’s look closer at what is going on.

Our main breathing muscle, the diaphragm, is a domed sheet of combined muscle and tendon that spans the entire torso, separating the abdominal cavity from the chest cavity. Its rim is attached the base of the rib cage and to the lumbar spine at the rear. It acts a piston, drawing air into the lungs and exhausting it away with each breath.

As we breathe in, the diaphragm contracts and pushes down into the abdominal cavity, thus creating a vacuum in the lungs, then there is a stretch reflex and the diaphragm releases upwards. The process is way more complicated than this simplistic summary, but you get the point.

The diaphragm should account for most of the breath we take (80%), with the costal muscles across the ribs (15%) and accessory muscles around the neck, shoulders, and collar bone (5%). Pause for a moment and think about that that deep breath…

Consider the diaphragm compressing and releasing the abdominal spaces and massaging the lumbar spine and digestive system up to 20,000 times a day, if we were breathing in this way. The diaphragm also activates the vagus nerve, which is the main cranial nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system, controlling specific functions such as digestion, heart rate and the immune system, lowering the body’s stress response.

I read somewhere that of you look at a toddler breathing they breathe into their tummy, you might see it pushing out and releasing with the breath, perfectly natural.

Then, with a few years on the clock, lots of sitting, lots of stresses and we have developed the skill of ‘backward breathing’ – fixing the diaphragm, holding ourselves in, breathing up into the chest cavity, over breathing up to 18 breaths per minute in some cases, losing all those positive, natural, attribute above, with each breath.

We can retrain ourselves to breathe better and be the best we can by checking on and seeing what our default breath is. Forget about holding your tummy in, let is out, let the diaphragm go and breathe!

Yoga techniques teach us how to strengthen the diaphragm and retrain our breath. The breath is the one function of the autonomic nervous system that is controlled and controllable and given that the breath can control our nervous system, it makes sense to become breath aware as it’s with us for life and we owe it to ourselves to get it right.

I am a breath coach and I teach techniques to empower people to breathe better, it sounds obvious but, through life, we have been gradually, unknowingly developing the wrong way to breathe.

A few weeks of this practice will open your eyes to the breath and open the right pars of your body too!