Relaxation Techniques!

When stress overwhelms your nervous system, your body is flooded with chemicals that prepare you for "fight or flight." This stress response can be lifesaving in emergency situations where you need to act quickly. But when it’s constantly activated by the stresses of everyday life, it can wear your body down and take a toll on your emotional health.
No one can avoid all stress, but you can counteract its detrimental effects by learning how to produce the relaxation response, a state of deep rest that is the polar opposite of the stress response. The relaxation response puts the brakes on stress and brings your body and mind back into a state of equilibrium.
When the relaxation response is activated, your:

• heart rate slows down
• breathing becomes slower and deeper
• blood pressure drops or stabilizes
• muscles relax
• blood flow to the brain increases

In addition to its calming physical effects, the relaxation response also increases energy and focus, combats illness, relieves aches and pains, heightens problem-solving abilities, and boosts motivation and productivity. Best of all, anyone can reap these benefits with regular practice.

Deep Breathing:-

With its focus on full, cleansing breaths, deep breathing is a simple yet powerful relaxation technique. It’s easy to learn, can be practiced almost anywhere, and provides a quick way to get your stress levels in check. Deep breathing is the cornerstone of many other relaxation practices, too, and can be combined with other relaxing elements such as aromatherapy and music. All you really need is a few minutes and a place to stretch out.

How to practice deep breathing

The key to deep breathing is to breathe deeply from the abdomen, getting as much fresh air as possible in your lungs. When you take deep breaths from the abdomen, rather than shallow breaths from your upper chest, you inhale more oxygen. The more oxygen you get, the less tense, short of breath, and anxious you feel.

• Sit comfortably with your back straight. Put one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach.
• Breathe in through your nose. The hand on your stomach should rise. The hand on your chest should move very little.
• Exhale through your mouth, pushing out as much air as you can while contracting your abdominal muscles. The hand on your stomach should move in as you exhale, but your other hand should move very little.
• Continue to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Try to inhale enough so that your lower abdomen rises and falls. Count slowly as you exhale.

If you find it difficult breathing from your abdomen while sitting up, try lying down. Put a small book on your stomach, and breathe so that the book rises as you inhale and falls as you exhale.

The Positive Psychological Effects Of Prayer!

Prayer is the practice of connecting to something deeper and more meaningful in life. It is rooted in a sense of spirituality. Prayer has two dimensions, one internal in the form of self-reflection and self-awareness, and the other external in a sense of connection with a depth, something bigger than the self and an inner dependency with all the other creation. Prayer, when done with the right awareness and intention and in moderation, can be beneficial in a number of ways:

1. It can give people a moderate sense of optimism and a healthy dose of hope. Optimism that there is more than the tip of the iceberg to life, and hope that when things do not go the way one wants despite reasonable effort, that there are other options.

2. It can help people cultivate a sense of gratitude. Prayer gives the person a quiet moment to use the time to appreciate the positive in life and to remember that at any moment, there is so much more positive than negative to life. And that sometimes, what seems negative may be otherwise.

3. It can help people delay gratification and control impulsive actions. By using this time to calm your mind, you can evaluate situations to see if it would create any harm and if it does, to stop yourself from doing it.

4. It can give people time to be able to see things from a broader perspective and that by itself can help with obsessive acts and compulsive thought or limited thinking.

5. It can help people find commonality and beauty in diversity. By reflecting on what Carl Jung calls the collective unconscious, people realize that they are sharing many of the same needs, desires, essence and beliefs as others, at the root.

6. It can help people focus and concentrate. By taking a break from the daily activities and doing a quiet time, one is able to use it to train his brain to be focused on the here and now.

7. It can help people forgive easier, and detach from the past and move forward.

8. It can give people a sense of security that they are connected to a depth in life.

9. It can give people a sense of comfort, being at ease and being protected, therefore decreasing too much anxiety and irrational fear.

10. It can be used as a time to cultivate rational thinking.

11. It can give people new and creative ways to solve their problems.

12. It can help people unleash.

13. It can be used as a time to learn how to connect better to others and to increase one’s emotional/social maturity.

14. It can be used as a time of self-affirmation to increase one’s confidence.

And remember, by repeating a series of meaningful, positive, lifting, and thankful phrases, you can retrain your brain to be more positive, be aware, be able to focus and concentrate and to let go of unwanted thoughts.

Benefits of Prayer!

According to a 2013 Pew Research Poll, over half of Americans pray every day. A 2012 poll found that over 75 percent of Americans believe that prayer is an important part of daily life. Other polls indicate that even some atheists and religiouslyunaffiliated individuals admit that they sometimes pray.

Our species has probably been praying for as long as we have been able to contemplate our existence. And though we may never be able to establish evidence that a deity or spiritual force actually hears our prayers, in recent years, scientists have begun to consider the potential tangible (i.e., measurable) effects of prayer. And this research suggests that prayer may be very beneficial.

So here are five scientifically-supported benefits of prayer:

1. Prayer improves self-control

Studies have demonstrated that self-control is like a muscle. That is, it gets fatigued. You can only do so many push-ups before your muscles give out. Similarly, activities that require self-control are fatiguing, making it more difficult to make good choices the more you have to use your "self-controlmuscle." Think about it. You are more likely to lose your cool or engage in mindless eating when you are mentally exhausted. 

Recent research indicates that prayer can help you get more out of your "self-control muscle." Research participants who said a prayer prior to a mentally exhausting task were better able to exercise self-control following that task. In addition, other studies demonstrate the prayer reduces alcohol consumption, which may reflect the exercise of self-control. Findings such as these suggest that prayer has an energizing effect.

2. Prayer makes you nicer

Researchers found that having people pray for those in need reduced the amount of aggression they expressed following an anger-inducing experience. In other words, prayer helps you not lose your cool.

3. Prayer makes you more forgiving

Researchers found that having people pray for a romantic partner or friend made them more willing to forgive those individuals.  

4. Prayer increases trust

Recent studies found that having people pray together with a close friend increased feelings of unity and trust. This finding is interesting because it suggests that praying with others can be an experience that brings people closer together. Social prayer may thus help build close relationships.

5. Prayer offsets the negative health effects of stress

Researchers found that people who prayed for others were less vulnerable to the negative physical health effects associated with financial stress. Also, it was the focus on others that seemed to be contributing to the stress-buffering effects of prayer. Praying for material gain did not counter the effects of stress. So thinking about the welfare of others may be a crucial component of receiving personal benefits from prayer.

To Give Your Brain The Sleep It Needs!

While sleep researchers are constantly learning more about why we need sleep, one thing has been clear since the beginning of time: If we don’t get enough of it, we falter. Sleep deprivation has been identified as a factor in countless tragedies including friendly fire incidents in the military, train accidents, plane crashes, industrial and automobile accidents, and medical misjudgments.

Some of us have personally experienced the agony of sleep deprivation when pulling all-nighters in school, taking care of a newborn baby, doing shiftwork, driving for long periods of time, or trying to meet a looming deadline. The effects of sleep deprivation may be subtle at first: our thinking may be a bit more sluggish, our memory not quite as precise, and our movements a bit slower. However, the impact often quickly accelerates, and before we know it we may feel like we are moving through the world in a slow-motion state of clumsiness and increasing confusion.

What is less obvious is that sleep deprivation actually impairs our ability to process and store the memories that we form during our waking hours. Furthermore, if sleep deprivation is chronic (occurring over months or years), it may also be a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease.

Just this summer, researchers at Washington University found that disrupted sleep led to increased levels of two proteins associated with Alzheimer’s – beta amyloid and tau. In the study, beta amyloid levels increased after just one night of sleep deprivation, and tau levels increased after one week of sleep deprivation. Although it is likely that the brain has a mechanism for correcting for such effects of short-term sleep deprivation, this finding may provide a possible explanation for the link between chronic sleep deprivation and Alzheimer’s. 

Related findings in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s showed that not only was beta amyloid significantly higher in mice who were sleep deprived, but the rate at which beta amyloid was cleared from the brain doubled during sleep. Although this brain-cleaning mechanism has not yet been observed in humans, it is interesting to note that beta amyloid levels in humans increase throughout the day, but decrease during sleep. These results – when combined with data showing that sleep is necessary to successfully remember information – provide growing support for the link between sleep and brain health.  

Because sleep is often the first casualty of an overextended schedule, many of us do not feel well rested and refreshed on a regular basis. So, how do we give our brain the sleep it needs to function at optimal levels?

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1. Figure out how much sleep you need to feel well rested. Although the average person requires 7-9 hours of sleep, many individuals need more or less time. How do you know how much is optimal for you? If you feel refreshed, awaken without an alarm clock, feel alert throughout the day (without excessive use of caffeine), and do not fall asleep immediately after your head hits the pillow, chances are you are getting enough sleep. If you are not getting enough sleep, gradually increase the amount of time you sleep until you feel well rested, and prioritize getting that amount on a regular basis.

2. Schedule in “down-time” prior to bedtime. Engaging in a relaxing pre-bedtime ritual helps signal the body of the upcoming transition to sleep, and improves sleep quality. Calming activities might include dimming the lights, reading, and listening to soft music. Also consider turning off blue-light devices about an hour before bedtime (e.g. televisions, cell phones, tablets), given that blue light has been shown to interfere with melatonin, a sleep-inducing hormone.

3. If you can’t fall asleep after 10 minutes, get up and do something relaxing. When we lie in bed and think about things for long periods of time before falling asleep, our brain unwittingly links lying in bed with thinking. As a result, we may automatically go into “thinking” mode rather than “sleeping” mode when we lie down the next time. To teach your brain to pair lying in bed with sleeping, if you cannot fall asleep after 10 minutes, get up and do something calming such as reading or meditating. Then return to bed when you feel groggy. Repeat this as many times as necessary in a given night. This recommendation may seem paradoxical, but it really works! Over time, your brain will more readily go into sleeping mode rather than thinking mode when you lie down.

Prioritizing optimal sleep helps your brain function faster, remember better, and just may help to minimize the risk of Alzheimer’s. Optimal sleep also helps reduce the risk of accidents, and maximizes mood, quality of life, and immune functioning. With all of these benefits, it’s time to prioritize getting some Zz’s!