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The Relaxing Sounds of Falling Rain

by Bright Days Ahead

There is something very relaxing and mesmerising about the sound of heavy rain lashing against a window pane or a low roof. Perhaps it’s the thought of being safely inside and out of the elements that gives one a warm satisfying glow inside.

Whatever it is I must say that the sound of falling rain has a deeply hypnotic effect that can help one to thoroughly relax and unwind. It is a totally natural sound, a sound that has been heard with the ears of humans and animals alike for eons, almost as old as the earth itself. When you hear it you know that for millions of years the same sounds have been heard the world over ‘ timeless and forever.

Getting in touch with mother-nature is something we all should do from time to time however busy and hectic our lives may be. It is good to get back to nature and listen to her pure natural sounds, relax and recharge the batteries. Music is fine, but again you are bombarding your brain with artificial amplified sounds however wonderful the artist or composer may be. Of course there is a place for great music in everyone’s lives, just not all the time. Sometimes our body and soul just need the solace and tranquillity of pure nature sounds to really connect and just be.

However it is not always convenient to drop everything and go out into the countryside to hear pure nature sounds and if you did, how exactly do you make it rain? A great alternative is to invest in some pure nature sound recordings that you can play on your stereo, computer or personal mp3 player.

Facial Yoga, Is This The New Face Lift?

By Katie Carwell

While it is undeniable that the benefits of yoga are endless and far reaching many are still skeptical of a new trend being called yoga facial toning. The yoga element will definitely produced positive results but does it actually give you a face lift without the surgery? This may indeed be one of those things you may just have to tryout to find the answer for yourself.

Yoga facial toning is considered to be a specific exercise program which stimulates, firms, and lifts every muscle of the face and neck. The claim is that by exercising these muscle there will be a reduction of sagging skin and the disappearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Many also believe the stimulation of the facial muscles will also lead to a clear complexion.

During a yoga facial toning class the face is ultimately the focus but be aware of the fact you will not just be sitting in a chair making faces at your instructor, it is generally believed that proper form involves your heart being higher that your head. The facial poses are often combined with yoga body poses and breathing techniques to allow for an increased flow of oxygen and nutrient rich blood to all parts and aspects of the head including the face, neck, scalp and brain.

Give the Gift of Heart Health this Mother’s Day

Are you unsure of what to give your mom for Mother’s Day this year? She probably doesn’t need another sweater, and chocolates won’t do her waistline any good. Why not give her the invaluable gifts of heart health and empowerment?

Heart disease is the number one killer of women, claiming the life of one in four women. That is more than all types of cancers combined. Surprisingly, studies show that only one third of women realize they are at risk for heart disease. Chances are your mother may be one of these women who is unaware.

The Sister to Sister Foundation, a national non-profit organization dedicated to preventing heart disease in women, expects to screen a record 15,000 women for heart disease this year.  Since 2001, they have screened 77,000 and have found that 80 percent of women who have been screened by the organization did not know about their increased risk for heart disease before attending a screening event.  More than 50 percent learned that they have two or more risk factors and over 70 percent report seeing their doctor as a follow up to their screening.

“Don’t let your mother be blindsided by heart disease like many women are,” says Irene Pollin, founder and president of the Sister to Sister Foundation. “Make sure she gets screened, and empower her to know the right questions to ask her doctor. Mothers are the hearts of our families; we need to keep them strong and healthy!”

It is a common misconception among women that heart disease only affects men so they often ignore it and don’t recognize it as a serious health threat. However, more women die from heart disease each year than men. Risk factors for heart disease in women include unhealthy cholesterol levels, diabetes, smoking and being overweight. To further gauge your risk of heart disease it is important to know all of your numbers, including HDL “good” cholesterol (greater than 50 mg/dL for women), LDL “bad” cholesterol (less than 100 mg/dL), as well as triglycerides (less than 150 mg/dL), blood pressure and glucose. These risk factors are all measured during routine heart disease screenings.

Balancing your work life see-saw

Copyright © 2008 Jacqui Tillyard

Everyday life is full of ups and downs! If only life were as fun as when I once played on the see saw in the park as a child I hear you say! I am sure you could easily tell me how busy you are today, struggling to fit all aspects of your life in your ever hectic day trying desperately not to feel exhausted.

In my role as a business coach for women I hear the same message daily. Not enough time to do everything you feel you should and how guilty you feel when you cannot support those around you.

My advice on this matter- and this comes from the voice of experience! Learn to be more selfish, put yourself first! Now I know some of you are shuddering at this thought, but listen on…..

If you are ok in your world, you are more likely to be in a fit state to help those around you better; starting to make sense now isn’t it?

I urge you to learn to say No more often - and really mean it! Delegate as often as you can, find others to share your load preferably willing volunteers! Set boundaries around your own time and then allocate time for work, family, social and community activity.

Do the things you love most. Then your energy remains high and you can build your own internal coping mechanism for the tasks you are not so keen on (and haven’t managed to delegate to others!)

Meditation Exercises – A Fulfilling And Efficient Way To Improve Your Health

By Susan Masters

If you are tempted to try meditation exercises, yet you are unsure whether they actually work, you might want to answer these questions: How would you feel about improving your general tonus, vitality and energy? Or how about releasing that unwanted stress and relaxing your mind and body? You might be surprised that there actually is a solution for all these and it is called meditation.

Just How Efficient Are the Meditation Exercises?

Even though some might be inclined to doubt the efficiency of meditation exercises, the truth is that they are based on medical facts. For starters, meditation can not be done without a proper relaxation and proper breathing – and by proper, you should understand long and slow breaths that purify the body.

Breathing has numerous positive effects on your health, even if it sounds too simple to be true: what breathing does is that it basically slows down our heart rate and, at the same time, it normalizes your blood pressure. In addition, meditation exercises can actually strengthen your immune system and improve a wide range of functions, such as concentration, attention and memory.

Which Are the Most Popular Meditation Exercises?

To many people, being active is essential – if you are one of them, then the best type of meditation exercises for you is the one that can be done while walking. Basically, nature and a peaceful environment are excellent premises for a successful meditation session – in the case of these types of walking meditation exercises, breathing has a major role, since it allows the body to purify with the help of the fresh air and oxygen.

Fitness And Exercise: How To Stop Battling Frustration To Lose Weight

By Amy Lundberg

Women who battle frustration and silently scream from failed weight loss attempts, poor health, and lack of will power are not alone. It’s not all about exercise and diet. If your spirit isn’t with the program, even the best discipline might just lead to injury or worse yet feeling you failed even when you gave it your “all.”

Statistics show “dieting has a 95% failure rate and just by switching from a bad lifestyle to a healthier one, one can expect to add as much as 14 years to their life.” But what do you do when you think you have done everything and the results don’t last?

Over the years, I have discovered that teaching women how to exercise in order to help them become well again was the easy part. Teaching women to motivate themselves to exercise beyond the initial stages of accomplishing a goal was quite challenging.

Most women don’t look at the whole picture when it comes to losing weight and getting in shape. For ultimate health you must balance obligations, desires, job, family and self-care. Women must pause long enough to look within to see if exercising is going to be an added task to their list for the day or a more nurturing practice that elevates them to a higher well being.

To look at this, I believe women must take a holistic approach to their exercise. The good news is there are three major components in making ultimate health a living reality, giving you a balanced, healthy, joyful lifestyle.

I realize we have heard a lot about body mind and spirit; however, this is part of our infrastructure that makes us unique. All three are part of who we are. If we forget about one or the other we set ourselves up for failure every time. Taking a holistic approach to your exercise program allows for effortless integration into your lifestyle and have results stick.

It would be simple if a cookie cutter quick fix approach worked for most people. This hope is the constant lure of new diet books and programs. If I take steps 1-10, the same as my neighbor, we should get the same results, right? But that science class approach does not ring true for diet and fitness programs.

Each of us is unique. We have unique needs and causes, often time’s emotional ones, for why we need to improve our physical fitness. When we honor that, it allows us to exercise with enjoyment and safety.

To be successful, you must focus on building an inner foundation to support your physical fitness program, before you add on the exercise component. This may seem backwards to many women, but without this foundation, most women fall off the exercise program once life distractions occur. By looking at your life balance, examining your self talk (mind), uncovering the things that drain your energy (spirit) and learning how to nurture yourself (body) ones fitness program becomes an easy part of your world. It draws you toward the health, vitality, and toned body that you strive for, instead of pushing and exhausting yourself and getting nowhere.

Yoga: An Ancient Practice to Relieve Contemporary Stress

Many of us in modern life today are under stress all time. However, we still have to stay in control. If this goes on for a long time, we can react to stress with poor eating habits, release of more stress hormones, and even by manifesting cardiac risk factors. However, there is a way to reduce these risk factors and even reverse them without turning to prescription drugs. All it takes is some discipline and to develop some habits over your lifetime that will work in tandem with your ordinary diet and exercise programs. Yoga is one of these; it can help you relearn the state of peace and harmony that you want your mind and body to be in. It will help you relax.

Yoga is the most prominent form of the burgeoning mind-body health movement, which includes tai chi, qigong and other meditative forms of exercise. Mind-body fitness, which derives from Eastern philosophies and religions, improves physical and emotional well-being.

The overall benefits of mind-body exercise are documented in an increasing number of scientific studies. They include everything from reducing cardiac risk factors to enhancing mood.

The kinder, gentler movements typical of yoga improve flexibility, strength and muscle tone and can be more youth-promoting than the wear-and-tear of daily aerobics, weights and running alone.

The practice of yoga should integrate every aspect of human existence. While many modern Western practitioners focus on the physical asanas, for others, yoga is an all-encompassing way of life and a path to bliss.

Walking Meditation Can Double Your Health Benefits

You probably know that walking is a great way to stay healthy physically. It provides cardiovascular benefits, burns calories, and increases blood flow to various parts of your body that need it. However, have you ever thought of combining the time you spend walking with spiritual and mental meditation, so that you can increase the benefits walking can offer you?

It’s easy to reap the health benefits of walking. It doesn’t require any special gear, and it’s a skill most of us have had since childhood.

However, if you combine this with meditation or mindful walking, you can get even more benefit out of this time than you would normally spend just exercising.

Walking meditation comes from the art of Ayatana; Ayatana is a Buddhist concept whereby you stay continually in touch with your senses. You don’t walk mindlessly, but focus on every step and sensation. You don’t have to increase your speed and even may walk a lot more slowly than usual at first until you are fully comfortable with meditating while you walk.

As you concentrate on your steps, focus mentally on the heaviness or lightness of your feet as they leave the pavement and then hit the ground after each stride. As you practice mindful walking, you need to concentrate on the experience and not let your thoughts wander off to other activities and worries. Focus on the process, and take note of the details involved in moving each foot in turn.

Benefits of Stretching

If you want to get fitter, or try to lose some weight, the first point of call is your diet. You decide what you should cut back on and what you should add to your diet to achieve your goals. The second thing that you will probably consider is a good exercise program. In most peoples views a good exercise program will initially consist of some type of cardio exercise. After this some people may try to incorporate some sort of weight training regime.

An essential part of any exercise program is often ignored by most people. This essential part is stretching. Some people may go through the motions with a couple of minutes of stretching before a workout, but most people do not realise the wonderful benefits that stretching can give them. Stretching along with cardio and weight training should be considered as being a vital part of any exercise program.

The first thing to remember is that you should always have a good warm up before stretching. This is because a warm muscle is always going to be more flexible than a cold one, and this will avoid the risk of any injury. The second thing is to make sure that you do not push too far when stretching. Always go to the point where you can feel the pull and not to the point where it becomes painful.

As children we are naturally pretty flexible but this changes as we get older. Our muscles begin to get tighter and this is why it is so easy to pull a muscle, or often wake up in the mornings feeling sore and stiff if we haven’t slept with a good posture. As children the bulk of our world consists of physical play. We run around and move about in ways that stretch our bodies. When we get older all this stops. You rarely hear of children complaining of back pain or pulled hamstrings.

You should have a good stretching program consisting of 10 to 15 minutes. You will get most value from stretching if you do it after your normal workout. The benefits of stretching are many, and here are just a few:

When you exercise you are basically stressing your muscles. It is this stress that is going to make your muscles stronger or give you muscles endurance. Stretching after a workout is going to reduce the stress on your muscles because stretching will allow your blood to reach the stressed muscles more quickly, and it is your blood that carries the nutrients that are going to repair you. You will have less soreness in your muscles the day after a workout, allowing them to recover more quickly.

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