Practical tip for stress management: Drink water
Submitted by Abigail HamiltonA friend sent this to me, and because of my own longtime delight in drinking lots of water (for me, the bubbly kind!) I thought I'd share! The following is by Dr. Neill, Registered Psychologist.
After breathing oxygen, drinking water is the second most essential step in maintaining life. So drink lots of water.
It is estimated that 75% of Americans suffer mild chronic dehydration. Many would be drinking enough water were it not for the fact that they also use diuretics such as caffeine and alcohol which cause dehydration.
A host of problems have been associated with dehydration, but how does dehydration relate to stress? The brain is composed of 95% water. A mere 2% drop in body water will begin to shrink your brain and cause fuzzy short-term memory, difficulty focusing and daytime fatigue. The cluster of symptoms is sometimes called the brain fog.
Brain fog makes thinking harder and life more stressful. Therefore, avoiding or minimizing brain fog is a part of any good [tag-tec]stress management[/tag-tec] program.
Of course, chronic dehydration also leads to a host of physical problems such as hypertension, under-functioning kidneys and joint pain. Physical problems tend to create more chronic stress.
The solution is obvious: drink lots of water to keep your brain and the rest of your body working optimally.
Drink extra water under circumstances of increased body-water loss; for example, when you drink alcohol or coffee, exercise, fly or are under stress.
Drinking lots of water is key to good [tag-ice]stress management[/tag-ice]. It is important in avoiding the buildup of chronic stress, and it is a central tool in reducing stress when it arises.
Psychologist Dr. Neill Neill maintains an active practice on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. He focuses on healthy relationships and life after addictions. He is the author of Living with a Functioning Alcoholic – A Woman’s Survival Guide
Source: http://www.neillneill.com/59/practical-tips-for-stress-management-2-drin...
Inviting silence to quiet stress
Submitted by Abigail HamiltonEspecially during the crazy holiday months, it's important to remember how we can cultivate and use inner quiet to combat the frenetic pace of the season and all its attendant tasks. In a recent piece, Arnie Kozack explains:
Four AM is an auspicious time of day in many contemplative traditions. The world used to be quiet at 4 AM, long before 24-hour stores and the ongoing hum of our electrical and now electronic world. Still, Four AM is relatively quiet as are the other early morning hours. The children are not yet awake, traffic has not started piling up, the press of the work day not yet begun.
Of course, we can be in the relaxing silence of the early morning hours and not have inner silence, and this is why we practice mindfulness — to cultivate that inner quiet. And if you’ve tried mindfulness practice you’ve discovered that this quiet is not always so. We move in an out of quiet and this IS the practice. The goal should not be to make the mind quiet for this only sets us up with expectations. Rather, the practice is retrieve the mind back from noise and allow it to be quiet for a moment or however long it is before it is drawn back out of silence. Again, the practice is to keep coming back.
When we can create this space of returning to silence within ourselves we can take this space anywhere. Now when we are in the noisy world of cars, people shouting into cell phones, construction, and just the hum of daily life we can enjoy an inner quiet.
It’s important to spend some time each day cultivating this sense of inner silence. Ideally, you’ll devote a good 30 to 45 minutes in sitting or walking meditation (see the Guided Meditation links below in this entry). If you can’t devote this time, carve out a few minutes to do a mini-mindfulness practice. Just three minutes can punctuate your day with a soulful silence that disrupts the mounting stress of the typical day.
What happens when you imagine the experience of eating food before having any?
Submitted by Abigail HamiltonAccording to a new study reported by the New York Times, you eat less of a particular food if you spend time before you eat it imagining the act and sensations of eating and tasting the food. Very interesting and delightful way to curb one's tendencies to overindulge in favorite foods!
Call it the Imagine Diet. You wouldn’t have to count calories, track food points or memorize rules. If, say, some alleged friend left a box of chocolate truffles in your home this holiday season, you would neither throw them away nor inhale them all. Instead, you would start eating imaginary chocolates.
You would give yourself a few seconds to imagine tasting and chewing one truffle. (If there’s a picture on the box, you could focus on it.) Then you would imagine eating another, and then another and another...until at last you could open the box of real chocolates without making a total pig of yourself.
So far, the Imagine Diet exists only in my imagination, as does any evidence of its efficacy. But there is some real evidence for the benefits of imaginary eating from experiments at Carnegie Mellon University reported in the current issue of Science. When people imagined themselves eating M & M’s or pieces of cheese, they became less likely to gorge themselves on the real thing.
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Games that Help
Tropical Heat
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We got a call from the school principal: Our son is doing better! I'm sure that Dual Drive has been a factor in his improvement. I love watching him calm down and breathe.
