FitSugar

5 Inexpensive Ways to Relax

FitSugar — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:07:49 PST

Holidays stressing you out? Spa treatments and therapeutic massages are great ways to relax, but with all the gifts you're buying for those on your list, you might feel so guilty about spending the money on yourself that you skip the treatments altogether. During the high-stress time of the holiday season, many of us need relief now more than ever. Thankfully there are plenty of cheap and easy ways to relax and relieve the tension.

Source: Thinkstock

5 Meditation Styles For Beginners

Heather Dale — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 03:08:32 PDT

Quiet the mind. Slow down your breath. Awaken your chakras. It's time to meditate! I'll be the first one to admit that I used to be like Ms. Paltrow, in that I didn't have the slightest idea how to meditate. I would dim the lights, make sure the apartment was quiet, and try to focus on my breath. Problem was, I was so focused on "conquering meditation" that my mind couldn't relax and just "be." After hearing about all the health perks associated with meditation - including stress reduction, a heightened self awareness, and being able to tune out distractions - I knew I couldn't give up. The good news is, I realized that there are many different types of meditation. This is key, because once you explore the various meditation styles, you can choose one that suits you best.

Keep reading to find out what they are.

Regular Meditation Can Help Tune Out Distractions, Study Says

Leta Shy — Tue, 03 May 2011 06:59:56 PDT

Meditation helps with many things: it can help you destress, become more self-aware, and even reduce your sensation of pain. And a new study has found yet another benefit: meditation helps you tune out distractions even when you aren't in the midst of a mediation itself.

The study, published in the Brain Research Bulletin, looked at 12 adults, some of whom took an eight-week class training in stressed-reducing meditation (the rest were the control group and did not take the meditation class) and found that alpha wave changes in the brains of those who meditated were more pronounced than those who didn't. Since our brains use alpha waves when we concentrate, researchers believe people who meditate may be more skilled at being able to tune out background distractions and focus on a task, whether it's reading a book on the bus or finishing a project at work while your co-worker has an animated phone conversation nearby.

Ready for meditation to help save you from all those daily distractions? Keep reading for tips on how to build your meditation skills after the break.

Reduce Pain With Mindfulness Meditation

FitSugar — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:31:13 PDT

Have you experienced the positive benefits of meditation? A new study that looked at 18 healthy young adults who had never meditated before found that with just 20-minute instructional sessions in mindfulness meditation, there was a significant reduction in pain when subjects were exposed to painful stimuli.

I already knew that regular meditation has been shown to have significant therapeutic effects on people at high risk for heart attacks, but these new findings are really profound because they are applicable to everyone!

According to researcher Fadel Zeidan, PhD, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and also worked on the study, meditation may be useful for the management of postoperative pain since it distracts the mind and reduces the emotional response to pain. Zeidan says a wandering mind is normal at first and that you simply have to bring your consciousness back to your breathing.

Here are a few helping pointers for starting the meditation process.

How to Start Your Day Calm, Cool, and Relaxed

Heather Dale — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 13:00:16 PST

Whenever I get asked if I'm a morning person, I drift off for a moment, imagining my hands wrapped around a mug, sipping hot tea as I sit cross-legged in a cozy chair, watching the sunrise over the ocean. Then reality slaps me in the face, and I hesitate to say I'm a morning person. Forget the fantasy morning, because I've learned over the years to create my own morning ritual that helps me start the day on the right (and positive) foot. Here's my little slice of morning heaven:

Drink Warm Water With Lemon Step aside caffeinated products, this simple yet powerful concoction provides you with a shot of vitamin C and stimulates your digestive tract - improving your body's ability to absorb nutrients. This alkalizing drink will also wake-up your liver and help flush out toxins.
Have Your Own Moment of Silence As soon as you get out of bed, take a moment to just be without doing anything. Don't check your email on your BlackBerry, don't start stressing about your day, just focus on your breathing, meditate, close your eyes and be still. Think happy, peaceful thoughts to calm your mind. Even Oprah makes the time to do this each day.

For more of my favorite morning rituals,

Read Something Meaningful If you are captivated with a new book or enjoy reading poetry by a certain author, this is your time to read one or two pages, maybe even an entire chapter. What this does is slowly wakes up the mind without overwhelming it with information.
Sun Yourself Open a window, or step out on your back door and take a deep breath of crisp morning air. This will help expand your lungs as you fill them up with oxygen. And if the sun is out, close your eyes and feel the warmth of the sun on your face. Be present, be still.

You're ready to start your day. And if you want to jump-start your metabolism, here are some healthy morning tips.

Graphotherapy Exercise For Relaxation

OnSugar Blog — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:30:35 PDT

Stressed out? Grab a pen or pencil and some paper, and do this relaxation exercise from the OnSugar blog goddessbody.

I call this exercise the Phone Cord (before the cell phone and cordless phone). It promotes calmness and relaxation and relieves inner tension. It also helps improve balance and coordination.

Learn how to do this easy exercise when you

Have You Ever Tried Cupping Like Jessica and Gwyneth?

FitSugar — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:30:51 PDT

The value of Eastern medicine must have left a big impression on Jessica Simpson while filming The Price of Beauty earlier this year. On Sunday, the actress sent out several tweets about the work she was doing with healer Master Wang, founder of the Medicine Buddha Temple in San Francisco.

"Shocked my system with a vegan diet, special Pu-erh tea from China, and cupping since friday! Who am I right now? This might be too clean!"

Jessica went on to ask her Twitter followers if any of them have tried the 3,000-year-old acupressure therapy of cupping, saying "the meditation creates intense visions." Traditionally in cupping, glass cups are heated with fire to reduce air pressure and create a vacuum on the skin. The heated cups are placed onto the skin's surface and as the cup cools down, the skin is sucked up inside. More modern cupping does away with the flames and uses a mechanical suction pump to remove air from inside the cup. Cupping is believed to stimulate and/or restore blood flow to specific areas of the body to encourage balance and healing.

Jessica made a point to say that she wasn't doing any of this for weight loss. She tweeted that it was to understand her "body through hydration and alkalinty." She's not the only celeb to try cupping. In 2004, Gwyneth Paltrow showed up to a film premiere with a series of telltale bruises that are typical following a cupping procedure. Tell me . . .

Wanna Sleep at Night? Stop Counting Sheep

FitSugar — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:00:25 PST

Every few weeks I'm hit with a bad case of insomnia, and it's beyond frustrating. I've tried every trick in the book to deal with it, but I usually end up lying in bed for an hour before giving up and getting up again. One thing I've tried to lull me to sleep is the old wives tale of counting sheep. I haven't had much success with it and it looks like I am not alone. According to a sleep study, counting livestock is not an insomnia cure and it may even be keeping you up longer.

To see what methods were best when it came to falling asleep, researchers in Oxford monitored the sleep habits of insomniacs. On the nights the participants were told to count sheep (or do nothing at all), it actually took them longer to fall asleep in comparison to other methods. What did help the insomniacs was to visualize a relaxing scene. On average, the participants fell asleep 20 minutes sooner when they used this visualization technique. Researchers believe that counting sheep is ineffective because it's too boring and participants stop counting. In comparison, imagining yourself on a tropical island is engaging enough to concentrate on until we tire ourselves out.

The reason positive visualization may work on insomniacs is related to another Oxford sleep study that compared the pre-sleep thoughts of insomniacs and sound sleepers. Researchers found that insomniacs don't usually picture relaxing images before bed and instead focus on worries, things they did during the day, and environmental noises. It looks like having less stress is the key to a good night's sleep - unfortunately, the stress of not sleeping is enough to keep anyone up! Next time I have this problem, I'll be taking a few minutes to meditate all the day's worries away.

Meditate Your Way to Good Health

FitSugar — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:00:02 PST

This year Gwyneth Paltrow is going to clear her mind and give meditation a try. Before you write this off as another one of Gwyneth's questionable health practices or categorize meditation as something hippies, Buddhists, and the new agey do in incense filled rooms, hear me out. Meditation is an easy way to alleviate stress and anxiety and it doesn't cost a dime. Also, it can be done anywhere in as little as five minutes.

In her latest GOOP newsletter, Gwyneth writes that she's not exactly sure how to meditate but she hears it's "freakin' brilliant." Well, she's right to say that - it is brilliant and it's so easy to do. Whenever I meditate, I always feel refreshed, energized, and less anxious. While there are many different types of meditation, here are some basic guidelines if you'd like to give meditation a try.

First find a quiet place to relax, and then put your body into a comfortable position - I usually lie down in my room with the lights dimmed. Close your eyes and concentrate on your breath going in and out of your body. The action of concentrating on your breath is what helps you let go of worries and stress. Instead of focusing on life's little problems, you clear your mind and instead focus on the present moment.

At first go, some people might have a hard time letting go to just be in the moment. If that's the case, try and do it for only a few minutes the first couple of times. As you become more comfortable with the practice give yourself 20 minutes of escape time. And don't worry if your mind starts to wander, just refocus on your breath. It always comes back to the breath.

Class Act: Vajra Yoga

FitSugar — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 12:00:22 PST

The yoga studio where I teach just started offering Vajra yoga classes, so I decided to try something new and took a class last week. The only thing I knew before heading into the studio was that this was a more meditative kind of yoga. Since the class began at noon, it was small: only four other students. The small group made for a calm and peaceful environment, and the teacher had a single candle lit in the front of the room, which added to the quiet ambiance.

This 90-minute class began as I thought, seated in a comfortable position, as we were instructed to focus on our breath and quiet our minds. We only sat for about five minutes or so, which seemed like the perfect amount of time. To be honest, I have a hard time sitting and being still (it's something I need to work on), but this didn't seem too long at all. I actually enjoyed just experiencing the moment and following my breath.

To hear about the rest of the class

read more. After the short meditation, we began with small movements to awaken and warm up the muscles. We did some Cat Cow back stretches on our hands and knees, and some Cobra to Child's Pose. Then we eased into opening our hips with Pigeon, and some standing poses like Warrior 3 and Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend to open our hamstrings. Although the poses were familiar, the way we did them was different than I am used to. There were no vinyasas, and we didn't flow from pose to pose to pose. Each asana was carried out on its own, and to be honest, it didn't work for my body. My muscles never really had the chance to warm up since I felt like my body was just being thrown into poses. That's just me though. I prefer fast-paced flowing styles of yoga such as Ashtanga, Vinyasa, and Jivamukti, where there's a lot more movement. Slower forms such as Kripalu and Iyengar always leave me feeling unsatisfied and antsy to move. If you're new to yoga or prefer to move slowly, then Vajra yoga may be right up your alley, so see if a studio near you offers this type of yoga. As for me, I'll stick to my Vinyasa class most of the time and head to a Vajra class if my energy level is low or I need some quiet time to de-stress. Is yoga one of your favorite things to talk about? Then check out the Yoga Stretch and Tell group.