Revitalising Breath

The oxygen you take in whenever you breathe in revitalises every cell in your body - but you can help that process along by imagining and visualising it actually taking place.
By using your imagination, you can send energy-giving breath to wherever you like - anywhere that feels dull, or painful, or sluggish. Try it out!

1. Take a deep breath, and bring your arms slowly out in front of you and slowly up over your head.
2. S-t-r-e-t-c-h as you breathe out and slowly bring down your arms to your sides.
3. Breathe in again, bring your arms slowly out in in front of you, and slowly up over your head. Imagine your breathe revitalising your whole body, filling it with energy. Try to feel your body becoming alive with the oxygen that is spreading through all parts of your body.
4. Exhale slowly, bring your arms down to your sides, and imagine all your tension flowing out through your fingertips.
5. Repeat that sequence three times - and try to notice any sensations you may feel. You might experience warmth, tingling - or just a feeling of relaxation.
6. Now focus on an area where you feel tension or pain, and take another deep breath, and imagine/feel it moving into that area. Imagine that breath massaging that tension/pain away - and exhale.
7. Take another few deep, invigorating breaths - and imagine your whole body full of energy and vitality.
8. S-t-r-e-t-c-h your whole body, palms up, toward the ceiling. Rock your body from side to side by switching your weight from your right foot to your left foot, right to left, right to left.
9. Bring your arms slowly down to your sides, and take a few moments to enjoy the sights, sounds, colours around you and the feeling of being very, very alive.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Crying Your Heart Out is Pretty Good For You, Too.

And if you really, really need to do it on the bus - then you should.

On the whole, we're very bad at crying, and the fact that we're very bad at it, and persist in keeping 'a stiff upper lip', is very bad for us.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that everyone is a chemical factory - and that's true. The problem is that some of the chemicals people produce when they are over stressed, miserable and unhappy constitute the sort of garbage that a 'green' person would refuse to dump in landfill.

The ability to weep is a uniquely human emotional response. Only human beings of all living creatures are able to cry – and with good reason; the human body produces a great many chemicals in response to stressful situations, and some of them are very, very toxic indeed.

Tears produce protein, which helps rid the body of toxic chemical waste; they encourage the body to produce a natural painkiller called Enkaphalin - and they free pent-up emotions that might otherwise create physical problems.

Tears comfort and calm, cleanse the body, relieve pain and sorrow, get rid of tension and defuse stress.

If you feel the need to cry, then you should cry no matter where you are – and if you feel that you can’t cry immediately, then it’s very important to do it later on because if you don't you're going to be storing some very unpleasant garbage.

We all have to repress tears sometimes because it isn’t always possible or appropriate to cry when we want to, but letting tears out after the event is easy enough to manage; it's not hard to find a weepy movie - and, of course, writing about whatever it was that upset you earlier in the day will often make you cry, because the memory of it will make you shed the tears you felt like shedding at the time.

Better to cry later than not at all. And the method you use to make yourself cry is immaterial; the important thing is to cry, and go on crying until the crying stops of itself – which means, of course, no 'stiff upper lip', no admonitions to 'pull yourself together', and no smoking cigarettes to try to stop the flow.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

It's Good to Talk To Yourself. Just Don't do it Aloud on The Bus.

When people are over-stressed or when bad or unpleasant things happen to them, the unconscious mind automatically causes the body to react to compensate - and the first line of defence it’s likely to come up with is an increased need to talk.

Verbalizing what you’re thinking or feeling about yourself or your situation or the unpleasant things that happened to you today, or yesterday, or even long ago, will allow you to achieve several very important things:

• You can clarify, realise and understand what EXACTLY has made you so upset, so stressed, or so angry.


• You can get things out of your system.


• You can neutralise unpleasant situations.


• You can turn your internal pressures down - or off.


• You can dissipate your anger and avoid negative mental activity.

And no, you don’t need a therapist or even a friend to talk to in order to get the benefit of saying everything you want or need to say, because the essential element of the ‘talker plus listener‘ equation is the act of putting thoughts and feelings into words, and not the fact of having another human being to talk to. Listeners – even (and perhaps particularly) professional listeners - are comforting to have, conducive to communication, and encourage the development of ideas by asking questions, but they aren’t essential to the defining, cathartic process of verbalising thoughts and feelings.

The cheapest, most efficient, and most private way of talking is to talk to yourself – in writing. And the ‘private’ part of that is very important, because most of us have some things locked away inside us that we would never want to reveal to another person – even a professional ‘listener’ - and which therefore might otherwise never be verbalised at all.

If you don’t want to commit those particularly private thoughts to paper – and I can understand why you might not want to take the risk of having someone read what you’ve written either now or in the future - there’s always the cat, the dog or a tree in the park. You can talk to any one of them, because none of them ever tell tales – and you’ll still have said what you wanted or needed to say.

Everyone needs to talk often – actually everyone needs to talk every day – about the things that have annoyed or upset them that day. And, of course, they also need to finally come out with all those things that have been niggling away at them for months (or even years) and which can sometimes add the emotional weight of past events to present problems.

Diaries – real ones as opposed to the ones that remind you that you need to go to the dentist next Wednesday – have gone out of fashion. That’s a pity. Garbage is something that needs to be thrown out – and you can offload an awful lot of it into a very small, very cheap book.

Talk to yourself often! It’s good for you. Things tend not to get quite so out of proportion if you do.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com

Keep Smiling!

While you’re practicing (I hope!) better breathing (and if you aren’t, please go back to yesterdays post and start practicing it today) I want to share a really simple stress-relieving technique with you that you can practice anywhere at any time – and the more often the better.

You probably don’t know it, but you are very efficient chemical factory. This is one of the reasons I can never understand people coughing up large sums for supplementary, more dangerous, and less effective chemicals – but that’s a whole other story. The important thing is that you appreciate that practically everything you do with your body causes a chemical reaction that can be positive or negative – and that many of those reactions are completely under your control.

All facial gestures, for example, trigger the production of neurotransmitters – negative or positive. When you smile, your brain is triggered to produce ‘uppers’ to fit the gesture, and your mood and energy levels lift accordingly – and (obviously!) the longer you smile, and the more you smile, the more ‘uppers’ your brain will produce.

Equally, if you frown the brain produces the equivalent of ‘downers’ - and the longer you frown and the more you frown the more ‘downers’ your brain will churn out, and your mood and energy levels will drop dramatically in consequence.

If you want to, you can test the speed and efficiency of this kind of automatic chemical response by going into your bathroom right now and snarling – really seriously snarling – at yourself in the mirror.

Whenever people snarl aggressively, the body immediately produces adrenaline and painkillers - and if you manage a really good snarl in the course of your experiment, you’ll find that not only will you undergo a very noticeable mood change, but also that your heart rate will go up, your nostrils will flare, and you’ll be able to feel ‘fight or flight’ quantities of adrenaline flooding into your system. There isn’t a threat in your bathroom, of course – and no reason to fight or to run away and live to fight another day either - but your unconscious mind will assume that there is, because that’s what you’re saying with your face.

Facial expressions are a particularly unsubtle form of body language, and the easiest of all to produce deliberately – and it’s a good idea to produce positive ones, because (as you will have learned for yourself if you managed a really successful snarl in your bathroom just now!) a particular facial gesture doesn’t have to be accompanied by the appropriate emotion in order to produce results. ‘Fake’ snarling produces adrenaline and painkillers; ‘fake’ smiling – smiling when you don’t feel like it, in other words – produces a cascade of upper-type chemicals from your brain, because your unconscious mind assumes that you wouldn’t be making the gesture without good reason.

This built-in, easily manipulated mechanism means that you have the power to influence your own moods, and reduce (or raise!) your own stress levels.

• Negative and anxious facial expressions produce very definite stress reactions in the autonomic nervous system because the neurotransmitters they provoke are stress-producing.
• Positive and happy facial gestures lower stress because the neurotransmitters they provoke make you feel good.

It’s obviously therefore in your own best interests to try to maintain positive facial expressions - and to make the effort to actively produce them if you’re feeling really miserable about something.

It’s important to bear in mind as well that positive facial expressions receive positive responses from other people – and equally that negative ones receive negative responses.

This is because facial expressions and moods appear to be contagious. In other words, when we perceive that someone else is happy, or sad, or angry, we don’t just register the fact, we actually experience the emotion, albeit to a lesser degree. Consequently, if you smile, you’ll not only feel better yourself, you’ll make other people feel better, too, and that mood will build on itself. Equally, of course, if your facial expressions are negative, you’ll make other people feel negative and that mood will build on itself.

Most of our stress and many of our negative thoughts and feelings directly result of dealing with difficult people.

Making the effort to maintain positive facial expressions habitually will go a long way toward ensuring that the person creating the difficulty isn’t you.

Oh yes – there is just one other thing. We all age and, in the process, we all get the lines and wrinkles we deserve. Make smiling your habitual facial expression today. Nobody needs to get written off as a miserable old bat on sight...

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Breath is Life. The Best Breath is More of It.

It’s always very difficult to explain to people why they need to practice breathing when they’re standing there with their chests going up and down and nobody is expecting to see a hearse arrive anytime soon.

But then there’s breathing, and not breathing all that well.

There’s an important relationship between breathing, emotion, and the autonomic nervous system, and if you can get that relationship into balance then you will be a healthier, calmer and much happier person.

Practising abdominal breathing is the best way to achieve that balance. Abdominal breathing leads automatically to physical and mental relaxation and better mental and physical health - and once you've got the hang of it you can do it whenever or wherever you want, or need, to.

When people are calm and composed, abdominal breathing is the norm. When people are anxious and stressed, on the other hand, costal (or chest) breathing can become the norm. Costal breathing is shallow, unsteady and jerky, which naturally results in the mind and the emotions becoming unsteady also, so that it becomes impossible to relax. That in turn leads to tension and anxiety which leads to continued costal breathing, thus creating a vicious circle that goes round and round and on and on until something finally breaks down.

It isn’t difficult to achieve and maintain an optimum abdominal breathing pattern. It just takes practice and a few minutes of your time every day. And it's something that you can build on - a simple technique that forms the basis of other 'stress breaking' habits.

Here’s one way of breathing in a less stressful life. Read the exercise through carefully a couple of times so as to be sure that you can remember what you need to do:

1. Lie on your back with your feet apart. Allow your feet to flop loosely, heels turned inwards and toes turned outwards.

2. Let your arms flop loosely away from your body, palms turned upward and fingers loosely curled.

3. Close your eyes, and take a moment to enjoy lying down in this physically relaxed position.

4. Put one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen.

5. Take a moment to become aware of the rate and rhythm of your breath.

6. Note which hand is moving as you breathe.

7. Inhale and exhale slowly, smoothly and deeply.

8. Try to pull your abdominal muscles in as you exhale. If you feel that you want to, you can push those muscles in gently with your hand.

9. Put your hands back by your sides and continue breathing in and out. The only thing you need to think about now is the gentle rise and fall of your abdomen. (In general, people breathe in and out twelve to sixteen times a minute when they are resting. You may find that your breathing slows as you relax).

10. Get up slowly only when you are ready to get up. That could be in five minutes or in fifteen minutes or when you wake up on this first occasion. It really depends upon how tired and stressed you have allowed yourself to become. As you progess, you will find that five minutes will be the norm.

Practice for five minutes every day. If you have a problem dealing with this method of practising abdominal breathing, I’ll be talking about another method later this week. In the meantime one or another of us will be talking about other ways to use your body to reduce stress.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Christmas - Less a Holiday, More a Stress-Fest

Christmas can be a very stressful time for all kinds of reasons even if you have nothing else to worry about - which, for at least 95% of us, isn’t the case.

The best way to deal with stress is to anticipate it and take positive steps to cope with it, so over the next couple of weeks or so we’re going to be talking about simple physical relaxation exercises that can help you to cope with stress positively – not just at Christmas, but all the time.

None of these techniques will take up great chunks of your day – half an hour at most and sometimes as little as three or four minutes - and none of them are going to cost you anything. You do need to appreciate, though, that you are going to have to LEARN how to relax.

Genuine mental and physical relaxation isn’t about just sitting down and taking it easy: it’s a skill - like riding a bicycle or driving a car – and (just like riding a bicycle or driving a car) you need to practise until it becomes second nature. That takes time, motivation and commitment.

We’ll start tomorrow with abdominal (or diaphragmatic) breathing. That probably doesn’t sound very exciting, but actually it’s the most important stress management technique of all.

What will you get out of it?

Improved health and well-being, increased energy, and the ability to be mentally and physically relaxed at will.

What do you need to complete the exercise?

A place lie down – a floor or a hard bed - and three or four minutes.

What do you need to get the best out of the exercise in the long term?

A place to lie down and three or four minutes every day until abdominal breathing becomes your normal pattern of breathing. If you practice every day you'll find that that happens very quickly.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

The Only Person You Need to Impress is You

I think most of us spend a lot of time at one time or another trying to impress other people. We do it in all sorts of ways - with our clothes or our belongings or by the way we behave or the things we say or do.

It works, of course, sometimes - but only with people who are impressed by externals - the young, the naïve and (let's face it) those very shallow people who judge others not by whom or what they are, but by their belongings, and the the labels in their clothes.

Obviously, getting a job (or even keeping one!) is about impressing people, and very good clothes and very nice accessories can be great props to ones confidence in those circumstances, but the fact is that nine times out of ten an interviewer or an employer (whilst perhaps noticing the neatness of your appearance) wouldn't know the difference between Cerruti and Marks and Sparks and couldn't care less one way or the other.

Being impressive to other people - real people who really matter - never depends on what you wear or what you own. It depends on you - the real you - the person you really are, and what you think of and believe about yourself and your skills, and your abilities, and what you have to offer to an employer, to society and the world.

That's why the only person you really need to impress is yourself. If you don't believe in the real you - the you without what Geoffrey's late mother would have called 'the schmutter' - who else is going to?

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com