Hi Kira Leskew here. Have you ever felt stressed or overwhelmed during your
workday or your daily life? Would you like to be able to relax on demand? When
things are really difficult in our life, that can seem like an impossible task,
but it is possible. So in today's video I'm gonna show you why relaxation in an action
is both important and possible, and show you how you can relax into your
busy life in five minutes or less.
So stay tuned.
So, why does relaxation fall under the category of meditating, when we define meditating as developing the ability to focus and concentrate.
Well first of all for the majority of us, even though relaxation is our
natural state, most of us aren't there a lot of the time and certainly not all of
the time. And bringing awareness to that can actually help us be more relaxed. Another
reason why developing relaxation throughout your day is
important is, earlier talking about the different brain states and your brain
chemistry and your emotional state, and how that affects you mentally and physically,
relaxation, when you're there, you're much more likely to be in that alpha brain state
or low beta where you can get the best results out of your life.
The other thing is that, which we totally underestimate a lot of us
in our society, is it just feels better. Being relaxed feels better and then being
stressed, and really that should be reason enough, but a lot of us have come
to feel that pushing outselves, pushing our limits and being more more
more more more MORE makes us more valuable. And I'm all for pushing your limits. I love doing
that, I love to grow as a person. I'm very creative, I like to grow businesses, I
like to grow myself, and that can be stressful. But one of my favorite quotes
which is my own is "the event is the event, but the stress is optional."
So you can really push yourself in your life to do a lot of things, but you can do it in a
way that's totally calm and relaxed. So some things that can bring us into relaxation:
First one is breathing so if you have time right now just do the little quick
breathing with me. Inhale, exhale drop your arms. Inhale. Exhale from your arms. And one more time just for fun, inhale, exhale from your arms.
So any time what we can increase our oxygen intake, whether it's by doing something consciously like
I just did the breathing, or by doing any kind of exercise in nature that elevates
your breathing, as long as you're doing it from relaxation, it will create you know
that relaxation in your whole body. The reason why I add that is that we can exercise and make ourselv
more tense. A lot of people don't do that, they tend to loseen up and they tend to let
go of things when they exercise, but just be aware that if you are
exercising, you do that. A few other things that you can really do to bring on
relaxation and one of them that's really important is posture.
So a lot of people you'll notice if they're in a lower mental state, depressed, angry, anxiety,
we huntch our forward shoulders and we close this area of her body which is where the
relaxation response is when we breathe. So from the side so we can see this is
driving a car, this is working at a computer,
this is is working at a desk. You want to open your shoulders up, let your shoulders drop and relax down
your back. And what this does is it frees up your lower lungs to breathe,
but it also sends a message to your nervous system that things are ok.
When we're like this, the message that our nervous system is getting from our biochemistry is - GO into fear.
When we open our shoulders and we relax them down our back to the best of
our ability,
the message that your nervous system is sending your body is things are OK.
Or they are even better than ok. So that's tip number one. The next tip is that be mindful during the
day. Are you breathing and what's my body posture? And set up little trigger for
yourself, so it's something that you do regularly. So if you're a person that does a lot of
driving, then every time you get in and out of your vehicles whatever that is, paying
attention. What's my breathing like, am I relaxed and what's my posture. If you
work in an office and you get up and down from your desk a lot, just put a
little note: Am I relaxed, and every time you get up, ask yourself, what's my
body posture am I relaxed. Other things you can do if you want you can use the suggestion for
timer for breathing, when you're doing that you can ask yourself
I'm breathing, am I relaxed. Other things you can do going into a meeting, going
out of a meeting.. you know, anything during the day. You can pick something in your office.
Every time you look at it, you can ask yourself "Am I relaxed". So I was doing this, I ran a large factory
that had about 30,000 square feet, and every time I walk by a particular piece of
equipment and we had 3 of them in our factory
so anytime I was in one third of the factory, I can see the most part one of
these pieces of equipment. Every time I look at it I asked myself am I relaxed?
And most of the time I wasn't because I was out in the facotry and there was a problem you know, whatever was going on. So even
though the event is the event, the stress is optional. But we need to train ourselves for that.
Hope this really helps, I'm going to be doing more stuff on relaxation. Relation is important in developing our
minfulness and it's a really really easy way that we can become more present in
our lives, but also really reduce that perception of stress. Have a great day and I look forward to
seeing to you on future videos.