How to chill out…

While it’s impossible to lead a completely stress-free life, finding ways to unwind and “chill out” are key to retaining your energy levels and ultimately your sanity when you have a demaning job.

There are as many techniques to decompress as there are human beings; but when it comes to finding inner calm, practices such as mindfulness, meditation and meditation are usually top of mind.    Although these are great tools they don’t appeal to everyone.  Personally I love both yoga and adult colouring books.   But what can you do it none of these apeal.

My golden rule is any activity that is enjoyable and absorbs you to the extent that you aren’t aware of the time and you stop thinking about work helps you unwind and chill out.  So you can choose any activity that helps you distracting your mind from everyday pressures and you love.  Once you have choose your activity do it often, and put it in your diary and don’t feel guilty – we all need time out.

One free, easy activity is just going for a stroll.  I don’t mean walking fast to hit your 10,00 steps per day target.  Just go for a stroll for the sake of it.

 

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  • Good Posture Exercise

    Having spoken previously about why poor posture is bad for you, I wanted to move on to give you a simple exercise that helps promote good posture.  Brugger's exercise routine is devised to activate postural muscles weakened and simultaneously stretched by a prolonged sitting posture. Slumped Position slumped Check the tension in your upper back and shoulders in the slumped posture and then in the Brugger's position, to see if you notice any difference as the muscle tension is dramatically reduced. Brugger Exercise Posture bruggers Step By Step Guide

    1. Sit perched towards the edge of your seat; this will naturally place your lower back into a curve (lumbar lordosis) with your butt sticking out a little.  As you do this your breastbone (sternum) will naturally lift up.
    2. Separate your legs to 45 degrees each side with your feet turned out slightly and in line with your knees.
    3. Your shoulders are relaxed and down with your chin tucked in, making the back of your neck longer – imagine a piece of string is attached to the top of your head and someone is lifting you up.
    4. Fully straighten (extend) both elbows and arms.
    5. Make sure you keep your shoulders down and imagine your shoulder blades [scapula] are pushing down and together to form a V.
    6. Turn your thumbs out (externally rotate), palms up.
    7. Separate your fingers.
    8. You should now be in the position show above in the Brugger's exercise posture picture.
    9. Hold for 30 seconds.
    Ideally you should perform the Brugger's exercise once for every thirty minutes of sitting, so why not try this once a day. PS The Science This exercise was developed by a Swiss Neurologist called Alois Brugger MD,  the exercise is neither a traditional stretch or strengthening technique but works neurologically by being complementary to the way your body is wired to work. Our bodies are neurologically much stronger in all of our flexor muscles. This is displayed perfectly if we look at a person with a neurological disorder, e.g. cerebral palsy; their body naturally has increased tension (hypertension) in the flexor muscles, also known as the spastic posture. This demonstrates our natural prosperity to an Upper Cross Posture which often develops when we sit for prolonged periods of time in a slumped position. Muscles work in groups. When one group is working then the opposing group are unable to work (inhibited).  An easy example to visualise of this is when you place food in your mouth. To do this you flex your fingers, wrist muscles, bicep muscles and pecs., all flexors. However, to be able to do this you have to inhibit your finger extensors, wrist extensors, triceps, rhomboids etc. This is called reciprocal inhibition. If you were unable to do this you would be unable to feed yourself. The Brugger exercise works on the principal of reciprocal inhibition. When doing this exercise you are activating all your extensor muscles and therefore inhibiting all of your (usually hyper activated) flexor muscles.  

  • Natural treatment for cold sores

    A common treatment for cold sores is antiviral cream called aciclovir.  A new randomised controlled trial of nearly 1,000 adults with cold sores where they either applied aciclovir cream or medical grade New Zealand manuka honey to the cold sore. There was no significant difference in the time taken for the cold sore to heal:

    • 8 days for aciclovir cream
    • 9 days with New Zealand medical grade manuka honey
    It should be noted that cold sores can get better within 1 to 2 weeks without treatment and the trail didn't include a no-treatment group.  In addition the trail didn't show that there were any special properties of "medical grade" manuka honey as the trail didn't look at the impact of using  ordinary honey. Basically the trail results show the medical grade mauka honey worked just as well as anitvital cream. Reference https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/5/e026201

  • Having a ball?

    Previously I have written my guide to foam rolling parts 1 & 2.  Now I want to explore the uses for another self-massage tool, the spikey ball.  I would recommend you use both a foam roller and a spikey ball the reason is that for some parts of the body it is easier to use a spikey ball, for example: Releasing the feet Stand on one leg use a chair or the wall for balance.  Roll one foot at a time over the ball for a good few minutes.  Include the heel, the outside edge and the instep.  Push down stronger into any area to deepen the intensity.  Do each foot separately. Between the shoulders A common area of tension with modern postural habits is between the shoulder blades.  You can easily reach this area with a ball placed anywhere between the shoulder blades and move up and down against the wall.  One tip to stop the ball dropping it to put it in a long sock or stocking, drap it over your shoulder and then hold it in your hand. Lower back - Under sacrum and glutes You can use the floor of resistance to press your weight into or when lying to let gravity give you a help in hand.  Simply lie on the floor, bend your knees but keep your feet flat on the floor.  Then place the ball underneath your sacrum – the large triangular bone that forms part of your pelvis.  Now move just gently move your sacrum and glutes all over the ball.   If it feels safe to do so your can bring your knees into your chest to add additional pressure.  This will help release off your lower back.