Friday, November 9, 2012
Your yoga practice is helpful for more than your physical and mental health. Here are some tips for bringing yoga's benefits to any presentations you do in your job or elsewhere.
Many of us have given presentations in our jobs. It could be talking to a group of people in a staff meeting, doing a sales presentation, or giving a talk to a large group. Some of us are in jobs where our role is, literally, to speak in front of a people (as I do, in my job as a yoga teacher). For many, the prospect of speaking to a group brings on paralyzing fear. Yoga, as a practice, has many practical applications outside of all the wonderful physical and mental benefits you get when you practice. There are many things that you can take from your practice that can help you when you need to give a presentation. Feelings of being grounded, centered and relaxed are just a few. Here are ten ideas to think about: While these tips work well…
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Need to feel better about yourself, fast? Check out these action steps to a positive outlook on you and your life.
One of the best ways to stay healthy is to feel healthy about yourself. In my work as a yoga teacher working with both adults and children, I find that often it’s the last person you’d expect to have low self-esteem that is struggling with putting themselves first. There can be no typical profile for someone like this. Financial success, being in a relationship or having a great job can all exist in the life of someone who just doesn’t feel good about themselves. Sometimes these habits are ingrained from patterns we learn as a child. While it can be helpful to go back in time to try to understand the origin of these behaviors, the bottom line is that if you’re in a cycle of feeling down about yourself, you just want it to stop. Here are …
Thursday, July 19, 2012
You're always with your phone, so why not put it to good use to improve your mood and your health?
We all spend a lot of time with our phones. They are practically additional appendages on our body. When you think about it, you’re hardly ever without it, so why not put it to some good use? Sure, there are the phone calls to loved ones and fun text messages but there are other ways you can use this technology to enhance your mood and impact your health. I’ve got an iPhone, so this article is written with iPhone functionality in mind, but if you’ve got another type of smart phone, look for similar functions as what I’ve listed here. Use your lock screen to display images that make you smile. One of the best things about smart phones is how you can personalize them to reflect your likes and preferences. I take lots of pictures and …
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Can't live without your smart phone? Read this.
Have you ever thought about how much time you spend connected to media of one kind or another? Whether it’s an online paper, Facebook, Pinterest or other social media tools, or television and radio, much of our waking moments are spent hearing and absorbing information that’s not our own. While this can sometimes be for informational purposes, like listening to the news or the weather, much of it is hardly essential information. Having said that, there is both interest and fun to be had in reading onine articles, blogs and Facebook posts by friends and family. But when we are constantly attached to external information it can literally take its toll on our physical and mental health. Our brains are overstimulated, our reference point …
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Stressful, unhealthy job? Here are some quick fixes.
Most of us have to work. And, if you don’t work for yourself, like me, you may feel as if you have very little control over what happens to you at work. Responsibilities change, your boss may change or where you’re physically located for work may also change. When things are constantly changing and we feel we have no control, it creates stress. And, the reality is, change is part of life and certainly part of the landscape of many jobs today. So, what can you do to manage this stress? Attacking stress requires a two-part plan: Shift your thinking and move your body. This plan acknowledges two things: First, that while you may not be able to change what’s happening in your job, you CAN change your reaction to the changes. Secondly, how you…
Monday, March 19, 2012
Turn your frown upside down with these easy tips.
Are you having one of “those days?” You’re feeling blue or sad and you don’t know how to get yourself out of it. Or, maybe you recently had an awful day and you ate your way through an entire bag of Pepperidge Farms cookies and still didn’t feel better. When we live in close quarters with people, we notice mood shifts. Not only in those we love but our in our neighbors, co-workers and the people we come in contact with on a daily basis. When we have a bad day, sometimes we let everyone around us notice it. But how can we shift our mood? Here are some easy tips: One of the foundational principals in yoga is the idea of transience. This is the idea that things are shifting on a daily basis and nothing is ever stable. We might notice this …
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Prevent stress by taking these steps towards better health.
I know a lot of entrepreneurs. These are people in my neighborhood that left working in a corporate position to work for themselves. In every case, they were unhappy with their lifestyle and passionate about something else, so they created an opportunity to start their own business. I see them often in my local coffeehouse and we talk about business ideas and how things are going. You might think that when you make a move such as this, you leave stress behind. This actually is not the case. Speaking from my own entrepreneurial experience, I can say that stress is a daily factor of my life. Juggling many different things regularly, completing daily activities as well as making time for future planning all can create stress. But, the one …
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Create better health through improving your finances.
Quick: do you know how much money is in your wallet? When was the last time you balanced your checkbook? Do you go to the ATM machine frequently and have little idea where all your cash goes? Mindfulness is the practice of awareness. As a yoga teacher, I try to bring awareness to students by offering suggestions for body position and breath. As a yoga student, I try to bring awareness to my practice by breathing deeply, resting my gaze in each pose on one spot and listening to my body. So, what do these tips have to do with spending money? Most people think about money in the context of having a budget. But having a budget doesn’t do you any good if you don’t stick to it. Also, having a budget doesn’t take into consideration how you feel …
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Make your heart stronger and live longer!
While February has Valentine’s Day as a heart-centered day, it also is American Heart Month, as recognized by the American Heart Association. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and there are many things that each of us can do to improve our heart health. Taking care of your heart is really a two-fold thing. First, there’s the focus on the actual heart itself and making it strong and healthy. This is done through a combination of dietary choices, exercise habits and stress management. We can eat all the healthy food in the world but if we’re constantly stressed, that can lead to high blood pressure (hypertension) and can put a strain on our heart. As a yoga teacher, I know that yoga has a tremendous …
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Disconnect from technology and tune in to your body instead.
In the past few weeks, there have been two notable reports in the news about companies encouraging, if not forcing, their employees to stop emailing after work hours. A New York Times story, “A Time to Tune Out,” described Volkswagen’s new policy to turn off the email server to selected employees one half-hour after their shift ends, only to resume it 30 minutes before their next shift starts. In another report on NBC Nightly News last week, a Boston-based company was profiled in which the CEO and some staff set an automated response in their email that is sent out in response to any email that they receive after 5:30 pm. While they still answer their phone calls, they refrain from responding to emails after work hours. The growth of …
Lyndi Thompson
3:59 pm on Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Love the idea of saving as a way of acknowledging yourself for your hard work. A change in perspective is often what people need. One thing too I see with yoga and fitness instructors is that they mix their personal finances with their business finances. Things get blurry and managing funds gets tricky. more ›