So, on Friday I talked about my journey into the Discipline of Discomfort and my desire to push through the uncomfortable barriers in my life that are keeping me stuck.

Now, if you’re like me, and a bit of a “Type A” personality combined with ADD you will have a list a mile long of things that need to change in your life, or things you want to push through. Tackling them all at once (as we tend to do in the first week of January…) is only going to get you frustrated.

I like to try to add one thing per week, but even that is overwhelming and I burn out too quickly. Right after the New Year I came across Chris Brogan’s blog post “My 3 Words for 2012” and he mentioned a personal trainer named Jackie from Fitarella.com who uses a concept called “12 in 12″. Every month you pick one thing that you’re going to do consistently for 30 days. At the end of the 30 days you decide if you’ll continue or not. Regardless of the decision on that first item, you add a second item to work on in the next 30 days. Check out the blog post to get more detail.

The main area that is frustrating the heck out of me is the weight that refuses to budge, regardless of the diet, exercise, or magic potions I might try. SO unbelievably discouraging. If you can’t lose weight walking 100+km a week, while eating a healthy diet, there really is little hope. Currently I have the cold/cough from hell that refuses to let go, so my options are somewhat limited here as well. However, last month I began a program of supplementation/cleansing that I’m hoping will boost my energy and help me sleep better. I’ve been pretty faithful with that. The first two weeks of January have been about healing this blasted cold/cough, but I’ve also been doing some research into programs that will help me get fit and lose the weight without stressing my daily schedule too much.

Several years ago I found Zna Trainer and found her stuff very interesting and backed by a huge amount of science. It’s pretty weird, though, and is based on some rather odd breathing practices. It’s only 5-10 minutes a day and the results seem pretty astounding. I spent about an hour chatting with her on Facebook and then spent more time exploring her site and some of the success stories, and then 15 minutes working on figuring out the O2 exercises which are unbelievably powerful. Just the O2 Breathing exercises alone gave me a full abdominal and facial workout! I will feel this tomorrow.

So, between now and the end of January I’m going to do her O2 exercises every morning for 5 minutes. In February, my intention is to start back with my walking, which is nearly impossible right now with the combination of this cough and the cold weather. Hopefully by the end of January, the cough will be history!!

Why not join me? Pick one thing you’re going to do between now and the end of January, every day, faithfully, regardless. Post below what that is, and we’ll motivate each other!

Make it a great day!

Darlene

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Well, the last few months have been wild. Too much on my plate, and that sense of panic that I’m not going to get it all done has forced me to constantly push my workout to the side.

Not good. It’s my workout that gives me the energy I need to get everything else done!

We’ve nixed the HotSpot Promotion angst by narrowing our focus even smaller to something that is highly effective and easy to keep up with. Not only are we still just focusing on the “little guy” (home/small business) but our main emphasis is on Appreciation Marketing, which is something I love, and am developing to a true art form! That has removed a lot of stress and peripheral tasks from our business, and should make what we offer even more effective.

Also, I spent the day reading yesterday. Some very helpful stuff which I’ll share a little later, and it’s helping me to find the time that’s just not there these days. I’m quite excited to put that into practice too!

These two changes mean that I’m back to focusing on my workout in a way that is not causing any stress. For this week only I’m simply doing a half hour of slow walking on the treadmill, focusing on perfecting my 15 minute warm-up and 15 minute cool-down procedure with the high-efficiency breathing exercises (I add another 5 minutes on to the end of the warm up and beginning of the cool down doing 4 beats of breathing in, completely filling my lungs, and 4 beats of “whooshing” the air out, completely emptying my lungs.) This is enabling me to start my day with my blood pumping and my brain clear!

Things are going to be happening over the next few months that will bring a huge change to my lifestyle, and so I’ll be keeping you posted here.

Kinda excited, really…

Darlene

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I’m a day late with this – sorry! This past week was a zoo, but I think I’m starting to settle now…

We’ve talked quite a bit about the importance of breathing on this blog, and I want to add to that again today by discussing two new breathing exercises: panting and resistance breathing.
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Panting

What it Is: “Nose panting is a practice that focuses on breathing through the nose at a fast pace. This breathing exercise can make you feel more energized and release stress.” (Japanese Breathing Exercises)

How to Do It: Breathe out sharply as if you were trying to dislodge something in your nose, and then just as sharply, breathe in again. Repeate in quick succession, making sure you’re using your abdomen to push air in and out, rather than your shoulders. Begin with 10 pants in and out, and slowly increase until you can do a full minute.

Resistance Breathing

What it is: Resistance breathing is just forcing yourself to breathe heavily with some kind of resistance. According to research for cardiac patients, resistance breathing “strengthen the diaphragm and chest muscles by providing resistance to breathing. Similar to weight training for the arms or legs, they make the lungs work harder.” It “forces the user to take deeper and more forceful breaths thereby gradually strengthening the muscles and expanding the lungs.” (from “Breathing Exercises for Cardiac Patients: Resistance Training for the Lungs“)

How to Do It: Try sort of scrunching up your nose to partially close off the airways and breathing in with force. Then purse your lips and push the air out forcefully, making a kind of squeaking noise. Breathe in with nostril resistance for 4 counts and breathe out through tightly pursed lips for 8 counts.

Add this exercise to your warm-up, cool-down that we talked about earlier. The warm-up, cool-down session should now look like this:

Warm-up:

• Do 5 minutes breathing in for 4 counts and out for 8 walking painfully slowly
• Do up to 1 minute of panting, and 4 minutes of resistance breathing – in for 4 counts, out for 8

Cool-Down:

• Do up to 1 minute of panting, and 4 minutes of resistance breathing – in for 4 counts, out for 8
• and 5 minutes of breathing in for 8 beats and out for 4 walking painfully slowly again.

And that’s it for today!

Happy Walking!

Darlene

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I’m just guessing, but if you’re anything like me, your day-to-day can be quite stressful if you’re not careful. Managing stress is a HUGE part of being healthy. It’s amazing how many systems of the body are negatively affected by stress.

But what can we do about it in our busy day?

One of the best ways to combat stress is through mediation. Now that can be a hot topic for some, but I’m talking about simple kinds of relaxation meditations. Moments of calm throughout your day when you purposefully slow your breathing, your heart rate, and your overactive mind.

Here’s how you can do it:

Whenever you find yourself waiting – like at a traffic light, in a waiting room, or in the checkout line – instead of fretting impatiently, just tune your mind into your breathing, and simply listen to what’s going on around you. Don’t judge or try to understand, just hear, acknowledge and focus on breathing and listening.

You can also use this time to tune in with God and ask Him if there’s anything He’d like to say to you. Perhaps you’d like to use the “anchor phrase” from 1 Samuel 3:9 & 10 “Speak Lord, your servant is listening”.

Sure beats shouting at the kids, getting nasty with the cashier, or releasing that migraine that’s just waiting to happen.

What are some ways you combat stress during the day? Share your comments below!

Did you like this post? Please share it – I’d be grateful.

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Who is Darlene Hull? Click here: www.darlenehull.com to find out!

When was the last time you took a deep breath?  One that totally filled your lungs from the base of your abdomen, wide out to expand your rib cage, and right up to your chin?  In our current society where we spend much of our day hunched over computers and desks, deep breathing is a rare thing, indeed.  Deep breathing helps you control stress, improve energy levels, clear your mind, and even heal disease.  It can also help you lose weight!  Check out this quote from “One Minute Cure”

The human body is composed of 70%-80% water—and water is 89% oxygen by weight. Therefore, oxygen comprises 62% to 71% of the body, and is the body’s most abundant and essential element. Ninety (90%) percent of all our biological energy comes from oxygen. It is the essential element that the human body needs in order to not only survive, but also have optimum levels of energy, function properly and become more productive.
Consider, for instance, that humans can survive for weeks and even months without food, and live for many days without water. But we cannot survive more than a few minutes without oxygen.  It is surprising, therefore, that people find it hard to believe that the very element, which is required by all humans in order to live is also the secret to keeping us disease-free. Medical professionals, in particular, would find the notion of curing virtually all diseases with oxygen rather simplistic, or even lacking merit.
The curious thing is that oxygen is already used in medicine. Oxygen supplementation has been used to ease health conditions, such as emphysema and pneumonia that impair the body’s ability to have a sufficient intake of gaseous oxygen. Hyperbaric (high-pressure) oxygen has been used to treat carbon monoxide poisoning, gas gangrene and decompression sickness, as well as increase athletic performance! Oxygen has also been used for life support situations and on patients who require mechanical ventilation. Patients on their deathbed who are given extra doses of oxygen are often kept alive long after they would otherwise have died.
However, because oxygen has seldom been used in the medical setting as a first line of defense for preventing, let alone “curing” diseases, it has never been accorded its rightful place as the cure for virtually all diseases.  The world of science and medicine has always known that oxygen is the basis of human life, without which humans die. This fundamental truth has become so overlaid with centuries’ worth of extraneous matter that its essence has become completely obscured by the ‘Tower of Babel’ created by the field of medicine.

This is a fascinating e-book, as it teaches you how to use oxygen to heal and restore – even things as serious as cancer and AIDS. I recommend you take a read. Click the book cover to get a copy! If you chose not to read it, at least take a couple of huge, deep breaths before going back to what you were doing before you began to read this post!

Happy walking!

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Who is Darlene Hull? Click here: www.darlenehull.com to find out!

We’ve been dealing with breathing this week, and we’ve looked at it from a few different angles.

Today I want to introduce you to a very cool book that deals with breathing and weight loss, called “Jumpstart Your Metabolism: How To Lose Weight By Changing The Way You Breathe”

First of all, the book is hilarious. Pam Grout has a great sense of fun and humour, and her book is a very easy read. She brings in some pretty amazing case studies and facts, like this one:

People discovered if they would bounce, jump, twist, and run until they were panting like a lap dog they could lose weight. But what they failed to realize was that it was the extra oxygen that really did the work. Sure, the extra muscles helped. Lean muscle burns through fat a whole lot faster than flab. But the bottom line to their success was they transformed their bodies from being fat producers to being energy producers. And it was the extra air – not the exercise – that did it” (page 67)

Cool, eh?

Here’s what she says on her website about the book:

Oxygen is the big kahuna!

Breathing is the key to warming and waking up your metabolism.
When you don’t give your body enough oxygen (and 90 percent of us don’t), your cells have no choice but to store fat.

It’s ironic that we count calories, tally fat grams and then completely ignore the amount of oxygen we consume. Yet, scientists have proved that by increasing the amount of oxygen per breath, the body can better burn hydrogen, the chief culprit of excess fat.

Oxygen is the key–will always be the key–that unlocks your metabolic rate.

Shedding unwanted pounds is as simple as learning to breathe differently

Permanent weight loss is not about counting calories or fat grams. It’s about changing the way your body burns fat. It’s about altering your cellular chemistry. If you follow the breathing exercises in this book, you can change your cellular structure at a very deep level. Which means you won’t ever have to worry about fat grams again.

So, there you have it. Go back to my earlier post on how to breathe, and get started. Better yet, get Pam’s book because she has 13 “energy cocktails” in there that will help you breathe better, and feel better all around.

Darlene

Don’t forget to pick up your FREE COPY of the PraiseWalker Primer! And also, please check out my Christmas challenge here!

There is a wonderful ancient practice called “Breath Prayer”.

My non-liturgical, “good-ol’ traditional Baptist” upbringing never introduced me to such a thing, but joining an Anglican Church in France when we lived there, opened my eyes to the beauty of liturgy, and started my journey down the path of memorized prayer.

I’ll spend more time on the whole idea of memorized prayer in a later post, but for today, let’s look at this idea of “Breath Prayer”.

There is an excellent definition – and step-by-step description – of Breath Prayer on the “Heartlight” website.

It’s a wonderful way of praying when you’re anxious, feeling stressed, confused, or need to move from where you are to a deeper awareness of God’s presence.

Before you panic, this form of prayer should not replace extemporaneous (or spontaneous) prayer.  It is simply a tool to place in your prayer toolkit, and should be considered as a form of Christian Meditation.

Personally, I love to exercise breath prayer when I’m waiting in line, sitting at traffic lights, or doing housework.  It keeps my mind focused on God, drawing strength from Him, and keeping my heart at peace.  Breath prayer, for me, often leads to extemporaneous prayer, and deepens my prayer life.

For some ideas on ways to use breath prayer, and some suggestions of scripture that you can focus on,  see this site: Christian Soul Care

Darlene

Don’t forget to pick up your FREE COPY of the PraiseWalker Primer! And also, please check out my Christmas challenge here!

When was the last time you took a deep breath?  Did you know that breathing well – filling and emptying your lungs completely on a regular basis – is one of the best foundations for health?

Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP, in her article: Deep breathing — the truly essential exercise, says:

I have noticed that a surprising number of my patients show irregularly high levels of carbon dioxide in their blood. Interestingly, the carbon dioxide level is often abnormal when all the others tests of the blood are fine. In fact, I probably see more abnormal tests for carbon dioxide than for standard glucose, kidney or liver tests.

While this is not life threatening, it does tell me that my patient is not inhaling enough oxygen or exhaling enough carbon dioxide, which can have consequences such as fatigue, mental fog and decreased tissue function. I often note “needs to breathe” on a patient’s chart. Not the shallow chest breathing many of us default into, but deep, meaningful breaths, or “belly breathing.”

I did some research on the web, and here are the benefits I found that come from good breathing:

1. Stress management
2. Relaxation
3. Helps manage eating disorders
4. Weight loss
5. Purifies the bloodstream
6. Increases energy by increasing the hormone Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP)
7. Slows aging
8. Improved mental ability
9. Improves digestion
10. Rejuvenates the glands of the body
11. Feeds the skin so it glows and looks younger
12. Massages internal organs so they perform better
13. Reduces stress on the heart
14. Lowers blood pressure
15. Relaxes the muscles
16. Burns fat
17. Releases endorphins (“Happy Hormones”)
18. Reduces asthma
19. Reduces insomnia
20. Reduces water retension

Most of us use only 20% of our lung capacity. You can take a Breathing Test here to see how you measure up. It takes about 10 minutes to do, and you get some pretty detailed results that will help you increase your overall wellness. Pretty cool.

Simple breathing exercises done daily will vastly improve your capacity. But how do you breathe correctly? Here are the steps taken from: Breathing Techniques

Although this exercise can be practiced in a variety of poses, the following is recommended for beginners:

• Lie down on a blanket or rug on the floor. Bend your knees and move your feet about eight inches apart, with your toes turned outward slightly. Make sure your spine is straight.
• Place one hand on your abdomen and one hand on your chest.
• Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose into your abdomen to push up your hand as much as feels comfortable. Your chest should move only a little and only with your abdomen.
• Continue step three until it becomes rhythmic and comfortable. Now smile slightly, inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth, making a quiet, breezy sound as you gently blow out. Your mouth, tongue and jaw will be relaxed.
• Take long, slow, deep breaths raising and lowering your abdomen. Hear the sound and feel the texture of breathing as you become more and more relaxed.
• When you first begin this technique, do it for five minutes. When you become more comfortable with it, you may extend it up to 20 minutes.
• Upon ending a session, stay still for a few minutes and try to keep the entire body relaxed.

The purpose of this technique is to develop a good, relaxing breathing method. It may be practiced anytime, especially during stressful situations.

And there you have it! A quick primer on breathing. Before you leave, take a few deep breaths and see how it makes you feel!

Darlene

Don’t forget to pick up your FREE COPY of the PraiseWalker Primer! And also, please check out my Christmas challenge here!