Breathing and Meditation Techniques

So far so good. We are being helped reading this good article from health.howstuffworks.com. We salute the Overseas Filipino Workers who are giving their best to contribute to the economic development of the country where they are working. Our prayer is that you come home financially stable with the view of starting a new life in our beloved country, the Philippines. You are positioned to generate enough financial resources. The next step is for you to be financially literate in order to manage and grow your resources with the view that you are going to be a successful entrepreneur someday.

This is the last of the article on stress.

If you pay attention, you'll notice that most of the time, we breathe with our chests. During times of stress, when our breath is short, we can relax and take in more oxygen if we breathe using our diaphragms, a muscle below our ribcage. When we do this, the chest takes in more blood, which is good for heart functions. Like other muscles, the diaphragm needs exercise to get strong. The American Medical Student Association offers these suggestions for practicing diaphragmatic breathing:

1. Place your hands on your chest and stomach.
 
2. Breathe in deeply through your nose. Make sure that the hand on your stomach rises and the hand on your chest doesn't.
3. Breathe out very slowly and then clench your abdomen muscles.
4. Repeat these steps four times [source:AMSA].

Although often practiced by people in religious orders,meditation can be a useful method to relieve stress regardless of one's beliefs. Here are a few different kinds of meditations that supposedly relieve stress:

• Finding a happy place: With this form of meditation, you use your imagination to escape and relax. Think of a place where you felt relaxed -- on a dock at the lake, in the hot sun at the beach or with your friends and family, for example. Try to imagine that place in the greatest detail possible, down to the sounds, smells and textures. When you take a few minutes to really immerse yourself in this meditation, it can serve as an excellent relaxation technique.

• Repeating a mantra: Many religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism, use mantras. A mantra is a repeated word or short phrase that serves as a relaxing prayer. For example, a Jewish mantra is "shalom," which means peace. But your mantra need not be religious. When our lives become busy, it can get harder to concentrate on one thing at a time without other thoughts popping into our heads. This is when mantras become useful to clear our minds.

• Mindfulness meditation: In this kind of meditation, commonly associated with Buddhism, you focus in on the present moment. To accomplish this, concentrate on your own breathing. Through practice, you can get better until calming your thoughts becomes easy.

Exercise and Muscle Relaxation

Great. Now where moving on. This guest post  from health.howstuffworks.com will help many of our Overseas Filipino Workers, who are hard working, faithful and reliable. They sacrifice to provide for their loved ones. They want their children to get the kind of education they haven't gotten because they know that a good education will set them up for a good life in the future.

You've heard it before: One of the most effective stress reducers is regular exercise. Evidence shows that those who are in good physical shape don't have as many problems with stress [source: University of Iowa]. Have you ever noticed that as you exercise your mind turns to upbeat thoughts? That's because exercise releases endorphins, chemicals that promote good moods and positive thinking. Exercise also provides a good physical outlet for releasing that energy that stress builds up inside of you. In addition, exercise increases blood flow to your brain, allowing it more oxygen, which has numerous advantages, including promoting clear thinking. Various kinds of exercise work to reduce stress, so you can take your pick. Walking, runningand playing sports all relieve stress. To get the stress-relief benefits, experts recommend setting aside a half hour a day for three days a week for exercise.

Massages can also significantly reduce stress by releasing tension in your muscles. Not only can a massage help with stress, but studies have shown that it can help boost your immune system, which may have been weakened during stress [source: MayoClinic]. Not all of us can fork over the money or the time for a professional massage. Luckily, there are a few methods of massage you can perform on yourself. You can give yourself an effective and stress-relieving massage on your hands, feet, face, arms, legs and shoulders. Gentle circular motions on your muscles for a few minutes at a time will help relieve their tension.

A physician named Edmund Jacobson invented a process in the early 20th century called progressive relaxation, which is proven to reduce stress. As with a self-massage, progressive muscle relaxation is something you can do all by yourself. Start with your head and work your way down to your feet, or do the opposite, as long as you generally go in one direction. If you start with your feet, focus on one foot at a time. Here are the steps:

1. Gradually tense the muscles in your foot until you are contracting your muscles tightly.
2. Keep the muscles contracted for about five or 10 seconds.
3. Relax your foot.
4. Pay attention to the release of pressure from the foot for a few seconds.
5. Repeat these steps on the other foot and then move your way up your body, focusing on different muscle areas at a time [source: Helpguide.org].

In addition to these techniques, changing the way we breathe and taking breaks to practice meditation can go a long way in helping us relax. On the next page, we'll take a look at deep breathing and how to find your "happy place."

Stay relax and healthy.