Cut Me In Half

By Kristina Von Rosenvinge

Are you living your life or drudging through your life? To live your life means that you are doing the things you have to do and also have room to enjoy your life. All people want to be happy and have their life have meaning. Yet many people are so stressed by the demands of daily living that life feels hard. These 7 tips are designed to help you regain control over your life.

1. Take Ownership of Your Attitude

We control our attitude. It is not something that is genetically or environmentally determined. We can choose to have a positive attitude about life. You can look at a glass as half full or half empty. The choice is yours.

2. Be Non-Judgmental

Let go of being critical of others. Open yourself up to not judging others. Try instead to listen and understand. As you open yourself up to not judging others you will be able to accept and enjoy yourself and others more.

3. Eliminate What You Are Tolerating

Tolerations are things we put up with that we do not really have to. We all tolerate more than we realize. Think about what you are tolerating. Just by becoming aware of and articulating some of your tolerations you will naturally start handling, eliminating, and fixing them.

4. Let go of Things That Do Not Matter

Much energy can be spent on being irritated and annoyed by things that really do not matter much. Put things in perspective and let go of a lot of it.

5. Become Incredibly Selfish About Who You Are

You need to matter to yourself. Establish boundaries with bother people so they do not take advantage of you. Love who you are. You are unique and special. Stop trying to be someone else.

6. Make Shifts That Reflect Who You Are

Your behavior has to be grounded in your values. Focus on what you want your life to be like rather than a specific behavior you want to change. For example: I will exercise regularly. Shift: I am someone who values my body and I will eat only healthy foods. When you make this shift you also will set up an exercise schedule and diet that reflects your values.

7. Have Fun in The Present

Take delight in life and create fun experiences for yourself. Life needs to be lived in the present and you might as well laugh and enjoy yourself.

For more tips and tools on self-improvement and enhancing your relationship please visit: http://www.kristinavonr.comArticle Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kristina_Von_Rosenvinge) by relationship expert Kristina von Rosenvinge.  (

By Richard Kuhns

Stress can literally be crippling which is why it’s important to know how to relieve stress. Here are just three actual case experiences demonstrating how emotional stress can affect one’s musculature in a crippling manner.

• On Joe’s way driving back from California to NJ he learned that the IRS would be auditing him. By the time he reached NJ his hands were clenched on the steering wheel and his leg muscles were so tight that he required crutches to walk.

• Jim was married to a very jealous woman who demanded a lot of attention and felt that he was a mama’s boy. Jim felt torn between his mother and his new wife and began experiencing eye twitches.

• Larry’s father was a demeaning controlling man. He came home one day to find that Larry hadn’t gotten around to straightening the garage as promised. He called Larry a “stupid shit,” and Larry’s stuttering which we had worked for two months to eliminate returned immediately.

• Tom’s wife left him after six years of marriage. There were many things he wanted to say to her in hopes of changing her mind, but she wouldn’t listen to him and he developed a lazy tongue resulting in speaking difficulties.

These examples demonstrate the power of stress over the body. In each case, an emotional stress led to excessive uncontrolled crippling muscle tension.

Stressors such as Joe’s that can stand in the way of getting things done such as the IRS create tension in the legs. Stressors that affect one’s self worth such as with Larry and Tom, create lazy tongue and or contribute to stuttering.

Stressors such as Jim’s where he felt torn between his mother and wife create muscle twitching.

It’s normal that with some of these reactions, such as with Joe’s crippling reaction, doctors run tests for MS as the symptoms are very painful and serious. Barring any disease, the solution is to take back control of one’s musculature.

This is done with a stress reliever exercise:
1. First by often dealing with self worth issues–learning how to build self worth in the midst of crisis.
2. Secondly to use specific stress management techniques for managing muscle tension.

a. Practice abdominal breath management techniques.

b. Selectively tense sequential groups of muscles daily keeping the rest of the body relaxed–takes approximately 20 minutes to do entire body as specified later in the stress coping exercise. Depending on severity of symptoms, this is done many times per day for the specific muscles affected.

c. Reminder each time that you tense/relax that you’d like to forget about it (it referring to the muscular reaction to stress)

The amazing thing was that Joe could walk absolutely normally for twenty minutes after he did the 20 minute tense/relax stress reliever exercise.

The coping with stress exercise goes like this.
a. Slowly tense a particular group of muscles keeping the rest of your body relaxed.
b. Cause it to become tense and hold that tension for a few seconds.
c. Slowly let the tension go as you breathe deeply.
d. Remind yourself that you prefer the relaxed feeling over the tense feeling.

A muscle sequence would go like this:
• Make a fist with your right hand.
• Then a fist with your left hand.
• Push you right hand into the arm of the chair to tense you forearm and upper arm.
• Repeat for the left arm.
• Lift your shoulders high to tense them leaving your arms just hanging loose.
• Push you head into the back of a chair to tense the neck.
• Scrunch your facial muscles.
• Tense your forehead.
• Arch your back.
• Take a Deep Breadth and hold it to tense your chest.
• Push out with your abdomen.
• Tense your buttocks.
• Tense your right and then left leg.
• Tense your right and then left foot.

This is a general relaxation that should take approximately twenty minutes. For specific muscle groups the muscles groups are refined to include only the affected muscles. For instance cds are available for handling general muscle tension, neck and shoulder tension, and for stuttering which focuses on muscles of the mouth and tongue on my website.

Usually a combination approach of dealing with the life crisis plus muscle relaxation exercises over the course of two to three months is all that’s required to gain a significant foot hold on the problem. And this is pretty good considering these problems often exits for years before starting this stress management technique.

Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E., NGH certified makes it easy to manage stress with muscle awareness training techniques. He is a is a prominent figure in the field of stress management and personal change. He is the author behind the best selling hypnosis self help cds and a specialist with panic attacks.  Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Richard_Kuhns

Posted by: Jim the review guy 

Public Health Forums is a health forum dedicated to reviewing all-natural products that treat conditions such as smoking and irritable bowel syndrome (they have a product called Bowltrol that is a major competitor with Colonix — if you’re never felt the benefits of colon cleansing, you don’t know what you’re missing). They also have some great products on Hair Loss, so defintely check them out when you get a chance!

By Mike Ryeman

It’s a common complaint, isn’t it? We feel stressed, so what do we do? We eat…and eat… Oh, the comfort! But then there’s the downside. The waistline expands. The thighs thicken. And the… Well, everything goes! Energy and health levels drop, so we feel more depressed. But you needn’t stay trapped in this vicious cycle. Just by making a few good choices, you can begin to feel much, much better. Here are a few ideas for a healthy diet for stress relief.

Blame Helps No-one!

Yes, you feel stressed and worried and anxious. So dieting is the last thing on your mind. It’s a fact that our bodies have not evolved in line with fast food distribution. We’re naturally attracted to high calorie foods because our ancestors never knew when the next sabre-toothed tiger was about to pounce. So they had to run… and run fast! But we don’t even walk as much as we used to. It’s so much easier to drive, isn’t it?

Another thing… Our ancestors used to work outside all day, hunting and tilling the fields. There was less stress and more exercise, and this ensured better food assimilation. They didn’t have to worry about taking a healthy diet for stress relief. So we need to retrain ourselves to adapt to foods that are more suited to our modern lifestyles and conditions. It just takes practice!

Two Essentials: More Water, More Fiber

Even if this is all you do, drink more water and consume more fiber! This will greatly aid any healthy diet for stress relief. Medical opinion is now aware that dehydration is the cause of many illnesses and conditions in Western society. Constipation and/or insufficient elimination affects the mood and emotions as well as the body. The answer is water and fiber! Fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains and pulses are excellent sources of fiber. And fruit juices are excellent sources of water for those who complain that water is ‘boring’. (But alcoholic drinks don’t count, as these tend to dehydrate the body.)

A Caffeine Fix

Many people seem unaware that caffeine also dehydrates the body - and that it is found not only in coffee, but in tea, many ’soft’ drinks and in chocolate. Cutting back here can go a long way in restoring your healthy diet for stress relief. But there’s no need to cut them out all at once. Simply make a determined effort to cut back gradually on your caffeine intake.

Results may not be noticed right away, but if you persevere you’ll soon feel - if not actually see - a difference. And this in itself will boost your confidence so that you can make other choices to bring about a more healthy diet for stress relief.

Interested in more highly-effective stress management tips? For the very best, visit Mike Ryeman’s website and make that big breakthrough today: http://www.stressreliefgold.com. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Ryeman

By Norman Hurst

If you are unfortunate enough to suffer from panic attacks, you will know that there are a wide variety of symptoms. All of them are distressing and can have a negative impact on how you live your life, maybe even causing you to be constantly worried about when your next panic attack will arrive.

By learning to control how you breathe, you can make a vast difference to your panic attacks and, given time and practice, you may even be able to stop them dead in their tracks.

Initially, it may not be easy to breathe into your panic attack. It is worth practicing these breathing exercises so that they will become a natural reaction for you.

Breathing exercises are a simple yet effective way to deal with your panic attacks.

Learning to breathe from the diaphragm

You need to learn how to breathe from your diaphragm. Once you’ve learned this method, you’ll find that it becomes second nature. Initially it may seem a slightly odd way to breathe. Stick with it and you’ll see some positive results quite fast.

Breathing from the diaphragm is actually the most natural method of breathing. You used it as a baby but, over time, you have learned other, less natural breathing methods. Now is the time to re-learn!

Place one hand on your abdomen (the part of your body that lies between your chest and your thigh) and the other hand on your chest. As you start to breathe, your chest should remain still and barely moving as you breathe in. Instead, your stomach should expand with the air you are breathing in.

Once you’ve taken a deep breath in, slowly start to exhale. Imagine that all the air leaves your body as you breathe out.

The aim of this technique is to slow down your breathing. After a few deep breaths, you should be taking around six breaths a minute. Probably quite a few less than the shallow breaths you are taking at the moment.

Your breathing rhythm should be slow and natural. There’s no need to rush. Your stomach should rise and fall smoothly. Although I suggested imagining that you are breathing all the air out of your body, keep that thought in your imagination. Don’t strain breathing in or out.

If you feel dizzy or light headed when practicing this new breathing method, just stop and relax. Once you are back to normal, start to practice again. Keep up the practice for a few minutes.

Congratulations! Now that you’ve learned this breathing technique, you can simply apply it whenever you feel the symptoms of a panic attack coming along. At the slightest hint of any of the symptoms, start to breathe from your diaphragm. This alone should reduce the risk of hyperventilating when you next suffer from a panic attack.

For more top tips for dealing with panic attacks and other simple ways to cope, check out this website  (Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Norman_Hurst)