Laughter, Meditation, Yoga, and Affirmations (videos)

This week the Choose You Blog is focusing on the topic of relieving stress and finding peace. My contribution to this cause comes from several different posts I’ve done over the past few years.

These are posts I’ve done on the many different ways we can reduce stress in our lives.

Did you know laughing is good for reducing stress?

Smile and Laugh Your Way to Better Health…

Diet and exercise are important for good health, but did you know laughter is too? If you want to be as healthy as you can be, than laughter needs to be part of your healthy living regimen. Is it?

Here are some of the Health Benefits of Laughter:

• Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases infection fighting antibodies. It increases our attentiveness, heart rate, and pulse.
• People who laugh heartily on a regular basis have lower standing blood pressure than the average person. When people have a good laugh, initially the blood pressure increases, but then it decreases to levels below normal. Breathing then becomes deeper which sends oxygen enriched blood and nutrients throughout the body.
• Laughter, along with an active sense of humor, may help protect you against a heart attack, according to the study at the University of Maryland Medical Center (cited above). The study, which is the first to indicate that laughter may help prevent heart disease, found that people with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations compared to people of the same age without heart disease.

Here is a post about acceptance, gratitude, and positive affirmations — 3 Tips For Reducing the Stress of Daily Life

Is stress wearing you down? Are you worried about the bad economy? Your job? The mortgage? Your health? Your family? If so, you are not alone.

Life is always changing, and that can feel very stressful. But often, seemingly bad things will happen in our lives, that will actually turn out to be the catalysts to something positive. It’s very true that when one door closes another will open. Although it never feels so great when that one door closes. Recently I’ve had several doors close on me. But as hard as it’s been, I can already see that these things needed to happen to bring me closer to where I am meant to be.

There are three things we can do to help relieve stress in our lives…

[Read full post and see videos — 3 Tips For Reducing the Stress of Daily Life.]

This is from a post I did on meditation – Stress Reduction in Six Minutes…

Are you stressed out? Even a small amount of stress can have negative effects on your overall health and well-being. Can you spare six minutes of your time to reduce some of that stress? If so, give this a try.

Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for the next six minutes.

COLORFUL MEDITATION – For meditation and stress reduction try this 6 minutes of continuous highly complex computer generated kaleidoscopic imagery with an original New Age ambient music soundtrack.

Here is a post I did about using yoga to reduce stress — Yoga Can Reduce Stress & Curb Emotional Eating…

Did you ever want to give yoga a try, but it seemed like too much of a commitment? Well if you’re like me, and you’re a bit of an emotional eater, learning a couple of yoga poses may be just what you need. Yoga can help you focus on what your body needs, reduce stress, and curb your emotional eating.

Here is a pose you can do in less than two minutes, it’s called Downward Facing Dog. Give it a try for a couple of days and see if you notice a difference.

And, just in case you’re wondering…I’m still doing good with my commitment to not eat sugar and other junk foods. I haven’t lost any weight yet, but I am feeling pretty good.

You can see my Choose You posts chronicling my food commitment here.

Have a great week!

🙂