So how exactly do stress and anxiety interfere with your sleep? Stress and anxiety might be causing you to get less sleep, more restful sleep, or make it hard to fall asleep at all. Plus, not only does stress and anxiety make getting a good night’s sleep hard, but they can also worsen existing sleep conditions. Here are some of the ways stress interferes with your sleep, and what to do about it.

Your mind never stops racing

If you’re stressed about something in your day, these thoughts will undoubtedly bombard you right as your head hits the pillow. You can’t help but run through tomorrow’s to-do list, think about what you could have done differently in that meeting at work, or think about that impending due date that is hanging over your head.

You wake up a lot during the night

Stress may make it harder to fall asleep in the first place, and it also makes it harder to get a restful night’s sleep. According to the Anxiety and Depression Foundation of America, seven out of ten adults with persistent stress or excessive anxiety say they have trouble sleeping. In addition, the average American only gets 6.6 hours of sleep a night, which is down from the average in 2005 and less than the recommended 7 – 8 hours of sleep.

So what can you do if stress and anxiety are plaguing your sleep? Here are a few helpful tips to hopefully get you snoozing.

How to ease your stress and anxiety to sleep better

Set aside the time

Too often, we’re busy living our lives, getting dinner cooked, doing a little work, or taking care of the kids and the clock quickly reaches 11 pm or midnight. We know we have to get up early the next day, so our sleep quickly diminished. To avoid this problem, set aside time at night to start getting ready for bed and winding down. You can set a reminder on your phone an hour or so before you want to be in bed to remind yourself. Stay accountable with your schedule and set aside the time for a solid night of sleep.

Turn off the screens

Experts agree that using your phone or computer or watching TV right before bed is one of the worst things you can do for your sleep. These screens emit blue light, which disrupts the part of our brain that’s responsible for winding us down for sleep. Make a promise to yourself that you’ll turn off all screens an hour before bedtime. You can read, draw, or listen to music instead! [Also read Computer vision syndrome: Strained sight]

Try meditation

Especially for people who suffer from stress and anxiety, meditation is a great tool to help you sleep better. Your meditation practice doesn’t have to be an extensive, involved, process, but it could be as simple as spending 10 or 20 minutes before bed doing breathing exercises and relaxing. Meditation lowers your heart rate, helps clear your mind, and tells your body that it’s time for bed. Being mindful and in the moment is a skill that translates outside of sleep, as well!

Start exercising

According to the Sleep Foundation, “regular exercisers fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. In fact, even a single moderate-intensity workout, like a brisk walk, can improve sleep among people with chronic insomnia.” This is likely because exercise triggers an increase in body temperature, decreases symptoms of depression and anxiety, and improves our circadian rhythms (or internal clock). Plus, your body will be much more tired after a long workout, and you can’t help but hit the hay!

Stress and anxiety may interfere with your sleep, but there are many things you can do to counteract these symptoms. If you think you have a more serious sleeping condition, talk to your doctor.

The post How Stress and Anxiety Interfere With Sleep appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Now, new research published in the journal Psychological Science has shown that becoming happy improves your health. The researchers employed tactics that were specifically designed to boost subjective wellbeing. The study found that both online and in-person psychological interventions have positive effects on self-reported physical health. What’s more, there was no difference between the impact of online and in-person interventions—they were found to be equally effective.

“Though prior studies have shown that happier people tend to have better cardiovascular health and immune-system responses than their less happy counterparts,” said Kostadin Kushlev, a professor in Georgetown University’s Department of Psychology and one of the authors of the paper, “our research is one of the first randomised controlled trials to suggest that increasing the psychological wellbeing even of generally healthy adults can have benefits to their physical health.”

Kushlev and his colleagues at the University of Virginia and the University of British Columbia spent six months examining the impact of improving the subjective wellbeing of otherwise healthy individuals on their physical health.

How the study was conducted

155 adults between the ages of 25 and 75 were randomly assigned either to a wait-list control condition or a 12-week positive psychological intervention that addressed three different sources of happiness: the “Core Self,” the “Experiential Self,” and the “Social Self.”

The first three weeks of the programme focused on the Core Self, helping individuals identify their personal values, strengths, and goals. Then, for the next five weeks, the focus shifted to the Experiential Self, covering emotion regulation and mindfulness. This phase also gave participants tools to identify maladaptive patterns of thinking. The final four weeks of the programme addressed the Social Self, teaching techniques to cultivate gratitude, foster positive social interactions, and engage more with their community.

Called Enduring Happiness and Continued Self-Enhancement (ENHANCE), the programme consisted of weekly modules either led by a trained clinician or completed individually using a customised online platform. None of the modules focused on promoting physical health or health behaviours such as sleep, exercise, or diet.

Each module featured an hour-long lesson with information and exercises; a weekly writing assignment, such as journaling; and an active behavioural component, such as guided meditation.

“All of the activities were evidence-based tools to increase subjective wellbeing,” Kushlev noted.

When the programme concluded, researchers gave participants individual evaluations and recommendations of which modules would be most effective at improving their happiness in the long term. Three months after the conclusion of the trial, researchers followed up with the participants to evaluate their wellbeing and health.

The finding: Becoming happy improves your health

Participants who received the intervention reported increasing levels of subjective wellbeing over the course of the 12-week programme. They also reported fewer sick days than control participants throughout the programme and three months after it ended.

The study found that the online mode of administering the programme was as effective as the in-person mode that trained facilitators led.

“These results speak to the potential of such interventions to be scaled in ways that reach more people in environments such as college campuses to help increase happiness and promote better mental health among students,” Kushlev said.

—Link to original research

The post Becoming happy improves your health appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Right now, there is no vaccine for COVID-19, although scientists and researchers are at work. But regardless of a vaccine, the best way to stay protected from the coronavirus—or any other disease-causing microbe for that matter—is to possess a strong immune system, which is nothing but your body’s intrinsic intelligence.

The good news is that you can strengthen your immune system by inculcating a few simple lifestyle habits.

5 healthy habits to build immunity

The five lifestyle habits listed below will protect you not only from disease-causing microbes such as coronavirus but will also help you reduce the risk of many other illnesses such as heart disease, blood pressure, diabetes and even cancer.

1. Hydrate (but not with colas!)

Did you know that having just two tablespoons of refined white sugar temporarily lowers your immune system? And a can of Coke contains as much as eight tablespoons of sugar. Your immune system will thank you for eliminating soft drinks from your diet.

But don’t just stop at that. You need to hydrate yourself and what better way to do that than zero-calorie water? The list of benefits of drinking water is long. Here are a few ways water helps keep your immune system in good shape:

• Water helps carry oxygen throughout the body — to organs, tissues, and blood cells. It pumps up bodily functions to full capacity making you feel and perform better physically.
• Water promotes adaptive immune response. It does so by helping your kidneys get rid of toxic foreign invaders from the body. Water also prevents toxin build-up which, in turn, boosts immune function.
• Water pushes bodily waste into the lymph nodes where lymphocytes destroy them, keeping them from impairing the immune function and causing life-threatening conditions.

So stay hydrated with water. Proactively incorporate the habit of keeping yourself hydrated throughout the day.

Three delicious drinks to improve your immunity with water

1. Lemonade: Vitamin-C helps boost immunity, fights infection and aids digestion
2. Black tea, freshly brewed: Tannins and alkylamines in tea help fight infection
3. Honey Water: Honey has antioxidant and antibacterial properties.

2. Oxygenate

About two-third of your body is oxygen. Oxygenated cells imply that your muscles and organs are working efficiently which, in turn, translates into superior immunity. Due to lack of sufficient oxygen, your lungs could be functioning sub-optimally making you more prone to infections. In fact, COVID-19 is known to affect your lungs. Your lungs bear the brunt of poor levels of oxygen, which is why respiratory infections including common cold, frequent headaches, itchy throat and symptoms of flu, are more common among young, urban professionals and people who are mostly indoors.

Here’s how fresh air keeps your immune system healthy:

• Fresh air helps your lung’s airways to dilate, releasing airborne toxins from your system
• The white blood cells that fight bacteria and other foreign invaders in your body need oxygen to function effectively; no wonder being in open spaces strengthens your immunity
• Oxygen is antiviral in nature; oxygen in blood helps reduce viral proliferation.

Easy ways to improve oxygen intake

1. Open doors: Open windows, doors and let in sunlight and fresh air as often you can
2. Take regular breaks at work: Allow yourself a few minutes of fresh air during work hours
3. Do deep diaphragmatic breathing: By helping your lungs to expand, it maximises your oxygen inhalation. It also switches off the fight/flight response and activates your body’s rest and repair mechanism for healing and recovery
4. Incorporate Pranayama in your daily schedule: It helps reduce stress and anxiety, which boosts the immune system
5. Place indoor and outdoor plants: Having plants in your home and workplace helps purify air

3. Move

“A body in motion shall keep moving longer
A body at rest shall rest in peace faster.”

Regular physical movement is key to good health. Just like healthy eating, exercise contributes to general good health and therefore to a healthy immune system.

Here are three ways how exercising can strengthen your immunity:

• Regular moderate exercise reduces the risk of infections as compared to a sedentary lifestyle
• Physical movement promotes good circulation, which allows the cells and substances of the immune system to move through the body freely and do their job efficiently.
• Moderate physical activity helps flush bacteria out of the lungs and airways (beneficial for COVID-19). This may reduce your chance of getting a cold, flu, or other illness.

4 ways to get sufficient exercise

1. 1. Yoga: Try Surya Namaskar — it is a great way to move your entire body and has many proven health benefits
   2. Walking or Running: Walking and running are among the best forms of cardio workout
   3. Home Workout: Without stepping out of your home, you could do skipping, trampoline jumping, and Tabata
   4. Resistance: Push ups, pull ups, squats, burpees, jumping jacks are great ways to use your body weight to strengthen your muscles and your immunity.

4. Nourish

What you eat decides whether you’re feeding the virus or your immune system. Food influences as much 70% of your immune system.

Checklist of dietary changes for boosting immunity

1. Eliminate: All types of processed food including meat, refined oils and dairy. Frozen and ready-to-cook foods are a strict no-no
2. Consume moderately: Fresh meat (cooked with bone), whole eggs, fresh curd and cow milk, healthy fats like ghee, coconut oil, olive oil and other healthy cold pressed oils. If you are a vegetarian or vegan, get good quality oils and protein from vegetable sources like nuts and seeds
3. Eat more: Fresh fruits and vegetables, sprouts, lentils and other veggies
4. Vitamin D3: Check your Vitamin-D3 levels for better immunity
5. Pre & Probiotic for Gut Health: Gut health is vital for a healthy immune system. Add foods rich in probiotics: rice kanji, fermented vegetables, homemade pickles, good quality yogurt. Also include prebiotics such as garlic, banana, apple cider vinegar, apples.
6. Include immune boosting foods: Ghee, cold pressed coconut oil, turmeric and black pepper combination, amla, garlic, ginger, onions, citrus fruits, dates, pumpkin, pumpkin seeds, cucumber, carrot, capsicum, celery, jowar, masoor and chana dal.
7. Eat home cooked food: Commercially prepared food contains many ingredients that can weaken your immunity

5. Sleep

Your body, and especially your brain, needs a good night’s sleep for healing and repair. Sleep is the elixir for our wellbeing because it is considered as an important modulator of our immune system.

Did you know? Sleeping less than five hours a day reduces your immunity by as much as 70%. Water, oxygen, exercise or good food are necessary but cannot compensate for the lack of sufficient sleep.

Fact: World Health Organization (WHO) regards working night shifts as a probable carcinogen (cancer causing) because it disrupts the body’s Circadian Rhythm.

Key points to remember about sleeping enough

1. Regularity: One cannot over-emphasise the importance of a regular sleep schedule. Going to bed and waking up at the same time each day is greatly beneficial to your wellbeing
2. Sleep Hygiene: Avoid looking at screens at least two hours prior to sleep; also avoid bright lights as your sleeping time approaches—use dim yellow light instead
3. Dinner gap: Maintain a gap of two or more hours between your last meal and going to bed
4. Duration: Most people need 7 – 8 hours of sleep to be refreshed; get a minimum of six hours
5. Calm the mind: Prepare your mind to relax before sleeping; try some gratitude exercises or a sleep meditation
6. Environment: Make sure your room is cool, dark and comfortable

Remember, the best way to deal with the current crisis is to stay calm but cautious.

The post 5 healthy habits to build immunity against infections like coronavirus appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

• 56 hours: in bed
• 40 hours: at work, e.g. in front of a computer or sitting in meetings
• 7.5 hours: travelling into work by car, or sitting or standing on the train, bus or Tube
• 10 hours: sitting down when eating
• 7 hours: watching TV or reading
• 8.5 hours: socialising with friends [often sitting]
• 14 hours: cooking, washing, brushing teeth, showering and personal admin.

That’s a grand total of 143 hours of little or no movement per week. We only have 168 hours in a week, so that’s 85% of our week without movement.  It is challenging to make changes to these 143 hours, so it’s what we do with the rest of our time that is particularly important.

Three golden rules of exercising

1. Movement = energy. Aim to fill as much of your life with movement as possible.
2. Be consistent. As the saying goes, if you don’t use it, you lose it. If you exercise 3 – 4 times per week for three months and then miss a month, most of your health and fitness gains will be lost because you’ve stopped.
3. Find exercise that you enjoy and that fits your lifestyle, this will increase your chance of being a consistent exerciser.

The three key types of exercise

1. Resistance
2. Cardiovascular
3. Stretching.

Each gives your body unique benefits. A good exercise programme should ideally incorporate all three elements in the same workout; they can also be separated into different workouts; however, it is good to include stretching at the end of all workouts.

The benefits of resistance exercise

1. This can be with free weights, machine weights or your own body weight.
2. Increases your metabolism, i.e. you burn more calories each day [even when you’re sitting still!]
3. Helps you to achieve the weight you want
4. Builds and/or tones your muscles, improving confidence
5. Improves your posture
6. Strengthens your bones, reducing the risk of osteoporosis
7. Makes everyday activities easier and makes you less prone to back problems and other injuries.

The benefits of cardiovascular exercise

1. Releases endorphins, the feel-good chemicals—so you feel happy
2. Improves your energy levels and gives you more stamina each day
3. Improves your overall health, especially that of your heart and lungs
4. Increases your metabolism [i.e. you burn more calories each day]
5. Strengthens your immune system, so you’re less likely to get ill
6. Reduces the risk of diseases such as cancer and heart disease
7. Helps you to maintain a healthy weight
8. Improves quality of sleep
9. Increases blood flow, which improves the appearance of the skin.

The benefits of stretching exercise

1. Improves your balance, co-ordination and mobility
2. Reduces muscle tension and helps to prevent injuries
3. Improves flexibility, mobility and posture
4. Stimulates blood circulation and improves energy levels
5. Improves physical performance in sports and general exercise
6. Helps to relax, re-energise and balance mind and body

Examples of resistance, cardiovascular and stretching exercise

Resistance exercises

An all-body resistance-based workout could last for as little as 20 minutes and it could be done just twice a week in order to see improvements. That’s just 40 minutes per week to get all the great benefits of resistance training—anything more is a bonus. You could try to:

• take a resistance-based exercise class, e.g. body pump
• get a personal trainer to write you a home-based resistance programme or look one up online
• take part in a military fitness class or an outdoor boot camp circuit class
• use resistance bands [when you buy them they come with examples of exercises]
• join a gym and get a resistance programme from a gym instructor or personal trainer.

Cardiovascular exercises

Ideally, a cardiovascular-based workout should be done three times a week. It doesn’t need to be for long: 20 – 30 minutes at a time is a great place to start. That’s just 1 hour a week to start seeing the benefits! You could try:

• cardio-based exercise classes, such as Zumba, body attack, cardio kick-boxing and aerobics
• a cardio-based exercise DVD
• sports that involve cardio, e.g. cycling, swimming, skipping, running, football, netball and power-walking
• looking up a cardio-based fitness programme online, which you can do outside of a gym
• joining a military fitness class or outdoor boot camp circuit class
• joining a gym and get a cardio-based programme from a gym instructor or personal trainer.

Stretching exercises

An all-body stretching workout could last for as little as 10 – 20 minutes and you could start by doing this twice a week: that’s just 20 – 40 minutes per week to start seeing great benefits. Stretches can be done throughout a cardiovascular or resistance workout, in-between exercises or at the end of your workout. You could try:

• going to yoga or Pilates classes, or getting personal yoga or Pilates sessions at home
• a stretching exercise DVD or Wi Fit, or follow a yoga book or DVD
• searching online [there are hundreds of stretching videos to choose from]
• asking a personal trainer or yoga instructor to write you a home-based stretching programme.

One final point to mention is that there are big benefits for your overall health in combining all three elements of exercising in the same workout [e.g. some cardiovascular exercise, some resistance exercise and some stretching]. This is also a great use of time and will leave you feeling completely energised.

The post How to Exercise: Your Ultimate Guide appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

“Strangely, I wake up much earlier whenever I‘m away from home. I always feel inspired after a productive trip and think that I’m going to be a ‘new me’ when I get home and wake up every day at the crack of dawn, but I inevitably go back to my old ways within a week.” — Jing Wei, Illustrator

Here are tips to consider when traveling and staying in a different environment

Working out of a hotel room can make you more productive

This is especially true if you’re traveling alone, because when you work from a hotel room you eliminate all your at-home distractions. Andy Hayes, a premium tea seller, notes: “I find hotels to be a great place for quiet, mindful morning moments, as there is no temptation to clean out the refrigerator or reorganize my desk.”

If you want to add some familiarity to your morning routine in a hotel room without providing too much of a distraction, consider traveling with an electric kettle or blender so you can make your favorite drink without having to leave your room.

Do some smart scheduling ahead of time

Schedule your flights to make sure your morning routine is not disrupted. Or, if you know you sleep well on planes, schedule them so you travel overnight and land at your destination relatively early in the morning, so you can enjoy an active out-of-doors morning routine from the moment you disembark. If you know that you never tend to work well in different environments, you may choose not to travel at all when you’re in the middle of an important project, instead choosing to protect this time and ensuring that any travel is scheduled for afterward.

Make a plan and stick to it

This can be hard to implement on the fly once you wake up in your hotel room, so if you travel a lot it might be a good idea to keep a simple morning routine at all times. That way it won’t require much adaptation when you’re away from home.

“My schedule is dynamic, so I have to be prepared to adapt. I keep a suitcase packed with thin gym shoes and socks and workout stuff so I can weave that into my schedule when I travel. I’m pretty disciplined about sticking to it.” — Kevin Warren, chief commercial officer at Xerox

If you travel only occasionally and therefore want to keep a bulked-up home routine, think about what key habits from your morning routine you can still do on the road — meditation, yoga, or light stretching —and plan to include this in your routine when you’re away from home.

Don’t beat yourself up

Don’t beat yourself up about not perfectly following your morning routine [or even a shortened version of it] while on the road. Whether you’re staying in a hotel room alone, or sleeping on a friend’s couch, you may find that you’re just not as efficient away as you are at home. That’s okay.

“Routines are funny things. Following them causes a certain level of stress. Not following them causes a different level of stress. Either way, I’m never totally comfortable.” — Steven Heller, Former Art Director of the New York Times Book Review and Co-chair of SVA MFA Design Program 

The next time you’re planning a trip to stay with friends or relatives, remind yourself of Benjamin Franklin’s famous quip from Poor Richard’s Almanack: “Fish and visitors smell after three days.”

Get in and out of there as soon as possible, and abide by their morning routine while you‘re there. Writer Paul French puts this rather wonderfully: “Dawn can be an unforgiving hour to be cluttering around in someone else‘s home. I‘ll just do what I can without waking people or riling anyone’s cat.”

Reversals

There are a couple of instances on the road when you‘ll want to throw all notions of following your morning routine out the window in favor of enjoying the here and now. These are:

I. When traveling for important work meetings and events

2. When traveling for pleasure.

Regarding the first instance, many of the people we spoke with noted that when they are traveling for work, their wake-up time mostly depends on why they’re traveling in the first place. And so it should be, especially if you’re only away on business for a day or two, and the reason you’re away is especially important to your company or career. In this situation, take this time to work as hard as you can, sacrificing all but sleep.

When traveling for pleasure, just go with the flow. Unplug as much as possible on vacation. If you’re visiting family members [especially those you don’t see very often], enjoy the time you’re there with them instead of fretting over your morning routine falling by the wayside.

The post How to Maintain Your Morning Routine When Traveling appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Remember that the average office worker’s week is 85% inactive, so walk whenever and wherever possible (e.g. get off the train, bus, or Tube a couple of stops early to give yourself a good 30-minute walk to work three mornings a week and always take the stairs at work).

2. Find the exercise you love

Find something active you enjoy that fits your lifestyle and aim to do this 2–3 times per week. The golden rule with exercise is consistency—if you don’t like the exercise you have chosen and it doesn’t fit your lifestyle, you just won’t keep it up.

3. Morning exercise is best

Morning exercise is best for energy and burning calories, and people who exercise in the morning are always more consistent exercisers. Why? Because, more things can get in the way of your plans to exercise at lunchtime or in the evenings. So do 20–60 minutes of exercise at least three mornings per week—it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re moving.

4. A balanced exercise programme

Aim for a balanced exercise programme, combining resistance, cardiovascular and stretching exercise.

5. Having great energy makes exercise easier

Ensure you sleep well and follow good nutrition habits. This will ensure you have great energy for exercise; it will also aid your post-exercise recovery and maximise your results.

6. Challenge yourself

Exercise in your discomfort zone. This is not your comfort zone (e.g. sitting on a bike reading the newspaper), but nor is it your pain zone (e.g. pushing yourself so hard that it’s really painful).

7. Motivate yourself with a goal

Set yourself a health and fitness goal, making it as specific as possible and setting yourself a deadline for achieving it. Share your goal with someone—this will help you to stick to it.

Excerpted with permission from Energise You by Oliver Gray; Published by Jaico Books

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Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against fat people… as long as I don’t have to share a seat with them. They are usually a jolly good species and can devour buckets full of fried chicken minus the guilt pangs. An extra inch or two blends in harmoniously with their wide girth. The truth is, I secretly envy them. It’s me I have a problem with. You see, I was born with a manufacturing defect. I have wrists so thin that bangles slide down my arms like an avalanche in a hurry. Europe doesn’t make shoes my size. My dainty frame allows me no concession for extra kilos. And, to make it worse, that stupid gulab jamun I sometimes succumb to makes its way to my cheeks!

Imagine your embarrassment when a more than well-endowed aunt of yours sizes you up and says, “Aahh, P has become fat!” Secretly you are sputtering with rage and dying to bellow, “How dare you call me fat! When was the last time you checked yourself in the mirror, you stupid Cow!” With your appetite buried deep underground, you barely touch anything at the party, while your dear aunt’s face is strategically hidden behind the mountain of Biryani she’s gobbling.

I wrote these lines to justify my passionate love affair with fitness: Why my life seems incomplete if I don’t get to run on the treadmill; why everything seems pointless if I don’t raise my toes to the ceiling; why I think I might die if I miss even one day of my fitness regime. I have tumbled down the stairs and still gone for my morning walk. A bleeding knee, an aching back, a neck that scarcely moves—nothing discourages me from huffing and puffing.

My family insists that even if our house is on fire I will rush to the gym murmuring, “Darlings I will be back in 45, I’m sure you can manage till then!”

A bleeding knee, an aching back, a neck that scarcely moves—nothing discourages me from huffing and puffing

I wasn’t always a fitness fiend

Twenty years back, had someone gazed at the crystal ball and predicted that I will be a fitness fiend, I would have laughed at her face. Physical exercise and I could never see eye to eye. In school I made sure I bunked all my physical education classes. I played badminton just to shut my sports freak dad up. I was more into activities that did not disturb the rhythm of my assorted body parts—reading, music, yakking with friends. My brother would take care of my cardio. All I had to do was crack a joke at his expense and he would make me run all around the house. My mum’s eardrums would reverberate with my loud shrieks.

That girl who could demolish a box of chocolates in one sitting, the woman who had to have ice cream everyday during her pregnancy, is a stranger to me now.

Do I curse myself for favouring a healthier lifestyle? Not really, in fact I am quite proud of it. And it’s not as if I munch on carrots and seeds all through day and barf at the sight of ice creams. I still can’t live without my daily dark chocolate fix and binge on weekends.

Twenty years back, had someone gazed at the crystal ball and predicted that I will be a fitness fiend, I would have laughed at her face

I’m OK, you’re OK

What irks me is, when your close ones, who are well aware of your aversion to oil drenched delicacies, will still insist on plying you with it. Myths are woven around your so-called diet and you are projected as a fat-hating ninja. Dear God, now that you’ve had a pastry, will you be running for an hour on the treadmill! You smile even as you are trying to shove that sickeningly sweet cream in your mouth. Be damned if you do, be damned if you don’t.

And what I don’t understand is why certain people project their cholesterol loving and exercise shirking ways as an act of bravado. I am glad you can devour half a dozen bhature with chole for breakfast and still be alive and kicking. It’s great that exercise bores you and your idea of cardio is walking to the fridge to get yourself a beer. But don’t tch tch when I tell you I prefer yoghurt with fruits for breakfast and sigh in sympathy at my yoga-loving ways. I am old enough to decide what’s right for me and don’t need your unsolicited advice.

I fail to understand why most of us are so eager to project ourselves as the coolest and insist our way is the right way. Should your self-esteem always be at the cost of someone else’s sense of self-worth?

Yes, I suffer from guilt pangs when I reach out for another slice of brownie. I can’t remember the last time I had a samosa but I don’t miss it. But at least I don’t crib about my extra kilos as I tuck in yet another helping of aloo kachori. And don’t you worry, I will be the last one to call you fat. I don’t have the need to make you look bad to feel good about myself.

The post Yes, I’m a fitness freak and I’m not ashamed to say it appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

The main challenge that I find in treating injuries within this ‘gym-going’ population is that it is not a uniform group of individuals. People of every age group—from teenagers to seniors—and of every body type—slim, athletic, overweight or morbidly obese—go to the gym for a variety of workouts. It is therefore important to classify these people into a few categories:

• Senior citizens
• Weight-loss aspirants and fitness enthusiasts
• Muscle-building aspirants
• Eager beavers wanting to achieve quick results

While there is a lot of overlap between these categories, the last category of people is found in abundance. They join a gym a few weeks before a wedding or some other important event with the aim to ‘look good’, and it is this faction that is most prone to getting injured.

Senior citizens

People above 60 usually go to the gym to maintain and improve their cardiac fitness. They mainly do exercises like walking on motorised treadmills, cycling or elliptical cross trainers.

Injuries in this group

Senior citizens have a lot of age-related wear and tear in their joints and spine that already creates a strain when they workout.

• Knee pain, back pain and shoulder impingement are the commonest problems seen in this group.
• Knee pain is usually aggravated knee arthritis and responds well to a treatment of Rest, Ice application, Compression and Elevation [commonly known as RICE]. However, if your knee pain is accompanied by swelling, it may be a sign of cartilage tear in the knee.
• Similarly, back pain is most often just an arthritic spine that has been aggravated due to strenuous activity and responds well to rest and ice fomentation. However, if it is accompanied by radiating leg pain and the RICE treatment doesn’t produce relief, consult a medical professional.
• Shoulder impingement is another common problem, especially amongst people who train with weights. Overhead elevation of the affected arm during exercise becomes painful with this condition. RICE therapy is the best way to treat this and your weight training should be suspended during the therapy. If there is weakness in the shoulder or you have severe pain, see your doctor immediately as it may be a sign of a torn tendon in the shoulder.
• Pain due to degenerative arthritis tends to improve with an increase in activity. However on rare occasions it can get aggravated.

Weight-loss aspirants and fitness enthusiasts

Weight-loss and fitness fanatics also tend to focus on cardio-centric workouts. Some of these people also do other routines like aerobics, Pilates and spinning.

Injuries in this group

Foot and ankle injuries are fairly common amongst gym enthusiasts. Ankle sprains, shin splints, Achilles tendonitis and plantar fasciitis are frequently seen injuries.

• Ankle sprain is due to a torn ankle ligament. Low grade sprains are treated by RICE therapy and taping the ankle. If you have severe swelling and an inability to bear weight on the injured leg, you should seek medical attention to rule out a fracture.
• Shin splints are pain in the shins, which occurs post workout. It is usually found in runners. To heal this type of injury, you need to have your running technique evaluated, as it might require modification along with a reduction in the intensity of your training.
• Achilles or heel pain is result of inflammation of the tendon due to repetitive workouts like running or skipping. Modification of training and reduction in intensity with proper rehab exercises usually works well for this type of injury.
• Knee injuries are common too. Usually Patello-femoral joint pain syndrome is the main culprit for knee pain. In this condition, the pain subsides after modification of your training and rehab exercises. Red flags to watch out for are: swelling in the knees and instability while walking, as these may indicate a torn cartilage and need surgery.

Muscle-building aspirants

People that fall into this category want to look like Sylvester Stallone, so they have long workout sessions.

Injuries in this group

Besides all the injuries mentioned above, people in this group are also prone to muscular strains of the thigh, calf, triceps and shoulder tendonitis.

• Unsurprisingly, foot fractures stemming from people accidentally dropping weights on their feet are one of the commonest injuries in this third group. This is because people continue to exercise despite being tired.
• Due to an aggressive regime, fitness buffs end up pulling different groups of muscles and experience severe pain. If the initial RICE therapy doesn’t improve symptoms, you should go to a doctor as most of these injuries need supervised rehabilitation.
• Also, rupturing of tendons like the Achilles tendon and high-grade muscle tears are seen in some people, especially the ones who abuse anabolic steroids to gain muscle mass. These are major injuries, which require immediate medical attention.

Eager beavers

Finally, the group of eager beavers are prone to all the injuries mentioned above. They also have the highest incidence of new injuries.

Injuries in this group

• Stress fracture to the legs and feet are common injuries in this group; these happen due to excessive running or skipping.
• Signs of a stress fracture are pain while applying pressure on the affected area and swelling. A stress fracture requires urgent medical intervention but it can be treated with extended rest and rehab. However, severe cases may need surgery.

How to stay injury-free

Staying injury-free is obviously the best way to make the most of your workout. You can prevent acute injuries by simply being safety conscious. Follow exercise progressions in a logical way and work with experienced trainers rather than attempting to exercise on your own—this will reduce injuries to a minimum. Other strategies are:

• Know how to appropriately use the mats, trampolines and other equipment, before embarking on your workout
• Do not goof around with the equipment
• Don’t workout when you are fatigued.

Injuries can happen in spite of precautions; but with the advances in sports medicine no injury can put a dent on your active life.

This was first published in the November 2014 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Arjun comes into office, switches on his computer only to find 100 new emails waiting for him. As he sifts through the mound of mail, his annoying colleague Snehal stops by his desk to tell him how her daughter stood first in her school exams despite having chickenpox. When she finally decides to leave, he goes back to sorting his email when he remembers that he has a meeting with the company director in 10 minutes. He goes through his notes. Things seem to be in order and he heads off towards the boardroom. As he is about to enter the room, his assistant rushes up to him and informs him that the numbers that he was supposed to quote in his presentation are all wrong. Unfortunately for him, the director witnesses this exchange and berates him publicly for his incompetence. Does Arjun’s day sound much like yours?

At work, we often face stressful situations, dreaded projects, irritating co-workers, frustrating bosses, an overwhelming number of tasks and messages, boring work we don’t enjoy.

These problems have one simple cause: we’re holding on.

It’s not your work that is stressful

The work itself isn’t stressful—it’s just action that’s taken or that needs to be taken. It’s our reaction to the work that causes the stress: our holding on to a wish that things were different.

It’s not the constant stream of interruptions that is frustrating—they are just events that happen around us, like a leaf falling or a bird flying by. It’s our holding on, in our minds, to the task we were doing before we were interrupted that causes the frustration. We wish we weren’t interrupted from the task, and we resent anything that interrupts us while our minds are still half on the previous task.

Our co-workers and boss aren’t the problem either: they’re just other human beings trying to do the best they can in this world. It’s our holding on to the idea that they should somehow behave a certain way, that they should do their best to make us happy, that causes us anger and irritation.

It’s not that we have an overwhelming number of tasks and messages that causes us to be stressed out—it’s our reaction to that number. It’s just a list of things, or a phone ringing, or an inbox with a list of messages. Those things are harmless. But when we hold on to the idea that we can do everything, and that we have to deal with all this at once, we become stressed, because obviously we can’t. We can only do one thing, though our minds are on all of them.

So what’s the solution? It’s letting go.

This is the Zen of Work.

Learning to let go

When you let go of these ideas of how things should be, how other people should behave to make you happy, how you can do everything at once, then the problems go away. They simply don’t exist.

There are other problems, of course—you still need to do the work. But the frustrations, stress, anger, irritation, feelings of overwhelm… those are all caused by holding on, and they’re in our minds. We also hold on to things that happened earlier—something someone did that wasn’t nice, a meeting during which we said something embarrassing, a mistake we made on our project—and of course this only compounds the pain, keeps the pain replaying on an endless loop.

Letting go allows the problems to disappear.

It’s that simple, and yet letting go isn’t always easy.

It’s a learning process

First you have to learn mindfulness, which is the key to the whole shebang. Mindfulness allows us to see these thought processes that are causing us pain, allows us to delve into what we’re holding on to.

Mindfulness also helps us return to the moment, so that all those things running around in our heads can fade away, and we live in what’s actually happening, right now.

We do a task without holding on to other tasks, or offences made by other people. We do a task, and then let go of it, and move on to the next task.

This takes practice, and so I suggest starting with a simple practice, like five minutes of meditation, and working from there. Once you get good at this simple practice, you can expand mindfulness to other tasks. Eventually you’ll get pretty good at it, and you will notice that the problems will start to dissolve on their own.

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One of the biggest mistakes people make is to be too ambitious. Running five days a week may just not be possible. There are plenty of ‘experts’ out there insisting that anything less is not worth it, but these people tend to be fitness fanatics, who probably would consider themselves pathetic wimps if they don’t run miles every day. For the rest of us, we have to set a target that is realistic for us, not for someone else.

Being too hard on ourselves when we start backsliding can be counterproductive, too. After that first missed run, a kind of inner drama can spring into being, whereby part of us starts lecturing the other for being lazy, feckless, just like your Uncle Fred (and so on), while the other sticks up two fingers and says it’s all a waste of bloody [or something worse] time, anyway.

In my work as a coach I use [amongst other things] Eric Berne’s Parent / Adult / Child model. This reminds us that even as adults we still have parental ‘tapes’ running in our heads and childish mental states that we can still revert to.

When these two start getting at one another, it is time for the adult to quietly take over and work out a new solution. I actually get clients sitting down and getting one hand to represent the parent, the other the child. It sounds odd, and for people not used to personal development work, it feels odd—to start with. But once you get used to it, these two warring parts can soon calm down and allow a new solution to be negotiated.

There’s nearly always a compromise that will get the exercise routine back in action again. It might take on a slightly different form, but that’s fine. That Wednesday run just doesn’t work, and that’s an end to it. Your inner parent may regard any deviation from your initial Plan A as a slippery slope into decadence [and your inner child may respond ‘so what?’], but if your adult self has listened to these voices and then made a new decision, the voices will probably end up going along with it. The inner parent may even end up approving, and the inner child finding the runs quite fun.

Robbie Steinhouse is the founder of NLP School and author of various books, including How to Coach with NLP. He regularly runs courses on How to Coach with NLP, TA and Mindfulness—for details of the next one, please go to the NLP School site.

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