#1 Hug yourself with no hands w/breath! : Sounds too good to be true...But it's both too good and true! Because of the stresses of our lives sometimes it freezes our diaphragm (breathing muscle) and it should in fact move on its own! Of course it doesn't so easily in the battlefields of our life so just by taking a few moments throughout your day to make deep, slow focused inhales & exhales in and out of your stomach: feel your breath fill & empty from your pelvic floor (underneath belly button in & out) you will notice a hug like feeling over your whole body to relieve stress, brain speed, and muscle tightness. Just by breathing into this part of the stomach automatically turns on the chill switch (rest & digest) of the nervous system.
#2 More water & better nutrition: Good health or any good habits for that matter are ALL about winning the little battles! Obviously we know we all need to do this. But ICE CREAM IS SO GOOD! I think the best way to achieve better nutrition and more water is just each day trying to pay attention to nutritional labels and avoiding them if they have too many big words... or too many different versions of sugar. Obviously we aren't going to explode eating sugar but some products have sugar that really don't need sugar and only do so to make up for lack of quality ingredients like tomato sauce for spaghetti -- Get quality sauce and the natural fructose in the nutrient dense tomatoes will be sweet enough for you. With water - I found best way to get sufficient water, is drink a liter FIRST THING in the morning! Waters electric and it will electrify your cells and jump start the whole body system!Then throughout the day just under 4 liters for men and 3 liters for woman is daily recommendation [Mayo Clinic].
#3 Foam roller: One of my favorite ways to give myself a free massage is a foam roller usually at all gyms if not $10-30 online. Roll slowly up and down spine and legs and even pectorals and arms while breathing into the pain/tightness and maneuvering body slowly to get those are to reach areas. Getting creative on that and moving your limbs around SLOWLY will bring you amazing relief after exhausting days or pain is increasing just to hold you over until a massage! ;)
#4 Day-to-day posture awareness: Making sure you work towards a straight upright spine. Gravity and the weight of our head when not straight above our hips takes a big toll on our whole system. Paying attention at what you do mostly day to day, and then doing the opposite to remain balance; for example sitting a lot for work, find ways to extend your hips forward since in a sitting position you'd be doing the opposite... or sleeping on your right shoulder, switch to your left --- and for side sleepers like me occasionally use pillow in between your legs to align hips and another pillow hugging it to try and keep shoulders square instead of crunched!
#5 Regular massage: Ever opened an orange?? Of course!!! at least we would hope...if not divert back to #2... And notice in that orange the white strings that go all throughout it?? And even connect to a thicker white strand in the middle that connect to the skin!?!? There is something called fascia in the body and it is exactly the same concept. It flows all throughout our body; even around strands of muscles, and groups of strands and then to and around bones and connects all the way to our skin. It becomes entangled very easily like cellophane so massage can and will untangle the fascia holding patterns in your body and make physical movement easier and guess what that means -- saving energy from working harder to be out of balance and thennnn that extra energy for you to use!!!
