Tips to Cope With Stress Through Yoga and Exercise
I AM SO STRESSED OUT! DO I NEED EXERCISE CLASS or YOGA?
Marquette, MI – Learn how to recognize signs from your body to know whether you should push yourself through vigorous exercise or chill out with a balancing yoga routine. Sometimes we need to run it out while other times we may need a more gentle approach, how do you know which is best? Mary Connor shares some tips to cope with stress through yoga and exercise and learning to listen to your body.
A typical yoga workoutis a great way to exercise the body without increasing stress to the mind and body after a challenging day. Exercises can always be modified for all levels and abilities. (photo by Canstockphoto)
Exercise is one of the 5 pillars of health. To stay healthy we need good exercise to keep the machine running, we need good clean non-processed foods, we need good restful sleep each night, we need to care for our minds relieving stress when needed, and finally stimulation for our spirits. Our modern world and modern conveniences have left most of us with a calorie overage on many days. We are not living the same lifestyle as our ancestors.
Depending on what Generation you are from there are various modern conveniences we use that leave us expending ONLY 1000-1500 calories in 24 hours. Not much when our mining and farming ancestors where expending 2500-4000 calories per day. Therefore moving the body will use more calories and keep our bodies strong, helping to keep the body’s systems working properly.
Exercise is considered stress on the body. We need a certain amount of stress in our lives to keep the mind and body strong. Excess stress that raises certain hormone levels such as cortisol and epinephrine are great; when running away from a bear, but not so good when they linger in the body after a long hard stressful day at work.
Exercise when done above the respiratory or lactate threshold will raise your cortisol levels. YES, you will burn more calories, you will give a stress response to your muscles so they will continue to stay at a fit level. You will also keep your metabolism running at a higher “RPM” to keep the calorie burning going. This exercise is good for the heart, and lungs, temporarily de-stresses the mind by releasing endorphins, and helps to maintain our body weight.
Now take that great spin, run, cycle, fitness class workout and put it on top of the “work day from hell”…
Picture this….. You wake up late, the dog has chewed up the clothing you plan to where to work. Summer construction on the chewed up roads begins in Marquette detouring you 2 miles and 4 stop lights out of your way, getting you to work 8 minutes late. The boss is ragging on you, no lunch break, or you eat at your desk working and lunch is a bag of chips and M&M’s from the vending machine. The computer is screwed up, and the phone never stops ringing, at last you get done for the day, late again, and run to the gym for your classic, KILLER SPIN CLASS class. You get home finally! Wolf down some leftovers just to get food inside, slightly dehydrated because of the busy day……….. And then you can not sleep because your still thinking about the “day from hell.”
This is the day you need to find some mind body fitness Or a great YOGA class. So find your local yoga class. And here are the reasons why.
A typical yoga class will allow you to settle in before the movement begins. You may do some breathing exercises to regulate your breath after a busy day. You will get the heart and lungs moving, but a rate below your respiratory and lactate threshold, which the heart and lungs needs and likes. The movements will stretch out any tense muscles and encourage you to hold a position that is great for strengthening muscles. This class warms you up slowly and then works you, cools you down and then final relation will allow the senses to shift down for a a few minutes to help get the cortisol out of the system. Conversely….
When the “day from hell” has your cortisol levels maxed out and you take a moment to see how you may be breathing, you would be described as a “panting dog” or “rabbit”. The more you breath into the upper lung, you keep pumping cortisol into your system. The body thinks it is still running from a bear.
When you go to yoga the instructor should be advising you to breath deeply into three parts of your lungs. The bigger, fuller, belly breath you take you begin to get receptors in the base of the lungs to stimulate and release, norepinephrine (the calming hormone) to be released in the body. This is what the body and mind needs when you have been on overdrive all day long. Staring at a computer screen all day can have the same effect as aggressive exercise by working your eyes all day long.
If we can learn to shut down and take some time and breaths for ourselves we can then enable the body to sleep and rest. But you say, “I have been sitting at a desk all day and need to move!”
Moving is good and helps to calm but keep the killer spin class for another day and give your body and mind a break. Instead try to calm and let all your senses rest.
Click here for more information on yoga classes at the Marquette Yoga Center.
Article about yoga, Mary Connor, and the Marquette Yoga Center
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