EducatingWellness

You’ve heard me speak of the importance of setting goals.  The only issue to understand now is how to get yourself motivated enough to set them and continue to achieve them!  What better time than the start of the new year.  The motivation behind your goals, in my opinion, is the most important factor in determining how successful you are at achieving them.  It is the driving force that keeps us on our path when we reach stumbling blocks and failures.

These little bumps in the road are inevitable.  It’s how we handle them and use our motivating factors that separates those of us that succeed from those that give up.  Motivation levels will also change each day depending upon how you feel or how you experience certain situations.  Weight loss motivation can sometimes be particularly challenging because although you may understand that weight loss, to be permanent, is a slow process, in this fast paced world we all want that ideal size NOW.  Since the number one new year’s resolution has a fitness or weight loss connotation, we will focus our attention on that today.

There is actually a reason why most people start a new diet or exercise plan

Seriously?  Is that really possible?  Let me put it to you this way, if all you did was breathing exercises to enhance your metabolism, your weight loss goals would escape you.  However, adding these exercises to a clean diet and exercise program will tremendously increase your results.

Breath work itself constitutes many different forms of breathing alterations.  Fast inhale/exhale (hyperventilation), when used during a meditative but conscious state is one example.  This can be done with movement as well, such as with Tai Chi and Qigong.  There are supposedly many psychological and physical benefits to different breathing exercises.  Our purpose today is skyrocketing that metabolism, so let’s get started.

1. Learn your breath:  Take a deep breath in-yes, right now, do it.  Observe what just happened.  Did your chest rise and rib cage expand?  If so, you are not breathing properly, and probably have been breathing improperly for most of your life.  This is a body stress type of breathing.  Try again.  Take a nice long deep breath and allow your abdomen to expand.  This is also known as belly breathing.  When your lungs inflate, they push down on your breathing muscle (diaphragm).  This push on your abdominal organs causes them to