10 Easy Steps To Help Reduce Anxiety

The Bodyguard - Christine Barnes

Some symptoms of anxiety may be confused with depression and anxiety symptoms are endemic in depression and general mood disorders.

Possible Symptoms

Excessive worry, Restlessness, Fatigue, Concentration problems, Irritability, Tension or sleep disturbance, Trembling, Sweating,Panic & fear, Heart palpitations, Dizziness

Possible Causes

Depression, Underlying genetic predisposition, Environmental factors, Genetic inheritance, Abnormal Serotonin, Noradrenalin and GABA transmissions, Pre existing Psychology and/or Emotional issues, Stress, Alcohol abuse, Menopause, Adrenal exhaustion, Nutritional deficiencies, Over active Thyroid,

Recreational Drug Use, Hormonal Disruption, Compromised Fatty Acid Absorption.

Women are twice as likely to experience anxiety than men.

Foods to avoid

Alcohol, Excess Sugar,  Caffeine, Refined Carbohydrates.

Identifiable Food Allergies

Foods to Embrace

A health promoting diet rich in whole, natural unprocessed foods, especially high in plant foods; vegetables, whole grains, beans, seeds and nuts.

Small wild cold-water fish between 2 – 5 times per week.

Lifestyle to embrace

Massage, Aromatherapy, Exercis (Caution should be adopted if you are anxious and have repiratory or cardiovascular symptoms, as symptoms may be exacerbated with exercise and this in turn may increase anxiety.  In some people respiratory distress may also provike a panic attack), Calming Activities or Hobbies, Relaxation Therapy, Meditation,  Cognitive and/or Behavioural Therapy, Acupuncture

Lifestyle to avoid

Smoking 

And in Consultation with your Natural Medicine Practitioner consider:-

Botanical Medicines – Valerian, Kava, Passion flower, Lemon balm, Ginkgo, Skullcap, Californian poppy, Zizyphus, Withania, Rhodiola, Crataegus, Remotiv 

Homoeopathic Remedies - Aconite, Arg Nit, Phosphorus, Arsenicum, Gelsemium

Prescribed Practitioner Only Supplements - Magnesium. Selenium, Vitamin C, Thiamine (Vitamin B1)

Niacin (Vitamin B3).  Mega doses are often needed.

Multivitamin and mineral may also be needed.

10 Easy Steps To Help Reduce Anxiety

1.    Eat a nutrient rich, plant based diet.

2.    Eat small wild cold-water fish between 2 – 5 times per week.

3.    Avoid caffeine, nicotine, sugar, alcohol and recreational drugs.

4.    Exercise daily (see caution above).

5.    Take a high potency multi vitamin and mineral supplement.

6.    Organise a good work/ life balance.

7.    Enjoy time with friends and family.

8.    Have regular massage therapy

9.    Practice daily relaxation exercises.

10.  Practice daily breathing exercises e.g. alternative nostril breathing.

For more information about managing  anxiety, contact The Bodyguard on 0421 379 615 or email christine@thebodyguard.com.au

If you are depressed or finding it hard to cope, help is available 24 hrs a day at Lifeline 13 11 14 24.

Pizzorno, J., Murray, M. Joiner-Bey, H., (2008) The Clinician’s handbook of Natural MedicineElsevier, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

Trattler, R., Jones, A., (2001) Better Health through Natural Healing. Hinkler Books, Victoria, Australia.

Sarris, J., Wardle, J. (2010) Clinical Naturopathy, An evidence-based guide to practice.  Elsevier, Chatswood, Australia.

5 Step Technique for Naming your Excellent Idea or New Business

Getting creative at naming your excellent idea, or new business, or products, or services, is the heart of authentic marketing.

While you need to be professional in your marketing, I believe it's more important to let your passion and personality shine through, rather than try and impress people with all your knowledge, experience and credentials.

Thinking in a creative way or tapping into the huge store of information in your subconscious mind is skill that can be learnt, and this 5 step technique provides a process to help you use imagination to find solutions to problems like creating a unique and compelling name for your idea or business.

Step 1 - Gather all the information needed to think deeply about your business idea or name:

Describe the solutions your idea or business provides in 30 words or less.  List the benefits of your idea, business, services and products - what benefit do you want your customer to know about you? Are you the best, highest quality, most caring, most reliable, most unique? List the main benefit your competitors promote - how do you want to position your business in your customers minds compared to your competitors?  And who are your ideal customers - describe a typical person who will want what you provide - and what main benefit will they receive?

Step 2 - Begin the task of digesting all this information about your business: 

Take the different elements of the information which you have gathered and identify the words that relate to key benefits that you need to keep uppermost in your mind, in order to think creatively about naming your idea or business. What you are seeking now is the relationship between all the facts above, a synthesis where everything will come together in a neat combination, like a jig-saw puzzle. To maintain your focus, write your key benefit words on sticky notes on your computer screen or on your fridge, so that you can keep the need to resolve the name in front of you.

Step 3 - Conscious and Subconscious processing task:

Brainstorm as many names around a single customer benefit - as you can - there are no right or wrong answers now - just name ideas generation.  Avoid the big words. Keep it simple. Just use plain English about the problems your customer is facing and how you can help them. 

Pick out the words that represent your business - can any of those words be grouped together in a way that is either a description of your business, or a fictional or made up name using these benefit words? Are any words suggestive of the benefit for your customer? Select your favorite words and again, write them down on sticky notes, to keep them in your mind.  

What you have to do now, is to turn your creative thinking over to your subconscious mind and let it work while you do something else.  When you reach this third stage in the production of a name for your idea or business, drop the problem completely and turn to whatever stimulates your imagination and emotions. Exercise, listen to music, watch TV or a movie, read something completely irrelevant to your task.

Step 4 - Allowing the name to come into your mind:

Everything will click in the fourth step of what will seem like an “a-ha” moment. Out of nowhere the name will appear.  It will come to you when you are least expecting it, while showering, or exercising, or most often when you are half awake in the morning.  It may even wake you up in the middle of the night.

Step 5 - Putting your new business name to a reality test:

It requires a patient working over to make most business names fit the exact conditions in which they must work.  This is where many good name ideas are lost.  Many are often not patient enough or practical enough to go through with this adapting part of the process. But it has to be done if you are to put name ideas to work in the current environment.  It’s now important to submit your name idea to the criticism of friends and mentors.  When you do, a surprising thing will happen. You will find that a good name idea has self-expanding qualities. It stimulates those who see it, to add to it. And possibilities which you have overlooked, will come to light.

The aim of naming your new idea or business should be to create strength in the minds of your customer.  The words need to resonate in their minds and stand out from the rest.  Once you have some strong name ideas - you can easily understand how searchable your words are by using Google’s Keyword tool. 

Get your business name right and you get the branding as a bonus. When your potential customer senses you're speaking to them authentically, odds are they'll be more likely to want to do business with you.

And its more fun to work with people you like!  Give it a shot. You might just be surprised at what happens!

Teresa Bassham is the principle of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing and coaches small business’ to create their compelling marketing message.  If you have difficulty telling potential customers why they need you, Teresa can help! Her next workshop is on June 6th in East Ballina. 

Contact via the website: http://www.zenworkz.com or call 0408 304 145 or 02 6686 8413.

Pleasure for Productivity

Pleasure for productivity - with Laura-Doe Harris

I’m the bearer of good news - feeling good is good for you

Pleasure can be considered selfish, greedy, or hedonistic. 

But if we want to be healthy it is in our very best interests to make pleasure a priority. 

To understand why this is so we need to discover more about how our bodies function and how stress affects us. Three hormones share credit (or blame) for most of the changes caused by stress, cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline. How the body releases these explains why we can't be stressed and happily content at same time.

Our autonomic nervous system controls the heart, the smooth muscles around your organs, and your glands. Its function is involuntary - we have no conscious control.

The two branches of the autonomic nervous system send messages to and from the brain using entirely different paths - called Sympathetic and Parasympathetic. These two branches cause the release of very different chemicals governing different and opposing physiological & emotional states.

Sympathetic is the fight or flight system - it up-regulates the body to prepare it fight or to flee to safety when in danger.

The Parasympathetic nervous system down-regulates the body to return it to the ability to rest & repair. These pathways calm the heart rate, lower blood pressure, support digestion etc.

Under normal conditions, the body swings back and forth between sympathetic and parasympathetic dominance all day long, in cycles called ultradian rhythms. 

But today's overstimulated lifestyles lead to chronic stress - we tend to be a bit addicted to sympathetic dominance. Caffeine, media, cell-phones, busy lifestyles and computers all up-regulate us. Our bodies forget about down-regulation and this is the beginning of the disease process. 

Stress has been known to cause disease since Hans Selye's groundbreaking research in the mid 1900s. 80% or more of diseases have been shown to be stress related.

Women who work produce twice as much cortisol as men do. We particularly need to create a way of working that allows our bodies periods of down-regulating, cortisol reducing parasympathetic time.

So how do we activate our parasympathetic nervous system? 

You guessed it - pleasure!

Every experience of pleasure activates your immune system, providing a measurable and enduring boost to your body's natural defenses. A single moment of pleasure can boost your immune response for up to 6 hours. 

Pleasure does not just happen to us - we must actively choose to cultivate pleasure in our lives and in our relationships.  

What can we do to inject more pleasure into our days?

Laugh

The act of laughter instantly lowers blood pressure for hypertensive persons, stimulates the brain, expands and enriches the blood vessels with oxygen, and sends more blood racing to the extremities. It reduces the levels of stress hormones adrenaline & cortisol in the body. It increases the happiness hormone oxytocin and triggers a spike in immune-boosting antibodies. Sustained laughter gradually increases the levels of cytokine in the blood – a white blood cell enhancer which builds antibodies and helps prevent illnesses.

Laughter is a form of stationery jogging - it has thesame health benefits as vigorous aerobic exercise stimulating the heart and blood circulation. 

Twenty seconds of heavy laughter is equal to 3 minutes of hard rowing and burns up to 400 calories per hour!

A daily dose of laughter exercises 15 different facial muscles is anti-ageing and beats any anti-oxidant pill on the market!

The great thing about laughter is that you don't even have to find something funny to laugh at!! Laughter meditation is a worldwide movement.

Tip 1  - take regular laughter breaks! Have joke books in the workplace, follow funny people on facebook, tune in to comedians on youtube or simply do a 10 minute laughter meditation.

Breath is our best tool to regulate the nervous system.

Deep long out breaths with a sigh encourage the movement of the smooth muscles in the body, aiding in digestion and lowers blood pressure. 

Tip 2 - Smell the roses, use aromatherapy, look at beautiful images - inhale and enjoy the view - visualise breathing in delight and exhaling stress 

We tend to operate in one of three channels cognitive, physical and emotional. When you are taking a break, it’s important to change channel. 

Music helps us change to an emotional channel

David, lacking access to Prozac played harp to alleviate King Sauls depression. 

It’s no accident that Apollo was the god of music and medicine. 

The levels of IgA - one of the frontline defenses of the immune system were measured in the saliva of a group of people who listened to a short piece of music and in a control group. The music listeners levels spiked and then stayed higher for several hours compared to those who sat in silence.

Tip 3 -  take music breaks

Pleasurable touch alleviates depression. If you are feeling depressed, and are touched or cuddled, your blood chemistry can change in as little as one millionth of a second. The brain instantly responds to pleasurable touch with a flood of endorphins.

Pleasurable touch makes you feel loved. Feeling loved and emotionally secure is essential for the overall health of mammals. Study after study shows that emotional bonds and physical contact allow mammals to thrive. Studies with infants have shown that touch and love are biological needs on par with food and water. 

Tip 4 - Touch yourself or others or pets or soft cuddly toys! - Put your pet on your screen saver or have a picture on the desk - Ask for hugs.

Squeeze your pelvic floor muscles

Some researchers maintain that pelvic floor fitness is essential for a woman's life long physical, sexual and emotional health. It is a fun and easy and valuable exercise that you can do wherever you are.

For instructions check out Victoria Vulva in this clip from Laura-Doe’s Vaudeville of the Vulva  - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_6xq4ZQZz8 or visit www.dothekegel.com for more tips on the topic and to get your copy of her squeeze-along song ‘Do the Kegel’!

Tip 6 - Kegel when you are talking on the phone, in the bank queue, on the bus ... you can even Kegel when you Google!

Neuroplasticity refers to the idea that the brain is capable of changing in response to experience and training. Wellbeing and happiness are skills that can be cultivated.

If you’d like to explore pleasure and your relationship with it further, then please come along to The Power of Pleasure. This series of four half day workshops is designed to empower women to re-connect with our glorious sensual bodies and cultivate our creative life-force energy. The next events are on May 20th and June 3rd. Drop in for one ($40) or do the whole programme ($150). There is also a seminar for men on women’s arousal anatomy on May 19th. More details at www.yoniversity.com.au or on facebook at http://www.fb.com/yoniversity

Links & resources

Ultradian Rhythms & Producivity

http://lateralaction.com/articles/productivity-ultradian-rhythms/

Our Emotional Brain (radio program)

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/our-emotional-brain-6th-may/3985474

Feeling Good Is Good for You: How Pleasure Can Boost Your Immune System and Lengthen Your Life by Carl J. Charnetski & Francis X. Brennan 

Do the Kegel www.dothekegel.com

The yOniversity - www.yoniversity.com.au