Move Your Body, Move Your Mind

Keep your knees locked! Hold your arms straight until they hurt! If you feel pain, good for yousomething is happening

Ah, the soft and tender words coming from my militant hot-yoga instructornot exactly soothing. Isnt yoga supposed to be relaxing, you ask? Not the kind Ive been doing for a while. I prefer to think of it as bootcamp yoga: an hour and a half dripping with sweat in a very hot room, often practising next to someone who had too much garlic at dinner last night, contorting myself into positions that make my head want to explode, while feeling murderous towards the teacherwelcome to my form of heaven.

Do I enjoy torturing myself this way three times a week come rain or shine? NO. Do I often get into the hot room and want to run out the door screaming? YES. Do I pay a lot of money to go through this torture? YES. Am I glad I do it? ABSOLUTELY.

You may be scratching your head in confusion at this point and I totally understand why. But when I tell you the real reason I do this exercise regime three times a week religiously, suffering and cursing the entire time, youll understand where Im coming from.

At the age of 36, Ive gotten a bit wiser when it comes to health and taking care of my body. Gone are the days of starving myself or overeating and then punishing myself through exercise. Believe it or not, I absolutely love exercise now. Not because it makes me skinny (nothing will do that due to having the pulchritudinous physique of my shapely Jewish female ancestors which I have come to learn is purely genetic). However, regular exercise does keep me at a healthy weight for my size and stops me from obsessing about my body and food (except during PMS when my body and mind are overtaken by some form of alien life who temporarily makes me think that chocolate is in itself, an entire food group and that excess water in the tummy area is a must-have).

The reason I love exercise now is how it makes me feel AFTERWARDS. You see, after I leave an exercise class, I am transformed. No matter how crappy, miserable, sad, or angry I am feeling before I exercise, for some incredible reason, I consistently feel energized, positive, relaxed, and peaceful after a good workout. And so do many of the women I know. Now we know from brain research that exercise boosts serotonin, the feel-good neurotransmitter in our brains, increases endorphins; chemicals in our bodies that make us feel happy and neighbourly, and relaxes our muscles, which in turn, relaxes our mind.

I encourage all of my clients to follow a regular, three-times-a-week exercise regime of their choice as the first step in improving their mental health. I have not met one single person who has adopted this healthy lifestyle habit who has not greatly improved their mood, productivity, and reduced stress in their lives as a result. I know we hear it over and over again about exercising regularly, but being the stubborn self-willed person that I am, I have finally accepted that other people are wise when they espouse this concept and its not a conspiracy to make me conform to some strange cult.

I have witnessed countless womens mental health improve vastly from including regular exercise into their lives including recovery from depression, anxiety, disordered eating, post-traumatic stress, and many other issues.

I especially recommend regular exercise for women who are suffering from the effects of being in any kind of abusive relationship where they were systematically stripped of their dignity, sense of worth, and faith in their abilities. Vigorous exercise in this case, especially something like kickboxing, can be extremely empowering and help you to overcome feelings of worthlessness and toxic shame. Through the act of exercising, you can transform a negative self-concept into one of power, strength, and awareness of your abilities and gifts.

In my therapy practise, I have discovered that many women are weighed down with depression or anxiety and that what is often underneath those labels is suppressed anger and/or grief. Being in our bodies and expressing ourselves physically through regular exercise is a fabulous way of releasing emotions that have been stuffed down for a long time.

Exercise can be extremely helpful in moving our feelings up and out of the body and can thus free up energy and leave us feeling lighter, stronger, and more peaceful and in control of our destiny.

There are so many wonderful, exhilarating, and enjoyable forms of exercise out there. Check them all out, try them out, and find the one(s) that you feel the best doing. Experiment and have fun!

To end, Ill leave you with some very inspiring reasons for working out regularly

Esthers Top Ten Reasons to Exercise regularly:

1.Time for yourself- you get to leave all the people and things that you feel responsible for behind for a time and just focus on yourself

2.Lifts your mood and helps you feel more positive

3.Stops you from obsessing about your body size and shape (in most cases- if you are really prone to this, try a form of exercise that focuses on how you feel on the inside; not how you look on the outside- focus on becoming strong and feeling good emotionally).

4.Gives you a sense of routine which can help you feel more grounded emotionally

5.Gets you out into the world connecting with people you may not meet otherwise

6.Increases your self-esteem as you grow stronger and feel fit

7.Normalizes metabolism which helps you gain or lose weight depending on what is best for your body

8.Improves your sex drive- not a bad side effect, huh?

9.Makes you nicer to be around because youre happier, healthier, and calmer

10.Helps you get out of your head and into your body; this is great for us thinkers and analyzers

So go hop on a bike, take the dog out for a walk, or crank up the stereo and boogie up a storm in the living room - youll feel better as a result!

Esther Kane, MSW, Registered Clinical Counsellor, is the author of Dump That Chump: A Ten-Step Plan for Ending Bad Relationships and Attracting the Fabulous Partner You Deserve http://www.dumpthatchump.com, and What Your Mama Cant or Wont Teach You: Grown Womens Stories of Their Teen Years http://www.guidebooktowomanhood.com Sign up for her free monthly e-zine, Womens Community Counsellor, to uplift and inspire women at: http://www.estherkane.com

Please consider this article for publication in your newsletter or website. Permission is granted to reprint for free with resource box and byline intact. Please send me a copy of your publication if you choose to include my article.

Free Printable Yoga Positions Downward Facing Dog

10 Important Tips to Finding the Best Laptop

Taking the time to review laptops is time well spent especially when wanting to have the best working laptop for all your specific needs.

When reviewing consider these things;

1. Screen - What are you looking for in the Screen., is it resolution, size, definition.

2. Portability - Are you carrying it around a campus or is it mainly home and hotel?

3. Speed - laptops are generally 20-30% slower that Stationary computer with the same features. If speed is a necessity be sure to check out details such as; CPUs, motherboards, hard drives, and video systems. These all contribute to the speed loss.

4. Upgradability - Likely there will not be a lot that You can upgrade on your laptop so it is good to know what you need for the long run. Upgrades can be pricey and some almost not worth getting when You could just get a whole new laptopso get a good one to start.

5. Memory This is So Important! Most lower-priced laptops are sold with 128 MB of system memory (RAM). That is not enough for running applications efficiently under Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. If you use your laptop for occasional typing and web surfing you could get along with 128 MB of RAM but you are likely to be much happier with 256 MBs. As well Power users would benefit from a notebook with at least 512 MB or more.

6. Batteries - Lithium batteries are superior to others.

7. Hard Drives - 20 GB is a minimum. Of course as they say, larger is better.

8. hardware - (DVD/MPEG-2) - All DVD drives rely on MPEG graphics compression to display video. The present standard is called mpeg-2.

9. mpeg-2 compression can be provided by software which is slow or by hardware which is fast. Needless to say, hardware mpeg-2 is more desirable, and will provide a smoother playback. hardware MPEG-2 is a video chip function in laptops.

10. Expense - Laptop computers can cost almost twice as much as similarly equipped desktops. You can actually purchase two comparably equipped desktops for the price of one laptop. So if you have to have a computer in two separate places, you would be better off with two desktops. As well if they were reasonably close together you could connect them together in a wired or wireless local area network (LAN). Buying a laptop is great if you are on the go. The more you need in it the more youll pay but it will be worth it!

Tamara Williams is a successful author and regular contributor for Cheap Laptops. A resource featuring tips, advice on buying a laptop and caring for it.

Meditation Yoga Supplies