A matter of life and breath

Try this little experiment (and don't force it): You'll need to have a clock handy with a second hand to count how long you hold your breath.  Start by breathing normally for a minute or so, don't try to change anything just trying to be calm. Then breathe out and don't breathe in until you feel like you really need to (this is the bit you should not force) and time how long between the end of the exhalation and the inhalation.

The reason I'm suggesting you do this is inspired by a talk I went to on Breathing Pattern Disorders by Leon Chaitow (an Osteopath that has written the textbooks on virtually all techniques used by bodyworkers) and there were some real eye openers on how common this could be.

How long did you manage? 10 seconds? 20 seconds? 30 seconds? more? Apparently we should be able to hold our breaths for approximately 30 seconds with ease, however most of us find this difficult.  My own score this morning was 20 seconds. This means that we are breathing too much so we could be suffering from Hyperventilation Syndrome (HVS) and this is a problem as we are expelling too much Carbon Dioxide (CO2) from our bodies.

Most of us know that we breathe in oxygen (O2) and breathe out CO2 as a waste product, but the level of CO2 in our blood plays an important role in our systems as it helps to keep our body at a particular pH balance between acid/alkali (within a very specific range).  If this pH balance becomes took alkali then the haemoglobin in the Red blood cells struggle to let go of the O2 that our body needs to function properly. Symptoms can range from headaches, lethagy, neck ache, back ache, and anxiety amongst many others.

Some of the other things that were interesting from the talk were that this mostly affects type 1 personalities, it is more common in women (and progesterone raises women's breathing rate during their menstrual cycle), that this can have far reaching consequences on the quality of our life.

What happens is that we breathe into the top of our chests rather than using the diaphragm to fill the whole lung cavity.  This then has a knock on impact on the stability of the low back (through the "core" muscles of the obliques, transversus abdominus and pelvic floor) and through fascial connections to the limbs as well because we are not using things properly.
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Our bodies become habituated to the level of O2 and alkali in the blood so any changes to this can induce feelings of anxiety (which will then negatively feed back to more hyperventilation) and so trying to retrain needs to be a long slow approach: 5 minutes each morning and night as a focussed effort but forgetting about it and getting on with your life the rest of the time.

In his talk Leon Chaitow showed us a video of retraining (The Nutri Centre filmed the whole talk and it is available in its entirity on their YouTube Channel) but the first part is to focus on the out breath for short periods. This is done by using the pursed lips exhalation.  You put your lips together and blow a thin stream of air our, gently as if you were blowing out a candle about 1 foot away (put your finger there to feel it) and you empty the lungs as fully as you can.  Close your mouth and count for 1 second before you breathe in through your nose.  Do this for 20 cycles of breathing morning and night for a week and then try holding your breathe to see if there is a difference.

You can find the video on The Nutri Centre website here.

An object lesson in the Myofascial Web

One of the key ideas about the myofascial network is that it is a continuous web that surrounds, envelops and defines the elements (muscles, bones, organs) of the body and that what happens in one part of it has an effect on every other part of the body.  It is something that I discuss with my clients all the time and they are amazed when they feel that this is the case.  Over the last couple of weeks I've been painfully shown how interconnected the body's connective tissue is.

I arrived at my Stanmore clinic one morning limping because of a sharp pain in my left knee, every step was agony.  Adam (one of the chiropractor's) checked it and put some tape on it to provide some stability whilst I got on with my clinic. Later, when I had more time, I got another Chiropractor (Owain at Clerkenwell Chiropractic) to check it fully, with no apparent structural problems, thankfully.  I am now working with Owain to rehab the knee to finally resolve the instability, however I really need to work on myself to clear out the myofascial restrictions that will have formed both this time and in the build up to this crisis.

This particular knee issue has been happening for many, many years.  Over a decade ago my best friend got married, for the stag do we went paint-balling. All was going well until at the start of one game I was sprinting for cover, my left ankle gave way and I fell forwards.  Apparently, though I do not remember, it was a spectacular dive and roll into cover that my friends thought was really impressive; I didn't care as I was screaming in agony.  I had to be helped off game area and that was the end of my day paint-balling.  Unfortunately I was the driver, and it was a manual car.  I had to drive home in rush hour through London in a manual car using my injured foot on the clutch.  That night I put a compression bandage and elevated it, putting cold towels on it and that was really all the rehab I did at the time (this was a long time before I was a body worker).  Oh, and there's going to be an emotional element to it as it caused me a lot of grief at work because I took a week off work as I couldn't drive, but that's a different story.

So the reason I'm writing this is that the cause of a lot of my issues come from an ankle that was badly hurt over 10 years ago that I did nothing about.  This time it was the knee that has been hurting, and this has flared up periodically over the last 10 years.  I've usually popped pills and the pain goes after a couple of days, so that means it had gotten better or that is what I thought was the case.

This time I noticed something: I could feel the whole of the left side of my body tighten up.  Having seen a number of Chiropractors and Osteopaths over the years I am aware that I have a functionally short left leg, which means that my pelvis is twisted that causes low back pain, that then travels up into my neck, head and then my jaw and then to my sinus and the dreaded pain that that causes me.

This time I could feel that there had been a preceding tightness in my lower leg running up from the outer side of my ankle, the knee was then being pulled out of place because of that.  This then causes the hip to tighten, pulling inwards causing tension across the pelvic muscles, causing the Sacro-iliac joint to grumble.  The left side of my ribs then collapse down and a muscle in my back threatens to spasm.  I can then feel that the left shoulder is pulled out of place, which I ignore as it's always a bit sore but that's only because of my job, it then hits the base of the skull and over to my jaw, which causes the sinus to become incredibly painful.

So this time I'm going to do something about it.  I've already had a couple of very productive rehab sessions with Owain (thelondonchiro.com) who I'm lucky enough to work with at Clerkenwell Chiropractic and he has been putting me through my paces (and introducing me to the torture device that is a red bouncy hemisphere [pictured]) and I'm really glad to have been doing it.  Yoga has definitely helped, as it has all the way through, and the wonderful Bridget (bridgeyoga.co.uk) is really good at making sure I do not hurt myself.  I've been working on myself with some Myofascial stretches as well, but think I really need to find someone local to me to help out more.  In the meantime I've been having more massages, which are always very nice. In combination all of these approaches have been really helping me.

Reiki helped me stop smoking

Happy New Year! It is the time of year when people are making resolutions on how to loose weight/stop smoking/be healthier and from what I know about myself is that most fail before we even start as we don't really want to make the change.

I don't really do resolutions at New Year (why wait for a particular time of year to make a change?) and would rather make small changes whenever I feel I will succeed. I used to be a smoker and for many years family and friends told me to give up. I was aware of the poisonous effect, but I was not ready to give up. Each time someone told me what to do, I became more stubborn about "giving up when I want to".

Finally one Christmas I was really sick and very nearly went the whole day without a cigarette. When having the one cigarette I had that day I suddenly realised I really hated it. It was now the right time for me to quit. Unfortunately, I'd just bought a couple of weeks' worth of cigarettes and I do not like to waste things, so I decided to smoke these last packs but at a severely reduced rate, weeks later came the last one and then I was done.

During the time I was cutting back I was developing my Reiki life (reading books on it and incorporating it into my work as a massage therapist) and I came across the Reiki technique to change negative habits. Smoking was a negative habit and I was going to stop so I decided to use Reiki to help make it a smooth cessation.

The day I stopped happened to be my Mother's birthday so I told her what I was doing (to her delight) and spent an hour giving myself Reiki and then the specific approaches to help change habits. I kept this combination up for 21 days, always a good number and it is frequently said it takes 3 weeks to allow good habits to take hold.

How did I find giving up? It was the easiest cessation I've done (this was my third attempt at stopping smoking) and the key? My Reiki self healing practice, and giving myself a short burst of Reiki whenever I had a craving. Using Reiki as the way to address the craving meant that I didn't replace one emotional crutch with another (such as chocolate). So no further habits to break. I will say that I, like many former smokers, still have cravings (3 years later) but I have a wonderful way to counter this.

It doesn't just work on smoking, it was recently reported that Christina Aguilera used Reiki to support her through her weight loss regime, saying “Reiki puts her mind in a good place and gives her the discipline to eat healthy and maintain weight loss.”

To me that is the beauty of Reiki, the healing energy can be used to support you in the positive changes you want to make. It is also easier to support yourself by learning Reiki so you can help yourself to do this.

If you want to experience Reiki for yourself book in for a treatment or even decide to learn for yourself or if you have questions then get in touch.

Please note, this is my personal story and it does require will power to make these changes.  Reiki, in my mind made this easier.

What is meditation?

Meditation is the practice of focusing and training your mind to achieve an alteration in mental state, whether bring the mind to focus on an image, or trying to still the mind so that other areas become more apparent and you “become one with the universe”.  The images you probably have of meditation probably involve sitting cross legged for hours at a time, chanting “OM” constantly and this is often how it is presented in popular culture, but it really doesn’t have to be like this.

There are lots of different types of meditation that can be practiced by people wanting to meditate and they are ways that give you something to focus on and then allow it to drift away and the constant chatter that happens disappears.  Most of them are ways to encourage you to “live in the present” rather than worrying about the past or future.  This living in the now is the reason I frequently suggest people do some sort of meditation if they are stressed or anxious. Some of the different types are:

• Visualisation: Your focus is to see images in your minds eye.  This can be imagining a candle flame in your mind, or a walk in your favourite woodland/park/outdoor space.  This can be quite difficult to start with, as your mind is likely to struggle
• Guided: This is a mixture of methods where you are talked through the techniques by someone else.  This can be someone leading a meditation group or a CD/tape of someone (it could even be yourself reading through a meditation technique you want to do).  Having someone telling you what to do can be a very good way of keeping the mind focused on the meditation and not getting caught up in your thoughts.
• Breathing: Focusing on the breath is one of the most basic forms of meditation and is something that is practiced all around the world.
• Mindfulness: This is the buddhist form of meditation and its focus is many forms of living in the present.  Breathing is used as a focus initially, but the stillness that this creates is then taken to other areas of your life and you become aware of what you are doing throughout many other aspects of your life.
• Chanting: This could be the saying of a religious prayer, repeating an uplifting motivational statement or chanting a short phrase (mantra) or making and experiencing a sound (such as OM or Aum) to act as the focus for the mind.
• Transcendental Meditation: This is a form of mantra meditation that became popular in the 1950s and 1960s and is still widely taught and practiced to this day.
• Other forms: This is the extension of mindfulness so that all areas of your life can become a form of meditation.  You can meditate on the sensations of texture/smell/taste as you eat a meal (or start with a grape if that’s too much). The feelings/sounds/smells that surround you as you walk, and even the footsteps that you take can be the focus (though this should only be done somewhere safe, not on a busy high street).  Some even talk about meditating when washing up.  Anything can be used as your focus for your mind.

I am also of the firm belief that you can spend a shorter amount of time doing “quality” meditation more frequently rather than feeling guilty about not being able to spend an hour each day doing it.  Things like breathing style meditations, walking meditations can be slipped into your daily routine in short bursts, but it is always good to have time to spend on other areas such as visualisation that need more time given to them to really benefit.

Short Breathing exercise:

Try focusing on your breathing for ten breaths three times a day:

• really feel how the air moves into and through the body,
• what parts of the spine move and at what point in the breathing cycle
• do you feel your ribs moving? if so where (top, middle or bottom)
• Do any thoughts crowd into your head? if so then note what they’re about and return to watching your breath, you can deal with what they were about after you’ve done the 10 breaths.
• When you finish do you feel any different?  

 Then when you have more time try doing the same for longer, or search out and attend a meditation group.

I run a drop in meditation group every Monday at the Clerkenwell Clinic at 1pm.

7 well-being tips for surviving the office

For all the office workers out there... I feel your pain having worked in a job where I was sat in front of a computer all day for 7 years and developing the lovely aches and pains in neck, back and wrists that you might be suffering from.  I thought that I would share a few ideas to help you look after yourself whilst you’re at work.  Since changing my career to body work I have realised that a lot of my clients work behind desks and these are some of suggestions that I give to them to help keep as relaxed as possible as most people can’t afford to have a massage every day/week.  So to help you maintain your well-being try adding these to your day:

1. Get up at least once an hour.  This can be tricky if you’re really involved in something or you’re fixed to your phone but try to get up from your chair and ideally leave your desk on an hourly basis.  This could be to go and get a glass of water, talk to a colleague rather than sending an email to them or even standing up to make a phone call.  Your body gets used to being kept in a sitting position and the hip flexors get very used to being shortened when sitting and protest when you stand up, so keeping moving keeps them active and they’ll be able to keep you doing what you enjoy.

2. The 20:20:20 rule.  This is to help keep your eyes healthy and the full rule states  “Every 20 minutes, look 20 feet away for 20 seconds.”  Constantly focussing on a computer screen gets the eyes used to seeing that distance and we’ve not evolved for it we’re meant to be looking all around and at different distances from close up work to long distance.  So looking at something in the distance exercises the eye muscles and prevents them getting lazy.

3. Sit at your desk properly. I know how easy it is to slump when sitting in front of your computer, but this sitting position really doesn’t help your back and neck. Your back muscles will weaken over time and your vertebrae will be more likely to become displaced possibly leading to slipped disks and agony.  The head is often held in a forward position putting extra strain on the shoulder muscles leading to aches and pains in the upper back and possibly headaches.  Remember:

• that your spine should be more upright and take the weight vertically down through the bones.  
• There should be natural curves in the spine so don’t sit bolt upright.  
• The spine should feel lighter when all muscles and bones are working together to keep you upright (using less energy in the process). This lightness is something I introduce to my clients after a massage so they know what it should feel like, as I find it is easier to understand once you’ve experienced it.

I know from experience that changing the way you sit isn’t easy to maintain all the time, at least to start with so it is easier to try to change it in small stages.  Start by sitting better each time you sit down , which will be at least once an hour (see tip 1) and over time you will get better at it until you start to catch yourself sitting badly.

4. Get your desk properly set up.  Having your desk organised properly and your chair at the right height can really help to reduce the strains and stresses we put on our bodies, however the workstation assessment is seen as a chore by many office workers and is seen as a box to tick off by everybody concerned, and many companies are now using an online self assessment which means that corrections aren’t checked.  I know that when my HR department came and checked my workstation I did everything correctly until they had left the room when I went back to my old habits.  What I didn’t appreciate when I was younger was that getting my mouse/keyboard/monitor/chair set up properly meant I wouldn’t develop aches and pains as quickly.  I will be spending more blog time on this, but in summary::

• when sitting up properly with your shoulders nicely relaxed, your arms should be at the keyboard height with your elbows at approximately 90 degrees,
• your arms shouldn’t be constantly reaching forward to the keyboard or mouse. If the arms of your chair hit the desk and prevent you getting close enough then get rid of the chair arms!
• move your mouse closer so you don’t have your arms constantly extended, and if your mouse mat constantly migrates away from you then try tacking it into position with something like white tack.
• if you need to raise your chair to get your arms at the right height and this means your feet come off the floor then put something underneath them (you do not want to cut off the blood supply to the backs of your legs),
• have the top of your monitor at eye height when you are sitting up properly (see tip 3) you should be looking very slightly down

5. Rest the backs of your hands. We’re typing away for long periods and often our wrists are bent slightly.  The finger muscles start in the forearm and they are constantly being used to hold the fingers off the keyboard so when you need to break from tyling whilst you think about what you’re going to write next turn your hands through 90 degrees so you rest them on the side of the palm. This then gives the muscles on the back of your forearms a well earned rest and doesn’t take a great deal of effort.

6 Keep yourself hydrated.  We are about 60% water and this needs to be maintained to allow good functioning of the body.  Modern office environments are warm and dry so tend to dehydrate people.  There are a lot of articles about how much you need to take in and 2 litres is often given as the minimum amount that you need to drink of water.  I know that I feel better if I do consistently drink plenty of fluids but I also know that:

• a lot of the food we eat contains water, though bear in mind that salty foods like crisps can make us need more liquids,
• tea and coffee and alcohol provide liquids that the body can use, though they also make up pass more liquid out than they provide as well as overload the body with toxins that need to be excreted.
• Drink little and often, that way you don’t overload your kidneys.
• Your kidneys will constantly work to keep your body in homeostatis (balance) with regards to fluid levels meaning you need to pee less when you need to take in more and pee more when you’ve drunk too much.  The colour of your urine is the best indicator of how hydrated you are, and during the day it should be straw coloured, darker than this and you should drink more, paler than this and you’re drinking too much and placing too much strain on your kidneys.

7. Take a breather.  Getting stressed, mind losing its focus.  Then stop what you’re doing and focus on your breathing, feel how it enters the body, travels down to the lungs, a short pause before you start to breath out, a pause before air enters the body again and travels down to your lungs, etc  Do this “observation” of the breath for 10 inhalations/exhalations and then return to your work.  You should feel more in control, less stressed or at least slightly fresher in mind than before.

Look after yourself on a daily basis and you will hopefully not suffer with too many aches and pain.  If you do start to get pains or over stressed do something about it.  You really don’t want it to build up to such an extent that your body shuts itself down in an effort to protect itself. Have regular massages/reiki treatments to maintain a healthy body and mind.