Everyday Shavasana Helps People Around the World Find More Ease and Peace in their Lives: 5 Reasons You Should Join Them!
Scott Mills, Ph.D.
“Tell me, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ~Mary Oliver
At the end of February, MindbodyExperience’s free e-course “Everyday Shavasana” launched offering people around the world the opportunity to find peace and ease in their daily lives. It has already gotten off to an amazing start with people all around the U.S. and as far away as France joining in. One participant told me that she finds “the exercises to be amazing. They’re the perfect length to easily fit into my busy day.” Check out the five reasons you might want to explore more ease and peace in your life now!
1. Less stress equals better health. The Mayo Clinic has a strong focus on the relationship between stress and poor health. When our bodies are stressed, we send them into overdrive. Adrenaline and a whole host of neurochemicals that support our super charged reaction flood our bodies. This is a great thing to happen if a tiger is chasing you or you are rescuing someone from a burning building but not so great on your average day. The amount of wear and tear on your body when you stay in a stressed out mode is tremendous. When your stress rate decreases all kinds of health benefits occur from more regular heart rate, deeper sleep and a more well functioning immune system.
2. More creativity. – Just about everything that folks do these days, from working to parenting, requires a lot of creativity. A recent study at Ohio State University shows that under stress it’s pretty difficult to get the creative juices flowing. Our brains are designed to focus in om threats and be prepared for action when we are stressed. This makes it much harder to operate in a complex environment where creativity is required. Is there anywhere in your life where you are feeling stressed and needing options? Perhaps bring more creativity to it would help.
3. Weight loss. There seems to be a clear connection to stress and weight gain. Even setting aside all that “stress-eating” there are biological responses to stress that make losing weight more difficult. The fight or flight response in our bodies increases cortisol (as well as other chemicals) which can slow your metabolism, increase cravings, alter your blood sugar and increase the amount of abdominal fat we store. (The least healthy place to store it!) Decreasing your stress levels makes losing weight much more possible.
4. Better sex! How likely are you to feel in the mood for love when you are worrying about paying the house payment and what’s going on with work, as well as all your other stresses? Stress dampens the sex drive and draws us away from our partners. The catch 22 to this is that sex also seems to decrease stress. So if you decrease your stress you can feel more frisky for more sex which will further decrease your stress. Sounds like everyone’s a winner there!
5. Increased happiness! If the sex doesn’t convince you to explore a life of ease and peace, perhaps the fact that a recent Gallup study found that people in states with the lowest stress levels also tend to report the happiest residents. Of course, if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. When we are living in stress our focus narrows, our capacity to see the good things shrinks and we seem to always be looking for danger. Not much fun in that, is there?
Of course, I should note that there is good stress. That’s the stress or challenge that you feel when you are enjoying pushing yourself to learn or grow. This is a type of stress that we often choose to go into and feel like we have more control of. When you start in a place of ease and peace, you have more capacity to expand in those situations as well!
