Health Care

  Beginning exercise to develop abdominal muscles and gain breath control.  Objective is to introduce the use of hands to master abdominal breathing. Step 1.   Lie down with back flat, tailbone down, knees bent, feet flat on the floor, legs slightly apart aligned with hip. Step 2.   Place hands on abdominal area in order to feel the movement, preferably below navel (or just above navel if that is more comfortable.) Hands should be one on top of the other with thumbs touching to make a circle and the armpits are flared open, with shoulder blades spread apart. For females, right hand should be placed over left hand. For males, left hand should be placed over right. Step 3.   Inhale pushing abdominal muscles out, starting at the lowest part of the abdominal area and rolling the movement up into the chest as you inhale. Focus on feeling your breath travel from your nose to deep into your abdominals on the front side of your body. At the...

The Art of Walking and the Way of the Breath main goal, in these classes is to less stress in shoulder and tension in body through walking and using the breathing techniques and understanding how the mind works in directing energy in the body.  It offers techniques (ways of doing things with the mind and body) and concepts (relationship in the mind, between ideas, thoughts and abstractions to manage a persons body tension and shoulder stress) that less tension in the body and give a person ways to deal and manage life conflicts. It offers an understanding of energy in the body and out side of the body that affect the everyday experiences of a person living life. Understanding relationships between Mind, Body and Breath is the first part of using walking as a way changing one self by controlling body tension which lets a person feel more of there life experiences.  For Walking is a human act that benefits a person in more ways, for time spent doing it, then any other activity....

Muscles must contract for movement to occur. The contracting muscles are called agonists and are the prime movers. For an agonist to contract, shorten, and produce movement, a reciprocal lengthening of its antagonists must occur. For example, when the biceps muscle of the upper arm contracts, its opposite, the triceps muscle, must relax and lengthen. In this case the biceps is the agonist and the triceps is the antagonist. The triceps becomes the agonist for movements that require it to contract, in which case the biceps becomes the antagonist. Understanding these concepts is necessary to understand stretching techniques.Ballistic stretching uses dynamic movements to stretch muscles. Each time a muscle is stretched in this manner, the myotatic reflex (stretch reflex) located in that muscle is also stretched. It responds by sending a volley of signals to the central nervous system that order the muscle to contract, thus resisting the stretch. This is not only counterproductive-the mus...

In February 1995, the center for disease control and prevention together with the American college of sports medicine (ACSM) jointly released a new recommendation for physical activity. The new guideline stated that “every American adult should get 30 minutes or more of moderate intensity physical activity on most, and preferably all days of the week. ” This recommendation is aimed at the 78% of our population who are sedentary or marginally active. Only 22% of the population is currently exceeding the new recommendation. The essence of the new recommendation, which was written by a panel of experts, can be summarized by the following - We believe that the most reasonable interpretation of the currently available data is that Calorie expenditure and total time of physical activity are associated with reduced cardiovascular disease incidence and mortality There is a dose response relationship for this association Regular moderate physical activity provides substantial health be...

The term weight loss is too generic and implies that indiscriminate weight loss of body fluids, protein, and fat is desirable. A more appropriate goal is to measure success by the amount of fat lost rather than by weight loss. The term weight loss should be replaced by the more specific term fat weight loss. Until recently, advice to over fat persons was imprecise. For example, the suggestion simply to “cut back on calories” is an oversimplification of the truth and reinforces the misconception that diet alone is the problem. Successful weight management is rarely the result of following a diet or counting calories for a specific time period. Rather there must be a life long lifestyle change because the loss or gain of body weight, the development of fat cells, and the causes of obesity are complex issues related to the interaction of three factors-heredity, diet, and exercise.

Americans’ obsession with their body weight is evidenced by the 50% of women and 25% of men who are trying to lose weight at any given time One third of US adults and one fourth of US children are obese. Almost three fourths of all Americans are overweight. Americans are more sedentary and at the same time consume more calories than their peers of 10 years ago. Obesity is defined as being 20% over the recommended weight in height/weight tables. Better methods of determining obesity are those that involve actual fat measurements. With these methods, body fat percentages of 25% and 32% for men and women respectively are classified as moderately obese. Obesity is a risk factor for coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, some forms of cancer, some types of diabetes mellitus, respiratory disorders, and orthopedic problems. Obesity has been declared a disease by the National Institutes of Health. Dietary intake of too much fat and too many calories is the major cause of obesity...