Qi gong training for a healthy physique | Snipsly

Qi gong training for a healthy physique | Snipsly

6 Sure Fire Tricks for Avoiding Holiday Weight Gain

by Sara Novak

Are you eating healthy food?

The season of weight gain has already begun. It all starts with an enormous Thanksgiving feast and culminates with the drunken festivities of New Year's Eve. Come New Year’s Day many of us are awoken to the added bulge surrounding our bellies and thighs.
No matter where you’re prone to gain weight, none of it feels good. It’s an unnecessary setback and constant weight fluctuations are bad for your health.
While I won’t divulge how many years that I’ve gone through this downside of the holiday season, I will say that it’s no longer an issue in my life. Over the years I’ve compiled a list of sure fire ways to avoid the holiday weight gain, no matter who you are.

1. Eat Only When Seated

Holiday grazing is one of the largest sources of weight gain. It’s not necessarily the quality of the food that we eat, it’s the amount. Resolve to never eat while standing up. In the end, this means that you'll avoid snacking and eating between meals.
I just got back from a trip to Indonesia and though I indulged in meals that were larger than I normally would have eaten at home, I lost weight on the trip. At first I was confused until I realized that I didn’t have a single snack while I was there. Eat three meals a day and let that be it, especially during the holidays when meals are larger.

 2. Don’t Eat Anything With a Wrapper

Do your best to avoid foods that come with a wrapper. These are the foods that cause us to gain the most weight. Stick with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and protein. Processed foods are too easy to grab and therefore, cause the most weight gain.
Stay away from chips, prepackaged cookies, candy, processed meats, cheeses, and other fatty dairy choices.

3. Try the Meditation Diet 



Try and remain in balance during the holiday season. This means try to get on a regular meditation schedule. I like to meditate for a bit in the morning and in the evening, that way I can ensure I'm engaged in the present moment during both portions of my day. You don't have to sit for a long period of time, ten minutes is a good start, the key is that you're consistent. Allow this mindfulness to translate to your diet as well.
Meditate on your meals. Notice every aspect of the taste, texture, and smell of your food. And when you're full, stop eating. The same goes for drinking, don't get drunk so that you lose that mindfulness at the party and have a hangover the next day. That's two days of mindfulness shot. Notice how food impacts you. Did the pumpkin pie make you feel good after you ate it? If not, do you really want to feel crappy again?

4. Hone Your Morning Routine

When winter rolls around try and avoid slipping into that place where activity falls by the wayside. Set your workout cloths by the bed so that in the morning you can slip off the bed and put on your outfit. Start the day with a brisk walk or run before you even know what hit you. If you’re not into walking or running, choose an activity that you do like. I have my yoga mat out and ready to go so I roll off my bed and onto my mat to get my day started right.

5. Plan Activities With the Family

Planning activities is an ideal way of controlling weight gain and keeping you sane. Plan outdoor games for the whole family. This way you’re not all sitting around eating and gossiping.
If your family is making you crazy, plan an activity apart. Both my husband and I live far away from our families so we usually plan long visits. To break up the time, we often hit the park with the dogs or go play tennis for a few hours.

6. Choose a Go To Alcohol-Free Beverage

The holidays are often marked with excessive alcohol which can be problematic in already stressful weight gain situations. Keep drinking to a minimum and make sure most of your drinking is done with a meal rather than on a empty stomach. Not only is drinking problematic while it’s happening, it can put you in a bad place the next day.
Instead, have a go-to non-alcoholic drink like club soda with cranberry and lime, watered down juice, or your favorite mocktail planned so that you stay sober.

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How To Stay Present During Your Qigong Training

It’s very common during Qigong training for your mind to seem like it has an agenda of its own. And that agenda is to want to focus on everything other than your training.
When this happens try 1 of these 3 tips to stay present.

1. State Of Mind – spending more time entering a Qigong State of Mind can have an enormous benefit on your training. Your practice may have evolved so that you are used to only spending a few minutes on this step. But if you find it hard to stay present during your practice then following this tip will often prove to be the solution.
2. Focus – If the mind wants to focus more on a problem or what to have for lunch for example, then distract it by focusing on what you are doing in your practice.
• Pay attention to the movement of your body, focus in on your breathing and so on. But just be sure not to overdo it!
3. 1 Thought – a continuation of Tip #2, but especially useful when practicing Standing Zen. Because the mind can only really focus on one thing at a time. You can use this to your advantage. You use 1 thought to overcome the 10,000 thoughts. And what is this one thought?
• When you breathe in through your nose, say the word to your self: ‘In” and when you breathe out through your mouth, say the word to yourself: ‘Out’. Then repeat.
  Simple, direct and effective.

The next time the mind is behaving like a naughty monkey during your Qigong training, try out one of these tips to bring it back in line.
 

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Clean Your Body With Your Qigong Training

Your Qi (vital energy) flows through the energy streams of your body (meridians).

As a result:

1. When your Qi flows harmoniously through the meridians, you will have good health.
2. When your Qi flows harmoniously and vigorously you will have good health and vitality.
3. When your Qi flows harmoniously, vigorously and abundantly you will have good health, vitality and longevity.

The problem is that life in the 21st century is highlighted by a lack of proper rest, too much unhealthy stress, poor diet and burning the candle at both ends.
The leads to blockages of harmonious energy flow in your body and the result is ill health, lack of energy etc.
Qigong is such a powerful tool for health, vitality and longevity because it first removes these blockages, improving health, and then increases energy flow.
Listen carefully now, because this concept of vital energy flow doesn’t just apply to your body, it applies to all areas of your life.
This shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

Qi is the basic building block of the universe

That is, everything is Qi and if it can’t flow, whether it’s through your computer, your office, your house or your body because of blockages – whether they be in the form of old information, clutter or poor lifestyle choices – then the result is always undesirable.
The solution?
You just need to clean up and get rid of the blockages you are aware of  and let your Qigong training help you clear the rest.

written by Marcus Santer

How meditating may help your brain

When you're under pressure from work and family and the emails don't stop coming, it's hard to stop your mind from jumping all over the place.

But scientists are finding that it may be worth it to train your brain to focus on something as simple as your breath, which is part of mindfulness meditation.

A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the latest in a hot emerging field of research examining how meditation relates to the brain. It shows that people who are experienced meditators show less activity in the brain's default mode network, when the brain is not engaged in focused thought.

The default mode network is associated with introspection and mind wandering. Typically, drifting thoughts tend to focus on negative subjects, creating more stress and anxiety. It has also been linked to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and Alzheimer's disease.

Researchers looked at experienced meditators and trained novices. There were 12 in the "experienced" category, with an average of more than 10,000 hours of mindfulness meditation experience (Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" suggests that it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert at something), and 12 healthy volunteers who were novices in meditation.

Each volunteer was instructed to engage in three types of meditation: concentration (attention to the breath), love-kindness (wishing beings well) and choiceless awareness (focus on whatever comes up). Scientists looked at their brain activity during these meditations with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Across all of these types of meditation, the experienced meditators showed less activity in the default mode network than in the novices. The experienced participants also reported less mind wandering than the novices. Interestingly, experienced meditators also showed increased connectivity between certain brain networks during meditation and non-meditation.

"It doesn't matter what they're doing, they have an altered default mode network," said Dr. Judson Brewer, medical director of the Yale University Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic and lead author of the study. "We were pretty excited about that, because it suggests that these guys are paying attention a lot more."

From this particular study, researchers can't say whether meditating is beneficial to the brain. But, viewed in conjunction with other studies showing the positive effects of mindfulness training for depression, substance abuse, anxiety and pain disorders, it seems to have promise. Also, a 2010 study found that people tend to be more unhappy when  their mind is wandering.

"Putting all those together, we might be able to start get at what the mechanisms of mindfulness are," Brewer said.

But the study does not address the issue of cause: Is meditation changing the brain, or do people who already have these brain patterns get interested in meditation?

"Emerging data from our group and others suggests that some things thought to be result of meditation might be cause of meditation," said Dr. Charles Raison, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

If some people are just better at keeping their minds from wandering, that would also be consistent with the Buddhist idea that your capabilities are the result of your Karmic path, so meditation may be better suited to some people than others, Raison said.

Someday, if brain scans become cheap enough, one day there might be a test to see who can benefit most from mindfulness training, Raison said.

In the meantime, scientists should explore these open questions by doing longitudinal studies, Raison said. That would involve assigning some people to meditate and some people to not meditate, and following the groups over time to see whether a change in brain activity patterns is visible.

Post by: Elizabeth Landau - CNN.com  To start with an easy exercise get a FREE report with the most powerful qigong posture in it at: Qi gong exercise

What Is The Real Secret Of Chi Kong ( Qi Gong)?

If you saw the previous post you could wonder: how are things like this possible? What is this Chi (Qi) anyway?

Well, let me tell you an interesting thing about Chi Kong also known as qigong. It has been used for thousands of years with great success in eliminating illnesses, regaining control over our thoughts and feelings and aquiring "super power" - no wonder the Chinese regime was so afraid of the chikong masters that they sent them into prison or even killed them.

Actually the "mechanics" of it is simple. Let me explain: the more energy we have, the more confident, happy self empowered we are. It becomes more and more difficult for outer hypnotic and subliminal programs to have an effect on us - so we won't "follow the herd", won't be consumers only. We start creating the life we want to live.

You might ask how? With the power of our thoughts. Actually everybody creates in their lives with their thoughts and feelings. That's why it is paramount to be on a high energy level to create positive things into your life.

Now imagine when you can achieve the state of no thoughts bombarding you one after the other. Then you chose a thought and it becomes a reality in your physical world. That's the "secret". With chikong practice you can achieve this no thought state as chi kong has an effect on your body, emotions and mind at the same time.

You can start creating th elife you desire today! To learn how claim the FREE  Qi Gong report NOW! Become the master of your life and take your health into your own hand.