Creative Health Tip 12 June 2009

[At the 2 minute 16 second mark, the word I was trying to think of was trampoline!]

Here is your Heaven On Earth Creative Health Tip for this week:

Stand up and stretch!

At least once every hour or hour-and-a-half - this is critical, especially if you are working at a job where you do a lot of sitting without moving around – standup, stretch out a bit, walk around for five minutes, loosen up your muscles, breathe in more oxygen.

The reason this is important is two-fold.

First, if you are working at a desk, you often tend to sit a little hunched over which means you are not taking as much oxygen into your lungs because you are leaning forward and you lung capacity is compromised.

If you stand up, you elongate your body, you unfold yourself, and you can get more good oxygen into your lungs. The oxygen spreads throughout your body, of course, and helps to relax your muscles.

If you're not getting enough oxygen as you sit there at your desk, your muscles are going to start to become tense, and then when you do stand, you'll experience the uncomfortable "pins-and-needles" thing where you try to kick out your leg muscles and stretch a bit to relieve the discomfort.

You can save yourself that discomfort by just standing up and getting in some deep breathing every hour or hour and a half.

The second part of this is your lymph system.

Your lymph system works along with the movement of your muscles. Sitting still and quiet while working at your desk, your lymph system is very sluggish. It's not doing very much; it's not removing all those used and dead cells in your body nor any of the toxins that you've taken in. It's not getting them out because it's just not moving fast enough.

When you stand up and start moving around a bit with your muscles, that kicks your lymph system into a higher gear.

In fact, the best thing you can do for your lymph system is rebounding. Get one of those little trampolines and bounce on that for five minutes, or even three or four minutes….it doesn't need to be a long time. That will really rev up your lymph system and get a lot of that stuff out of your body.

A lot of that stuff (old cells and toxins) is what causes illness because it's just sort of sitting there and blah.

So….stand up! Stretch, Breathe Deeply, Move Around a little bit, and Feel Good!


Have a fabulous weekend!

Michelle