Slow Down! Time Out! Pause!
Maybe even…. STOP!
As the summer season comes to a close, you may find yourself beginning to feel overwhelmed. Suddenly, those several months of “slo mo”- with long summer days and family vacations are coming to an end. That “Summertime Feeling” is being replaced with all of the meetings, planning, getting children back in schools or just squeezing your last vacation in. You may even feel a little confused as to the season! Labor Day is still unmarked on your calendar – yet Football is airing on television and everyone around you seems to have stepped into high gear.
It is important to remember the importance of cultivating stillness and creating time for yourself when things seem to be spinning out of control or going full throttle! Allowing for rest and relaxation along with time to meditate, journal and reflect are extremely important in today’s rapidly changing world.
The Huffington Post published an article entitled, “10 Health Benefits of Relaxation” by Sarah Klein. Listed below are the top 5 Health Benefits of R&R:
- Relaxing protects your heart- While researchers aren’t sure exactly why, the research is unanimously in favor of relaxation for your heart’s sake. “There are studies to show that stress is comparable to other risk factors that we traditionally think of as major, like hypertension, poor diet and lack of exercise,” Kathi Heffner, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Rochester Center for Mind-Body Research at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, told Health.com.
- Relaxing boosts your memory- One study found that, at least in mice, chronic stress impaired the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in abstract thought, cognitive analysis and detecting the appropriate behavior for a given situation.
- Relaxing helps keep you slim- We love a good comfort food every once in a while, but reaching for foods high in fat and sugar too often can pack on the pounds, and stress makes it harder to resist. Cortisol increases appetite, and may even specifically encourage junk food cravings.
- Relaxing keeps you safe from depression- According to Time.com. In 2011, a study in mice illustrated these findings and began to explain one possible way antidepressants work. The mice exposed to a stressful situation didn’t want to eat, gave up during a swimming task much faster and exhibited “pleasurelessness” — similar to human depression symptoms like loss of appetite, sadness and hopelessness. In humans, the prolonged presence of stress hormone cortisol can reduce levels of serotonin and dopamine, which are linked to depression.
- Relaxing helps you make better decisions- It’s no surprise that when you’re under stress, you might not always be thinking so clearly. But a 2012 study found that stress seems to actually change how we weigh risks and rewards, and can cloud our judgment when we are faced with important decisions. Counterintuitively, stressed our people actually tend to focus on the positive, and may ignore the cons of the decision they’re about to make, one of the study’s authors, Mara Mather Ph.D., a professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern California, said in a statement.
The Vital Lifelong Alignment system was created in order to help you live the life that you LOVE! We believe that the secret to living a long and healthy life is to live a life of fulfillment and joy! Below are a few other possible benefits of slowing down and hitting “pause”:
- The time to reconsider your commitments- If you find yourself running all day long from meeting to meeting- leaving little to no time for you- it may be beneficial to reconsider your priorities and get clear about who and what really matters. The Launching Your Vital Possibilities System has an exercise that helps you get clear about what you value most.
- The time to break out of your “to do lists” and live fully into your “what matters most” list-At the end of your life, you won’t be sitting there studying your “to do” list. You will wish that you had more time with those you loved. You will wish that you had lived more and loved more! Our system is designed to guide you into this type of conscious clarity in order to make rapid changes.
We want you to LOVE YOUR LIFE! We believe you are worth it and it is our mission to help you realize all of the Peace, Joy, Happiness, Health, Abundance and LOVE that you were designed to create!
Here is today’s Vital Reset ReMINDer:
“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.”
Alan Cohen
