www.dancenyc.org | Dance NYC

Click on above to see video footage from the Bessies.
Issac Mizrahi MC'd. It was a night of fun, shouts and tears devoted to choreographers, dancers and the usual suspects in New York's vibrant dance scene.

Bacon and cheesecake 'alter brain like heroin'

Say no more . . .

Bacon and cheesecake 'alter brain like heroin'

Sleep Apnea: An Alternative Approach

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is caused by a disruption to the breathing cycle, often for 10 seconds or more at a time, when you are sleeping. Contributing factors vary -- from narrow or clogged airways to the tongue falling back in the throat cutting off the air supply. If you snore, keep your partner awake at night and wake up tired every morning, you might have sleep apnea.*

Since sleep apnea is a common breathing disorder, and since your breathing is controlled by your brain and breathing muscles, wouldn't it make sense to use breathing exercises as a front-line treatment? After all, Physical Therapists and Yoga Therapists use exercises all the time to restore balance to the body's neuromuscular systems. And, Yoga provides the best system I know of, hands down, for exercising the breathing apparatus -- muscles, lungs and brain. 

Can we then apply this same treatment logic -- of restoring balance to the body with exercise -- with years of documented success, to sleep apnea? It seems we can. Two randomized studies have recently been published in support of using different forms of breathing exercises to successfully treat obstructive sleep apnea.

The first, published in the British Medical Journal February 4, 2006, showed that didgeridoo playing is an effective treatment alternative for moderate sleep apnea. Here 25 patients were randomized between a control group of 11 people and a treatment group consisting of 14 participants. The treatment group practiced didgeridoo playing for 25.3 minutes for 5.9 days per week for four months.

The didgeridoo players showed significant improvements in terms of daytime sleepiness and snoring. The sleep apnoea-hypopnoea index (a measure indicating the severity of the disease in terms of sleep disruption and decreased oxygen saturation in the blood) significantly decreased. Happily, their partners also reported less sleep disturbances.

The second study was published February 20, 2009 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. It was a randomized trial of 31 patients with moderate OSAS. For a period of three months, 15 patients received sham therapy and 16 patients received a set of exercises for the mouth, soft palate, face, tongue and throat.

Not surprisingly, the exercise group showed significant decreases in snoring frequency and intensity, a decrease in daytime sleepiness, improvements in sleep quality and a significant decrease in the severity of the measure of OSAS.

Doesn’t it make sense that yogic breathing exercises might have the same desired effects?

________________

     * To get a good diagnosis, please consult with your primary care doctor, who can refer you to a sleep clinic for evaluation.

References and Resources

Guimarães K, et al, 2009. Effects of Oropharyngeal Exercises on Patients with Moderate Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Vol. 179: 962-966.

Puhan M, et a,l 2005. Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: randomised controlled trial. British Medical Journal, 332(7536): 266–270.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/obstructive-sleep-apnea/DS00968

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep-apnea/sleep-apnea

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/sleepapnea.html

The Science of Touch

Check out this article on the science of touch

Recommended Reading

The Best Buddhist Writing 2008
  edited by Melvin McLeod
  2008 Shambhala Publications, Inc.

This is a great book of essays by some of my favorite Buddhist writers: Norman Fischer, Joseph Goldstein, Natalie Goldberg, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sylvia Boorstein, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Pema Chodron.

I especially liked Noah Levine's Learning Forgiveness, Joanna Macy's Gratitude, and Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche's The Practice of Lojong: Cultivating Compassion Through Training the Mind.

Enjoy!

One Thing You Can Do Today to Prevent Pain

 Look down at your feet. Seriously, take a look at your shoes.

 

• Are you wearing supportive shoes? Our mothers were right on this one. Good shoes are supportive. After all, your feet support all 100 plus pounds of your body weight. Yes, they are an investment; good shoes don’t come cheap.

• Repair worn down heels. Try having your shoemaker place soft rubber taps on the part of the heel that wears down, most often the outside border of the shoe. It’s an inexpensive way to significantly extend the life of your shoes.

• Throw out shoes where the inner soles are flattened and worn out. Similarly, throw out shoes where the outer soles are worn beyond repair. 

If you walk a lot, keep your shoes in good repair. Your feet, and thus your shoes, provide a hopefully stable base of support to your ankles, knees, hips and all of the other joints in your body. It can be only a millimeter or two of an uneven shoe sole that aggravates your foot or knee pain, or causes you to trip and fall. 

Most people haven’t a clue that their shoes are worn out. “But I just got these shoes last year.” For people who walk a lot, and that is most New Yorkers, you need to make friends with your local cobbler. They will save you money on new shoes and doctor’s bills.

Loafers do not provide good support. They’re okay to wear around the office if you are sitting most of the day or if you are blessed with strong feet and arches. (Most people aren’t.)

High heels are great to look at but hell on your feet, knees, ankles, hips and back. The higher the heel, the more the distortion to the entire skeleton. Enough said.

When someone comes to me with foot, ankle or knee pain, I include an evaluation of their shoes. It is surprising how adopting this one simple recommendation can suddenly clear up what seems to be a perplexing problem.

So, if you suddenly -- for no discernible reason -- develop pain in your feet or legs, take a good look at your shoes. 

Tips to Prevent Back Injury

Tips to Prevent Back Injury - The Iliopsoas Muscle

You may wonder why it might be a good idea to avoid double leg lifts, whether your knees are bent or extended, if you have a history of back pain. In yogic terms, this would include boat (navasana) and its variations.

Q: Why would double leg lifts re-injure the back?

A: Because of an unequal and excessive pull on the spine and hips by the iliopsoas muscles, considered to be the primary hip flexors.

The psoas major has its origins on the spine at vertebrae T12 and throughout the lumbar spine on L1 through L5. The iliacus arises on the inside of the hip bone, the ilium. They both attach on the femur on the lesser trochanter. They also serve as important postural muscles.

Let’s look at this more closely. In almost every patient that I have treated for low back pain or injury, including sacro-iliac problems and sciatica, she also shows a curvature, or rotation, of her spine. This curvature may be an acquired scoliosis, from injury or unequal use of the body over time. Overuse of the right side of the body is common -- we live in a right handed world. (Quickly, what hand are you holding your mouse with?) Or, she might have classic scoliosis, called idiopathic scoliosis, which develops in children, usually around adolesence and seems to run in families. This means that the psoas muscles, arising from your low back, are pulling unequally on either side of the curve or rotation in your spine.

Further, the legs have weight. Together, they are approximately 40% of your entire body weight. In a 150 lb. person, if one leg weighs 150 x .20 = 30 lbs., then both legs together weigh 60 lbs. 

In a double leg lift, whether you are lying on your back or in the boat pose, whether your legs are bent or straight, the psoas have to move and hold 60 lbs. This is exerting a pull of at least 60 lbs. directly on your back. 

Think about it. If you lift, or worse, hold in an isometric contraction as we do in navasana, that much weight on an unstable back -- a back which is rotated and uneven on top of an unstable and rotated pelvis -- then does it make sense that you might feel or develop pain in your back? 

Remember, an unequal pull of the iliopsoas muscles will only exacerbate an already unstable situation, leading to back strain, reinjury and pain. And, we haven't begun to mention that the different fibers of the psoas, at its multiple insertions on 5 vertebrae in the low back, pull unequally and different points in the movement cycle.

Free Your Body - Part I

 Free your mind and the rest will follow. 

                                        En Vogue

Free Your Body - Part I

These days I am thinking about freeing the pelvis. I keep coming at the topic from different perspectives. While swimming laps today, I was stimulated to think about it in yet another way.

To have an efficient swim stroke, it needs to be relaxed. In the crawl or free style, you let the body roll when you turn the neck and face to get air. You let the spine move side to side, like a fish, when you are stroking and kicking. For a swimming novice, this may seem counterintuitive. You might think that if you hold the body in a straight line, and just turn the head and neck, it would be a more efficient way to swim. If you say "rigid" to your body, you will tend to move that way. And, if you swim that way, what you really might get is a stiff and sore neck.

When I let the body roll from the pelvis, I decrease the cranking on my neck. Today I discovered that if I pushed my face down -- again very counterintuitive -- in the roll, it further integrated my ability to roll in a unit. First, I initiated the roll from my pelvis, which I cued silently to myself as “move the pubic bone.” Then, as I began the turn of my head, I pushed my head into the water. The buoyancy of the water itself facilitated the head turn rather than using my neck muscle to lift and turn the head. It felt great.

I was able to relax into the water, to let my weight drop further into it to allow the water's buoyancy to, well, buoy me.

We can do the same thing in gravity. By pushing down into gravity through our feet, we can engage more directly with the ground reaction force, which travels in an equal and opposite direction from gravity. By pushing down through the feet and releasing the weight into gravity, we can more effortlessly stand taller. We discover buoyancy and ease in our everyday movements, like walking, standing and sitting. I will elaborate more on this topic in days to come.

Holding On vs. Letting Go

Now think about the concept of “holding the body.” When you arae learning a new movement activity, whether it be dance or tennis, there is a tendency to hold tension all over the body, using extra effort to learn the new skill. Movement cuts paths through space. Our bodies move in space. Until the motor pathways are well established in the brain, the movements tend to be inefficient and to take a lot of extra effort. With practice, practice being key here, there are well-established neuronal pathways laid down. Over time, and with lots and lots of practice, the movements become easier. You use less tension to accomplish them. You are able to do more. You have more fun.

We often think of it as kinetic or muscle memory. Really, it is that new motor pathways have been laid down in the brain. Further, if you have aptitude and a good teacher, these movements over time will be increasingly efficient and effortless. Think of the best dancers. They seem to throw away all technique and to move effortlessly.

Practice Practice Practice

After a cerebral vascular accident, also known as a stroke, we can see varying degrees of recovery. Sure the first factor is the severity of the stroke and the extent to which different areas of the brain are damaged. Another significant factor, in my experience, is that those people who had a good fitness level before the stroke did better. It is probable that because they had developed more in terms of quantity and diversity of motor pathways in the brain, that when the brain was damaged in the stroke, they had a head start on recovery. Maybe the motor pathways are deeper, cut in deeper grooves. Certainly, they are more plentiful.

Is it similar in psychological terms? The more one practices anger, say, the angrier one gets. Is this because we have deeply embedded the neuronal processes and pathways that spark anger? Is this why cognitive-behavioral therapies have such a good track record with depression, because they teach the patient how not to just keep repeating the same old patterns -- cognitively, emotionally or behaviorally -- but to establish new ways of thinking and behaving. In essence, beyond the mystical and mysterious results of seeing the changes in one’s thoughts, emotions and behaviors, are we simply establishing new neuronal pathways?

We let go of the tension to have greater freedom of thought and movement. To have greater possibility.

More to follow in days to  come.

When is Less More

Just for today can you tune into what brings you pleasure? No, what really brings you pleasure?

Do you need to rest? Do you need to exercise? If you didn’t sleep well last night, what might you do to help you get a good night’s sleep tonight? Do you feel lonely? Or do you need more alone time?

Do you need to push yourself or lie back a little today? How about food? Take a minute. Check in to see what your body really needs in terms of nourishment. Or relaxation. Or stimulation.

Is it time to take a day off? Or would you feel better abandoning the comfort of procrastination and getting to work on that project you are excited (and maybe fearful) about.

Can you pause right now to tune into what you’re really feeling and thinking. Then, can you do just one thing that will make you happy. Just one little thing -- whether it’s indulging in a 10-minute nap in the afternoon or putting 15 minutes into the project you keep pushing to the side.

Just for today, maybe less is more.

The Role of Posture in Pain

I've discussed before how important your posture is to preventing and treating pain. Posture is how you hold your body up against gravity. It's the picture of your body in space, sitting in the chair, standing up or lying down. It is how you move your body to get from one place to another. Posture is dynamic.*

Most of my clients' physical therapy goals are simple. First and foremost, they want to get rid of pain. They also want to be able to get back to doing everything they did before the onset of pain, injury or surgery.

How we go about doing this is the interesting question. It varies with each patient with whom I have the privilege to work. In physical therapy, the overarching principle is to bring the body back into balance, with itself and within the gravitational field, the constant force within which we all live. We seek to strengthen weaknesses, to relax tense muscles and to open tight areas of the body.

Since the body is a dynamic structure, it is changing all the time. It changes with activity and even with our thoughts, especially the habitual ones.

Learning how to move with ease is a challenge, mostly because of inefficient habits. It usually is not the case that we stand, walk or sit with too little muscular effort, but with too much effort. We habitually hold tension in our muscles, partly in reaction to stress, but also in reaction to gravity pulling on body parts that are out of alignment with gravity. It really is a mind-body thing. Muscles that should be working may become weak and out of balance because of habitual patterns and chronic tension. Chronically tense muscles typically become tight, thereby creating muscle imbalances in a joint or even an entire area of the body.

Finding the weak areas in the movement chain is the therapist's job. There can be some surprising discoveries along the way. Everybody has a unique posture and a unique walk, as individual as her fingerprints. She also expresses varying degrees of composite, predictable movement patterns -- forward head and rounded shoulders with compressed breathing, for example.

Because we sit at chairs, desks and in front of computers all day, we might develop neck, back, shoulder or forearm pain. When the back of our necks and trunks are slumped forward, those muscles become overstretched and weak. The muscles may develop too much tension in them in their chronic effort to hold the head and trunk up from falling over and into gravity. We might develop shoulder impingement problems because of slouching forward at the desk. Our forearms may become sore and painful because of working on the computer. (Did you know that we see more cases of tennis elbow (aka lateral epicondylitis) from overuse of the mouse and keyboard, combined with poor ergonomics, than we ever have from people playing tennis?)

Besides poor posture, things that contribute to dynamic functional weaknesses are too little exercise, the wrong kind of exercise, fatigue and stress. In New York, most of us walk quite a bit, so footwear is important. (This could be the topic for another blog.) Walking on hard concrete, rather than loamy soil, may keep us pointed in the right direction, in a beeline for work and home, but this moving in 2-dimensions on concrete, may create weaknesses in our core muscles, especially the pelvic stabilizing muscles of the gluteus medius and minimii.

What are the core muscles? Are they only the abdominal muscles? Or, does the core also include the lateral and posterior hip muscles? Answer: yes, the core includes the abdominal as well as the surrounding hip musculature.

Did you know that your flat and fallen arches might be the primary cause of your neck pain?  Or your knee pain? Your hip and back pain? The weakness in your core? Or that your shoes, slightly worn down on their outer edges, may be causing your knee or hip pain? Did you know that either having the heels of your shoes fixed or buying a new pair of shoes can immediately give you relief? Sometimes the fix to your problem actually may be that simple!

There are many ways to improve your alignment, but standing up straight with your shoulders back may not be one of them. Learning Mountain and Tree poses in Yoga are wonderful tools to breathe in upright alignment. Ideokinesis is a wonderful tool for learning alignment. Ballet and other dance forms are excellent ways to learn about developing strong posture. Tai chi not only improves balance and posture, but teaches you how to move from your center (your core), as well.

*For purposes of this blog, I will alternately and interchangeably use the words posture and alignment, which essentially mean the same thing. 

Haiku 2000/2010

Dew drop on tip of
blade of grass evaporates
like sadness in sun.

Advice for a Painful Shoulder

This was written to a patient after I had seen her for an initial treatment. She had developed a painful shoulder from shoveling snow earlier in the Winter.

You may want to notice your shoulder at different points during the day, or at night, or in the morning when you're still in bed. Just quietly become aware of extra tension or holding in that shoulder. Then, breathe into it gently a couple of times.

It may relax, or it might not. What's important is to gently become aware of what's going on with an accepting mind and then to breathe WITH the tension, discomfort or pain. It isn't necessary to have a goal to change the feeling, but simply to notice it and to breathe into and with it.

I'm passing this along because when I woke up this morning, I became aware that I was holding my left shoulder, one with a chronic & old injury, in a tense and elevated position. Then, I took a quiet, mindful breath into my shoulder and watched it unwind from the tense holding pattern that had crept into it.

Amazingly, it felt much better once I noticed the feeling of tension and holding in the shoulder, breathed with it and let go. Sometimes we hold our hurt wings with tension, in anticipation of pain. This can set up a pain, holding/spasm, pain cycle. Awareness and mindful breath work can help to break the holding/spasm component.

Your Lymphatic System

Did you know that your breathing habits may positively effect your lymphatic system?

Let's begin with a review of the anatomy and functioning of the lymphatic system. Closely related to the cardiovascular system both anatomically and functionally, the lymphatic system is composed of capillaries; larger lymphatic vessels, called collecting vessels; the lymph fluid itself; lymph nodes; and numerous lymphatic ducts.

The journey of the lymphatic fluid looks like this: lymph fluid is picked up from the cells, where it travels via the lymphatic capillaries to the collecting vessels, then up to the lymphatic ducts, where it is filtered and  returned to the bloodstream.

What is this lymph fluid? It is a fluid that is the byproduct of cellular function and respiration. It is extra, or interstitial, fluid containing bacteria, fat and proteins, fluid that remains between the cells and was not picked up by the bloodstream. It is a waste product of the body discharged from the cells. This clear and colorless fluid is then transported to the lymph nodes, where it is filtered and cleaned of foreign substances, bacteria, proteins and other large particles. From the nodes, the lymph travels to the ducts, formed by the convergence of lymph vessels. They include the lumbar duct, the common duct that empties into the cisterna chyli, the cisterna chyli, the thoracic duct, the left jugular and subclavian ducts and the right lymphatic duct.*

Lymph, then, travels from the cells to the capillaries, to the nodes, through the ducts, to empty in the large blood vessels located at the base of the neck, where it is emptied back into the bloodstream. However, unlike blood, lymph moves in only one direction through a variety of parallel mechanisms:

1. hydrostatic pressure;
2. valves to prevent backflow;
3. voluntary muscle contractions throughout the body;
4. respiratory movments that create alternating pressures within the chest cavity (pressures created by the contraction and relaxation of the diaphragm and respiratory muscles);
5. contractions of the abdominal wall upon forceful exhalation -- vigorous exercise, coughing, sneezing -- creating a positive pressure in the cisterna chyli that pushes the lymph up towards the large veins in the neck;
6. pulsations of adjacent blood vessels throughout the circulatory system.*

Three liters of lymph enter the bloodstream every 24 hours. Since muscle contractions aid lymph flow, you can see how important general exercise is to aid turnover in your lymphatic system. Furthermore, the thoracic duct, cysterna chili, the lumbar duct and the common duct are all very near the diaphragm, our primary breathing muscle. The thoracic duct passes through an opening in the diaphragm.

One can see how, on an anatomical level at the very least, deep breathing exercises may have a direct and positive impact on lymphatic flow. Deep breathing exercises create greater pressures within the chest and abdominal cavities. Additionally, through the contractions of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles, a positive pressure is created in the trunk to further push the lymph upwards towards their emptying ports in the neck.

Another reason to get moving and to do pranayama, powerful breathing exercises!

Note:
The above information is not comprehensive of the entire lymphatic system, which also includes the spleen and lymphocytes.

*Information taken from Anatomy by Ernerst W. April and Grant's Atlas of Anatomy.

Click here to learn more about Sharon Gary and Yoga Physical Therapy.

The Body Electric

"Dancing is more like high-interface action verbs than nouns and subjects. I'm very interested in the electric threshold; dance can be like live voltage, or crossing realms. Sometimes the body is flooded and energized by an excess of impulses, spasms, jerks, shakes, tremors, and responds with quirks and undulations."           Kenneth King

If a dancing body is capable of these responses, these expressions -- spasms, jerks, shakes, tremors -- then where do these responses go in everyday life? Where do we put that kinetic energy while we sit quietly in front of the computer or clutching our cell phones, thumbing our blackberries and iphones? Do we even breathe when engaged in these activities, never mind allow our body its natural expression?

Part of our successful socialization, or the price of success if you will, is based on the ability to suppress physical, visible, reactions. We freeze our faces (Botox anyone?). We freeze the muscles in our bodies. We do this whether we are excited, disappointed, angry or overwhelmed. But remember, the brain and its extension, the body, are coded for action/re-action. If we can't flinch, quiver, cry or grimace, what happens to those impulses? Do we take these neural stimuli into hiding? Might it be these inhibited impulses that unexpressed hide out in the neck (spasm), eye (twitch), head (pound), back (grab), stomach (gurgle), intestines (run)?

Instead of releasing, do we repress? Maybe it's the crazy person, the schizophrenic off his meds on the subway platform who might still embody his own natural reactions, reactions that haven't been re-pressed. Scary, isn't it? Or think of the disorder of Tourette's syndrome, where the nervous system is operating without the appropriate neural brakes or neural inhibitions. (For it is the inhibitory part of the nervous system that allows it to operate smoothly by applying braking mechanisms that allow for smooth, controlled movements.)

Paradoxically, one of the beauties of meditation is that it allows us to sit quietly and to be with our own mental and emotional processes. It is why it can be so uncomfortable to meditate. All of the sudden, we give permission, time and space to those thoughts and feelings, the same ones that we try, with decreasing effectiveness, to control, to keep down, to run away from. We give these very thoughts and feeling permission to bubble up, as if from the primordial soup, and they want to be heard. In meditation, we can study this live voltage, this energy that gets trapped in our bodies. We do this by sitting quietly, tuning into the repetitive cycles of the breath.

One appeal of yoga is that we invite ourselves to slow down and to feel the body. We are invited to extend the head on the neck, the neck on the spine, the fingers, hands and wrists, torso, toes and limbs out of habitually tight ranges. By doing this, we give ample time and space for the muscles, thoughts and emotions to unwind. Is it any wonder that we feel calmer, with fewer aches and pains after giving the bodymind its say?

Think. What posture is most typical of Western life? Sitting. We sit in front of the computer, the TV, at our desks, in our cars, on the airplanc. We are a nation of sitters!

Many, if not most, of our aches and pains, our illnesses (including diabetes and heart disease) are caused not by overuse of ourselves, our bodies, but by under use. We move too little in quantity and variety. So, let's get up and move, dance to get the electric body moving, and we will all feel better and be healthier for it.

Get Up and Move. Your Brain and Your Well-Being May Depend on It.

The brain is the CEO of the body, the chief organ, the director. It initiates and sends the signals that allow us to accomplish tasks. Making and drinking that cup of espresso. Reaching out to reassure a loved one through a gentle touch. The brain also governs organ function. It monitors and creates neurotransmitters and hormones, complex and dynamic interactions in the body we still know very little about.

Besides sending signals for movement, action, reaction and creating homeostasis within your body, your brain receives and interprets information coming to you from the environment outside you, as well as the environment inside -- your body, mind and emotions. Are you hot/cold? Is it light/dark? Are you afraid or calm? Are you sleepy or rested? Happy or sad? Is it safe out there? What does it feel like in here?

We tend to think of the emotions as originating in the brain, in our minds. Buddhists and many psychologists believe that emotions are caused by our thoughts. Become aware of the faulty thought, identify it as such, and the painful emotion will change, switch or even disappear. Becoming aware of the emotion may mean learning to feel where the tension of that emotion is felt in your body. At this level of tension or bodily discomfort, it's not hard (or is it) to convince many people that we store mental and emotional tension or sadness or depression in our bodies. That the signal of pain or stiffness or tiredness may not be solely physical in origin. That our fatigue, sleeplessness, stiffness and pain may because of a combination of physical, mental and emotional triggers.

Indeed, Yoga, meditation, tai chi and other approaches offer us a method to become aware of our bodies, minds and emotions. Besides awareness, these practices may also offer us a way to work with our minds and emotions in a calm, sane way. Through the combination of mental and physical practices, they offer us a way to counter the deleterious effects of stress and pain stored in the body. On a simple, concrete level, the physical practices of Yoga, tai chi, chi gong get the blood flowing. They enhance breathing (which alters blood flow). They can help us to decrease pain, increase balance and provide an overall sense of well-being.

At the same time, in Western scientific medicine, emotional imbalances or disorders particularly depression and anxiety, are thought to be because of biochemical imbalances, imbalances in the neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine, etc. and are then treated with pharmacology in an attempt to restore balance to the body's (and the mind's) chemistry.

The good news is that a bevy of studies suggest that the cheapest, easiest and perhaps the most effective way to alter mood, perception or even cognitive function is to get moving. Open the newspaper, go online, and you will find continuously new studies that document the positive effects of exercise on depression and anxiety. Cognition too. Get the blood flowing and you just might feel better (maybe because of an alteration in biochemical processes).

What kinds of exercise can accomplish this? Does it have to be running or yoga or meditation? Stepping not too far out on a limb, I would say that any form of exercise will accomplish this, from yoga, to playing basketball, weight lifting, biking, running, elliptical training, walking, swimming, tennis, tai chi, any form of dance -- you name it.

Get moving and you will feel better, look better and improve your health and longevity. It's a win-win proposition.