Namaste is a friendly greeting in written communication, or generally between people when they meet. Some would say it literally means, "I see the good in you." I use it in my final blog of the year because I'd like to thank all members of The Warrior Nation for their support, their encouragement and their participation in helping grow Warrior Life Coach. As my way of showing thanks, I'd like to offer a potential course of action that many of you might want to investigate as we head into the new year. When we traditionally think of the New Year, we can't help but think about New Year's resolutions. What I'd like to shed light on today is the "trap" that we set for ourselves when we resolve to "not do something."
At the heart of my practice, I use an evidence-based discipline called Subconscious Restructuring®. Don't let the name scare you, as I know those of you reading these words for the first time can create all kinds to images and thoughts about what this might be. Simply put, it's nothing more than this: your subconscious mind drives every thought, every word, every action, and all behaviors you exude. If you are thinking about a resolution for 2012, you have obviously identified a behavior that does not work for you. That behavior comes from information stored in your subconscious. In order to change your behavior, you must "restructure" your internal self-talk to achieve change. Put another way, you cannot drop a behavior by "not wanting to do it." Your brain stays permanently fixed on your old behavior and your subconscious mind will do everything it can to keep you in that behavior. So how do we truly change, you might ask?
Every warrior (and if you haven't figured out by now, we are ALL warriors) worth their salt know that an Objective is something we orient on to achieve. If you are going to set a New Years Resolution, might I suggest you chose to do something new in place of your unwanted behavior. Using a simple analogy, which way do you drive a car more effectively...looking in the rear view mirror, or looking straight ahead? For those of you (especially my wounded brothers and sisters in arms) looking for something beneficial to add into your life, that could replace a behavior that doesn't work for you, might I suggest you consider yoga?
To save you the trouble of researching this topic, I offer you the following link from Health Yoga. Although this is a mainstream yoga site, I found this list of benefits very "warrior-esque:
Here are the top ten benefits of yoga.
1. Stress Relief
Yoga can help reduce the effects of stress on your body. One of the benefits of yoga is that it encourages relaxation and can lower the amount of cortisol in your body.
2. Pain Relief
Daily exercises of yoga can help ease the aches and pains of the body. Many people with very serious diseases have reported less pain after these daily exercises, such as asanas or meditation.
3. Better Breathing
You will learn to take deeper, slower breaths with daily exercises of yoga. It will help to increase your lung function and set off the body's relaxation response. This can be one of the most powerful benefits of yoga.
4. Flexibility
You will notice your level of flexibility will increase, which will help with your range of motion. Sometimes in the yoga daily exercises, people cannot even touch their toes. The benefits of yoga will include lengthening the muscles, tendons, and ligaments in your body to help you become more flexible.
5. Increased Strength
Yoga poses use all the muscles in your body and help you increase your strength level from head to toe. The benefits of yoga and daily exercises will help you strengthen your muscles close to the bones, which increase the support of your skeletal system as well.
6. Weight Management
You will see the benefits of yoga begin to affect your scale. Daily exercises are always recommended, but yoga helps reduce the level of cortisol in your body. This aids in weight loss and fat burning.
7. Improved Circulation
Yoga will help improve your body's circulation. In turn, with daily exercises, you will see the benefits of yoga with lowered blood pressure and pulse rates.
8. Cardiovascular Conditioning
Even the most gentle style of yoga will help to lower your resting heart reate and increase your overall endurance. This is one of the important benefits of yoga to help improve the amount of oxygen taken in during the daily exercises.
9. Focus on the Present
You can have greater coordination, memory skills, reaction times, and improved concentration skills by utilizing yoga for daily exercises. These benefits of yoga will extend far out of the yoga center.
10. Inner Peace
What more could you want? This is one of the primary reasons that people do daily exercises of yoga. This is one of the most important
benefits of yoga and is also one of the more easy ones to attain.
Take Away
I know from my work with this amazing population that there is at least one of these benefits that can help you. If we are being honest here, there are probably 5 or 6 that you could really benefit from. Either way, it's just a course of action (COA) I offer you. Hopefully, you have at least another COA you can compare it to prior to making a decision. Making good decisions it what allows us to "see the good in you."
Warrior, out!