When your walking along, your vision is, of course focused on looking straight ahead. Some of that field of vision can actually see part of the ground directly in front of your feet, and then sends a signal to your brain saying ‘look out, we know that’s pavement (really hard unforgiving ground) your about to walk on, and the involuntary body tensing begins, and interrupts your breathing pattern allot. See the amazing things that you find out when you read?

The author takes you through the very real benefits of showing you just how important the art and science of breathing is all about. I practice breathing 3 times per day when I study Chi Kung and Yang Style Tai Chi. You just would not believe the difference between putting your breathing patterns on auto pilot, or making a concentrated effort to practice healthy breathing. It improves digestion, healing, improves oxygen delivery to the lungs, provides mental clarity and the list goes on and on.

Have you ever observed the way a baby breathes? From the lower tummy, or abdomen, not the chest, and that’s the challenge with most of us. We breathe from the wrong place in our bodies. As we grow up we inherently forget that we slowly change many things in our lives. We get busy and accept more ‘responsibility’ like school, then perhaps pose secondary education such as college or university, and then you get a job, have a mortgage, have kids, then your paying for someone else’s post secondary education. Stress causes us to do many things, including how not to properly breathe. It’s just one of those things that we take for granted, but don’t give it much thought. After all, we all know how to breathe right? Perhaps. All I know is that when I practice my Chi Kung and Tai Chi, it is a gentle reminder how to gain benefits from a very powerful and popular form of Kung Fu that has been successfully used in China for thousands of years.

1) Walking is absolutely free, and can be done almost anywhere.

2) Walking fits everyone of all ages, shapes and sizes.

3) Walking can be an extremely challenging form of exercise

4) Walking can be integrated into everyone’s lifestyle relatively easily.

5) Walking is a very low strain on the feet, joints and body, and risk of injury is very low.

6) Reduces heart disease, lowers cholesterol, lowers blood pressure.

7) Reduces body fat, enhances mental well-being. Increases bone density, reducing the risk of cancer of the colon, helps to control body weight, helps increase flexibility and coordination, and if that’s not all,

Its allot of fun!

Oh, and while were on the subject, lets talk about ‘Work Place Walking’.

1) Improved productivity.

2) Fewer insurance and compensation claims.

3) Fewer absenteeism.

4) Decreased accidents.

5) Reduced staff turnover.

6) Lower cost related to retirement, training and orientation.

7) Improved attitude toward the organization and higher staff morale.

A more receptive climate for, and ability to cope with workplace changes.

9) Enhanced business.

First, know that however bad your office place stress gets, you get to make some decisions. For example, take a look at your typical day and gauge your office work place on a scale of 10 to 1. 10 being the worse stress you can take, and 1 being the least. Here is a fantastic revelation that you might want to keep to yourself. Say for example you have a stress level that is way out there. I mean, on the drive to work, your anxiety is through the roof. Where do you store your tension? Where are you most vulnerable physically. Personally, I tend to hold my tension and stress in my lower abdomen. So, I consciously focus my breathing on my lower abdomen, and with every breath I take, allow the relaxation process to enhance the experience. By the time I get to work, I find I have much, much more energy that I would ordinarily have had I not relaxed for the entire drive in. (Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that I get to listen to my favourite podcast’s as well)

Your office place stress will be there when you get to work, so, why allow it to get the best of you on the drive to work? Think about this. When you combine all the stress and tension that is going to get thrown at you in your day, and your doing what you’ve always done (allow parts of your body and mind to literally freeze up) isn’t it about time you did something different? How long do you intend to go on torturing yourself with your specific type and brand of anxiety? There is hope for you, even though you may think that there isn’t.

THE FIRST STEP: SET REALISTIC GOALS FOR Y0UR SELF. In this day and age, I know that almost every business is expecting more out of you with less time available. The one thing that you need to do is to take stock of your abilities and be really honest about the work load you can handle. This will no doubt take some real soul searching to find out what is fair, honest and doable. Sit down with your immediate supervisor and set some guidelines on how you need to approach your workload. This should be a team effort because if if you don’t work as a team, it’s going to be a might long day, and for some of you, a long year.

Both of you should start by putting together a list of expectations. Really, a form of procedures that you can use as an expectation guideline. After all, if you don’t have any kind of procedure list, how will you ever know if your meeting the expectations set before you. When I used to work for IBM, Microsoft, HP and Toshiba, we had very specific training and a mini printed manual called a complete ‘scope of work’ where every single step was documented so that there should be very few if any questions after you have been trained in a particular platform, whether it was software related for Microsoft, or hardware break/fix based for Toshiba when you need to fix a huge four foot long plotter.

A basic procedure manual is so vitally important that, if your place of work doesn’t have them or support using them, you can always have employees pointing their fingers at each other saying ‘it’s not my fault, its his or hers’. Procedure manuals give direction, essential training, responsibility, traceability and sense of accomplishment. If there are no basic procedure manuals or guidelines, why not volunteer to create one for your company in the exact department you work in.

Part 2 below.

She will be missed very much by many loving students, friends, family and adoring fans. We have truly lost one of the greatest ambassadors of Reflexology and holistic health. It was because of Yvette that I created the ‘Healthy Tech Talk’ method of health for computer users. Even though Yvette is gone physically, she did leave behind a great blog that she has entrusted me with. Please feel free to visit the blog in order to get to know Yvette and what she meant to so many people. The address is:
yvetteeastman.squarespace.com

As a business person, one of my hopes is that I can live up to people who are vastly smarter than I am, and Yvette was one of those instructors that towered above most people.

Here at ‘Healthy Tech Talk’ we have taken some of the best ‘principles’ of Yvette’s training and hopefully everyone who comes in contact with the product will love it the same way we did as we were putting the program together.

In the healthy tech talk system, we don’t use hard core Reflexology. I took the most practical, powerful and believable aspects of Reflexology and combined it with what I call ‘trigger ball’ therapy and teach the PC user how to deeply relax while using all 3 systems at the same time. I am under the impression that Reflexology on its own just won’t give you the relief your seeking. Neither will the trigger ball therapy or the deep relaxation exercises. Personally, I can’t wait to get out in the real world and show off my system. It’s perhaps one of the best out there.

I taught Reflexology for several years through the adult education program of my local school boards, and I always felt just a little bit uncomfortable attempting to ‘sell’ what boils down to a belief system. That was clarified for me just a few weeks ago as I was video recording Yvette teaching her advanced class, and she again re-enforced the notion that Reflexology is indeed a belief system. Let’s look at the bigger picture. Take for example Chiropractic medicine. While it is very tightly controlled, monitored and is backed by a college based educational system, chiropractic was once connected to a person who was involved in ‘magnetic healing’, which by most accounts has been questioned by the scientific community. Some will claim that chiropractic is also based on a belief system that supposes the alignment of the spine can influence health for the entire body. Sounds strangely familiar doesn’t it?

Reflexology just doesn’t have the same ‘panache’ that the other systems do, and as stated above in this blog, some reflexologist’s can’t even agree on the delivery method of the basic principles. The science behind the art of reflexology is scarce, substandard and sometimes desperately stitched together from questionable studies and reports that aren’t as convincing as I would like them to be. Still, and there is a ‘still’, reflexology has an annoying habit of being able to relax, restore, revitalize and calm in an amazing way that is still quite a mystery to me. That’s why I am going to attempt to explain it from my side of the fence, as an electronics technician.

Have you ever heard of the book called ‘The body Electric’ by Dr. Becker? He is a medical doctor who was fascinated with the influence of the body’s electronic and electrical system. It took him a few years to gather enough research together in order to write the book, and as I read it over and over again, it revealed to me that the body has a very interesting way of using the properties of magnetism and electricity to do some pretty incredible things, namely to allow healing with the properties that are in his book.

So, I haven’t blogged for awhile because I have been nursing my sore neck, which brings me to this blog and the introduction of my Physiotherapist, Jeremy.  Jeremy was referred to me through our son Duane. He went through what I am going through now, but about 2 years ago. His was back related, and my wonderful adventure in pain centers in my neck. Duane said that he was convinced that the physiotherapy he received from Jeremy was the deciding factor in getting him back to work in a timely manner. (Which is code for: it works)

My first meeting with Jeremy was on Monday, Sept 26th. On the initial visit (also known as an assessment) Jeremy asked me a series of questions that will help him verify exactly how he should proceed with the treatments to get me back in the real world. In my case, the area of my neck just could not stand any kind of manual manipulation, so Jeremy decided to apply some heat, and incorporate voltage with a device that goes around the back of my neck and to the sides. You know that it is working because you can feel a tingling sensation all along the area where the device is placed. It felt warm and relaxing, and when I left the office, I was good for about an hour or so. After that the neck stiffened up again, and Jeremy told me that it may take some time for that area of the neck to get the message that we were there to help, and that if something he was doing wasn’t working, or if I had any concerns or questions about the treatment to talk to him about it right away. In that sense, it allows the Physiotherapist to become a real quality team player and partner in the recovery process.

Today is Wednesday, Sept 28th, and this is our second visit. We did the heat pad again, as well as the voltage machine, and then we introduced something a little different. Laser beam therapy has been used for a few years now, and, Jeremy did a great job of explaining the features and benefits associated with that particular kind of therapy. I wasn’t paying particularly close attention to the laser as Jeremy was talking, so I didn’t turn around to see what it looked like, but it felt like a warm piece of metal a few inches in diameter being gently rubbed around the affected area. I don’t know if its my imagination or not, but compared to the other two therapies (heated pillow device and voltage) it felt as if the laser was actually going subcutaneously under the skin and working further down on the muscle and tendons of the neck.

Jeremy and I swapped a few stories, and I asked him about my injury, and why it keeps on tensing up. He said (if I can remember the conversation correctly) that we needed to continue to work on relaxing the neck area where the discs were in order to stabilize it, then we could use different tactics to ensure that the entire systems and subsystems for the neck and spine could accept different influences for recovery. I’m impressed with Jeremy’s professional and intelligent approach to patient recovery. I’ve had two sessions now, and as we continue I will of course keep  I will keep you updated with what is happening.

Dealing with a neck injury like this is teaching me that I must re-evaluate some of my daily activities. Oh sure, just after I take my pain killers, at about the 30  minute mark your saying to yourself ‘Hey, I’m not feeling too bad, maybe I’ll try to unload the dishwasher’, and get about 1/2 way through the process when that familiar ‘zing’ hits the neck, and I know that I’m going to pay for my indiscretion when the medication wears off, and that’s exactly how it happens. So we go through this goofy, and not so smart cycle of feeling good, doing a mild activity, then back to great pain.

There’s no doubt that, in order to get better I have to do less and make a conscious effort to use my meditation skills to enhance the healing process. I’ve been doing some research on the internet, and it seems that an injury like this can take some time to settle down. I have been using meditation for years to completely stop cluster headaches, and I even used self hypnosis to quit smoking without any challenges whatsoever. The issue here is one of the disc are protruding, and pressing on some nerves. Muscle, ligament and tendon pain can benefit from heat, cold and resting. I have found, in my case the nerves being pressed in my neck causes uncontrollable jerking and twitching from my arms, legs, hands, fingers and even my entire body will twitch whenever I am laying down, or if a pillow or something else presses on the back of my neck.

So, the adventure continues. And, as a strong believer in holistic methods and concepts, I am working my Reflexology points often and have to keep in mind to ‘do less’, which drives me absolutely crazy, because I now realize that I have to ‘sneak’ up on this kind of pain in order to stay ahead of it. My next appointment is tomorrow and I’m probably suspecting that we will definitely use the laser at that time. I will do some research and talk to Jeremy to see if I can get the name of the exact laser machine they are using and put some detailed findings on this blog. Until then, this is Rick saying,

‘Blog at you later’. Rick.

Case in point: We were walking in Mundy park, and came across a metal pole standing about 5 feet tall, with a metal ring mounted horizontally half way down the pole, with chains that attach from the smaller metal hoop to the top of the pole. Yes, it does sound confusing, you should see it in person, its just plain weird. Anyway, there was a sign on the pole that said ‘Disc Golf’. I had never heard of such a thing, so we captured it on video, and as we continued walking across a field, noticed 3 fellows playing Disc Golf. I couldn’t help going over and talking to them about Disc Golf. Turns out, only 3 parks in all of British Columbia have this strange yet interesting twist on the of Golf. See our video on Disc Golf here.

On Saturday, August 13 2011 using our ‘Noom’ program, we have captured a GPS map of where we walked, how far we went,(6.35 kilometers)  how long it took us (1 hr, 26 minutes, 35 seconds) how many calories I burned (422) and our average walking speed (4.4 km/hr) The program even recorded how many steps I took (6345) and that’s pretty detailed information. After the walk in Mundy Parki, we weren’t even close to being winded, so we decided to drive a few miles down the road for another walk along the beach’s of White Rock. This walk took (55 minutes and 22 seconds), a distance of (3.47 kilometers), I burned (220 calories) and our average speed was (3.8 km/hr) See the map below for our Mundy Park walk. If you combine what we did at Mundy Park with our little jaunt at White Rock, you’ll notice that we walked a total of: 9.82 Kilometers, and that’s about average for us on either a Saturday or Sunday.

The fun part about this (aside from being with my beautiful Bride) is the documentation of our walks. When we went to White Rock, we began to get hungry, so decided to check our different Restaurant reviews with a program called ‘Trip Adviser’. Click here to see the review under ‘Coney Island Restaraunt’. Named ‘Light and Fluffy Fish‘. Pat and I have so much fun when we’re out anywhere. A few months ago we walked the Stanley Park Seawall. It was so refreshing to see all of the other folks rollerblading, bicycling, jogging, running and even skipping their way to health. We think it’s really important to record our fitness program for everyone to see to do a couple of things. First, and this may sound a little bit strange, its motivation for us to get out there with our video and still cameras and start capturing fantastic memories. Not only that, but have you ever been talking to someone and they said to you ‘so, what did you do this weekend?’, and you tell them about your walks, how beautiful it was, and no matter how hard you try to recreate the scenery with a good story, its almost impossible. But, if you have videos, pictures and text based stories that easily gives you another dimension to work with so, not only can you tell your friends about with you did, but show them as well.

Another reason I love to use technology to record our fitness program is so that we can motivate not only other people to get out there and start walking, but our blogs and podcast’s serve as reminders to us of what we’ve done, so we can ‘up our game’ to do more than the last walk. Really, its somewhat of a virtual fitness diary that we love to share with everyone. Besides, if you have relatives that live out of the country, and you have a library of videos where you walked, complete with beautiful scenery and stories on the internet where they can easily access them, don’t you think they will be curious about what your doing and turn on your personal channel from You Tube. When they see how much your enjoying yourself, and what your City, Town or Province has to offer, they’ll probably start working on a plan that puts them on a plane to visit you pretty quick.

The point of this bog is to show you that when you use technology to record what your doing out in the ‘real world’, you enrich the world for everyone. Here is a short list of some of the walks we have done and video recorded:

Mundy Park

Burns Bog

Blog at you later, Rick and Pat.