For Performance, Health, and Stress Reduction

Meditation has been scientifically proven to provide many physiological, mental, and emotional benefits. Many athletes, corporate executives, entertainers understand the benefits and employ them as an integral part of there lifestyle as well as a tool to prepare them for their performances. For athletes, corporate executives and entertainers their performances are their livelihood and the quality of each performance impacts their value, thus allowing them to keep their positions in these highly competitive fields. Today I am going to introduce you to a very easy meditation application that will help you whenever you need a break to increase your energy, clear your mind, or reinvigorate your mental focus.

Power meditation is much different than a power nap. A nap by definition is sleeping for a short period of time. A power nap is a 20-30 minute nap that purposely falls short of attaining deep or slow-wave sleep. Getting to a place where one can sleep, power napping, and getting back to your days work is not logistically possible for most. Compound that without being able to close off your mind, little emotional rebalancing, mental clarity, physical energy is going to be gained and you have the reason for its lack of popularity. Where the power is derived from a “power nap” is evading my understanding and imagination completely. The term “Power Nap” is arguably an oxymoron. 5 - 20 minutes of “Power Meditation” on the other hand, with a focus and technique on breathing and clearing the mind produces a noticeable calm and increased energy state. I state my case!

Studies have found a direct correlation between meditation and the performance level of sports professionals. Meditation strengthens the mind as it comes under control, providing an enabling of effective guidance to the physical body (including the brain) to proficiently executes desired efforts. Meditation has many health benefits. The deep, rhythmic breathing techniques of meditation increases circulation allowing cells to receive oxygen and other nutrients in great quantity. In recent years meditation has been implemented in the management of many life threatening diseases and psychological disorders.

Benefits of meditation:

• The lowering of oxygen consumption
• The decreasing of respiratory rate
• The increasing of blood flow and slowing of the heart rate
• Increases exercise tolerance in heart patients.
• Leads to deeper levels of relaxation
• The lowering of high blood pressure
• Reduces anxiety attacks by reducing levels of blood lactate
• Decreases muscle tension, pain due to tension, and headaches
• It increases mood and behavior influencing serotonin production, in which low levels are associated with depression, obesity, insomnia, and headaches
• Helps in chronic diseases like arthritis, allergies, etc.
• Reduces Pre-menstrual Syndrome
• Helps accelerate post-Operative recovery and healing
• Reduces the activity of viruses and emotional stress
• Enhances the immune system

Power Meditation Technique:

• Turn off your phone ringer.
• Find a quiet place or lock the door and put on some soothing music.
• Set your watch or phone to your desired time of meditation.
• Find a comfortable place to park your body. Whether that be sitting upright in a chair, in a recliner, lying on your back with knees bent, or sitting on a matt in the lotus, ½ lotus or seiza position.
• Take a couple of deep breaths to open up your lungs and clear them out.
• Take a minute to consciously relax, find a comfortable posture
• To start, close your eyes and focus on breathing relaxed full breaths. Breathe in and out through your nose at the same pace.
• Focus your hearing to the music or peaceful silence while you concentrate on your full, relaxed rhythmic breathing.
• Keep your attention on your breathing, feel the inhale and exhale. Withdraw your attention from the past, future or responsibilities at hand and focus on deeper immersion in the feelings of your breathing.
• If you find yourself distracted with thoughts, gently bring yourself back to the feeling of your breathing. Allow the thoughts to pass by as they come. Don’t try to hard, just do your best to return to your breathing and allow any thoughts to exit.
• Don’t worry if you find yourself thinking a lot. This is normal. Over time, you will gain the ability to quiet yourself more and more. Like anything else, it just takes practice.
• If you experience some physical discomfort during the meditation, make the necessary adjustments to bring yourself back to the comfort zone. The adjustments might be very subtle muscular, skeletal, or attitudinal shifts. Just do your best to relax and remain as still as possible during your meditation.
• Whether you perform 5 minute meditations when needed or use a scheduled time in your day, you will feel the relaxing, energizing effects of taking a break from the world and breathing therapeutically.

Your performance in life is how you are judged, both by yourself and others. Take charge of your own performance potential by maintaining peak performance ability. Energy management is a must in todays over the top, busy world. Meditation, combined with daily management of your nutrition, hydration, physical activity and sleep will help you obtain your optimal performance in life.

Namaste.

Greg Alario

Blue Collar Zen Master

There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good. It is human nature to want to look our best and if passing by the mirror after getting out of the shower does not elicit a, “That’s what I’m talking about ” response to your reflection, the culprit is, for the most part, your diet, it is not the mirror. What you see is what you have earned. You are what you eat. That is the absolute bottom line. To look and feel your best your must have diet habits that fit your needs. The undeniable fact is that what you eat and drink is a pillar of your health and performance ability. Before you can expect results from your physical activity, you need to ensure you are fueled for the performance. In referring to performance, I am talking about not only game day performance but your every-day performance.

The key to maintaining a base of balanced wellness is a healthy diet and adequate physical activity. Your diet gives you the fuel and your activity maintains or enhances your physical vehicle. They are inseparable. Activity without the fuel breaks down the components and/or limits your efforts. Although the main activity in my services regards varying methods and degrees of physical activity, I always emphatically emphasize diet as an irreplaceable, foundational component in any program whether it be health, fitness or competitive in its objective. A healthy, sufficient diet combined with daily low intensity exercise is more beneficial to wellness than moderate to high-intensity exercise supported with poor nutritional habits. Bottom line is, what you eat is more important than what you do physically. Ignoring a sound nutritional base is the equivalent of building a custom, million dollar home on an unstable, imbalanced foundation.

We are what we eat. As a society we are fat, lacking energy, suffer from sexually dysfunction, depression, and a plethora of degenerative diseases, yet for the most part, are accepting of it. People will take a pill before taking the first step in attempting a holistic approach to self healing, by refining their diet. I do not get it. How is it not possible for our education system to provide an applicable understanding of this? How irresponsible is it for a college course in nutrition to pass a student without equipping them with the knowledge and ability to create a personal diet plan that provides specific nutrition for optimal performance? Think about it.

As a believer in the benefits of the human potential, I promote healthy living to create a foundation of quality of life. Everything we do starts with that foundation. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind which is what’s needed as a base to realizing potential and self. Blue Collar Zen promotes physical culture as a method of creating a base for service productivity and enlightenment

Physical Culture is a philosophy, regimen, or lifestyle seeking optimal physical development through a healthy diet, mental discipline and varied means of physical activity such as martial arts, yoga, dance, weight training, aerobic activity, and athletic competition. Benefits include improvements in health, mental clarity and capacity, appearance, strength, endurance, flexibility, speed, and general fitness as well as greater proficiency in sport-related activities.

As you can see from the above definition, the exact combination of activities you may choose for your own state of physical culture is vast. You have choices to fit your specific needs, personality, climate, facility or equipment availability at your disposal. Just like the wild animal, the human animal needs movement and to expend physical energy to maintain physiological and mental balance. Without that needed movement animals become lethargic, atrophied, stressed, neurotic and fat. Although there are countless recreational activities, sports and fitness approaches that will satisfy our activity needs, your diet has personalized, specific volume and composition requirements.

The problem with the plethora of information and advice on physical activity and diet choices is that they much of the time contradict each other, and are simply attempting to negate the ill effects of unhealthy, degenerating life style habits instead of promoting good health.

I can guarantee if you get your food intake right every aspect of your health will improve. You will have more energy, better workouts day and night, better recovery and improved mental clarity. It astounds me that this is not understood and applied. Getting it close is not good enough. Your oxygenation, hydration and nutrition are the foundation of your health and performance ability.

Healthy Diet Guidelines

• 5-6 small to moderate complete meals per day
• Eat plenty of high-fiber foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, to get 30-50 grams of fiber daily.
• Consume raw food: green, orange, and yellow fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds. Eating a salad with raw vegetables and a little bit of raw seeds or nuts with lunch and dinner is a good recommendation. Baby carrots and edamames are good snack and boxed lunch ideas.
• Cut the sugar; eat mainly complex carbs: Limit your intake of sugary foods, refined-grain products such as white bread, and salty snack foods.
• Avoid all saturated and trans fats.” Saturated and trans fat calories hurdle their way past metabolic adjustments and sit themselves in the fatty tissue of the body.
• Consume lean protein products with each meal.

I watched “Gandhi” the other night, again, and was inspired to write a post in tribute to the beautiful, little man, with a mind devoted to peace, love and humanity and possessing the heart of a warrior.

“….man acts as a guardian of his body. It becomes his duty to take such care of his body as to enable it to practice the idea of serving to the best of its ability.”

All the great prophets and spiritual leaders are very clear in their belief that creating an optimal state of health and fitness is a primary responsibility for each of us so as to create the energy needed to live a life of harmony, continual growth and contribution. Gandhi was no different.  He had plenty to say on diet, hydration and exercise. In his own life he provided a very real example of the effects on health with his own fasts. In his historic Calcutta fast Gandhi used a, fast to the death, threat as a means of stopping the Hindu-Muslim violence uprising. http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study_res/gandhi/gandhi_fast.html

Gandhi knew very well the fact that quality, balanced food intake was irreplaceable fuel for the physical action of life. He stated it irrefutable that 99.9% of men and women in the world eat merely to please the palate. Gandhi is often associated with strict vegetarianism. For 6 years he was exactly that. Not taking into account the accumulative effects that diet could have, his health forced him to make a change in 1917, and recognize the need for adequate protein in his diet. He said, “In year 1917, as a result of my ignorance, I was laid down with severe dysentery. I was reduced to a skeleton, but I stubbornly refused to take any medicine and with equal stubbornness refused to take milk or buttermilk. But I could not build up my body and pick up sufficient strength to leave the bed. Gandhi believed that he who is able to control the palate, will easily be able to control the other senses, and that there should be an odium attached to those who slavishly pander to the palate.

“modern education….  has no relation with our everyday life. Thus, it leaves us almost utterly ignorant about our own body. ”

Much has remained the same since Gandhi’s time, and much of what he lived and promoted have fallen to the wayside. Almost 100 years ago he was commenting on the need for individual health management. Today many are still starving, most are malnourished, a sub-species of obesity has formed, and the majority of the population apply minimal effort, if that, to their health and fitness.  His quote, “The modern generation is delicate, weak and much pampered”, has only multiplied in quality and quantity in time.

“No matter what amount of work one has, one should always find some time for exercise, just as one does for one’s meals. It is my humble opinion that, far from taking away from one’s capacity for work, it adds to it.”

Gandhi was very clear on his opinion of physical labor as part of life and believed, “… a man should be able with ease to walk ten to twelve miles a day, and perform ordinary physical labour without getting tired.”

“Exercise is as much of vital necessity for man as air, water and food, in the sense that no man who does not take exercise regularly can be perfectly healthy. Exercise, as is food, is as essential to the mind as the body. The mind is as much weakened by want of exercise as the body, and a feeble mind is, indeed, a form of disease. A sound mind in a sound body alone constitutes true health.”

Gandhi’s health advice stressed the need of adequate hydration for health and performance, recommending, at least 9 cups of pure water per daily.

‘”…everyone should carry his drinking water with him. Many orthodox Hindus in India do not drink water whilst traveling on account of religious prejudices. Surely, the enlightened can do for the sake of health. What the unenlightened do in the name of religion”

As you can see the game has not changed that much. Whether coming from Aristotle, Hippocrates, Buddha, Morihei Ueshiba, Gandhi, Jack Lalanne, or a Blue Collar Zen master it is acknowledged that health and fitness is an integral pillar in life that has no replacement, and if ignored detracts from our life performance and thusly our happiness and harmony. Make the commitment to yourself, and honor your obligation to God and mankind to be your best by taking charge of your health and fitness.