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We all go through times when our sleep gets affected: something on our mind, a family problem, issues at work, or whatever life may bring.
A friend of mine referred me to Lara Riggio who has a special place in her heart for people suffering from chronic fatigue or who have just been diagnosed with cancer and want to know what holistic work they can do to heal and to counteract the side effects from chemo or radiation.
Her approach to sleep and relaxation is holistic, and in her own words, "It’s so rewarding to help my clients suffering with chronic symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, depression or insomnia and give them much needed relief!"
One Saturday, Lara woke up anxious with a long list of things to accomplish and found herself procrastinating. There she was sitting on her couch in her PJ’s watching the news, which was repeating its feed for 2 hours! She didn't even like watching the news!
Lara says, "I couldn’t believe that I had wasted so much of my precious time doing nothing. I went back to my room and did one of the stress relief postures. The energy boost was instantaneous! I immediately knocked 5 things off my list. I didn’t even realize how anxious I was until my anxiety in the form of procrastination was gone.
As I regularly incorporated these stress relief exercises into my routine, I realized life got easier in many ways. And, as I consistently noticed and released my anxiety about anything that was bothering me, I was achieving goals which had been stalled for years. And, within just 2 years of using these tools regularly-
I opened my own business
Got married
Doubled my revenue in my first year of business
I realized my own fear of change and failure was what had been holding me back. When I could release my fear physically as it came up, I could take the actions to which I previously had an emotional resistance, and achieve my goals.
Having lived this and helped thousands of clients get over the physical pains or emotional fears that were stopping them, it is my belief that we can train the body and the brain to heal itself and to be comfortable having a life that, while once scarily foreign or impossible to us, now feels fulfilling. Seeing how the muscular or meridian system breaks down under stress, and balancing it in the face of those stressors, teaches it how to adapt to stress and overcome it. The same way marathoners train by adding little distance and speed increases weekly, we can balance your body, then have you do a lunge or think a stressful thought, balance it again and train you to be able to perform those moves or think about a problem without getting bent out of shape, literally!
Moving forward is so much easier with these tools!"
Lara today shares with us through this article these exercises below:
"Can't sleep?
Do you find your mind racing when you are trying to fall asleep?
Do you wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble getting back to sleep?
Do you wake up still feeling tired?
Your physiological response to the emotional stressors you either ignore or don't recognize is putting you into a sympathetic, fight, flight or freeze stress state making it difficult to relax at night.
Think about how many times you can get stressed every day...
-Listening to the news
-Getting an upsetting email
-Hitting traffic when you are running late
-Looking at your list of to dos and worry you won't have enough time to get them all done
Every time you have a distressing thought (like one of the ones above), your body reacts. Your nervous system goes into a fight-or-flight state: heart rate and blood pressure increase, muscles tense up, your blood-glucose level rises, your digestive and immune systems slow down, in an effort to harness your energy to run away from or fight the perceived danger. These reactions can work to your advantage when you are actually experiencing a life-threatening situation; however, most of your modern-day stress, while anxiety-provoking, most likely will not harm you. Your boss may be angry if you miss a deadline. In the worst possible case scenario, you might lose your job, which while distressing, will not immediately hurt you. And, there are most likely several incidents that would have to occur prior to that happening.
If the market takes a sudden turn or you miss your flight, your actual life is not threatened; there is no lion, tiger or bear about to devour you. Yet, your body is reacting as if you might die, making it difficult to calm down, get perspective, think rationally, as well as relax and sleep!
When you can't sleep, your body has no chance to heal or repair, leaving you more exposed to colds, digestive issues and diseases.
You are great at revving up your system. How about taking 1-2 minutes to start training your body to relax?
Using exercises based on The Chinese Acupuncture System, Lara Riggio creator of The Lara Touch, has helped tens of thousands of her clients relax in minutes. From Veterans suffering with PTSD to business travelers suffering with jet lag, these exercises will give you the calming power of an acupuncturists at your fingertips.
These exercises consist of relaxing into specific body postures, rubbing or tapping specific meridian points, and can be done almost anywhere. In fact, you can do them in a cab or office! They are quick, easy, immediate and effective. Having the ability to calm yourself down whenever you are stressed can improve your sleep, health, performance and creativity. Your ability to process any type of information is better when you are calm.
Here are a few quick and easy exercises to help you relax, so you can be more productive, get more restful sleep and allow your body the time and energy to repair itself.
The Easiest Stress Relief Exercise
This exercise can be done to alleviate stress anywhere...on trains, in meetings and standing in lines to calm down yourself down- whenever stress strikes. You can’t always control what stressors come your way, but with this exercise, you can begin to control how you react to it. Doing this exercise on a regular basis will lessen the intensity of all of your stress responses over time, and things that would normally set you off will become small irritants verses huge upsets.
This particular exercise gets your brain working bilaterally. When you are in a sympathetic, fight or flight state, your brain starts utilizing your more dominant side, right or left, to conserve energy. Doing this posture forces the brain into bilateral function, overriding a stress response and putting your body in a restive or parasympathetic state. Rate your stress level on a scale of 1-10 before and after doing this exercise, so you can see how this works for you!
Simply get into this posture and repeat this phrase 5xs as you take deep breathes to calm down.
I can relax, ground and center myself now.
Lara Riggio
Exercise Ambien
Do this super relaxing stress relief pose at night for 3-5 minutes when you get into bed; you will most likely fall asleep in it. Doing this nightly can help you feel calmer during your days, too.
This pose helps calm your body’s reaction to stress by sending the message to your body to move into a parasympathetic nervous system response, a restive state verses a stress state, so you can have a more peaceful night’s sleep.
When you have a fight or flight response to everyday stress, blood rushes from your brain to your limbs to power your escape or fight. When you hold these points, you send a signal to bring blood back to your brain. This reverses the stress response, so you can relax. You are physically conveying the message to your nervous system that, despite the stress you endured during your day, there is no lion chasing you and no gun to your head now, so you can relax and go to sleep. Doing this pose nightly helped me completely alleviate my anxiety during a stressful episode in my life.
Place one hand on your forehead and the other across the ridge on the back of your head with pillows under your elbows, so you don't have to hold your arms up, and can relax in this position. Rest here until you feel pulses in your hands or your body relax.
If you are still having trouble going to sleep or if you are waking frequently in the middle of the night, try doing this exercise followed by the Head Hold above.
You can access videos of all of these exercises HERE.
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