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Lower blood pressure and relieve computer stress with exercise.

| Health & Science

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Before Starting An Exercise Program You May Want To Consult With Your Health Care Provider.

The following exercise is specifically designed for weight reduction and weight loss generally leads to lower blood pressure.  Stand with your heels, buttocks, and upper back against a wall. Your arms are at your sides with the palms flat against the wall; your shoulders are pressed against the wall. Without raising the heels from the floor, inhale through your nose and do a full body stretch upward, while pulling the abdomen in and expanding the chest outward as much as possible.  Next, exhale as quickly as possible through the mouth, blowing the breath completely out and pushing your abdomen outward.  Repeat the exercise 8-12 times.  The exercise can also be done while seated, with feet flat on the floor and  helps relieve computer related stress.

In a sitting position with the back straight, cross the legs (if possible) and place the hands on the knees.  While exhaling slowly tilt the head forward until the chin touches the chest, or as far as feels comfortable.  Next, begin to inhale and slowly roll the head straight back without raising the shoulders.  An alternative is to pull the shoulders upward as if trying to stick them in your ears.  Repeat from the beginning six to eight times.  Helps lower blood pressure and relieve computer related stress.  Do not roll the head around or from side to side, this puts pressure on the spinal disks in the neck.   Take it slow and don’t force yourself.  The more you practice the farther you’ll be able to tilt the head forward and backward.  The exercise helps tone and tighten the skin below the chin on the neck.

Lying on your back do a full body stretch and wiggle the toes.  Breathe freely and deeply.  Relax and let the mind float.  Think of something that makes you smile or feel comfortable and warm inside.

A simple yoga exercise that can be easily done at home is the half-forward fold:
Sit with the feet pressed against a wall, keep the back straight, the head lifted and the neck elongated.  Reach down and grab the toes or around the arches.  Lift the chest, continue to elongate the neck and create space between the spinal vertebrae.  Imagine that you have a line attached to the top of the head and are being pulled toward the wall.  Keep the legs straight, breathe into the muscles being stretched evenly and completely.  This posture can help lower blood pressure, improve digestion and circulation, soothe the nervous system and quiet the brain.  Most simple sitting and cross-legged sitting postures in yoga help to lower and regulate high blood pressure. 

When doing any exercise(s) if you suffer from high blood pressure don’t hold the breath.  Shallow breathing and holding the breath both contribute to high blood pressure.  Do not force yourself to breathe beyond what feels natural. When you have to breathe through the mouth to get enough oxygen during exercise, you’ve put yourself in the fight or flight mode and raised your blood pressure.  No pain, no gain is not a truism!

An exercise for low blood pressure is called the child’s pose in yoga.   If you have knee problems you will probably have to modify this exercise so you don’t put pressure on the knees:
Get on your hands and knees with the back straight, flat and horizontal.  Next slowly sit back on with your buttocks on your heels, arms stretched out in front and forehead on the floor between your arms.  Remain in the down position as long as feels comfortable or slowly transition from up to down and back up again.  If transitioning, slowly do the exercise 6-12 times while synchronizing your breathing, exhaling as you go down and inhaling when coming back up onto the hands and knees.  If you stay in the down position for a period of time exhale going down, breathe freely while down and inhale when coming up.

Ref:  Larry R. Miller health and wellness classes

Filed under: Health & Science
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About Larry Miller

I was born in Los Angeles in 1940. My father was a fighter pilot instructor during WWll and we moved from coast to coast, maybe that’s where I got the nomad in my blood. After graduating from high school in 1958 I joined the Marines. That lifestyle wasn’t for me and upon my discharge I went on with my life, and have never looked back. I worked briefly for a Caterpillar dealer in Riverside, CA before moving back to N. California where I was a welder and truck driver for a chemical company. Truck driving wasn’t my calling anymore than being in the Marines, and I went back to work for another Caterpillar dealer steam cleaning dirty tractor parts and welding. They sent me to schools, lots and lots of schools. I spent as much time going to trade schools as I did at work. I went from cleaning parts to apprentice field mechanic, to mechanic to the parts department to satellite store manager in less than two years. They wanted me to move to Sacramento and be a salesman: I moved to Oregon to learn to commune with nature. I went to work for another heavy equipment dealer and was later contacted by the World’s largest Lorraine Crane dealer and offered the position of purchasing agent and general parts manager. In 1967 I was offered a line of automotive parts and supplies and went into business for myself. My business revolved around eleven race cars that we maintained for others, driving race cars professionally and maintaining high end sports cars. I was a championship and regional champion driver. My business was the largest import parts and service, non dealer, in the state until I sold it in 1979. We went sailing in 79, first to Mexico and then Hawaii. I was an award winning Trans-Pacific sailor and sailor of the year, Hawaii, Island of Kauai. An opportunity presented itself in Hawaii during 1981 and I was back in business, importing Japanese auto body and hard parts. I also felt the pull to write and began freelancing for magazines and newspapers in 1982. My main focus in my articles is, and always has been, health, wellness and fitness. Most of us have heard the saying, “Time is all we have.” I disagree. Our health is all we have, because without our health, we have no time. I was a US Olympic team hopeful in racewalking and held all the records for the state of Hawaii. As a sponsored athlete in my forties, I finished first in nine marathons in a row in my division, qualified for the Ironman® and was the state USCF cycling champion five times in Hawaii and Oregon. Celinda and I were married in 1988 after a three year engagement. We sold our businesses and organic farm and sailed back to Oregon. After our sailboat boat was sold, we moved to Joseph, Oregon, two miles from the trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We were caregivers for my mother the last ten years she was alive. We moved to New Mexico in 1995 because it was too cold for my mom in Oregon during the winters. Celinda designed, and I engineered and built our strawbale house. I began writing the weekly health column for a local newspaper in 1996, and still do. In 2000, I took the summer off to do a four month, 4000 mile, hike, bike and kayak odyssey. I’d been writing health, fitness and sports articles since 1982 and the journey produced a full-length, nonfiction, first person adventure book, Yol Bolsun, May There Be A Road, which can be bought from Amazon.com and others over the Internet. The summer of 2001 was spent hiking. kayaking, fishing and exploring the southwest. In 2002 Celinda and I spent the summer in Canada learning the hospitality business at a resort in preparation for doing promotion for the resort in the US. Most of 2003 was spent reestablishing the trees and landscape that had died during the stay in Canada. We had a house sitter and the house sitter had an ex-husband, and that’s a long story. In July of 2004 I did a solo kayak trip on the Snake River, taking pictures, writing articles and pencil sketching the journey. I hope to do another kayak adventure on the Snake River during the summer of 2008, on the section I missed in 2000 and 2004. In 2005, I returned to Canada to the resort where we’d spent 2002. I was supposed to be there for the month of June. I’d contacted people I’d met in 2002 and they came back to Canada to fish, hike and spend time at the resort, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, while I was there. My one month became five and then it was off to Spain to do the El Camino de Santiago as a travel companion with one of the guests who’d returned to Canada in June. During the summer of 2006 a friend from Ireland, who I’d met in Spain the year before, came to visit in NM and we fished, hiked and explored the White Mountains of AZ. He’d never slept out in the wild in a tent before, and it was quite an experience, for both of us. My newspaper articles were put on the Internet beginning in 2002. I was asked to give public speaking engagements, photo and video presentations, on various subjects for the library in Deming, NM and continue to do so. In 2006 I videoed and produced a DVD for the Smithsonian Institute’s travel exhibit “Between Fences.” NMFILMS had a conference by invitation only, which I attended. While attending the conference, I realized that film making wasn’t what I wanted to do but I still wanted to use my sixteen years of experience and enjoyment of videoing and photography. During the winter of 2005, I discovered that no one on record had ever run from the Arizona border to the Texas border, a distance of 165 miles. During the spring and summer of 2006 I trained for the run and the run was completed in October, 2006. In late 2005, I began building and maintaining websites incorporating all the things I enjoyed about video, photography, travel and the out of doors. 2007 has been a summer of upgrading the home and property which resulted in a downgrading of my enthusiasm for being located in one place. If we don’t like what’s happening in our life, we need to change what we’re doing. Celinda and I are ready to pull up roots and move on. I guess I’ve come full circle. I’m ready to revert back to my childhood, and a nomadic lifestyle.

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