12 Yoga Tips for Beginners
Tips for Managing Today’s Stress
First, it’s important to acknowledge when you (or people you love) are experiencing extra stress, whether financial, health, relationship or job-related stress, or uncertainty about the future. We need to become more aware of how stress is affecting attitudes, communications, health and quality of life. Then we have to take personal responsibility, realizing that our moment-to-moment choices do count. They create a map of which emotional roads we will travel on each day and what their destination is.
The process of managing stress isn’t the same for everyone, because of different situations and differences in individual makeup. Yet, there are simple, effective steps any of us can take.
Tip 3 – Manage Your Reactions to the News
Watching the news can easily trigger feelings of stress. Continuously amping-up anger, anxiety or fear releases excessive levels of stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenalin, throughout your body. The long-play version of this can cause a cascade of physical health symptoms, along with potential mental and emotional imbalances. Practice reducing your internal drama as you watch the news or even turn the news off at times. The energy saved helps restore balance, clarity and positive initiative. Take care not to judge yourself if you slip backwards into drama at times. It’s okay. We all do. Just reinstate your heart commitment to practice, and then move on. Each small effort you make really helps.
Tip 4 – Communicate and Interact with Others
When a major crisis happens (or a sequence of crises), our stress tolerance level depletes from the shock and emotional pain. We become overwhelmed, which inhibits our capacity to cope. Yet, it’s completely understandable why we would feel the way we do. Be encouraged that you can create a psychological turnaround along the way and increase your ability to cope effectively—especially if you work through your challenges with others. One of the most important things you can do is to communicate your feelings to someone, or to a group of people, going through similar experiences. Then engage in caring about them and offering emotional support. This especially helps to reopen the heart, which increases your fortitude and emotional balance. Whether you laugh together or cry together, there is often tremendous beneficial release.
When people gather to support each other, the energy of the collective whole multiplies the benefit to the individual. It’s known that collective energetic cooperation can increase intuitive guidance and effective solutions for problems at hand. When a group of people are “in their hearts,” and not just their minds, the collective support helps to lift their spirits, which in turn releases stress buildup and anxiety overload. When the heart reopens, self-security and confidence can gradually return. Be patient with the process and have compassion. Even small acts of kindness and compassion can make a big difference. This is one of the quickest ways to reestablish your footing and reduce the stress that could otherwise affect your health.
Tip 5 – Reduce Comparing the Present with the Past
In times of change, one of the hardest things for any of us is to stop comparing the way life was before with how it is now. That’s really okay and understandable. The time it takes to recover from a major loss can be different for all of us – and time can’t be forced because healing heartache doesn’t respond to schedules or agendas. Be comfortable with your own timing, however long it takes.
Heart Healthy Protein Snack – Salmon Mousse
Sauteed Tilapia Tacos
Ingredients
- 2 (1/2-inch-thick) slices white onion
- 1 (8-ounce) package mini sweet bell peppers
- Cooking spray
- 3/4 teaspoon salt, divided
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided
- 4 (5-ounce) tilapia fillets
- 8 (6-inch) corn tortillas
- 1 small jalapeño pepper, thinly sliced
- 8 lime wedges (optional)
Preparation
1. Preheat grill to high heat.
2. Arrange onion slices and bell peppers on a grill rack coated with cooking spray. Grill onions for 12 minutes, turning after 6 minutes. Grill bell peppers 12 minutes, turning occasionally. Remove onions and bell peppers from grill, and let stand for 5 minutes. Slice onion rings in half. Thinly slice bell peppers; discard stems and seeds. Combine onion, bell peppers, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon black pepper in a small bowl.
3. Sprinkle fish evenly with remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and remaining 3/8 teaspoon black pepper. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add fish to pan, and cook for 3 minutes on each side or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork or until desired degree of doneness.
4. Warm tortillas according to package directions. Divide fish, onion mixture, and jalapeño slices evenly among tortillas. Serve with lime wedges, if desired.
Nutritional Information
Amount per serving
- Calories: 292
- Fat: 4.4g
- Saturated fat: 1.2g
- Monounsaturated fat: 1.2g
- Polyunsaturated fat: 1.3g
- Protein: 32.6g
- Carbohydrate: 32g
- Fiber: 4.8g
- Cholesterol: 71mg
- Iron: 1.9mg
- Sodium: 526mg
- Calcium: 120mg
Vaccination Recommendations For Children
Vaccinations against 14 childhood diseases are crucial to giving babies a healthy start in life. If you have an infant, your child’s health care provider can help ensure your little one gets the recommended vaccines for children age 2 and younger. Measles and whooping cough (pertussis) are among the serious diseases children need protection against. During National Infant Immunization Week (April 18 to 25), visit the CDC’s Infant Immunizations FAQs at www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/parent-questions.html.
Thinking of Hiring a Trainer
April tip from Pete the Planner
“Struggling to stay under budget each month? The culprit is swiping. Reset your swiping habits by challenging yourself to swipe your card under 10 times this week.” Pete the Planner
Over 2 Million Steps Already Achieved!
Thank you so much to all of our participants in the Healthy Horizons AHA Step Challenge. As of 2:30pm today, we’ve reached 2,228,918 steps, converted, that equates to 1,117.04 miles! We currently have 52 participants enrolled in the program. If you haven’t logged your activity from the weekend or last week, you still can! We have 17 days to reach our goal of 5 million, so keep on moving!
Friday: Building on 20 Years of Success
Let’s celebrate our accomplishments and talk about what it will take to become the Healthiest Nation in One Generation!
2015 marks the 20th anniversary of APHA coordinating National Public Health Week! The accomplishments of the public health community over the last two decades are significant. To become the Healthiest Nation in One Generation: experts need to support the integration of public health and primary care; policy decision makers need to understand and support funding for both a strong public health workforce and prevention programs proven to advance health; both national and local policy decision makers need to expand the consideration of health implications in all the policies they create; and the general public needs to make healthy choices for themselves and demand that everyone has an equal opportunity to make those same choices.
Facts & Stats:
Some of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th Century – according to the CDC (and we agree!) include:
- Healthier Mothers & Babies – Infant and maternal mortality rates have decreased in the U.S. Environmental interventions, improvements in nutrition, advances in clinical medicine, improvements in access to health care, improvements in surveillance and monitoring of disease, increases in education levels, and improvements in standards of living contributed to this remarkable decline.
- Immunizations – Today, U.S. vaccination coverage is at record high levels! National efforts to promote vaccine use among all children has helped eradicate Smallpox and dramatically decrease the number of cases of Polio, Measles, Hib and other diseases in the U.S.
- Motor Vehicle Safety – We’ve seen a huge reduction in the rate of death attributable to motor vehicle crashes in the United States, which represents the successful public health response to a great technologic advancement (the motorization of America). The response has spanned government, public health and driver and passenger behavior.
- Family Planning – Increased contraception use, public health education and other factors mean that, today, Americans face fewer unintended pregnancies and are far more likely to achieve desired birth spacing and family size.
- Tobacco as a Health Hazard – During 1964-1992, approximately 1.6 million deaths caused by smoking were prevented thanks to substantial public health efforts.
- Decline in Deaths from Heart Attack & Stroke – Still the country’s top killers, the public health community has helped achieve remarkable declines in deaths from both diseases: since 1950, deaths from cardiovascular disease have declined 60 percent, and stroke rates have declined 70 percent.
(For more visit http://www.cdc.gov/about/history/tengpha.htm)
What’s next? Together we can create the healthiest nation in one generation.
We have a lot of challenges to overcome, but it all starts with a simple first step:
Sign the pledge to show your commitment. Ask others to sign as well because the more people who sign, the more influence we have to drive change.
Sign the petition to ask our leaders to do their part. It will take change at both the local and national level to ensure our communities make a positive impact on our health.