Yoga, Smartphones and Stress Levels

I recently installed an app called 'Quality Time' that sends you an alert each evening to tell you how much time you spent on your phone that day.  I try to consciously limit my phone use and was vexed to see that I was averaging almost three hours most days.  Looking down at our phones to send messages or scroll Instagram can add up to sixty pounds of extra weight to our cranium (the average weight of a six year old child apparently).  Along with added screentime on laptops, this neck craning inevitably leads to slumped posture, hunched shoulders and muscular imbalance.  

We slouch and sit all day and expect one small muscle in the chest called the Pectoralis Minor to take up the slack and deliver us to perfect poise with heart open and shoulders back.  Show your Pectoralis Minor some love today and if you can't take a yoga class just hop up to the nearest wall and try the stretch below... 

Stand beside to a wall, extend your right arm up and out behind your body, with your palm on the wall around 45 degrees. Turn your chest away from the wall to feel a stretch deep in the chest. Stay here for at least five long, slow, deep breaths then change sides. Then put your phone on Airplane Mode and ignore it for the rest of the day!

The tensions of modern life go far beyond tight hips and stiff upper back from sitting at a desk all day.  Most people's stress levels are so high that their sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) is almost constantly activated.  When hormones like cortisol wash through the body too regularly we feel like we are in threat of danger and this causes untold damage to our bodies.  Yoga and meditation help to establish regular breathing patterns and to consciously release tension in the body. 

The root causes for many of these stresses are psychological- for example a difficult boss or relationship issues.  We always get caught up in our stories when we feel threatened.  Guilt about the past and anxiety regarding the future leads to us feeling stuck in fragmented thought patterns.  Meditation in particular can help us to observe our thoughts from a position of neutrality and acceptance.

Take a couple of moments to breathe deeply with your chin down and back.  You will feel a slight restriction in the throat (jalandara bandha) but try to keep an 'open' feeling across the collarbones.  Even five to ten expansive breaths in this position will bring circulation to the frontal lobe of the brain.  This has an immediate effect of quieting emergency responses and allowing presence, intuition and creativity to flow instead.