Back for the 2014 Holiday Season: Your Paleoista Healthy Holiday Tip of the Day

Were you up first thing this morning, rushing out to hit the stores early during the business in-store shopping day of the year? Did you have a chance to get in a workout first? Or eat? Or…breathe? It’s funny- I’m actually writing this post partly to remind myself to do exactly what I’m going to suggest to you, too: breathe! Seriously. Slow down and breathe. It sounds like the simplest thing to do, yet it’s often something we don’t do properly.  We get caught up in the stress of day to day living and end up adapting a very shallow, ineffective, constricting breathing pattern…almost as though we’re wearing a corset! If you can start tuning into this…now, you’ll not only set yourself up for a more peaceful few weeks leading up to the holidays, you’ll pave the way for a better sense of calm, period! The easiest thing to do, perhaps, is to take  a simple five minute break to yourself, and focus solely on your breath.  My favorite technique is one I learned from a meditation exercise that came from a sport psychologist I’ve done a great deal of work with:  breathe in for a count of 4, and breathe out for a count of 6.   That’s about 10 breaths/minute.  If you do that for a mere 5 minutes, watch and see if you don’t come away from it feeling just a bit more present and less frenetic. Laying the foundation for being present, tuning into your body and creating a better sense of inner peace is a key component of a healthy, True Paleo approach to living.  It brings us back to basics in the truest sense and helps offset all those external stressors that are so unPaleo!