Get a Chill in The Shower
Whilst simple, taking a cold shower or two each day can have a number of benefits to your health practice, even improvement in your emotional health, cold showers have been shown to relieve depressive symptoms due to the intense impact of cold receptors in the skin, which send an overwhelming amount of electrical impulses from the peripheral nerve endings to the brain. Producing an anti-depressive effect, and boosting moods, making it a pick-me-up of mood and alertness.
A 2008 study found that cold hydrotherapy has an analgesic effect, and does not appear to have noticeable side effects or cause dependence.
Try This: Treatment included one to two cold showers of approximately 3 degrees Celsius, two to three minutes long, followed by a five-minute gradual warming to make the procedure less shocking.
Prioritise Water over any Other Drink
Water aids in digestion, circulation, absorption and even excretion. Whilst we have the ability to cope with mild dehydration, a small drop in your body’s water content will see your vital functions pulling water from your peripheral body to ensure that you maintain essential levels of function in your organs. This can leave skin dry, tight and flaky and your muscular and lymphatic system feeling sluggish.
Try this: On a daily basis, we should be drinking 0.033 litres of water for each kg of body weight; each day should start with water rather than any other drink. The overnight fast will leave us mildly dehydrated, start the day with water and leave the coffee until later in the morning.
Never Underestimate The Power of Walking
Not many of us have barriers to walking and it just might be the healthiest of all health pursuits. There is nothing more natural than getting outside, getting mildly breathless and pumping fluids about your body to aid circulation, lymphatic flow and cardiovascular health.
Try this: With walking, more is nearly always better, but, even a little is good. It can be a great practice to audit your current activity level using a wearable activity tracker and to set a goal for a new daily step rate.
Practice Deep Breathing
Breathing properly and taking time out of your day to actually practice taking full, strong and deep breaths will both calm and energise you. A lot of our energy production in 21st-century life is adrenalised energy, pumped-up, stressed-out energy.
The alternative is an assured calm, a feeling of strength and power that can be manifested through the centring and internal focus of deep breathing.
Try this: While sitting in a comfortable place, take 30 deep breaths, inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth, aim for an inhalation of 4 seconds and an exhalation of 6 seconds. When you have completed the 30 breaths, take a deep breath and exhale; hold until you need to breathe in. Inhale again, as deep as you can, and hold it for 10 seconds. Repeat as many times as you feel really comfortable.
