As a kid I never grew up being very physically active. I did some little league sports, I liked gym class, but it wasn’t something that ever became a consistent part of my life. My free time was typically spend in front of computers, videogames, and eating fast food.

Meanwhile, other classmates were much more health conscious: they went to the gym everyday, participated on the high school football team, organized softball games over the summer, and lived in households that encouraged eating vegetables and drinking protein shakes.

These different lifestyles represent two different cultures. One where health awareness is a prevalent theme, and the other where it is largely absent. We all experience these cultures to different degrees.

But our culture is not chained to our childhood and family. We have the ability to change our routines even as adults. We start by becoming more aware of our habits, and then we begin to make small adjustments as we find healthier alternatives. At first we may just do 10 push-ups every morning, then we might add an evening walk after dinner. For breakfast, we begin to substitute bacon for a fruit salad, and at night we limit our TV snack to only one scoop of ice cream instead of two. Every change is a step in the right direction, and each one builds on the momentum from the last.

If you have a problem keeping commitments, just start by doing whatever is most convenient. Something is always better than nothing, and if you keep building little habits then it will add up over time. Remember, you are trying to make changes that will persist for a lifetime, not simply spend the 3 months before summer trying to pump up (and then losing those gains come next winter). If the culture isn’t there, if you aren’t planning for something permanent, any progress you make will be temporary at best.

The hardest part about changing your culture is making those first few steps. You need to get in the habit of changing habits, and once you have ingrained that into your mind you will be open to change when it presents itself. These things begin to have a snowball effect, and one day you will look back and wonder how you ever went from “couch potato” to “health guru.” It began with that first sit-up.

There are a lot of effective ways to build up your culture. You could make friends who encourage these new habits, find exercises you enjoy, or keep a diary to keep track of your progress. One of my most popular articles is Fifty Ways to Stay Committed, which suggests these techniques as well as many others that will help you instill change. It is probably worth skimming through.

I also recommend Routines vs. Rituals, which drives home the point that a ritual is an action with meaning and purpose, while a routine is heartless and treated like a chore. If your fitness regimen becomes a chore, you’ve already lost the battle. There is no culture there – no drive, no passion, and no commitment. Basically, it won’t last.

I encourage people to become engaged in their health, to be internally motivated to maintaining a healthy and fit body, and not reactive to the external and often superficial pressures placed on us by society. This is how you build authenticity that lasts.

While I haven’t recommended any particular exercises, diets, or work-out schedules, my point of this post was to stress the importance of building your own rituals and culture. If you are someone who has been a health nut for awhile, then you are probably already familiar with some ways you have developed these things unconsciously. If you are someone who is just beginning to develop a new culture of fitness, then I hope you have learned why they are so important.

I will touch on some more concrete examples and strategies in upcoming posts. For now, I just want others to get the attitude right.

Sometimes the more the mental distress, the more we just want to curl up in a ball or vegetate in front of the TV – even though this is exactly the opposite of what we need.

Modern research continues to beat us over the head with increasing evidence of physical health being intricately correlated with mental health and cognitive sharpness. But instead of following our intellect, we remain apathetic, lazy, or sleepy whenever the mental-going gets too tough.

I could give you a whole list of news and research claiming the mental benefits of physical exercise, but you already know all this – don’t you, smartie, so why don’t you do it?

I’ve written some tips before about how to stay committed to a change in behavior, but maybe it’s because of how people frame the advice that attributes to its inefficacy. A doctor or psychologist could say, “Hey, look at all these benefits you will get if you exercise more often,” but you might decline to follow this advice because life right now is already “tolerable,” and you don’t see any urgency to change your habits.

It is unfortunate, but most people don’t feel the need to change anything about their life until the problem has reached a point of critical mass. We wait until we have absolutely no other options left – and then we seek change (sometimes after it is already too late). This means our actions are often motivated more by avoiding pain, rather than seeking rewards. We ask ourselves, “What happens if I don’t do X?” and if we imagine something awful happening then we will do it.

What if instead of framing physical exercise as a positive, we framed physical inactivity as a negative? Then, ask yourself, “Whenever I am depressed, stressed, or anxious, what happens if I choose the couch instead of the gym? What happens every week I don’t run a mile or do my hour-long yoga session? What costs are contingent with those inactions?”

Whenever we spend extended periods of time not working out our bodies (in one form or another) we risk a decline in our mental state as well. Sometimes it can develop without us even realizing it: our attention-skills may not be as sharp as they could be, we may experience self-confidence issues which could otherwise be avoided, or we may be more anxious than usual during a job interview. Life could be better, but we aren’t usually aware of it.

Some individuals are reward-seeking, but, for others, reframing this desired behavior can lead to a different motivational charge. We know what to do. We know the benefits of exercise on mental health. Now let’s find a way to do it and be consistent. Whatever it takes to get yourself out of bed and active – do it – because we know it’s important, even if you have to imagine yourself being fat, lonely, stupid, and depressed 10 or 20 years down the line.

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However, stress is a necessary component to the human experience. Neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky, who is featured in the PBS documentary “Stress: Portrait Of A Killer,” explains how stress is an adaptive response of our nervous system. According to him, there are two main hormones involved in this stress response: epinephrine (also called “adrenaline”) and norepinephrine. Many recognize this biological process as the “fight or flight” response that takes place in our sympathetic nervous system. From an evolutionary perspective, this response was first adapted to increase an animal’s survival when confronted by an immediate danger. However, Sapolsky argues that humans tend to trigger this stress response psychologically, without any presence of a threatening stimulus. This “artificial” stress response is constantly being activated, which becomes severely taxing on our body’s resources, and later in life can result in some very undesirable outcomes.

All vertebrates have this “fight or flight” response and therefore experience stress. When Sapolsky was in his 20s he traveled to East Africa to study wild baboons. He found that the same area in the brain that correlates with human stress also correlates with baboon stress. Sapolsky then spent the next 30 years observing these baboon communities – their behavior, environment, and social structures. He determined the relation of these factors to stress through the use of blood samples and other physiological measures.

One of the key findings made during Sapolsky’s research was the effect of social hierarchy on stress levels. Dominant male baboons were shown to have much lower levels of stress than subordinate baboons. Sapolsky observed the bigger, dominant males often teasing the weaker ones, pushing them around and not letting them have a fair share of food or mating privileges. In fact, the baboons that were most submissive to the dominant males revealed brain activity similar to the kind found in clinically depressed humans.

Sapolsky’s findings with baboons echoed an important study done on human stress called the Whitehall Study. Researchers decided to record the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and mortality rates of British civil servants between the ages of 20-64. They found that individuals employed closest to the bottom of the business hierarchy (such as messengers or doorkeepers) had a mortality rate that nearly tripled the rate of administrators and CEOs. Since everyone in Britain receives the same quality healthcare this study made important implications into the role of social hierarchy on stress and its effect on the risk of heart disease.

So how does this hierarchical structure contribute to different levels of stress? Researchers theorize that this could be due to a lack of control. The less control we have over our actions the more we are likely to feel stressed out. The same is true for baboons as it is in humans. This idea will be revisited later once I go over some solutions to overcoming stress. Before that I will elaborate further on the health implications of this growing stress epidemic that the whole world is quickly falling victim to.

HEALTH IMPLICATIONS OF STRESS

The first ever stress-related health disease that was discovered was a stomach ulcer. Stress and ulcers is still a common association made today. It used to be the case where doctors would have to advise their patients on ways to relax and minimize stress in order to avoid these ulcers. This practice was commonplace until it was discovered that ulcers could also be linked to a certain kind of bacteria infection. Since then doctors have begun to neglect the importance of stress in ulcers and thus have resorted to drug prescriptions as a proper treatment.

However recent research has begun to shed light on the real causality between stress, ulcers, and other health implications. As it turns out, extreme levels of stress can tire the body and weaken our immune system. When bacteria or a virus enters the body under these very stressful conditions the body may not have the resources to take care of itself effectively. Thus those of us who are most stressed are likely to get sick more often.

A recent discovery in the field of biology has linked higher stress levels with shorter telomere lives (telomeres are a part of DNA that affects the shortening of our cell’s lifespan and its ability to reproduce new cells). In addition, shorter telomeres have been linked with higher risks of heart disease and cancer. This relates back to the findings in the Whitehall Study that showed an increase in cardiovascular disease in individuals who experienced more stress.

Dr. Carol Shively from Wake Forest University found that stress also changes the way fat is distributed throughout the body. Stress seems to allocate fatty resources to areas of our body they are not needed. Shively theorizes that the stress caused by our industrialized world may also play a contributing role in the global obesity epidemic.

PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF STRESS

One of the most obvious results of stress is how it affects our mental wellbeing and life satisfaction. Stress has been shown to work in contrast with the dopamine receptors in the brain, which are associated with pleasure, and because of this high ranking monkeys, when compared to ones further down the social ladder, have shown to have greater activity in these areas of the brain.

But there is more; stress has also been linked with poorer learning abilities. Researchers have found that the neural networks in the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for learning and memory, reveal much less receptor binding under conditions of stress than without. Not only does studying for an exam all night cause more stress but it may also have implications for how well we are absorbing the material.

So whether it is happiness or our cognitive abilities, stress is a major danger to our mental health. No one enjoys being stressed out. But when we begin to factor in how stress may affect our own ability to work and be productive, then this brings into question whether Type-A personalities, those who are workaholics and always multi-tasking, are really benefiting by their work tendencies or if they are only causing more harm onto themselves (and perhaps even the company or business they work for).

SOLUTIONS FOR MANAGING STRESS

While reading this you have probably recognized areas of your own life where you could better learn to manage stress. Maybe it is at the workplace, a relationship with a loved one, or dealing with an obnoxious roommate. A big determinant for what you should do to ease stress is to identify what exactly is causing it.

If the work of neurobiologist Sapolsky and the Whitehall Study are correct in their assertions, then a big determinant of most stress is lack of control. One solution proposed in “Stress: Portrait Of A Killer,” is to find areas of your life where you can exercise control. For example, an employee can put together a company softball team and be the manager of that. But we don’t necessarily have to exercise control over others.

Why not also pursue creative interests like music, dance, or writing? By focusing more on our own personal endeavors we create a medium to channel our will to control, and even use this focused energy to derive a sense of achievement. I believe that if we give ourselves the time to exercise control in certain areas of life, then we have less of a desire to control things that we can only have limited authority in, like situations at work. But of course, if a job is so stressful to the point where you really can’t stand it, then it may be appropriate to just quit and find a new one.

Sometimes a situation is very stressful but you do not have a pliable option to walk away from it. Some examples of this may include the hardships of being a mother or the stress from coming down with a terminal illness. Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a biology research at the University of California, suggests that meeting and interacting with similarly situated individuals is one of the best ways to manage stress in a situation like this. This means mothers forming organizations for mothers, in order to talk about mother things, and the same for any other group of individuals who need an outlet to express their interests and concerns. By doing this Blackburn argues that stress gets minimized and becomes much more manageable.

The last solution I wish to mention is something that can help out anyone. This deals with acting compassionately towards others. Studies have shown that caring and providing for the needs of others promotes greater longevity and strengthened telomeres, which is good for fighting the risks of heart disease, cancer, and other ailments. By doing nice things for others we also feel good about ourselves.

What these chemicals initially do is they make us more energized and alert. And by doing this, we gather more information about our environment, and we have a better idea on how to respond to our surroundings.

However, compared to humans tens of thousands of years ago, we are being introduced to novel stimuli at an alarming rate. This creates more stress, and a lot of it is due to our technology.

Of course, technology has also reduced a lot of stress: we no longer have to be worried about predators, we can survive through most weather conditions comfortably, and we have a lot of machines to do our manual labor, etc.

But in exchange we have found sillier and less threatening ways to accumulate stress. Now we stress over text messages, upcoming exams, job interviews, sports teams, video-games, having to go to the store, or “what will I eat for dinner?” Meaningless stuff compared to survival, the ability to be alive, to breathe, and to feel safe.

We have more distractions than ever before, we have more possessions than ever before, and we have more circumstances to worry about than ever before.

Some people can handle it well, and others can’t. And this may be why we are seeing so many with attention and learning disorders. We’ve created our very own chaotic environment – from our entertainment to our political and economic systems – and some people are having trouble adapting to it.

But, just as we have created our own mess, I think we are also creating our own solutions. Solutions that are not coming from the unconscious forces of evolution, but from our own minds and good judgment.

One of these solutions is meditation. Research on meditation, especially on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) (which you can learn a little bit about here), has shown its effectiveness in reducing stress and anxiety.

Kabat-Zinn says “being and doing are interrelated,” and if we don’t take the time to “be and rest,” then we are doing without any purpose or direction. We are like a 26-musician orchestra trying to play Beethoven before ever tuning our instruments – no matter how much effort we exert we will never find harmony.

The first principles of meditation according to Kabat-Zinn are that the past and future exist only as a concept (given, a very useful concept), and life only unfolds in the present moment.

This recognition allows us to keep our mind concentrated only on what is happening now, the sensations of our breathing, and not to drift into the future or present – but when we do – to make note of it and go back to the breath.

Eventually we notice how unruly the mind can be – how it loses focuses, becomes interested in new things, seeks new desires, and always wants to be entertained. Don’t be alarmed – it doesn’t mean you are a bad meditator.

Recognizing your ability to be distracted is knowing your mind at a deeper level. Our minds do this all of the time, they are constantly shifting their beacon of light to new shapes and forms. Be aware of it’s irregular movement.

One moment you may be noticing birds chirping, then you return to the breath; next you notice a pain in your lower back, then you return to the breath; now you notice a smell of someone cooking in the kitchen, then you return to the breath. Be aware of changing awareness. Notice how even while you are doing nothing, your mind is being tugged in different directions.

In the midst of this chaos of consciousness, remain still and choiceless. Try not to judge any of your sensations as pleasurably or painful, but retain equanimity, balance, and centeredness. Just flow with each new sensation as it rises and falls, without attachment or disapproval. Just let things be as they are.

Jon Kabat-Zinn recommends that we practice this formal kind of meditation at least a few minutes a day, and that we also should try to maintain this awareness and clarity throughout our daily activities. “The real meditation,” he says, “is your life.”

He mentions that even a short 2-5 minutes meditation before an important business meeting, or an interview, or a date, can help tune yourself before carrying out the activity. This can help you act more efficiently, by being in the moment, with greater focus and less stress.

When you first begin your practice, don’t worry so much about how long you are meditating. Just meditate when you can, and when you think you most need it. A little bit each day (or every other day) is enough to create a foundation to your practice. Try to apply mindfulness to every moment.

This is not what our bodies have been evolutionary designed to withstand. Our ancestors would spend the majority of their waking hours migrating, hunting, and gathering in order to find food and shelter to survive. They were always on their feet. But now with the rise of video games and technology we have even more distractions to decrease our time being physically active.

One result of too much time spent sitting is poor posture, which according to doctors and chiropractors has become somewhat of an epidemic in the United States. Another study even showed how poor body posture can affect confidence in your own thoughts. The importance of good posture for a healthy body and mind cannot be underestimated.

Computers are of course becoming one of the biggest contributors to bad sitting posture. I know this is certainly true for me, but how many of us can honestly relate to the first image above where our spine would be perfectly erect? More than likely – our bodies resemble the last two photos, where our bodies are slouched either forward or backward.

But we can’t avoid computers for the rest of our lives, they have become an integral part to modern society, so why not adapt to them in a way that optimizes good health? This doesn’t mean we have to blog less or stop going to work – it simply means we take some time to focus on building better computer posture.

First we need to become more conscious of how we sit throughout the day, then we can correct it and over time build it into an automatic habit.

Here are some tips you can apply to help correct your sitting posture and improve your physical and mental health:

1. I first recommend to watch this short video on The Alexander Technique, an incredibly powerful tool designed to improve body awareness, posture, and coordination. It was first developed by a Shakespearean actor between 1890-1900 in order to alleviate breathing problems and hoarseness. It is not widely used in various physical therapy facilities, dance schools and acting studios. Here is another video posted by the British Medical Journal in response to a study showing the positive effects of the Alexander Technique on pain and physical stress.

2. Of course having good sitting posture is a huge plus, but why not also try to actually be active while sitting on the computer? In fact, according to some studies physical inactivity is beginning to pose one of the biggest health risks to Americans.

So what types of things can you do while on your computer or watching TV? You’ll notice that even while sitting up straight you can still mobilize your head, neck, shoulders, hips, and legs. Try to see how many different stretches you can do while still sitting at your computer desk. Sometimes after long periods of time sitting down I simply continue what I am doing on the computer while standing up (no one says you have to sit down while surfing the web right?). In a standing up position you can get even more little exercises accomplished while still doing things on the computer. My only warning is to make sure you adjust the height level of your computer monitor so that your neck doesn’t have to bend down to see the screen.

3.Take a short 3-5 min. break from the computer every hour or so. Do some push ups or sit ups, take a lap around the office, or do more in depth stretching – but whatever you do make sure it is some sort of physical exercise.

Wrapping Up

Of course, like all good things, the hardest part is first being aware of what you are doing wrong. This means seeing where your body is building up physical stresses, which parts aren’t being properly attended to, and observing when your posture gets lazy. Consistency is key if you want to build these habits into your natural way of acting.

I recommend dedicating a whole week or two to posture awareness and see what you learn. Find your weak points and then work from there. For those who are already trained at applying mindfulness to everyday activities this should already be a familiar practice. For those who aren’t yet skilled in mindfulness, this may not be a bad place to start; the Alexander Technique after all is a technique of mindfulness.