Healthy Office Space Workouts

Ever since I stopped teaching ballet full time and began working in an office space, I have been bothered by not having the time in most givens days to work out, or just move around, as much as I would like.

Then a few years ago Doris Bondi, a rehabilitation trainer, came into our office to work with a patient. The patient was elderly and weak, and yet in a few months of once-a-week training on a physio ball, this patient showed marked improvement in his muscular strength.

At the time I was living in a small apartment with no room to add exercise equipment. I started training with Doris, and added a ball to my home office space, simply by replacing the chair in front of my computer with a ball. What a difference that made to my daily exercise!

Firstly, the ball gives with every breath I take, so there is no pressure moving up my spine causing my back muscles to hold a position, resulting in tension. This is not a cardio-vascular workout, but will keep the body oxygenated with better circulation, far better than merely sitting.

Secondly, while reading on the computer, or waiting for a page to load, I exercise! (I soon became able to type while I am bouncing - just takes practise!) The simplest thing to do is to simply bounce gently, with both feet flat on the floor, placed either directly below your knees, or slightly in front of. This keeps you on balance and in control of the ball. And when I say bounce, I mean a movement like a fidget. This uses your stomach muscles ALL THE TIME. Isn't that wonderful?

Posture on the ball should be a 90 degree angle at the hips. Especially, the hips should not be lower than the knees. (If you have had a hip injury of any kind, the physio ball may aggravate joint inflammation from previous strain or scar tissue. You just have to try it and see. Of course, don't continue anything that hurts.) Balls come in several sizes, and the size in relation to your height would likely be written on the packaging. If not, find a brand that does supply this information.

There are several exercises you can do sitting on a physio ball in your business or home office space. Be warned, the ball can roll and dump you on the floor. You can purchase a hoop type of frame that the ball can sit in to confine its movement, or a round pan that allows a small amount of movement but will not allow the ball to roll. Putting a large book on the floor behind the ball also restricts rolling. Wrapping a rolled up towel around the hind curve of the ball achieves the same thing. Safety first!

You can experiment with using certain muscles by moving your weight slightly forward or back. If you roll the ball forward one inch or so, you'll feel the pressure of balancing go onto your quads, or thigh muscles. If you bounce gently in this position for a few minutes, you will be engaging those muscles.

If you bounce by moving your heels up and down, you will be exercising your calf muscles, and also the muscles around your ankles and under the sole of your foot. Caution: (dancers already know this) when you are lifting and lowering your heels, look down to see that you are not leaning the foot toward the big toe, or toward the little toe. This is called 'sickling the foot' (because you are making a shape like a sickle) and you want to keep the line of motion going up and down the center of your foot.

Want to tighten up your butt muscles? Relax the thighs and focus on squeezing your buttocks up and down. Bounce for a few minutes using only your butt muscles. This is mindless and easy to do. Done several times a day while you are reading or typing, is a lot different than just sitting there with your muscles in that spread position!

While doing these exercises, or by only sitting on the ball, all your abs, hips and leg muscles will be doing tiny movements to effect your balance, without any effort on your part.

Push that chair into a corner and get a physio ball, and turn your office space into a healthy space! If you are the boss in your office space, be a leader in health and fitness. You and your employees will benefit in invisible but healthy ways.

Breathing will be deeper and more oxygen will be going to the brain! Metabolism will stay gently stimulated. Muscles will be moving with no strain instead of gripping in positions leading to spasm and pain.

This is not dramatic but it is evolutionary. Think about what a truly comfortable and supportive office chair costs. Not a little! And not that everyone shouldn't have one. But a good quality physio ball costs under $35.00, and many come with a hoop or pan to prevent rolling. Some office supply stores even sell a chair with a ball in the frame.

Just remember that you are on something that can roll, set it up for safe use, and you will change what your body does all day, every day. Think about how many hours a year you sit on a chair!

Evolutionize your office space - and have a ball!

Office Space and How its Location Affects Productivity

Whether you are looking for office space rentals, or managing some, or are already working in one, you have your own reasons for liking the space - or not. What if you could do one enhancement, and like your space even better, like the job even better, and feel more well-being in general?

Rachel Kaplan, PhD, and husband Stephen Kaplan, a professor in both psychology and computer science, are leaders in research on what they refer to as "restorative environments". The results of their studies show that individuals who can see a portion of green nature, from their place of work, do better. So it appears that what one can see from one's desk, or one's window, really matters.

Terry A. Hartig, PhD, MPH, is another researcher who also concludes that nature helps people
recover from what he expresses as "normal psychological wear and tear".

In a research paper "The Surprising Connection to Green Play Settings" by Andrea Faber Taylor, and Frances E. Kuo, their introduction begins with the following statement:

"Attention Restoration Theory suggests that contact with nature supports attentional functioning, and a number of studies have found contact with everyday nature to be related to attention in adults."

So, back to office space, office rentals - and last but not least - your home office space - it seems that there could be a very simple way to enhance our environment to support our drive to produce and succeed, optimizing our energy and moods at the same time!

For example, if you have an office space at home or in a business building of offices, and you do not have a window (never mind the coveted "corner office") studies show that you would do well to add at least one attractive plant. It doesn't even have to be a real plant, but it should be where you can see it, and it should be worth looking at.

If you have a view of real greenery, appreciate it, notice it, drink in the scenery...but if not, you could add a wall calendar with gorgeous photos or paintings of nature, or an art print. Many offices provide some art work and plants because their managers and consultants have read these studies too. Then again, some don't.

If you have a window behind you with a view of tree tops or landscaping, put up a mirror wherever you can. Failing all else, you can put a tiny convex mirror on your computer monitor, the kind you get for your rear view mirrors.

Just turning around and taking a few deep breaths while you view the available greenery, is a very restorative quick break.

Speaking of breathing, I will digress shortly for a comment on real versus fake plants. There are volumes written on indoor air pollution - particularly relative to office space, though the same data is true for our homes. Many green indoor plants remove noxious fumes generated by everything that is in the typical office space - from the paint, the carpeting, the furniture, the machines - everything! Fresh air created by air purification machines is a bonus of course, but plants in your office space area do a tremendous job in cleaning the air.

Greenery in urban office spaces is important. In a home office, or corner of a room, (as that is what many of us have), we have direct control over what we look at - real greenery, or reasonable facsimiles.
It seems a simple way to add to our techniques of manifesting success - managing internet marketing means managing a lot of detail. Adding greenery would be one of the easier ones! So whether you sit in a huge office in an urban commercial office space, or you sit at the corner of your kitchen table, it matters. Everybody matters, you matter.

Is Affilliate Marketing A Career Builder For You?

As an affiliate marketer looking for a career builder, there is an overwhelming plethora of data.
Holly Mann's "Honest Riches" about affiliate marketing gives the best step-by-step instruction I've found yet. There are many MANY ebooks available, affordable, and useful out there, but everyone who can do cannot necessarily teach. Holly Mann can teach. As I have taught, myself, for over 20 years, I know that explaining the basics of a procedure can be painstaking. Knowing WHAT you did to get to step "whatever" is not an analytical process for many. I would have to say because Holly is so young, she's a natural, and she does not waste a minute of your time. No filler folks! And there are others too - hit the search engines and get ready for the deluge!

The "niche" product, the search engines - the affiliate marketer - go to your on line dictionary to get a real sense of the language that is new to you and THEN go back to what YOU are really interested in. What would your personal product be if you could snap your fingers and have it there, digitally ready to go? An ebook on music lyrics? An online dictionary on fly-fishing or ballet shoes? Car racing? What do you think about when you are day-dreaming? (Professionally speaking!) And could this interest/passion of yours put money in the bank?

Well, if your personal heart-felt energy is behind the subject, I'd say check it out! I'm not going to repeat what the gurus have written about internet marketing, but take the advice that is readily given, learn how to do a key word search relating to your chosen product and then take the path of least resistance.

Write an article about your beloved subject and submit it to a few on line ezines. (Holly even tells you the best ones). You can start with the one you're reading right now!

If you do decide that internet marketing can be a career builder for you, you will want to get used to writing about your topic. Just talk to people. You do not want to be academic about 'it' anyway, but personable and approachable. Just start communicating. No matter how learned and how expert you get it is YOUR VOICE and your enthusiasm that will sell your product, or someone else's product (assuming you do learn some basic internet marketing techniques).

So while you have a day job (or parental support) start exploring, get some professional info, and start talking to people, that is, writing articles on your favorite topic. Get those fingers tap dancing on the keys. If you are reading this, you are probably going to enjoy the process as much as the results.

It's the journey that counts. I didn't say that and I don't remember who did. But I think it is true.

Holly Mann is one of the most trusted voices in internet marketing. Get your copy of "Honest Riches" for your career builder.

The Ironic Poetry of 'It's A Deal or No Deal'

I'm not talking about used cars, or cars here, or the poetry of the Bentley or little Zip car.

I'm talking about how the universe makes a deal, or no deal.

Whichever way, the universe always says yes!

Just as the search engines use key words and phrases to MANIFEST, MATERIALIZE, and have your site (thoughts, contents, ideas, creations, your ESSENCE) SHOW UP, so does your intention, your creation machine, use the main words (ideas, frequencies) you are thinking or being, to search and place your reality into material form.

You place a thought, block of thought, concept, desire, worry, concern, dread, or terror into the empty field of mind, it's like typing your search words into the search engine search box. You hit 'enter' and that word or phrase is launched.

The universal units of motion crawl the holographic ALL THAT IS for matching energies, and during whatever time it takes, indexes and cross-indexes, and mixes and matches, and Lo!

A unit of your reality appears, your search result shows up.

It is a 'deal' or a 'no deal' according to whether you like this result or not. If you're on search engines, and you don't get what you want, you type in a variation of your phrase, a little more specific, getting the exact dictionary meaning in the words you use, and you try again.

All in a half a minute..... and you get a different result, or somewhat different.

But in your own creation machine, eyewwwww...what if you don't like what you get? What if some imagined worst case scenario manifests in real time and space and you spend a few days emotionally reacting, commiserating, blaming, wringing hands or "out damn spot' -ing. I've done it, you've done it! Well, there goes a few precious days between your first breath and your last! Oh woe, let's not think about that......

Is this one of those existential bad jokes? Is your life a mockery? Oy!

No, you have just proven that you have personal power and that you have a creation machine that does not miss the mark!

If you want to do that metaphysical search again, sit back and breathe for a few minutes. What do you really want? Why do business trainers, managers, spiritual gurus and reality kings tell you to make a wish list, set your goals, post stickies all over the place with your favorite inspirational quotes and treasured poetry?

It's to make your metaphysical search engine words and phrases more specific, to help you find what you want, not what you sorta want, or don't want.

Emotions are very hypnotic. I mean the hand-wringing ones. We all have them, and television and movie dramas are there to give you all the support you could ever imagine, and more.

One thing I especially like about Paul Scheele's meditations is that they take you way back from all of that, whether it's the Photo Reading topic or the Genius Code, or whatever. It's like a trip to the country, aahhh. Then there is the film "The Secret" which, after attentive viewing, is the best background noise you could have while chopping wood and carrying water. Play it for a month. As opposed to the news or some other distressing noise.

So to recap, give careful notice to what you are entering into the universal search field. Just mentally type in what you want, every morning as you are waking up. The search engines are vibrating and humming to YOUR tune, so get those happy music lyrics out, along with some inspirational quotes and poetry, add water, and stir!

WYSIWYG - What You SAY Is What You Get

WYSIWYG is a very familiar acronym in the internet world. It's the drag and drop method of creating things, and all that that entails.

The Universe has the same service, at your beck and call. Your favorite expressions, your instant response phrases, your favorite music lyrics that you sing absentmindedly, all drag forth ethereal responses and probable realities, and drop the most likely version into your life.

Floyd Holdman of Tahitian Noni International has a motivational lecture called "Speak and Grow Rich". It has several aspects to it, but emphasizes that the words we choose create our future.

Napoloean Hill wrote "Think and Grow Rich", one of the most famous motivational books ever written.

Currently there is an abundance of works such as the Abraham-Hicks material, Bashar channelings, Bruce Lipton's "The Biology of Belief", and Paul Scheele's of Learning Strategies' The Genius Code course, just to name a few, whose premise is to back peddle from thinking to consult the frequency you are vibrating and emanating into the oceanic field of creation. Your frequency will attract a like-frequency-manifestation into your life. So what you believe, you vibrate, you think, you say and YOU GET.

And it requires no particular articulation, it is what you are being, you are transmitting like a radio tower. It's going OUT THERE. So it seems.

Whether you are the worst case scenario type or an optimistic person, you can improve on what you are vibrating/thinking/speaking, by selecting whatever is the next tolerable, or almost realistic, idea of goodness, achievement, peace, your preference for improvement in your life. You may be able to make a huge leap into a vision of a whole new wonderful world. Or, you may be able to imagine only so far as 'things aren't quite so bad.' That's great, you made a move, you changed a little. Keep at it.

A few years ago my son did volunteer service -it was mandatory - at school, and he worked at an animal shelter called The Gentle Barn. A cow named Buddha was the intake counsellor for rescued animals. They arrived at the shelter overwhelmed, often not eating or sleeping well, certainly not playing. Buddha would sleep in the yard right next to the frightened newcomers, and over a few days the the animals typically recovered enough of their emotional balance to function again, even interacting with humans. Buddha was not trained to do this, she just did.

Somehow Buddha emanated to these animals "Everything is Okay." No words were exchanged, no subliminal phrases or positive affirmations were repeated. Pigs and turkeys alike were rehabilitated into enjoying a peaceful existence.

So if you are stressed and crazy, tearing your hair out at learning internet marketing strategies, DON'T HAVE A COW! Take a sleeping bag over to The Gentle Barn and have a slumber party with Buddha. Okay, so I'm kidding, but for all I know people do that.

And yeah, they will want you to shovel a little sh....doo-doo while you are there. The stuff of life.