Boost Your Immune System!
Boost Your Immune System!
Jane, a new client, recently said, “A session with Deborah turned the tide for me! I was feeling lousy and thought I was getting a cold.”
Within a few minutes of starting our call, she felt relief from sinus pressure, headache, and achiness.
“…And then she gave me self-help acupressure flows to continue using for allergies and my Covid shot!
Those flows and energy tips keep on doing the trick, and I’ve had more energy than I’ve had in days. Now I see Deborah regularly, and my body is a lot happier with no aches and pain. I live hundreds of miles away from her, but those Zoom sessions are changing my life. I didn’t even have reactions after my second Covid vaccination!!
Deborah’s right! Boost your immune system, and your body will be happier!”
Energy balancing IS all about strengthening your immune system!
COVID brings the conversation about immune systems front and center. A stronger immune system will help you and your body resist germs and bugs, reduce allergy symptoms, potentially lessen reactions to vaccinations, and calm the nervous system.
There are healthy ways to strengthen your immune system
Harvard Health Medical School suggests that following general good-health guidelines is the best way to keep your immune system working properly. A few of the top strategies include:
- Minimize stress.
- Eat a diet high in fruits and vegetables.
- Exercise regularly
- Get adequate sleep.
- Take steps to avoid infection, such as washing your hands frequently.
You can read more about what they say at —
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-to-boost-your-immune-system
Harvard Health study says stress can suppress your immune system, increase your susceptibility to illness, contribute to anxiety, and cause depression.
We can’t avoid all sources of stress in our lives, nor would we want to. But we can develop healthier ways of responding to them. Harvard Health recommends that breath and relaxation can make a difference in your wellbeing.
I’d like to show you how YOU can help your body let go of stress and not have it accumulate in your system.
Self-care Practice
A self-care practice teaches your body how to take care of itself and to be healthy and vital. While doing your self-help acupressure, you are also doing the following and a lot more–expanding breath, relieving pain, having more vitality for your daily activities, managing feelings, sharpening clarity and focus, increasing creativity and productivity.
Here are self-help acupressure energy tips to boost your immune system, relieve allergies, and help you move easily through your vaccination.
- Right hand—cup right shoulder near the neck
- Left hand—hold fingers on the left chest below the collarbone
- Switch to do the other side
- Right hand—hold fingers on the right base of the skull
- Left hand—hold fingers on left base of the skull
- Right hand—cup forehead with fingers on the left side
- Left hand—cup back of head with fingers on the right base of the skull
- Switch to do the other side
- Left hand—cup right shoulder near the neck
- Right hand—hold fingers at sitz bone/hip area
- Switch to do other side
Harvard Medical Recommends
Harvard Medical identifies several techniques to help turn down your response to stress. Breath focus helps with nearly all of them:
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- Progressive muscle relaxation
- Meditation
- Yoga, tai chi, and Qi Gong
- Guided imagery
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Add self-help acupressure to the list!!
Read more about why Harvard Health Medical School suggests relaxation techniques to reduce stress.
Another resource on how to cope with stress during troublesome times
University of Maryland Medical System
https://www.umms.org/coronavirus/what-to-know/managing-medical-conditions/healthy-habits/stress-management
Dr. Stephanie Knight, Chief of Psychiatry, suggests these tips to help cope with stress during troublesome times:
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- Stay connected with friends and family members. It’s important to be processing your thoughts out loud, rather than keeping them close to your chest.
- Eat healthy
- Exercise regularly
- Get outside
- Get plenty of rest
- Practice mindfulness activities, such as meditation, journaling, movement, yoga, pay attention to sensations
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Additional Resources to Boost Your Immune System
Get Your Free Stress Relief Guide
It’s easy and all you need is to click on this link.
A Breath of Fresh Air
Breath: it’s such an important part of living in our bodies. Have you ever experienced times when it doesn’t feel “totally there?” That feeling or realization has happened to most of us off and on throughout our lives. But we often aren’t even aware when it actually started or that our bodies developed consequences of not having total breath available.
So, what happened? I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “it took my breath away.” This has understandably happened to quite a few people in the last few weeks. There have been a few instances that maybe even stopped you in your tracks.
Big Changes
When we lost Robin Williams, most of us felt immediate sadness for his family, but we also felt the sadness for Robin and what he had gone through all of his life. But I think what really created reaction in our bodies was the realization of losing an icon that we saw as vibrant, vital, and so full-of-life. He had a way of being that he shared with all of us. He could make you laugh and laugh so hard you felt it in your very core. The realization that something big is no longer available to us is what “can take our breath away.” And where do our bodies experience that “taking or holding of breath”? Our diaphragms are where we get the reactions, the consequences.
Another BIG incident that was felt by those of us who live in Napa and Sonoma Counties was the earthquake on Sunday August 24th. The jolt at 3:20 a.m. in the morning was enough to take MY breath away! Follow that with the shaking and rolling that seemed to go on forever and I had a full diaphragm tightening experience.
My BIG Changes
The day before, August 23rd, was my birthday. I usually love everything about the birthday experience but this year was a bit different. My husband Randy’s birthday would have been the 22nd. This year I really missed having our birthdays together – I think because I didn’t have anything big planned, so there was the realization that all of the traditions that we had created over the years to celebrate both days were never going to happen again. I felt the loss and the changes. I actually felt like I was floating in a tunnel at times. Follow those feelings with the earthquake and I really had a “taking my breath away” experience.
So, what did I do? I got up on Sunday with the sunrise and took a really long hot tub where I did the Daily Clean Your House Flow, as well as other flows that are all about “getting grounded,” creating vitality and discovering breath and joy. I spent the rest of the day in the garden. I remember feeling thankful and joyful that I had a way to truly be in touch with the earth, the same earth that had jolted me awake several hours earlier. And I left that “tunnel feeling” behind. I felt an awareness that all was right with the world, that there are moments in time that can affect us but we can still be “okay.”
Prepare
If you have had some “projects crop up” in the last week or so, and you don’t know what you did to have it happen, you are not alone. By the way, “projects” is the word I use instead of problems or conditions that are the results of the consequences of an incident, an injury, a trauma, etc. So, some projects that could easily be results of diaphragm tightness and “loss of breath” are back discomfort, throat tightness, chest and breath constriction, knee soreness, loss of clarity and focus, loss of vitality. The list can be longer, but I’m sure that you get the sense of it. I’ve seen a number of clients over the last few weeks whose bodies are showing up with these projects.
Read on to get some answers for what to do – to open up your breath, to release your diaphragm, to rediscover calm, to find joy, to release constriction, to help your body release discomfort.
For specific project release:
To open the breath, calm the whole being, relieve anxiety:
- Hold thumbs
- Hold index fingers
- Hold upper arms by folding arms across the chest
- Cross hands and hold inside of knees (or upper inner thighs)
- Hold right fingers on base of right ribcage
and hold left fingers on right chest below collarbone
Switch and hold opposite sides
To release jaw, mouth or throat tension; to create space for breath and strong voice
- Right hand cup the sternum just below the clavicle and
hold left fingers in a vertical pattern just below the naval
To let go of head pressure, headaches, “mind chatter”, tired eyes; to remove incessant (persistent) mental absorption (often creates forehead and/or eye tension)
- For right side “project”
Left hand – hold forehead with fingers on right side
Right hand – cup back of head, fingers on left base of skull
- For left side “project”, switch hands
To reduce back and neck discomfort, improve flexibility and mobility, improve posture, enhance vitality, experience more gain & less pain in all that you do
- Sit on both hands
- Sit on left hand with right hand on left shoulder (near neck)
- Sit on right hand with left hand on right shoulder (near neck)
