A Strange City very first impressions

Arriving to a delicious, welcome  wall of heat after a cold night on a plane feels just like we are on holidays in Asia.  And what a relief to be met by our own taxi and immediately on our way....ahh

Traffic.  "we're not in Kansas anymore Toto"

The jaw dropping chaos, the honking horns make my head spin. There is no need of "lanes" and the "correct side of the road:- in this case right, is a mere concept, a philosophical idea.  Glad I am not driving.  In fact, I may never drive again. The roads are full of scooters. We learned later that the government encourages motor bikes:- laws permit two adults, and one child under six.  And to discourage car? How about a 200% tax on car registration.  So a Toyota Camry would cost $85,000 US. 

Golden Canes Interview on Local ABC radio

Here is the link to the interview that ABC local radio conducted with our Golden Canes instructor, martial arts expert Philippe Hoareau conducts his Golden Canes

 <http://www.goldencanes.com.au/content/020514-cane-fights-blog.mp3>

Meanwhile, at Nundah Activity Centre,  there are still Golden Cane vacancies in the new Pal program on Friday's, as well as the usual Saturday morning class.

It is a great program, giving people strength, confidence and the power to take care of themselves, safely.

Highly recommended.

HOW - Notice our Breathing

This week's Habit of the Week (HOW)  is to notice your breathing.  Our breathing is most efficient when we are straight,  sitting or standing, head up and shoulders down the back.

Take a lovely deep breath right now with your hand on the lower ribs above the hips.  It is so easy to breathe deeply, the muscles expand the ribs creating low pressure inside the lungs and the air rushes in.
Now try to take the same breath with a slumped posture, bury your head in your chest, curve forward through your shoulders, when you try the breath it is soooo difficult because you are forced to use the very top of the lungs and those ribs don't move so easily.

This week I have noticed an ad on TV where someone is taking a deep breath, standing on pool deck and you can see the flaring of the ribs and diaphragm working beautifully -  but I digress

Here is the kicker, when we are tired, we slump, right? Slumping causes us to breathe more shallowly and shallow breathing makes you tired.  Want some more energy?  Straighten up and breathe.

This week, notice how many different ways we have of breathing, the "stretching" breath, the laughing breath, the sprinting puffing breath.  Have you seen someone sleeping and watched their breath change?  How many types of breath do you have?

Habit of the Week - HOW

Our bodies adapt to the load we give them.  Make no demands upon yourself, physically, like say, stay in bed all day, and pretty soon all you will be able to do is.....stay in bed all day.  Your muscles weaken even your bone density can decrease.  Yikes.  This actually happened to the early astronauts, who were, of course, fit young strong men, their bone density went down because in space, the pull of tendon, muscle and ligament is reduced and less force goes through the bones.  Let me paraphrase:- in space no one can ........measure your bone density!  ha

What does this mean for us?

The less we do, the less we are able to do.   I am reminded of the adage:-      
       "We don't grow old and slow down, we slow down and grow old"

Importantly, the reverse is also true, when our bodies adapt to the load we give them, it means that if we require a little more of ourselves we can become stronger.  So at any age, we can expect to be stronger next year, than we are this year.

When we follow Habit of the Week - HOW whatever that maybe, we make small changes to our posture, etc and our body adapts to the new posture.  As we try to implement that new change every day, our postural muscles gradually become stronger. And if we try more often,  as many times a day as you can remember, the adaptation happens sooner.

So follow the HOW and try to do it regularly, during the week, and expect to see some positive changes, like easier breathing, better digestion, fewer aches and pains.