In Week 1 of our Movember Series, I want to focus on a topic which I’m extremely familiar with. This is an activity that I participate in every night, and whose benefits I can easily notice in my daily life.
It’s also an example of the importance of a general category of activities that men need to make time for, but often don’t – daily stress management.
I’m not talking about exercise, reading, or yoga. These activities distract you from stressors; the don’t solve your stress. I’m talking about actually confronting your stress, being observant of it, experiencing it, and being able to move past it.
The benefits of this mindful stressful management are nothing short of life-changing:
- More energy for the other important things in your life.
- Increased patience when interacting with your family, friends, and co-workers.
- Better sleep at night.
- Decreased overall stress and anxiety.
And what’s really cool? It doesn’t take long to notice the benefits. I notice an immediate improvement in my physical and mental state every time I actively stress relieve.
In this 10-minute video, I’m going to describe my personal experience with this body awareness-focused type of meditation, expand on the benefits that I’ve noticed, and also give you a simple plan for you to start doing it on your own.
Are you ready to make time for yourself? Even just 5 or 10 minutes per day is incredibly helpful.
Here are 3 important tips to getting started:
- Figure out a consistent time and location for your stress relief. It should be in a location that doesn’t remind you of stress. If you have a small home, then you can sit in a different chair or a different part of the room. You also want to be sure that your environment is clear and free of distractions. That means cleaning up and organizing the space, turning off your phones or smart devices, and making sure that nothing bugs you while you’re there.
- Understand that you’re going to get frustrated during this process. Remember – you’re actively confronting your stress here. The expectation that meditation involves sitting in a lotus position, ohming, and having absolutely nothing go through your mind is complete nonsense. You’re going to have thoughts go through your head while you meditate. The important thing is to attempt to be objective; to observe your thoughts and to avoid reacting to them. (This comes with practice!)
- Keep returning your focus to your breathing. Ultimately the power of any meditation comes back to the ability to focus on your breathing. Your brain will undoubtedly hijack your stream of thoughts and take your focus from the tension in your shoulders to something that somebody said that made you really mad. When you realize this happening, just say to yourself, “oops, I lost focus. Let’s back to that breathing.” (This is one big way that I like to measure my “performance” in meditation. It’s not about having zero thought – it’s how many times I had the awareness to recognize that my focus was wavering, and then to bring it back to the breath.)
I hope this was useful!! I look forward to discussing more mental and emotional well-being topics for the month of November in honor of Movember, Men’s Health Month.
All this month I’ll be collecting donations for men’s health, 100% of which will be donated to men’s health organizations at the end of the month. I’m hoping that the Man FLow Yoga Community can come together once more and do something incredible to help improve the future of men’s health by supporting research and initiatives to make men healthier.
Our goal is to raise $10,000, and Man Flow Yoga will match 50% of all donations up to $5000, as well as 5% of our monthly sales from November 2021.
You can make your donations directly on the Movember website by visiting ManFlowYoga.com/movember, or by donating through the movember facebook fundraiser.
Did you miss the Men’s Health Awareness Month introduction from earlier this week? Here it is.
It’s the start of November, Men’s Health Awareness Month, and this month I want to focus on health practices that I typically don’t talk about. You’ve seen me in yoga videos and tutorials, but once per week for the month of November I’m going to be talking about something else – your emotional and mental well-being, and what better way to do that than by sharing through my own personal experience, and introducing you to simple practices that you can easily incorporate into your existing routine for dramatic changes in your own emotional and mental well-being.
More and more, research is teaching us that it is our stress, more than anything else, that is contributing to our poor overall health. Things like cancer and heart disease are happening disproportionately to people who have poor emotional health, stemming from poor emotional practices like repressing certain emotions, not mindfully dealing with the day to day difficulties of modern life, and other manifestations of anxiety and depression.
I want to help reverse this trend by teaching men simple strategies to not just managing, but also improving, their overall mental and emotional well-being.
I’ll be covering essential topics that you probably didn’t learn about in school, aren’t covered in mainstream popular culture, and at least for me, aren’t things I talked about with my peers or family – and I can only assume that for many of you, this is also the case.
These are mental and emotional well-being topics and practices that I had to learn about on my own, mainly through books, and then through trial and error, figure out how to implement into my own regular routine. I’m not pretending to be an expert, but I am much more familiar than most people with these topics, and I know how to explain them in a way that’s down to earth and practical.
I can also tell you that after a few years of doing this, I’ve uncovered a lot about myself that don’t know – self-limiting beliefs that held me back from being happy, triggers from past experiences that made me get unreasonably angry, and patterns from past relationships that made my present relationships more difficult – and as a result of being able to process these things, I’ve been able to move forward with a better understanding of myself, have more energy, and be happier.
I want to talk about some of these things with you, so that we can learn how to take better care of ourselves mentally and emotionally – not just physically – for the future and beyond.
Every week, I’ll release one short lesson, including a specific topic on emotional and mental well-being, details on the practice itself, and an easy action plan for you to start doing it yourself.
We’ll cover topics to help you manage your stress, get to the source of your day to day stress, and help make you healthier and happier – because that’s what we all want, right?
I’ll also be collecting donations for men’s health, 100% of which will be donated to men’s health organizations at the end of the month.
Last time we did a fundraiser it was to help Central Austin recover from the infamous freeze of 2020, and we raised over $20000 in less than 1 week! I’m hoping that the Man Flow Yoga Community can come together once more and do something incredible to help improve the future of men’s health by supporting research and initiatives to make men healthier.
You can make your donations directly on the Movember website by visiting ManFlowYoga.com/movember, or by donating through the movember facebook fundraiser.
About Dean Pohlman, Founder & CEO of Man Flow Yoga, Author of Yoga Fitness for Men, Expert on Yoga Fitness for Men.
Dean Pohlman is an E-RYT 200 certified yoga instructor and the founder of Man Flow Yoga. Dean is widely considered to be an authority on Yoga for Men. He has worked with physical therapists to create yoga programs for back health and spinal recovery. His workouts and programs have been used by professional and collegiate athletes, athletic trainers, and personal trainers; and have been recommended by physical therapists, doctors, chiropractors, and other medical professionals.
Dean is a successfully published author through DK Publishing (Yoga Fitness for Men), selling 35,000 copies worldwide in English, French, and German; in addition to being a co-producer of the Body by Yoga DVD Series, which has sold over 40,000 copies on Amazon since its release in 2016.
Man Flow Yoga has been featured in Muscle & Fitness Magazine, Mens’ Health, The Chicago Sun, New York Magazine, and many more major news media outlets.