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Staying Healthy
Breathing your way to better health
- By Kelly Bilodeau, Executive Editor, Harvard Women's Health Watch
Deep breathing can help reduce stress and potentially your risk of some diseases.
Inhale. Exhale. It’s something you do tens of thousands of times each day, probably without thinking much about it. While it may seem strictly utilitarian, breathing isn’t only life-sustaining; it can be life-enhancing when used as a tool, says Dr. Shalu Ramchandani, a health coach and internist at the Harvard-affiliated Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Simple breathing exercises incorporated throughout your day can actually disengage a potentially health-harming chronic stress response and help insulate you from the damage that it can inflict on your body.
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Introduction to Yoga
Yoga is more than just a workout—it’s actually a combination of four components: postures (like tree pose), breathing practices, deep relaxation, and meditation that can transform your health on many different levels. To show you how easy yoga can be and how you can reap the many health benefits, Harvard Medical School experts created An Introduction to Yoga.
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