To exercise your inner self, take the time to step off the treadmill and concentrate on the here and now, says Michelle Bridges.
Try this for a moment: for the next five minutes, concentrate on your breathing, and nothing else. Take long, deep breaths, relax your body and don't let your mind wander. The only thing that there is in the world is you and your breathing.
In this calm state, you are stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system, which lowers your blood pressure and slows the pace of your breath.
And why is this good? Because when your blood is no longer being frantically pumped to your muscles, it can properly flow to your organs - your immune, reproductive and digestive systems - and in doing so carry all the nutrients required for their good health.
And that is the difference between dancing and practising yoga. On the face of it, they both involve at some level the performance of similar movements, stretches and bends. But a dance routine stimulates the sympathetic nervous system - the nervous system that increases the heart rate and accelerates the breathing. A dancer's attention is focused on everything that is happening around them, while a yogi's attention is focused on everything within them.
Regular dance classes will stretch and tone, as will regular yoga classes.
But yoga has additional mental benefits, because it teaches its practitioners to focus purely on the present, on the now. Think back to the breathing exercise I asked you to do earlier. If you did it correctly, there was no room in your mind to be worrying about work tomorrow or forgetting to put the garbage bins out.
Yoga uniquely connects its practitioners' minds and bodies. It also has the additional benefit of not just stretching and toning, but stretching and toning while deep breathing and being in a calm, meditative state.
Concentrating on your breathing, and only your breathing, means that you are focusing on the most fundamental task your body performs, and one it performs every moment of the day. This connects your mind and your body without the clutter of physical and mental distractions.
Importantly, it does it in the present. There's no fretting about the past or anxiety about the future, only a state of calmness in the "now".
Thanks to the frenetic pace of modern life, this "existing in the moment" is a way of being that often proves elusive. How often have you felt your concentration wander to other things when in conversation with friends or while reading a book?
It's time to enjoy the freedom of being fully present and aware of what's happening around us.
