Our bodies are meant to move around through the first hour or two of the day. If we look at hunter-gatherer cultures or stone-age farming cultures (people who are still living the way our ancestors lived and the way our bodies are designed to live) we see that they generally start their day with gentle movements before eating. They clean up, perform morning chores, or perhaps do a bit of work before breakfast. Critically, they move enough to increase circulation, get a bit of adrenalin flowing through their veins, and start the flow of wake-up chemicals like dopamine and epinephrine in their brains. This movement also wakes up their metabolism and prepares them to go about their day with energy.

If you can do a light workout in the morning before breakfast – a 20-40 minute jog or session on an ellipse or bike, it is well worth your time for the energy benefits alone. After 4-6 weeks of light morning exercise 3 to 5 times each week before breakfast, you should begin noticing that you wake up more easily and have more energy throughout your mornings – even on days when you don’t exercise.

If you can’t squeeze a proper workout into your morning, or if a full workout is more than you want to bite off right now, even 10 minutes of gentle exercise in the morning can make a big difference. Try taking a brief brisk walk 15 minutes after you get out of bed, or even walk up and down the stairs in your home for 10 minutes or until you are out of breath. Anything you do that gently elevates your heart rate in the morning is going to pay dividends, and with consistent practice, you should feel your energy levels increasing.

Sunlight naturally wakes up your brain. If you’ve ever slept under the stars or even camped out in a tent that didn’t block out too much light, you may remember waking up right at dawn or shortly thereafter feeling reasonably energized. Natural light stimulates a brain center called the “suprachiasmatic nucleus” to mobilize chemicals through your body and brain that rev you up and prepare you for the day. Artificial light from light bulbs isn’t as effective. One of my favorite things to do in the morning is to go outside for 15 minutes or so and just soak in some sunlight. I leave my glasses off to get the full spectrum of light into my eyes (lenses block out the beneficial in moderation UV light). Sometimes I take a walk in the morning, and sometimes I just eat breakfast outside. No matter how you do it, natural light right after you wake up will help you feel a bit more energized through your day. Incidentally, exposing yourself to natural light in the morning will also help you sleep more deeply at night over time as sunlight helps set your body’s internal clock. If there is no way for you to get exposure to natural light in the morning, consider buying some “full spectrum” lighting that simulates sunlight. Good brands include “Ott Lamps” and “Sun Squares”

There are a few foods that many, many people have inflammatory reactions to after eating them. If you do have inflammatory reactions to foods you eat, you may not be conscious of it, but it is invariably sapping your energy levels. If you suffer from low energy levels, and especially if you feel like you “dip” after meals, try avoiding the most common inflammatory trigger foods for the next two weeks. These foods are sugar, wheat, eggs, and dairy. Cut these foods out of your diet completely, and see if your energy levels improve.

It takes a bit of commitment and planning to eliminate these common foods from your menu, but if you struggle with fatigue – and especially if you suffer from a condition like chronic fatigue syndrome of fibromyalgia it is really worth making these changes. If you are getting inflammatory reactions to these common food allergens, you’ll feel a lot better within 10 to 14 days of cutting them out of your diet. The one caviat is that you have to eliminate these foods 100% or you won’t get much benefit. Become a conscientious label reader, and leave any food containing sugar, wheat, dairy, or eggs on the shelves. And if you go out to eat, explain to the waiter or waitress that you are on a strict program and can’t have these foods. This dietary change is the most powerful intervention of all those I’ve discussed between last week’s mailer and this one. As always, feel free to email me at info@vaughngray.com with any questions or for more detailed advice. Good luck!

"Detraining” a muscle may not sound like something you’d ever want to do (We’re pretty sure we made the word up actually), but the fact of the matter is that when certain muscles get too big, too strong, or too active, they can actually do our bodies harm. Nowhere is this more true than in the upper trapezius. The upper trapezius is the large muscle above your collar bones that you use to shrug your shoulders. It is one of the major muscles of accessory breathing. As discussed in the beginning of this tutorial, when accessory breathing muscles are used to breathe all of the time, they get overworked. The upper trapezius responds to being overworked by becoming shorter, tighter, thicker, and developing knots. All of these effects not only distort posture, they also actually make it harder to breathe properly.

Short overdeveloped muscles undergo a process called “facilitation”. What this means is that as these muscles are worked more and more frequently, they tend to contract more and more easily with less and less stimulation from the nervous system. Most people’s upper traps are highly facilitated, meaning they fire on a hair trigger. As a result, many people find it hard to stop breathing with their traps by raising their chests up, even when they are concentrating on trying to breathe with the diaphragm.

Fortunately there is a way to “detrain” muscles. Simply stated, you detrain a muscle by working its antagonist. Most of the muscles in the body have antagonists. Muscles are antagonists to each other when they perform opposite actions at the same joint. For instance, the biceps and triceps are antagonists. The biceps flex the arm while the triceps extend the arm. When you exercise a given muscle, that muscle actually shuts off its antagonist. This is an important effect. If the biceps didn’t shut off the triceps during a biceps curl, you wouldn’t be able to lift as much weight because the triceps would actually resist the biceps' action. Over time, training the antagonist of any given muscle can actually reverse facilitation.

All of this might sound a bit complicated in theory, but it's charmingly simple in practice.The traps shrug the shoulders up. Therefore the antagonists of the traps must push the shoulders down. The primary muscle that does this is called the serratus anterior. The name isn’t important. The real question is how do you train it!

You train the serratus anterior (turning off the traps and defacilitating them) by doing what is, essentially, an "anti-shrug" (forgive another linguistic sin). In a shrug you raise your shoulders up towards your ears. An anti-shrug (or, more formally, a "straight arm dip") involves pushing your shoulders down, moving your shoulders away from your ears. To perform an anti-shrug (straight arm dip), find a chair or any other stable surface where you can rest your hands with your feet on the ground and your body suspended in the air ( Position 1 shown below).

Position 1	Position 2

Position 2 (note - picture incorrect - arms should not bend)

Staring from Position 1, with your arms straight, your chest up, your spine straight, and your head as high up towards the ceiling as you can get it, begin this exercise by letting your torso fall straight down towards the ground. Keep your arms locked straight. Your head should fall down between your shoulder girdle to about the level of your ears, without your arms bending at all at the elbow. When you reach the bottom of this motion (Position 2 - note that, for now, this picture is worng - the arms should not bend), switch directions, and push your head and torso back up towards the ceiling (Position 1). Again, be sure your arms stay locked straight, your spine stays straight, and your chest stays up the whole time. Breathe in, filling your belly with air as your torso is moving down toards the ground. Breathe out, pushing air out of your lungs by pulling in your stomach as you're pushing your torso and head up towards the ceiling. Perform as many reps of this exercise as you can without exhausting yourself, up to 30 or 40 reps at a time. Do 3-4 sets a few times per week.

Improving your breathing technique is one of the easiest, most effective things you can do to improve your health. Combining the breathing exercise illustrated here with the “anti-shrug” exercise outlined above, should help you begin breathing better as a matter of habit within weeks. Once you do start breathing better all of the time, you'll most likely find the tension in your neck and shoulders easing up. You may also find yourself feeling less stressed and more alert and energized as you go about your day. In the end just about every cell and organ in your body depends on oxygen. Proper breathing technique will more thoroughly oxygenate your body, and in doing so, help just about every organ and cell in your body to do its job better, leading to more energy and better overall health.

Submit your questions for Garey and Vaugh by writing to: Garey@OptimalHealthRSQ.com