This is a great youtube channel for body alignment and at home muscle education. I highly recommend checking out his other videos.

This particular video is talking about tightness in the hamstrings and how to reeducate your muscles to stretch better.

Stress leads to inflammation and inflammation is at the core of many diseases. I think we all know negative stress and inflammation are not so great. 

Stress can be from family, friends, work, finances, over scheduling, disorganization, physical (such as bad diet), poor health, it’s a viscous cycle), over or under exercising… you get the point. You
most likely have stress. Right?
                                               
                                                Ok. Lets figure out what to do about it.


First, identify what your major stressors are. Many times these are more veiled than we originally think. For example many people come in saying their stress is not that bad, however when we look at their life circumstances and their current health we realize that they are under a lot of stress but they are used to it... chronic stress. Sneaky.

Second, make changes. Do you need to say goodbye to some negative people in your life, get organized, change your diet, exercise, and basically move toward health. This is the hardest part for people, myself included, taking responsibility for your health. We all want someone else to blame and someone else to fix it. That’s not how life works, it’s ALWAYS you. We are the only thing in life we can control. Its human nature.

                Matthew 7:3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your
                            brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank
                                                     in your own eye?”

You can’t control the boss that makes your life miserable, but you can control your reaction or your employment at that job.

Third, implement practices that help cope with stress. There are stressors we cannot or are not yet willing to change, therefore we must change our lifestyle to help account for that stress.

Start a yoga practice. Yoga has been shown to reduce stress by combining body movement with mental focus in a way that bring awareness to the body and aids its attempts to deal with the stress.

Create a morning routine. Each morning we are given the opportunity to start over.

        My routine is wake before my daughter make my bed, breakfast, drink tea and make goals for         the day, do some stretching or (L)body movement,  Then I have set a calm intention and                     accomplished something before the chaos of the day has started. Your daily routine will                     probably look different than mine. The point is to establish routine and order before the day             officially starts, instead of pushing snooze until the last moment

Acupuncture is a great way to not only help stop that vicious cycle of stress and disease, disease and stress but to aid in overall prevention and treatment of the negative health effects stress had on the body.  Boosting the body’s own healing response it aids the body in healing itself. Acupuncture overall is a relaxing experience, the needles help the body reach a deeper place of relaxation than most people can reach on their own.

Not all stress is bad. If you don’t experience the stress as negative then perhaps it doesn’t effect you the same as the stressors that you view as negative.