“The fitness world has convinced us that you can be fit only with extreme effort,” says Pete Egoscue, world-renowned physiologist and co-founder of Elev8d Fitness, the new home workout program from the experts of Sonima. “They’ve convinced everyone that fitness is hard and that the key is the more effort you apply, the better your results. In essence, more is better.”

But the focus on quantifying anything and everything in your fitness routine is counter-productive. Doing so takes the focus off of the goal—being healthy—and puts it on numbers and ever-increasing levels of effort.

First, there’s no correlation between an increase in numbers and fitness. We’ve all seen the guy with hulking arms who can bench press 400 pounds but can’t lift his arms over his head. In no way should that lack of mobility be construed as fitness. Indeed, one of the primary ingredients that defines fitness for Egoscue is a full range of motion. So much of what we do, especially in gyms, provides zero benefit for our range of motion.

But there’s another reason that obsession with numbers can lead to an unproductive cycle: It’s not very fun. “That’s why so many people who join gyms stop going after a few weeks,” says Egoscue, who considers fun the second ingredient that defines fitness.

Remember How to Play 

In an effort to track and quantify, we’ve lost our ability to simply play. Think about play in decades past—a sepia-tinged, nostalgic vision of kids playing. It’s one part Calvin and Hobbes, one part summertime stickball, a dash of “Ring Around the Rosie”—all innocence and effortless joy. No one calls it fitness; they call it childhood. There’s no counting reps or judgments about whether Sally ran faster today than she did yesterday. It’s just about having a good time.

Related: How Your Feelings Affect Your Workout

“Play is fun because there are no judgments associated with it,” Egoscue says. “There’s just the joy of participation. There’s the joy of self-actualization. That’s where games came from. That’s where sport comes from. All sport started with a sense of play.”

It may be tough to scare up enough players for a game of stickball in the street, but it’s probably not especially difficult to go for a run in the woods. Or instead of today’s trip to the gym, why not head to the local playground for a half-hour of tag with your kids and see how you feel afterward? Or say you do go to the gym. Rather than follow a prescribed workout, just do what you feel like doing. Jump around or do a few somersaults. A sense of play can breathe life into your fitness routine. You just have to let it.

Fun Is More Effective

I ran a lot one summer and fall, training for the New York City Marathon. Spend 15 seconds Googling and you can find any number of marathon training guides, every week mapped out, each day with its own goal. (Even rest is programmed.) I had a GPS watch that I’d wear on training runs, which told me how fast I was running, how far I went, and how many strides I took per second. I was constantly aware of numbers, times, speed, and more. Information overload.

On one long run, I left the watch at home. I had an approximate path mapped out in my head, but I let my body guide me. If I wanted to turn left, I turned left. If one street looked interesting, I ran down it. I saw my surroundings and enjoyed the run. And when I got home and checked my time, I realized that I ran faster than I had previously. By letting go and having fun, I improved.

Related: This 8-Minute Beginner Workout Will Make You Love Exercise

Elev8d Fitness is predicated, in large part, on having fun. It’s full of exercises that recall childhood freedom. The workouts get you down on the ground and moving around in ways many of us haven’t in far too long. What’s more, there are no set numbers. Yes, the workouts are structured in eight, 16, and 24 minutes, and within each workout, each exercise is prescribed for a timed interval. “But you don’t have to do it for the whole time,” Egoscue says. “Do it as long as you can. If you can only do it for 15 seconds, fine. No one’s judging. That freedom takes away all the sense of drudgery and duty with fitness.”

The key to returning to play is to change what you’re experiencing. When it comes to working out, you should be looking to have a good time, have fun, experiment, and enjoy. Forget numbers and reps, and the neurosis of perfection. You’ll love the change and see the benefits.

Take it from Egoscue, a man who knows: “If you’re not having any fun in life, then what’s the point?”

Looking for more fun, playful workouts? Try the Elev8d Fitness eight-minute Get Back in Shape Workout or the Weight-Loss Workout Series.

The post The Secret to a Better Workout? Have More Fun with It appeared first on Sonima.

You know that stress is unhealthy, sitting wreaks havoc on your posture, and the bright screen light can disrupt your sleep. None of this is good, but possibly even more serious is the sensation that you sometimes get at your desk when it feels like your head is underwater. Why do you feel like you’re drowning? Because, in a sense, you are.

“Email apnea” is a term credited to former Apple exec Linda Stone. Just like it’s better-known bedtime counterpart, sleep apnea, the term describes prolonged periods where you go without breathing—you hold your breath without realizing it—while at your desk or at work. And just as sleep apnea is under-diagnosed, email apnea may be a lot more prevalent than you think.

In fact, Belisa Vranich, Ph.D., says that in nearly every office setting that she has encountered, three out of every 10 people are breath-holders. Vranich teaches breathing classes in person and online for everyone from corporate office types to tactical military operators. She likens the focused-to-the-point-of-breathlessness that we feel at our computers to being in a “modern predatory state.”

“Think about shooting at a range, or if you were an animal stalking something,” says Vranich, who is also the author of Breathe: The Simple, Revolutionary 14-Day Program to Improve Your Mental and Physical Health. “You would naturally hold your breath so that you won’t make an errant movement.”

Obviously, bringing that level of intensity to your inter-office “reply all” is overkill. You wouldn’t choose to do it. The problem is that, unless you’ve actually caught yourself holding your breath as you type or read, you probably aren’t aware that it’s happening. Here’s how to tune into your body as you go about your day and notice whether it is happening to you.

Two Types of Breathers: Which One Are You?

Let’s start with how you breathe. Believe it or not, people respire in many different ways when you consider the pace at which they inhale, what muscles they use to pull the air in, and so on. But Vranich says you can simplify things by separating people into two broad categories: vertical breathers and horizontal breathers.

Vertical breathing describes how most people breathe. When you do it, your shoulders move up on inhales and down on exhales. You may even feel as if you’re getting taller when you breathe in and shorter when you breathe out. If you were to put one hand on your belly and another on your chest when you breathe, the hand on your chest would move more.

In horizontal breathing, your shoulders and neck stay completely still as you breathe. Only your midsection drives the inhalation and exhalation. Rather than growing taller and shorter, you feel as if you’re moving outward, then contracting.

RELATED: The Simplest Change You Can Make for Better Health

Horizontal breathers, who are in the minority, breathe by properly using their diaphragms. For vertical breathers (a.k.a., the rest of us), muscles in our back, shoulders, neck, and even face work to help “pull” the air into our bodies. This not only causes us to expend more energy than we need to, it also tightens up all of those compensatory muscles, and still provides a lousier dose of air than does lower body breathing. Why is quality compromised? Because so many of our lung’s alveoli (the air sacs that allow for the exchange of oxygen into the bloodstream) lie in the lower portions of the tissues.

Making matters worse, vertical breathers are more likely to also be subconscious breath holders, Vranich warns. But the good news is that you can do the old “two birds with one stone” and fix both problems by learning how to breathe better with your lower body.

Stop Needlessly Drowning at Your Desk

To change your breathing pattern from vertical to horizontal, Vranich says you need to think differently about how you breathe. Rather than concentrate on pulling air into your lungs, imagine your breathing starts at your hips. A drill you can use to help learn better lower body breathing is something Vranich calls “Rock and Roll.”

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In Rock and Roll, you start in a seated position. You can be in a chair or cross-legged on the floor. On your inhale, expand your belly and lean forward. The extra lithe among us may have to actively push their belly out to achieve what we’re going for here. Your goal is to achieve a sensation akin to having your belly land in your lap. Then when you exhale, lean over as if you were slumping down into a comfy cushioned loveseat. Contract your belly fully, exhaling until you are completely empty. Do this 20 times (an inhale and exhale equals one rep).

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“When you move your breath toward the bottom part of your body, you’ll actually feel relieved,” Vranich says. “Not only because you’re taking a breath that helps your parasympathetic system, which controls your “rest and digest” response, but also because you won’t have to recruit your shoulders to do the work of breathing for you. You’ll be breathing more into your anatomical center, and that will actually make you feel more centered.”

Vranich offers two other tips for noticing and correcting your breathing as you go about your workday. First, occasionally breathe through your mouth so you can hear it—yes, you can ujjayi breathe at work. Second, remind yourself to exhale. People rarely hold their breath on an exhale, Vranich says, but often do on an inhale.

Take Your Breathing to New Heights with a Balloon

Advanced breathers who want to take respiration a step further can try balloon breathing to improve exhalation, the very important underdog. Here’s how Vranich teaches it: Place the balloon between your lips. Take a big belly breath in. Then on the exhale, blow into the balloon while you squeeze the air out with your ab and core muscles. The first exhale may be difficult, especially if you’re using a new balloon.

Once you’ve fully exhaled, keep the balloon in your mouth without letting the air escape. Inhale through your nose and repeat, filling the balloon even more. Do this for up to four breaths, or until the balloon seems “about to pop” full. Then pinch the balloon with your fingers, remove it from your lips, and let the air out.

The post Are You Subconsciously Holding Your Breath? appeared first on Sonima.

At Sonima.com we aim to illuminate the nexus between consciousness of spirit and biology of the human. The body has energetic centers, called chakras, which mirror the hierarchy of human needs and human expression, as Deepak Chopra explains here. Dr. Chopra discusses each chakra and the way we can see them as metaphors for our expression and consciousness.

The post What Are the Chakras? appeared first on Sonima.