Hi: If you're new to this blog, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. It's easy and fast. Thanks for visiting and happy reading!

Are you always losing that ‘fitness war’ of mind over matter?

Have you looked at the bulge over your stomach and felt despair? Do you feel lethargic all the time? Do you go breathless after climbing a couple of staircases?

How many times have you promised yourself that you will go to the gym, take a swim or jog around your neighbourhood but had always gave yourself an excuse and wriggle out of it?

We all know that we need to exercise to maintain a healthy lifestyle and that’s why gyms are in vogue. However, how many of us will actually drive or take a bus to the gym? Even when we are at the gym, do we know what is the correct exercise we need to do to achieve our desired fitness? Can we maintain that discipline to exercise regularly?

Sure, we can always hire a fitness instructor or a personal trainer to train and to push us. Do you know how much an hour with a personal trainer cost? US$75 to US$120. That’s right. Two hours per session, three times a week will easily set you back US$600! How many of us have that kind of money even if we have that kind of desire to keep fit?

I was recently recommended to this program - Bodybot software. A personal fitness trainer by the name of Ryan Lee had designed a virtual program that ensure a ‘personal fitness trainer’ is always at your beck and call.

In a nutshell, this is how it works:

1. Log onto a website - Choose a desired fitness goal
2. Select from the recommended exercise routines
3. Set the music
4. Wala… a ‘fitness trainer’ appears and lead you through your exercise routines!

How much easier can it be? You can choose to exercise whenever you want in the comfort of your own home with your desired fitness goal - be it to lose fat, gain upper body strength, promote joint flexibility or better cardio-respiratory strength!

A list of fitness routines according to your desired fitness goal will be recommended to you and you can choose or design these routines differently each time so that you are never bored by the same routines. In addition, a ‘real life fitness trainer’ exercise along with you so that you can ensure that you are doing the right kind of exercise!

If you had always wanted to keep fit but lack the technique or the discipline, here’s your chance to try out this unique training program.

I understand that this software is causing a sensation with home fitness enthusiasts in the USA and I have downloaded a free trial myself. Why don’t you try it out yourself too - after all, there is a 8 week trial period for you to decide if this program is suitable for you. If you have always been hesitating about your fitness goals - hesitate no more - try out this software now! Click to learn more about the software.

A personal home massage chair has suddenly become a vogue item to have at home.

A few years ago, some people would have purchased a massage chair at home because they may be suffering from back pain, neck pain, buttock pain, headaches, and even leg pain and stress and hence would want a chair to release some discomfort at home.

In those days, most chairs would be made from artificial leather and offer only one or two mode of massage - mostly vibration and kneading. Most of these chairs cannot fully recline and to be honest, most were not good-looking and may not blend well in a home if you are a fussy home maker.

Most chairs would have cost about US$1,500 to US$2,500, and were mostly bought by children as a gift to their elderly parents or by the elderly themselves.

Fast forward to today - and you’ll find that the trend of buying massage chair is not a one-time fancy or fad but instead, massage chair has almost become a vogue item to buy for the home.

No longer is the massage chair bought by children for their elderly parents but most likely by the children for themselves or for their new homes. The new massage chairs of today are likely to be made from real leather or suede, are good looking, can fully recline, has multiple massage functions and can even massage or vibrate in accordance to music or a movie!

Hence, some people will simply want a nice massage chair that looks good in their living room or office so that they can relax and just listen to their surround sound movie or music system! For others who are still keen on ‘real massage features’, new massage chairs today can perform all of these massage functions: -

Kneading – also known as “shiatsu”, kneading rolls outward from the spine and feels much like 2 hands alternately rubbing your back.

Percussion/Tapping – this is the light “karate chopping” on a client’s back that you’ve probably seen before on TV. Increased blood flow and muscle stiffness relief is the benefit gained. It feels wonderful.

Rolling - Basically, wheels just roll up and down the muscles on either side of your spine. Here are the benefits: 1.) gentle moving of the spinal bones, and 2.) stretching of the spine and the muscles around it.

Foot and calf massager - many of the new chairs have an attached ottoman that has a calf and foot massage feature administered by an airbag system. This feature is a real “must”, especially if you spend a good portion of your day on your feet.

Full recliner – if you want your massage to be as deep as possible, you need to get a massage chair that has a reclining feature. And the further back the recline, the greater the intensity of the massage.

Prices has not only not fallen over the years but have gone steadily up especially with a number of new features and are generally between US$1,500 to US$8,000 depending on leather quality and number of fancy mechanism. Most of these chairs are manufactured in Japan or China under a few big Japanese brands such as Sanyo and Panasonic. In other parts of Asia, local brands such as Osim, Oto, VGO, Omega has sprung up and are active sellers of the home massage chair and other home health products.

If you live far away from shopping malls or prefer to shop online, you can buy new massage chair recliners at a good price at this massage chair online site. This company offers a 90 refund policy, ships internationally, is managed by a doctor and carry most of the major and reputable brands. By far, this is one of the best on-line website for massage chairs I have seen.

I do Yoga regularly and try to practise at least twice a week at the gym. I spend another two days practising Yoga on my own at home because I find that I am spending too much time running back and forth to the gym and that Yoga is basically something you can practise alone at home.

If you are keen on doing Yoga at home as well, here’s the basic items you’ll need to start off:

1. A good non-slip Yoga mat
2. Tight gym clothes
3. A TV and a good instructor-led DVD or VHS video on Yoga so that you can practise along
4. Aromatherapy or fragrance burner to enhance the ambiance (Optional)
5. Soft music (Optional)

I normally rest for about an hour after dinner and then start my Yoga session at home. First, I’ll light up an aromatherapy candle or burner and then tone down the lights a notch or two. I find that building up the mood and ambiance contribute a lot to an enjoyable Yoga session.

Then, I’ll run the Yoga DVD video disc and follow along with the TV Yoga guru for an hour or so. I’ll next rest for half an hour or so before running a nice, warm hot shower. Then, I’ll drink down two glasses of plain water before turning in for the day.

I find that drinking two glasses of water at the start and end of the day help me flush off the toxins in my body. I also find that a round of Yoga practice followed by a hot shower let me fall asleep easily nowadays compared to a time prior to starting Yoga when I was always having a hard time falling asleep at night.

So, if you’re thinking of picking up a non-strenuous exercise or have insomnia problems at night, why not pick up my idea of doing an hour or so of Yoga at home. Home Yoga is completely a sustainable form of self-exercise for home and it does not take up a lot of space, equipments, time nor need a sporting partner.

Yoga is not as strenuous as a lot of other sports and is just the right exercise to do at home alone or with another family member. Yoga is both a therapeutic exercise for the mind - for it leaves you relaxed and serene after a session, and at the same time it is a also an exercise for the body for it tones up your muscle and loosen your ligaments.

If you need help in starting Yoga training or will feel more confident with a good instructor-led Yoga DVD video to follow along, you can pick up these video VHS tapes or DVD disc or even a Yoga exercise mat at this website!

I don’t exactly know when it happened but I realized that my left shoulder was painful whenever I worked out at the gym. It wasn’t a obvious pain that I am physically aware of all the time but a sublime sort of pain which was only obvious when I worked out on certain gym equipments or when I stretched my shoulder a certain way.

I can only guess that I must have hurt one of the inner shoulder muscle during an earlier work-out. It wasn’t painful all the time but it was painful and awkward whenever I wanted to exercise and it wasn’t really recovering despite the pain being two weeks old or more.

After two weeks, I reached out for my mother’s traditional pain relief patches and applied one to my shoulder. Around the shoulder, I applied the Yoko Yoko Analgesic ointment, both of which my mother swore were traditional Chinese cures that will always work when nothing else will.

This is my second day with the pain relief patches. The shoulder seems to be feeling better and less painful when I stretch it but I’ll need another day or two before I see obvious result. I certainly hope it works well because I have already skipped a number of gym sessions.

You can purchase similar traditional Chinese pain relief patches and ointment at: www.quick-pain-relief.com

Once in a while, you come across things that simply take your breath away. It could be a scene from a movie, a piece of rousing music, a child’s painting, a nicely-setup food presentation or a funny busker on the road.

This fully illustrated book on how the different body muscles and skeletal work with various Yoga postures simply took my breath away! I have never seen anything so real, so lifelike and so representative of the art of Yoga.

It is simply one of those books that you must have on your coffee table even if you only flip through it once a month. Check it out and I’m sure you will be just as amazed too! And what better gift to give to anyone that is a Yoga enthusiast than this amazing book!

And for any Yoga teachers or masters out there, I will never understand if this book is not in your personal reference list all the time! Check out the amazing illustrations here…

I love relaxing in a spa. They invoke your inner senses with their dim lights, aromatic smell and soothing background music.

I remember this spa that I visited in Mines, KL, Malaysia, a few years back which even had a room with soft sofas called “The Sense Room” that had nothing but flowing curtains, soft lights, scented candles and soft music.

Guests moving in and out of The Sense Room were not allowed to make unnecessary noise and magazines, MP3 players and mobile phones were strictly not allowed. All you were allowed to do was to lay back and relax to the soft music.

There is something about spa music that is so soothing. Many of them are back-to-nature sound, nothing but the repetition of ocean waves or rustic bamboo swinging in the wind or spring water bubbling over stones or the collective call of sea gulls.

These music tracks were unique and difficult to get. I’ve checked many CD shops and the closest I can get are zen, inspirational, instrumental or aboriginal tracks but never exactly the same kind of music I hear in spas. Once, I did come across a small CD shop that sold similar back-to-nature music CDs but it closed down quickly due to the small market.

I am glad to come across this online CD store that sells exactly what I am looking for. This company sell back-to-nature CD that you can buy online and they’ll ship you the CD with FREE shipping fees. And if you can’t wait for shipping, they’ll even allow downloading of the same MP3 tracks. How’s that for service?

What this company does is to actually track down the right places in nature and record the sound using high quality audio recording devices. None of the tracks are artificially created in a production studio.

What I also like is that I can also listen to a track partially on their website before making a decision to buy. And if I realise the CD I bought is not really what I want, I can even get a full refund within 30 days!

So, if you are like me, who like soothing spa-type music at home or in the office, do check out their website. I’m sure you will enjoy what you hear.

Online Store: Http://www.relaxation-cds.com
Types of CD: More than 30 categories of rest and relaxation genre CDs
Price: Between US$19-US$25
Remarks:
FREE relaxation screensaver
FREE MP3 version included on CD
FREE international shipping & handling
RISK-FREE 30-day money-back guarantee