The University of Tasmania has  recently published research findings that link depression to obesity, not altogether surprising considering the much publicised growth of both diseases in recent times. Some people lose their appetite altogether when they are stressed out but others comfort eat, the foods comfort eaters choose usually are not fresh carrots and vitamin tablets but rather high calorie treats rich in fat and sugar.

Exercise can help with both problems but how do you get started? The best exercises in the world won’t help you if you can’t do them due to reasons like you cannot easily get down on the floor to do yoga or it has just been so long since you did last exercise that your body has really stiffened up and aches when you try to power walk or lift weights. It may be necessary to get a course of massage or osteopathy or chiropractic treatments before you take the next step to get fit.

Herein lies a big problem, over the last 20 years of doing body work in several  clinics obese people seem to be very under-represented considering how many of them there are now. It is possible that feeling embarrassed about their girth (particular if you are shy or lacking in confidence) might make an obese person hesitate about taking their shirt off infront of a total stranger. This is a great shame because there is a lot a good that a musculo-skeletal therapist can do to help you get started on the path to a healthier and fitter new-you. If this sounds like you or someone you know there are ways around this. Getting massaged with your clothes still on like you do when you get Chinese or Thai massage may make you feel more comfortable and less self-conscious than stripping down to your underwear for an oil-on-skin Swedish style massage.

There are some very worn-out fallacies about about being too fat to get a massage, EVERYBODY can benefit from being massaged not just slim athletic looking people. Sometimes when a person’s skin has become stretched tight because their girth has never been greater it can take more strength on the part of the massage therapist to get down to the muscle but anybody (and there are many) who does deep tissue massage should be able cope with this and if you are unsure just ring up and ask.

There are an increasing number of female only gyms and female only areas in regular gyms that can help girth-conscious women to feel more comfortable with exercising. If there are some exercises that you cannot do don’t let it stop you from doing the exercises that you can do, be careful not to go looking for excuses not to exercise because you don’t feel like exercising, 5 minutes exercise is better than no minutes exercise.

It is not just comfort eating (and drinking) and lack of physical activity that causes and worsens obesity, some medications such as anti depressants can increase your body weight and size too which may be part of the problem, don’t be shy about discussing the options with your doctor and explore how Self Massage may help you.

Massage and exercise can alleviate the symptoms of obesity by soothing muscles that have to work so hard carrying your body around and the feel good hormones released during massage and exercise can help both.

The way breathing effects the body is very important, if you stop you die. The way breathing effects the emotions tends to be much more subtle. When we get emotionally excited for instance we tend not to notice our breathing becoming more rapid and shallow, this is what adrenaline and noradrenaline does to us when our fight/flight response kicks in.

Along with the changes in breathing during the fight and flight response, our blood heads to our arms and legs, we find it hard to keep still, we become hyper-vigilant, our bodies get muscular armouring to protect it (ie the neck muscles stiffen), our fine motor coordination diminishes, our physical strength suddenly increases, blood pressure rises, heart rate (pulse) rises and we are ready for action, even if what has excited us poses no actual physical threat, just an emotional one.

Our fight and flight responses are there to protect us in short bursts, when we get wired and twitchy more as a habit than a necessity it can effect our sleep, our immunity, our ability to relax, our blood pressure even our relationships with other people. One of the ways we can turn this around is through making a conscious effort to breath more slowly, deeply and rythmically. It is hard to start with because when we get angry or frightened we tend not to think firstly and foremostly about our breathing but rather about what has upset us…which usually has the effect of further upsetting us.

Breathing exercises are very common to meditation practises for this reason, as a distraction and as a way of returning the nervous system to a more relaxed state. Even if you “get bored” with meditation or quickly lose your patience with “holier-than- thou” types who calmly tell you that you should chill-out a bit more, slowing your breathing WILL calm you down and it is an easy thing to prove to yourself if you try it. You may live longer for it too because you are much less likely to have a heart attack or a stroke if you avoid emotionally over-reacting, the creatures that enjoy the longest life-spans (such as sea turtles) have low heart rates while creatures with rapid heart and respiratory rates have shorter life spans, they are much more excitable by nature (such as rodents) too.

There can be a big difference to appearing calm and actually being calm, suppressing emotions might make you appear cool and collected but if your heart rate is still elevated your blood vessels and heart may sustain life threatening damage. Chronic jaw tension and neck stiffness are common signs of suppressed emotions.

Laughing and crying changes the way we breath too, our breathing loses it’s normal rythm when we do these things. Faced with a choice between the two laughing is a much more attractive option than crying although people can and do choke in the midst of a good laugh if they have airways congestion….it is safer to enjoy a good laugh with clear lungs.

In the case of crying from grief our tears contain feromones that literally have an anaesthetising  effect on the body, grief really does numb us, in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) too much grief or repression of grief is said to weaken our lungs, sometimes people become asthmatic after a bereavement or take up smoking. In TCM smoking very temporarily warms and strengthens lung energy but ofcourse in the long term it doesn’t help our lungs atall, if you know someone who has developed breathing difficulties since a major emotional crisis  it is possible that the problem may have a more emotional cause than a physical one.

It is not just what you physically do that effects your lungs, what you think plays a part too. Breathing exercises can be done anywhere….don’t forget to breathe!