Adress your stress! - stress management with nutrition and lifestyle adjustments

Irritability, headaches, insomnia, fatigue, digestive problems, anxiety, lack of concentration & shortness of breath... sounding familiar?

Our environment and diet may have spent thousand of years evolving but so too has our daily stress. Long gone are the life threatening days of fighting sabre-tooth tigers and wooly mammoths; however despite this, our bodies are still programmed to respond in the same manner - "fight or flight".

Our brains are programmed to set off an immediate response to stress by sending signals to the adrenal glands to release our stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) and once these have entered our bloodstream, our bodies respond through a series of psychological and physiological reactions (pupils dilate, our digestive system shuts down, our blood starts to thicken in preparation for fast healing should we experience injury, etc). When the threat the has gone, our body then returns to its normal state.

Unfortunately due to the constant influx of daily stressors, it becomes increasingly harder to switch off our internal alarm system and return to a calm state. Subsequently we start to experience aforementioned symptoms as a result of continued stress on the body.
The long-term implications of stress can be incredibly damaging to the body playing a contributing factor in the following disorders:

• Diabetes
• Obesity
• IBS
• Depression
• Psychiatric illness
• Low immunity
• Chronic Fatigue
• Peptic Ulcer
• Skin problems
• Rheumatoid Arthritis
• Migraines
• Premature ageing

Address your stress!

The therapeutic properties found in food along with lifestyle changes can be hugely beneficial in helping to tackle symptoms associated with stress.

Suffering from Anxiety?

Eat your Greens! Yes there is no escaping it, dark green leafy vegetables are packed full of the mineral magnesium, also known as "nature's tranquilizer" essential in helping the muscles relax and bring the body back into balance.
Why not try a relaxing Epsom salt bath, the salts consist of magnesium sulphate, so 15-20 minutes of soaking with also help the body intake magnesium, thus reducing stress.

Having trouble sleeping?

The essential oil of lavender contains calming properties within its aroma, add a few drops either into your bath or onto your pillow case as inhaling the oil can aid both relaxation and sleep
Eat Tryptophan rich foods (cottage cheese, peas, turkey and bananas) at night, this amino acid is the key building block to the brain chemical serotonin (feel good chemical) this is then converted to melatonin the chemical, which induces sleep. Hence turkey making us feel both happy and sleepy.

Experiencing palpitations?

Try reducing your caffeine levels, the stimulatory effects of tea, coffee and fizzy drinks result in the release of adrenaline, thereby creating a similar effect to an actual stressor. Instead replace with herbal teas or water, remember to reduce caffeine gradually to prevent withdrawal symptoms.
Reduce your salt intake, stress already elevates blood pressure, by adding salt to your food this will further constrict your blood vessels.

Always tired and irritable in the afternoon?

By balancing your blood sugar you can prevent huge drops in energy responsible for mood swings. Try including a mid morning and afternoon snack, ideally carbohydrate with protein, oat cakes with hummus are fantastic for slow releasing energy, alternatively 6-8 walnuts or almonds with a piece of fruit will also help to balance your blood sugar.
Include plenty of B vitamins in your diet, responsible for the formation of chemicals and cells made by the brain for mood - these can be found in whole-grains, fish, nuts, seeds and dairy products

Headbands and leg warmers!

Aerobic exercise can help to bring down stress levels and benefit your mental health. if that is a little too high impact why not try yoga, walking or meditation to give yourself the opportunity to unwind and help you forget about the day's stresses
Developing a stress time management plan can be a highly effective method to help identify and focus on the most serious sources of stress within your life to help you bring them under control

If you would like further advice on how to reduce your stress levels, private and group consultations with our nutritionist and author of this article, Rachel Bailey,are available. Contact t2b wellbeing to find out more about Rachel's corporate packages.

T2b Wellbeing: Our change of Name

Following a dispute over our trademark in which use of the word “bliss” has been contested we are now changing our name to T2b Wellbeing. We think our new name better reflects the shape transport to bliss is taking. We are currently in the process of taking on other therapists specialising in Alexander Technique, Nutrition, Yoga, Pilates and Reflexology to become a comprehensive wellbeing agency. We are happy with our new name because we feel it is stronger and funkier, but don’t worry, you can still rely on our massages and other treatments to transport you to bliss!

You can still find us at http:// http://www.transporttobliss.com/, so feel free to check out our website and our new range of therapies for the workplace.

Listening to Your Body for Pain Management

However challenging and gratifying urban lifestyle may be, it doesn’t allow for much breathing time between all those scheduled meetings, pressing deadlines, shopping trips, social outings and family duties. Most critics of highly charged and high-powered 21^st century life always agree on one point: it does not make time for meditation, this quality “me” time, that – regardless where you come from- was always quietly at the centre of traditional ways. This solitary time allows for self-reflection and helps to maintain mental and physical sanity. In our everyday busy lives, we tend to be so out of touch with our bodies (and emotions) that we often don’t realise just how tense we became. We learn to live with the odd ache nagging us more and more often, to eventually surrender and accept it as the natural state of our bodily affairs. Therefore most people coming for a massage treatment tend to shrug off therapist’s inquiries about their levels and areas of tension and say they’re absolutely fine and just looking for some relaxation.

One of great qualities of massage and other hands- on therapies is how they make you more aware of your body, how you feel and your levels of tension. The very same people rise from massage couch or chair all dreamy- eyed and fresh- faced to exclaim:”I didn’t realise how tense I was!”

Your body always gives you cues and signals, and listening to them helps you detect problems in early stages. Mechanical and divided approach to health is still maintained and publicised by medical profession (although our society is slowly moving away from it and towards more holistic attitude). Health is widely defined and understood as absence of disease rather than a positive state. Treatment and dependence are the easiest available choice that- although necessary in advanced stages of disease- can often be altogether avoided when replaced by education and self care.

Most people consider pain alarming and seek medical advice when it exceeds their threshold. When something goes majorly wrong, i.e. injury occurs, we are prepared to pace ourselves and pay attention to what’s going on with our bodies and how our daily activities affect us. As soon as things start improving, however, a lot of us relax back into old, careless attitude, while this should really be taken as an opportunity to make lasting lifestyle adjustments and get to know your body’s strengths and weaknesses. Injuries don’t just go away overnight, or if you do your stretches for a couple of weeks. For many months or even years after, your body experiences structural weakness at the site of injury, which can in turn affect surrounding areas, alter your posture and lead to other seemingly unrelated problems. That’s why it’s important to keep up with your exercise and treatment regime and generally give your body more thought, observing how it responds to certain kinds of activity, what seems to aggravate it and what helps to release your tension and achiness.

Alexander technique (a postural re-education system that we are focusing on this month in our blog) offers an easy and effective way of tuning into your body. It also helps to relax postural muscles running along your spine and correct negative muscular patterns and misalignments resulting from poor posture and disrupted body mechanics. Most people experience those problems to some degree. Alexander’s “semi-supine” position, a basic self- help relaxation exercise works absolute wonders. All you need to do is lie down and relax- it’s really that simple! We recommend it to everyone because of an amazing difference it makes in terms of general wellbeing and bodily awareness.

Instructions: First, stand by the wall resting your back and head against it, and get your friend or partner to measure the distance between your neck and the wall. Next, get a couple of paperback books (width of which should equal the distance measured between your neck and the wall). Lie down on a floor and: 1.bend your knees bringing the heels of your feet towards your buttocks and 2.place the books under you head like a pillow. This reverses your cervical (neck) and lumbar (lower back) curves and enables your back to comfortably flatten out on the floor, allowing all the muscles supporting entire length of your spine to stretch out and relax. Stay in this position for 5-10 minutes, paying close attention to your body. If you become aware of tension in a particular area, breathe deeply focusing your attention on letting go of tension as you breathe out. If the books feel hard against your head, focus your awareness on your neck, relaxing it till you can feel tension release and your head rests comfortably. You will be surprised at the difference only a few minutes of these exercise makes: you will feel as if you just got out of bed-after good night’s sleep: relaxed, rested and ache-free. With a bit of practice you will learn to instantly identify and let go of stress in your body – which will in translate into newfound confidence and ability to adjust your posture whenever you feel you’re tensing up throughout the day.

Alexander Technique for Depression

Many transport to bliss clients ask us if there is anything they can do to prevent the repetitive injuries and strain that we treat as massage therapists. Massage is a great general maintenance tonic, but for those ever recurring knots, is there anything that you can do to stop them coming back again and again.. and again? Clearly we can’t prescribe you with a lucky lottery ticket and overnight change of lifestyle. Instead, we frequently find ourselves recommending Alexander Technique, which can form a fantastic complement to massage. Something that interests us as massage therapists is how the body not only holds tension caused by physical use, but how it also retains and reflects patterns of emotional use. Alexander Technique takes a holistic approach to the body and is claimed to be an effective treatment for various psychological conditions, particularly depression.

What is Alexander Technique?


The Alexander Technique was developed by the actor, Frederick M Alexander (1869-1955). He suffered from the recurrent problem of voice loss during periods in he was performing. Although he sought medical attention, no doctor was able to provide a solution. Despairing with conventional medicine, Alexander began to observe that during periods of rest his voice returned. However, as soon as he returned to the stage he quickly lost his voice again. This caused him to make the observation that it was something he was doing while he performed that was leading to his voice loss. Alexander decided to investigate this thought and began to observe himself in the mirror while reciting his parts in order to analyse precisely how he was using his body whilst acting. He realised that when performing he was utilising his body in a harmful way that was creating unnecessary tension and effort. Over time he played with his posture and body use and discovered a way to perform that eliminated his problem.

From there he developed the Alexander Technique, a system specifically designed for changing people’s bad habits in the way they use their bodies to create unnecessary tension. The technique can be applied to a wide range of issues such as fatigue, back pain, depression and anxiety, back, RSI, stress, vocal or breathing disorders. An Alexander Technique teacher will analyze your whole movement pattern and then draw your attention your characteristic habits of compression in sitting, standing and walking. They will then guide you to move in a freer, more integrated way that causes less damage and strain across the body.



Muscles and Emotions


The body-worker, Stanley Keleman writes,

"My particular bodily form, my particular body feeling, is testimony to my particular character, my particular way of behaving, both psychologically and physically."

This is well illustrated by the way in which we might tense our shoulders when we’re stressed, slouch when we despair or clench our fists when we’re angry. These example behaviours are more overtly displayed by children. As adults we become more adept at hiding our feelings, but subtle reflexes still occur across the body often in less visible forms.

Habitual emotions will set-up habitual patterns in the body. The same physiological processes take place when we tense particular muscles in response to emotional stimuli as when we tighten certain muscles for physical use. The muscle tissue will contract and shorten, often trapping lactic acid in its fibres to create knots in response to both. Conversely, muscles commonly slackened will be underused and become weak. Over time customary muscle patterns become fixed. As muscles are routinely stressed or under-used, over time this will also have an effect on the skeleton as the joints become pulled out of alignment and the body gradually re-shaped.

As Keleman states:

“During the process of self-formation, a person meets challenges. The challenge can come from either one's internal or external environment. When the challenge exceeds the capacity of the person to tolerate the distress, a distortion of shape takes place as a coping strategy. Through repetition and over time, this pattern can solidify and become a person's shape. From this shape, both inner and outer, a person tends to respond to the world in a stereotypical and predictable manner. There is no such thing as the right shape...However, a person's shape is always a combination of inherited givens and the type of obstacle that he is struggling with”.

However, not only does our psychological state effect our posture; the reverse is also true. Common sense tells us that, for example if you slouch, your lungs become compressed with less room to operate in. This will restrict the amount of air you can take into the body. Reduced oxygen intake will affect the function of every cell in your body. This is why the ancient art of Yoga associates breath with life force or "prana": By breathing correctly you increase the flow of life through the body.



Knock On Effects

We have looked at how emotions affect muscular health and vice versa, but what is interesting again is the knock on affect your posture has on the people around you and how they relate to you; and this in turn will ultimately have an impact on your state of mind. Both police street safety initiatives and assertiveness courses will ask students to be aware of the importance their posture has in communicating how they may be treated by others. Again there are thousands of books, articles and websites on how to adapt your posture and body language to gain results in popular areas of interest such as dating or marketing. NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is a technique much used by life-coaches and business managers and again trains it’s students in the use of posture and phsyical signals to gain influence with other people.

January’s New Scientist documented recent research into how emotions can be contagious; how a phenomonon such as happiness, for example, can pass quickly through a social network and affect clusters of friends, almost like a virus:

“Psychologists have shown people unconsciously copy the facial expressions, manner of speech, posture, body language and behaviours of those around them, often with remarkable accuracy and speed. This causes them through a kind of neural feedback to actually experience the emotions associated with the particular behaviour they are mimicking. Others have suggested it works through the action of mirror neurons, a type of brain cell thought to fire both when we perform an action and when we watch someone else doing it, though it is not clear whether the mimicking would cause the neurons to fire or whether firing would trigger the mimicry.”

What lies undebated is that unconscious imitation allows people to feel a pale reflection of their companions actual emotions.




The Alexander Technique as a treatment for mental illness



Under the Alexander teacher's guidance, the student learns to release and lengthen muscles that have been shortened over time because of stress and misuse. But how can curtailing unnecessary muscular tension heal negative emotions?

Nami Shragai, psychotherapist and Alexander Technique teacher, wrote in an article in the Times newspaper (18/04/08):

“Unconscious experiences, such as unhealed traumas, unexpressed feelings and painful memories can be pushed into the body where they are not free to be dealt with in the mind. These tensions might turn into physical symptoms and ailments, but can also lead to mental illness, such as depression and anxiety. Frederick Alexander, the founder of the technique, taught that how we use our bodies has an extraordinary effect on our ability to accurately perceive the world around us, as well as our emotional and physical health”


Shragai goes on to refer to various clients of hers who have been effectively treated for mental conditions using Alexander Technique. The first case she cites had been referrred to her by a psychiatrist after a two-week admission to The Priory Hospital for a psychotic, manic episode. Since neither therapy or medication had made much impact on her ensuing depression, the lady, named Hilary, was referred to Shragai for physiotherapy. However, her depression was so severe that she could not cope with a 50-minute therapy session. And so Shragai suggested three Alexander Technique lessons a week until her mood stabilised.

Hilary was suffering from extreme depression at the time and was in her own words “ completely non-functional,” She described how,

“Before, I had ten years of antidepressants and therapy to some effect, bringing some stability. Using the Alexander Technique helped me to achieve a degree of healing that wasn't possible with just talk therapy and pills. For me, the technique became a lifeline. I felt calmer from the first lesson. I had been holding fear in my muscles...One experience I had is that I would just let the fear out of my body. I would lie on the treatment table and I would just let it flow out. I had been holding it in my muscles. So, with lessons over time, the world seemed like a less scary place. I had less fear. I look back now and realise that this fear made me perceive anything anyone did to me as a threat. As a result, I was basically confrontational all the time, with everyone...Of course, at the time I couldn't see it. As my balance improved, my perceptions softened and with less fear came less confrontation. I was better able to connect with reality.”

For Hilary, the physical space gained in lessons in lengthening and widening the body translated to a mental space available for thinking and reflecting.

Anne was another of Shragai’s clients treated for depression using Alexander Technique. She had attended psychotherapy sessions for nearly seven years for depression, which although she had found useful did not prevent recurrence of the illness:

“For me, the Alexander Technique was more helpful for depression than therapy. With good posture and balance you are more able to withstand the physical and emotional knocks that life throws at you. A feeling of a lightness and ease in standing and sitting replaces the sense of being held together by tension and fragmented body parts. With lessons, my body started to feel less fragmented, more cohesive, and with that cohesion came a new clarity of thought.”

Lucy Brown is a professor of neurology and neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and a student of the Alexander. According to Professor Brown, research implies that the technique stimulates the parts of the brain responsible for cognition, learning and emotions. She says: “It is reasonable to speculate that areas of the pre-frontal cortex would be activated under the circumstances of a lesson and long-term learning from the technique.”




As a company that deals with wellbeing in the workplace, Alexander Technique has attracted our attention not only as a perfect counterpart to massage, but also as a therapy that has the potential to stimulate more positive dynamics among people working in teams. The technique can be taught either one-on-one or in groups and seems ideal for the workplace, as it healps to unlearn bad posture often aggravated by computer work. transport to bliss is currently looking into providing Alexander Technique classes and we would love to know your thoghts on this.

The Puzzle of Perfect Posture- Forward Head Posture

The picture you see to the left illustrates a correct body posture, with centre of gravity running through the middle of the body. This is a posture that young children display naturally and effortlessly, but as years go by, and we spend more time in a variety of social settings that clearly were not designed with correct body mechanics in mind, most of us develop postural patterns more or less deviated from this ideal.

One of most common postural deficiencies, affecting to some degree ninety per cent of Western population is forward head posture, that can be simply described as carrying the head forward of the centre of the shoulder. As your head moves forward, your centre of gravity shifts.

With every inch your head moves forwards, the weight of it on the neck increases by 10 pounds, straining your neck and upper back muscles, forced to overwork in order to keep your chin from dropping forwards onto your chest. This forces the muscles that raise the chin to remain in constant contraction, compressing the suboccipital nerves (spinal nerves supporting muscles of the base of the skull), which often results in severe headaches. Chronic neck tightness associated with forward head posture impairs your cervical range of motion, and there you are, struggling to twist your head to look at something, although you could swear that you were definitely able to do it not so long ago.

Persistent forward head posture (known as hyperkyphotic posture) puts compressive loads upon the upper thoracic vertebra, and is also associated with the development of upper thoracic hump (which can devolve into Dowager Hump when the vertebra develop compression fractures). Carrying of the head forward of the shoulders exposes the upper thoracic area. The body deposits fat over exposed area to protect it, creating unattractive “hump pad”. The hump causes loss of height and diminished lung capacity. A recent study found that hyperkyphotic posture was associated with a 1.44 greater rate of mortality.

Spine always seeks equilibrium. The whole upper body readjusts to accommodate for the gravity shift on the top of the spine. Trapezius muscles are often tight and there is greater stress on the mid-thoracic spine and the lower back and sacrum. Therefore forward head posture not only results in head and neck problems, but also affects mid-back and low-back problems, creating poor postural patterns along the entire length of the spinal column.

Below you will find simple stretching exercises that will help you achieve better overall upper body posture as well as actively combat forward head posture. For best results, you should make them a part of your daily routine. However if you don’t feel like you’re progressing, or if you believe your posture is significantly deformed, ask your doctor for a referral to a spinal mobility specialist such as osteopath, or a physio who might be able to identify other underlying postural and muscular patterns that may indirectly contribute to your condition.

Stretches for correcting forward head posture:

To encourage realignment of the spine, lift your chest, expanding diaphragm and drawing your shoulders backward.

Employ a targeted stretching routine:

A great way to re-program your posture and encourage a more natural head alignment is to perform chin retractions. While sitting up straight and tall, retract your chin as if trying to lift the top of your head toward the ceiling. Use two fingers to gently press your chin backwards. Aim for 5 retractions every hour throughout the day, holding the stretch for 10 seconds. If you do this throughout an 8 hour workday, along with lifting your chest, you will have done 40 postural corrections! This will help you re-pattern your posture easily and effectively.

Another helpful stretch is a posterior neck stretch: Begin by retracting and lightly pressing against your chin with one hand; place the other hand on the base of your skull. Lightly pull your head forward while keeping your chin retracted. Perform this stretch twice, holding each one for 15-30 seconds. Perform this stretch at least once per day.

45° Neck Stretch: With your chin retracted, lightly pull your head forward/sideways at a 45° angle. Keep the opposite arm and shoulder down to accentuate the stretch. Stretch each side twice, holding each stretch 15-30 seconds. Do this stretch at least once per day.

Stick Chest Stretch: This is a fantastic stretch for opening your chest and realigning the entire spinal column. Hold the stick in front of you at hip level, with your arms a bit wider than shoulder width apart (the worse your range-of-motion, the wider you'll need to grab the stick). The aim of this stretch is to bring the stick over above your head (keeping your arms straight at all times), so that the stick ends up by your buttocks. Do not worry if you can't get the stick behind you at first. Many people can't even get to the midpoint, but the stretch is still effective. Over time your flexibility and posture will improve dramatically. Perform 2 sets of 10 reps, holding the stretch on the last rep for 15-30 seconds. This is one of the most powerful stretches encouraging correct upper body posture and you should make sure that you do it at least once a day.

Ensure you have proper ergonomics in your car, at work, and at home.

Make sure your computer height is optimal at work and home. Another great trick to do in your car is to move your rear view mirror just an inch higher. This will remind you to sit straight while driving.

Do your back a favour... How to make the most of your transport to bliss treatments

To all people with achy backs, pulled muscles, post- injury twinges, necks that wouldn’t turn all the way: we are here to help you, so do come and see us for thirty-minute sessions!

We regularly have people coming to see us in a lot of discomfort, sometimes even agony. Surprisingly, very often those people only book in for fifteen-minute sessions. This can be a frustrating experience for both the client and the therapist – the therapist struggles to make a positive impact in too short a time frame and wishes she had a bit more time to work her magic, and the client comes out of the treatment room feeling somewhat better (often they are relaxed but when the initial sensation wears off after a couple of hours, they realise that the treatment has made little difference to their achy bits). Sometimes the clients are discouraged by this experience and fail to come back, but the bad back doesn’t just go away.

We don’t want you feeling “somewhat” better; we want to make an amazing difference to the way you feel and a lasting impact on your wellbeing!

We think the situation described above might be occurring partly because people are not certain how massage works and don’t have realistic expectations of how long a treatment should take in order to meet its’ objectives. Don’t expect miracles as a result of your fifteen-minute massage! If you are looking for a relaxing treatment to take your edge off, fifteen-minutes of on site massage will allow your therapist to achieve this. In this time frame the therapist will work on the muscles of your upper body focusing on regions that need particular attention, stimulating blood flow to the tissues and removal of muscle waste, using varied pressure and tempo to achieve relaxing and invigorating effect. If there are any minor complaints, fifteen minutes should allow enough time to knead them away.

But if you have any twinges that wouldn’t let you sleep at night, you could definitely benefit from a thirty-minute therapeutic massage. In a longer session your therapist will be able to warm up and relax the muscles of your entire back, as well as work specifically on any areas that may be bugging you, using advanced massage and injury treatment techniques.

No part of your back works in isolation from another. If you have an achy shoulder, there is a good chance that your neck muscles as well as postural muscles further down your back will be either affected by the shoulder problem, or contributing to it.
That’s why a good massage therapist will never work on a complaint that you pointed out without inspecting surrounding tissues. This is often a time consuming process but the effectiveness as well as the bliss factor are guaranteed!

Also remember that if you want to feel better, you will need to start by making commitment to feeling better. If you decide to pursue massage as an aid in improving your wellbeing, you should realise that just one session won’t fix the problem. It took time for the damage to be made and it will take time to unmake it. When working with the body, being systematic is the key. Tension tends to build up through disrupted muscular and postural patterns, increasing body’s vulnerability to injury and stress. A skilled massage therapist (such as members of our team at transport to bliss) will be able to undo those patterns, but it is a gradual progress, and regular attendance is the key to success, as your body will let the therapist work deeper with every consecutive session.

Music and Cardio Health

You finally get home after a long and busy day. You kick your shoes off, sink into the sofa with a warm, comforting cup in your hands... and with your favourite tunes playing in the background you finally manage to relax and leave the stresses of the day behind.

It's widely understood now that music can transform our moods. Advertisers and filmmakers skillfully use this quality of music to create bigger impact on their audience. Every one of us instinctively used music to achieve our objectives -getting an object of your desire in the bedroom mood with a mellow music is just one example :-) . But now, it turns out, music not only can make you feel good, it’s actually good for you! Music appears to exert direct physiologic effects through the autonomic nervous system. Read on to find out how music can save your life!

Latest U.S. research demonstrates that listening to favourite music may be good for your heart. Uplifting music stimulates your emotions- and nervous system- causing blood vessels in your body to expand, thus increasing blood flow around the body. Regardless of the genre, the effect is the same, as long as the music is pleasurable to you: expansion of blood vessels indicates that nitric oxide is being released throughout the body, reducing clots and LDL (a type of cholesterol associated with heart attacks).

Head researcher and director of preventative cardiology, Michael Miller, explains the motive behind the experiment conducted at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in Baltimore: “We had previously demonstrated that positive emotions, such as laughter, were good for vascular health. So, a logical question was whether other emotions, such as those evoked by music, have a similar effect.”

Ten healthy, non-smoking volunteers were selected for the study. There were four phases occurring in a random order. In one, participants listened to music they had previously selected that evoked joy. Another phase exposed volunteers to a style of music that they said made them feel anxious. A third session involved listening to audio material designed to promote relaxation and in a fourth, volunteers were shown videotapes created to induce laughter.

The results for listening to joyful music were striking, with blood vessels increasing in diameter by 26 percent, while listening to stressful music narrowed blood vessels by 6 percent (the same effect, apparently, as those of eating a hamburger!). Laughing created an increase of 19%. Relaxation stimuli dilated blood vessels by 11% , which according to researchers was not a particularly significant increase in terms of cardiac health. However, relaxation music appears to have a variety of other benefits such as reducing stress, enhancing immune system function, balancing brain wave activity, increasing endorphin levels and evoking feelings of inner peace.

Apparently, most of the participants in the study chose country music as their favourite music, while heavy metal made it to the top of the anxious list. However that doesn’t mean you need to ditch your AC/DC classics for a spot of Dolly Parton. Dr. Miller emphasises that, “ you can’t read into this too much, although you could argue that country music is light, spirited, a lot of love songs.” He says he could have selected 10 other individuals and the favourite could have been a different type of music.

Although direct impact of music only lasts for a few seconds, the accumulative effect of playing your beloved tunes perpetuates and is being seriously considered by doctors as a non-chemical prescription to improve cardiac health.

“The results of the study were music to my ears” states Miller, “because they signal another preventive strategy that we may incorporate in our daily lives to promote heart health.”

transport to bliss is currently compiling a special collection of relaxing and uplifting music to compliment our workplace massages (by the way, having a massage is another great way of boosting circulation and promoting cardiac health). Listening to music while receiving a massage has been proven to evoke “the relaxation response’, which means that you’re more likely to slow down and let go of negative emotions and muscle tension, your body and mind assisting the therapist in making the most of your massage treatment.
Please help us by emailing the name of any music that makes you feel particularly relaxed and joyful to newsletters@transporttobliss.com.

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Dr. Miller’s funding sources include the American Heart Association, Veterans Administration and the National Institutes of Health. “Positive Emotions and the Endothelium: Does Joyful Music Improve Vascular Health?” Miller M, Beach V, Mangano C, Vogel RA. Oral Presentation. American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, 11/11/2008.