Eckhart Tolle in his book The Power of Now said he had lived with several Zen masters, all of them cats. Certainly my departed Chandra was one, but I have more pics of my current pooties, so I will let them show us a bit about being in the moment and managing stress. A lot of the content here was in my previous diaries, but I'm hoping repackaging with pooties will get the information to more people.

Breath work is hard to see in a photo, but can be done in conjunction with yoga, so I'll show Sara in a kitty yoga pose for this.
More on how-tos below the fold.

Or your own. I want you to be with us this fall and beyond.  We all have our part to play in the election, and in the world in general, so stay healthy and stick around for it! Tim Russert’s sudden passing brought up the topics  of heart disease and how to have a healthier lifestyle, and that certainly got me over some recidivism with my own lifestyle choices.  Since my health coaching class had an assignment last year to pretend we each had been diagnosed with heart disease, and to research what we would need and where we would find it, I thought I’d share some of our ideas and resources.

I've put one or two of these in other threads, but decided to make a diary out of it after seeing more comments from Kossacks who sound like they are getting stressed out. The extended primary season is getting to some of us, and others of us also have finals week coming up. If you feel like you are not able to put on the brakes and slow down yet, just taking a few moments here and there to try some of these "exercises" can recharge your batteries. I want us all to stay healthy through the election and beyond!

One of the simplest that can be done just about anytime, anywhere, is belly breathing. Put a hand, or both on your belly and inhale slowly , letting your belly expand like a balloon. Exhale slowly, watching your hand go down and keeping your belly soft. A lot of us breathe only from our chests, especially if we're tense or were taught to "suck it in" to look slimmer. Breathing from your belly can re-balance your nervous system and improve the functioning of your immune system. A more thorough explanation of this, and some of the other tips can be found in Fred Luskin's  book Stress Free For Good.

We need to look at what single payer universal health care is going to pay for as well as how. If we just include what insurance companies currently cover (or pretend to cover), we'll miss an opportunity to improve the quality of health care. Up to 75% of Americans use complementary or alternative therapies,and 58% pay out of their own pocket for the total cost of these. CAM therapies are often not covered by insurance, though there are exceptions, like being allowed a limited number of visits to a chiropractor.

I don't have links, but most of my facts are from lectures at the University of Minnesota for my post baccalaureate certificate in the health coaching program, especially those given by Pat Culliton, a pioneer in integrative medicine in the Twin Cities.

For once it is not the fault of Daily Kos that I'm not getting my homework done. My senate district convention went 2 hours longer than it has in recent memory and turnout looked about quadruple from 2 years ago. Even better, it was much less "white"; many more people of color showed up and got elected delegates to the state convention.

All of our top 3 Democratic candidates would make a fine President. I just did another sorting through the issues with the information on Minnesota Public Radio. They have a  computerized quiz, but with 3 so similar on so many issues, it's easy to bump up one or another based on insignificant distinctions.

Clinton, Edwards and Obama are all good-enough progressives on getting out Iraq, taxes, the mortgage crisis, and health care. They didn't have anything there about organized labor, but I know Edwards and Obama are both strong there. Edwards has very good answers about energy policy, and I think Obama has the best thought-out plans for education. The one area where Obama knocks it out of the park for me is knowing that we should not have gone to Iraq in the first place. In 2002, he publicly called it a " dumb war". Edwards has at least admitted he made a mistake in voting for the IWR; Clinton has not and that's one reason I can't support her, despite my feminist views. She seems too worried about looking strong (at least until recently) and that reminds me a bit too much of the current Chimp in Chief. I want the candidate who will make women's and everyone's lives better, not just the one who matches my gender.

When my 11 year-old asked me, I wasn't sure how to answer at first. I'm certainly not a "my country, right or wrong" patriot. My dad, an immigrant from France at age 15, may be more American than me in some ways. He came here for better economic opportunities. I seem much less concerned abut the material aspects of the American Dream, much to the annoyance of my kids. Not because I've always been comfortably well-off, either- we were on food stamps for a while.