Your breath and your mind have an intimate relationship, if your breathing is fast and shallow it can stir up your thoughts and increase your stress, but if you learn to notice your breath and slow it down, you can reign your thoughts in and calm your mind. Stress breathing techniques give you practical ways to adjust your breath and respond at your best in any challenging situation, or anytime you want to relax and unwind.

Here are five easy ways to use your breath to lighten your load:

Last month over 1,220,000 people searched Google looking for information on yoga. Yet Ayurveda, yoga's sister science, prompted a mere 33,000 searches. It seems we are slow to catch on in the West, while yoga has steadily grown in popularity her sister science, Ayurveda, remains largely undiscovered.

This is a great shame since Ayurveda holds healing secrets that every parent, partner and friend really should know. It teaches us how to develop awareness of how our diet, lifestyle and relationships affect our health, how to cultivate a calm peaceful mind, and how to be healthy and happy so that we can invest our attention in developing our spiritual awareness rather than just running around feeling stressed out and tired and worrying about how we are going to pay the next bill.

It's carnival time again and this edition features an elite gathering of posts that are more than worthy of reading and reflection.

I highly recommend taking a look at "Stand by Me" by Daily Awareness - beautiful. Happy reading and thanks to everyone who contributed.

Celes presents What Are You Running Away From? posted at EmbraceLiving.Net, saying, "What are you running away from? Many people are running away from many things in their lives - sometimes unconsciously so. This is a provocative article inspired by my experiences in my coaching, especially one of my coachees is trying to run away from his issues."

Stress experts are telling us that by the time we get that holiday it’s almost too late. Many of us are so run down before we get a break that when we finally get away our body takes a nose dive and decides to really let go by succumbing to exhaustion or a bug.

We know that a walk, swim, or yoga class are great ways to diffuse stress but a recent study found that we can also achieve great results in relaxation without even leaving our desk. A recent study at the University of Connecticut encouraged participants to try simple stress management sessions that involved breathing slowly and visualising a peaceful place and found that: “Just four ‘mini relaxation’ stress management sessions (1 1/2 to 2 minutes) over the course of the day reduced work-related stress as effectively as 15-minute blocks of progressive muscle relaxation.”

Have you ever wondered why it is that some people get sick when there's a bug going around and others don't? Ayurveda teaches that this is due to whether our immune system is balanced or not at the time of exposure to a virus or bacterial infection. A balanced immune system offers better resistance to pathogens which are always around us. So does that mean that some people will always get sick and others won't? Not necessarily.

We know that some people are born with a stronger immune system than others, but the message from Ayurveda is that our level of immunity is not set in stone. This first article in a series on how to boost your immune system gives an introduction to the ancient concept that you can directly influence your own health.

Breathing is a unique physical act. It's the only automatic function your body performs over which you too can also have control, when you learn to focus on and control your breath you have a direct and positive impact on your well-being. You can relieve stress and it's accompanying symptoms slow your heart rate, calm your nerves, reduce tension, improve oxygenation to all cells in your body, and support your immune system.

Here's one simple way to work with your breath to reduce tension and feel calm in just a few minutes, you can practice this anywhere and any time, it's one of those handy little stress reducing moves that are invisible, no-one can see you're doing it, so you can practice at traffic lights, on a train or bus, while standing in a queue, in meetings, or at school pick up time. You can try it if some one is irritating you, or if you feel anxious or angry, and within a couple of minutes you will begin to feel relaxed.