Why is this important? In terms of daily living, when we go into a state of stress, a number of things happen. We tense up, and instead of relaxing when the cause of stress disappears, we stay tight. In this way, we become more and more blocked and rigid in our bodies. Health and responsiveness in your daily life comes from the ability to respond to things with fluidity and flexibility. If you get into the habit of tightening and closing, sooner or later it's going to impact the way you do business, the way you are with your family and friends, and your health.

Qigong practice starts to take you back into the heart and stomach areas, and allows you to get in touch with how it is to be relaxed and fluid. One of the keys to this is abdominal breathing. If you want to get back to that childhood buoyancy, learn to breathe like a child. The optimal breathing technique is that of a little baby, where the stomach gently inflates on the inhale and softly contracts on the exhale. Your attention and breath is low, near the stomach brain.

What happens when you breathe down in the stomach is that your lymph system is activated. When this system is stimulated, an automatic relaxation response is triggered, which puts you into that "aaahh" state. The lymph system is the body's trash removal system. It is more extensive than the circulatory system and it's responsible for removing crud from the body, including excess blood proteins around the cells. If the cells are going to be vibrant and alive, they need to receive blood and oxygen on a regular basis.

Imagine if one day the garbage man just didn't show up anymore. That's essentially what happens in a lot of our bodies. When the lymph system gets sluggish, as it tends to do as we age, the body starts to stagnate. It starts to have literal sludge. So no matter what you do, you're not able to do it with optimal vibrancy or health. And sooner or later, you'll almost certainly get cancer or some other major disease. When you breathe from the abdomen, and do certain types of upper arm movements, and when you bounce, as in rebounding, you stimulate the lymph system. This crud, if you take these measures every day, will be removed from the body.

We want to avoid disease, because it's very impractical! But we procrastinate enough about our health that we set ourselves up for disease all the time. Want to be practical in your life? Then adopt a daily practice that stops you getting sick.

When you adopt a practice that takes you into a more serene, contented state, it helps you change how you react to stressors. There are two ways to handle someone cutting in front of you on the freeway. You can grip the steering wheel, shout at the person and treat them like they were stealing your time, stealing your life; or you can just smile and relax and breathe. It's not going to help you to shout and curse; in fact it's just hurting you. When you get into a daily practice and gain the ability to relax and breathe, you're able to handle so-called stressful situations in a much freer, easier way. And this applies to your business. When something doesn't go the way you want it, you can go ballistic and get all worked up about it, or you can relax out of that state. You need a daily practice to build the skill to be relaxed.