Liz Wenzel

 I did my field assignment on how breath excersizes can help your health. I do a lot of yoga, and I have learned through my practice the benefits of breathing correctly, and what it can do in order to help the organs and all that stuff inside your body!

A lot of people probably think its just about breathing in and breathing out, but a lot of people also dont know that HOW you breathe affects your liver, blood pressure, kidneys, posture, and so on.

There are two types of breathing: chest breathing and stomach breathing. To figure out which one you are put your left hand on your stomach and right hand on your chest. Breathe in and out a couple times and see which hand raises the most. If its your left hand, your a stomach breather. If its your right hand, your a chest breather.

Chest breathers are worse off than stomach breathers, and chest breathing is unnatural to the body. A lot of people learn to breathe with thier chest in order to make the little “pooch” in thier stomach go away, and sucking in their abdominals in order to look aesthetically pleasing in our society.

Chest breathing does not allow the person to take a full inhale, and keeps used carbon dioxide in the chest. It also makes breaths quick and short, which makes the heart work harder and faster pumping more blood through the system than is necessary, causing increased heart rate and blood pressure. 

Stomach breathing is the natural, correct way to breath. Taking in a FULL breath and exhaling a FULL breath means pushing all of the air out until you feel like there is nothing left inside your lungs, and then you are able to increase and inhale your breath, taking in all new, fresh oxygen your body needs to feed the blood and bones. This also slows down the heart rate in order to pump the blood at an even paced level, decreasing blood pressure.

Breathing correctly can help reduce stress among other things, and a lot of the time when people are stressed out, taking a deep, full inhale and exhale can help regulate the body in order to calm down the nervous system as well.

Hope this helps all those stressed out people during finals week! =D Good luck everyone!

So this is the last week of blogs.. and I wonder if I will use this thing again once I dont HAVE to use it once a week.

I kind of like a place to jot down my random thoughts, even if no one is listening, so maybe I will continue this “blog” thing after Reporting 2 is over.

This quarter went by really fast, and as much as I am glad that it did, I deffinatley had a great time this spring. As my first year ends at Cal Poly Pomona I have definately made really good friends, had really good times, and enjoyed myself in the classroom and outside.

This quarter was pretty easy as far as assignments and school went, although I feel like there was a LOT of papers to write, they were all fairly easy.

Work was pretty good this quarter too, I got a raise and my position at Kellogg West as greatly improved and my resume is looking pretty nice.

Now comes the scary part of life…thinking about Grad school - If I want to go, where I want to go, if I can afford it and whether or not I’ll be able to work during Grad School.

The GRE needs to be completed by this summer so I can apply for grad schools in the fall, so all of these decisions need to made FAST!!

I guess maybe i’ll post on here what happens and what I decided, even after this class is over!

No, not really. But after reading about 24/7 Wall St. second yearly examination of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s report on life satisfaction in the developed world, I’ve decided that its probably going to happen before I die. 

The group looks at economic prosperity, health and a strong social support network, which they think corresponds to happiness.

And of course, America falls short.

only #11 on the list, but still.

I think Canada is the place to be and here’s why.

1. Unlike the other top countries on the list (Denmark as #1, Norway as #2, Netherlands as #3, Switzerland as #4, Austria as #5, Isreal as #6, Finland as #7, Australia as #8, and Sweden as #10) I dont have to learn a new language in order to live there! I mean, Australia speaks English too, and that’d be a cool place to live, but I’m talking about Canada here!

2. Canada also has one of the lowest crime rates. Many Canadian’s rarely lock their front doors, and the whole country has less crime rate per year than the state of New York. 

3. Canadian syrup…. Enough said. 

4. I’m democratic, and I love me some universal health care!!

5. Canadians are smart - 88% of the population has a high school education or higher (waaay more than the U.S.’s)

6. I can get a job there! 74% of working age people are employed, and there is an average of $27,138 disposable income per household (thats a LOT more than whats in my bank account now!!!)

7. Over one half of Canadians own a home (NOT apartment, condo, or attached house - STAND ALONE HOME)

8. Everyone secretly wants to have the the “aboot” accent.

9. Canada has one of the highest life expectancies - 81. 4 years

10. I will never, ever blame Canada for any of my problems, and neither should South Park. 

So as we are all aware, the Reporting 2 class had to attend a City Council meeting this past Tuesday in order to conduct our own set of notes to write a story.

To be completely honest, I was really excited to attend this meeting! I have a wierd love for politics and see everything that is in the realm of politics fascinating.

I didnt have a whole lot of expectations as far as the room and “setting” of the city council meeting, but I was highly suprised at all the high tech equipment, the cameras, and the use of media in order to archive the recordings was really interesting to me.

The city council meeting itself was not as dramatic as I would have liked- in my dreams there was going to be something highly debated in the meeting - maybe the budget or something, but I quickly reminded myself that we were in a very small district without a lot of “hullabaloo” going on in the first place.

The city council meeting did make me want to go to another one - maybe in my hometown of San Diego where I know there are always things going on, and since it is a larger population, probably a lot more debate!

I wrote a lot about the birthay party and the new library for this city council meeting, hopefully thats good enough for the article we have to write!!

I know that this post may seem really mean to some people- reminding you of summer is not a nice thing to do when you still have 5 weeks of class left, but I’m pretty excited.

I love summertime, as most people do, but I feel like it is a time in which I am the most happy about life and everything going on. Besides being away from school work for a while, I enjoy summer just because of the days filled with sunshine and being able to enjoy the outdoors.

I think that I am a much happier person when its hot outside; I hate the cold, I hate being cold, I hate rain, and I hate having to layer up just to go somewhere (my family lives in Chicago and I honestly don’t know how they do it).

I can stand the heat more than most people I think, and I would always chose to be too hot as opposed to too cold. Its one of the reasons I chose Cal Poly Pomona as my college- because I knew that it was going to get extremely hot up here in the Spring and Summer time.

I also love the beach. I love the ocean, cliff diving, surfing, sailing, tubing, water skiing-you name it! If it has to do with water, I’m there! I grew up as what my dad described as a “water baby” and I think I spend more time in the water during the summer than I do on land.

So all in all I know we’re all excited for summer, but to realize its merely a month away is even more exciting- and maybe a little more stressful to realize I still have to keep up and going with all the school work left until I get there!