Using energy resource to power up your work or study

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Using energy resource to power up your work or study
When I say energy resource, I’m not talking about power plant or battery. I’m talking about the energy system of the body. We consume energy when we work or study, that’s why energy is an important consideration when we discuss about improving performance. Fortunately for us, it’s possible to develop our body to become much more energetic. The more energy resource we have, the more things we can do in life.

It’s hard to perform well when we feel dead-tired and sleepy all the time. Wouldn’t it be great if we are fresh and energetic whenever we work or study? It seems difficult since we tire out after a whole day of work. What can we do to increase our energy capacity?

Sleeping is obviously an important way of replenishing our energy to ensure that we have enough energy to work well. There goes a saying, “we rest so that we can continue our journey further.” Without sufficient sleep, we won’t have enough energy to work. Although having enough sleep should be a common sense thing, many people still drag on their lives without proper slumber and burn themselves off eventually. The rule of thumb to quality and quantity sleep is 8 hours of undisturbed slumber.

Besides having good night sleep every day, we should take short bonus nap at afternoon, which is commonly known as the power nap. Human natural sleep cycle has two sleep phases: one long and one short. The long one is the night sleep and the short one is about 15 – 30 minutes at afternoon. Taking a short afternoon nap is important to complete the natural sleep cycle. Basically, power nap is simple. You just drink a cup of coffee and sleep for 15-20 minutes. The caffeine will take effect after 15-20 minutes to make you fresh and alert right after you wake up. For me, power nap is an important ritual to do after lunch every day. Without it, I become weak.

Students who are studying for long hours to prepare for exam might want to consider the hourly nap, where one takes 5 to 10 minutes of quick nap every hour. This hourly sleep break is effective to improve memory performance and recover energy. Studying without sleep break risks poor memorization and burns off energy. Study smart, nap every hour. All you need to have is just an egg alarm or a timer. Don’t sleep more than 15 minutes for this kind of nap because sleeping too long will disturb your natural sleep cycle and you might end up sleeping very late at night.

The food and water intake influences the energy level. If we eat too much, we get stuffed and become inefficient. Eat too little and we lack energy. Eating according to your workload is important. Besides having sufficient nutrient, eating “cleanly” is vital to become energetic. What I mean by “clean” is eating food that detoxifies the body system. You might have heard that people become more energetic after taking detox sessions seriously. If we have too much “tox” in the body, the body will be “blocked” and works sluggishly. We need to clean it. How to eat “cleanly”? Eat more vegetable and fresh fruits and drink a lot of water (even before you feel thirsty). It sounds like common sense, but again, many people are not practising it.

Aerobics exercise such as running helps to boost the energy system and increase stamina. Doing it consistently is like upgrading our biological engine so that we can cope with high work load. It strengthens the organs, improves the blood circulation system, builds more muscle, speeds up recovery rate, and brings many more benefits. I usually run about 5 km per session for at least two times a week and notice that I can cope with working life better as I improve physically. I strongly recommend you to take running seriously since it brings a lot of benefits. For beginners, start to run slowly for a short distance. Gradually increase the distance or the speed as you improve.

Breathing is what we do all the time. Breathing properly helps to energize us the whole day. Some breathing methods, such as abdominal breathing, increase our energy level and bring more oxygen to the body. Deep abdominal breathing allows us to inhale deeply as if the air goes down directly to the belly area. This enables us to breath with full lung capacity, where oxygen intake is sufficient to energize the body properly. The air is exhaled completely so that most of the stale air is out of the lungs. Besides energizing the body, it’s also calming. This is a very healthy way to breath and we should practise it until it becomes our second nature. I recommend you to read more on abdominal breathing. One of the best books on this breathing is The Art of Breathing by Nancy Zi.

Traditional energy work such as qigong, yoga, chakra breathing, and tai chi works well to upgrade the energy body. It unblocks and expands the energy pathways, strengthens the energy system, nourishes the organs, and promotes detoxification. The energy work that I’m doing is qigong. I do it every day and it feels like a nice session of Thai massage. There are many areas to explore in energy work so you might want to try a few of them before picking your favourite energy training to focus on.

If you don’t mind spending some money and time for comfort and wellness, massage is a good way to relax and recover from a hard day of work. One hour of aromatic oil Thai massage is pure bliss, where the energy pathways are stimulated to make you feel better energetically. Go to genuine massage parlours since not all of them are doing real massage business.

It’s best to combine all methods above to achieve the synergy (one plus one equals more than two) to gain high level of energy. After building a huge reservoir of energy, we can pour it into our work or study to achieve result. What we need to do next is to design a working or study system that’s efficient and effective to avoid wasting our energy unnecessary.

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Readers’ contribution:

foongpc says:

I must take power nap in the afternoon, otherwise I’ll feel sluggish and sleepy for the rest of the day! My power nap only lasts 15-20 mins. Any longer and it’ll make me even more sleepy!

In fact, we should make it a habit to take short naps in the afternoon. I think people in some countries like Spain and Mexico take naps in the afternoon. They call it afternoon siesta. The employers actually allow their workers to take short naps. Maybe Malaysians should practise this too. And why not since it will increase productivity?

Talking about massage, it’s my favourite indulgence! I love massage because it helps me relax and de-stress. I really think if we go for frequent massages, we will have better blood circulation and more energy.

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Tagged as: energy, food, Health, life, qigong, running, sleep, study, tips, work