Thursday, March 6, 2008

Improved Sleep Habits With Improved Sleep Hygiene

Okay, so it sounds a bit ridiculous, but there truly is such a term as sleep hygiene. As you truly understand the meaning of sleep hygiene and it is quite likely that your quality of sleep will be significantly improved.

While personal hygiene is known to be that thing we all do in order to keep clean and fresh smelling and dental hygiene involves keeping our teeth clean, healthy, and in our mouth, sleep hygiene is about those things that you can do in order to have a healthier and more restful sleep life.

Sleep hygiene encompasses all of those things that you can do which can help you to get ready for a restful nights sleep. It involves getting ready for bed, and preparing to easily fall asleep and stay asleep.

There are several tips that you can initiate if you are looking to improve your sleep habits by improving your sleep hygiene.

first of all it is important that you establish set times for sleeping and getting up each and every morning. This even includes the weekends. Regularly scheduled bedtimes are important for children and are equally as important for adults.

Unfortunately, there are many nights in which we get caught up trying to catch with the things that did not get taken care of during the day and we force ourselves to stay up later and later. But, this really does not solve the issue since by doing this we began to create a sleep deficit.

Without a set time for you to go to bed and wake up it's hard to get your body in the habit of sleep.

not only do you want to establish set times for going to bed in getting up every day you also want to learn how to relax your body if you want to work towards improving your sleep hygiene. It is never a good idea to simply throw on your pajamas and leap into the bed.

Typically if you try this approach your body may revolt as it is probably not ready for bed. You simply cannot go from exercising or eating or reading a racy novel to jumping into the bed closing your eyes and going to sleep. Your body just does not work that way! If you don't learn how to relax, you will learn that it takes you much longer to fall asleep even though you feel totally exhausted.

So when you are trying to improve your sleep hygiene, it is important that you make the decision to relax at least an hour before you plan to go to bed. begin to settle down and allow your body to be quiet and calm. Both meditation and yoga are excellent examples of ways in which you can take your body, mind, and soul into a state of relaxation.

Good sleep hygiene can also come when you will learn how to relax your body through deep breathing. So when you are busy focusing your concentration on your breathing, your body automatically begins to relax.

There are many techniques, such as progressive relaxation, in which you begin relaxing one part of your body and continue moving throughout the body parts until you are fully relaxed, that can help you to relax as you prepare for bed.

Having a plan for an effective sleep hygiene routine is critical for you to get the restful sleep that you need in order to obtain the restorative sleep your body craves.

For more important information on getting a good night's sleep be sure to visit http://www.sleep-good.com where you will find advice and tips on sleep habits insomnia, sleep apnea, snoring, and more.

Yoga Zone Yoga For Life

How To Find Out If You Are Making Money In Your Yoga Studio Business

One of the major challenges that many studios face is dealing with finances. This doesnt necessarily mean just paying the bills, but knowing exactly how much money you made each month. Not just that you have money in the bank, but knowing what your expenses were and how much profit you made.

Perhaps you do this already, using QuickBooks (or something like it), and every transaction is entered, categorized and reconciled. At the end of the month you generate a profit and loss statement and examine your expenses and revenue to determine where you made money and where you lost money.

If you dont do this, you might wonder, Why should I care, as long as Im making money? Good question.

The goal is to determine where you really make money, and where you dont. Then, do more of whatever you do that makes money, as well as change or eliminate the things that dont make money.

For example, do you know exactly how much you made from classes this month as opposed to last month? Maybe youve done some advertising these numbers will tell you if it was worth it or not.

For example, suppose you find that for the past 6 months, you average of $5,000 from selling memberships per month, after paying instructors. Then, one month you spend $1,000 to do some radio advertising. At the end of this month, you again look at your profit and loss statement and see that you made $7,500. You made an extra $2,500, but the advertising cost $1,000, so in reality, your increase in profit from radio advertising was only $1,500. This tells you that it is worthwhile to use radio ads.

On the other hand, lets say you only made $5,800 on memberships that month. On the surface it appears you made and extra $800, but after taking into account that you spent an extra $1,000 on the radio ad, you really made $200 less than you had previously averaged.

Your conclusion would be that this type of radio advertising was not a good way to make more money. Yes, you did get more students from the radio ad, but not enough to offset the cost of the ad.

Think of it like a runner timing herself each time she practices the 100-yard dash. The stopwatch will tell her exactly how she did today compared to yesterday or last week. Maybe shes trying to decide if eating before running makes her faster, slower or has no effect. Without the stopwatch, she could feel like she was faster or slower, but not really know for sure.

The same is true for business. When we dont accurately measure profits and expenses, we end up like the runner who says Boy, I felt fast today! Sure, you probably have a good intuitive sense of how the studio is doing. And knowing the exact numbers will allow you to take your studio to a new level.

Doing this kind of analysis of profits can help you earn more and stress less. So often a studio will try the Advertising strategy of the month, randomly trying things to bring in more business, but never really knowing if they earned more money from it.

As you get more experienced with doing this (its actually not hard once you get used to it), youll be able to focus on those things that make money, and change or eliminate those that dont. And remember, as the one who is in charge of running the studio, no one cares more about the bottom line than you do.

I work with many people on this very idea: How to figure out where you are making money and losing money so that you can make your studio more profitable. If you have a questions you would like me to address about this, please email me at coach@CenteredBusiness.com, and I will try to address it in a future newsletter.

Coach Al Lipper
Business Coach for Yoga studios
destiny: Success
website: http://www.CenteredBusiness.com
Email: coach@centeredbusiness.com
Telephone: (805) 544-3938

Coach Al Lipper of 'Destiny: Success' helps Yoga studio business owners smoothly run and grow their yoga studio. He helps stressed and overwhelmed yoga studio business owners who spend most their time wrapped up in daily business tasks, who can't handle any more clients, or who can't make any more money out of the business. Coach Al helps clients find new yoga business strategies which result in generating more clients, increased profits, and more free time for the yoga studio owner. The amount invested was small compared to the results. Contact him today to discuss your yoga studio challenges at (805) 544-3938 or visit http://www.CenteredBusiness.com

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