Returning to My Old Friend—–Yoga

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/01/31/yoga-is-revolution/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For twelve years I was a faithful and devoted yoga practitioner.  From my first yoga class I was aware that this practice was exceedingly helpful to my well-being.  Three, four, or sometimes even five days a week I participated in a class.  Mastering poses was a pleasure and I felt very proud that I was doing something so obviously good for me.

Over time the studio I attended changed.  They got into hot yoga and the studio temperature was sky high.  Hot yoga is good for some people but for many of us it is not.  It wasn’t good for me and I moved my practice into my home.  I continued to practice several times a week.

Gradually, however, I drifted away from yoga.  I began to practice less often and a few weeks ago I realized that I hadn’t practiced yoga for most of the summer.  Returning to a regular practice felt difficult to me.  I experienced resistance and continually telling myself I “should” do it wasn’t helpful.

It is true that the mind-body can change very quickly and it is true that changes can sneak up on us.  This fall I noticed that I had lost a great deal of my flexibility.  I felt stiff and didn’t move as quickly or as easily.  All of my “should” talk flew out the window and I suddenly desired to return to yoga.  I wanted a yoga practice to come back into my life.

Two weeks ago I began practicing in my home and once again I am amazed at how helpful my yoga practice is to my overall wellbeing and how quickly I’m feeling the results. Hopefully, I’ll never “fall off the wagon” again!

I urge you to find a yoga practice that is helpful to you.  In our bookHealing Depression the Mind-Body Way Sandra and I discuss the benefits of yoga.  We give directions for different poses and discuss what type of yoga is beneficial for different constitutional types.  If you wish to begin to practice yoga reading Chapter 12:  “Yoga: Posing for Life” will be helpful. Following are a few of the ways yoga can benefit you.

Yoga is a key agent of vitality because with one graceful motion after another, it accomplishes the following:

• It replenishes our energy reservoir because it helps us to develop an awareness of energy flow, remove blockages, balance the mind-body and it strengthens our connection to cosmic consciousness.

• Yoga awakens the physician within by activating our innate physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing capability

• Yoga promotes the integrative functioning of the mind with the brain, the body, and the breath

• Yoga promotes neuromuscular integration—the ability to use our muscular and skeletal systems to influence the working of our nervous system, and vice versa.

As always, Sandra and I wish you perfect health and happiness!  We hope you decide to bend, twist, and stretch with us!

Toxins are the Enemy!

Think of it this way:  in order to function properly, we are not unlike our cars; we need to clean out the dirt and grime in our systems.

 

Over time and because of life style mistakes, we accumulate impurities and toxins into our system.  When these accumulate at the cellular level, they impede the flow of natural intelligence throughout.  These impediments eventually cause the cells to forget how to function.  Removing toxins is often the first step toward physical, mental and emotional health.

 

Western medicine has traditionally been focused on putting things into the body, not on purification.  Ayurveda, on the other hand, has always fostered taking things, aka toxins, out of the body.  Purification is necessary if we are to have good health.  In recent times many Western experts have become interested in purification of the physiology. Recently the cleanse has generated a great deal of interest.  This is good!  A cleanse, done correctly, can go a long way toward the restoration of vitality.

 

When vitality is weak and our metabolic fire is burning low, it is easy to accumulate toxins in our mind-body.  According to Ayurveda, toxins are the things that disease is made of because they block the free flow of our innate intelligence at different levels of our being.  There are three types of toxins:  physical, mental, and emotional.  Physical toxins obstruct our biological processes and are formed when the food we eat is not digested properly.  Emotional toxins are residues carried from one experience to another, obstructing the full enjoyment of the here and now.  Mental toxins block access to our inner knowledge, our intuition.

 

Toxins cement depression, causing some of its main symptoms:  low energy and fatigue, cloudy or slowed thinking, poor memory, appetite disturbances, increased sensitivity to pain, headaches, backaches, sore muscles, constipation, and low immunity to disease.  The first thing that people feel when they begin to succumb to depression is often a sense of malaise. It is not uncommon to hear people say, “I just don’t feel quite right.”  We can understand this in terms of what an accumulation of toxins is doing to the physiology.  Perhaps this is why the appearance of a seemingly unexplainable illness is often the harbinger of depression.

 

In our book Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way Sandra and I thoroughly explain the concept of toxins and we give many ideas for how to clear the mind-body.

And last week on this blog we offered two recipes for cleansing smoothies.  Creating health through smoothies does seem a bit silly, doesn’t it?  But remember everything we come in contact with and certainly everything we consume has an affect on us.  If a drink can help to remove toxins from the physiology then yes, that drink, even if it is called a smoothie, can be helpful for overall health!

 

We want to remind you that an accumulation of toxins is often at the source of problems.  If you wish to lose weight and are dieting but not losing the chances are that the problem is toxic blockages.  If you haven’t been able to feel like your old self after a stressful time, the chances are that the problem is mental and/or emotional toxic accumulation.

 

Transcendental Meditation is extraordinarily helpful in the process of purification.   Exercise, sleep, yoga and nutrition are also helpful for physiological renewal.  I would be remiss if I did not mention these interventions.  Meditation is the cornerstone of our anti-depressant strategies.

 

However, today I want to share an intervention that tastes good and can boost purification. This is a recipe for lemonade!  Yes, lemonade can help to clean your liver, therefore removing toxins from your system.  In the summer time lemonade is especially helpful because it is cooling and on hot days we need cooling substances to help us stay in physiological balance.

 

Following is the recipe.  Enjoy and when you drink it know that you are doing your physiology a favor.  The body appreciates acts of kindness and removing toxins is an act of kindness.

 

                 Green Lemonade

 

Five leaves of kale—chopped, no stems

1 apple or ripe pear—chopped

1 tsp grated ginger

Juice of 1 lemon

Sweeten with raw honey, raw agave, raw coconut nectar, or stevia

 

If you have a juicer, then no need to cop kale or apple, or grate ginger.

 

If using a blender, blend chopped kale and chopped apple along with 10 oz. of water.

Strain.  Add grated giner and the lemon jice.  Sweeten to taste.

 

This lemonade will cut down on an accumulation of heat in the body.  It will clean the liver and the ginger is pungent and will activate and optimize your digestive fire.  When digestive fire is optimized you will find losing weight easier and you will feel more energetic.

 

May I suggest that you raise your glass of lemonade on high and propose a toast to VITALITY, wonderful vitality that is experienced through a toxic free physiology!

 

As always, Sandra and I wish you perfect health and happiness.

 

 

 

 

Good Parenting Isn’t About Child Management Techniques: Let’s Take Care of the Parent First!

Has Amy Chua started a new trend in American parenting style?  Ms. Chua is the author of the controversial book The Tiger Mom.  In her book she advocates being an unyielding sort of parent who demands perfection (and long hours practicing the piano.)  She also advocates dressing down a child in front her friends for an offense as great as coveting a second cupcake.

 

Since the advent of The Tiger Mom several other books advocating strict parenting styles have been published.  They are also in direct contrast to the usual American books about parenting.

 

I think the enthusiastic acceptance of these recent books represent a sea change happening in American attitudes toward parenting.  American parents were considered to be permissive for many years.  Now the majority of American women work outside of the home, and they do not have the time or the energy to put up with much nonsense.  Being strict, and believing that is the way to go, can feel like a relief and seems to many to be an easier way to parent.

 

The dangers of The Tiger Mom, or Bringing up Bebe (which advises training children with methods from the French), or the new book (not out yet) about shaming a child into losing weight is that parents will adopt the recommended styles of parenting from these books.  Adopting someone else’s style is not the way to parent.  Good parenting is best done if you refine your own style. There is not, in general, a right or a wrong way to parent but there is a beneficial way to BE with children.

 

Parents need to be in charge of their kids.  Being in charge doesn’t mean making a child clean their room every Saturday at 10 a.m.  It also doesn’t imply forcing a child to spend many hours practicing the piano.  Being in charge denotes not being emotionally reactive, but staying grounded and objective in the face of a child’s emotionality and oppositional behavior. Being in charge requires using a sense of humor and having a lightness of spirit.  Because being in charge requires a lot of energy it is important that you feel physically, emotionally and mentally on top of your game.

 

Research shows that there are, in general, three distinct types of parenting.  There is an authoritarian style, a permissive style and an authoritative style.  Researchers have shown that the authoritative style works best for the development of happy, mature and successful children.  In this parenting style parents are supportive and nurturing. They are in charge, but they also set high expectations and clear and firm limits.  Makes sense doesn’t it?

 

If we are overly bossy the children will rebel and if we are overly permissive we sabotage the child’s efforts to develop self-esteem. If we set high expectations we build self-esteem.  If we build a nurturing foundation we encourage and insure that the child has the tools to meet those expectations.

 

With depression at epidemic rates how are parents going to get the energy to be authoritative?  Depression saps energy and overwhelms the spirit. Parenting takes a great deal of energy and even under the best of circumstances it is a difficult job.

 

I suggest that we turn our attention away from specific parenting techniques, and focus on fostering the wellbeing of parents.  At this time millions of parents and millions of children are depressed.  This is a drain on our countries greatest resource.  Helping a child to grow up is a challenging task.  This task isn’t doable if the parent is depressed and it becomes more difficult if a depressed parent is faced with a depressed child.

 

In Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way Sandra and I give the most up to date scientific information about the causes of depression.  With a plethora of research coming out that the anti-depressants do not work our book is a jewel offering natural techniques that do work!

 

In my many years of clinical experience I never met a parent who did not wish to do a good job.  What interfered the most in the achievement of that dream was not a lack of information about parenting techniques. Their own emotional issues got in their way.  Parents become discouraged and overwhelmed and often get stuck in communication patterns that fail to be helpful. In addition, it is not uncommon to find that a degree of depression drains the energy of all the members in a family system.

 

If we are to nurture our children, our greatest national resource, then we need to begin by focusing on ending the depression epidemic.  Health, your emotional, psychological, mental and spiritual health is the place to start if you want to become a terrific parent.

 

Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way can help you to create vitality. Vitality equals physical, emotional and mental energy.  You need a lot ofthat if you are to parent successfully.  Reading our book will be a good start in your quest to be an optimal parent.  Learn how to foster your overall health, create optimal vitality and the rest you will be able to figure out step by step in the way that works best for you and your family.

 

Sandra and I wish you success in that most important endeavor—parenting.

 

 

 

Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way

Hi!

We’re a clinical psychologist and an Ayurvedic practitioner who were stunned by the dire statistics on depression. We became eager to find another way to heal what is now referred to as the “common cold” of mental illness.

It appears that depression has a tenacious grip on the body and mind. Consider the statistics: Seventy percent of people using conventional methods of treatment remain depressed. Episodes of depression recur in 50 to 85 percent of people who have had one episode.

Why keep looking to find a cure in a pill? Especially given the latest study done in the United Kingdom in 2008 that revealed anti-depressants to be only slightly more effective than taking a placebo.

After a great deal of research we discovered a simple fact: Depression is not about a “broken brain.” Depression is much more than a chemical imbalance or something we can talk ourselves out of. It is a condition which affects the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of our being.

In Ayurveda, the ancient Vedic system of natural medicine, we found time-tested advice for getting out from under depression. Ancient, yet ultra-modern, the practical wisdom of Ayurveda correlates well with the latest theories of modern science.

We’ve written a book that presents specific anti-depressant strategies for dealing with depression. The title of the book is “Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way.”

We want to use this blog to discuss how these anti-depressant strategies have helped others and we would love to hear from you. Do you have a story about trying to recover from depression? Have you been in therapy and popped pills and supplements but still feel like you’re not quite right? What has worked for you? Let us hear from you and we will share stories of people who have been helped by practical Ayurvedic interventions.

Wishing you the opposite of depression—vitality!

Nancy and Sandra