herbs for healing your body and mind!

Natural Mental health and physical health are so closely intertwined that properly addressing the ailments identified in one often requires also addressing potentially unidentified ailments in the other. In many cases, the most effective way to restore optimal health to both body and mind is to supplement with adaptogenic and other herbs that help balance both systems simultaneously and naturally, without causing harmful side-effects. Here are five must-have herbs that may be exactly what your body needs to achieve optimal mental and physical health:

1:-Turmeric:-
Turmeric, the primary active component of which is curcumin, is one of the most clinically studied herbs today that contains powerful mind-body healing capacities.

Its natural ability to normalize various bodily processes commonly aggravated by stress and other life factors, turmeric is considered to be one of the most powerful adaptogenic herbs that helps promote systemic balance and facilitate the healthy metabolism and assimilation of nutrients. By counteracting these disease-causing physical, chemical, and biological stressors, turmeric can effectively heal and protect against illnesses that affect both mind and body.

2:-Ginger:- 
Often under-appreciated because of its relative commonality as a food, ginger is another powerful healing herb that has been used the world over to prevent and heal diseases of all kinds. Some of ginger's many benefits include its ability to settle a nervous or upset stomach, which for some people can lead to persistent mental anguish and disruption of other bodily functions. Raw ginger has long been consumed for its general calming effect, which can help promote general healing while staving off disease.

 Supplementing with ginger can also help lower blood pressure, ease morning sickness, and lower bad cholesterol levels.

3:-Aloe vera:- 
Like ginger, aloe vera possesses an incredible ability to ease nausea, improve digestion, cleanse the colon and digestive tract, and maintain healthy elimination and bowel function. Consuming aloe vera can also help ease inflammation and improve the oxygenation of blood, two benefits that for many people can make all the difference in promoting lasting health.

 your daily dietary regimen can effectively remedy a whole host of physical and mental illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, arthritis, kidney stones, ulcers, high blood pressure, nutrient deficiencies, constipation, diabetes, candida and other yeast infections, skin disorders, and cancer.

4:- Tea tree oil:- 
 Typically used topically to heal various skin conditions and infections, tea tree oil is considered by many to be "nature's miracle healer." A highly-versatile, all-purpose healing oil, tea tree oil, which comes from the Melaleuca tree, is an exceptionally powerful antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, antiviral, curative, bactericidal, fungicidal, insecticidal, stimulating, and sudorific herb capable of treating many different physical and mental ailments.

Drinking Melaleuca tea, for instance, especially when blended with other beneficial herbs like rosemary, passion flower, hibiscus, and ginseng, can help calm and soothe the nerves while providing sustained energy and motivation. 

5:-Holy basil:- 
 Another powerful adaptogenic herb, holy basil is known to help elevate mood and spirit while calming the mind. Like ginseng and licorice, holy basil is said to enhance the mind-body-spirit connection by addressing the underlying health conditions afflicting each of these important human systems.

Besides generally relieving stress and boosting immunity, holy basil helps fight chronic inflammation, boost energy levels, promote clarity of mind and thought, and improve digestion.

Individuals that supplement with holy basil, particularly in conjunction with other adaptogenic herbs, have found that they are able to breathe better, digest food better, think better, and generally feel better, regardless of their particular health conditions.

Meditation & Relaxations tips!

Meditation Made Easy : Follow These Tips:-

• Comfortable surrounding - It is advisable to meditate in a quiet place. This saves you from distraction and helps you go deeper in your experience.

• Be regular with the practice - It is a good idea to meditate at least twice a day and be regular with the practice. Only then will you be able to observe its positive effects with each passing day.
• Meditate with your buddies - You could get together with some of your close buddies and meditate in a group. This will enhance your experience; it will also help you to be regular with your practice.
• Try some stretches before meditating –This helps release the stress and tension in various parts of your body and helps you relax to have a more enjoyable meditation.
• Observe your thoughts - Do not make an effort to resist your thoughts. Let them flow. Meditation is effortless.
• Take it easy - Make sure you meditate for at least 10-15 minutes. Do not be in a hurry to open your eyes.
• Make sure your stomach is not full – This will prevent you from falling asleep!  
  Tips for fitting relaxation techniques into your life
• If possible, schedule a set time to practice each day. Set aside one or two periods each day. You may find that it’s easier to stick with your practice if you do it first thing in the morning, before other tasks and responsibilities get in the way.
• Practice relaxation techniques while you’re doing other things. Meditate while commuting to work on a bus or train, or waiting for a dentist appointment. Try deep breathing while you’re doing housework or mowing the lawn. Mindfulness walking can be done while exercising your dog, walking to your car, or climbing the stairs at work instead of using the elevator. Once you’ve learned techniques such as tai chi, you can practice them in your office or in the park at lunchtime.
• If you exercise, improve the relaxation benefits by adopting mindfulness. Instead of zoning out or staring at a TV as you exercise, try focusing your attention on your body. If you’re resistance training, for example, focus on coordinating your breathing with your movements and pay attention to how your body feels as you raise and lower the weights.
• Avoid practicing when you’re sleepy. These techniques can relax you so much that they can make you very sleepy, especially if it’s close to bedtime. You will get the most benefit if you practice when you’re fully awake and alert. Do not practice after eating a heavy meal or while using drugs, tobacco, or alcohol.
• Expect ups and downs. Don’t be discouraged if you skip a few days or even a few weeks. It happens. Just get started again and slowly build up to your old momentum.

The Benefits of Yoga!

The benefits of yoga provide both instant gratification and lasting transformation. In the fitness world, both are extremely important. Too much time with too few results can be incredibly discouraging, and monotonous routines week after week can lead to stagnation. Yoga can change your physical and mental capacity quickly, while preparing the mind and body for long-term health.

Yoga is for everyone:-

Most yoga studios and local gyms offer yoga classes that are open to all generations and fitness levels. It’s exciting to enter a room full of young teens, athletes, middle-aged moms, older gentlemen and even fitness buffs and body builders. Everyone can feel accepted and included and, unlike other sports or classes that focus on niche clients, yoga tends to have open arms. Whether you like to say "Om" or you can’t stand the word “yogi;” whether you are 92, 53, or even 12, yoga can help you.

Yoga encourages overall health and wellness:-

Yoga is not just about working out, it’s about a healthy lifestyle. The practice of yoga allows students to be still in a world consumed with chaos. Peace and tranquility achieved through focused training appeals to everyone.
Yoga’s deep breathing and meditation practices help foster an inner shift from to-do lists, kids and spouse’s needs, financial concerns and relational struggles to something a little bit bigger than the issues you face. Yoga helps relieve stress and unclutter the mind, and helps you get more focused.

Yoga has many faces:-

One of the benefits of yoga is that you can choose a yoga style that is tailored to your lifestyle, such as hot yoga, power yoga, relaxation yoga, prenatal yoga, etc. Whether you prefer you're at home, in a private session, watching a DVD or at a studio or gym, there are a huge variety of options available to suit your goals and needs.

Strength training and flexibility:-

Yoga’s focus on strength training and flexibility is an incredible benefit to your body. The postures are meant to strengthen your body from the inside-out, so you don’t just look good, you feel good too. Each of the yoga poses is built to reinforce the muscles around the spine, the very center of your body, which is the core from which everything else operates. When the core is working properly, posture is improved, thus alleviating back, shoulder and neck pain.

How does power yoga build muscle?

A more advanced form of yoga can amplify these effects. Adapted from the basic Ashtanga yoga, power yoga requires increased amounts of energy, focus and strength. Although power yoga is an evolvement of the basics, it certainly is not a basic course.
But how does it help build muscle? Deeper, more focused participation is required, because most poses are held for five full breaths versus the usual one to three breaths. Muscles are challenged as the mind and body have to work together simultaneously to hold a position or continue a succession without giving up. Breathing, posing, moving and increasing flexibility happen all together at one time, which solicits a new level of discipline in your mind and body.

Power yoga and the core:-

Isometric exercises are one of the best ways to build core strength. Isometric, stemming from the words “same” and “length,” simply translates to holding one position without moving. Power yoga uses isometric exercises along with other postures that are designed to make the core and back stronger. Flexibility and balance stem from your core, so it is very important to train this area of the body. In turn, you can increase the strangth and health of your entire body. Generally a higher-temperature room is used in this practice to help keep the muscles warm and release additional toxins from the body.

Power yoga’s effect on the total body:-

Here's a list of some of the most beneficial aspects of power yoga:

• It increases endurance, strength and flexibility.

• Mental endurance and physical stamina are tested through holding postures for extended breaths.

• Arm and shoulder strength is multiplied as you use your own body weight for resistance.

• Lats and other back muscles begin to support the spine better than before.

• Abdominals and obliques are refined and sharpened through building core muscles.

• Poor and average posture begins to correct itself over time.

• Hip flexors are stretched and rebuilt.

• Glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves are tightened and lengthened where they need to be.

No matter what ails your aching body, or if you just want to take your fitness to a higher level, power yoga's ability to build muscle has an undeniably effect on the total body.

The Art of Healing!

we can  suggest that our experience of art can be one of deep reflection and a kind of communication with the artist about a particular feeling or difficult life challenge.
1. Enjoy a therapeutic museum or gallery afternoon. 
With pen and notebook, take a walk through a local museum looking for works of art that seem to reflect what you are feeling right now. At each one you find, sit and quietly spend time with it: its colors, its emotions, what the artist might be trying evoke or capture. Write what you see and what you feel the work of art is saying to you about your current feelings. Take a moment after you are done writing to just sit again with the work of art. Perhaps silently thank the artist for his or her understanding. Then go on to find a few more works that speak to your current frame of mind.

2. Do an Internet art recharge.  

On a day that you can’t go to a gallery or museum to view art therapeutically, take a short break from work or family obligations to look for two or three works of art on the Internet. Visit the websites of some of the world’s great museums and galleries, or go to individual artists’ sites. You can also find photographs on sites devoted to nature or travel. Take some time with each image and relate it to what you are feeling or to a current life issue, and see what that image says to you. Keep an online journal of all your images so you can revisit them at other times when you need to recharge.

3. Take a snapshot moment: Art is everywhere! 

 Sometimes we need to process our feelings and rejuvenate ourselves, but we don’t have time or are not in the right place to visit a museum or even surf the Internet for therapeutic images. This is the perfect opportunity to realize that we can find art all around us. Our offices and homes have been designed by architects; our backyards or the view out our windows are potential photographs. Everything around us has a shape, a form, a color, a tone. Take a moment to look at what is right in front of you as a work of art—the library clock on the wall that is ticking and makes you feel for a moment that you are in a past century, the bold colors at the fast-food restaurant where you are standing in line for a sandwich, the sharp angles of the receptionist’s desk at the dentist’s office. Make a mental note of the image and notice whether the act of observing or appreciating it alters your mood or frame of mind. Take a snapshot with your mobile phone in case you want a reminder of the experience.

The Healing power of Prayer!!

It is natural to be frightened when we become ill. We feel vulnerable. We worry; we want to know that everything will turn out all right. We sometimes feel alone even when loved ones are by our side. The illness lies within us, and no one else knows exactly how we feel. Prayer has the power to transform our fear into faith. It reminds us that we are never alone. Everything we are, body and soul, is in the hand of God, whose presence fills the universe and who is as close to us as our own breath. No matter what this unpredictable world sends our way, with God by our side we can find the strength to confront our fears. So pray and welcome God’s healing power.

A prayer of thanks for healing

I thought you had forgotten me, I felt abandoned and alone. I prayed to You, but You never answered. I searched, but I couldn’t find You. And then, without warning, You spread Your love over me and taught me not to fear. You quieted me, You healed me, You blessed me, You stretch Your comfort over all living things.

Health and religion have always been intertwined, most obviously through prayer on behalf of the sick. Does intercessory prayer for sick people actually help heal them? For thousands of years some people have believed so. But new research shows that over the last four decades, medical studies of intercessory prayer -- the prayer of strangers at a distance -- actually say more about the scientists conducting the studies than about the power of prayer to heal.

The Spirit of Thai Yoga Massage!

How Does it Work?

The theoretical foundation of Thai Yoga massage is based on the belief that there is a life force that circulates around pathways in the body. Indian Yoga philosophy calls this life force 'Prana'. It is said to be absorbed with the air that we breathe and the food that we eat. In Thai Yoga massage, these pathways make up an energy system. This system is said to be made up of 72,000 invisible energy lines. If there is a blockage in any line, preventing free flow of Prana, it can lead to aches, pains and disease on a physical, emotional and spiritual level.Thai Yoga massage concentrates on ten important lines called the 'Ten Sen'. A thorough Thai massage treatment covers all ten lines. These ten main energy lines are sufficient to conduct practical treatment for the whole body and its internal organs. This will ensure that blocked energy is released, restoring health, harmony and balance. When Prana flows freely, our general wellbeing is greatly improved.

Neck-Elbow. The therapist uses her elbow to apply

pressure to the shoulder area while stretching the neck

Thai massage differs from Swedish massage, which is the most widespread technique of massage in the West. The kneading of muscles, which dominates in Swedish massage, is absent from Thai massage – energy points are pressed or general pressure is used instead. There is a lot of stretching involved and many exercises might well be described as applied Yoga.

Physiotherapy and Chiropractic in the West are closer to Thai massage than is Swedish massage, but these techniques ignore manipulating acupressure points and the energy flow of the body and, unlike Thai massage, their theoretical foundations are based on the anatomical structure of the body. 

 

Benefits:-

There are many benefits in receiving a Thai massage. It usually takes four or five days for the balancing of the energy systems of the body to be complete. This means that people often continue to experience the beneficial effects for some time after the massage and not just during the treatment. Some people feel immediately energized as the new energy flows into the body. Other people can feel very tired straight after the treatment as the negative and old energy leaves the body. Whatever the first reaction, after a few days the energy will be re-balanced and with it a sense of harmony and well being will be experienced.

Other benefits include greater flexibility in the joints, enhanced blood circulation, better alignment of the body, improved posture and better functioning of the internal organs. Thai Yoga massage usually leaves the recipient with an invaluable feeling of relaxation and tranquility.

Thai Yoga massage is an excellent way to keep the body in tune; receiving regular treatments can be as beneficial for people with no particular problems as it is for people suffering from common ailments or even with more serious conditions.

Thai Yoga massage is an excellent way to keep the body in tune; receiving regular treatments can be as beneficial for people with no particular problems as it is for people suffering from common ailments or even with more serious conditions.

The Yoga positions and stretching makes Thai Yoga massage ideal for sports people, Yoga practitioners and dancers, whilst the energy line workout is especially beneficial during pregnancy and after giving birth. Due to some of the stretches used, some people have the impression that they must be very flexible to receive Thai massage. This is definitely not the case; Thai Yoga massage is beneficial for people of all ages and flexibility. The session is designed to suit the needs of the recipient. There are such a wide variety of techniques and stretches and no-one is taken beyond his or her own personal limit. If someone is less flexible or unwell, more emphasis would be placed on working the energy lines with acupressure rather than stretching the body.

Ways to integrate Yoga in Healing Body!

BODY

Practicing yoga or any form of exercise increases your energy.

• Eating a balanced diet with lots of greens, reducing processed sugars, and drinking lots of water is not only healthier for your body, it also nourishes the mind. In the book The Ultra Mind, author Mark Hyman correlates how “junk” food can affect our moods and diseases such as depression.

• Sleeping is important, ideally eight hours. You’ll feel refreshed and a lot less prone to making poor choices.

ways to integrate yoga into your life this spring.

1. Start Small.

One of the top reasons why people are resistant to starting yoga is the intimidation factor. With name-brand yoga gear, the rapid corporatization, and prohibitively expensive monthly class packages, it is no wonder that this industry seems not so beginner friendly.

Luckily, there is an endless amount of free resources online. From YouTube videos of hour-long classes, to anatomically-correct descriptions of each pose, to studio directories, there is an answer to every yoga-related question.

Use online resources to get comfortable with the names of poses, class etiquette, and the history of yoga so that any intimidation just melts away as you step into your first class.

2. Hop Around.

Finding the right studio and the right instructors is essential to your enjoyment of the practice. Many studios offer “First Week Free” coupons, so use those offers to explore yoga in your community.

Hop around to as many studios as you can, trying different styles of yoga and different instructors. Find a studio where they remember your name and inquire about injuries.  If there is an instructor who inspires you, that’s a good sign that you are in the right place.

If you do not find your “home” within the first few studios, don’t get discouraged! With the proliferation of yoga in the US, there is a studio and style of practice for everyone – big, small, young, old, businessperson, veteran, able bodied and not so able bodied – there truly is a home in yoga for everyone.

3. Flow with a Friend.

Everything is better when you have someone to share it with! Convince a friend at your same experience level to attend some classes with you. This will allow you to let your guard down and enjoy the experience a little more.

Not to mention, you will have someone to laugh with. When the kooky instructor starts belting out the “OM” or the guy next to you in down dog lets out a questionable noise, your friend will be on the next mat over trying equally as hard to suppress the giggles.

4. Give it Your Best.

By this I mean, give yoga a genuine shot. Lots of students give up their practice when they cannot conquer Crow pose after only two weeks. Understand that when you enter the world of yoga, all the rules about competitiveness, comparison, and deadlines that we are raised with go out the window.

Yoga is about simply enjoying the journey. Your journey. Not the journey of the person on the mat next to you. Your uniquely beautiful journey.

Come to your mat each time with an open mind and a compassionate heart, and you will be surprised at how much easier the poses will come to you!

5. Just Let it Go.

Yoga is as much about the mental practice, if not more than, the physical practice. Make a conscious effort to clear your mind, letting go of negativity. First, try letting go of any preconceived notions about who should practice yoga, what they look like, how they dress, what they eat, etc.

Every yogi is different and defines yoga in his or her own individual way. Second, try hard to let go of any judgments and negative feelings you are harboring towards yourself. Just enjoy the present moment, enjoy the journey.

Know that each day is different. Some days your balance and your focus will be rockin’. Other days, not so much. Learn to accept your body and your mind as they are, rejoicing in the gifts they give you and not bothering yourself with the shortcomings.

Embrace the ancient concept of “just letting it go” and one day you will wake up and realize that you are a more peaceful person, not to mention a real-life, living, breathing yogi!