Start making plans as soon as you start to feel that sensation. Here are some easy things we can do to coungteract those feelings:

1.   Think of all the things you like about autumn and start a list.

2.   Now schedule those events into your calender.

3.   Make a party out of it, invite your favourite people to join you in these events.

4.   Treat yourself to things you don’t have time for in the summer.

5.   Create some new rituals around your favourite things:

       Like reading: Start/join a book club

       Like cooking/eating: Invite friends to start a weekly progressive dinner

       Like movies: Invite friends to join a weekly movie night

The worst thing you can do is hibernate, keep moving, working and find ways to fill your days with joy.

]]> http://essentialyoga.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/look-forward-with-excitement-the-joys-of-autumn/feed/ 0 essentialyoga http://essentialyoga.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/yoga-cures-for-a-cold/ http://essentialyoga.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/yoga-cures-for-a-cold/#comments Fri, 19 Nov 2010 16:10:58 +0000 Essential Yoga & Massage http://essentialyoga.wordpress.com/?p=53 ]]> Someones asked me the other day what to for a cold. I think just the question caused me to have a sympathy cold of my own…good times  I don’t often have colds but it seems everyone is struggling with something right now. So here’s what I do when I have a cold.

1. Hot honey and lemon(not the stuff you buy at the store, home made, hot water, honey & yes you guessed it, lemon juice mix together and enjoY. Hold the cup close to your nose and let the steam go up to loosen any congestion. Relax and enjoy the rest of this magical potion. Repeat as many times throughout the day as you feel you need to, it can become quite addictive and you need to stay hydrated.
2. Take nice hot shower, let the stream build up in the room, that really helps. There are some really good products that contain Eucalyptus that can be place in the shower to breath in some more goodness. I like China Gel.
3. After your shower, time for Neti…”what is that?” I hear you say. Commonly known as nasal irrigation. Dr. Oz & Oprah have both said they think it’s a good idea so it must be true   Nasal irrigation or nasal lavage or Jala Neti is the personal hygiene practice in which the nasal cavity is washed to flush out excess mucus and debris from the nose and sinuses. It has been practiced in India for centuries as one of the disciplines of yoga. Some clinical tests have shown that this practice is safe and beneficial with no significant side effects. Nasal irrigation in a wider sense can also refer to the use of saline nasal spray or nebulizers to moisten the mucus membranes.
4. Remember to boost your vitamins, get plenty of rest and give yourself a break, you are not Superman, Superman was not even Superman…NOW GO LAY DOWN!

or depressed. Maybe we’re too busy, too stressed, or preoccupied. Remember…committing to a daily

practice, as well as the struggle around the commitment, IS YOGA!

 You don’t smoke and keep drinking to a minimum. You have cut down on fried foods, but have you tried kicking sugar to the curb?

As you might have already found out, saying good-bye to that pesky carbohydrate is a difficult union to break. Not only is sugar addictive, with its users suffering from headaches, anxiety, depression and mood swings – similar to the effects smokers, caffeine addicts and narcotics users experience – but it also lurks in unexpected places. Refined sugar can be found in almost all packaged and processed food at your local supermarket. It hides under the guise of sucrose, fructose, corn syrup, glucose, maltose and other pseudonyms. Americans love the sweet taste of sugar, but unfortunately, most that ingest it on a regular basis are addicted. With the United States facing an obesity epidemic, the consumption of refined sugar does not help. The average American eats about 175 pounds of sugar each year, compared to the 15-pound average of 1915. This over consumption has led to a number of different health problems:

1. Weight Gain. It’s no secret refined sugar leads us to pack on the pounds. Especially if eaten in large quantities, it will keep you from achieving that dream body you want. This is because it contains only empty calories – no fiber, no protein, no vitamins and no minerals. Nothing. Unlike water, which seems to have the same nutritional value, your body sees refined sugar as an invader and acts accordingly.

2. Mineral Depletion. When you eat refined sugar, your body takes nutrients from other cells to metabolize it because the sugar lacks the ability to do so on it’s own. Minerals like calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium are taken from vital body parts to make use of the sugar you ingested. Over Time, the vital body processes requiring those minerals run down and become less efficient.

3. Bone Loss. Your body particularly misses calcium as it is destroyed in your body’s fight against sugar. With a decreased amount of calcium being used toward vital body processes, bones become weak, increasing the chances of osteoporosis, breaks and fractures later in life. Calcium loss also leads to tooth decay, a major component of the $50 billion dentistry industry worldwide.

4. Diabetes. Large sugar intake leads to the onset of diabetes because sugar raises your body’s blood sugar levels quickly, causing the pancreas to release insulin. The constant consumption of sugar throughout the day forces the body to constantly work. Eventually, the pancreas wears out and cannot perform its normal duties.

5. Low Energy. Sugar consumption will leave you feeling run down. Eating sugar after a craving might give you the notorious “sugar high,” but it does not last long. Soon you crash and feel more tired than you did before the high, have less energy and are hungrier.

To wean yourself off refined sugar, take your time. Don’t think you will go from eating donuts and McDonald’s to oatmeal and steamed broccoli over night. Instead, try to eliminate something from your diet once a week that contains refined sugar and replace it with something natural. For example, to keep energy that will last, eat a bowl of oatmeal instead of a Twinkie. As you are kicking the sugar habit, remember not to completely suppress your craving. You can feed it, but keep the portions small and savory.

A few years ago as part of the Mindful Steps Walking Challenge, I invited Bhante Sujatha, a Buddhist monk to lead a group of Centegra Associates in a meditation walk at Glacial Park.

We met in the parking lot and walked to a labyrinth that is located a short distance away. As I recall there were about a dozen of us. The labyrinth is circular in shape with winding paths that draw you back and forth until eventually you reach the center. Because so many of us were making our way through and we all began at the same time, we regularly needed to move aside as people passed us on the way back from the center. As we all gathered afterward for discussion I commented on how peaceful, and calming the experience was, everyone was in close proximity to one another and yet we moved together with respect and patience and reverence.

I spoke about how in everyday life; I am often impatient while on the road, or trying to get through a grocery store, etc. What if we moved through life the way we had just moved through the labyrinth? Sujatha’s remark will stay with me forever; he simply said, “Then we would all be holy.

Here are some suggestions to become more mindful of our actions and how they impact those around us.

• When someone is talking to you stop what you are doing
• Make eye contact with the person and attend closely to what they are saying 
•  Make a conscious effort to smile and greet those you pass 
•  Hold doors open for people
• Happily allow people merge in traffic
• When you are feeling stressed, choose a trigger, such as a ringing telephone, to remind you to think kind and loving thoughts about the person calling
• The next time you think something nice about another person, make sure you tell them
• Practice meditation and mindfulness daily

Rosemary Morris Wellness for Life Wellness Coordinator (Health Bridge Fitness)

Patients Fighting Cancer and ADHD Find Hope Using Yoga to Battle Their Diseases

“Doctor’s Orders” is a new feature in the collaboration between Medpage Today and ABC News. We’ll be exploring medical issues of interest to physicians and their patients. In this first monthly segment, we look at the increasing body of research into the effects of yoga yoga in a variety of conditions as interest in this form of therapy grows. Share Doctors embrace ancient form of exercise to treat ailments from ADHD to cancer. At major cancer centers across the country, patients are putting themselves in a better ‘position’ to cope with their cancer.

Some of the biggest names in cancer care — M.D. Anderson, Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, among them — now offer their patients classes in yoga. In the past, physicians may have written off the therapy as merely a trendy yuppie pastime. But today, researchers — mainly psychologists — are asking questions about the benefits of yoga in a variety of conditions, including cancer, asthma, sleep disorders, depression and attention disorders. 

Generally, the studies have shown that yoga improves quality of life and relieves stress and anxiety associated with these conditions. Some researchers say the Ayurvedic therapy may have physiological mechanisms, such as reducing cortisol levels, but those theories are still under evaluation. A word of caution, though: The studies that have been done so far have yielded soft findings, with little hard data to back up the conclusions. That said, there is no denying that yoga is becoming a presence even in the ivory towers of academic medicine.

Yoga for Cancer Patients Alyson Moadel, PhD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y., has been tracking the effects of yoga on breast cancer patients at Montefiore Medical Center for the past eight years. In 2007, Moadel reported early findings from the study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology: Patients who did yoga saw improvements in social and emotional well-being, compared with those who didn’t. When data on patients undergoing chemotherapy were excluded, yoga also significantly improved overall quality of life. “I think it’s going to be an important complementary modality,” Moadel said. “I don’t think it’s the only one, but I think it is an important one for dealing with stress and anxiety.” Yoga classes are offered three times a week at Montefiore. Patients gather in a conference room for the seated yoga sessions, which include stretching in a mix of seated and standing poses for the first hour of the class. Then the instructor dims the lights for meditation, breathing and relaxation.

Studies Find Yoga Can Relieve Anxiety, Attention Disorders, Improve Sleep

Moadel said the study has been expanded to include patients with lung cancer and colorectal cancer as well. Most previous studies have focused on breast cancer patients, but other cancers have also been evaluated.

(Riser/Getty Images)

A small study of cancer patients in Japan and published this year in the Journal of Palliative Medicine found yoga may be effective against anxiety. A recent study in cancer found the therapy improved sleep outcomes in lymphoma patients.

And at least one organization, the Society for Integrative Oncology, has issued guidelines recommending that the treatment “should be incorporated as part of a multidisciplinary approach for reducing anxiety, mood disturbance, and chronic pain and for improving quality of life in cancer patients.”

Investigators aren’t limiting their questions about yoga to cancer, though.

A German study found that yoga was superior to conventional motor training in a small population of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

An Australian study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders, concluded that yoga “may have merit as a complementary therapy for boys with ADHD already stabilized on medication.”

Related

WATCH: Doing Yoga… In Your Sleep?

Heather Peck, PhD, a school psychologist at the Bethany Community School in Bethany, Conn., and her colleagues at the University of Connecticut, performed a study last year on children with attention problems — although not clinically diagnosed with ADHD.

After taking a yoga class in school, the children had improved attention that was comparable to that of their peers who didn’t have attention disorders.

“We found significant effect sizes,” Peck said. “Their levels of attention came up close to those of the rest of the kids in the class.”

Sat Bir Khalsa, PhD, a neuroscientist at Harvard who researches the effects of yoga on sleep disorders, said the therapy promotes focus, which could help explain why it appears to be so effective in children with attention problems.

“What could be better for someone with ADHD than improving their awareness and attention skills?” he asked.

Some researchers have looked into more physical effects of yoga. Peck’s colleague at the University of Connecticut, Melissa Bray, PhD, assessed the therapy in asthma patients.

Bray found that it did improve lung function “to some degree,” but it had a bigger effect on quality of life.

She said that improvements in posture may have played a role in promoting better breathing and airway function, but the relief of anxiety shook off a tremendous burden of the disease.

“You’re surmising that you’ve changed a mental state,” she said, emphasizing this idea is strictly an interpretation.

“No one really knows” what the potential mechanisms of yoga in improving asthma may be, she said. “We need studies to replicate our work.”

High performance state is an internal process that can be developed and accessed at will.

Because of much research, there is a new understandings about the interactions between the heart, brain and nervous system and how these interactions impact reaction times and performance. When the heart, brain and nervous system are synchronized we attain a measurable physiological state called coherence. And, it is this coherence that underlies optimal performance and emotional stability — the key to accessing the zone. And we can’t just think our way there.

Your ability to perform at your best is compromised if you are still reacting to the business deal that fell through, the argument with your spouse or the double bogey on the 14th hole. It’s just about impossible to be stressed (i.e. irritated, angry or frustrated!) and in the zone at the same time! High performance starts by learning how to effectively transform stress into coherence. The mind on its own is not enough. It requires something more. It takes heart.

Next time you start defeating yourself with a negative attitude or feeling, add some heart and get your body back into coherence: Heart focus. Heart breathing. Heart feeling. It works–in and outside.

Edited from an article by:
*Research by Richmond Events LITD, commissioned for the Marketing Forum 2002.

• I am grateful that my son, who has autism, is almost self sufficient at the age of 22. A miracle when you think at the age of 2 we where told to have him institutionalized and move on. He had no useful speech until he was 6 years old
• I am grateful that my daughter was born free from autism, we did not know of any genetic connection until after she was born or we may have chosen not to get pregnant a second time. She is my light, my sunshine and my pride and joy
• I am grateful that I work for myself and have the best job in the world
• I am grateful for the annoying noise my younger cat makes when he wants to go outside, a place he has never experienced. He had an episode last week that seemed almost like he had a stroke and 1 week later he is almost back to normal. The vet never found out what happened to him
• I am grateful for all my wonderful friends and family members
• I am grateful that I have traveled to some wonderful places, Brazil, Switzerland, France, England, Wales…note to self…”travel more”…
• I am grateful that I did not die of an aortic aneurysm

Ok, so I could go on all day, I have had a wonderful life and I am only 46 year old, hopefully much more to come, but we never really know what life will bring.

To Do List:

1. Start a gratitude journal, write in it every day, look for things to be grateful for
2. Tell the people in your life that you love them and take the time to waste some time with them
3. Take time every day to meditate/be alone and think about all the wonderful things in your life

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.

It turns what we have into enough and more.

It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.

It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision of tomorrow

- Melody Beattie