Category: Healthy Living

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Beautiful Rituals Healthy Activities Healthy Living Yoga

Benefits of Restorative Yoga

The following is straight from International Restorative Yoga Day’s HP.  I didn’t make it up (lol) …If you click on the pink texts, related study details are found, compiled by Lindsay Sisti.  In my mind, it’s a meditation practice and an effective preventative medicine and… so much more.  I had known all these years there’s something precious that’s been neglected and amiss in our lives – this practice represents exactly what I had missed all these years.  We need to make it a ritual.  In parenting, parent education class often stress the importance of setting a “routine” – and I hated that word, routine – ugh – so boring. I  say – make it a “ritual”.  a Ritual for adults… Make it a sacred ritual in which you honor yourself by being kind to yourself. It’s not merely a 5 minutes for the exhausted, an after-thought post sweaty practice (which is very good for you BTW!).  It’s for everybody. It’s mindful not mindless.

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Benefits Of Restorative Yoga

Restorative yoga actives the parasympathetic nervous system, which balances out the over-charged sympathetic nervous system, bringing about overall balance, wholeness, in a natural yin-yang way. The practice, if well designed, allows the body to reap the benefits dwelling in its restorative ‘rest and digest’ mode that yields the body’s natural functions to enliven you at top efficiency:)

This style of yoga can be beneficial for people struggling with a variety of conditions such as insomnia, asthma, migraine headaches, and chronic pain.

These are some of the benefits of restorative yoga:

  • reduces cortisol, the stress hormone
  • lowers blood pressure and heart rate
  • reduces muscle tension, insomnia, and generalized fatigue
  • boosts immunity
  • reduces serum triglycerides and blood sugar levels
  • increases “good” cholesterol,
  • improves digestion and elimination
  • greater capacity to regulate blood glucose levels
  • lessens or alleviates chronic, severe pain
  • enhances fertility
  • increases blood flow to the heart
  • stimulates flow of the lymphatic system
  • increases oxygen levels in the blood
  • greater flexibility
  • reduces brain arousal
  • feeling balanced and grounded
  • increases mental acuity
  • increases ‘vividness’ in daily sensory life
  • cultivates greater patience with yourself and others

Researchers have been investigating the benefits of restorative yoga. Here is a sampling of the findings:

Restorative yoga for women with breast cancer: findings from a randomized pilot study.
These pilot data suggest potential benefit of restorative yoga on emotional outcomes and fatigue in cancer patients. This study demonstrates that a restorative yoga intervention is feasible for women with breast cancer.

Restorative yoga for women with ovarian or breast cancer: findings from a pilot study.
Significant improvements were seen for depression, negative affect, state anxiety, mental health, and overall quality of life. Fatigue decreased between baseline and post-intervention follow-up. Health-related quality of life improved between baseline and the 2-month follow-up.

Feasibility and acceptability of restorative yoga for treatment of hot flushes: a pilot trial.
This pilot trial demonstrates that it is feasible to teach restorative yoga to middle-aged women without prior yoga experience. Mean number of hot flushes per week decreased by 30.8% and mean hot flush score decreased 34.2% from baseline

Restorative yoga in adults with metabolic syndrome: a randomized, controlled pilot trial.
Restorative yoga was found to be a feasible and acceptable intervention in overweight adults with metabolic syndrome.

 

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Healthy Activities Healthy Living Yoga

I’m too young! Really?

There appears to be a trend that more and more women are experiencing various discomforts attributed to onset of menopause early on – a premature(*) peri-menopause that comes to the unprepared is alarming, even scary. ( “*Premature menopause means the woman’s ovaries have spontaneously stopped working before she has reached the age of 40 years. Women can be affected in their teens or early 20s: About one in 1,000 women may reach menopause before the age of 30.”)

Yet it is nothing to be in denial about or feel negatively about – your body is on its natural trajectory of … aging. Yes, aging – I said it without flinching – and … let me tell you that it’s okay because you can do something about it. No you cannot reverse the clock but you can change the bias and prejudice you, yourself have about this very natural process every human being alive undergoes.  You can choose to age with grace and acceptance.  It begins with you. Then you can change how you treat yourself with more compassion. You need not fear the change. In this outer world we live in, everything changes; nothing is permanent.

The average age of menopause was 55 just ten years ago but now it’s something like 51; however, many start noticing the tell-tale signs in their 40’s; some as early as in their 30’s… and perhaps this earlier occurrence is directly related to the fact that more and more young girls are experiencing early puberty (the new “normal”). It follows logic that what starts early must end early… (so know that it’s okay to be a late bloomer girls – early bloomers, on-time bloomers, late bloomers – like flowers, all are beautiful:) This is a mystery but some say it’s due to increased additives/chemicals such as growth hormones in our foods.

Women’s experience in living in their bodies will bring about 3 major life altering events – this is as far as their physical biological development is concerned: First – when you start having your monthly cycle; Second – pregnancy and childbirth; then finally, menopause.   Some may skip the second event but no women is likely to skip over the last transition in their lifeline. When these junctures come varies but they follow a general statistical trajectory.

And what about men?  That typical term used by lay-people “mid-life crises” or “Man-opause”… is apparently also prevalent and I am here to propose there’s a healthy way to deal with this change that may often be unwelcome:

“Although male menopause occurs in older men whose testosterone levels have declined, it tends to affect older males with heart disease, obesity, hypertension (high blood pressure) and/or type 2 diabetes. In other words, unlike the female menopause, several factors together contribute to the development of male menopause. Some underlying health problems, lack of exercise, smoking, alcohol consumption, stress, anxiety, and sleep deprivation could also be key factors.

Psychologists suggest the male “midlife crisis”, when men are supposed to wonder what they have accomplished so far professionally and personally, can be a cause of depression and might possibly trigger a cascade of factors that lead to symptoms associated with male menopause.”

– excerpt from Medical News Today Knowledge Center

Some go to yoga to escape the daily stress, some for fitness to burn calories and lose weight and some because … maybe their doctor told him/her to… whatever motivates you to get on with the journey with all your senses engaged is… all good.  I want to assure you (1) you are not alone; and (2) if you are committed, you can find the power to heal within; It’s a mind-body-spirit all working together to get you to that place of balance, freedom and stability.

And to those who are just hooked for no reason other than it makes you feel good, you might stumble upon rediscovering your body – mind – spirit.  Yoga allows you to rediscover who you really are under all those layers of habits and societal and self-imposed limitations.  You are then practicing preventative medicine and meditation in motion and … stillness… it’s… sublime.

 

 

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Beautiful People Beautiful Places Beautiful Rituals Healthy Food Healthy Living

Visited Rainbow Grocery after the Shojin cooking session in San Francisco.  Of course bought sesame seeds so that I can grind some sesame myself at home… have been using my Cuisinart to make Tahini sauce and pesto sauce but I am now ready to at times, embrace the inconvenience of slow foods as to quote from Kyoto Journal’s interview with the famed Chef Toshio Tanahashi to the question,

“Shojin cuisine does not strictly equate to vegetarianism. How are they different?”

Chef Tanahashi answeres:  “Shojin abides by Buddhism’s Five Prohibitions, the first of which is “don’t kill.” However, one of the most important teachings of Buddha is also to accept all suffering and pleasure with equanimity. The same is applied at the dinner table. Buddhists should receive all food that is offered, and not distinguish between meat and vegetables. So, Buddhists are in fact permitted to eat meat in certain cases. Out of choice, however, Shojin cuisine only uses vegetables. Shojin cooking may seem limiting, but actually it is very liberating. Convenience will destroy humanity. Inconvenience leads to freedom.”

So in search of that “freedom”, I might sometimes forego Cuisinart as I hear him saying “mottainai” – what a waste – in his opinion, we lose a little life, that is, small pleasures inbedded in our ordinary daily life.  What he illuminates by this comment is that there is this perfect opportunity to “experience” a precious moment, a ritual… yet, mindlessly,  you are bypassing that opportunity by the short-cut in using a modern appliance. Need not go to any temples, shrines or monasteries to find the Zen in the ordinary… in the kitchen, on the floor…To him, it’s a chance to strengthen your core with your abdominal breathing, a chance to meditate and be at present with the experience as aroma of sesame wafts through the air you breathe.  Indeed, I experienced Pranayama, Meditation and Aromatherapy all at once!  Who would have thought grinding sesame in the special mortar* and pestle** to be so Zen.  The labor of love then makes for  the gastronomic bliss…of tasting the painstakingly prepared foods for the divine.

*Mortar – It is a ceramic bowl with very narrow – 1-2mm grooves in them for grinding small seeds like sesame.

** Pestle – in this case was special wooden one made from Sansho wood. Sansho, Japanese pepper is from Japanese prickly ash, or Zanthoxylum piperitum tree… Chef Tanahashi explained that from Ancient times it was known that this wood has properties to kill poisons, and along with salt and vinegar, was used to prevent food poisoning, etc. back when refrigeration was unavailable.   So while grinding, very very fine wood oil will seep into the sesame to make the process even more beneficial.  Unlike the regular ones at home, this wooden pestle was quite big… very solid in your hands but light enough to allow continuous grinding in circular motions possible – it’s quite a trance!

Hope he will make these tools available in US as well… or we will be looking into finding a local tree that may serve as a good substitute.  Any ideas anyone? Oh, no, as tree huggers, perhaps we shouldn’t be chopping down trees?  Only if we could replace that tree with baby trees … Having said that there’s lots of fire wood on sale on our street as our neighbor just cut down a giant tree from their back yard… sigh… Mottainai?

In reality, his way of time consuming cooking may only possible in monk’s world or as for that matter a nun’s… but to bring it into today’s context with so much yearning for the mindful, meditative, peaceful way of life, we can at least have the tools to create that or teach our kids the beauty that lies in simple pleasures of the ordinary everyday.  Why do we always need to be entertained ?  It’s yoga in the true sense.

It’s a cliche nowadays but yoga is how you live off the mat… at present, listening to the inner wisdom so what’s truly within us can shine bright.  Such teaching resonates with the kind of teaching Judith Hanson Lasater, Ph.D. shares in her precious book filled with yogic wisdom:  Living Your Yoga – Finding the Spiritual in Everyday.