Tag: yoga

  • The Healing Power Of Yoga For Brain Injuries

    The Healing Power Of Yoga For Brain Injuries

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    In honor of Brain Injury Awareness month, former pro snowboarder Kevin Pearce talks about how key the practice is to his ongoing brain injury recovery.

    On December 31, 2009, less than two months before the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, snowboarder Kevin Pearcecrashed his head into an icy half pipe in Park City, Utah.

    The traumatic brain injury (TBI)brought on a 6-day coma, memory loss, mood swings, and vision problems, but Pearce’s discovery of yoga has helped give him new eyes. Quite literally.

    Pearce’s vision problems required glasses all the time, but two months ago, Pearce attended a life-changing yoga class near his home in Carlsbad, California. He drove to the class, wearing his glasses, but found afterward as he drove home, he didn’t need to them for the first time in five years.

    “In no way are my eyes 100 percent better, but it made that big of a difference that I don’t have to wear glasses anymore,” says Pearce, whose story is captured in the 2013 documentary “The Crash Reel.” Since then, Pearce has become a regular, practicing yoga and meditation at least once a day when he’s home and at least two or three times a week when traveling.

    Explore Yoga Poses for the Brain

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    Quiet the Mind, Heal the Brain

    How could one yoga class have such powerful effects? Former representative Gabrielle Giffords has also been quoted saying yoga is a key part of her therapy recovering from that 2011 gunshot wound to the head. Kim Greene, an injury prevention specialist at the Vail Valley Medical Center in Colorado, isn’t surprised. Greene’s son, Jeremy, suffered a severe TBI in a 1999 car accident when he was 16 years old, and she says that’s when both she and her son found yoga and meditation.

    “The practices help you use your brain in a different way to calm it down and to focus,”Greene said. “I think that’s for all of us, but when you have a TBI, your brain is going in 100 different directions at one time, and the yoga and meditation helps to slow it down and bring a calmness.”

    See also Yoga Helps Vets With Brain Injury

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    Yoga and Meditation Program for Brain Injury Survivors

    “Finding yoga and that ability to be exercising and be moving, but at the same time be meditating and be calm and be so relaxed and so mellow, has been so helpful and healing for me in the most amazing way,”Pearce said. “It has changed my life in a way that I could have never imagined, so I want to share what I have found with the rest of the world.”

    The impact was so real for him that he enlisted his brother Adam and started The LoveYourBrain Foundation in 2014. In honor of March, Brain Injury Awareness Month, the new nonprofit is leading a monthlong yoga and meditation fundraising campaign. Their aim is to partner with at least one studio in every state to offer a donation-based class. All of the money raised will help grow LoveYourBrain’s flagship yoga program, supporting affordable yoga and meditation classes tailored to the needs of traumatic brain injury survivors.

    Interested in participating? Learn more about the LoveYourBrain Foundation and the March yoga fundraising campaign.

    See also The Big Brain Benefits of Meditation

    Kim Fuller is a freelance journalist and yoga instructor based in Vail, CO.

    Yoga JournalMarch 30, 2015
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  • Acne Ayurveda treatments

    Other than knowing your dosha ( Ayurvedic body type) through an Ayurvedic consultation to treat skin disorders, below are 3,useful herbs

    Three Herbs for that Perfect, Glowing Skin

    Want to have that perfectly glowing skin but not sure what to do about it? Well, the answer lies in your own surroundings! We often fail to realize the importance of the things that are easily available to us – the biggest example being ‘nature’ itself. Just look around and you will find that there are numerous valuable herbs and plants that have endless therapeutic and rejuvenating properties that could be a boon to your skin in the scorching heat.

    Here are three useful, easily available herbs that will pacify your doshas and keep your skin healthy and glowing in summers:

    Turmeric (Haldi)

    Turmeric purifies blood, nourishes the skin and gives it a healthy natural glow and radiance. It has anti-inflammatory, anti-aging and anti-bacterial properties that help reduce inflammation of skin, acne, pimples, blemishes, pigmentation, and prevent many skin ailments. It also helps heal and prevent dry skin, and slows down the skin aging process.

    Ayurvedic Properties:
    Quality (Guna): Rough, Light
    Taste (Rasa): Pungent, Bitter
    Post-digestive Effect (Vipaka): Bitter
    Potency (Virya): Warm
    Effect on Doshas: Pacifies Vata,
    Pitta and Kapha

    How to Use:

    To brighten your skin up for a hot day, mix turmeric powder and rice powder with raw milk and tomato juice, enough to form a paste, and apply to face and neck for 30 minutes. Rinse with lukewarm water.
    For a night cream, prepare a paste made from turmeric and milk or yogurt and apply it to your face. Allow the mask to dry and leave it on overnight. Wash off the mask in the morning using a gentle cleanser.
    Applying turmeric powder along with lime juice on exposed areas of the skin helps remove tanning.

    Sandalwood (Chandan)
    The key ingredient in many Ayurvedic skin-care treatments, Sandalwood is effective in treating scrapes, rashes, blemishes, acne, and other common skin problems. When used externally, the oil and paste of Sandalwood has a calming, cooling effect on the body. It is bitter, sweet, astringent and cooling in nature, and helps balance the body after overexposure to the sun. Sandalwood powder can be made into a paste, lotion or soap for cleansing and hydrating the skin.

    Ayurvedic Properties:
    Quality: Rough, Light
    Taste: Bitter
    Post-digestive Effect: Bitter, Sweet
    Potency: Cold
    Effect on Doshas: Pacifies Pitta and Kapha

    How to Use:

    To treat pimples, make a paste of one teaspoon of sandalwood powder mixed with one teaspoon of turmeric. Add one teaspoon of water to make the paste, and apply to pimples before bed.
    For itchy skin, apply the mixture of one teaspoon of sandalwood with one teaspoon of turmeric and one teaspoon of lime juice. Leave on for 20 to 30 minutes and rinse with cool water.
    Sandalwood oil can be used as a moisturizer on the face and body and is also great for massaging.

    Mix five tablespoons of coconut oil with two teaspoons of almond oil. Add four teaspoons of sandalwood powder, and apply the mixture to the overexposed areas of your skin. You will notice a considerable improvement in your tan.

    Aloe Vera (Ghritkumari)
    Aloe Vera has been well known for centuries for its anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, healing and cooling properties. It facilities healing of any kind – be it a skin wound, acne, burn, scald, blisters, insect bites, rashes, urticaria, vaginal infections, allergic reactions or dry skin. The gel of this plant helps to protect the outer layers of the skin, keeps the skin cool and reduces inflammation.

    Ayurvedic Properties:
    Quality: Heavy, Oily
    Taste: Bitter
    Post-digestive Effect: Pungent
    Potency: Cold
    Effect on Doshas: Pacifies Pitta and Kapha

    How to use:

    Applying Aloe Vera gel on the skin prior to application of make-up can prevent the skin from drying.
    lend the pulp of some fresh fruits with Aloe Vera gel in a blender and use it as a pack to keep the skin cool.
    Mix Aloe Vera with wheat germ oil or almond oil to use it as a moisturizing pack.
    To treat pigmentation, get a fresh leaf of Aloe Vera and split it to remove the gel. Apply this on clean skin and leave for about 20 minutes.
    In case of sunburn, the application of Aloe Vera-based cream acts as a protective layer on the skin and helps replenish its moisture.

    http://www.jiva.com/ayurveda

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  • Yoga and Animals

    Yoga and Animals

    Why Yoga and animals don’t mix

    Yoga is over 5000 years old, it’s one of the oldest forms of healing therapy.  Way back in India, animals were observed in nature, and noted for their particular abilities and many yoga postures were taken from them.

     

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