Natural Alternatives to Treat Scrapes, Sunburns & more…

Check out my latest Ecomii post on how to treat typical summer maladies, like sunburns and poison ivy, with natural remedies.   Try out my recipe for a natural sunburn relief spray.  Learn what tea can help stop the poison ivy rash and itching within 48 hours.  Find out what common pot plant’s flowers are an effective remedy for mosquito bites and other insect bites.  And learn which sunscreens are the safest to use on your skin.  Read it all here at Holistic First Aid for the Summer Season.

Start a Medicinal Herb Garden with These 5 Essential Herbs

See my latest post on Ecomii.com‘s Food and Health blog: Start a Medicinal Herb Garden with These 5 Essential Herbs.  You can grow your own medicinal herbs right in your backyard.  Preparing fresh herbs may offer higher potency than you can get from other sources.  It is the perfect way to stay connected to the amazing potential to help us heal found in plants.

More natural remedies for spring allergies…

An article I wrote recently with seven natural remedies for spring allergies was featured on Yahoo! Green and The Early Show on CBS this Friday, May 13th, and I am writing to follow-up with a few more natural remedies that can help provide relief to those that suffer from spring allergies:

• Butterbur: this European herb shows great promise as a natural treatment for allergies.  In a study published in the British Medical Journal, taking one tablet of butterbur four times a day was effective in controlling hay fever symptoms without the usual drowsiness accompanying many traditional antihistamines.  Butterbur has been used medicinally since ancient Greece.

• Chrysanthemum: taken both as a salve and tea, the flower pods of this herb provide relief from red eyes, itchiness, and sinus pressure headaches associated with allergies.  Steep the dried flower pods in boiling water for 1 minute, then let sit for 5-10 min, strain, and drink the tea.  Place the boiled flower pods inside a paper towel and apply directly over the eyes for 10 minutes for relief from itchy, watery, red eyes associated with seasonal allergies.

• HEPA Filter: a High Efficiency Particulate Filter can filter out the tiniest particles floating in the air, including pollen grains.  Use one in your bedroom, or other rooms where you tend to spend a lot of time indoors, and it will help relieve allergy symptoms by reducing your exposure to the allergens.  A HEPA filter is a great idea to have in any bedroom to improve the quality of indoor air.

Hope you find these additional suggestions useful as you seek to reduce your allergy symptoms.  Here’s to no sneezing, coughing, watery eyes, or itchy eyes and nose!

Biofeedback: An Evolving Mind-Body Therapy

My first introduction to biofeedback was in helping patients learn how to lower their blood pressure.  I had heard of this therapy, but didn’t understand its many applications.  As I explain in my most recent Ecomii Food and Health Blog post, Biofeedback: Evolving Mind-Body Therapy, the applications of biofeedback as an adjunct therapy in medical practice are rapidly evolving.

Among the conditions that I have been surprised that it was able to help include constipation and mild obstructive sleep apnea, a condition where the airway becomes blocked during sleep and the persons thus experiences multiple micro-awakenings throughout the night, leaving them feeling exhausted the next day.  The standard of care for obstructive sleep apnea is known as CPAP, which stands for “continuous positive airway pressure.”  CPAP involves using either a face mask or nasal canula that pushes air into the airway to keep it open during sleep.  For many patients, CPAP is very uncomfortable, and they are unable to tolerate it.  In this one case, a male patient with mild obstructive sleep apnea was cured through the use of biodfeedback over the course of several sessions.  This is by no means a study, and thus the results are not scientifically valid, but all science starts with empiric observations that are then put under the vigorous measures of a placebo-controlled trial.  Obviously, the first treatment for anyone with sleep apnea, which is usually due to the collapse of tissue around the wind pipe in people who are markedly overweight, is to put them on a rigorous weight loss program.  Sleep behavior modification, such as sleeping on one’s side with a special pillow, may also provide some benefits.  However, I have seen patients with mild sleep apnea who are not excessively overweight as well.  Therefore, looking into the potential role of biofeedback in cases of mild obstructive sleep apnea warrants investigation, and could result in significant health cost savings over the long-term.  Untreated, obstructive sleep apnea could lead to heart arrythmias, pulmonary hypertension and congestive heart failure.

A biofeedback specialist can also help teach people who are not able to relax enough to sit through a meditation or yoga class learn how to relax their bodies and their minds.  I often see this as a common complaint in my stressed and anxious patients — that they can’t relax enough to sit through a meditation.  So biofeedback is basically a crash course in meditation for those that think they can’t meditate.  In the end, meditation like exercise is a matter of practice.  You can’t expect your muscles to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger after one day at the gym in the same way you can’t expect to be a skilled meditator in one week.  Nevertheless, think of biofeedback as a bridge to a calmer self for those of you that cannot easily harness the “zen” within.

Seven Natural Remedies for Seasonal Allergies

Read my most recent post on Ecomii Food and Health Blog.  Learn natural ways to help reduce seasonal allergy symptoms due to environmental allergens.  Click here: Seven Natural Remedies for Seasonal Allergies.

Ten Tips to Clean Living in a Toxic World

Check out Ecomii.com’s Food & Health Blog post on how to live clean in our toxic world. The more man-made materials and toxins are put out into the environment, the more we need to be educated consumers and know what we are getting when we purchase food and goods. Living clean is about living healthy. We are what we eat and breathe, as well as how we live.  http://bit.ly/9WmVdz

Transform your Life in 21 Days with Meditation

In this new post on Ecomii, I talk about my experience with a 21-Day Meditation Challenge, during which I meditated for at least 10 minutes every day for 21 days.   Within a week, I felt more grounded.  By the end of week 2, I was looking forward to those 10-20 minutes of equanimity and centering.  And by the end of the third week, I wondered what took my so long to establish a more regular meditation practice.  Meditating helps us handle life stresses better.  It has been proven to lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety, and create a feeling of connectedness and purpose in life.  In our hectic world, it is so worthwhile to take the time to pause, breathe, and be present in the moment that is.  When you read this, I hope it inspires you to start on your own 21-day meditation challenge.  Meditation is a great add-on to a nutritional detox program.  As you detox your body, you should detox your mind from all negative thoughts.  Good luck, and happy meditating!

For a kick-start on your 21-day meditation challenge, see the Chopra Center Meditation Challenge for daily inspired meditations.

Day 5 of 21-Day Meditation Challenge

I started the Chopra Center Meditation Challenge five days ago on Monday.  Some days I’ve done the meditation once, but other days, I’ve actually done the meditation twice, or repeated a meditation from the previous day.  Life had gotten really busy, so it had been a long while since I had meditated regularly.  In fact, since my yoga teacher training in 2003, I had not been so disciplined in having a regular meditation practice.  Sure, I tried to get in a meditation here and there, but they weren’t as effective as they used to be.  A friend told me recently that if you’re making too many plans, it’s time to meditate and be still.  Well, it was time to meditate regularly once more.   So, when I saw the 21-day meditation challenge, I knew it was for me.  I needed something to hold me accountable to the daily meditation.

Well, the week started with the mind of a child — hard to sit still, very active, short attention-span and wanting to wander off on the trail of all types of thoughts.  My breathing felt off.  Bringing consciousness to the breath made it feel more labored than relaxed.  I struggled to find a comfortable sitting position, and if I lied down I most inevitably would fall asleep from how hard I push myself.  So, days 1-4 were the same — restless, ansy, wandering thoughts, poor concentration, and an inability to reach those highs I felt when I had meditated regularly in the past.  However, from my prior experience, I knew to cultivate a mature patience in this endeavor.  Things come with time, and I had committed to doing 21-days of this, so “Hang in there…” I would tell myself.  After all, the results that really count take a little longer to kick in, but tend to be more powerful once they do.  This is my philosophy in medicine — making important lifestyle changes can often have a more powerful impact on future results than any medication I can prescribe.

So, with that in mind, I’ve undertaken the 21-day challenge with blind faith that nothing will happen.  Wait a second?  Am I not expecting anything to happen?  Well, yes, of course.  And I know from previous experience that regular meditation results in a calmer mind, a positive outlook on life, a greater sense of being centered, and a connection to the earth and all living beings.  However, to get results, you have to not want and want results at the same time.  It is the paradox of meditation.  You can set your intentions, and even write them down, because that helps you solidify them and bring them to reality.  But, then you have to let them go and trust that the universe (or whatever belief you have) will take care of it in the right way for you.  Having this trust in the way things come about leads to the most powerful results.

Day 5 — there was a shift.   Something changed today.  Suddenly, the inner child is calmer.  He’s not running around trying to play with every thought that enters the room.  The breath is easier.  Sitting is more comfortable.  The body is letting go.  The mind still wanders, but I’m able to bring it back to the breath more effectively.  Leaving the past and future aside, I am able to focus on the present moment.  After four frustratingly ineffective days, it is the first glimpse that my meditation practice is starting to work.  I have a glimmer of hope that I will reconnect with the self that once was, free of ego, trusting that everything in life will happen just as it was meant to be.

Tomorrow, I will work more on setting intentions, then tossing them free.  I will let go of desires, but trust that what I put my attention on will come to be.  Things come be to, not from a place of need and fear of loss, but from a place of trust and confidence that what will be, will be.  In anything you are trying to achieve in life, put your best work in, then use this thought process and meditation to set it free, and you will see that it will be more effective.  This works for accomplishing life goals or running a small business.  When you try to control all outcomes you stifle the energy flow.  Open it up, and your life is a realm of possibilities.

I will continue writing as I go through the 21-day meditation challenge.  I hope that reading this inspires you to join me, or perhaps put the next 21-day challenge on your calendars.  As winter is a time of introspection, it is a great time to start a meditation practice.

The Benefits of Coherence: A Heart-Centered Life

Read my latest post on Ecomii.  If more of us would live a heart-centered life, the world would be a better place.  Follow this link:  http://www.ecomii.com/blogs/food/2011/01/20/the-benefits-of-coherence-a-heart-centered-life/

The “Aaaahhhh….” Breath. Laugh and be tension-free!

The breath is such an important tool to help keep us grounded and reduce tension.  This is a breath I like to do with my son, which is both useful in reducing tension/stress and funny at the same time.  1) Take a full, deep diaphragmatic breath through your nose, 2) Hold for 1 -2 seconds, 3) Breath out through your mouth while voicing an audible “Aaahhhhh…..” until you run out of breath like a lion yawning (the goal is to outlast the other), 4) Repeat several times (2-3 times).

Pausing and doing this breath for a few cycles can actually recharge your cells, and allow you to release any pent-up nervous tension or anxiety.  The best part, is watching my 6 y/o do it and laugh as we do it.  Anything that generates laughter is also healthy, and releases those feel-good chemicals, such as endorphins, that help us have less pain and feel happy.

So, the next time your day gets too stressful and serious, do the “Aaahhhhh….” breath with a friend, with your children, or your partner.   The best part is that it can end with a heart-warming chuckle!!