Restorative Yoga Benefits for Mothers

05/06/2022 Leave a comment

Yoga can provide mothers with obvious and unexpected benefits for the mind, body, and spirit. One of the main reasons every mom should do yoga is that it offers them emotional and physical balance and self-acceptance. There are several different types of yoga, but today, we will focus on restorative yoga.

What is restorative yoga? It’s a therapeutic style of yoga that revolves around using props in order to get into certain poses in an easier way, thus enabling you to completely surrender to the pose. This practice is not physically challenging and doesn’t require you to switch from one position to another quickly, but rather encourages you to stay in a certain pose for an extended time period.

This form of yoga will encourage busy moms to slow down, heal, and reflect. Instead of focusing on physically challenging poses, restorative yoga emphasizes simple stretches. You will learn to practice stillness, center your breath and body, and hold certain poses for extended periods. Staying in a certain pose for as long as you are comfortable will help you achieve a state of relaxation.

Like any type of yoga, you can choose to work either your entire body or a specific area. You can achieve restorative yoga poses by using many different props, such as pillows, blankets, chairs, straps, blocks, and bolsters. By using these props, you’ll allow your body to relax and stretch with support.

Restorative yoga isn’t as popular as other yoga techniques since most people opt for something more physically challenging. Nevertheless, restorative yoga is far from easy (even though it might not look that way) and offers many different health benefits.

Aids Weight Loss

You might be thinking that there’s no way restorative yoga could help you lose weight since it isn’t an aerobic style of yoga, such as the fast-paced vinyasa flow. Or maybe you’ve learned that you can lose weight only by taking part in strenuous exercise and keeping a healthy diet. Although this is true, there are other ways to lose weight effectively. By practicing one of the calmest forms of yoga, you can lose significant weight by reducing the stress hormone cortisol, which is associated with too much stress and excess belly fat. The National Institutes of Health study, led by researcher Maria G. Araneta, PhD, MPH, of the University of California, San Diego, found that it also helps people get rid of subcutaneous fat.

Restorative Yoga for Menopause

Restorative yoga will help reduce the effect of hormonal changes associated with menopause by balancing your endocrine system. Your poses in a therapeutic yoga class will stimulate all your body’s organs, glands, tissues, and cells, significantly affecting your neuroendocrine system. As a result, it will also increase oxygenated blood flow to the glands in your head and neck.

Calm the Nervous System

Stress and anxiety cause our nervous system to move into fight or flight mode. On the other hand, restorative yoga can help bring back balance and calm to the nervous system. Practicing simple yoga stretches for just an hour a day will trigger the parasympathetic nervous system and get your body into a more balanced rest and digest state. You should feel a sense of calmness and rejuvenation when finished.

Increase Flexibility

Yoga is probably best known for increasing flexibility. However, restorative yoga isn’t about how bendy you can get, like some of the other more popular forms of yoga. Instead, it focuses on simply teaching you how to release tension in your body, especially in tight areas. Because of this, restorative yoga may be the fastest way for you to learn how to increase your flexibility.

Injury and Illness Recovery

Restorative yoga is excellent for all people recovering from a particular illness or who are partially immobile and unable to take part in more strenuous workouts. This form of yoga allows people with depleted strength and low energy levels to enjoy some exercise. Engaging in this form of exercise will help you become more active. You’ll also experience a faster recovery, seeing how restorative yoga will help you rest, relax, and fight stress.

Restorative Yoga for Women with Breast or Ovarian Cancer

According to a study published by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, restorative yoga may help slow down the development of breast and ovarian cancer in patients suffering from these conditions.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18544284

Strengthen Mind and Body

By strengthening your mind-body connection, you’ll deepen your self-awareness and introspection and experience a heightened body awareness. With a solid mind-body connection, you’ll be able to access certain parts of your body and relieve those areas of tension very quickly.

Try these 7 easy-to-follow poses to relax the mind and body:

Restorative Yoga Sequence to Relax the Mind and Body – Yoga Rove

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Are You Suffering From Brain Fog?

09/14/2021 Leave a comment

Photo credit: Shannan Muskopf [CC BY-SA 3.0]

Almost everyone experiences brain fog from time to time. So, what exactly is brain fog? It’s a condition where you feel a general lack of mental clarity. You may feel forgetful, confused, or have trouble concentrating. Various factors may lead to brain fog, such as nutritional deficiencies, hormonal imbalance, stress, sleep disorders, or environmental toxins. Once you understand why you are suffering from brain fog, you can take proactive steps to fix it.

Here are five possible reasons you are suffering from brain fog –

Poor Nutrition

Eating a diet filled with highly processed foods, aka junk foods, will leave you feeling foggy. There isn’t much, if any, nutrition left in these foods after they’ve been stripped of their natural state, taking this and that out and adding in more chemicals than we can count to come up with something that will stay on the shelf indefinitely.

When you put bad gas in your car, it makes your car sputter, cut out, and just run poorly. Well, think of highly processed foods as lousy fuel for your body.

Get more fresh whole foods into your diet to combat brain fog. Eat organic as often as possible and fill your body with the goodness that comes from real food.

Sedentary Lifestyle

Leading a life without much movement can cause brain fog because your brain isn’t getting what it needs to be sharp and alert.

Your brain needs oxygen and vital nutrients, which are carried to it through the bloodstream. If you don’t get your blood pumping to increase blood flow through exercise, your brain lacks the very things it needs to do its job correctly. Exercise improves brain function, so get off the couch. Even a quick 10-minute walk will go a long way towards improving your brain power.

Toxic Buildup

Our bodies can get polluted from chemicals in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the foods we eat. If you don’t eat healthily and get some exercise, these toxins can build up, causing your body and brain to function at sub-optimal levels.

Detoxifying can be an unpleasant experience the first time because we’re stirring up all the crud that has built up over our lifetime. The more often you do this, the easier it becomes, and you will feel the effects of having a cleaner body and a clearer mind.

Stress

Chronic stress is another factor that can lead to physical and mental problems. Stress elevates a hormone in your body called cortisol that causes inflammation in your brain and body. Chronic inflammation can cause many health issues, including fatigue, damaged brain cells, depression, weight gain, and glucose imbalance.

Finding an outlet for your stress would be immensely helpful, such as adding an exercise regimen to release endorphins in your brain, which cause you to feel good; it can even help you shed unwanted weight. You can also choose to pamper yourself by taking a hot bath, getting a massage, meditating, or trying yoga.

Dehydration

If you don’t consume enough water, you may suffer from dehydration.
Water can help flush the waste and toxins out of your body that can accumulate in your intestinal tract.

Try to consume at least 8 cups of water per day. An easy way to incorporate more water into your day is to drink a full glass upon rising and another before each meal. For advanced hydration and flavor, a healthy sports drink will do the trick.

If you find yourself feeling foggy regularly, chances are good you’re suffering from one or all of these issues. Get some exercise, eat better, drink lots of water and release your stress, and you’ll feel sharper in no time.

Resources

Bolero Advanced Hydration

http://www.gobolero.com

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3 Unhealthy Habits that are Holding You Back

04/10/2015 Leave a comment

Photo credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simões CC-BY-2.0

Throughout life we will make choices that will form good or bad habits in our daily routine. Those bad habits are the ones that will potentially put us on a path to an unhealthy, stressful life. Once we recognize what these bad habits are, it’s easier to form a plan of action to eliminate them altogether. It will take some effort and discipline in order to maintain a new way of life, but it is doable. We tend to stand in our own way most of the time and that is what holds us back from change. What are these habits that hold us back from a successful, happy life?

Nobody is Perfect! – Feeling the need to be perfect all of the time will not only do harm to any progress you could make, but it also does something to your self-confidence. You will constantly feel like you come up short if you are always striving to be perfect. Let’s face it, no one is perfect and you don’t need to be. Success doesn’t depend on perfection, but rather depends on your ability to take action and follow through with the goals you set. You can’t be truly happy if you are always reaching for something that will never happen. Understanding this about yourself is the first step in overcoming it. Make a plan, take action, and put it out there. If it’s not perfect at first, don’t stress about it. There is always time to make changes and improvements.

Stop Comparing Yourself to Others – This is one of the biggest mistakes we can make as humans. We are all different in a way that is unique to each and every one of us. We damage our own self-worth by comparing our life with someone else’s, because we always come up short feeling like we are not good enough. Every person, every situation, and every life is unique. There are circumstances in one person’s life that brought them to where they are today. You can’t compare your journey to theirs simply because of that. It’s important to value yourself and what you have to offer because it is enough.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy! – Some people spend so much time worrying about the outcome of a situation that no action is taken. This means nothing gets accomplished and any goals they’ve set will fall by the wayside. Worrying is a useless emotion, and it does nothing but torment us into conjuring up scenarios that will never come to be. No one knows what the future holds, so what is the point of worrying about it? Worrying that a business venture will fail or a product launch will fall flat are just one of those things that can happen on the road to success. Whatever will be, will be. There is no sense in ruining your day and stressing over issues that may or may not happen.

We have a way of backing ourselves into a corner with some of these unhealthy habits. They not only keep us from achieving the success we deserve, but also messes with our confidence and self-esteem. We can overcome these habits through discipline and consistency. Focus on the habits you have and take the steps to get past them. Read books, do research, and be persistent when it comes reaching your goals and creating a healthy, less stressful life.

 

 

 

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