01.15.08
Giving Opens the Heart
when the lotus blooms in the desert
and the night becomes illuminated
at the point where river flows upstream
your heart expands
give what you can to all
Full Cosmic Quality Home-Care Pamper Package
To nourish, clean, and pamper your entire body and face will bring the mind into a entire different space in which time slows down.
1. Hot hair treatment with warm jojoba, or coconut oil, footbath, scrub and foot-massage.
2. Mini facial – use hot towels, nice carrier oils, home made spritzer, exfoliate with clay, tone with witch hazel mix, use clay mask with aloe vera and essential oils, massage and apply your favorite moisturizing lotion.
3. Take a healing bath containing ground oats, herbs, salts, milk, honey, oils, essential oils and rose petals.
4. Let your skin feel alive and salt/sugar scrub or dry scrub simply with a loofah. Remember a salt/sugar glow is easy to make with carrier oil’s salt and sugar (ground in a coffee grounder is best) and essential oils. Rub yourself all over and polish your body off the dead skin cells. You can do that while in the tub.
5. Rest with a tea
6. Meditate
7. Do your yoga poses.
8. Read your favorite spiritual book.
9. Listen to soft music
10. Do the whole sequence with a partner and pamper each other.
The “Full Cosmic Quality Home-Care Pamper Package” would include a bath, wraps, self-massage (or massage), and facial.
One could include a herbal wrap if a friend is willing to help (see my very first entry!)
01.12.08
Caring
The earth is dressed in white again
Storms and snowflakes dance in circles
Perhaps by forgetting our differences
We can take charge once more
New hopes and joys are presented
Floating down that ancient river
Are the visions of wellness for all
In this present atmosphere
We can choose just once more
To give our life to one and all
So promise all bodhisattvas alike
As they gently carry all wounded beings to care
With the rise and fall of the winter snow
The rainbow of change slowly touches our heart
To share ever new moments of healing and hope
01.10.08
How to Make Your Own Abhyanga Massage Oil?
Our skin, eyes, hair, nails reflect the state of our mind. If we feel good we look good. Daily so called “dhinacarya rituals” make our skin glow, stimulate blood and lymph to feed the skin.
The physical body and mind are intertwined in ayurveda, and customizing individual treatments are meant to balance the constitution, known as the dosha, which means “that which easily goes off balance or primal metabolic force.”
Heat one cup if organic vegetable oil over low heat. Copper pots are good heat conductors but make sure the copper is only outside of the pot. Add 1/2 cup of mixed herbs to the warm oils, and stir for few minutes. Once the herbs are wilted, cover the container and let the mixture stand for 2 days. Afterwards pour the mixture through cheesecloth and add 5-8 drops of essential oils to the oil. There you have your own abayanga massage oils.
For your daily abayanga self-massage you need to make the appropriate massage oil with the appropriate herbs and essential oils. Keeping the process simple is the key for success.
1. Vata is made up of the two elements of air and ether. To make Abayanga oil for vata people who tend to have a weak colonic constitution: Heat up ghee or sesame oil, and add turmeric powder, cloves, orange peel powder, basil, and fresh ginger. Let the mix sit for 2 days and add the 5-10 drops of essential oils of lavender, jasmine, or rose.
2. Pitta is made up of the two elements of fire and water. To make Abayanga oil for pitta people who tend to have a weak mid-digestive tract: Use a base of coconut, sunflower, ghee, or olive oil and warm it up. Add some neem oil, lemongrass, fresh turmeric root, and licorice root. Let the mix stand for 2 days. Add the essential oil of rose, sandalwood or saffron.
3. Kapha is made up of the two elements of water and earth. To make Abayanga oil for kapha people, who tend to have a weak upper-digestive tract: Use mustard oil, canola and warm it up. Add neem oil, black pepper, cardamom, fresh lemon peel, cloves, fresh turmeric root powder, and fresh ginger powder, essential oils such as cardamom, lemon, and eucalyptus.
Daily generous Abayanga massages, a light diet, exercise, and meditation increase Ojas, which is “that which invigorates” our system, harmonizes and increases our immunity, life force and over all strength.
If you wish to do an assessment to find out what constitution you have (Prakruti) and whether it’s in balance (Vikruti) send me an e-mail.
Warm Light
cold earth
light of the sun
when the mind
draws in
the newest sweet rainbow
we continue to observe
knowing that
some days
perhaps more often than not
the river
defies gravity
flows
slow and steady
uphill
against all odds
spreading and
washing down
warm light
01.08.08
New Start - New Energies 2008
12 lotuses (month)
warm oils treams
stay
in the moment
absorbed
inside clear light
life supporting nurturing
after a year of
many encounters
and hard work
enjoy
healing blessings
when the mind paints colors
touch brings new peace
you are at home
03.10.07
About Oils and Essential Oils in Ayurveda
Sesame Oil:
Of course, it is well known that classically. Sesame oil is the oil of choice for Ayurvedic massage. Ayurvedic doctors will use sesame oil for most imbalances by medicating it with herbs and or essential oils. The properties of sesame oil are:
Heavy – sweet – bitter – astringent – heating – balances vata – increases pitta – neutral for kapha
Essential oils enhance or adjust the properties described. For instance, sesame oil is often used for all doshas but with cooling essential oils, sesame oil can be readjusted to work with pitta conditions if no other cooling is available. Coconut oil alone during winter maybe too cooling in some northern climates.
Herbs are cooked in sesame oil in combination with water. It’s a somewhat elaborate process and the slow cooking can take hours. Many ayurvedic carrier oils are readily available already online.
The most common ayurvedic oils are:
1. Amla oil: Sesame oil cooked with the herb amalaki – balances pitta and vata
2. Bringaraj oil: Sesame oil cooked with the herb Bhringaraj – balances pitta and vata
3. Brahmi oil: Balances the mind and senses by increasing circulation of the brain. It’s used for improving memory and sleep disorders, and focusing ability. Mixes with coconut oil it balances pitta.
4. Chandan oil: Sesame oil cooked in sandalwood. It pacifies pitta conditions but is also very therapeutic for vata and Kapha. It treats inflammatory conditions as well as balances the mind.
5. Dashamula oil: Sesame oil mixes with Dashamula [ten roots – ashwaganda, yasti mudha (licorice), punarnava, kumari (aloe vera) shatavari, vidari, bilva, bala, arjuna, goksura. This oil provides deep rejuvenation for Vata and cleanses kapha.
6. Mahanarayan oil: A combination between sesame and castor oil, cooked with shatavati, ashvaganda, bilva and bali. It is classically used for muscular skeletal aches and pains. It balances vata and kapha.
7. Neem oil: Sesame oil cooked in neem. It balances pitta predominantly and is used to treat chronic skin conditions.
8. Vacha oil: Sesame oil cooked in vacha (calamus root). It balances Vata, stabilized moods, and improves clarity of thought
According to Body types the following modifications to the massage oil can be made for the different doshic body types.
Essential oils can be added to massage oils or medicated massage oils. Twenty to thirty drops of oil to one cup of ayurvedic massage oils. Essential oils can be blended to cool or heat the carrier oils according to need.
Vata essential oils are:
Basil, Fennel, Marjoram, Orange, Geranium, Bergamot. Benzoin, Cardamom, Cinnamon. Lavender, Tulsi, Sage patchouli,
Pitta Essential oils are:
Sandalwood, Lavender, Lotus, Jasmin, lemon, Ylang Ylang, Chamomile. Peppermint, Fennel, Rose, Neroli, Melissa (lemon balm), Vetivert.
Kapha Essential oils are:
Rosemary, Peppermint, Lemon, Sage. Tulsi, Eucalyptus, Camphor, Frankincense, Clary Sage, Juniper, Myrrh, Black Pepper, Clove,
Tri-Doshic Essential oils are:
Rose, jasmine, Lavender, Sandalwood, Melissa, Ginger, Fennel
02.06.07
Swedish Massage vs. Ayurvedic Massage
Ayurvedic Massage often uses warm infused aromatic herbal oils for massage and tends to work energetically with vital energies known as Prana or certain marma points (ayurvedic acupunture points). Different styles of touch are being applied according to the primal metabolic rate (called dosha) of the client. Ayurvedic massage, just like Swedish massage, may help to reduce pain and soreness and frees up blockages and opens the flow of prana in the body’s vital energy centers. Ayurvedic massage is characterized by long flowing strokes, the usage of warm medicated oil, alternating speeds, pressure, rhythm and circular motions over the joints.
Some ayurvedic massage practitioners work with the crown of the head first (Brahma Randra) in order to open the connection to the “higher powers.”
Muscle aches and pains often block vital energies. By working on tight muscle groups we make sure that the energy flows freely and does not remain trapped. Through deep relaxation we pacify the nervous system first.
A traditional Abhyanga starts in a seated position actually, followed by supine (upward) and then prone. Often 3/4 of the session is done in a supine position.
Ayurvedic massage the strokes move away from the heart and center of the body towards the extremities.
In Swedish massage the strokes move blood, venous and lymph fluids back to the heart.
Swedish massage is therapeutically more goal oriented and tries to identify the source of the pain through reductionism. We palpate the source of the tension, use specific techniques such as effleurage, friction, tapotement, various tense and relax methods, active or passive range of motion exercises to get that muscle to relax.
Ayurvedic massage looks at the entire being and lifestyle choices to identify the source of the problem. The right choices of massage oils are used as medicated healing tools to address the root cause of the problem.
The goal of Ayurvedic massage is to produce a deep meditative state of deep relaxation.
(Ayurveda refers the yogic “science of life”.)
10.13.06
Now the Autumn is Near
Now the Autumn is near and time to go outdorrs and detoxify with Ayurveda again.
Walk the trail of beauty with Joseph Cornell. I recommend his programs highly. I love him.
www.sharingnature.com/beauty/
Autumn is a time when there is more lightness, dryness and coolness. There is also the tendency for ‘the winds of change’ to blow ever more erratically. These qualities in nature have a tendency to disturb vata (no kidding), which is the dosha primarily associated with the nervous system. Vata also regulates the levels of moisture in the body, how relaxed we feel and how well we digest food.
Autumn is naturally a time of balancing vata and reducing any symptoms of wind, dryness and erratic behaviour.
It may be wise to eat yummy with astringent, bitter or sweet tastes such as rice, barley, wheat, along with curd, cabbage, cheese, milk. Also, this is the right time to go through purgation & blood letting treatment to get your pitta down. Do not expose yourself to winds, especially if you are vata.
Quote, “I want to remind you to be gentle with yourself. Changing habitual patterns can be very challenging. Exercise compassion for yourself as you embark on this journey. Learn to laugh at yourself as you begin to wake up to the energies that are running you. Give thanks that you can see it happening, and persevere. This is the process of conscious evolution.”
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”
Helen Keller
07.22.06
Take it Easy
Since I have visitors from Europe during the Summer, I have no time to write this blog.
I will continue when all the summer fun is over. I do schedule and take new clients, however. So feel free to contact me.
