Yoga at Alex Beach Pose

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Open your heart

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Stretching your chest muscles, opens the heart chakra and gives the body a feeling of release and freedom.

By using the arms you can open or close the upper body.

Here are three movements to open your minor and major pectoral muscles.

1. Take your hands behind your back, innerlace the fingers and draw your shoulder blades together, you will feel the chest muscles opening and spreading energy through the front of the body, take some deep exhales.

2. Move your arms one at a time in circles backwards, like you were doing backstroke with a single arm and breathe deeply.

3. Take your right arm and straighten it above your head then bend it at the elbow and drop it down your back, have the  palm of your hand facing to your back and creep the fingers as far as you can get reaching towards the bottom of the shoulder blade.Then take your left hand and reach behind your back and try to link hands ( if you have a gap between the hands use a strap to bridge the gap until this gets easier to do. Once you have the hands holding the strap or your hands linking draw the shoulders open and breathe.

All these stretches done regularly will improve your wellbeing and make you feel happier and less anxious as well as correcting your posture.

 

Emotions!

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As humans we must experience all emotions , it nice to feel happiness and not so nice to feel sadness, there are other emotions such as excitement, anger, fear, disgust and surprise.

All emotions create either a positive or negative reaction which is a rush of chemicals internally which stimulate external behaviour.

When we are angry the chemicals such as adrenaline, testosterone increase and cortisol decreases. The heart rate is elevated, theres a rise in blood pressure along with the blood flooding the left brain hemisphere where decisions are made.

The changes we see externally are many, such as a change in the colour of the skin it usually goes red, there can be sweating, shaking, people try to appear bigger by standing with their hands on their hips and legs apart.

When we experience the emotion sadness, we feel most vulnerable, and even hopeless, but as much as we would choose not to feel sad, it is an emotion we must experience it along with all the others.

Yoga is an excellent olive branch to emotion balance, it helps to defuse the power the mind has to drown us in a negative emotion.

Yoga brings the mind and body together in the present moment, making it impossible for the mind to create the scenarios of what might happen or what happened in the past. This is what creates anxiety, stress, lethargy and darkness.

Practicing yoga with your focus on your breath brings light and purpose into our lives.

 

                   IT IS DURING OUR DARKEST MOMENTS THAT WE MUST FOCUS TO SEE THE LIGHT.

Aristotle Onassis

 

It is in learning to focus that we go stronger and the negative emotions have less power over us but we must practice yoga daily to remind the mind to focus on the light.

 

 

 

 

Why wait for the pill?

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Big news anti ageing pill soon to be available for human consumption. There is a lot of buzz around the develop of a pill which Professor Sinclair of the University of NSW has been working on. Boasting now about the effective results in just one week on old mice. In short the result is a 60 year old person can become as youthful as a 20 year old by taking this pill which would eradicate all ageing and age related illnesses. The pill is  called NAD which stands for Nicotinamide mono-nucleotide, it works by improving the communication between the cells. We all produce this chemical naturally but by age 70 it looses 50% of its effectiveness.

But Professor Sinclair has stated by eating healthy with low calories daily and exercising our natural levels of NAD go up. Thats why we look better and feel better, when we are follow these guidelines.

So why wait for this pill which will probably be too expensive for the average person to buy and like all drugs will probably have some sort of side effects.

Lets just do what we know works and has now been proven by the great Sinclair and team of scientist, eating healthy, exercising and fitting that weekly yoga class, is keeping you younger in many ways. Lets be smart and take a step ourselves instead of the quick fix pills because honestly where is the satisfaction in that..

Lets travel through the body one chakra at a time.

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We will start the chakra journey at the head  this is the 7th chakra. The most powerful of all chakras ,it is called

‘ The Crown’ we visualise the crown chakra as white because it represents all the lower chakra colours combined. This is the chakra (or energy centre) that connects us to pure consciousness , in other words all is revealed once we can enter into the crown chakra whenever we desire.

It is only truly accessible once all the lower chakras are in balance. This is the ultimate reason for yoga practice.

The crown chakra is also known as ‘Sahasrara’, once all the other chakras are in balance ,the way into Sahasara is through meditation.

There are two poses used in yoga which help bring awareness to Sahasara, they are

1. Cross-legged seated mountain pose, while in this position we use the yogic breathe and visualise the breath traveling from the base chakra through to the crown chakra.

2. Headstand while visualising the white light at the crown.

When we take the time to come to yoga, we move our bodies to the beat of our breath , dissolving all disruptions to our energy channels or chakra pathways.

Synchronising breath with yoga is the body drawing the mind into the spirit.

This is known as Samadhi. (Pure consciousness or complete contentment and Bliss!)

Ready to Create Sauerkraut.

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A couple of easy steps that will have you creating your own fermented foods, whenever your heart so desires.

Place your cabbage in a processor or chop it roughly by hand, you will need a quarter of a cabbage of any colour and type. Once chopped, you can either whizz the cabbage up again so it looks like the above picture or you can leave it in larger chopped pieces- the choice is yours!

Boil 2 cups of water and wash out the jar you plan to use with some of the boiling water. Cool the rest of the water- once cooled, cover your cabbage with the remaining water.

Next, seal the jar with a lid and place it near the window on your kitchen bench. give it a shake or stir everyday. Your Sauerkraut should be ready in about 3 to 4 days. It should smell sour and taste sour too. If any mould grows on it throw it out .

After 3 or 4 days strain the remaining fluid off the cabbage and keep your finished Sauerkraut and the fluid you removed in the fridge.

You can drink the fluid and eat the sauerkraut daily for the same effect as a probiotic- helping your body to build up good gut bacteria, helping you to naturally breakdown food efficiently. If you have not had Sauerkraut before start off with a small amount until your system gets used to it.

Addicted to Peanut Butter……Guilty.

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My new treat is homemade peanut butter on oat bread. You’ll need organic roasted peanuts – Flannery’s Natural Organic Food Store sell these in bulk! Peanuts are actually a legume and are full of protein. They are high in Folate for strong bones, help prevent cancer and heart disease and have loads of Vitamin E- and next to grapes, peanuts are the highest in resveratrol. Roasting the peanuts increases the antioxidant content and we can also rave about the high phytosterol level which promotes healthy cholesterol. I make my peanut butter in my Omniblend and add extra virgin olive oil and Himalayan salt until the consistency is like the picture above. I say Peanut Butter is now a guilt free treat, so enjoy!

 

Food you SHOULD be eating.

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This week we are talking about Fermented foods and the positive influence they have on our guts. One of my personal favourite fermented foods is Sauerkraut, which directly translates to ‘sour cabbage’, but wait! do not be deterred this finely cut cabbage is actually delicious! WATCH THIS SPACE for my homemade recipe coming to you this week.

In the meantime check out Wellbeing‘s article on belly bacteria & fermented foods at www.wellbeing.com.au.

C x