Use Yoga to Heal Insomnia

Insomnia is a sleeping disorder basically characterized by inadequate time of good quality sleep. Insomnia can be primary or secondary. Primary insomnia is not related to any medical condition, or is commonly caused by stress, anxiety, depression and incidences of loss. On the other hand, secondary insomnia is failure to maintain the sleeping state due to certain illnesses such as asthma, arthritis, heart failure, and sometimes, effects of pain medications. Insomnia can also be acute or short term insomnia, and chronic or long term insomnia. When the difficulty of sleeping is experienced for 3 weeks and longer, medical consult is already necessary.

The best management for insomnia is treating the underlying cause. Since stress is one of the most common causes of insomnia experienced by almost all age group, stress relieving options are greatly used to get a good night sleep. Nowadays, yoga is one of the most famous practices to relieve stress, get a good night sleep, and be healthy.

"Yoga" is a Sanskrit term which means union. Originated in India, yoga is the union of the mind body and spirit. Over time, as practice differs, yoga became a system of breathing and body movements to relieve stress. Yoga does not relax the body, it also wakes it up through flexibility. The practice of yoga involves the whole body as breathing, concentration and movements are all related. After all the contortions and poses, the body relaxes with corresponding slow heart rates. As these events happen, muscle contractions diminish and they begin to relax.

Yes, according to experts, yoga really helps to get a good night sleep with yoga's stimulatory effect on the brain and the whole nervous system. Yoga allows better blood circulation in the brain which normalizes the sleep cycle. Furthermore, yoga promotes elimination of toxins from the body that revitalizes the whole body until the cellular degree. With breathing exercises, more oxygen enters the body and promotes a mind free from troubles. According to researches, a minute of yoga practice is equal to a minute of the number of sleep required.

If you are an insomniac and plans to enroll in a yoga class, you might as well ask your instructor for the following poses specially designed to solve your sleeping problems.

1. Ashtanga or the power yoga, this pose is worth doing for at least 3 times a week.
2. The three part breath, best done before going to sleep for it promotes peace of mind.
3. Ananda Balasana or the happy baby pose, this results to relaxation of the lower back and hips.
4. The corpse pose. According to practitioners, this promotes the yogic sleep. The yogic sleep precedes the actual sleep. According to yoga experts, this is state is something not easily done, it may take weeks for someone to perfect this pose.
5. Halasana. Also called as the plow-pose, this specially addresses insomnia for it concentrates on relaxation and breathing.
6. The Sukhasana is done cross-legged to achieve relaxed breathing.
7. The Adho Mukha Svanasana or the down-ward facing dog position supports flexibility and promotes breathing.

Unlike any other stress relieving practices, yoga does not require any special equipment and it can be done anywhere when you are already familiar with the techniques. Aside from that, yoga also believes that no one is better than anyone else, isn't it less stressful knowing that?

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Simple Yoga Pose to Relieve Tension

What does it mean to relax the mind and body? Do you put on the television to relax? Do you prefer to sit in silence and relive the events of the day? For me the television can add stress and anxiety to my body. And silence is a foreign word to many. Between young children, traffic, cell phones...you get the idea, silence can be tough. A different approach to relaxation would be to learn how to do this yoga pose to unwind at the end of the day. You owe it to yourself, your body and your mind.

Are you experiencing any of these signs of tension?

• Body stiffness
• Headaches
• Digestive problems
• Insomnia
• Chronic anxiety
• Irritability

A classic yoga relaxation position called the corpse pose is an alternative solution to softening your stiffness and easing your anxiety by allowing you to pause and slow down. Relaxation in this position is achieved through visualization, conscious breathing techniques and active involvement in the pose. The corpse pose looks like the easiest of all the yoga poses but it actually is one of the hardest. There is a fine balance keeping the mind focused on the here and now and actively involved in the success of this pose, yet letting go of the body and feeling the calm in all your muscles and organs. You are actively releasing tension with this pose. Your mind needs to stay present and your body needs to stay still.

Lay on your back with your legs straight and your feet about hip distance apart. Straighten your arms and place your hands slightly away from your hips. Relax your head on the ground and close your eyes. Soften each part of your body by concentrating your mind on the loosening of your muscles and organs. Let your mind work throughout your body: start at your toes, up your legs, through your pelvis, abdomen, upper chest, down your arms, into your fingers and then back to your shoulders, neck and head. Work through the body tensing each section for a few seconds and then releasing, allowing a deeper surrender to relaxation.

As you let your mind flow through the different parts of your body pause when your mind finds rigidity and stiffness. Concentrate on softening that part of your body while taking in several deep breaths. Hold the relaxation point as long as it feels comfortable.

The head has its own set of tension points. The mouth needs to open slightly and take the tongue away from the roof of the mouth. Release your jaw muscles and the back of your throat. Once your mind moves to your eyes rest the strain. Let your eyes sense the restfulness. It can feel as if your eyes are sinking into your head. This is a sign that you are giving them a break and releasing any tension in the muscles of your eyes. Let the forehead loosen, ease the tightness. Soften the skin on your face and your scalp.

Once each part of your body has physically relaxed it is time to stay as still as possible not letting the outside world in. Focus on keeping the body still and releasing any further tension. This act of concentrating will keep your thoughts inside yourself and further deepen the tranquility you are striving for. Breathe deeply throughout this pose and keep your mind alert. Observe any sensations that your body feels. That is the feeling of stiffness loosening and anxiety easing.

Discharge your emotional tension as well while in this unrestricted state. Give yourself permission to let go. Your mind and body deserve it. As you continue to deepen this relaxation your body will feel heavy as if it is sinking into the ground. It is a very powerful force to relinquish anxiety and stress. Your body will tell you when it is time to come out of this pose. Your breathing will start to feel energized. Your eyes will feel rested and your body will feel rejuvenated. Roll on your side before you get up to avoid any unnecessary strain on your back. Sit up for a couple of minutes relishing in the true feeling of bodily relaxation.

This pose can be done by anyone who can get down on the ground. It is an excellent tension reliever that only takes about ten minutes but can wipe away years of stiffness and anxiety if practiced consistently. This pose alone will improve your health.

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Hatha Yoga Tip

The best hatha yoga tip I ever received, was from a yoga master who understood the inner workings of life, karma and reincarnation. Employing this tip is essential if you are going to extract the full benefits of a yoga practice. Without this piece of wisdom, hatha yoga becomes just a series of physical movements and exercises. The tip is that all yoga should be practiced with the Witnessing Consciousness active.

This is really more than just the best yoga tip, this is an essential yoga guideline. Yoga means, to join or yolk, and the joining that is being referred to, is the merging of your consciousness with the Universal Consciousness. This is the true purpose of yoga. To bring you to the doorstep of Infinity, so that you can realize the true Oneness of Reality.

Yoga includes many dimensions, and of these hatha yoga is just one. This dimension is considered the physical aspect of yoga practice, but if done while employing the Witnessing Consciousness, this physical practice becomes spiritual and much more. So what exactly is meant by this tip? Let's discuss the details of that below.

The Witnessing Consciousness is the act of simply standing apart and watching that which is taking place. In other words, to have a third person perspective of what is happening in your life, within and without, and using this observation as a source for self study. This observation is pure simple awareness. It should be without judgment or criticism, and it should be maintained as best you can from moment to moment. Another way of describing this state is that it is the act of being in the world, but not being of the world.

So, as you practice your hatha yoga poses and routines, keep this awareness active. Do your yoga and watch yourself doing it like you are watching a movie. Stay alert to the three dimensions of your being. The physical, emotional and mental. This detached, passive awareness will allow the content of consciousness to come out, reveal itself and be purged. That cleansing will then allow you to have space and silence within, which are the necessary ingredients for Truth to blossom.

This important tip though extends far beyond your hatha yoga practice as well. Not only during your physical practice should you practice this watching, but you should continue at all other times as well. No one is really able to successfully be conscious throughout all twenty-four hours of the day, but the amount of time you can stay aware is perhaps the best way to measure your spiritual progress.

The person who can maintain their awareness ninety percent of the time is going to be much more spiritually advanced than one who is only aware only five percent of the time. In fact, this metric is probably the best measure of the spiritual level of a person. Putting this tip to use, will certainly change your life. You will have to make adjustments in order to practice such vigilance and the more you practice it, the more positive changes you will notice start happening.

A great time to practice this tip is, of course, while doing hatha yoga poses. This is because hatha yoga can be done without excessive mental activity. This then leaves awareness available for the task of self observation. Of course, there are hatha yoga exercises that suggest bringing the mind and attention to various regions in the body, as you do the pose, but if you can, try to maintain some free energy and awareness for self observation. In fact, I would say that maintaining the Witnessing Consciousness is more important, than the mental requirements of a particular pose.

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Yoga For Your Immunity System

With the H1N1 virus becoming a global epidemic just after the SARS scare a few years ago, people are starting to find ways to build up their immunity system from taking tablets to drinking herbal tonics and elixirs. However a simple way to help build up one's immunity system is actually through a practice of yoga.

Stress has been shown to be a great contributor to weaken the immune system greatly. With a combination of asana practice, pranayama, meditation and relaxation, yoga can help to balance and strengthening the immune system as it reduces the stress hormones that compromise the immune system. A daily practice that combines breath with movement will also help strengthen the respiratory & circulatory systems stimulating the lymphatic system to move toxins out of the body and bring more oxygenated blood to the various organs ensuring their healthful function. Yoga also generates a balanced energy which is the key energy required for the immune system.

Looking closer at the immune system, it consists of the thymus glands, the spleen, lymph node and other organs. These organs are involved in generating & circulating immune cells and antibodies. Yoga poses that twist and compress these organs will help to massage & stimulate these organs allowing more immune cells & antibodies to be generated. A few postures that will help stimulate the immune system are the Tortoise pose ( Kurmasana) that helps stimulate the thymus glands, Inversions & forward bends such as Downward Facing Dog ( Adha Mukha Svanasana) help to drain the sinuses, Chest & lung openers such as Camel pose (Ustrasana) and Cobra Pose ( Bhujangasana) which also help to flush out the lungs & Restorative yoga poses such as Corpse Pose (Shavasana) and Shoulder Stand ( Shasangasana) which help calm the nervous system down and strengthen the body's immune response.

The thymus gland also corresponds to the fourth chakra and these postures if combined with fourth chakra sounds such as its mantra sound of "yum" or vowel sound of "ay" will improve the immune response. Yogic breathing practices such as Kapalbahti ( breath of fire) or just slow deep Ujjayi breathing done in chest opening postures will not only help to stimulate the thymus gland but also induce a sense of calmness and relaxation that will help boost the immune system further.

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Yoga to Increase Height

A good grow taller program should include a stretching routine. If you don't know any good routines, look no further than yoga to increase height. If you are not familiar yoga, it is an exercise philosophy in which the mind, body, and spirit comes together as one. The practice of yoga involves poses that stretch and strengthen the body. There are a variety of poses that hit the entire body once you get through a whole posing sequence.

There are certain exercises that help you grow taller by improving your posture and decompressing the spine. The spine has soft cartilage between the vertebrae. This cartilage gets compressed like a sponge due to gravity. There are stretching exercises that alleviate this compression to make your spine longer. Posture improvement also helps you grow taller. Posture issues can arise from muscle weaknesses or years of postural neglect. You can use yoga for height increase because it addresses all of the issues above.

The yoga poses are categorized into different groups. There are seated poses that are suitable for beginners and focus on flexibility. Twisting poses involve twisting your waist. These exercises are great for maintaining spine flexibility. Core strengthening poses strengthen the core which helps with posture. Forward bending pose are good for spine flexibility and decompression. There are many groups of poses and each group contains many different exercises.

If you need a stretching routine, you can employ yoga for height increase. There is much more to yoga philosophy than stretching, but you can incorporate many of their ideas into your stretching routine. You can find posing illustrations online. Combine this with good nutrition and sleep, and you'll have a solid routine.

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Restorative Yoga

Restorative Yoga goes beyond remedial yoga. It is the pathway to a very deep and profound self healing. Remedial Yoga works with people who have had specific injuries and helps them rebuild the function where the injury was whilst keeping the rest of their body mobilised. Restorative Yoga is also for people who have been ill or injured and are in their recovery period - but very specifically it is for people who are highly stressed and recognise that their levels of stress are affecting their body and their health badly.
A typical example of someone who would benefit from Restorative Yoga is a person who is becoming burnt out through their lifestyle and the particular demands it has. They probably would have been chronically stressed for some time and their bodies will be giving a lot of signals saying that it is getting too tired and depleted to carry on like this. They may have been told they have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, ME or fibromyalgia and warned against the perils of carrying on their current lifestyle.
As the body moves into this chronic state of stress and the systems such as the digestive system, the immune system and the cardio vascular system get more and more overloaded they stop working well. Bit by bit the person finds that they have a whole series of small health problems which then escalate into something more serious. For example, Angela got divorced 6 years ago and because she had to work so hard to try to keep up payments on her mortgage she was constantly worried and scared - but also physically tired running a job, seeing to her children and grandchild and keeping the house and garden under control. A couple of years later her mother became ill and needed nursing and attention and Angela found the energy from somewhere to give her mother the support she needed. However that was when she had her first asthma attack. After that she was always a bit worried that she would have another one and noticed that she quite often felt dizzy. Her doctor told her she needed to take it easier but that seemed out of the question to Angela given what was happening in her life. The following year she caught a very bad cold and that turned to bronchitis. Leaving her weak and ever more fatigued she then caught a series of flu viruses throughout that winter and the next. In summer she tended to feel better but as soon as winter began she would start to feel low and ill. She began to notice that she was sensitive to wheat and that her tummy didn't quite cope with eating late at night or very spicy dishes anymore. It just seemed to struggle to cope with whatever she put in it. Her energy got even lower and her spirits just wouldn't lift as she looked forward to a life of coping and struggling against feeling so poorly. Her doctor told her she was depressed and prescribed antidepressants for her. She also discovered that her blood pressure was higher than it had ever been before and was warning her like the red light flashing on the dashboard of the car - her petrol was about to run out!
Angela hated taking the anti-depression medication and really wanted to do something to help herself. This was when she came across Restorative Yoga and also began to see a herbal specialist who gave her some gentle natural remedies to support her very tired body and weakened systems as she did her new yoga practice. Restorative Yoga enabled her body to find a place of rest and balance again. For a short time every week Angela let her body be supported and very gently put into positions that opened her rib cage, stretched her spine and eased her digestive system. She learnt how to mediate while she was resting in the various poses that were right for her body. She also learnt how to breathe fully, yet gently, using all her lung capacity. Her body, which had been deprived of enough oxygen for so long with her shallow breathing pattern, responded very quickly as it absorbed the vital energy in the air. Her skin tone improved, her digestion strengthened and her heart rate calmed down as her body's nervous system realised that it didn't have to be in fight or flight mode every day. She taught her body that sometimes it is OK to be working at high gear - but when that time is over it is time to go back to a balanced state of mind and body.

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Yoga for Infertility

Unexplained infertility is when a couple fails to conceive following one year of unprotected intercourse and when all infertility tests show no abnormalities.
Unexplained infertility is very frustrating. Affected couples often go through numerous invasive and painful procedures. But the truth is that many of these couples have normal fertility, just taking longer to conceive. It is called sub-fertility and the purpose of therapy is to shorten the time of conception. Of course, you can start on fertility drugs, intrauterine insemination or injectable drugs but they all have so many side effects and can be even dangerous for your health.
In the last 5 years research have found that stress is a major reason for people's inability to conceive especially if their medical tests are normal. Stress influences hormonal and endocrine function, tightened the internal muscles (in the pelvis and around the uterus) and stimulate sympathetic nervous system (the fight and flight response system).
Over 80% of couples with unexplained infertility eventually conceive if they find a way to relax properly. Just going for a holiday is often not enough relaxation to be able to conceive. It has to be something more serious than just a holiday.
Special yoga postures can be a great alternative for people who trying to get pregnant but can't due to unexplained infertility.
Here are some for you.
1. Butterfly Pose. Sit on a blanket with the heels and soles of your feet together. Pull your feet in toward your body so that they are comfortable close. Rest your hands on the top of your feet. Close your eyes and focus on the organs inside your pelvis. Feel the blood flow inside the pelvis and gradually relax the pelvis internal muscles.
2. Squat Pose. Stand with your feet comfortably apart, placing your hands on your thighs for support. Bend your knees and slowly lower your buttocks down towards the floor. Clasp your palms and fingers together in front of your heart. Place elbows between knees and use your elbows to spread your knees apart.
3. Pigeon pose. Kneel down supporting yourself with your forearms. Crawl your right knee forward between your hands and slide your right heel toward your left hip. Extend your left leg back behind you, keeping the top of your foot and knee facing the floor. Repeat the pose on the other side.
4. Simple twist. Sit on a blanket with your legs crossed in front of you. Place your right hand behind you on your blanket with the base of your palm by your buttocks. Press into your palm and lengthen your spine. Reach your left hand across your body and rest it on your right knee. Inhale deeply. As you release your breath, begin twisting your torso to the right beginning with your waist. Continue twisting through your chest, shoulder, heck, and chin. Take another deep breath and try to twist a little father.
5. Pelvic tilt. Lie back on your blanket with your feet on the floor and your knees pointing towards the ceiling. Lengthen your neck and allow your shoulders to soften. Your arms rest at your sides. Lift your buttocks off the floor as high as you can, pressing your pubic bone towards the ceiling. Take a few long, slow breaths. Then begin to lower your spine, releasing one vertebra at a time until your buttocks are resting comfortably on the floor. Repeat the movement 5 times.
These 5 yoga poses can have significant effects on your ability to conceive and bear a healthy child because they play a major role in evoking a deep internal relaxation. The kind of relaxation which is necessary for people who suffer from unexplained infertility.
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