It’s amazing how our bodies work.  In particular, our energy.  The use of Energy Medicine and Yoga for pain management helped me recently when I had 4 molars extracted.  The two lower ones were ‘hooked’, where the root did not grow straight, it was hooked under/around my jaw bone.  While the mild sedative and freezing helped a bit, and I used Energy Medicine and Yoga-in particular yoga breathing (pranayama), to help calm my body and mind during the procedure.

I could feel the dentist pulling the first tooth.  Moving it back and forth to loosen it.  I could hear it tear away and decided that if I was going to get through 3 more extractions, I’d better calm down.  I didn’t want to stress out my body and carry that into the next days of healing ( I have a studio to run, and classes to teach, so being laid up for more than 4 days is not an option). So I did what I knew best:  breathed deeply and did some energy work.  I knew my body was stressing, even though I could barely feel it, so I held my triple warmer and spleen points by crossing my arms, one hand held my side rib cage and the other hand held the top of the opposite elbow.  I managed to tune into my deep, rhythmic breathing and kept thinking, “Just let go.  Let him take it. Just let go”.  I gave my tooth permission to release, all the while repeating the mantra.  I would switch holding the opposite rib/elbow combination every few minutes to keep the Triple Warmer meridian from over acting and taking energy from spleen meridian.  Triple Warmer meridian is responsible for ‘flight or fight’ so i knew I had to hold these points.  When the doctor took a break, I stole this time to do a triple warmer smoothie by tracing from my temple to behind my ears (as if I was smoothing the hair behind my ears) while breathing deeply.  I also wanted to make sure my energy was running the right way so I tapped my Kidney 27 point under my collar bone and my thymus (tarzan thump) and spleen (side ribs). He was back.  The last tooth was a challenge!  He spent a lot of time wiggling it (more like yanking it) back and forth and I felt like my jaw was going to unhinge!  I felt my heart racing, and that made me concentrate even more on my breath, the Triple Warmer and Spleen Hold and my Mantra:  Just let it go.  The dentist rested again.  He took a phone call and I could hear the patient was not so happy, and he was stressing out while he was speaking to them.  I did not want this negative energy to transfer into my energy or my treatment so I quickly Zipped Up my Central Meridian and imagined a protective ‘egg’ around me so that his energy would not affect me.  When he came back into the room and continued the extraction, he said he could not believe how calm I was (compared to the phone call he just had) and that I was his best patient and at the same time the most difficult extraction.  I told him I was doing Yoga and holding points.  He asked me if I could show him the points because he couldn’t believe that I wasn’t either crying or smacking him for the pain I was going through…or was I?

Every day for me is a gift when I can tap into energy and yoga to calm myself, to feel happy or to reduce pain.  I hope my experiences help you.  Namaste

Today is december 18th.  What are you doing the next five days?  Shopping frantically for last minute gifts, in corwded malls, stressing yourself out.  All the while the bears are sleeping peacefully and heavily in their dens.  Why can’t we be more like bears?

In fact, we should be.  Especially from the 20 to abou the 24 th of December.  Our bodies naturally go into ‘hibernation’ mode around December 21st.  It’s a time when we should get the most rest, eat hearty warm foods, and reduce stress.  But, we never do.  In fact, this is the week, or the days that we seem to be the busiest.  So, this is when we are susceptable to colds, flus, aches and pains.  You’re body is trying to tell you to SLOW DOWN and REST!

Keep your energies in tact this holiday season when you’re out shopping by doing the following:   Celtic Weave and Aura Weave:  Criss-cross your arms from above your head to your feet, weaving figure 8′s in the air around you.  Set the intention to include your back body too!   Zip Up: from your pubic bone to your bottom lip, draw a line to ‘zip up’ your central meridian and keep ‘energy vampires’ at bay.  Hook up central and governing meridian by placing a middle finger in your belly button and one between the brow: press down and pull up and take 3 deep breaths.  This will keep your energy flowing in the correct direction.  Finally, tap directly uner your eye.  When you feel stressed, smooth around your ears as if you were putting your hair behind your ear or just hug yourself.

Be sure to take Wednesday December 21st to do something quiet for yourself.  A restorative yoga class is a great treat!

Have a Happy Holiday Season and a most Joyous New Year!

Fall is a time of change.  Mother Nature sheds her summer coat and prepares for the white blanket of winter.  Energies change: we tend to be more vulnerable to colds and flu this time of year.  If we live the cycles of nature, we would recognize Fall as a time of shedding (like the leaves falling off the trees).  Summer was a time of fun, play, holidays, family and lots of interaction with other people.  Fall is the time to let it all go.  We may feel our energies vibrating lower with the shorter days and darkness falling upon us sooner.  We may feel a longing in our hearts to reconnect with those summer-time friends.  If we fail to shed in the fall, we tend to weaken our immune system and get ill.  It’s and energy thing, after all.

To protect yourself from viruses, Expel Venom, and do the cross hold (while sitting in a hot bath).  To expel venom, stand with your palms on your front legs, make fists with your hands (and imagine you are grabbing that which you want to expel) and raise your fists above your head and then throw it out (literally throw ‘it’ into the ground) making a ‘whoosh’ sound.  Repeat 4 times.    The cross hold is done sitting down.  Cross your ankles and cross your arms.  Press your thumbs into your biceps and press your elbows into your inner thighs just above your knee joint.  Stay for 4-6 deep breaths and repeat with your arms and legs crossed the opposite way.

When you feel your sinuses are clogging up, do some yoga.  Try rabbit pose: start in child’s pose (from hands and knees position, round your back like a cat and sit down on your heels in child’s pose) take your hands behind your back and interlace your fingers.  If your forehead does not touch the floor, then place your head on a yoga block.  lift your hips off your heels and roll onto the top of your head while you stretch your arms up and away from your back.  Stay for 2 long breaths and come back down into child’s pose.  Alternatively, you can just do child’s pose and rock your forehead side to side on the floor/yoga block.  Now sit cross-legged or in Hero pose (sitting between your shin bones or on your heels).  Place your thumbs on your cheek bones and press in and up.  Your finger tips are resting on your forehead.  Take in a deep breath and as you exhale, roll down bringing your head toward the floor (but not onto the floor, just roll down as far as you can in the position you are in).  Inhale to come up while pressing your thumbs into your cheek bones.  Repeat 6 more times.  Then just massage across your forehead to your temples.  Finish with a nice sinus massage:  along the top brow, below the eye along the bottom eye socket, across your cheek bones to your temples.  Massage your ears.  Press the point just in front of your ear and above your jaw bone.  Tug on your ears.  Finish with a Triple Warmer Smoothie: fingers at the temples, one deep breath.  Slide fingers above ears, one deep breath.  Slide fingers behind ears, along neck and off shoulder as you exhale.

Drink lots of hot water and lemon.  (or even add a bit of honey and cayenne pepper).

shed unwanted eneries to keep yourself healthy and prepare for the hibernation stage of winter!

namaste

When i was six years old my aunt took me across the Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver, BC.  I remember freezing in the middle of the bridge, terrified of falling, of it breaking.  I remember hanging on to the sides of the bridge and walking to the other side…and no one would move, so I (this tiny 6 year old child) would have to let go and make my way down the middle.  So i froze, right there in the middle of the bridge.  Crying…Why did no one help me?  Where are the people who supposedly loved me and why did they just leave me here in the middle of this terrifying bridge with all these people?  Someone finally did come back to get me and help me across and quite frankly i do not remember going back.  Maybe I blocked it out or we went down another way.  Either way, that ordeal has scarred me for life. Or Had it?

I had been dealing with my fear of heights: the fact that I had trouble walking down stairs (especially if someone was behind me), fear of ladders, and all high places, especially bridges and look-outs.  I attribute my fear to that day on the bridge.  This past weekend my husband and I did an Eco Adventure tour.  We toured some caves, went hiking and found ourselves as the foot of a suspension bridge.  I was determined to cross it.  The park was not that busy, so there were times when we were the only ones at the bridge.  I would go maybe 20 steps with determination, only to freeze and walk backwards to the start.  I did this three times.  My husband said “Let’s do some yoga” and walked 50 paces on the bridge, turned around and did a perfect tree pose.  My turn, I walked the 20 paces I could and sat down and did a simple cross-legged pose.  Then I stood up and did Tree pose.  I mustered up the courage to go across and did some EFT.  (tapping along the meridian points to get rid of my fear).  As I stood there at the start of the bridge, my husband said “I’m going” and off he went.  I stayed there and tapped out my fear:  “even though I am terrified to cross this bridge, I truly and deeply love and accept myself” as I tapped the inner corner of my eye, outer corner of eye, upper lip, bottom lip, collar bone, side ribs, top of head.  Take a deep breath:  continue to tap repeating:  ” My fear of falling, my fear of it breaking…” and going through all my fears.  Then some new fears began to surface as I took myself back to that day when I was 6 years old,  that I didn’t realize were deeply embedded in me since i was six.  “My fear of being abandonded, my fear of being left here, my fear of no respect, my fear of falling, my fear of being left alone, my fear of being forgotten, my fear of being small, my fear of crowds, my fear of lots of people”  all came up as i tapped these points.  With each round, I took a deep breath.  Finally I was ready to go…

As I got 20 paces into the walk across the bridge, I could feel the fear rising, so I re-assured myself that it’s just a bridge, it’s safe, it’s not going to break.  I repeated my phrases and imagined tapping the points and I reassured myself that my loving husband was on the other side.  The next thing I knew: i was across.  Hooray!  i did it!

We had a little celebration of my accomplishment and I was ready to go back.  We waited until we were the last ones, and no one else was coming and off i went.  I walked at a quick pace, repeating my affirmations:  It’s just a bridge, it’s safe, it won’t break.  Towards the end, i started to panic so I tapped my fear point on the back of my hand (and it was painful) until I got safely to the end.  I DID IT!!!

To me, fear is Feeling Excited And Ready.  Fear is that emotion that your body feels when it knows it’s releasing doubt, and it’s ready to take on the challenge.  EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is a great tool to learn (emofree.com) and was developed by Gary Craig. (you can read about him on his sight emofree.com) When you pledge your greatest love, you face your greatest fear.  It’s that emotion that arises when you really really want something, when at a soul level, you’re ready, but at a human level (the brain kicks in) you feel an emotion: FEAR.  Just remember that fear is your soul FEELING EXCITED AND READY.

I find it difficult to get out of bed some days.  And when i do finally place my feet on the floor, I’m lethargic, ‘heavy’ and still very tired.  So, before I get out of my comfy, warm bed, i do the following:

Morning stretch: arms above the head, pinted toes, stretching the front of my body, legs, and hands.  Then I put my arms by my side and stretch out the bottoms of my feet, spreading my toes and curling them back like i’m lifting them off the floor.  I stretch my ears, rolling out the cartilidge and pulling down on my earlobes.

Hook Up: I place one middle finger in my navel and one on my third eye (between my brows).  Press down and pull up: hooking up the central and governing meridians to jump start my day.

5 minute routine:  i then do a quick 5 minute energy routine:  thump beneath my colar bone (4 deep breaths with each round), thump my chest like tarzan, massage below my armpits: 4 inches or so at the spleen point.  Then I do a cross over pattern as i march in place:  right hand to left knee and vice versa.  I pull apart my skull, from front hairline to base of neck.  I massage where my arms attach to my torso, along my sternum, along the bottom ribcage, under my bra line, the pubic bone area, and up and down the side seams of my legs.  I stand with my ankles crossed and my wrists crossed in front of me for four breaths and switch sides.  Then i ZIP Up the front of my body from the pubic bone to my bottom lip three times while repeating a positive affirmation.

All ready to go!!!

As I delve deeper into yogic scripture, I find myself understanding more and more the complexity of the mind and how it affects us.  When I say the mind, I mean the intellectual mind, the one that does all the thinking.  The one that holds all our stories.

It’s the stories we have that cause suffering:  the inability to let go of habits that harm us: negative thinking, bad thoughts towards others, assumptions, addictions.  We come into this life holding past ‘karmas’.  (We hear that word alot; karma, and we over use it.  The true meaning of ‘karma’ is:” activity in general.  Karma, or the subtle effect caused by the actions and violations of an unenlightened individual, which is responsible for his or her rebirth and also for the experiences during the present life and future lives.  The idea behind all of India’s liberation teachings is to escape the effects of past karma and prevent the production of new karma, whether good or bad.”1) (source: The Yoga Tradition by Georg Feuerstein, PhD)

The hardest thing to accomplish in this Life of Yoga is to recognize your actions, what you do, and how they affect you and those around you.  Everyone has a ‘story’.  Everyone has suffering in their lives.  We may look at the rich and famous and say “Why are they not suffering?  They have everything”  They may have everything that MONEY can BUY, but do they have love and support, a happy marriage?  Are their hearts happy?We can’t say for sure.  We don’t know what another human being is thinking, not even our spouses or families.  We get caught in human suffering when we get caught in our stories.  Have you ever tried to NOT share your story?  The story you wanted to share so badly about something that happened to you yesterday or the day before, or right now.  The incident that happened to you that allowed you to feel a negative emotion, and all you wanted to do was share that story of that incident with someone?  Think about this:  If what happend to you yesterday, the other day, or today caused YOU to feel NEGATIVE, than why would you want to ‘share’ that story, that incident with another human being?  Would sharing it make them feel good or bad?  Why would you deliberately want another human being to ‘feel bad’?  Why would you share that story if you knew it made you feel bad?  Would making another person feel bad make you feel good?????  Instead, try this:  Take a deep breath.  Ask yourself:  “Why did that incident cause me to feel what I felt?  Do I want to feel this way? (for the rest of the day?”)  If the answer is NO:  LET IT GO!!!!!!  Breathe it out of your body until you feel ‘good’ again.  Tell it you no longer want it, you no longer want to feel negative nor do you wish to allow another human being to feel negative because of it.  Say “Goodbye” to it and Let It GO!

I will admit, it will creap up on you.  Days later, it will rear it’s ugly head.  Your desire to share the story will rise, but you’ll be strong.  You’ll remember how miserable it made You feel and you’ll remember that you do not want to be the one to contribute to having another human being feel that way.  Acknowledge it, and let it go again. This story does not need to be told.  This story has a happy ending: It was set free.   This is Living La Vita Yoga.

I eat an early dinner (between 4pm -5pm) so that I have enough energy to teach my evening yoga classes (usually 2 back-to-back from 6-7:15pm and 8-9:15).  When I get home, I’m usually hungry….well my body definately thinks it’s hungry…but most likely I’m thirsty.  OR bored.  So, I reach for what I call ‘easy snack foods’ which are usually found in my husband’s cupboard.  Yes, we have separate cupboards of food.  His has things like cookies, salted soda crackers, bread, pasta, chololate….the ‘bad’ cupboard.  Which is perfectly fine for him; he can eat anything and not gain an ounce!  Me, on the other hand will start to feel heavy, bloated, and tired if I eat any processed food from his cupboard.  So, I have things like quinoa, nuts, raisins, dried fruit, grains,  etc. in my cupboard.  Things that take longer to prepare and are not ‘ready made’ foods.  SO, I find myself indulging in his snack cupboard.  I told him it wasn’t fair and that his cupboard was tempting me and he suggest he put a lock on it….I half agreed.

Instead, I will cultivate my Energy Medicine and share with you a simple technique to Change a Habit:  the Temporal Tap.

The left side of your temporal lobe is the place we will start with.  It begins at the left temple and goes around your left ear to the neck.  This is the ‘Negative’ side.  (the right side will be the ‘Positive” side).  Think of a habit you wish to change.  ie:  “I don’t want to eat late at night”.  Now that’s what is considered a ‘negative’ statement because it has a negative word in it: ‘don’t”.  (choose negative words like: can’t, won’t, no, not)etc.  Now format that same phrase or feeling into a positive statement:  “I feel satisfied when I eat my early dinner.”    Using the ‘negative’ statement, Tap along your LEFT temporal lobe about 5 times while repeating the phrase: “I don’t want to eat late at night.”  Stop: Breathe.  Now tap the ‘Positive’ statement on the right temporal lobe:  “I feel satisfied when I eat my early dinner.”  about 5 times.  Stop:  breathe.  How do you feel?  Do you still desire that which we are releasing?  Do it again, and try to find words that fit and resonate with you.  Do it until it has no reaction any more.  DONE!

Simple as that.  Your mind will want you to stay with the old habit because it is familiar with it.  Your Temporal Tap will help ZAP it out!!! You may be left with just the old thought, but not the desire.

The energy around me today was very heavy and low.  I could feel disappointment and a bit of anger radiating from people.  To stay protected, I did a Zip Up.  (place your hands on your pubic bone and run your Central Meridian: zipping up from pubic bone to bottom lip.  Do this 3times).  Communication was a struggle.  In order to keep those lines of communication open (and to avoid saying ‘the wrong thing’) try recharging your batteries.  Sit with your right ankle crossed over your left knee.  Squeeze the sides of your feet from big toe to your heel and back up again (stimulating Liver, Spleen and Kidney meridians).  Sweep hand-over-hand from your inner big toe to your inner heel, then go up the inside of the leg to the knee, then knee to hip.  Your right hand traces up the side of your body into your armpit to just 4 inches below the armpit (spleen point).  The left hand traces up over the chest to the Right Collar Bone notch (Kidney 27 point).  Tap, tap, tap, these 2 points simultaneously as you take 3 deep breaths: in through the nose and out through the mouth.  Shake off your hands.  Repeat other side.

Now for some yoga:  stretch the side body in a lateral table pose, turning your head to the left and flexing your spine so that you can see your left hip.  Repeat on the other side: back and forth 4 times each side.  Stretch into a big cat pose, rounding your back, tucking your tailbone and dropping the chin to the chest.  Inhale and look up, tip the tail bone up and let your belly droop.  Do a few rounds of this Cat/Cow warm up.  I like to do a few rounds of Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutations).  That can be enough for now!  Just get that energy moving. 

Easy yoga:  sit in a chair and inhale as you circle your arms up over your head, exhale and circle your arms down to your side.  Do about five rounds and really concentrate on moving with the breath.  When you do this exercise with the palms facing outwards, you lower the blood pressure, stimulate the Parasympathetic Nervous System and bring a sense of calmness.  Great for today’s ‘heavy energy.’

Finally, get grounded:  go for a walk outside.  The easiest way to get grounded is to be in nature.  (preferably barefoot! But we can save that for summer weather).  Breathe in the fresh air and all it’s goodness.  Walk slow and observe.

If you are struggling with emotional blocks, inability to ‘let go’ or just feel drained of energy: send me an email and I’ll post a solution to assist you.

Namaste,

Noelle