Traditional Asian Medicine and Therapies: ноября 2008

среда, 26 ноября 2008 г.

7 Fertility-Boosting Tips from Traditional Chinese Medicine

Want to give your chances of getting pregnant an all-natural boost from the world of Traditional Chinese Medicine? Here’s the scoop on TCM…

The Scoop

At a fertility seminar in New York City’s ultra-hip Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn (Michelle Williams and Maggie Gyllenhaal are just a few of the famous moms who calls the place home), acupuncturist and natural fertility specialist Alexander Goldberg highlighted the role Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and mind/body techniques can play in boosting a woman’s odds for having a baby. Couldn’t make the talk? Here are Goldberg’s top seven tips for improved fertility:

Increase blood flow to your reproductive organs: TCM practitioners say that a stressful lifestyle pulls the body’s blood flow and attention away from reproductive, baby-making organs and funnels it instead to your arms and legs (part of the body’s “fight or flight” response). To change this course, use acupuncture to help reproductive organs receive optimal blood flow, or try focused relaxation (i.e., mentally going to your “happy place”), massage, or a de-stressing yoga session.
Get your hormones into balance: Conception becomes tricky when your reproductive hormones are off-kilter. And what’s often the culprit behind a hormonal imbalance? Again, it’s stress: women with high-stress lifestyles may produce more of the hormone prolactin, which may them impede ovulation. Besides using strategies to cut down on stress in your life, certain herbs from TCM may be beneficial—as can simply eating a healthy diet and exercising, two of the best ways to bring the body’s hormones back into balance.
Improve emotional health: According to TCM, two of the most common organ systems addressed in fertility are the liver and the lungs. The liver is related to anger, frustration, stress, and desire. So, it’s no wonder why one of the most common TCM diagnoses for infertility is Liver Qi stagnation. The lungs are related to sadness, grief, and holding on. How to get the fertility “chi” flowing? Make sure to find time to calm your mind through acupuncture, yoga, or meditation.
Avoid dampness: Dampness accumulates in our bodies and causes blockages in the form of cysts and fibroids that can make getting pregnant difficult, says practitioners of TCM. If you’re trying to become pregnant, eliminate damp food like milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, ice cream, greasy foods, and alcohol. Wet clothing, humid environments, and moist basements should also be avoided.
Chart your cycle: Charting your basal body temperature can help you determine when you’re ovulating, whether ovulation occurs on the optimal day and if your body is at a temperature conducive for fertility. Western medicine believes in this one, too! Look for special basal thermometers at your local pharmacy.
Make sure your body is receptive to conception: The perfect woman? If we go by what we see in magazines, she’s very thin, muscular, and extremely active. According to TCM, these values do not support the concept of fertility, which is warm, enveloping, holding, and supportive. If you are constantly expending all of your energy working out or following the latest fad diet, there may not be enough energy left to support new life. In other words: everything in moderation.
Don’t obsess: The more emphasis we put on our tries for a baby not succeeding in any given month, the more stress and frustration we create for ourselves. This in turn, may create more fertility hurdles. In TCM, it is thought that having a passive attitude toward your outcome and being more conscious of the process are what will help you maintain balance and, ultimately, give you the results you want.

Your Fertility

Will these tips work for you? A growing number of doctors in the US are fans of techniques like acupuncture for treating a host of health conditions, including infertility, while some remain skeptical. Thinking about taking herbs or other medicines from the world of TCM? Check with your doctor first to make sure they don’t interfere with any other medications you may be taking. But advice to follow a healthy diet? Thus is something you should be doing anyway!

Original article and pictures take www.babble.com site

среда, 12 ноября 2008 г.

6 Eastern Cures for Western Workout Problems

Ease sore muscles, relieve pain, and recover faster with these Chinese treatments

Charlotte Hilton Andersen

The high of going all-out during a workout and the results you see make you feel amazing—the achy or tight muscles that can also result? Not so much. And while foam rolling, heating and icing, and pain relievers can all help, sometimes modern cures aren't enough.

Traditional Chinese Medicine has been used for thousands of years to treat pretty much any ailment—and some of the remedies may help boost your fitness, TCM experts say. Here's the scoop on six treatments for active women.

RELATED: Wanna change an "ow" to "oh!"? Try these six unconventional ways to treat sore muscles.

You can boost flexibility—key for improving range of motion so you can get the most out of your workouts—without stretching or yoga.

During gua sha, a practitioner lubricates the body with oils and then uses a round-edged instrument such as a Chinese soup spoon, a blunt bottle cap, or even an animal bone to firmly scrape the skin with repeated strokes. The treatment can be soothing or quite aggressive depending on the person performing it and intensity of the desired treatment; either way it results in small red or purple spots called “sha,” which are actually subcutaneous blemishing, bruising, or broken capillaries based on how much pressure is used, and may take several days to weeks to disappear.

While generally performed over certain energy spots or “meridians” over the entire body, gua sha can be used to treat specific areas as well. In addition to increasing flexibility, it can help relieve muscle tension and stiffness from a hard workout, says Lisa Alvarez, co-founder of Healing Foundations, an Oriental medicine practice. She adds that it also helps with other conditions caused by tight or sore muscles such as TMJ and tension headaches.

Your workout is only as good as your recovery, as muscles grow when you’re resting. You may be able to speed up all of this with acupressure, the needle-less cousin of acupuncture.

"Using fingers or a tool to apply firm pressure to energy points of the body balances circulation and stimulates the body’s natural healing abilities,” Alvarez says. Each spot is thought to correspond with specific ailments, injuries, or pain, so pressing somewhere on your foot may in fact help with tight hamstrings.

Acupressure is so simple you can treat yourself, Alvarez says, and get some immediate relief instead of waiting for an appointment. One of her favorite points for athletes is the large intestine 4 acupoint found on the hand between the thumb and forefinger. “Applying pressure to this area is great for relieving any type of pain in the low back, whether it’s from deadlifts or PMS,” she says.

Sometimes you push a little too hard or stretch a little too far, and while there's no break or sprain, something’s most definitely out of whack. If you can handle the intensity, Active Release Technique (ART) may help.

During a session, the therapist manipulates muscles and other soft tissues, and moves or leads the patient through specified movements. This all separates scar tissue from the underlying muscle, which helps reestablish proper, healthy mechanical functioning and improves flexibility, says Craig Thomas, a massage therapist and acupuncturist. In order to relax patients and open up the body to maximize the benefits, some practitioners also incorporate shiatsu, a Japanese form of acupressure, and Thai massage, wherein they user their body weight—often leaning against or even sitting on the client—to pull and push.

This is perfect for treating the overuse injuries lifelong athletes often incur, Thomas says, because it not only fixes the immediate source of the pain but also corrects the underlying structural problems that allowed the injury to happen in the first place.

A massage can be super relaxing and relieve sore muscles—if you're not self-conscious about lying naked underneath just a sheet. But the Japanese have a solution for the shy: Reiki is a form of touch therapy based on the belief that energy can be channeled through the practitioner’s hands to heal the spirit of the patient, which promotes deep relaxation, revitalizes, and resets the body’s energy field, Alvarez says.

While you lie fully clothed on a massage table, the reiki practitioner places their hands on or slightly above areas on the front and back of the body, most often where illness or pain is felt. In Western versions of reiki, practitioners usually focus on the seven chakras that run from the crown of the head to the end of the spine, while in traditional Japanese reiki, the focus is on the energy or balance meridians, which are found over the whole body.

Reiki is often used in conjunction with other treatments such as acupuncture to “provide a deeper healing and rejuvenating experience," Alvarez says. She adds that its many fitness benefits include overall relaxation, pain management, reduction of soreness, and even aiding more Western therapies such as physical rehab by helping the person relax and remain open.

The mind is a powerful tool, but as anyone who's gobbled a chocolate doughnut while on a diet can confirm, getting it to work for you and not against you can be half the battle when it comes to making healthier choices. One way to help rule your thoughts is emotional freedom techniques (EFT), a method based off of acupuncture, neuro-linguistic programming (a behavior modification technique), energy medicine, and Thought Field Therapy (a psychological technique that uses tapping on certain meridians).

“The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system,” says Gary Craig, the founder of one popular style of EFT. Whereas treatments such as acupuncture are primarily focused on physical ailments, EFT focuses on emotional issues and involves performing a prescribed series of tapping or pressing on acupressure or meridian points on the body while repeating a mantra. Sometimes other steps are involved such as counting backward, singing a song, or moving the eyes in specified ways, as instructed by the therapist.

As it’s designed to complement other types of Eastern methodologies, simple to learn and perform, and doesn’t require any special tools or equipment, EFT can work for almost everyone, Craig says, to enhance willpower and focus to help you stay on course with your healthy living goals.

When you’re struggling to eke out that last squat, pollution is likely one of the last things on your mind. However, according to Alvarez, air quality actually impacts your workout because internal and external toxins accumulate in the body over time and can significantly affect your muscle endurance.

To release this toxic buildup, she recommends cupping, a treatment where 1- to 3-inch glass or plastic cups are placed strategically over your body. The practitioner creates a vacuum in the cup by briefly holding a lit cotton ball underneath it or using a hot water bath, rubber ball, or other mechanism, and then lays the cup mouth-side down on the body. The slight vacuum is said to extract toxins by increasing blood flow to the muscle and tissue underneath, thereby helping the body cleanse itself, reduce inflammation, and stimulate healing. Alvarez says it’s like a “reverse” massage: “Instead of pushing the muscles into the body to get them to relax, suction is used to gently pull the muscle tissue upward to help it release.”

Cupping is often used for athletes to treat sore muscles, but it can also help with injuries and pain, including strained shoulders. Alvarez says many of her clients see results both in their comfort level and in the gym in just one session.

Original article and pictures take www.shape.com site

воскресенье, 2 ноября 2008 г.

5 Steps to Recover from Illness

Ayurveda and Yoga, given as sister sciences thousands of years ago, help us find balance in our lives, bodies and minds. In modern times, when we are pulled from one urgent task to the next, find relief in “vegging out” and eat for convenience, these ancient teachings of balance have never been more relevant.

Far too often, I see clients who come to me to address chronic health concerns that are the result of many years of asking their bodies to do more with less. I hear stories of people who are sick with the flu but continue to go to work every day, or people who are recovering from surgery trying to go right back to their old jogging regime. Illness is a sign—a big red flag on the highway of life—of an imbalance in our bodies. When we overlook that important state of recovery, we throw our bodies into a deeper state of imbalance that can lead to more serious issues in the long term.

About 12 years ago, I felt several lumps on my side. I had also lost a significant amount of weight but hadn’t realized it. My father had just passed and it was a drawn out event.

I was diagnosed with leukemia, but opted out of the traditional chemotherapy and radiation and instead used my training in Ayurveda and Yoga to guide my healing.

I knew that the most important thing I needed to do was to give myself the space to heal and not pretend that I was exactly the same as I was before this imbalance had emerged. I changed my dinacharya, daily routine, to allow more time for rest, daily abhyanga, meditation and intuitive energy practice, along with eating daily meals of kitchari or kunyi. After six months, I felt well enough to begin surfing again. And though my recovery wasn’t complete, I knew I was going to be okay.

When our bodies are healing from an illness, whether it is surgery, the flu or cancer, they are working twice as hard to bring us back to a state of balance. In order to feel better—and by better, I mean better than you felt before you got sick—it’s critical to give your body the time and space it needs to rejuvenate. That comes from changing your dinacharya during and after illness to provide your body extra support to come back to your optimal state.

A regular dinacharya consists of times for bodily care, meditation, exercise, eating and sleeping. When you are sick, a supportive dinacharya can bring your body back to a state of balance. Here’s a simple dinacharya that can help you recover from illness and feel better than ever.

1. Make rest your first priority. When you are sick, your body is hard at work healing. This means you need to give yourself plenty of time in a relaxing environment away from stressful activities. Let your work responsibilities—neither you nor your job will benefit from pushing beyond your abilities—and aim to get between 8-9 hours of sleep. Typically sleeping during the day is not recommended in Ayurveda, but in a state of recovery from acute illness or surgery, naps can help your body recover faster.

2. Nourish your body with abhyanga. Applying warm oil to your skin every morning rejuvenates your tissues. Your skin is your biggest organ, so oleating your body replenishes the unctuous elements that have been lost, plus it’s a wonderful practice in self-care. Abhyanga is especially helpful when the oil is decocted with herbs that address imbalance.

3. Drink your fluids. Start your day with a cup of hot water to liquefy any stagnant kapha and ama, or toxins, and get your agni moving. Sip ginger tea (just a couple slices of fresh ginger in warm water will do) or tea made with cumin, coriander and fennel throughout the day to improve your digestion and help your body release ama.

4. Go within to heal. Spend more time in meditation and inward contemplation. Focus on living in the present moment, releasing fear and patterns that no longer serve you. Look for the emotional aspects of the imbalance and let them go without judgment. If you have a regular pranayama practice, hold off during your recovery. In a state of weakness, your energy channels are not at their optimal level. Pranayama can push your body to expend energy that it needs for healing.

5. Eat well to feel better. You may not be hungry, but eating at regular times throughout the day gives your body the fuel it needs to heal. Be very supportive to your digestion by eating plain kitchari with no vegetables (you can find a recipe here) or kunyi, a soupy rice mixture made with a ratio of 6:1 water to white basmati rice, a teaspoon of ghee, a pinch of turmeric, and salt. Stop eating at your first burp, since that is your body’s signal that it is full and overeating taxes your body with extra work. About 10 minutes before each meal, get your body ready to digest by chewing a ginger appetizer made from ¼ tsp. fresh, grated ginger with 2–3 drops of lime juice and a pinch of mineral salt.

Recovering from illness or surgery can take time, especially if it is chronic or the result of a longstanding imbalance. When you feel anxious or scared, take 12 deep breaths to rebalance. Don’t push yourself to go back to your normal routine until you have fully recovered. And remember – no matter where you begin, there is always a path to your natural state of health.

Original article and pictures take www.banyanbotanicals.com site