There is a concept in Ayurveda called prana or in other words life force energy.
Everything that I share with you will boost your prana. I promise you that my little golden gems of knowledge will help you step into your power and vitality.
Breathwork is sacred to me. In practicing yoga, I get to dance with my breath. Learning this sacred dance of the breath has been crucial for me to heal my body pain. Seriously!
Before I tapped into my breath and how to move and groove with it, I was literally in chronic pain wrestling with high levels of stress hormones and chronic fatigue, and later on diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
If you haven’t experienced the power of breathwork, then you haven’t experienced life to the fullest.
Breathwork is just one way to build prana in the body, but there are a multitude of ways to build prana. Prana is also in the food we eat, the vital living force of living plants not frankenstein processed foods. Prana is the energy that drives life, the power that animates the body, enlivens our minds, and is in attune to the soul. Prana is in every living organism and inanimate object on this planet, and we are in a constant dance with pranic energy all of the time.
Chakras and Nadis
I liken prana to atomic energy. Prana literally translates to the breath of life, and it is dynamic in how it enlivens our bodies. When prana is balanced, it flows freely through our chakras, and through all of the intricate channels of our bodies called nadis or meridians. There are said to be thousands of nadis throughout the body. Thus, prana is at work in each living cell in our body.
Some people have described prana as lifetrons. In other words, it is the cosmic vibratory energy that is omnipresent in the universe, structuring and sustaining all things. It pervades all atoms in the universe and every place in the cosmos. It is considered the primal, direct, subtle link between matter and spirit.
Prana is the intelligent force that the soul directs, or in other words the force that the soul uses to bring life into the body – the force between the soul and the body. When our body is no longer enlivened by the breath (the life force) we die, but after prana leaves the body the soul carries on beyond the physical form.
Prana, Tejas and Ojas
Prana, Tejas and Ojas are considered subtle forms of Vata, Pitta and Kapha the three Doshas. These three forces are interrelated. Prana is considered the energy and strength that comes from Ojas (immunity). Ojas is the stamina of the mind and nervous system for holding both tejas and prana. You can think of prana as the electricity that courses through our Electromagnetic Field.
Prana is the subtle form of Vata responsible for respiration, digestion (Samana Vayu), circulation, excretion and much more. It is the vital force of Prana that flows through the seven invisible wheels of energy (chakras) correlated to our major nerve plexuses.
Prana governs movement in the body, and thus why it animates the body. When prana becomes disturbed the breath is shallow, and thus leads to a host of diseases, such as breathlessness, asthma, bronchitis, cold, congestion, cough, etc.
Depleting Prana
Prana can become depleted when we are stressed, overworked, and our digestive fire is weak, then our immunity suffers. The quickest way to weaken prana is through too much mental activity when the mind is moving a mile a minute. Fear, anxiety and overwhelm are signs that prana is depleted.
When we are constantly extending our energy outward, then we deplete our vital life force. Our society has trained us to always be on the go. As a culture, we are driven to constantly be working, doing, succeeding, thriving, accomplishing, achieving, etc.
Tips to Restore Prana
Eat fresh, organic living plants
Aim for quality sleep to restore the body
Reduce Stress
Spend time with living plants in nature, forest bathing, earthing, etc.
Do you wake up groggy and dread the alarm clock, or do you pop out of bed ready to start your day like a whistling dixie? Well if you are like me, you’ve spent most of your life dreading the alarm clock and the wee hours of the morning.
Ayurveda gives us really clear instructions on how to begin and end our days like bookends. If the book ends aren’t there the bookshelf may look quite messy.
Using the concepts of Ayurveda, I went from feeling like a drunken sailor in the morning to no longer dreading the morning. I learned to eat lighter at night, go to bed early, and wake up feeling refreshed.
Most people think their morning starts when the alarm goes off, but actually your morning starts the night before. What you do the night before sets you up for success the next day.
In this short video, you’ll learn why this is so important:
Learn how you might be causing yourself jet lag with your habits around sleep.
Having energy in the morning is possible by switching up your routine.
By working with your day-light cycles you can have a productive morning.
If you’re struggling in the morning, it probably means you’re packin’ some serious ama aka toxicity in the body, and it isn’t a pretty picture my love. If you haven’t dialed in your digestion, sleep and wake/dark cycles for your physiology and energetic body, called your Dosha in Ayurveda, then you are missing out on deep cellular intelligence.
It is my intention to get you back on track. You just need to understand how the Circadian Rhythm works to optimize the morning hours. You already know that the day is divided into two 12 hours cycles am and pm, but did you know that it is broken into 3 cycles within a 12 hour period? Each four-hour period within 12 hours repeats twice a day. These Ayurvedic 3 four-hour cycles Vata, Pitta and Kapha are backed by circadian science.
Kapha Time – Morning hours 6 am – 10 am
After sunrise, the element of Kapha increases in the body, and it corresponds to the Earth and Water Element and the Spring Season. The morning is a heavy time of day. Do you ever wake up feeling groggy, stiff, and dull? If so, then you are experiencing the energy of Kapha. If you feel heavy then you aren’t working with your circadian rhythm properly.
Vata Time – 2 am to 6 am
If you wake up prior to 6 am then you are experiencing the element of Vata. You can avoid morning stiffness, making morning the best time for kickstarting your day the Ayurvedic Way. Studies show that morning exercise lowers stress hormones. By waking up with sunrise, the time when the nighttime switches over to the early morning hours, you can ride the way of this energy throughout the day. This is the time to start and do all your morning practices called Dinacharya.
If this interests you, I offer a yearlong course in synching up to nature’s rhythms called the Alchemy and Art of Loving Yourself. Click here to learn more!
Suffering from Poor Sleep? Try Out the Ayurvedic Clock for Sleep!
Are you getting good quality sleep? The American Sleep Association reports that 50 to 70 million adults have a sleep disorder.
48% report snoring, which isn’t a good trait to have for health purposes, and lastly 37.9% reported unintentionally falling asleep during the day. Those statistics look a bit grim wouldn’t you say?
How much sleep you clock in at night matters for disease prevention. In Ayurveda and Integrative Health, we are circadian beings which means we have a day/night cycle by design. The problem is that the majority of people think they are night owls, and they stay up way past bedtime.
Check out this quick video I prepared to learn about the Ayurvedic Clock for Sleep.
Insight into how you might be overstimulating yourself before sleep
Blue light affects sleep patterns
Align to Your Energetic Body
I hope this video helped sparked some interest in how you align your biological clock with your day. Most Americans are working against their energetic body. Ayurveda teaches you how.
Let’s Talk Ayurveda as A Wellness Approach By Paige Pearman
What is Ayurveda really? It is translated as the Science of Life. Ayurveda is a DISEASE PREVENTION medical model unlike Allopathic medicine that focuses on DISEASE TREATMENT.
As an Ayurveda and Integrative Health Coach, I help my clients realize that 95% of disease is caused by stress and lifestyle practices. Every single decision we make either brings about a life of health or disease.
At Luv Yourself, I help clients who are struggling with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, trauma to the body, insomnia, anxiety, gut based issues or on the path to disease.
I hope this blog will give you some inspiration for your own healing journey. You’ll learn that Ayurveda is not at all a quick fix to a health problem, rather it is a lifestyle.
It is not a one and done approach. What I explain to my clients is that they didn’t get out of balance or in a diseased state overnight, but that the manifestation of disease took time, and that to heal takes time as well.
The difference between Allopathic medicine and Ayurveda
Ayurveda looks beyond the symptoms.
Ayurveda doesn’t follow the symptoms, instead it is the entire system of mind, body and spirit .
Allopathic medicine works from man-made chemicals, whereas Ayurveda works with the laws of nature and energy to heal the body
Ayurveda looks to the laws of nature to understand how to heal the body because what happens in macrocosm happens in the microcosm as well. Thus the laws of nature happen within our own body, and how we interact within our environment has more control over our DNA than a predetermined code.
In the book The Biology Of Belief: Unleashing Consciousness, Matter and Miracles, Dr. Bruce Lipton shows how scientifically we now understand that epigenetics has more to do with our health than the fate of our DNA. The New Biology emerging in Science is showing that can heal our bodies by how we relate to our environment. Even though this book was written over a decade ago, we still give too much power to our DNA when really the power lies within to heal.
In Ayurveda, our five senses (touch, taste, sound, smell, and sight) are the portals through which the Pancha Maha Bhutus or the 5 Great Elements play. The five great elements include ether, air, fire, water and earth. Ayurveda looks to the laws of these 5 great elements and groups them into three basic types of energy that create our Dosha or Bio-Energetic Body. You can think of it as your DNA, but it is more than your DNA. It is your spiritual blueprint in life.
These three power houses are Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Everything in our environment has a quality to it, and there are 20 basic physical blueprints that exist in nature. The 20 qualities break down into 10 pairs of opposites (examples: hard and soft, dark and light, smooth and rough). The foundation of Ayurveda is understanding how these 20 gunas work, how they operate, how to identify them, and how they interact. Are they in excess or deficient? For example, in nature you can have a drought and you would need rain to allow the plants to grow (dry versus moist). When the pendulum swings too far in one direction, Ayurveda uses the opposite quality to bring about homeostasis within the body.
Ayurveda is truly the science of natural intelligence. As the original circadian science, Ayurveda gives us a road map to understand how the laws of nature work, and how we can work with our energetic force of nature to live a healthy, vibrant life.
Our own energetic body-type (Vata, Pitta, and Kapha) can be a different ratio, and the energetic body-types total 10 all together. When we were born we had a blueprint or a Doshic preference that our body resonates with called our prakriti. Our vikriti is our current state of imbalance, so the goal in Ayurveda is to bring us back to our true nature.
As an Ayurvedic health coach, I help you understand your blueprint, your prakriti and what current imbalances you may be facing. At the heart of Ayurveda is that understanding that like increases like and that opposites balance. Basically, we can apply the opposite principle to all aspects of our lives for healing. There are so many benefits to incorporating Ayurveda into your life. The number one reason would be disease prevention, managing stress, establishing a daily routine, diet, nutritional and herbal support, anti-aging and improving energy to name a few.
Ayurveda Immunity 101: Eat According to the Ayurvedic Clock!
By Paige Pearman, Owner, Luv Yourself
When and how you eat at different times of the day matters!
What if I told you that to lose weight, improve digestion, or have more energy and even prevent disease, it truly matters which meal you eat the most during the day.
If you are like most Americans, you eat your largest meal at yep you guessed it dinner. And if this is your habitual nightly routine, then you may want to think twice! The later you eat calories in the day is related to obesity, high blood pressure and metabolic syndrome.
Check out my YouTube video to learn:
How to burn fat and gain energy
Digestive enzymes are highest in our body during what Ayurveda calls the Pitta time of day
In Ayurveda, your agni or digestive fire is key to your health
Top 3 Natural, Alternative Health Recommendations Trending for 2022 for Women
By Paige Pearman, Owner, Luv Yourself, Ayurvedic and Integrative Health Wellness Spa www.luv-yourself.com
Women’s Sex Hormones Vs. Men
Women’s health is vastly different from men’s based on our sex hormones. Given that we have a 28-day cycle for most of our adult lives, working with this intricate system, the first thing to balance is our stress hormones. As an Ayurvedic Health Practitioner, it is my goal to help women and men get a natural high through treatments already found in nature. As women balance work, play, motherhood, partnership, and a never ending to-do-list, we need easy, affordable ways to bliss out.
Stress-Response
The biggest difference between men and women is our stress responses. Males have one 24-hour hormonal clock, whereas women have a 24-hour cycle and a 28 monthly cycle. This means that men have a high success rate with the same routine daily, whereas women’s stress cycle is quite different literally daily. The bottom line working with aligning women’s bodies to the parasympathetic nervous system is vitally important. The majority of Ayurvedic Health Coaching gets these results as well as Ayurvedic Body Therapies.
While men can do really well under healthy stress and higher levels of cortisol, women do quite well in the rest and digest state, tapping into the parasympathetic nervous system, or what is known as the “tending and befriending” stress response. This is equally important for men as well, but it is a quick way to help women balance their hormones and address women-related health issues.
Medical Research is Primarily on Men Vs Women
Some of the top reported health trends are frankly more appropriate for men than they are for women. The vast majority of research, 75% of medical research in fact, is performed on men rather than women. Due to the fact that in the past menstrual cycles and pregnancies complicated the research process, women were removed from the vast amount of research, and only 4% of healthcare R&D is on women’s health in the United States. Nevertheless, over 13,000 genes are expressed differently between the sexes.
Health Tips for Men may Not be Appropriate For Women
For example, while the keto diet and intermittent fasting is all the rage, it is not necessarily a wise approach for all women during all of the phases of her cycle. In fact, it can have dire consequences on women’s hormones long-term if it isn’t aligned to her bio-individuality or Dosha Body Type (Vata, Pitta, or Kapha) in Ayurvedic terms. Cross-fit and hard-core cortisol workouts might deplete a woman’s energy and immunity or in Ayurvedic terms her ojas. It can put women in low-energetic states, taxing her adrenals and thyroid, and have a hormonal response causing chronic stress, injuries, weight loss or weight gain, and low libido.
Ayurveda is the Science of Bio-Individuality
Ayurveda is the science of bio-individuality, and if we teach women their energetic body type or Dosha, they can maximize their energy, reduce stress, heal their bodies, and slow down the aging process. Ayurveda is not a one size fits all approach to wellness. Nature herself has some of the most powerful healing mechanisms on the planet.
I believe in 2022 and in the future, we will see women hacking nature more and more for healing. As women understand their biochemistry better, they will seek more and more natural remedies. One of the biggest things I preach in my practice is aligning your bio-energetic body to your circadian rhythm and your menstrual cycle. You can literally harness the hours of the day to be more energetic, creative, and resilient if you know how. These natural therapies mentioned in this article allow the body to relax, reset and allow your natural processes to function optimally.
Infrared Sauna exposure enhances performance, burns fat, and reduces all-cause mortality. For anyone looking for a passive cardio workout, relaxation, and mood-boosting effects, a mid-near-far infrared sauna should not be overlooked.
Sauna use mimics physiological and protective responses induced during exercise.
Repeated sauna use optimizes stress responses via hormesis and heat shock proteins.
Appears to reduce morbidity and mortality in a dose-dependent manner
Protects against cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disease
Preserves muscle mass and counters sarcopenia
Sauna releases euphoric hormones to improve mood and reduce depression
EMF Protection through Exposure to Negative Ions found in Nature
With ever-increasing exposure to EMF through 5G towers and constant use of tablets, our bodies need an opportunity to detoxify from EMF. There is an overall increase in electro-hyper-sensitivity. We can counter EMF exposure by being in nature, being near water, and using gemstones and EMF protective devices. The benefits of negative ions are the opposite of the consequences associated with positive ions due to EMF toxicity. Negative ions support the immune system, maintain mental health, regulates sleep patterns and inhibits the growth of bacteria, viruses and mold species. Negative ions can protect the respiratory system from germs and harmful particles in the air. Negative ion exposure enhances oxygen absorption. Their ability to increase oxygen results in a heightened sense of alertness, decreased symptoms of fatigue, and elevated mental energy and clarity.
To counter EMF:
Forest Bathing
Water contains negative ions that counter EMF, so spend time near water, waterfalls, creeks, lakes, etc.
Crystals to counter EMF: Hematite, Black Tourmaline, Shungite, Pyrite, Citrine, Rose Quartz
The Power and Science of Adaptogens
Given that women are under increasing demands to care for children, work, stay fit, and still have time for their own self-care, adaptogens are becoming increasingly popular. Adaptogens are plant substances that help our bodies manage STRESS, maintain balance, and homeostasis. In other words, they help us adapt to external stressors. By strengthening our internal systems, adaptogens can promote mood, metabolism, energy, immune system, and sex drive. The medical literature has found adaptogens to have far-reaching health benefits. Found in powder and capsule form, adaptogens can be mixed into morning coffee or tea or a daily smoothie.
* Consult with an Ayurvedic Practitioner or Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner before diagnosing yourself or starting a regime to match the adaptogen to your bio-individual makeup.
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