Nervous System Health and Yoga.

Every time you do yoga, breathing practices, or any mind-body practice for that matter, you are training and nurturing your nervous system.

This is why people can lower their heart rate, lower their blood pressure, and relief stress and anxiety so effectively (not always, but often).

WHAT YOGA DOES

* The importance of the vagus nerve for relaxation and  life balance is necessary.

*  Yoga, breathing, and mind-body practices stimulate your nervous system–in a good way!

*  Science of yoga is often overlooked.

*  Yoga can help the physiology of emotional dysfunction.

YOGA REALLY HELP TO COOL STRESSED NERVES!

Start it today you can find lots of videos on the internet. Start with 5 mts and take it to 30 mts or more if you desire!

                                                             BE A HAPPY YOGI  🙂

 

Lavender sweet lavender you changed my life

I have had a sleeping disorder for many years. On my last trip to the USA a friend of my sister Maria told me how her hubby and she slept like babies after massaging their feet with lavender oil. My ears perked up. But due to my busy schedule i forgot all about it. later on went to Kentucky to spend Christmas with my friend and her family. Got o gift of lavender body lotion and body wash. It was called “sleep”.. I started using is and am so grateful to all those people who helped bring it to my knowledge. Following is what my research showed me on Lavender. It is a miracle herb! Lavender sweet lavender Peace to all mankind Tranquility, purity The name lavender comes from the Latin lavare, “to wash,” since it was often used in bath and laundry waters. Its calming and soothing properties make it unique. According to Nicholas Culpeper who wrote of the herb in 1653, lavender is especially of good use for problems of the head, colds, sluggishness, cramps, convulsions, weakness, and palsy. It strengthens the stomach and frees the liver and spleen from obstructions. It is also helpful in bringing about the menstrual flow. The flowers of lavender, steeped in a little alcohol, effectively promote the flow of urine, and help ease flatulence and colic. A decoration made with these flowers plus horehound, fennel, asparagus root, and cinnamon can help lightheadedness. Gargling with this as a mixture is good for toothache, and taking two spoonfuls internally can help with a lost voice. Lavender is recommended for any faintness or trembling of the emotional body, and can be applied to the temples or sniffed. It is not to be used where there is excessive blood or fever. Care should be taken with the oil drawn from lavender, usually called “oil of spike” because of its piercing potency. Lavender’s tranquil properties make it an excellent mild sedative and painkiller, as well as in treating insect bites and small burns. Blended for use as massage oil, lavender works wonders with skin problems, rheumatic aches, insomnia, and depression. It’s easy to see why Mercury is said to rule this herb which is so helpful to the head and brain, for Mercury rules thinking and the mind. Author Izaak Walton once said, “I long to be in a house where the sheets smell of lavender.” And it was Wang Wei, the eighth century Chinese writer, who said it best. “Look in the flowers and perfumes of nature for peace of mind and joy of life.” A symbol of cleanliness and virginity, lavendar once was used medicinally for sunstroke. Included among the lavenders is a stunning bush of Lavandula heterophylla, a large plant that is almost continually in bloom. It has the sweetest smelling foliage, is equally good when dried, and is a stunning garden plant — but it must be wintered inside. This herb is reputed to be one of the plants most loved by the Virgin Mary, for as it does now, in ancient times it represented purity, cleanliness and virtue. Churches were decorated with lavender on Saint Barnabas Day. L. vera is the “true” lavender of which other lavenders are varieties. It is helpful for all disorders that trouble the head and spirit, for its scent is calming. For many centuries herbs have been used for medicine, cooking, decoration, and cosmetics. The ancient Egyptians even used aromatic oils for religious purposes. In medieval times, a scented handkerchief or nosegay was carried through the unsanitary streets of Europe to help ward off noxious smells. These herbal oils also helped prevent the spread of germs and viruses, since they are antiseptic and antibacterial, and in French hospital wards. they were burned often to fumigate them. One of the oldest and most revered is lavender, whose symbol is devotion. It generally flowers at the end of June and beginning of July. Lavender can be used in many varied ways: Decorative – The whole plant is good as hedging. Flower, hang dried in bunches on their own or with other tiny flowers, add sprigs to wreaths and nosegays. The leaves, stems, buds, and flowers of lavender all contain essential oils and all are valuable for different purposes. Parts of the plant can be used fresh, dried or distilled with the essential oil extracted. Culinary – Use to flavor jams and to make lavender vinegar. Mix small amounts with savory herbs for fragrant stews. Household – Put dried flowers in sachets and bundles to scent drawers and to protect linen from moths. Rub fresh flowers on skin or pin on clothes, to discourage flies. Stem use dried as incense or scented firelighters. Cosmetic – Make tonic water for delicate and sensitive skins to speed cell replacement and for an antiseptic against acne, add to soap. Use oil in message for muscular aches, fluid retention and cellulite. Add to your scrub water for regular cleaning jobs from floors to counters to bathrooms. Medicinal – Infuse as a tea to soothe headaches, calm nerves, and ease flatulence, fainting, dizziness and halitosis. Use heated essential oil as an antiseptic, mild sedative and painkiller, particularly on insect bites, stings and small (cooled) burns. Add six drops to bathwater to calm irritable children, and place one drop on the temple for headache relief. Blend for use as an aromatherapeutic massage oil in for throat infections, skin sores, inflammation, rheumatic aches, anxiety, insomnia and depression. Caution: When using lavender use common sense … remember, a little bit goes a long way.

 

Fast Forward a Smile! ( my new upcoming happy book)

( My book is not designed to provide psychological advice or to substitute for professional counsel. Its purpose is to increase your happiness by making you aware of the Consequences of all your thoughts and actions).

 

This is a prologue to my book:

 

When you  read this book, you may have several questions running through your head about me.

 

• Why did I write How to be Happy and Have Fun Changing the World?
• Will this book be able to deliver the goods or am I just a dreamer?
• If the insights revealed in this book can make you happy or happier and help improve the world, why would I give something so valuable away for free?

I wrote this book for several reasons. The first one is because I love sharing the insights contained in this book with others and it makes me very happy.

The second one is because I wanted to reach a mass audience by addressing a subject that would appeal to most, if not all, of the people living in our country.

After all who doesn’t desire to be happy or happier and make our world a better place for themselves, their children and their children’s children?

The third reason is because I needed a feedback mechanism that you can easily relate to and cannot deny.

Everyone knows whether they are happy or unhappy. You can decide for yourself what gives you true and lasting happiness. You will be able to judge for yourself if what I share with you makes total sense.

The most important reason is that this book allows me to introduce you to eight words that will help you increase your self-awareness and happiness.

These eight words will help you make better choices that will change you and the world for the better, in the process. If you want to be happier and remain happy, this book will show you the way.

These words are:

“I am always truthful, positive and helping others.” 

(These words have become my motto and of the 869 children I do volunteer work with in St Mary’s High School, Bedian Road Lahore)

Try repeating them to yourself for thirty days and implementing them in your life and you will feel a remarkable uplift and serenity.

If you can honestly say that you’re totally happy with all aspects of your life, are you happy with what is going on in the world?

Unless you never follow the local news and world affairs, or live in a cave in the Himalayas, you’re probably not happy about something or at least would like to improve it if you knew an effective way to bring about positive change. I would like you to reflect on this poem:

“The Joy of Life”

This is the true joy of life.

The being used for a purpose; recognized by yourself ; as a mighty one.

The being a force of nature instead of a feverish and selfish clod of ailments and grieving senses complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and that as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work, the more I live.

I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me.

It is a sort of splendid torch that I have got to hold up for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

 -George Bernard Shaw

THOUGHTS:

As previously discussed, your positive and negative thoughts cause your brain to secrete chemicals. These chemicals, in turn, affect all your natural abilities and functions. Your thoughts have two components: facts and emotions. Every stimulus you receive through your nervous system is nothing more than a fact. However, you attach emotions to these facts.

It is imperative for you to realize that negative emotions cause adverse chemical secretions and hinder your natural abilities. Increase your awareness of the profound influence negative emotions have on your brain’s chemistry, performance and happiness. Become more objective and restructure any negative emotional attachment you have to certain facts.

Facts are merely facts. However, you can choose your emotional response to them.

 DIET/NUTRITION:

Everything you eat and drink is a chemical, which affects your performance and how you feel. If you doubt this, observe how a person’s behavior changes when they drink some alcohol. Better yet, ask them how they feel the next day if they drank too much.

Since there are many good books available on nutrition, I will just briefly touch on this subject. In the early cave dwelling days there were no factories and no processed foods. Humans are designed to live on natural foods with the proper amounts of protein, carbohydrates and fat.

Eat wisely and in moderation. Also, do not become neurotic about what you eat. Your emotional state is far more important than what you eat, even though what you eat is important.

EXERCISE:

Most individuals are out of shape. How about you?

In the early days of time, humans engaged in many forms of physical activity just to survive. Your body is designed to function properly with physical exertion so it can remove toxins and secrete beneficial chemicals. If you do not believe this, exercise the next time you are depressed. Notice how much better you feel after exercising.

For your body and mind to function at their best, it is important to exercise to make up for the lack of physical activity resulting from today’s modern conveniences.

Is 20 minutes of aerobic exercise three times a week too great a price to pay for a healthy body and an alert mental state?

REST:

Sufficient rest is necessary for the body to eliminate toxins and rejuvenate itself.

Have you ever noticed that you sleep more when depressed than when you are excited and happy to be alive?

While you sleep, your brain is busy processing all the information it received during the day so that it can make spontaneous decisions when you’re awake.

ENVIRONMENT:

When I refer to environment, I’m not just talking about the air you breathe and your physical surroundings. I am more concerned with the people around you. The electromagnetic fields they generate, as well as their thoughts and actions, can adversely affect you.

I strongly recommend associating only with positive people, or keep to yourself. The only time you should associate with negative people is when you are trying to help them. Your stronger electromagnetic field and positive thoughts and actions will have a positive effect on them.

Researchers have found that emotions, positive and negative alike, are nearly as contagious as colds and flu. You can catch feelings of elation, euphoria, sadness and more from friends, family, colleagues, even strangers.

Mood “infection” happens in milliseconds, says Elaine Hatfield, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and a coauthor of Emotional Contagion (Cambridge University Press, 1994).

When interacting with a negative person, take extra steps to remain positive. Otherwise, you may be influenced by his or her negativity.

 PHYSIOLOGY: Your body reflects your emotional state. When you are positive and confident, you stand erect with your chest out and a smile on your face. If you just won Rs.10,000,000 in a prize bond, imagine how you would feel and how your physiology would respond ?

You would feel on top of the world. Everyone watching you will see it by the way you carry yourself.

Imagine how you would feel and look if you lost your winning prize bond. If this depressed you, your eyes would be down and your shoulders slumped. Some individuals would probably feel like killing themselves for losing their winning bond.

Your physiology works both ways. Your body reflects your feelings.

However, how you carry your body affects your feelings. One of the quickest and easiest ways to improve your chemistry is to change your physiology. By taking slow deep breaths, standing tall and sticking your chest out, you automatically increase your chemistry and immediately feel better. Raise your eyes to the sky and smile right now. Do you feel a change in your energy and alertness? If you always carry yourself like a winner, you will feel like a winner.

Your thoughts, diet/nutrition, exercise, rest, environment and physiology have a positive or negative impact on your brain’s chemistry that affects how well you perform and feel. To become happier and more successful, part of the process is to consciously work on increasing the chemistry of your cranial fluid so your brain can perform more efficiently and at higher levels.

” If you give sincere happiness to others only than will you receive true happiness.”

It Is all about attitude!

 

How meditation changes brain chemistry!

This is a guest post by Psychology student Brittany Miller

You’ve heard the popular mantra, you’ve seen the forms and know the behavior. It’s even prominent in the popular movie series Star Wars. Meditation is a mental discipline in which one “thinks” his or her way to a deep, relaxed state of awareness. How do we generate inner-peace through use of our own mind? Every day, your mind processes a barrage of emotions, visual images, memories, and more. Overcoming that internal chatter is hard, but when you meditate, you teach your mind to narrow its concentration to one thing, limiting the stimulation to your nervous system.

There are many ways to meditate, but they all strive for the same goal: Relaxation.

Since mediation is a mental discipline, one has to wonder: what exactly changes in the brain of a long-time meditator? Psychology is the study of mental processes and behavior, and by applying a psychological perspective, I want to find out why meditation works so well as a simple stress reducer.

Physiological Psychology: What changes in the brain?

This subdivision of psychology studies the mechanisms of the brain and their relation to one’s behaviors and perception. I’ve done some research and listed a few important findings on what meditation accomplishes within the brain of a meditator.

Though your mind is focused, some activities inside your brain go unchecked. In EEG (electroencephalograph) studies, brainwaves of different frequencies are measured, and many found an increase in these following brainwaves:

• Alpha Waves: Healthy alpha wave production supports mental resourcefulness, better mental coordination, and improves the general sense of relaxation and weariness. Many believe alpha waves are the bridges between consciousness and unconsciousness. Meditation synchronizes alpha activity between the four regions of the brain: left, right, anterior, and posterior, which positively correlates with creativity.

• Theta Waves: Theta waves come in strong bursts in long-term meditators who report a peaceful, drifting, and pleasant experience at the time. These waves enhance creativity, intuition, and daydreaming. It is also a storage area for memories, emotions, and sensations. Theta waves are strong during any sort of spiritual focus and they reflect the state between wakefulness and sleep.

• Beta Waves: When the EEG shows bursts of Beta waves, experienced meditators report an approach of yogic ecstasy or a state of intense concentration sometimes accompanied by an acceleration of heart rate. Beta waves can increase mental ability, focus, and alertness.

Meditation in Relation to Brain Hemispheres

Meditation seems to give us slight control of specific brain functions as well. We have two hemispheres to our brain each with different predominant functions: left(language/math/logic) and right (spatial abilities/face recognition/visual imagery/music).

Some studies show control of brain functions the importance of the right hemisphere during meditation:

• Bennett and Trinder (1977) reported that transcendental meditators couldshift brain activity
• Davidson (1976) reported that, during mystical experience, the right hemisphere dominates cerebral function.

One study concluded that meditation might begin with activity in the left hemisphere, which then gives way to functioning characteristics of the right hemisphere. Another study suggests that meditation may inhibit the left hemisphere, shifting the focus of consciousness to the right hemisphere.

In conclusion, the right hemisphere (being synthetic and holistic) seems to be dominant in meditation. Both left and right hemisphere activities are slightly repressed in advanced meditation, however. These findings are evidence that meditation does indeed narrow focus in the brain and can even transcend a meditator to an even clearer mind by repressing both hemispheres.

“Self-awareness is the path to self-mastery; self-mastery is the way to happiness.”
-Unknown

Meditation vs. Frustration

The best way to notice the benefits of meditation is to take a close look at the behaviors and health of meditators versus non-meditators. A study by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Medical School recorded the brain waves of stressed-out employees working in a high-tech firm in Wisconsin. The subjects were divided into two groups: 25 subjects were asked to learn meditation over eight weeks and the remaining 16 were left as a control group.
All participants had their brain waves scanned three times during the study: once at the beginning, once after eight weeks when the 25 subjects completed their meditation course, and once four months afterward.

The results?
The meditation group showed a shift in activity to the left frontal lobe. People with more activity in the left frontal cortex than in the right tend to have a cheerful temperament. These people tend to have a more positive disposition and are more willing to interact with people and be content with their lives.

Those with more activity in the right frontal area of the brain hesitate during encounters with people or situations and stress out over the smallest of situations.

Those who meditate and are happy are healthier on all levels and their brains are free to process information and solve problems more creatively. Meditation clears out the insignificant junk in your mind and boosts its performance.

There are many other effects of meditation from which a stressed out high-tech firm employee would benefit:

• Regulates heart rate, breathing, cholesterol, and blood pressure
• Increases creativity
• Reduces tension, anxiety, and stress
• Less activity in the amygdala where the brain processes fear
• Clears state of mind and makes it easier to kick addictions and self-defeating behaviors
• Greater intimacy with friends and family members
• Over-all positive emotions and state of mind
• Increases power of awareness by developing concentration on a particular object
• Investigate your inner self and question and contemplate the nature of existence itself

Go out and explore for yourself!

These are just a few aspects in which meditation can shape your life, but there are so much more. The mind is a powerful tool and mechanism with thousands of undiscovered talents and processes. Feel free to explore the inner workings of your mind, strive towards improving it for the better, and treat it well. Meditating gives your mind a healthy refreshing, just what it needs to keep you and your outlook healthy and positive.