Posts Tagged ‘Bodywork’
Create Your Own At Home Wellness Retreat
Weekend retreats are just great. Getting away from your responsibilities, the phone, the devices, the social whirlwind, is a nice reset for your body and mind. The relaxation response has time to fully express itself, the hormones wind down, the muscles change from rock to softness, your neck and shoulders relax. Puts your life in perspective. All these things that seem so important, well….you realize you are ok and all of our modern trappings don’t make the person. Good for your body, mind and soul. Do you wish you could reset more often? Yes, those weekend retreats are quite a commitment of time and money.
You can create a nice DIY Wellness Retreat in your own home. Some planning ahead helps you focus so that your weekend can be a haven where you are a human “being” in your home instead of a human “doing”.
What are the Seven Chakras
What are the chakras? The word chakra literally means wheel or vortex (Eden, 1998). According to yogic tradition, the chakras are the energy centers in the body which and interconnect the body and spirit and the external world. The chakras are associated energetically with physical organ systems, the endocrine system and emotional states. The chakras pull in energy from the environment like a vortex and also release energy outward to encompass outer energies and draw them in (Eden, 1998).
We can balance our chakra energy in different ways. The practice of yoga opens or clears the chakras which, in turn, facilitates self-growth and spiritual enlightenment. The practice of Reiki also clears and opens the chakras. Collette Baron-Reid has a beautiful, calming meditation called Journey Through the Chakras filled with imagery and color that clears and opens the chakras. I often fall asleep listening to it. Plus, color and sound frequencies influence the chakras. Each of the seven chakras has its own color vibration, and in addition, the seven notes of the C scale correspond to the seven chakras (Eden, 1998).
After Trauma, Four Skills to Come Home to Your Body
Sarah was the witness of an accident where a car struck and instantly killed two pedestrians. She had seen the car hit the girls and had seen the bodies fly and hit the ground. She thought that she had handled the situation as best as she could. She went to a therapist to talk about the incident and she also talked about it with close friends. But, as time went on, Sarah’s emotional and physical state was deteriorating. She felt sick often and was generally experiencing a lack of well-being. Two years later, she was having intrusive thoughts about the scene and was feeling physically nauseated often and also anxious and depressed, and sometimes panicky for no apparent reason.
Trauma and the Brain, Vagus Nerve and the Body
Mindfulness practices are considered Top Down Skills that can be learned and can help regulate PTSD reactivity (Istock/awelo)
“We use our minds not to discover facts but to hide them, One of the things the screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean, the ins and outs of it, its interiors. Like a veil thrown over the skin to secure its modesty, the screen partially removes from the mind the inner states of the body, those that constitute the flow of like as it wanders in the journey of each day. ” – Antonio Damascio, The Feeling of What Happens