How Ayurveda Turned Me Into A Total Morning Person (When Nothing Else Could)
by Shivaji Sharma July 5 2016

Photo: Pinterest
I've always been a night owl and craved the alone time it gave me. All through my 20s, I followed the cycle of begrudgingly waking up early for work on weekdays and then sleeping in until noon on weekends.

But upon discovering Ayurveda, I began tinkering with a lot of its teachings. I was especially intrigued by its concept of Dinacharya, or a suggested routine of morning and nighttime practices, which includes waking up early. Really early.

Last year, I finally mustered the courage to admit to myself that I wanted to do this. It took months and months of trying different things, and my determination to wake up early would often fall by the wayside by the fourth day. But I also began to notice that sleeping in was not doing me any favors; it was the reason I felt sluggish and heavy all day despite sleeping eight hours.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally developed a sweet repertoire of activities that help me wake up at 5:30 a.m. every day. Today is the 60th day of my journey. Here are a few tips that helped me along the way:

1. Wake up before 6 a.m. to feel energised.

Ayurveda is all about timing. It is not about whether you're clocking eight hours of sleep per night—but rather what time you're going to sleep and waking up.

The last phase of our 24-hour body clock is from 2 to 6 a.m. This is the period of Vata, or movement. If you're asleep, it’s during this period that you tend to dream a lot. To stay in sync with nature, Ayurveda recommends that it's best to wake up before sunrise, when there is natural movement in the atmosphere. To give you a surfing analogy, waking up before sunrise is like catching a wave. That wave will ensure that you ride through rest of the day effortlessly.

In comparison, the period between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. is Kapha time. Kapha energy is heavy, slow, and steady. By getting up before this Kapha period, you'll avoid that feeling of heaviness you can get even after a good night's sleep.

2. Finish dinner early.

I always thought that by eating at 8 p.m. and sleeping at 11 p.m., I was turning in early, because in the modern context, this is what we have come to define as early right? Turns out, in Ayurveda, early is a lot earlier.

I now have my dinner by 6:30 p.m. or before sunset and am in bed by 9:30 p.m. with the lights out by 10 p.m. To make this happen, I had to move a few things around and resist the temptation of Netflix. However, this has been the single biggest enabler for Project Wake-Up Early.

3. Create a wind-down routine.

Unlike my husband, who can go to sleep immediately, I need at least an hour to myself just to wind down. This really helps me fall asleep once my head hits the pillow.

I'd highly recommend incorporating a few rituals of your own that you find relaxing. A simple one is to massage your feet before sleeping. According to Ayurvedic physician Dr. Vasant Lad, ayurvedic foot massage can be traced back 5,000 years and offers myriad benefits: It nourishes the skin, helps reduce fungal and bacterial infections, and soothes an agitated mind. "The doors to the body's inner pharmacy are under the bottoms of your feet," he says.

You can also try having Golden Milk before you fall asleep. Milk contains the sleep-inducing amino acid tryptophan, and having warm milk at bedtime is a good way to help lull your body into sleeping.

4. Set an intention rather than an alarm.

I hate alarms. And I'm quite sure you do too. No matter how sweet sounding your alarm might be, it's a rude and unnatural way of waking up your body. Our ancestors woke naturally and gently before or with the rising of the sun.

What I do now is I set an intention to wake up early each day and then go to sleep before 10 p.m. When I do this, along with eating and sleeping on time, the natural energy in the universe always wakes me up between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. I kid you not!

5. Wake up the Ayurvedic way.

According to ancient Indian wisdom, before you get up in the morning, you must rub your hands together and place your palms upon your eyes. That's because there's a heavy concentration of nerve endings in your hands. So when you rub your palms together, these nerve endings get activated and the system awakens right away.

Once you get out of bed, immediately make yourself comfortable. If it’s winter, I keep myself as warm as possible with a sweater, socks, and sometimes even a hat so that the bed doesn't look as tempting anymore. In the summer, I take a quick shower to completely jilt any remnants of drowsiness. Splashing your face with water works well too.

6. Find your reason for waking up early.

One frequently mentioned benefit of waking up early is increased productivity. But I could never connect with this reason. Instead, what I love about waking up early are the spiritual and health benefits. Early rising for me is a spiritual journey that also happens to make me more productive—not the other way round.

For instance, one of my long-term personal goals has been to wake up early and carry out my Buddhist practice of mantra chanting to my heart’s content before I begin my day. Waking up early helped me achieve this. I could roll with the punches for the rest of the day knowing that I had done my most important task for the day first thing in the morning. (Note that I say important, not urgent. There is a difference.)

So, find your own reason. Schedule your favorite things for the morning. This could be going for a jog, journaling, practicing yoga, or simply sitting in silence. You will feel like a million bucks.

I know this is easier said than done. But I can confidently say that developing this one keystone habit will lead to many other positive changes in your life. Start by trying this for 21 days—and you'll never want to go back to hurrying your way out the door again.

by Suzanne Heyn 4 July 2016
When I first started meditating and noticing the contents of my mind, I almost went crazy. Literally.

I knew the practice was healing me from the inside out, and I trusted all the stories of changed lives I’d heard. But even my husband asked a very emotionally volatile me if trying this esoteric practice was a good idea.

Thank goodness I kept it up. A few years later, meditation has become the single most influential spiritual practice in my life. It's helped me heal a lifetime of repressed emotions, tune in to my heart, and finally find peace.

Here's what I wish I'd realized from the beginning, though: You don't need to stop thinking in order to meditate.

The truth is, meditation isn't about stopping your thoughts. It's about becoming aware of your thoughts. Trying to squash your thoughts is resistance, and resistance causes suffering, not healing. Resistance makes you fear yourself and emphasizes that dreadful feeling that you're flawed and doing something wrong.

You're not meditating wrong. You just haven't sat for long enough. It's my mission to help you learn how to accept every part of yourself, even the thoughts you'd rather not think. Here are some lessons I've learned along the way:

1. Becoming aware of your thoughts is progress.

Consider this: All day long, you're thinking—but you're not really acknowledging your thoughts. When you sit down to meditate, however, the frenzy of this nonstop chatter finally annoys you.

That's actually progress. Because before, you weren't aware enough of this chatter to feel annoyed by it. This awareness is the thing you're cultivating just by showing up every day to practice.

2. Meditation practice doesn't require thoughtlessness.

Technically, meditation is a boundary-less state of being in which your body, mind, and heart merge with the present moment. Everything else—focusing on the breath or chanting mantras, for instance—is a tool to glide you into that state of being. Using the tools is the practice.

Focusing on your breath helps peel your attention away from your thoughts. Your thoughts will continue to attract your attention; that's where you've been focusing your entire life. Your thoughts and attention are stuck together like one of those annoying pieces of protective plastic, but keep showing up and you'll weaken this attachment.

While seated, you will repeatedly notice that your attention has wandered back to your thoughts. Simply return your awareness to your chosen point of focus. Back and forth, back and forth—that's meditation practice.

Not glamorous, and it feels like nothing is happening. Summon a little blind faith and keep showing up. Your whole life will change.

3. Allow your thoughts to flow freely.

At the beginning of your meditation journey, it's easy to cling to thoughts and feelings. Your attention will focus on one or the other. Focus is constriction, and the idea of meditation is to create expansion.

During practice, experiment with expanding your awareness to include not only your thoughts and feelings but also your breath or heart center. As you expand your awareness to include everything, you'll release your grip on any one thing and begin to relax into the stillness.

As you relax, suddenly, you feel peace.

5 Rules for Optimal Gut Health - A Holistic Nutritionist Explains
by Kristin Dahl, 31 May 2016

The body is ripe with bacteria—most of which lives in our gut and has a huge impact on our overall health. Your microbiome regulates inflammation and immunity throughout your entire body.

That's why I think that tending to your gut is the number one thing you can do to boost your overall health and immunity. Here are five simple ways to boost your gut health today:

1. Remove the possible offenders

In order to rebuild a healthy gut, you have to remove what could potentially be causing the damage. This includes refined sugar, gluten, dairy, and most processed foods. Refined sugar is the worst offender because it feeds the negative gut bacteria and depletes the positive bacteria that support a healthy microbiome.

2. Focus on food

Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, dark leafy greens, easy-to-digest grains (gluten-free oats, quinoa, millet and amaranth), and healthy fats like avocado, flax, hemp, pumpkin seeds, almonds, raw coconut and walnuts. These foods reduce inflammation and support gut health. For alternative sources of sweetness, try pure stevia, yacon syrup, coconut nectar or raw honey.

3. Bring back the good bacteria

Bring in good bacteria to combat the bad stuff that's wreaking havoc on your gut. Fermented foods like kefir, miso, sauerkraut, kimchi and tempeh are all full of good bacteria, as are prebiotics. I especially love raw asparagus, garlic, onion, leek, bananas and dandelion greens.

4. Count your zzz’s

Sleep has a major impact on the digestive system, as deep sleep allows the digestive organs to rest, repair and replenish. During this time, the body detoxifies itself and gets rid of wastes from the day. Each person requires a different amount of sleep, but aim to get 7 to 8 hours a night to ensure a restorative sleep cycle.

5. Practice stress management

The stress of modern life often triggers the sympathetic nervous system, creating a fight-or-flight response in the body. This response may help you become more alert and focused, but it inhibits your digestion in the process.

Digesting food requires a parasympathetic nervous system response. Balancing the parasympathetic system decreases stress levels, so you can rest, repair, and heal your gut. Engaging in calming exercises such as walking, deep breathing, restorative yoga and meditation can help you do it.

Here are 14 of the most inspirational quotes from the last 15 years of graduation speeches.

Steve Jobs (Harvard, 2005)
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

Ellen Degeneres (Tulane, 2009)
"Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else's path unless you're in the woods and you're lost and you see a path; then by all means you should follow that."

J.K. Rowling (Harvard, 2008)
"I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."

Jim Carrey (Maharishi University, 2014)
"Fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much. You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about your pathway to the future, but all there will ever be is what’s happening here, and the decisions we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect, so we never dare to ask the universe for it."

Neil Gaiman (University of the Arts, 2012)
"And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art."

Ed Helms (Knox College, 2013)
"So long as your desire to explore is greater than your desire to not screw up, you're on the right track. A life oriented toward discovery is infinitely more rewarding than a life oriented toward not blowing it."

Susan Sontag (Vassar, 2003)
"It's hard not to be afraid. Be less afraid."

Larry Page (University of Michigan, 2009)
"It is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams... Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition."

Jennifer Lee (University of New Hampshire, 2014)
"When you are free from self-doubt, you fail better."

Dalai Lama (Tulane, 2013)
"Despite difficulties, always keep optimism. ‘I can overcome these difficulties.’ That mental attitude itself will bring inner strength and self-confidence."

Will Ferrell (Harvard, 2003)
"As you set off into the world, don't be afraid to question your leaders. But don't ask too many questions at one time or that are too hard because your leaders get tired and/or cranky."

David Brooks (Sewanee, 2013)
"The daily activity that contributes most to happiness is having dinner with friends. The daily activity that detracts most from happiness is commuting. Eat more. Commute less."

Chris Gardner (Berkeley, 2009)
"The balance in your life is more important than the balance in your checking account."

Sue Monk Kidd (Scripps College, 2010)
"One of the more powerful outbreaks of happiness and meaning in your life will occur when you pair your passion with the world's need."

Why Your Psoas Muscle Is The Most Vital Muscle in Your Body
18 Vital Facts About Your Psoas Muscle Group

Posted by Christiane Northrup, M.D.

The psoas muscle (pronounced SO-as) may be the most important muscle in your body. Without this essential muscle group you wouldn’t even be able to get out of the bed in the morning!

In fact, whether you run, bike, dance, practice yoga, or just hang out on your couch, your psoas muscles are involved. That’s because your psoas muscles are the primary connectors between your torso and your legs. They affect your posture and help to stabilise your spine.

The psoas muscles are made of both slow and fast twitching muscles. Because they are major flexors, weak psoas muscles can cause many of the surrounding muscles to compensate and become overused. That is why a tight or overstretched psoas muscle could be the cause of many or your aches and pains, including low back and pelvic pain.

The types of movement which can strain your psoas muscles include standing and twisting from your waist without moving your feet (think old fashioned calisthenics), or any movement that causes your leg to externally rotate while extended, such as Ballet-style leg lifts (or battement), and even doing too many sit ups (your psoas muscles complete the last half of a sit up).

But, since many experts don’t understand the complexity of the psoas muscles, it’s not uncommon for people to be given the wrong diagnoses and treatments for their psoas-related pain.

My What Muscle? What You Need to Know About your Psoas
Structurally, your psoas muscles are the deepest muscles in your core. They attach from your 12th thoracic vertebrae to your 5 lumbar vertebrae, through your pelvis and then finally attach to your femurs. In fact, they are the only muscles that connect your spine to your legs.

Your psoas muscles allow you to bend your hips and legs towards your chest, for example when you are going up stairs. They also help to move your leg forward when you walk or run.

Your psoas muscles are the muscles that flex your trunk forward when bend over to pick up something from the floor. They also stabilize your trunk and spine during movement and sitting.

The psoas muscles support your internal organs and work like hydraulic pumps allowing blood and lymph to be pushed in and out of your cells.

Your psoas muscles are vital not only to your structural well-being, but also to your psychological well-being because of their connection to your breath.

Here’s why: There are two tendons for the diaphragm (called the crura) that extend down and connect to the spine alongside where the psoas muscles attach. One of the ligaments (the medial arcuate) wraps around the top of each psoas. Also, the diaphragm and the psoas muscles are connected through fascia that also connects the other hip muscles.

These connections between the psoas muscle and the diaphragm literally connect your ability to walk and breathe, and also how you respond to fear and excitement. That’s because, when you are startled or under stress, your psoas contracts.

In other words, your psoas has a direct influence on your fight or flight response!

During prolonged periods of stress, your psoas is constantly contracted. The same contraction occurs when you:

sit for long periods of time
engage in excessive running or walking
sleep in the fetal position
do a lot of sit-ups
All of these activities compress the front of your hip and shorten your psoas muscle. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you should automatically stretch your psoas if you have pain in the front of your hip joint.

In fact, depending on your situation, stretching your psoas may actually do more harm than good! The key is to know whether your psoas is short and tight and thus in need of stretching, or if it’s weak and overstretched and in need of strengthening.

7 Ways to Tell if You Have a Psoas Muscle Imbalance

When you have a tight (or short) psoas muscle, you may experience pain in your lower back or in your hips, especially when lifting your legs. This is caused by the muscle compressing the discs in the lumbar region of your back.

Stretching your muscles and releasing the tension on the psoas is the best way to prevent this from happening. It takes time and daily attention to keep your psoas muscles relaxed, stretched, and strong.

And, while most people with psoas issues have tight psoas muscles, there are some people whose psoas muscles can be overstretched. In this case, if you stretch your psoas and it is already overstretched, you will cause more problems.

Your body will tell you what your psoas ultimately needs. Here are 7 ways to tell if you have a psoas muscle imbalance:

Leg length discrepancy. A tight psoas muscle can cause your pelvis to rotate forward. This in turn can cause an an internal rotation of your leg on the affected side. The opposite leg will rotate externally in an effort to counter-balance. This will make the affected leg longer so that every time you take a step, it drives your leg up into your hip socket. This can lead to functional leg length discrepancy.

Knee and low back pain. If you experience knee or low back pain with no apparent cause, it may be coming from your psoas muscles. When your femur is in essence locked into your hip socket due to a tight psoas muscle, rotation in the joint can’t occur. This can cause your knee and low back to torque.

Postural problems. When your psoas is too short or tight, it can pull your pelvis into an anterior tilt, compressing the spine and pulling your back into hyperlordosis or “duck butt.”If your psoas is overstretched or weak, it can flatten the natural curve of your lumbar spine creating a “flat butt.” This misalignment is characterized by tight hamstrings pulling down on the sitting bones, which causes the sacrum to lose its natural curve and results in a flattened lumbar spine. This can lead to low-back injury, especially at the intervertebral discs. You may also feel pain at the front of your hip. Finally, it is possible for your psoas muscles to be both tight and overstretched. In this case, your pelvis is pulled forward in front of your center of gravity, causing your back to curve (swayback) and your head to poke forward.

Difficulty moving your bowels. A tight psoas muscle can contribute to or even cause constipation. A large network of lumbar nerves and blood vessels passes through and around the psoas muscles. Tightness in the psoas muscles can impede blood flow and nerve impulses to the pelvic organs and legs.
In addition, when the psoas is tight your torso shortens decreasing the space for your internal organs. This affects food absorption and elimination. As such it can contribute to constipation, as well as sexual dysfunction.

Menstrual Cramps. An imbalance in your psoas muscles can be partially responsible for menstrual cramps as it puts added pressure in your reproductive organs.

Chest breathing. A tight psoas muscle can create a thrusting forward of the ribcage. This causes shallow, chest breathing, which limits the amount of oxygen taken in and encourages over usage of your neck muscles.

Feeling exhausted. Your psoas muscles create a muscular shelf that your kidneys and adrenals rest on. As you breathe properly your diaphragm moves and your psoas muscles gently massage these organs, stimulating blood circulation. But, when the psoas muscles become imbalanced, so do your kidneys and adrenal glands, causing physical and emotional exhaustion.

In fact, according to Liz Koch, author of The Psoas Book, “The psoas is so intimately involved in such basic physical and emotional reactions, that a chronically tightened psoas continually signals your body that you’re in danger, eventually exhausting the adrenal glands and depleting the immune system.”

9 Tips for Keeping Your Psoas Muscles Happy and Healthy

Exercise, sitting in your favorite chair, wearing shoes, and even unhealed physical and emotional injuries can cause imbalance in your psoas muscles. Getting things back in balance will give you a greater range of motion and relief from pain. Plus, you feel more grounded and relaxed!

Here are some tips for getting things back in balance:

Avoid sitting for extended periods. If you must sit for work or other reasons, sit with good posture and be sure your hips are level or slightly higher than your knees. Avoid bucket seats and chairs without support for your low back. Try to get up and move around every hour.

Add support to your car seat. Use a rolled up towel underneath your sit bones and/ or behind your lumbar spine to keep the psoas and hip sockets released. If you are traveling long distances, stop every 3 hours to stretch and walk around for 10 minutes.

Lay off extreme exercise routines. I don’t mean completely or forever. But, if you are a power walker, distance runner or sprinter, or even if you do a lot of sit-ups, you may want to alternate your workouts.

Try Resistance Flexibility exercises. Resistance Flexibility exercises can do wonders for your fascia.
To strengthen your psoas, lay on your back with your hips abutting the wall next to a door frame. Raise one leg straight so that it is against the wall. (Your other leg will extend through the door way.) Bend your extended leg and using your hands to slow down the movement and create resistance, bring your bent knee toward your chest.

Do this while also pressing your raised leg into the wall. Then reverse the motion of your bent leg. As you straighten it, continue to create resistance using your hands to push your leg out as your leg resists.

Learn more about Resistance Flexibility & Strength Training developed by Bob Cooley at com and flexiblestrength.com.

Get a professional massage. Getting a massage from a seasoned practitioner can help relieve a tight psoas muscle. Understand that this work is not the most comfortable, but can be of great benefit. In fact, getting myofascial release on a regular basis helps to keep your psoas, and all of your muscles, fluid. Assisted stretching (as with a Resistance Flexibility trainer) and yoga are also excellent ways to restore balance to your psoas.

Take constructive rest. The Constructive Rest Position (CRP) can relieve low back, pelvic and hip tension while it allows your entire body to come into neutral. Lay on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor hip-width apart and parallel to each other.
Place your heels a comfortable distance from your buttocks – or about 16 inches away. Do not push your low back into the floor or tuck your pelvis. Rest your arms over your belly. Let gravity do the work. Doing this for 10 to 20 minutes every day will release tension in your psoas muscles and help to reestablish the neuro-biological rhythms that calm and refresh.

Pay attention to your pelvis! The length of the psoas determines whether or not your pelvis is free to move. To tell whether your psoas muscles are tight or overstretched, stand sideways by a mirror (or even better, have a friend take a photo of you from the side). Note the position of your pelvis. If you were to draw a line along your pelvis from back to front, that line should be pretty straight. If the line tilts downward, your pelvis is anteriorly rotated or moving toward the front of your body. This means that your psoas muscles may be short and tight. If the line runs upward, your pelvis is posteriorly tilted toward the back of your body. This means that your psoas muscles may be overstretched and weak.

Release stress and past traumas. We store stress in our bodies. Tension in the hips is common and it’s usually not just caused by lifestyle, age and physical events, such as injuries or accidents, but also due to mental stress and unhealed traumas. Releasing stress daily can help keep your psoas healthy. Take a leisurely walk. Soak in a bath with Epson salts. Acknowledge your emotions, express and release them. Divine Love is a great way to heal from past traumas. Finally, get out and do something pleasurable every day!

Read The Psoas Book. If you want to learn more about your psoas muscles, read The Psoas Book by Liz Koch. Koch believes that our fast paced modern lifestyle — including car seats, constrictive clothing, shoes that throw our posture out of alignment, and more — chronically triggers the psoas as it “literally embodies our deepest urge for survival, and more profoundly, our elemental desire to flourish.” You can also visit her website, www.coreawareness.com.

How Food Affects Your Brain: Dr. Drew Ramsey
with Dr. Drew Ramsey

Psychiatrist Dr. Drew Ramsey discusses how poor diets and a lack of nutrients have harmed our brains, causing anxiety and depression, and why a client who visits him now for problems with her love life might just leave his office with a bunch of kale.

Live Dirty, Eat Clean! Why The Microbiome Is The Future Of Medicine: Dr. Robynne Chutkan
with Dr. Robynne Chutkan

We've all heard about the microbiome, but what is it? Why should we care? And, most importantly, what should we do about it? Integrative gastroenterologist Dr. Robynne Chutkan breaks down what you need to know about the microbiome, the vast collection of microbes that live in and on your body, and how you can optimize your gut health to live a longer, better life.