Spring has sprung and so has the season of hay fever, coughs, colds and runny noses !
In order to best serve all those children and teens in your classes, the best way is to look after you.
Get back into your daily practice, take time out to rest, eat well and replenish.
Make your health a priority this September: eat well, sleep well and do your yoga therapy exercises every day for the next 21 days and watch your energy, health and mood spring back into life.
For Kids, it’s easy.
Give them 3-5 yoga therapy exercises to do everyday, eliminate sugar and take-aways, feed them nutritious whole foods and within 3 days, symptoms will clear up.
So, what are the best yoga moves to do for coughs, colds and hay fever?
To answer that, it’s important to understand why colds show up in spring.
From a traditional Eastern medical perspective, coughs and colds are signs that the body is asking to be ‘spring cleaned.’
We often think about spring cleaning as a clearing and decluttering of our external environment, but our internal environment is even more important.
Children and especially teens, love to learn that by cleaning out their bodies of the excesses of winter, they will regain their health and once again, experience the lightness, vitality and openness that is the energy of springtime.
Why do we feel this urge to clean out, detox and de-clutter at the beginning of spring?
Well, it’s part of the natural process and cycle of our bodies and nature.
As mentioned in last week’s blog, there are two organs that become predominant in spring— the Liver and Gallbladder.
Both are organs of elimination and help to break things down, eliminate fats from the body and clean up the blood.
So, that urge to do a liver detox, as soon as the first signs of spring are in the air, is spot on. In fact, it shows that your body is in tune with nature.
If you listen and do a gentle detox, practise these yoga moves, you will sail through spring.
If we don’t listen and continue to eat heavy foods and excess sugary foods, the body will take matters into it’s own hands and eliminate it for you, such as, with a cold.
Interestingly, Both the liver and gall bladder meridians relate to the joints and digestive system and if the organs are stagnant or over-worked, you might experience symptoms such as eye problems, stiff or painful joints, flu, headaches, dry skin, dandruff, nausea and hay fever.
Because the energy of spring is rising, if we eat heavy foods or the liver is over-loaded, then it impacts the upper part of the body and you get neck stiffness, shoulder tension and joint pains.
Children (and adults ) can be irritable and experience more emotional outbursts in spring, which are simply a sign that the liver and gall bladder are over-loaded and the body is looking for a way to eliminate.
If you want to join me, here’s a great daily routine I’ll be doing for the next 21 days.
The exercises will be going into all my classes, because the more you do them, the greater the benefit. The more you teach them, the more you know and love them.
Do these 3 Spring Exercises for the Liver & Gall Bladder daily for the next 21 days:
- Liver Twisting
Sit with arms out in front and legs slightly apart.
Breathe out twisting and rotating arms and legs inwards. Then inhale, and breathe out, rotating the arms and legs outwards.
The arms and legs stay in the same position, and simply rotate inwards and outwards.
The key is to rotate all the way from the shoulder joint to the hands. And from the hip joint all the way to the feet.
For a stronger version, lean back until the belly grips. This will tone the belly at the same time.
2. Gall Bladder Wide-Legged Side Stretch
Take legs wide and interlace your hands behind your head.
Breathe out, drop an elbow down to one side, aiming for the knee, then breathe in to sit back up.
Repeat on the other side, going side to side 10 times.
3. Spring Asana: Triangle Pose.
Standing with feet apart, take arms wide at shoulder-height. Make sure the feet are wide enough that if you dropped a piece of string from your wrists, it would land on your feet.
Turn your right foot to face the side and your left foot also slightly to the right.
Take a breath in and exhale as you drop the right hand down to the right leg and the left arm straight up in the air. Hold and breathe.
To complement the yoga therapy poses, EAT: a lighter, whole food, plant based diet for the next 21 days also.
For some handy food tips for spring, watch out for a future blog, where I’ll share recipes and medicinal drinks to help eliminate those coughs, colds and hay fever,
Loraine x
Ps If you would like to learn more about Yoga Therapy, Meridians and Foods for the Season, check out the Zenergy Online Yoga Therapy Course. It is packed with great information to help your health, the health of your family and all the kids at home and in your classes (they love it )!
