Dru Yoga was first taught in the West by a small group of people at Bangor University, North Wales, UK from the late 1970s onwards. Mansukh Patel, John Jones, Rita Goswami, Annie Jones and Chris Barrington were trained in Dru Yoga by Mansukh’s parents. They had participated in Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha campaigns in India. Mansukh and his family emigrated to the UK in the 1960’s from Kenya.

Dru Yoga has become popular in Australia over the past 10 years or so. We talked to Andrew Wells who is one of the most eminent teachers of Dru Yoga here in Australia. He conducts Dru Yoga teacher training all over the world. He has taken Dru Yoga into war zones and it has brought amazing benefits to severely traumatised people.

Listen to the interview here:

Dru Yoga is accessible to all body types, the body is used to transform the mind and the emotions. It doesn’t matter how “fit” you are. In case you can’t perform certain postures, you can visualise doing them, feel the energy flow they would create and you will still get a lot of the benefits.

According to Andrew your own body is a much better tool to transform your unconscious mind than your conscious mind. Yes, you read that right – your body is the tool transform negative emotions into positive ones – anxiety into confidence, anger into empowerment and hatred into love, just to name a few.

The ultimate goal of any yoga practice is to achieve a physical and mental state that allows you to meditate with ease. A stiff, painful body and any emotions that cause “turbulences” in your mind will stop you from meditating effectively. Those turbulences need to be cleared.

Dru Yoga is a soft form of yoga with flowing movements and many different sequences. To find out more, have a look here:

www.dru.com.au

www.druworldwide.com

www.druyogaonlinestudio.com

Till next time

Connie

Your Yoga Partner

from

http://www.yogainahurry.com

Recently an article was published that reviewed a number of studies that were done to find out whether aromatherapy would be helpful in easing depression.As you might be aware Aromatherapy can be used in many different ways. All these studies looked at the effect of essential oils when they were used as massage oils.

Remember: essential oils must never be used straight from the bottle, they are very powerful and can be toxic – for massage they must always be mixed with a carrier oil. If you want more information on Aromatherapy in general we recommend you go and get yourself this free book in which we wrote an article about aromatherapy: http://stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/wonderful-law-of-attraction-in-action

When somebody suffers from depression, the symptoms include depressed mood, loss of interest in everything, appetite and weight start to fluctuate, generally they simply can’t enjoy life. Depression can be more debilitating than heart disease, diabetes or some other chronic illnesses. The individual simply can’t function properly any more and their relationships with family and society as a whole suffer greatly.

Depression is very common – if affects anywhere between 10-15% of the elderly in Western countries. It affects other age groups too – but the high percentage in the older age group is due to a number of factors. Chronic illnesses that are common in elderly people can lead to depression.

In over 50% of cases, people who suffer from depression are using some sort of alternative therapy like meditation, yoga, aromatherapy and massage to – name just a few – in addition to their medication. Often the results they are getting from their medication are not as good as they had hoped or they dislike some of the side effects.

Aromatherapy is the use of essential oils from plants which then affects the body in various ways – either directly through the sense of smell or by being absorbed through the skin. Essential oils are what gives the plant its particular flavour or fragrance (just think about peppermint, for example)

The article goes on to say that all the studies used Swedish Massage (which is a gentle but firm form of massage with soothing strokes). After the oils are applied to the skin they get absorbed into the blood stream. (this is just an aside: whatever you put on your skin ends up in your blood stream – be very selective about what cosmetics you are using!)

Once the oils were in the blood stream they had a significant effect on how the person felt. Especially feelings of depression and anxiety improved markedly in some cases.

Oils that stood out were: Lavender, lemon, jasmine, bergamot and rose. Rose was particularly beneficial for easing the symptoms of anxiety.

Another study showed that chamomile, lavender, spiced apple, eucalyptus, and geranium oil helped to improve moods and decrease anxiety. Chamomile, spiced apple and eucalyptus also had a beneficial effect. One blend that was used in another study consisted of sweet orange, geranium and basil.

The problems that researchers have is the fact that feelings can’t really be measured properly. People might say that they feel better but to capture the level of improvement in scientific terms is really difficult.

Some physical evidence showed that lavender oil relaxed smooth muscles (the ones that are not under our control), can reduce blood pressure and affects the way the signals are passed around the nervous system.

A lot more research needs to be done, but this shouldn’t stop us to enjoy the beneficial effects of the oils in the meantime. They can enhance any other therapy you are receiving and they are a pleasure to use.

Put some oils in a vapouriser while doing your yoga practice or meditation. Use them when you have trouble sleeping or when stress is mounting,

I found that they simply seem to take the “edge” of things and the world starts to look a little bit brighter.

For those of you who want to go to the source, here is the reference:

THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE
Volume 15, Number 2, 2009, pp. 187-195
© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089/acm.2008.0333
A Review on the Effects of Aromatherapy for Patients
with Depressive Symptoms
V.W.C. Yim, M.Sc., Adelina K.Y. Ng, M.Sc., Hector W.H. Tsang, Ph.D., and Ada Y. Leung, M.A.

Till next time,
Connie
Your Yoga Partner
From
http://www.yogainahurry.com

Recently I came across a study that assessed the benefits of Yoga for women diagnosed with breast cancer and receiving conventional treatment. The main focus of the study was on “Anxiety”, the reason being that anxiety experienced after diagnosis and during treatment causes various problems and the overall outcome of the treatment is not as good. Here are a couple of quotes from the study:

“Earlier studies have shown that anxiety increases psychological distress and side effects following conventional treatment. This treatment-related distress is predictive of poorer treatment outcome, poor treatment compliance,
greater pain, longer hospital stays, more postoperative complications and immune suppression.”

“Therefore, there is a need to reduce anxiety in these patients.
The literature on psychosocial treatment for breast cancer patients provides uniform evidence for an improvement in mood, coping, adjustment, vigour, and decrease in distressful symptoms using a variety of behavioural approaches including alternative medicine approaches such as yoga.

Yoga as a complementary and mind body therapy is being practiced increasingly across the world. It is an ancient Indian science that has been used for therapeutic benefit in numerous health care concerns in which mental
stress was believed to play a role. This could be particularly useful in cancer patients who perceive cancer as a threat. ”

In other words, it is crucial to reduce stress and anxiety when confronted with a diagnosis like breast cancer. Yoga is one of the methods that can help to achieve better outcomes.

The reference for the study is:

Anxiolytic effects of a yoga program in early breast
cancer patients undergoing conventional treatment:
A randomized controlled trial
M. Raghavendra Rao, Nagarathna Raghuram, H.R. Nagendra,
K.S. Gopinath, B.S. Srinath, Ravi B. Diwakar, Shekar Patil,
S. Ramesh Bilimagga, Nalini Rao, S. Varambally
Departments of CAM, Surgical Oncology, Medical Oncology and Radiation Oncology,
Bangalore Institute of Oncology, Bangalore, India
Department of Yoga Research, Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, Bangalore, India
Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS, Bangalore, India

and you can find it at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com

Till next time,

Connie,

Your Yoga Partner,

from

http://www.yogainahurry.com

When I started practising yoga many years ago, the first thing people would ask me was: “You do what? Yoga? I only know Yogi Bear?”…..

Now I finally found an answer to the question how Yogi Bear got his name and whether it has anything to do with yoga.

Have a look here:

Till next time,

Connie

Your Yoga Partner

from

http://www.yogainahurry.com

On our blogtalk radio show today Charly and I had Kathi Janssens from http://www.discreetlyfit.com as our guest speaker. Her area of expertise is pelvic floor health.  Pelvic floor weakness affects at least 50% of women in one way or another. The symptoms can be quite mild (an occasional bladder “accident” to very severe (uterine, bladder or bowel prolapse).  The condition is not talked about much and doesn’t get the publicity it deserves. I suppose it is not sensational enough.

Although about this time last year the pelvic floor made it to the headlines thanks to a Dr. Maria Cerruto from Verona in Italy.  She proclaimed that wearing high heels was good for your pelvic floor.  (She admits to loving high heels herself despite the pain and discomfort they cause). The various press releases seemed to be contradictory – one stated that 15 women were involved in the study, the other one said 66. During the study the women had to wear different high heeled shoes and their pelvic floor muscles were wired up to test how active they were. When the ankle was at a 15 degree angle (which means wearing a heel about 2-4 cm high) the pelvic floor muscles were “more relaxed”.  It was claimed that this strengthens the muscles and improves pelvic floor health.  A relaxed muscle is soft, flabby and not strong, isn’t it? The reasoning is beyond me….or am I missing something? Of course the fashion shoe designers jumped on this research with glee.

Coming back to reality:  It is really important to get proactive and do something about this weakness in those important muscles before it progresses too far. To date most surgical interventions are not perfect and often don’t bring the desired result. So it is much better to do whatever you can to strengthen your pelvic floor before it is too late. Also, always get things checked out medically to make sure that it is your pelvic floor that is causing the problem and not something else.

To get more valuable information, please listen to our interview with Kathi Janssens from http://www.discreetlyfit.com

Till next time,

Connie

Your Yoga Partner

from

http://www.yogainahurry.com