Yoga Can Help Keep Kids in School

August 27, 2013

GirlYogaAn excellent discussion below published in Forbes…given the increasing stressors kids face today, yoga exercises provide a form of movement that help kids to cope, focus and thrive.

 

In health,

Dr. Gina

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Forbes (forbes.com) – How Yoga Could Help Keep Kids In School – By Alice G. Walton

Scientific evidence is mounting daily for what many have long sensed: that practices like mindfulness, meditation, and yoga can help us address certain intractable individual and societal problems. Prominent companies – Google, General Mills, Target, Apple, Nike, AOL, and Procter & Gamble among them – and prominent individuals have already embraced this possibility. Tim Ryan, the Ohio congressman who wrote the book A Mindful Nation, has been a big proponent of bringing mindfulness to the masses. He, along with others, believes that mindfulness should be a part of everyone’s day, to help wire our brains to deal with our many modern stressors.

And, perhaps more importantly for our global health, for kids dealing with extreme stressors, traumas and abuse, putting these practices into schools could be the difference between failure and success.

Last month, a group of American and Canadian scholars, researchers, businesspeople, and yoga teachers came together for a weekend at Omega Institute to discuss how this group of practices that helps us self-regulate as individuals could, quite possibly, help us regulate on a society level. The issues the country is facing – the massive dropout rate of school kids, substance abuse among all age groups, PTSD among veterans, the staggeringly high incarceration and recidivism rates – cost the country volumes in human potential, not to mention trillions in dollars.


Your Body Has the Ability to Heal Itself

January 26, 2009

painLast week I was interviewed for an upcoming PBS Series on Naturopathic Medicine. The topic was chronic pain. Throughout the interview I found myself repeating the notion that “the body has the ability to heal itself,” provided you give it what it needs and you remove the barriers to cure.  What the body needs can range from a particular combination of nutrients, herbs, and natural hormones, to more positive emotions.  Some of the most prevalent “barriers to cure” that I see in my  practice are stress, food allergies, and toxin overload.

Most people suffering with chronic pain are handed a prescription for pain killers and muscle relaxants and/or advised to get psychological help.  The Naturopathic approach to chronic pain involves identifying the cause of the pain; be it emotional, physical, stress-related, toxin-related or hormone-related. Then treatment is individualized to suit the patients’ unique situation. No two treatment protocols are the same.  My experience has been that by addressing the cause of the chronic pain at the emotional, mental and physical levels brings about the most successful long term results and allows for freedom of movement and a pain-free life.

The most important message here is that if you are experiencing chronic pain, you do not need to suffer.  There is a way to find relief. One of the best ways to find that relief is by addressing the underlying cause(s) of the pain rather then chronically masking the symptoms with medication…and allowing your own body, in its innate wisdom, to heal itself.

In health,

Dr. Gina


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