Health

Shiva Centre is proudly dedicating more of its focus on the overarching issue of health

We want to enable you with tools to live a healthier life. From yoga classes to lectures on healthy living, we want you to be empowered to live a quality of life beyond your wildest expectations.

Massage | Articles by Andrejs Gailis |

Massage

Wouldn’t it be great to get those tight muscles loose and juicy before a class, and then float on in? How about after class, riding the wave of shavasana into a deeply therapeutic massage?

• 20min neck and shoulder massage
  Give your neck and shoulders the relief they deserve with a 20 minute neck and shoulder massage. Cost is only $30.
• Flow Massage
  Deeply relaxing massage with an emphasis on relieving muscular tension, reducing soreness, and improving circulation
• Deep Tissue Massage
  Deeply penetrating massage utilizing trigger point, heavy friction, and assisted stretches to release muscular adhesions and detoxify the body.
• Reflexology
  Activating pressure points in the feet and hands to clear energy channels, and tonify the body.
• Structural Integration (also known as Rolfing)
  A 10-session system that aligns and balances the body by lenethening and repositioning the fascia (connective tissue). As the fascia becomes lengethened it allows the muscles to move more efficiently. This provides for greater flexibility and mobility as well as providing relief from chronic stress in the body. ALL SESSIONS are 90 Minutes each.

Massage Pricing

• Add $10 for Deep Tissue
• 20 minutes: $30
• 30 minutes: $40
• 60 minutes: $60
• 90 minutes: $80
• Structural integration 10-pass: $750
• Call 485-5933 to make an appointment.

Massage Bios

• Mary Espil, LMT, approaches bodywork from a softer angle with the belief that the outside world is harsh enough -- why seek it out in a healing session? Her strengths include working with energy and subtle flows of the body via craniosacral rhythm, reiki, and lymphatic massage.
• Julie Guarino, LMT, RYT, came to massage by way of her yoga teaching practice. Her style of massage is characterized by flowing movements and stretching, which is similar to, and heavily influenced by the Vinyasa style yoga she is trained in. She specializes in trigger point therapy, deep tissue, Thai table massage, Reflexology, Hot Stone and Shiatsu; and she trained with Arun Deva in the art of Abhyanga (Ayruvedic oil massge). Her client’s have included Olympic athletes, professional snowboarders, and many medical professionals. Julie is currently working on her master’s degree in occupational therapy at the University of Utah. Her thesis is to investigate the effects of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy on adults with depression. She plans to incorporate massage and yoga into much of her occupational therapy practice.

Articles on Health by Andrejs Gailis

Spring Health Continued, April 27, 2010

...  the spring is still on, although the weather is getting more stable. So let's continue with making ourselves healthier on our own.

An important part of our life is water, more then half of the body is water and it is really crucial to have it in good quality and quantity throughout the day. The older a person gets, the less water is in the body, it slowly dries out, so not drinking enough water makes you age faster. Water is for cleaning our body, making the blood circulate, helping to get all the toxins and undigested food out of it. We can't actually digest food, if there is no water, and that leads to excess weight. Water on a more esoteric level, as gross element Apas, is responsible for all the emotions, mood, love, sex etc. If you have enough good quality water in your body and consciousness, you will have stable emotions, love and good relationships in life. Apas stands behind the principle of taste, if water in your body is in good quality and quantity, then you can get more taste from less food, which leads to less eating and loosing weight or saving some money.

So - how do we drink water the right way? There is no strict amount of water, it depends on the body type, but generally, the more thin you are, the more water you need to drink. But for all - you need to drink water whenever you are thirsty. You should only drink water or Ayurvedic teas. All juices, milk, soups etc. are food. You will satisfy your thirst  with these foods, but the body will still feel thirsty without you knowing it. All  soda waters and lemonades are even worse, because it destroys the digestive system from the inside.

Drinking should be done with little sips for better absorption and the water must be at least room temperature or warmer. The temperature is of utmost importance. To digest anything the body goes through a lot of chemical processes in order to transform food or drink into tissues and cells. Most chemical processes requires heat, which raises the temperature of substance and makes it transform into something totally new like brain cells. So anything that gets in the digestive system first of all needs to be heated as that requires a lot of energy. If we drink hot water or tea, then energy is saved and we can use it for health, success, wealth or anything important, because everything in our life is made out of energy. Also in summer - people from villages in the hot parts of Asia are drinking hot water or teas to not feel the heat as much, higher temperature of the drink in the body allows us not to feel or fight the temperature difference outside and inside the body.

Another tip for better digestion, health or weight issues - don't drink while eating! At least half an hour before and half an hour after food you shouldn't drink, instead do it regularly throughout the day. Imagine a fireplace for burning wood. The fireplace is our belly and the wood is food we eat. If you pour water on it, it might continue to burn, but with much less power, with lot of smoke and lot of unburned wood in form of toxic undigested food.

The best way is to drink throughout the day. You can carry a thermos with hot water or Ayurvedic tea in it. You can choose Cold season or Ginger tea for cold, Immune support tea for general immunity and for better effect add Immune Support tablets, Joint Comfort for problems with joints, Fasting tea for the days when you are not eating to let the body take care of your health . That way you will have a possibility to drink it whenever your mind gets the signal from your body in the form of thirst and you will avoid drinking in large quantities at one time. If you choose an Ayurvedic tea for your thermos, you actually are drinking medicine all the time, which makes your body healthier with every sip you take.

In case you already have a cold, flue, feel overall weakness or just for prevention purposes, you can take Amalaki for boosting up your Immune system. Amalaki is one truly amazing fruit used widely in Ayurveda. It not only makes your Immune system work better, but also nourishes your whole body and rejuvenates it. This fruit is the main ingredient of an amazing herbal mixture called Chyawanaprash, which is used in an almost lost Ayurvedic procedure called Kayakapla - total body rejuvenation! It makes the body look 30 years younger. Even more - it is one of the three ingredients of a famous and widely used Ayurvedic medicine Triphala. You can take Triphala daily without any recommendations - as a detox to clean the body and bowels from toxins, improve bowel movement, have healthy elimination, weight management or just to make any recovery process more effective.

For those of you who are more curious to learn, here is little mythology on Chawanprash: A long long time ago there was Rishi Chyawan who was immersed in a state of deep meditation called Samadhi in a forest for thousands of years. His body was covered with termite's nests so that only his eyes were seen shining out. King Sharyati's beautiful daughter Sukanya was walking in this forest and when she saw the saint Chyawan's eyes shining out of the termite's nest she thought they were fire flies, out of curiosity she pricked them. When she discovered that it was the saint's body, looking almost like a skeleton, out of fear she ran away. Because of rishi's Chyawan great power the whole kingdom and king's army started to suffer and fail. So the king went to saint Chyawan and asked him to help, he agreed with condition that he will allow him to take his beautiful daughter in marriage, who was the reason for all this. The King agreed, and the daughter started to live in the forest with the saint, she treated and served him sincerely and faithfully despite the fact that her husband was old and incapable of fulfilling his marital duties. Her sincerity and mind steadiness was so powerful that even the Devas (gods) in heaven noticed that.
One day two brothers named Ashwini Kumars, celestial healers of all gods, decided to test Sukanya by visiting her while Rishi Chyawan was not at home. She treated them with honor and respect. They asked her who she was and she told them her story. They laughed and told her to choose one of them. Sukanya closed her ears with palms and explained of her marital dharma, that once she has accepted Rishi Chyawan as her husband, she will never think about somebody else. When her husband came home, he was very pleased with his wife's loyalty, so he asked Aswini Kumaras to give Sukanya a good husband. Aswini Kumaras gave Rishi a specific rejuvenating tonic and then all three of them took a dip in the Payoshni Lake and came out young and beautiful, all three looking identically. But that didn't confuse Sukanya, she saw her husband with her inner strength and chose him. That's how the famous herb mixture Chyawanaprash got it's name.

There is also a Nakshatra (star) in the Jyotisha (vedic astrology) named Ashwini Nakshatra, which is very auspicious for starting all kind of healing processes, rejuvenations, fasting, diets, taking medicine for the first time for better results etc.

The next date with this auspicious Nakshatra is 11th of May from 2pm until 2pm on the 12th of May.

To learn more about Ayurveda be sure to attend the FREE Intro To Ayurveda Lecture with Arun Deva at Flow Yoga Monday May 3rd @ 7pm

Also- Please join us this Saturday, May 1st at 6:30 for Kirtan with Leraine Horstmanshoff. More info on both of these events is included below.

Spring Health, April 17, 2010

Now it is time when the seasons are changing and that is quite stressful for the human body because the natural balance of elements in the nature are changing and so the same happens in the body. Especially important is that this spring, the temperature in Salt Lake City is jumping up and down, switching almost from summer time to snowy winter during one day. Here are a couple of ways to keep your health in good condition, and how to fix the problems you may already be experiencing.

First of all in every simple illness, especially if you catch it at the beginning, you can just fast for one day, drinking hot or warm water whenever you feel thirsty or hungry. That way you give your Jataragni (digestive fire) the possibility to take rest and purify itself. Though instead of having rest Jataragni is starting to clean, burn and digest all the infections, toxins undigested food waste in the body. Actually this is a good habit for almost everybody once a month on a regular basis. Just let your body have a spring cleanout.

One of the first parts of the body getting affected during this period is nose. Again in most cases simple actions will help. Rinsing the nose is one of them - you need to have a Netti pot or as it is called in sanskrit Lota, warm water, salt and nasya oil. The procedure sounds more terrible then it actually is. You fill the neti pot with warm water mixed with salt, the salinity of water should be the same as your blood, so that the nose will not mind the water. Bend down over the sink or bath so the upper body is parallel to floor, turn your head to one side put the spout of the neti pot in the upper nostril. Let all the salt water run out through other nostril, and repeat a few times before switching nostrils. After that you need to breath out all the water in the nose by strong exhaling through it while the upper body is still parallel to the floor, start with keeping face down, then turn to the left and right doing exhales. In total you should have around 100 exhales so that all the water is out. After that put couple of drops of special nasya oil, sesame oil or even just ghee in both nostrils. You should avoid going out immediately after this procedure.

Many people this season are having more Pitta problems because of extremely long placement of Mangala (Mars) in very inauspicious for him place - Karkata (Cancer sign). It makes the Agni (fire element) in connection with Jala (water) behave differently, so you have more infections, inflammations, allergies coming through cold, lungs, skin etc. That will end in the last dates of May, but until then we just have to pay attention to this.

We have many herbs, teas, neti products avaialbe at the studio, please don't hesitate to ask our desk staff about products for your needs.