Thursday, February 28, 2013

Kids Yoga Series: Butterfly Life Cycle

Here is a wonderful yoga series that helps to strengthen kids bodies, improve their self-awareness, inspires imagination, and helps them learn the life cycle of a butterfly.

Before you begin, you may want to show the kids a diagram or book to explain briefly about the life cycle stages.

Pose 1: Butterfly Egg Pose


Curl up in a seated ball. Tell the kids they are butterfly eggs stuck on a green leaf. 

Tell the kids to close their eyes and take 10 deep breaths. 

Mention that with each breath their inner power grows and grows. Count down from 10 for them. 

* To make it more playful as you count, mention there is a rainstorm, or windstorm, ending with a sunny day.

Pose 2: Caterpillar Pose


From butterfly egg, slowly grow out of the egg by straightening your eggs and leaning back. This will work core muscle strength. Encourage kids to keep their lower back on the grown and lift their head and upper backs. Younger kids can put their hands down. 

Wiggle side to side like a caterpillar.

* To make more fun, you can encourage kids to "munch munch munch" with their mouths on a leaf.

Pose 3: Chrysalis Pose


From caterpillar, rest head and feet on the ground for a moment. Then using core strength again, lift feel and head up in the air, grabbing onto legs. Legs can be bent.

Encourage kids to again breath deeply in their cocoon, gathering inner power to transform into a butterfly with each breath.

Count down from five.

Pose 4: Baby Butterfly Pose


From chrysalis, put your legs down and open them to the side, with feet together into buddhakonasana, or baby butterfly pose. 

Have kids test out their wings, and tell them the butterflies are very hungry. Its time to find food! Ask, what does the butterfly eat? Where are we flying to?


Pose 5: The Adult Butterfly Pose


From baby butterfly, have kids breath five deep breaths and on the last one, grown their adult wings. Legs can be bent. Its easy to roll back here, so encourage kids to come up again if they roll out.

Ask the kids where the adult butterflies are flying to today?

To complete the cycle, tell the kids the butterflies lay eggs, and go back into butterfly egg pose.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Live Blood Cell Analysis Shines Spotlight on My Health

Healthy Blood Cells 

Today I had an amazing opportunity to get Live Blood Cell Microscopy done in hopes of helping me assess the state of my health. As revealed in my post, Just Hanging Out with Lyme, I have had some unfortunate setbacks to my health, and am in the process of building my health and immune system back up.

After changing my diet to eliminate wheat, sugar, yeast, alcohol, and seemingly all things delicious, and finishing the year up with a great 30-day herbal detox, I finally started to get my vitality and strength back. Lately, I can still feel the lyme creeping up on me now and again, but it is stuffed way down there, so as long as I don't overdo it or become too stressed, everything has been in check.

Or am I just dreaming? Am I just too hopeful and positive that all my hard work/sacrifice has been helping?

Enter Live Blood Cell analysis.

It provides information about the state of the immune system, possible vitamin deficiencies, amount of toxicity, pH and mineral imbalance, areas of concern and weaknesses, fungus and yeast. Here is a really cool video that gives you an idea of how much can be revealed with looking at your live blood. It shows the remarkable differences that can happen of people with chronic diseases by primarily taking nutritional supplements just after a few months.



We are so lucky to have a medical technologies in town that has been doing this for 20 years, and just started a new business, called Club Rejuve, that offers it for a fraction of the cost in a medical clinic. Not only that, but he sat down and talked with me for two hours!

I was dying to know if my blood was crawling with critters and where I am weak. Just like a predator in the wild, lyme and other bacteria/viruses love to feed on the weak. Then after feeding, comes re-population. Eek.

Jim Lane, the Medical Technologist, knew I was dealing with Lyme, and had warned me that he has seen lots of people whose blood was absolutely riddled with bacteria and fungis so bad that you could barely discifer any blood cells.

So I prepared myself for the worst.

And with just one little prick of my finger, like many diabetics do to test blood sugar, so much was revealed in my blood that I could write a short novel.

To spare you too many details, I was relieved to see that, overall, my blood looked quite healthy! Whoot!

The funniest part was when he asked me what I last ate. I was mortified to tell him that I had a plate full of homemade french fries an hour earlier. Hmm. He scowled at me.

"What type of oil? Coconut?"he asked.
"Uh, no."
"Deep fried?"
"Yep."
Then he investigated the potatoes, "New potatoes? Organic?" he pressed on.
"Ugh...no idea."
"You know you can bake potatoes..."
"I swear I usually eat healthy. I know way too much about this stuff. I just rushed home after teaching yoga and ate what my husband offered up [minus the illegal-for-me grilled cheese]. I swear."
He didn't look impressed or like he believed me one bit. I don't blame him either.

Well, at least my blood spoke up for me. Jim was very surprised to see in my blood very few big-globby-sticky-trasnfat-sludge-thingies  (my words). Cholesterol I assume. It goes on to combine with others globs to clog your arteries and slow down the free flow of your blood. He even went on to say the levels were way below normal.  "Oh, you really don't eat fried foods," he said. Ha.

The GROSSEST part though was to see lots of dot-like particles floating around in the blood plasma. "See those," Jim pointed at the dots, "those are the fat partials from your lunch." Yuck. At least, for whatever reason, it proved that my digestion was pretty good. We need fat in our blood though, said Jim. But its better to have the good fats. He recommended me take more fish oil/DHA supplements  especially because there were some "ghost cells", or weakly formed cells.

THE BAD

IT was there. THEY were there. Eating away at the weak blood cells. Those little squiggly worm-like spirochetes that created this whole mess in my body (aka lyme). Along with some other strange bacteria probably related to the original spirochetes (they morph and change form). I saw them with my own eyes. Disheartening to see I still had work to do, but I knew that. I knew they were still there. The good news is they were just in a few small pockets. Not everywhere overflowing.

A spirochete

He recommended herbs I am already taking, teasel root, cat's claw (I am on the specialized version called Samento which is really great to fight Lyme). As well as Oregano Oil derived from the Mediterranean oregano. It is an antiviral, and helps with yeast too, which , yes I had too.

Yes, traces of  yeast in my plasma clogging up my blood even though I have cut out sugar, wheat, and yeast from my diet for four months. *Sigh*

THE STRANGE

Then there were some really really strange looking red blood cells. Some that were spiky-looking instead of oval, and a couple that looked more like the shape of a bunny in Annies Mac & Cheese. The spiky ones are due to free-radical damage. The reason why those marketing gods are always promoting antioxidants. So guess I will be loading up on antioxidants to help prevent more free-radical damage.


The bunny shaped ones, Jim said, are due to radiation. Radiation could be from a dentist office, x-rays, radon in the earth, or electromagnetic radiation from cell-phones, or compact florescent lights (CFLs), or computers ect. (I knew that florescent lighting in school/work always made me sick!) There are many articles out there about how CFLs are not good for our health, like this one. The "green movement" supports shifting to CFL for the environment, but I have never been on board due to the "dirty energy" they emit.

Also lurking deep in my cells were some fibrous strands that Jim said were a sort of fungus. (Fungus in my blood, what!) He asked if I get cysts because these sort of fiber-strand-fungi can develop into cysts and even cancer.

Fibrous-fungi in the blood

He recommended the health supplement Bromelain (1000ml twice a day) to help rid my blood of these fungi-fibers. As an added bonus the Bromelain helps as an anti-inflammatory, which for a Lyme sufferer who experiences arthritic-like symptoms, this is wonderful. Bromelain is "one of the most popular supplements in Germany, where it is approved by the Commission E for the treatment of inflammation and swelling of the nose and sinuses due to surgery or injury."*

LESSONS

Lessons learned: eat antioxidants, stay away from wheat, yeast and radiation!
Plus, our gut health is so important to overall health! Without proper digestion in the gut, things (critters and fungi) can get into your blood and reek havoc!

I walked away feeling pretty good, but I still have work to do. It was so nice to be armed with direct knowledge of what exactly was going on in my blood and healthy options to help remedy. I hope I can go back in 4 months to see how I am doing again. Blood cells have a 4-month cycle.

I recommend everyone get this done! It can really help you know where exactly you are lacking and where you need to improve.

* Source about Bromelain.