Bathing in color can heal you

Who doesn’t love a nice relaxing soak in the tub at the end of a long day?

Since water is naturally soothing, one of the immediate benefits of soaking in a hot tub is stress relief. The feeling of weightlessness can significantly reduce physical stress and mental anxiety.

Add a few drops of color into your bath, and you turn your bath into a tool for chromatherapy. Also known as color therapy, it uses color to encourage general health as well as to remedy specific difficulties.

Lightly tinting the water with a few drops of color makes your bath a multisensory experience that is actually beneficial to your health.

Practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine point out the particular colors to work with each of the seven chakras or energy centers of the body. This will create harmony and make you feel much better.

Energy healer Nancy Hausauer has these recipes:

White and blue chakra soak to improve creativity:

Bathing in clear blue water helps you express yourself verbally and artistically as it harmonizes your fifth chakra, which is related to self-expression and creativity.

What you’ll need:

2 c Epsom salt
1 tbsp dried lavender buds
5 drops blue food coloring

Start by combining Epsom salt, lavender and food coloring in a bowl, or use a mortar and pestle. Mix until blue hue is evenly distributed and lavender is slightly crushed. Draw a warm bath and add tinted salt; gently stir. Relax for 20 minutes.

For romance

Green chakra Soak to enhance romance:

If you’re after a deep, loving relationship, a green bath is ideal, as it supports the loving energy that flows through your fourth chakra.

What you’ll need:

2 c baking soda
1 c citric acid powder
1½ c cornstarch
½ c Epsom salt
¾ tsp green bath bomb dye
Muffin pan

Start by shaking baking soda, citric acid and Epsom salt. Slowly add bath bomb dye. Fill small spray bottle with water. Lightly mist and knead mixture until it forms a crumbly dough. Spray muffin pan with cooking oil; pack in the mixture. Let it set overnight. Flip pan over; remove bath bomb, then soak for 20 minutes.

Yellow chakra soak to strengthen self-esteem:

Reinforce your sense of self and your personal power, the hallmarks of a healthy third chakra.

What you’ll need:

2 c Epsom salt
5 drops yellow food coloring
1 orange, sliced into wheels

Start by combining Epsom salt and food coloring in a bowl. Mix until yellow hue is evenly distributed; draw a warm bath and let them float freely. Relax for 20 minutes.

I have experienced soaking in a rainbow of colors in a spa abroad. The wet floor offers a Jacuzzi with light, changing colors from blue to purple to red and so on. It was quite mesmerizing!

So next time you dip in a tub, melt your cares away, balance your chakras and achieve deep relaxation with a chromatherapy bath. It is not only fun, but also very easy to do.

source: lifestyle.inquirer.net

San Francisco airport unveils yoga room for travelers

Just cleared airport security and in need of a little deep breathing and stretching relaxation?

San Francisco Airport has opened what it calls a first of its kind yoga room, and while it's not quite a mountaintop in Tibet, airport officials say the low lights, and soothing blue walls aim to afford travelers, stressed out or sanguine, an oasis of calm in which to flex, twist and decompress.

"As far as we know it's the first (yoga room) at an airport anywhere in the world," said Michael C. McCarron, director of community affairs for the airport.

He said the idea for the room, in the newly refurbished Terminal 2, came from a passenger suggestion at an open house. It joins the Berman reflection room, a space intended for silence and meditation located before Terminal 2 security.

Airport Director John L. Martin called the room, which opened last week, "another leap forward in providing our travelers the opportunity and space to relax and decompress on their own terms."

The architects, Gensler Design, set the lights low and warm in contrast to the light, bright concourse, according to a statement, and a floating wall was constructed to symbolize "a buoyant spirit and enlightened mind."

Large felt-constructed rocks will be installed in the Spring in a nod to the Zen gardens of Japan.

John Walsh, duty manager at San Francisco Airport, said the room is already attracting its share of travelling yogis, many equipped with their own props.

"I've seen people using it. They do yoga," Walsh said. "We have mats, but some people actually bring their own." There are also folding chairs, popular in many senior yoga sessions. So far there are no plans to hold classes.

Located just past security, it's a particular draw for people with time to kill before their flight, Walsh said.

Santa Monica-based yoga teacher Tamal Dodge believes the yoga room at the airport will be the first of many yoga spaces to be attached to airports and public transportation venues.

"How amazing will it be to stretch out and meditate before you get on a plane for a 12-hour flight," said Dodge, who is featured in the "Element: Hatha & Flow Yoga for Beginners" DVD.

"You are now given the opportunity to really relax and prepare your body for something as taxing as sitting in an airplane seat for hours on end," he said.

Airport yogis are directed to their room by the usual method–the pictograph: this one of a figure seated in full lotus position. –Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com