Trouble Sleeping? Try Yoga in Bed
When it comes to my personal health and wellness, there are two things I strongly believe:
1) I need a good night’s sleep to function well and to feel well. For me, a good night’s sleep is 7 to 8 hours.
2) Yoga is the best way to relax and relieve stress.
However, up until I read an article on doing yoga in bed earlier this month, I had never thought to use yoga as a way to get better sleep. But that’s just what Graydon Moffat, a Toronto yoga instructor, is doing.
Moffat found herself waking up multiple times in the middle of the night and getting very little quality sleep. She tried everything—alcohol, warm milk, sleeping pills—and then she tried practicing a few simple yoga poses in her pajamas, in bed. And it worked.
This wasn’t news to our senior editor, Maria Wakem. When I forwarded her the article, she wrote back: “I find that goddess pose (what the woman is doing in this picture) is the best when you can’t sleep. It’s even better when you put one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly—then you let your heartbeat and breath lull you to sleep.”
That’s definitely a tip I’ll use the next time I have trouble getting to sleep.
Read more about how yoga can help you sleep at The Globe and Mail.
—Stephanie Kinnear, web editor
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Easy (and Healthy) Stir-Fry in a Snap!
I always look forward to the annual San Francisco Yoga Journal Conference, not just because of the great marketplace that’s open to everyone (this year I especially enjoyed sampling ZICO coconut water and being guided by Grace Aroma Wellness on what essential oil would help boost my immunity) but also because of the amazing yoga teachers it brings to town.
One of them was Spa contributor Felicia M. Tomasko, who is also a registered nurse, a practitioner of Ayurveda, and the editor-in-chief of LA Yoga magazine. (Want a soothing yoga practice you can do at home? Check out 8 Yoga Poses for Simple Stress Relief that Felicia sequenced and wrote for Spa. The poses are beginner-friendly, and while simple, they are highly effective at calming the body and mind.)
One night during the conference, I was lucky enough to share dinner with Felicia. As we were heading to my apartment and discussing what to eat, we agreed that we wanted something warming, grounding, and healthy—yet simple enough to whip up quickly so we wouldn’t spend the whole evening cooking. So we stopped at a grocery store, and the result was the following stir-fry that took only about 1/2 hour to make, including preparation.
INGREDIENTS
1 pack of Thai rice noodles
3 small bunches of bok choy (sliced lengthwise)
1 yellow onion (chopped)
4-6 chives (chopped)
4-5 cloves of fresh garlic (peeled and crushed or chopped)
3-5 inches of fresh ginger (peeled and sliced)
1 head of broccoli (roughly chopped)
3 tablespoons of sesame seed oil (add more as needed while cooking)
2 tablespoons of mustard
DIRECTIONS
1. Boil water and prepare rice noodles according to package
instructions. When done, rinse and set aside.
2. Add sesame oil to a hot wok or large frying pan, then add onions,
garlic, and ginger and cook until onions are translucent (about 3-4
minutes). Stir constantly.
3. Add broccoli and mustard, and stir until broccoli is your desired tenderness.
4. Add cooked rice noodles, stir until noodles are mixed in and warm, then serve.
Voila! This turned out to be so delicious and easy, it’s going to become a dinner staple of mine. We ended up going with mostly green vegetables, but you could include anything that sounds good to you or you have handy in your fridge. For me, the ingredient I am now going to keep in my house regularly is fresh ginger. In addition to adding a tasty zing, ginger offers a host of benefits.
If you try the recipe, please let me know how it turns out—especially if you do some experimenting and find that you think more or less garlic is better, or if you’ve tried a different mix of ingredients in the stir fry.
Bon appetit!
Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottfeldstein/ / CC BY 2.0
—Julie Sinclair, editor-in-chief
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This Holiday Season, Find Your Happy Place
What is supposed to be a joyous time spent reconnecting with family and friends often turns into a whirlwind of menu planning, late night parties, and mad dashes for those last few presents. The revelry, of course, isn’t a bad thing. But the chaos can take its toll on your body—and your stress levels. So this holiday season, make it a point to set aside some time for yourself.
When I lived in New York City, I always scheduled a post-Christmas shopping water circuit at Great Jones Spa ($50, three hours). After a day of lugging heavy bags, it felt so good to soak in the 100-degree Jacuzzi and strategically position my aching back on the water jet. That water lounge was my happy place—a calming retreat where I could forget about everything I had to do, even for just a little while. (Now that I live in the East Bay, my new happy place is Piedmont Springs, where I can soak in an outdoor hot tub and stare at the stars for a mere $15 an hour.)
Your happy place doesn’t have to involve hot tubs or water jets, but it should be somewhere quiet that you can escape to easily. We spend most of the holidays giving gifts to others, it seems only fair to give some peace to ourselves.
—Maria Wakem, senior editor
Image: Great Jones Spa
