Elemental Notion:
A good deal of today’s concerns – especially for both ends of the age spectrum – relate to the brain. For older people it’s Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, strokes, … For the younger end it’s the anxiety that is becoming ever more rampant. Furthermore, because we’re all depend so much on it, it’s worth it for all of us to learn how to induce greater health in our brains.
Note that your brain is at the body’s very top.
It’s the place where highest level things are given their home. As you work on this area, be aware that you are intersecting with this highest aspect of our human condition. Troubles here are meant to force you to work on this top level part of your being.
In the chakra frame of reference given by yoga, the brain is a part of “the crown center”, a place where spiritual growth occurs. You’re going to discover that there are ways to help this brain-cranial region to stay strong; you’ll learn some tools to help it when things here are breaking down.
FYI: What follows is not a substitute for medical care, but is offered by Dr. W as a way to help yourself as you tap into a set of life-positive natural forces.
Motions:
A good movement to begin the renewal of this region involves a side-to-side horizontal motion – always into something of physicality – a riverbank of sorts. They are classically noted as isometric x-axis motions. These motions are at the core of this system’s Water energy maneuvers. Actively using muscles in an area to create this x-axis motion creates tides of nourishment to move into local tissues. The brain will always benefit from an increased flow within its circulatory components.
Movements as described will help the ventricles where cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) is made and circulated, as well as the dural sinuses that do much to filter the brain’s blood of its oxygen-depleted red blood cells. Even the draining done by small microscopic veins between neurons are helped through this horizontal motion.
In the skull, the soft spot at the top of one’s head is a useful Water place to orient oneself. There you will be on the sagittal suture between the two Water bone components of the cranium – our pair of parietal bones. You want to make contacts with your right and left hands’ fingers on their respective sides of this pair of bones.
A particularly useful motion is one of four counts to an inhale as you physically press your right fingertips outward against the right medial (inner) skull’s parietal bones. The skull presses concurrently inward as that is done. Exhale with four counts as you emphasize your left hand pressing out on its left side. Move repeatedly back and forth (or more accurately, side-to-side) in that manner. You can change which side relates to the four-part inhale and exhale counts.
Click here for my special maneuvers from my exercise system, 4 Element Yoga, which are oriented to this region and its problems.
Potions:
Everyone wants a “potion”, whether it be a pharmaceutical or a nutritional/herbal support. In addition to the following for attaining local tissue nourishment, I find more is accomplished when you add the movements that are embedded in the 4 Element Yoga maneuvers discussed in Motions above.
Here’s a few things to appreciate as far as the brain is concerned.
Fish oils…
Mushrooms
Herbs like gingko