Wellness Practices that Promote Health & Harmony

Acute and chronic stress impairs our functioning with potential lifelong consequences.

We now have substantial scientific evidence to explain how wellness habits promote our brain to change and rewire itself through a life long process termed neuroplasticity.

Wellness practices that promote health and harmony have existed for centuries and millennia. However, we were unable to provide a “hard science” explanation for their underlying benefits until these past few decades mostly due to advances in brain imaging and molecular genetics. Today science is catching up with the wisdom of Ayurvedic medicine!

How we hold our bodies is what I refer to as a “tell.” Our posture, how we walk, how we literally hold our body and how we speak are an external reflection of an internal misalignment called “emotional anatomy.” Many of us have experienced traumas, emotional, physical, or spiritual. All trauma(s) leave their mark upon us in a variety of ways. Many of us suffer untold traumas, and we may or may not realize how they “live” within us.

The most important takeaway in understanding how trauma impacts us, is the knowledge that it has a silent, but physical influence on us. This is the intricate part of “Mindbody medicine” that demonstrates that how what we feel, what we think and how we act are all connected to our well-being. How we hold our body is the window into what has happened in our past and it predisposes us to the quality of our wellbeing in the future. The way we feel in our body colors the perspective of the way we see the world.

The inverse is true as well, when we are relaxed, we are psychologically at ease and our world is seen from another perspective. The goal is to tap into the state of ease allowing for the brain to ease drop on our body to release the trauma and stress and return to a state of homeostasis – to a state of balance to be able to repair and restore our system.

Neuroplasticity, or simple change in the nervous system, is our brain’s intrinsic and dynamic ability to continuously alter its structure and function throughout our lifetime.

During a time of loss of loved ones, an unexpected illness, being placed in a care-giving role for elders or children or any time of heightened stress, we often share with clients this is the time that they “need” us the most. Awareness of the reasoning behind why this is truly the time they need us the most, is not often clearly understood. When a person is stepping through this type of trauma, if these stressors or traumas are not embraced in a safe sacred space for their body to process the trauma, it can become embedded in the body. This may develop into health imbalances that if not addressed lead to life-long consequences.

Our cells have memory. The study of the limbic system tells us that we not only have a long-term memory of trauma, but we also have triggers that bring us back to moments in time.  One of the most powerful is scent. This is a subject that is covered in many modalities, one of the oldest is Ayurvedic Medicine.

We have all had the experience of a particular smell bringing us back to a time and place of memory. It could be a freshly baked apple pie transporting you back to childhood and the first time you smelled apple pie baking. Or maybe a cologne wafts by and wham, you’re thinking back to your high school sweetheart! There’s no telling when a “limbic moment” will hit you, but thanks to that ancient part of the brain, you have direct access to your past through the sense of smell.

The limbic system is part of the reptilian brain, the older embryological part of brain that is one of the first to form as a fetus. It is the interface between the brain and the outside world. The limbic system is the seat of the emotional center and is partly responsible for our fight or flight response, our emotional reaction to something, our hormonal secretions, motivation, pain reflex, and our mood fluctuations.

The importance of the limbic system: The 5,000-year old, ancient science known as Ayurveda has an immense knowledge about the mechanism of the human body. Ayurveda considers the human brain a vital organ in determining a person’s health in all ways, physically, emotionally, mentally, and socially. It says that human beings act according to the commands given by their brain. The start or the activation of the limbic system triggers the function of the central nervous system, enabling various other functions, like blood sugar levels, respiration process, determining the body temperature, controlling heart rate, awake and sleep response, sexual feelings, and much more.

“There are many rivers, yet one ocean.”

When we continue to hold the memory of trauma, we create the conditions for illness and dis-ease. This is why there are many modalities that are formulated to help us process through events that need to be released from the cellular memory and allow for healing. Some of the current modalities are psychotherapy, yoga, meditation, tapping, Feldenkrais Method, and acupuncture, just to share a few. The ancient wisdom shares that marma therapy, shirodhara, Abhyanga, chromatherapy, vibrational therapy are all ancient wisdom traditions that create a remarkable shift in our energetic body. These therapies allow for transformation of stress and trauma without talk-therapy and a perfect adjunct to traditional psychotherapy sessions.

How do we reverse the emotional and physical response of trauma’s psychological and physiological imprint upon us? There is always the time and place for psychotherapy as history has shown that we need to have the ability to speak with professionals to guide and counsel us. However, it has become increasingly clear that talk therapy, in some instances, may not be an appropriate or effective “stand-alone” therapy. Rather, it has recently being discovered that the neurobiology of the body’s stress response is deeply connected with our need for therapeutic touch. Ayurveda had uncovered techniques and methods to assist with the release of stored emotions in a soft gentle way.  (We provide these techniques to our soldiers suffering with PTSD.) There are many modalities that we perform to assist with the nervous system and stimulate the healing response: lymphatic therapy, chromatherapy, vibrational therapy, Tibetan shirodhara, marma therapy, and abhyanga – as mentioned above.

When BodiScience was created 31 years ago, we formulated treatments that addressed the emotional, physical, and spiritual body to allow for healing to unfold. We based these modalities upon science and studies of Mindbody medicine. As a result, the important relationship between aroma and the limbic system, the key tenet of the age-old “method of healing”, known as Ayurveda, the ‘Science of life” has proven to deliver remarkable results for our clients wellbeing. Included in our intentional “symphony of modalities”, are our quantum energetic essential oils, to make your experiences as healing and therapeutic as possible.

Take a moment to immerse yourself in one of our therapies. After all, we have all been through quite a lot. Just as there are many rivers, yet one ocean there are numerous ways to heal the body (and the mind) through ancient practices and modalities. Ayurveda is the oldest ocean of which all therapies came to be as rivers flowing from the mother of all healing. Reserve your time today.

Be Well,

Dawn Tardif & the BodiScience team