Holistic Healing
What are Holistic Practices?
According to The University of Minnesota, holistic practices are "Alternative medicine, complementary therapies, holistic practices, natural healthcare, integrative medicine--these are a few of the terms used nowadays to describe a wide array of healing practices that fall outside purely pharmaceutical or surgical treatments. Some examples are massage, meditation, and acupuncture." There are hundreds of different kinds of holistic practices that hospitals and doctor's offices are beginning to incorporate with their practices.
Benefits of Himalayan Salt Lamp
Benefits of Himalayan Salt Lamp
Cleansing a Home/Space with White Sage
Cleansing a Home/Space with White Sage
There are many holistic practices you may see your hosts and instructors use throughout your Zen~Yum event. Cleansing a space with white sage is one of many extra services we offer to enhance your event. The Holistic Guide offers a great explanation of the benefits and meaning behind cleansing with sage:
White Sage is used to create smudge sticks, a kind of incense. It is believed that the White Sage cleanses the place of negative vibes or energies and evil spirits that may linger around while at the same time attracts good vibes and positive energies. Today, the practice of using White Sage as incense still exists within the Native American tribes for ceremonies and purification.
For smudging, grooming, healthy tea to herbal and holistic remedy, the White Sage has proven to be useful in a lot of ways making it one of the most useful plants in the planet.
Medicinal Uses of White Sage
Medicinal Uses of White Sage
- Sinus Infections: If you suffer from frequent sinus infections, consuming white sage tea may cure or prevent such infections from recurring.
- Treating Wounds and Hyperhidrosis: The compounds such as eucalyptol in white sage tea have antibiotic and anti-allergenic effects. Once it cools down, the tea can be applied to wounds and rashes to speed up healing of the affected parts.
- Menstrual Pain: Drinking white sage tea may ease heavy and painful menstrual periods. It may also ease the discomfort associated with certain menopausal symptoms such as sweating and hot flashes. White sage tea contains phytoestrogens, which are biochemicals that mimic the effects of the female hormone estrogen.
Meditation
Meditation
The Yoga Journal offers 7 Holistic Benefits of practicing meditation daily:
- Stay Focused: Learning to sustain one’s attention through mindfulness seems to improve overall ability to focus and maintain attention during everyday tasks. In a 2012 study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, researchers evaluated individuals with no previous exposure to meditation.
- Manage Anxiety and Depression: In a 2014 meta-analysis, Goyal and his partners at Johns Hopkins found that mindfulness meditation might be on par with antidepressants in treating depressive symptoms. In a 2014 study in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, researchers examined 15 participants with no prior meditation experience. Over the course of just four days of mindfulness-meditation training, participants experienced significantly less anxiety.
- Reduce Stress: mindful individuals showed lower brain arousal in response to highly unpleasant images compared with controls. This suggests that mindfulness changes how stress-related emotion centers in the brain are activated. As a result, not only do these brain areas get less active when provoked, but the reaction may be easier to regulate because it’s not so strong, says Brown.
- Ease Pain: In a 2011 study, Wake Forest researcher Zeidan and his colleagues showed that after just four days of mindfulness-meditation training, meditating during episodes of pain reduced the unpleasantness by 57 percent and participants’ pain-intensity ratings by 40 percent.
- Boost Gray Matter: By spurring the growth of gray matter in various brain regions, mindfulness may improve learning, memory, and emotional regulation, several studies over the last decade have shown.
- Fight Alzheimers: In adults with mild cognitive impairment (a transitional stage between normal aging-related memory loss and full-blown dementia), participants who practiced mindfulness meditation showed less atrophy, or shrinking, in the hippocampus, a brain region that is altered in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
- Avoid Colds and Flu: Mindfulness meditation may help boost immune function. In a 2012 Annals of Family Medicine study of adults aged 50 or older, researchers showed that mindfulness meditation is about as effective as exercise for reducing the occurrence of acute respiratory infection, which includes colds and seasonal flu.

Trataka : Candle Gazing Meditation
Trataka : Candle Gazing Meditation
If you’ve ever looked at a flickering candle flame and thought how calming and meditative it appears, you’re not alone! Did you know that candle gazing is actually an ancient practice, otherwise known as Trataka?
Unlike other forms of meditation where the eyes are closed and your attention goes inward, candle gazing meditation involves gazing at a flame and making that the subject of your focus. It’s a powerful practice that you can easily incorporate into your routine to experience its benefits!
TRATAKA MEDITATION BENEFITS
Candle gazing can be a very efficient way to practice meditation and is a great option for those who struggle to stop their mind wandering. That’s because by keeping the eyes open and having an animated object to focus on it is easier to stay focused and enter a state of pure awareness, as we aim to in transcendental meditation.
From practicing Trataka, we get all the usual benefits of a meditative state, but according to Hatha yoga traditions there are also several other benefits such as:
Improves vision/eyesight
Improves concentration and memory
Enhances patience and willpower
Improves productivity
Calms the mind and promoting inner peace
Improves clarity and decision making
Provides stress and anxiety relief
Deepens sleep and helps sleep related disorders
Strengthens intuition and clairvoyance
Words of Wisdom
Words of Wisdom