Best Self Help

Share some tea with SARK!

Want to have a cup of tea with SARK? Here’s a fun tea party video from SARK’s home in San Francisco where she talks about dreams and her new online program.

Here are more resources from SARK that we think you’ll enjoy! 

SARK’s Transformation Exper!ence
Get 90 fabulous tools for healing and transforming your life with SARK’s Transformation Exper!ence!

Juicy Journaling with SARK
From journaling to poetry, Juicy Journaling with SARK is a writing companion to help you discover and LOVE your writing AND and your life!

SARK’s Awesome Anytime Adventure
Want to take a different kind of vacation?  SARK’s Awesome Anytime Adventure is a 30-day multimedia eProgram full of nourishing, fabulously fun sweet spots of inspiration, healing, and extreme self-care.  Sign up for your three free days at the bottom of the page!

Natural Remedies for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Do you have a job that involves repetitive motion? If you aren’t careful, you could end up suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. For people who already suffer from it, here are some home remedies to help relieve the pain.

What is carpal tunnel syndrome?

The carpal tunnel is a narrow passage on the inside of your forearm at the level of your wrist. It houses the medial nerve and tendons that flex the fingers on your hand. All of these structures fit nice and neat in this passage that protects them from injury.

The problem comes in when swelling in the area causes the median nerve to get pinched. Anyone who has ever had a pinched nerve knows the amount of pain associate with it. The nerve can be agitated by fine motor skills and vibrating movements that cause inflammation.

Home remedies go a long way towards fighting the pain. If the movement that caused the carpal tunnel problem is temporary, then any treatment should take care of the discomfort. When the motion is repeated on a regular basis, using several of the suggested home remedies can bring relief.

1. One home remedy is using essential oils to ease the pain. Through massage, the inflamed nerve can be soothed. Peppermint oil and even lavender can cool the area and provide relief.

2. Use a splint on your wrist. This is a rigid device to keep you from bending your wrist in unnatural positions when sleeping or while working. When we sleep, we are not fully aware of how our arms and hands bend. Sometimes, sleeping on your wrist can lead to numbness and pain when you wake. Intense pain can wake you up from your sleep.

3. Use ergonomic equipment at work and at home. Ergonomics is the study of body mechanics. You hear a lot about it these days, especially from people who work in offices. For those with repetitive motion jobs, using wrist rests for your computer, ergonomic keyboards and adjusting your chair height can all contribute to relieving carpal tunnel pain and warding off the condition in the first place.

4. Use a cold compress on the area. A cold compress will dull the pain. Some suggest warm ones, but, for this region of the body, warmth can increase inflammation which can increase pain.

5. Exercise your wrists. Taking a break and performing wrist exercises can help reduce the pain caused by carpal tunnel.  Circling your wrist one way and then the next helps to keep the muscles loose.

Alternative medicine like acupuncture can also ease your pain. In ancient Chinese medicine, acupuncture has been used to not only ease pain but also to ease digestive discomfort.

Do you suffer from pain in your wrists or numbness and tingling in your fingers? You could have carpal tunnel syndrome. Use the home remedy ideas above to help stop the pain in its tracks.

You might be interested in:

Carpal Tunnel Cure
Free video reveals ancient Japanese exercises that may help eliminate your carpal tunnel pain.

Cure Carpal Tunnel Pain
Natural remedies guide available for instant download

How to Improve Your Memory

Chances are, you aren’t really losing your mind. A certain amount of memory loss is a natural part of aging. But there are a few things you can do to improve your memory.

How does memory work?

In the brain, when we gather and store information a new synapse or brain connection is created. In that particular pathway, we learned a telephone number or how to ride a bike. Thousands and thousands of these connections are created during your lifetime.

Short-term memory refers to information that we acquire for the moment. Maybe you are trying to remember a telephone number to dial it for car repairs. Next week, you probably won’t know that number anymore.

Long-term memory refers to information that we learn and want to remember. That includes people’s names, procedures at work, family telephone numbers and the stuff we learn in school (for many of us). Whenever we need it, we can search our mind and call upon those snippets of information.

When our memories begin to lose steam, it is a gradual process. The areas that are responsible for short-term and long-term memory suffer the ravages of time also. Memory loss may be the wrong term to use. You are still processing information but at a slower rate than you were before.

So how can you fight this process? Many of us don’t actively try to learn new things. In essence, our brains get lazy. To keep us from missing a trick, here are a few exercises you can perform to improve your memory.

* Write lists. When you go to the grocery store or run errands, write down what you are going to do. This encourages your brain to think about what you need to do. Also, the information is recalled to the forefront of your mind so there is less chance of forgetting it.

* Exercise on a regular basis. Exercise increases the oxygen intake in the body. You can increase your focus and the way that you process information. Instead of flying off the handle when a bad situation occurs, you will be more likely to think through your responses to trouble.

* Get sleep. During deep sleep, the body shuts off all non-vital functions in order to repair itself. Lack of sleep can lead to forgetfulness, that feeling of being scatterbrained. When the body is allowed the time it needs for renewal, your mind is fresh each morning.

* Neurobics is the new buzz word for activities to increase brain use. These can range from playing word games, number games or doing puzzles. Any activity that builds new pathways in the brain and uses ones you haven’t visited in a long time improves your memory.

* Use Memory Improvement Techniques.
Here are unique software and book selections to help you learn memory improvement techniques.

Yoga Sandals

Yoga sandals, proponents say, teach your toes to spread – which is a basic teaching in yoga, to achieve better balance & body alignment.

Osteopaths often recommend yoga sandals to improve foot, hip and back problems. The toe-spreading creates a massage effect that helps to re-align bones of knees, ankles, hip joints and legs and also improves foot mobility..

Wearing yoga sandals repeatedly can increase the blood flow, which relieve tiredness of legs and feet and helps with arthritic pain in lower limbs.

The yoga sandals are available in black and are made from microfiber. They are unisex and come in four different sizes, S (4-5), M (6-7), L (8-9) and XL (10).

The sandals can be worn anywhere, before and after a yoga class, in your home but also outside.

Learn more about Yoga Sandals from Gaiam.com:

Yoga Sandals
Description from Gaiam:
“Spread your toes” is a favorite yoga teacher mantra for a reason. Separating your toes improves your balance, flexibility and alignment. Worn around the house or on errands, our EVA microfiber yoga sandals retrain your feet to do just that while also helping to relieve painful foot conditions. A great before/after class slip-on. Black. S-M-L-XL. Made with 32% recycled LDPE. Made in Indonesia.”
Find Yoga Sandals at Gaiam
(Click link above to see if Gaiam is offering discount yoga sandals today.)

Easy Ways to Get Some Mind Rest

Have you ever tried to go to sleep but your mind is racing a mile a minute?

Sometimes when we just want the mind to rest, it won’t listen. Here are a few ways that you can silence the noise and learn how to give your mind a rest.

First, try to reduce your multitasking. Everyone today tends towards multitasking to make all of their activities fit into one 24-hour day. If you can’t think about five different things at one time, you are in the minority.

You may get a lot done, but there is a price. When you try to find the calm after the storm, it isn’t there. One of the main reasons is that we don’t let our bodies stop at the same time. The mind and body are connected. It is hard to keep the mind at bay when the body is still moving.

To that end, the first way to help your mind to rest is to stop moving your body. Find a quiet place in your home or another location where you can be alone (sans kids and hubby). In this space, refuse to lift a finger unless it is lowering yourself on the bed or a bench.

Try a few breathing exercises. Yoga is great for teaching you how to listen to the sing-song rhythm of your breathing. You probably didn’t notice that you were breathing shallow and fast. Now, you can slow it down and go deeper to bring more oxygen in your lungs. Increased oxygen levels also increases mental clarity and focus.

Thirdly, try to get rid of distractions. No one likes to think of their family as a distraction, but when you need to center yourself, anyone or anything that vies for your attention is just that. Turn off your cellular phone, your PDA and your pager. Let the only noises you hear be the natural sounds around you. Besides, with these devices close at hand, your body remains tense waiting for them to buzz.

Find something to occupy your time that is not related to work or problem solving. Often we are thinking of ways to fix or change something. Try reading a favorite book, fishing, watching the ducks in the park or simply staring up at the clouds. By changing your focus, your mind gets a chance to rest from its labors and concentrate on something that is not stressful.

One device that you can have is a music player of some kind. Music usually conjures up memories of less stressful times. It also calms the savage mind. Let the dulcet tones lull your mind into a deeper consciousness.

You might also like this free meditation course from Secrets of Meditation creator Matt Clarkson: Click here now to enroll for free.

Self Care: Go on a Virtual Retreat with Jennifer Louden

Do you ever find yourself needing a retreat, but you don’t have any time to get away?

Me too!

The amazing and talented author Jennifer Louden is having a virtual retreat.

Here are the details:

Love yourself INTO action and OUT OF depletion with Jen
Louden and 13 other world famous teachers… without even
getting out of your pj’s!

Jennifer’s book, Woman’s Retreat Book: A Guide to Restoring, Rediscovering
and Reawakening Your True Self –In a Moment, An Hour, Or a Weekend, was featured on
Oprah. Now, Jen has created a Valentine’s Day weekend
VIRTUAL RETREAT designed to give your creative heart a boost
and your mind a rest!

The retreat package includes:

•  A copy of “How To Retreat,” an eBook that helps  you let
go of the fear and shows you how to create the time.

• Gentle “Get Ready” emails  to help you prepare for your
self-caring-est weekend ever.

•  Exclusive access to a members-only blog, where you will
get untold amounts of support and encouragement, PLUS…

• 13 heart-expanding mini-retreats with world-renowned
authors and healers.

• Easy-to-download recordings and transcripts of each
mini-retreat  so you can come and go as you please.

If you sign up before February 5th, you get a $50 discount!
So click here to learn more and don’t forget to tell your friends so
they can “virtually retreat,” too!