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Wellness Wednesday: Quinoa Banana-Nut Muffins
When I want a protein-packed snack or a quick breakfast, I whip up a warm batch of these Quinoa Banana-Nut Muffins. Quinoa is a low-fat source of protein, rich in essential nutrients and my favorite alternative to white flour. I add ginger for flavor and spice and dark chocolate chips for a melt-in-your-mouth dose of antioxidants. Bananas offer a potassium kick and low-fat yogurt gives a calcium boost and keeps the muffins moist.
Homemade Ayurvedic Body Scrub
A rich body scrub can help revitalize skin in preparation for warmer weather, but forget pricey, overly perfumed store scrubs with dubious chemicals listed on their labels. All you need are a few simple ingredients and knowledge of your dosha, or constitution, to mix up the perfect body scrub for you.
4 Steps to Focus: Equal Breathing
Meditation is a difficult practice, and life's distractions often make it a challenge to focus. When you want to relax or de-stress, controlled breathing is a great solution—you don’t even need a yoga mat. It’s called Pranayama, one of the 8 limbs of yoga, and although it sounds very obvious to breathe, sometimes it’s easy to allow the breath to become erratic or short, especially when you are in a stimulating or even chaotic environment.
Creative Expression
Many of us remember making art as small children. Carving out that piece of floor or kitchen table or classroom and losing ourselves as we became engrossed in the task at hand. Immersed in a sea of paints, crayons, construction paper, brown paper bags and Popsicle sticks, all our senses were engaged. The smell of the crayons, the feel of wet paint or glitter glue on fingers, the sound of furious coloring or of our own rhythmic breathing as we focused on a task all grounded us to our mission. Some will remember the sense of pride and accomplishment at having completed this act of telling a story. Telling our story in a way that makes sense of ourselves, our families and our world.
Winter Wellness: Meditation
Metta Kindness Practice
The Buddha gave a beautiful teaching on the development of lovingkindness called the Metta Sutta (also known as the Karaniya Metta Sutta). I think it's a perfect practice to follow during the darker, quieter winter months.
Winter Wellness: The Seeds of Winter
I
began dreading the onset of winter in October, convinced it was only an enjoyable time for lovers and people who have kids. My anxiety about the impending winter grew as it drew closer and I found myself fantasizing about escaping the city, going somewhere, anywhere other than where I was, where surely I could go through my process in a more uplifting environment.
Winter Wellness
If we've learned anything here at Joyful Heart, it's that a regular practice of self-care can help significantly boost our well being, aids in the healing process and allows us to live more joyful lives. I started my meditation practice last weekend, but I was confident I could do more to keep well this winter.
2 Minute Wellness
Greetings from sunny Los Angeles. Many Joyful Heart staff and Board members have congregated in LA for a series of meetings and events. We look forward to sharing more about what we've been up to (including the launch two new joyful products, meetings with program partners from the west coast and hosting an amazing cultivation event) in the days ahead.
Heal the Healers Profiles: Elena Hull and Rebekah Windmiller
Rebekah Windmiller is an Expressive Arts Therapist, a licensed Creative Arts Therapist in New York State, and the Director of the New York Expressive Arts Studio Community Workshop.
