John Douillard's LifeSpa | Ayurveda + Natural Health
Ancient Wisdom meets Modern ScienceAyurveda + Natural Health News
How Strong is Your Pelvic Floor? Pelvic floor exercises, better known as Kegels, are stereotyped as only for women, to help with urinary incontinence or strengthen the pelvic floor after giving birth. However, everyone should be paying attention to their pelvic floor health! For both men and women, not only is the science behind pelvic
Breath Retention / Intermittent Hypoxia Breath retention, called kumbhaka in Ayurveda and yoga, is considered the most important aspect of pranayama or yogic breathing techniques.2 While it’s a practice that takes time to learn, research shows intermittent hypoxia (aka not having enough oxygen for short periods of time) has numerous side benefits, including neuroplasticity, stem
Ayurveda’s Strategies for Oxidative Stress What is oxidative stress? According to Healthline, it’s an imbalance between free radicals and antioxidants. Free radicals are oxygen-containing molecules with an uneven number of electrons. The uneven number allows them to easily react with other molecules. Free radicals can cause large-chain chemical reactions because they react so easily with
Yoga + the Brain Yoga, including physical postures (asana), breathing techniques (pranayama), and meditation, have been studied extensively. Yoga has so many benefits, but for this article, I will focus on its effect on the brain and brainwaves. Studies show that yoga decreases anxiety while boosting cognitive function.1 A meta-analysis of 15 studies found that
What Type of Exercise Should I Do? New research once again points to health and longevity benefits of endurance exercise compared to resistance training. Now, no one is suggesting resistance (weight) training is in any way harmful— numerous studies tout its many health benefits, as they do with any type of physical exercise.1,2 Recently, however,
Ayurvedic medicine is rich in time-tested wisdom, backed by good science, which we would now call life hacks. Some of these ancient health-promoting strategies are on the top of my list to helps us live longer, healthier, and happier during our stay here on earth. Here are my top ten! Dr. John’s Top 10 Ayurvedic
Yoga nidra has become a popular and effective relaxation tool common in many yoga studios. But it is not always practiced with an understanding of its original purpose. Translated, yoga nidra combines yoga, union of mind, body, and consciousness, and nidra, sleep. Strictly translated, yoga nidra is the ability to sleep while maintaining a state
The world may not need another cleanse, but the cleanse I’m introducing to you is not new—in fact, it is thousands of years old: perhaps the oldest Ayurvedic detox of all! There is one catch: this cleanse, the LifeSpa Kaya Kalpa Cleanse, is NOT for everyone. It’s more aggressive than our first two cleanses, the
A spontaneous healing is when the body recovers from a disease state spontaneously without apparent cause or aid of medical care.1 Some call it the placebo effect and others call it quantum healing, suggesting healing from an invisible source that works through mechanisms that are, as of yet, unknown. Spontaneous remissions, spontaneous regressions, or quantum
What is the connection between mind and body? How does the juncture point operate and could it be the key to health and quantum healing? According to Ayurveda, we carry a life force called prana that bridges the physical body and the subtle energies (like mind and emotions). We have various layers (koshas) to our
I have long held that being a highly sensitive person a great asset. Learning how to be a sensitive person, however, in an insensitive world, is the key—but once mastered, the rewards are great, especially for women!13 A 2015 study in the journal Psychonueroendocrinology suggests that women experience 2-3x the stress and mood-related concerns that men
When I was training in India many years ago, whether you were seeing a palm reader, pulse reader, or palm leaf reader to gain insight into your health (future or past), you would always walk away asking how much of that reading was psychic or intuitive. My Ayurvedic teacher, an expert pulse reader, would routinely
