As the pandemic rages across the world, a lot of us are feeling lost, angry, anxious, and uncertain about the unprecedented situation at hand. World Health Organization has acknowledged, more people feel stressed and anxious, have disturbed sleep, lack focus, and are overwhelmed about possible transmission from the spread of coronavirus, among other indicators. Can I take a minute of yours and share what is helping me stay calm and getting me through it?
Much disconcertingly, people with existing mental health conditions are more vulnerable under the current situation. The limited access to health centers, and the moral pressure to not overwhelm the existing healthcare system does not ease the stress in any way. Additionally, here is the big problem with anxiety-it perpetuates itself. If you are anxious about a certain illness, disorder or pain, it can simply be the seed for more anxiety. It is important to break this chain and manage anxiety. And to some extent natural healing systems like Ayurveda offer holistic and perfectly doable solutions to managing symptoms of anxiety.
We are rediscovering the meaning of ‘confinement’ in a new light. Social isolation may have clipped our freedom to go out and socialize, walk or travel. But, it has given us all the time we had wanted to give ourselves for some healthy TLC. Self Love, do I hear?
Here’s a simple low down of 5 extremely calming Ayurveda inspired body oils that have soothed my nerves, augmented my skin’s softness and healed anxiety and stiffness. Stress relief? Chronic pain reduction? Tranquility? Total balmy sense of relaxation? Check, check, check and check!
Formulated with the goodness of exotic herbs and herbal extracts like raspberry seed, black cohosh, clary sage, sesame oil, grapeseed oil, borage, aloe vera and castor oil and other herbs, Shankara’s Harmonizing Body Oil is an uplifting and rebalancing body oil with a fragrance that entices your being and offers emotional balance. The raspberry in the oil provides anti-aging quality to the blend, fights inflammations, acne and blemishes. Clary sage, another powerful ingredient, is a natural antidepressant, reduces stress, and reduces menstrual cramps.
Trust Shankara to craft the perfect and most harmonic EO blends for your skin and body that use extracts from all the above essential oils and more, bringing the best of Ayurvedic wisdom from the east and the knowledge of natural actives in the west. Made into perfection, when the oil drips on your skin, and you rub it evenly, gradually and lovingly, you can feel the goodness of all these essences seep into your body tissues. Finally, making you relaxed, hydrated as the aromatic richness wafts through the space you walk in. Feel the stress dissolve away!
Shankara’s Aromatherapy Collection is a calming gift for the senses. Aromatherapy is an ideal product to come home to, after a long day of handling office work, domestic chores and cleaning up. A soothing and sensually invigorating aromatherapy is as good as it gets. It aids sleep, reduces stress, transforms negative emotions and calms the frayed nerves. Shankara’s Aromatherapy collection balances all the three doshas and brings together the following formulations of essential oils:
Firstly, Grounding and Centering: Essential oils from Cardamom, Sandalwood EO, and Vetiver
Secondly, Cooling and Soothing: Essential oils from Sandalwood, Lavender, Geranium
Finally, Stimulating and Invigorating: EO from Lemon, Bergamot, Cypress and Grapefruit.
To begin with, Ayurveda experts recommend a 15 to 20-minute head and foot message before dinner. The massage relaxes the body, gets rid of the fatigue in the system and helps you sleep well. Shankara’s Nourishing Foot Oil has essential oils and extracts of calming herbs. It is rich with the essence of sunflower, jojoba, grapeseed, lemon basil, dashmoola, neem, cardamom, camphor, lemongrass, manjistha, lavender, ginger, olive leaves and Ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is a known calming adaptogen that helps your body manage physiological and mental stress, camphor helps you sleep better, reduces chronic pain and the fragrance eases tensions in the mind and lemongrass has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.
This is my go to post-workout. This is for the tired and overworked muscles. At the end of a yoga session or any other form of workout, which I assume, you continue with at home, experts recommend you give yourself a total body massage using an herbal muscle release oil that seeps into your muscular tissues, lubricating and rejuvenating each muscle fiber in your body. Also, it releases the psychosomatic stress stored in your body. Fitness freaks, yoga lovers, athletes and sports enthusiasts vouch for The Shankara Muscle Release Oil, a unique blend of calming eastern herbal essences and actives from the west like sunflower, almond, sesame, aloe vera, castor, jojoba, sweet birch, lavender, cedarwood, frankincense, devils claw, boswellia among others.
The invigorating scent is both soothing and aromatic., To add to it, the powerful ingredients help soothe inflamed muscles and joints. The oil positively supports the natural healing properties of the body. It is good for deep tissue massages and free from counter-irritants and other side-effect ridden ingredients. It supports the natural intelligence and healing wisdom of the body.
Abhyanga or self-massage therapy comes strongly recommended by American Massage Therapy Association. ‘Massage therapy can assist in reducing the symptoms of anxiety,” AMTA says.
It helps reduce anxiety in these four major ways,
- Lowers cortisol secretion, which is a stress hormone.
- Pain reduction
- Relieving muscle soreness
- Activates parts of the brain responsible for feelings of joy, and well-being.
Abhyanga or self massage therapies use Oils that are prepared using very specific type of herbs that aid and assimilate the healing properties of the herbs as mentioned in one of the world’s most ancient healing system of Ayurveda. The oil is made keeping in mind every individual’s doshic constitution and the doshas that need to be balanced.
Shankara’s Sundarya Body Oil is one such sensory gift with deep relaxing properties and a pleasant and fulfilling fragrance that does not give you a headache. Firstly, It combines the essence of more than 12 rare and exotic herbs including jasmine, ylang ylang, rose geranium, aloe vera, sesame, sunflower oleic, vetiver and vanilla. Secondly, they are pregnant with incredible medicinal properties. For example, Jasmine helps stimulate happy hormones like serotonin in the body, gives you clarity of mind, is calming and is good for your respiratory system. Then, Ylang ylang is an effective mood enhancer, anti-depressant and eases the stress built up in the nervous system properties.
