Beat Colds the Natural Way
Wouldn’t it be great to stop an icky-drippy cold before it starts?
Or how about keeping it from developing into a sinus infection or bronchitis?
Stay healthy and well by a new mindset and seven specific tips from this episode of The Gita Brown Show!
Get started now on your journey to wellness!
Takeaway tips:
1. Develop a mindset of gratitude and align with the organizing force of life. Know that the same organizing and abundant energy that created the trees and forrest, the beaches and oceans, the acorn and the oak is the same life energy that flows inside of you. Right now there are thousands of processes going on inside your body responsible for your respiration, heartbeat, metabolic functions and on and on! This power is in you all the time; and part of learning to manage your wellness is to focus on this inherent organizing force and help it flow more smoothly!
Meditation, tai chi, qigong, and gentle yoga are all great ways to start practicing this mindset!
2. Use a warming pack to keep your body warm. Check out this one or this one! If your body doesn’t have to work so hard to keep itself warm, then it has more energy to use for your immune functioning. They are also great for relieving muscle aches and pains, help joints be pain free, and reduce headaches.
3. At the first sign of a sore throat, gargle with warm salt water. Take about 1/2 cup of water and add salt until it tastes as salty as the sea. Gargle for thirty seconds, spit out the water. Repeat this at least twice more. If it doesn’t zap your cold in its tracks, it will greatly reduce the severity of your symptoms!
4. Drink ginger root tea.
Use this warming tonic to prevent colds by drinking it every morning or use it at the first sign of a cold
2 cups water
1-2 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and rough chopped
Bring to a simmer, cover and keep simmering for at least 10 minutes.
Before drinking add 1-2 tbsp of local, raw organic honey
Sip at least 8 ounces every few hours to keep your body happy!
Raw honey is antibacterial, anti-fungal, and has antioxidants and phytonutrients. Fresh ginger root can reduce the risk of infections, calms nausea, and inhibits the growth of bacteria. It also warms the digestive tract, so it warms you up from the inside out, which will help your body stay balanced and healthy.
5. Try acupuncture.
A great Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor will know acupuncture as well as have skills as an herbalist. They can help teach you about your body’s patterns and how to best handle boosting your immunity. Acupuncture has tons of research to back up its validity of an effective preventive medicine strategy, and from personal experience I can also recommend the power of herbal formulas to help stop colds in their tracks! Check out the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine to find a practitioner near you
6. Practice facial and lymph massage-check out the video!
7. Sometimes when you have a cold you need to just nap…but then there are times when you feel just kinda icky but still have enough energy to be-bop around your day. Try these different ways to rest and restore your energy when you have a cold:
-When you’re tired and don’t have all of your energy back, try intentional rest, like a yoga nidra or guided relaxation. These are great because it they help you reduce the stress that can arise when we are sick and they also help your body and mind to stay connected. Check out Yoga Nidra network or try my free guided relaxation here
-When you have a minor cold and feel like you can still function it’s great to do an energy gathering exercise. Go outside and take some deep breaths and let nature help your body rebalance. Or if it’s winter you can look out of a window and accomplish the same healing balance. Breathe in abundant healing and the power of nature. Breath out any stress and tension. Repeat this ten times.
-When you have a cold you may need a little energy boost. Try this breathing technique:
Imagine you are inhaling a healing color, like blue or green. See it filling your lungs and spreading all through you body.
Exhale and visualize all black light leaving your body, carrying away toxins, pain, stress, congestion, and anything else you don’t need.
Repeat at least ten times until you feel your body full of healing energy!
Full Transcript:
Hello my friend and welcome to the Gita Brown show, bringing harmony into everyday life. I love wellness and I love creativity and I've been teaching both for about 30 years. To be creative, it helps if you have a lifestyle that's based in wellness, because that's where your creativity starts. My philosophy is simple and based in yoga tradition, simple practices done over a long period of time with consistency will naturally lead you to lifestyle full of wellness. And from there your creativity can flow.
So today we're talking about a huge barrier to creativity for most of us and that is how to manage, how to beat the common cold. My goodness, my friends. This happens to all of us and I'm going to just throw it to the best of my wellness tips that I've got. So here's how you can think about today's show. Think of it like a mini class with Gita.
As always, I like to start really big with like a big philosophy, philosophy of health, philosophy of wellness. And then from there kind of give you a bridge that you can use every day. Today we're going to talk about awareness as your bridge to take that philosophy into action. Then we're going to drill it down and I'm going to tell you five of the things that I do every single winter to help manage my colds. So the idea is this. If I teach you a way to think about things, then give you a way to bridge that sort of thought or philosophy into everyday life and then specific techniques. Then you'll have a way to kind of experiment and use that information for yourself. So I'm not here to just give you the top 10 things you can take today of herbal remedies to feel better.
I want to teach you a way to think about your health and to think about your wellness, maybe even before that next cold starts or how to shift it once you have it. So in order to do that, it requires you need to practice a little bit, right? You can listen to the podcast and that's great, but even better if you think about things along the way that you could use some things that you could shift different mindsets that you could learn a little more about so you can take this information and make it your own. That's always my goal as a teacher is to be expendable, right? I want my students to grow up and not need me anymore. So I will try and do that for you today, my friend. So we got to start big picture though. So if you're sitting right there right now with a drippy cold and you're hoping to get some tips, do not worry.
I'm going to give you five things and five ways you can start to shift that towards the end of the lecture. But I got to zoom out a little bit and talk about wellness because we can't just talk about fixing a cold or like our runny nose unless we look at how you function as a human organism in material time and space. So my thinking, I'm a yoga teacher. So my thinking is of course always grounded in yoga tradition and philosophy. And the yoga tradition that I've studied is integral yoga, which is a very holistic style of yoga that looks at it as a lifestyle, how you think, what you eat, how you interact with the world, how you manage your thoughts and emotions. We do some physical practice mostly as an aid to helping your mind be more steady and more peaceful. So even my yoga is then a very holistic thing, right?
I don't look at it as just physical exercise. I look at it as training for life, training for being present in life. And I also have like a little sprinkling of Taoist philosophy training and practice. And Taoism is a practice that comes from China. And in the case we're going to talk about it today, just very closely relates to how we relate to nature and us ourselves as beings that live within a natural world, even if you're living in a city. So all of this is to say I'm really rooted in these very classical traditions. So that's my particular lens so you can know where I'm coming from. So from both of those perspectives, they really look at health as being a state where you are balanced, what now we call in science homeostasis, right? Your whole entire being is in imbalance with itself.
And so that goes to reason that if you get a cold or a flu, often that's a sign of an imbalance. Now, you know, in the West we didn't think of it, Oh it's a bacteria or it's a virus that came in and that's that external thing. But in these more sort of ancient traditions, they're looking at as, it can be a balance even of emotions. It can be an imbalance of how you're relating to the physical environment. You're not protecting yourself from the cold and the wind properly so that you're looking at how your overall health is functioning within the overall system instead of it always being an invader that came in and got through your defenses. So in that thinking, you can start to think about yourself a little bit more on like a small, like more physics level to use modern sort of science.
And we know that down to like our smallest particle we are actually all vibrating particles of energy. We know this through hard Western science now, thourgh great physicist, Einstein, Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist. We know that in its essence, even though this table looks solid, even though these acorns look solid, you get down to the atomic level, they are vibrating particles of energy in there. And in between those vibrating particles of energy is lots and lots of space. So that means then looking from these more ancient traditions of Taoism and yoga would call that prana, which just means energy or Qi in the Chinese tradition, which also means energy. And those were just ways before they had, you know, the the scientific instruments to measure energy. They've would experience it and feel it in the body. And those were the names, they gave it prana and Ci or chi.
But you could think of that as the sort of vital essence, the vibrating energy that makes and gives life. So here's a way to think about it. Make it a little more tangible for you. If you're ill, a lot of times that vibrating energy then might not be flowing smoothly. It's kind of like if it were, um, a garden hose and you could picture the water, was the energy flowing through the garden hose. If that garden hose is kinked, what happens to that water flow? It stops, right? And if you unkink it, then that water can flow again. And these more ancient practices or traditional rather practices hold that. If you keep your body in good alignment, it's like being a hose that's on kinked. The energy can flow. If your emotions are more balanced, that means your emotions are flowing, means your hose is smooth and the energy can flow.
So we're talking about things today that are going to help your overall mental, physical, and emotional self to be more aligned so that that energy can flow to take you to even a little more tangible. I mean, I was walking in the woods today guys, like I do every morning. It's part of my morning rituals. Talk about that a lot here on the podcast. Going outside is really great. And on the path today where these beautiful acorns, can you see those? Oh yes, you can perfect these beautiful acorns. Just, I've never seen one drop like this was right on the path and I live, I mean we have five acres of land. It's just wild woods back there. So it's right where I walk and I sort of asked, can I take those for the show today? And nature is like, yes you can!
So I promise I'll bring them back later to the woods at Three Dog Farm where I live. But look at this for a moment. Look at the beauty of those acorns. Look at, I mean it's just absolutely amazing. If you stop to actually really look and observe the beautiful cap, the shiny-ness, the symmetry, how they're all the same but slightly different. It's just, it's astounding. If you really stop to look at nature, the organization that created this life here is quite phenomenal, right? The confluence of energy into physical matter that created this is pretty astounding and it's organizational property. Same, too, with these beautiful Dahlia's that grew at the farm. I mean, look at that. The organizing principle of nature that directs the flow of energy to create such beauty is kind of astounding. And how many times a day do we just walk by that right?
Look at how everything has to be organized to function and flow smoothly. Same too. The fall autumn leaf, I'm gorgeous. All the organizing principles that took this from a bud, a potential in the tree to a full leaf in the summer to then as beautiful leaf in the fall, which will then land on the forest floor and become more earth. Quite astounding. All this organization of energy here now think my friend, why I have all these little nature props here. You are made of the same stuff that this acorn is made of. That same energy and organizing principle that gave life shape, form, potential and expression of that potential to these acorns leaves and beautiful flowers is the same force that dwells within you. And these are what the classical traditions teach us that to live a life where you're healthy, to manage colds, to even overcome colds or beat colds, the natural way means that you must fundamentally and philosophically wrap your head around the fact that you, these flowers and this leaf all contain that amazing organizing, harmonizing and balancing power of nature.
You have that creative potential, that creative force, that life force is in you right now. Think of all of the billions of things that are going on in your body right now that you don't even have to think about. You don't have to think about you're digesting your food, but it happens. You don't have to consciously think of breathing. It happens. You don't consciously have to think about how your brain is going to consolidate and form memories. It just happens. You don't have to consciously grow your fingernails. Okay, fingernails, I need an extra quarter inch like they do it. Think about that organizing principle of life and how powerful that is. That is really beating calls. The natural way to begin to recognize it. That power is in you all the time. And part of learning to manage your health and wellness is doing more. That aligns you with the potentiality of nature than it is focusing on the thing that is wrong.
Does that make sense? Please nod your head if it does. You are powerful. And the reason you pick this episode and you hit play is because you're a little curious about it. That tells me you're interested in learning more. So you have this big frame and this big philosophy that you have this abundant power of nature in you and that you need to learn how to direct that power and energy like the water through the hose in order to be healthy. But you know, you got to know how to train that, right? Otherwise you're sunk. Because I can tell you some specific strategies and I'm gonna give you, I think five specific strategies today, but there's a like a little missing piece that you need before you try the specific things and that missing pieces, this, it's training your awareness. Most of us wait until our cold is like full-blown before we go, Oh, maybe I should stop and take a nap.
Right? Or most of us wait until we have that thumping crazy, awful headache and then we say, Oh, I better take something for that. Or some of us, man, we wait until we are totally knocked out and we face plant and like I literally know people who have like passed out from exhaustion. Then we stop. But wouldn't it feel amazing if you did things a different way? Wouldn't it feel amazing if you could catch a cold before it even started? What would life be like if you could head it off at the past or diminish its symptoms a little bit? What would life be like if you could conduct that flow of energy in your body with more mastery? So it's really important that you learn how to do that because in order to really learn how to observe and find the natural remedies that work for you, you have to have some body, mind and emotional awareness.
If you don't have any of that, you're going to keep trying remedy after remedy and knowing what works and knowing what doesn't work, sort of, but not knowing why and not knowing how to really strengthen that. So how do you train not awareness, Gita? Let me tell you, you can do a couple of things, a great way to train your awareness to just to be more, you could think of yourself like a scientist. You want to be more observational about your body and more observational about your energy and how it flows. Great way is to meditate. Meditation is going to be perfect because it shows you how to sit with what is and observe it with a little more balance. There's some great apps, Headspace, I've mentioned it before. I love the Headspace app. It's great. I have a whole series of podcasts on meditation.
You can listen to those. You can find a teacher. A lot of yoga teachers will teach you how to meditate and there's tons of really great free resources. Meditation is a great way to start training your awareness. You can do something like do yoga, yoga, and also Tai Chi will really start to teach you how to be present with your body and how to observe. It's really, I think of it being like a scientist and you kind of just, you observe, you notice how things change, but you don't get sucked into all the emotion of it. You just kind of observing it. Oh, another great way to train your awareness to be able to use these natural techniques effectively is to practice the art of deep relaxation. In yoga, we call it yoga Neidra, which means like yoga, sleep. It's that cool place where you're not asleep but you're not awake.
You know when you're like drifting and you're like, Oh, I think perhaps I might be falling asleep, but you're not totally asleep yet. It's that sort of in between consciousness state where you can really start to observe your physical body. So there's all kinds of great deep relaxations on YouTube. If you check out yoga Neidra, there's some really good ones on there. Go to yoga Neidra network. This will all be linked over at my website, gitabrown.com Yoga Nidra network has some great ones. If you like my voice and you feel like that would be relaxing, you can try Relaxation Rescue, which is my mini course in deep relaxation. But you want to start developing the awareness of yourself now, right? You want to start developing that awareness of your body, your energy, your breath, your emotions so that you can course correct and make these little small adjustments.
So, and I'm not just saying this like you should do this because Gita said you should do it. This is how I healed myself, people. And I'm going to give you right after this all my little tips. But I used to get like every single cold and flu that came my way. I was going through an extremely stressful time in my life when I was going through my divorce to my 12 let's see, I guess I, my junior high school sweetheart, we met when we were 12 and along the way in our marriage, he became addicted to drugs and alcohol and it was extremely, extremely dark period. Of my life and you know, my immune system was shot pretty much. I was extremely underweight. I had no energy. It was stress heaped on stress. He had done stress every single cold, every single flu. I had it.
I was basically sick from, it probably started like in October and it would go through almost till June. It was not a good scene. Over the years though, lots of deep relaxations, meditations, good food. Some of the stuff I'm going to teach you here right now really helped me to start to understand how to catch colds and flus before they even start. Some times. In fact, I've got it down now so well that this autumn I have managed to head three colds off at the pass, which is huge for me because usually they knock me down and out. So I did it. I know you can do it. I've taught my students to do it as well and now I'm going to share it with you. So again, first thing had that philosophy. Know that you are that abundant life force and you have that organizing energy of nature already inside you.
Number two, start doing small things, a little yoga, a little meditation, a little Tai-Chi, maybe with some journaling where you're just training your awareness to be a little more aware of like how you kind of are just be a little more connected to that. Then once you have that in place, and actually even before you can start playing with some really specific toys and tricks to start to just alleviate the symptoms of a cold and help headed off. So one of the number one things that I do is I have this amazing pack and my technician, Dan by the magic of technology is going to throw a picture of this up for you guys. But this is a pack. It's a warming pack. So inside it are actually beans and herbs that my uh, one of my traditional Chinese medicine practitioners put in. And at the very first sign of a chill or a cold, I pop it in a microwave and I warm it up.
As soon as I get that like, Oh, I'm catching a little chill feeling before I ever even feel sick. But I just get that, you know, you get that up the back of your neck, usually around the change of season or when those first really cold days of winter hit. I warm that up and I put it around my neck and around my chest because that warmth of that gets right in and it does something really amazing. Instead of my body's spending all this energy keeping myself warm, that pack is doing the job of keeping me warm and now my body can take that energy and go off and start kicking out any little bacteria or viruses that floated in there. And I teach little kids yoga, so there's plenty of sneezes and coughs come in in my face. We always have a joke that they're always like, wash your hands and then you won't get a cold.
I'm like, that doesn't work so much when you're holding a three year old and they do a direct sneeze into your open mouth while you're chanting to them. Like I get exposed to all kinds of stuff. So at the very first sign of that chill, you put on one of these warming packs. I'm going to throw the link on my website too. Specifically. The woman I buy them from, she makes them by hand. She gets the herbs, she gathers them herself in China. When she goes to visit there, she gathers them from the mountainside where she lives and then she sews them into this pack and they are magical. The scent and the balancing and the warmth is so perfect and it starts to head that cold off at a pass before you even get it. Oh this next one. This one is great. I should demo this next one.
Live in studio. That would been a hilarious, because it's a saltwater gargle would have been fun to do. Salt water everywhere! Cause I'm a total klutz. So you know when you're getting that feeling in the back of your throat, you feel a heat or you feel that sore throat coming on and you're like, Oh I feel a little something. Pay attention to those signs. Most will say, yeah, I feel a little something there. And then they kind of ignore it. I dunno. That's your body going, yo. Hello. Need a little help here. This one only works for a sore throat. When you catch it right at the beginning, if you've had a sore throat for a few days, it ain't going to work, but I take like a cup of water. I have a little tumbler and it fits about eight ounces. I only put four ounces of water in it and I put a ton of sea salt in it.
The rule is you put make it so it's salty like the sea. You can just do it to taste and really mix it, mix it, mix it so it's all dissolved. Then I take it and I gargle with it for 30 seconds, spit it out. Then do another fresh one for 30 seconds. Spit it out. Another fresh one, 30 seconds, spit it out. The reason you break it up is cause that first one you're going to be the salt through the magic of osmosis you're going to be drawing a lot of that crap out of your throat and into the salt. It's magic and you want to expel that and get rid of that and then give it a fresh one. Then expel fresh and expel so that you're getting refreshing that water so you get the maximum healing potential from it. This one has really worked and this one is actually one that's super clinically proven, not just clinically proven, but super clinically proven to decrease sore throats.
So even if you don't get rid of the cold, it can reduce the severity and I'm all for that because colds can be miserable. Okay. This is something, the next one is something I do every single day, especially I live in new England when we hit like December and that cold weather just locks in, right? I do this every single morning as like a restorative tonic. It's amazing. I've given it to people who've actually come over to visit me for yoga at three dog farm where I live. And one person was like, Oh my gosh, I feel completely better after just having that. It was amazing. It like got rid of her cold like that. So you take water, fresh lemon juice, raw honey, which is extremely important. I'm gonna tell you why. And real ginger root, which you can get at any grocery store. You just lightly peel the ginger root.
You can use the back of a spoon just to scrape off the skin, chop up the ginger root. You want to have it like in a dice I would say. And then it's really important to let this one simmer on the stove. Don't just put the ginger root and hot water cause it won't distract. Extract enough of what you need out of the ginger. You put it on the stove and like a cup or two, a hot water like a nice inch long piece of ginge, ginger's hot so you kind of have to do it to taste. I like a nice inch long piece of ginger diced up in a cup or two of water and I let it simmer for about 10 minutes with the lid on. You don't want all that steam to go off and get rid of everything. You want to keep.
Everything contained in that pot. Simmer for 10 minutes as it's cooling, you add about a tablespoon of raw honey and the lemon juice. Add that after it's done simmering so you're not simmering out the properties of the raw honey. So raw honey is actually antibacterial, antifungal. It has antioxidants and phytonutrients, not filtered honey. Can I say that again? Not filtered honey raw. You want it to be like crystallized and have all that extra stuff in it. That's where the healing mojo happens and fresh ginger can lower the risk. Risk of infections, reduces nausea and inhibits the growth of bacteria. It also is very warming to the digestive tract, so it will warm you up from the inside out, which creates homeostasis in the body. Especially if you feel chilled. I do this every single morning. I will have all the recipes and everything at my website.
So don't feel like you have to remember, just look, there. Trust man had this every morning in the winter. You will feel so awesome and yeah, you can totally drink coffee after you have it. Cause that's what I do. So don't feel like you just have to drink this. Oh, also fresh ginger may be effective against the RSV virus, which is a common cause of respiratory infections. I mean, it's absolutely amazing. Okay. Ooh, I get to teach you a facial massage. This one's going to be good, but real quick before facial massage, acupuncture, acupuncture, acupuncture. I feel like this is something I talk about in every episode. Do I? Michelle, do I talk about every single episode she's going, no, you don't. Okay. It's come up enough times that I feel like I, maybe I should get like a cut from everyone who goes to acupuncture, so acupuncture, acupuncture, and traditional Chinese medicine is fantastic because they are really, if you find a skilled practitioner, it's a teacher that will help you understand your patterns, help you understand how your body responds to environmental situations and how your emotions interplay with your wellness.
The best acupuncturist is in essence a teacher for you. I have learned so much from my acupuncturist about my sort of baseline physiology of just how I was born and little things I can do to help myself feel better. A good acupuncturist will also teach you specific movements you can do to help keep that energy flowing in the body. Remember we talked about that hose that you want to keep on kinked. They will teach you specific practices to do so. In between appointments, you can keep your energy flowing and keep your system regulated. A great acupuncturist is usually a skilled herbalist. They can make formulas for your body type, your metabolic system, your energetic patterns, your just personality even that will help you to balance. I have a great formula that I've gotten from my acupuncturist that at the first sign of a specific kind of cold, I have the symptoms right there.
I know if I have two to five of these specific symptoms, I take those pills right away. It's an herbal formula and it cuts the cold and it's headed. So many of them offer me, but it has to be tailored to you. It is so worth the expense. It's one of the number one things I ever did for my health is get acupuncture, so I highly recommend it. So now I want to teach you a little facial massage. If you're listening to this on a podcast, you know you can listen. I'll try and explain as best as I can, but I'm also demonstrating in the video. So sometimes what happens in a cold is we get like super ultra congested and you know how when you go to a doctor and he feels your lymph nodes and he's like checking if they're swollen so your lymph nodes are responsible for your immune functioning and if your lymph nodes aren't draining properly, that's where you can get that extra congestion.
That's where you get that feeling up here where you're like all sort of stuck and everything is swollen. The lymph nodes need a little extra like mechanical movement to pump the lymph fluid so the lymph gets pumped in your body when you move and sometimes it needs a little extra stimulation to get that lymph pumping. So you have a couple of lymph nodes right here. I'm gesturing right above the collarbones and you just take your middle finger. I do this when I actually have a cold and I can't get it to drain. You know when you have a cold it's like all stuck in your head or like I just wished it would drain out. You can do this. Think of this as the base level of your pump. You need to drain the lymph sort of area right here, right above the collarbones by just pressing lightly and drawing in, pressing lightly and drawing in.
It's like emptying out that lymph node there, which will then draw down the fluid from the rest of your head. I'm going to do this a shorter version. Generally I would do this about 50 times and then we're just going to move up then to the sides of the neck, and this is one that I do really frequently, like almost every day just to keep my health up there. So you just take the hands like karate, chop hands, place them on either side of the neck and then just draw down, draw down. You don't have to think about anything special. You can do it while you're listening to the podcast. You can do it while watching TV. This naturally will start to pump that lymph fluid down and it's happening already. I'm already getting drainage like through the back of my nose and down my throat.
You might have to swallow a lot when this happens. No problem. This one saved me one winter when I had a sinus infection. It was so painful and I would do this for like each one I'm showing you. I do it a hundred times each and I would drain and drain and drain and drain and drain and I got over that sinus infection a lot quicker. So you do that about 50 times and I got two more to show you the next one you get to do the Spok hands. What does it live? Long and prosper. Got it. There we go. And they put the spot cans on either side of the ear. Can they see that? Oh they can. Can they see that? Yes, we're good. Okay. And then you draw down like that cause you want to get this spot behind your ears and you do that for about 50 times now I have to swallow.
Excuse me. It works. I mean you can't help it drain. When you do these, do that about 50 times and then you go to the back of the head, you know that spot on the head when you're laying on the floor, it's the part that bumps out. You just put the flat of your hand right there and you draw down kind of to the nape of your neck or where your hairline is and you do that like between 10 and 50 times. Again, you have to use your awareness and see what works. And I'm doing really light pressure. If I were to show you on my arm, I'm not digging way, way in, nor am I just going like that. Like don't be a wimp. Like you're in a nice gentle, smooth, kind of like if you were a smoothing out pizza dough at lunchtime.
We already ate darn it. But like you'd actually have to smooth out a wrinkle there. So after you do the top, then you just reverse it on out my friends. Then you go back to the Star Trek, hands alongside the ears. Do that between 10 and 50 times sides the neck, 10 to 50 times. And then you can do this little spot, a little Ridge right above the collar bones, 10 to 50 times. This works like magic. It's lymphatic massage. Woo. And now I have to swallow again cause I'm drained in that lymph fluid everywhere. Okay, so facial massage, last little bit, last little tidbit here. There's three ways to rest. When you have a cold. There's those times when you are just like, I feel like crap and I cannot move. Now there's times where like, yeah, I have a cold, but I sort of feel okay.
And then there are those times where you're like, Oh, I'm getting over the cold, but I still don't have all my energy back. Okay. So when you are flat out exhausted and like you just have to give up. I surrender, I have a cold, I'm a wellness goddess. But whatever, you just gotta let it go during those times. Sleep deeply, but also do yoga nidra. Do a deep relaxation because that's an intentional rest that will help your body and mind to be more connected. It helps your physical body to release all that extra tension that comes in when you have a cold and it will help your mind to start to direct yourselves to vibrate with a little more harmony and energy. So I've got a whole relaxation rescue series you can check out where I give lots of examples of deep relaxations there or you know, if you want a different flavor, hop on over to Yoga Nidra network.
They have tons of free Yoga Nidras there. These things are magical and will really up your recovery time and turn rest into something that's productive rest instead of just resting. Even if you fall asleep, your mind, your ears are still hearing all the messages and your body is still learning how to relax and let go and move into more balance. So then there are those times when you're like, okay, I feel okay. I kind of have a cold but I don't feel great. It's the perfect time. Even if the weather's kinda crappy to go outside and do an energy gathering walk. It's really simple. You just do it for about five or 10 minutes. If it's too freezing outside, you can stand at a window and do the same thing. But what you do is you walk outside and you take deep breaths in and you imagine that you're breathing in the organizing principles of nature.
You're breathing in that abundant healing. You're breathing in all the power of the earth, the sky, the sun, the moon, all those forces that created that are in you. So you're breathing that in and then you're exhaling and relaxing while you're walking. You're looking at the trees and breathing that in. You're exhaling stress, you're looking at the stones, whatever you're looking at, you're breathing that in and bringing it into the body so you're align your mind and your body with that organizing energy of nature. Then there's a time when you need, um, when you sort of need a another like little way to rest. This one is great. It's one of my favorite ones. So it's like I have energy, but it's like not quite back yet. So you can just take a deep breath in and out and even if it's through your mouth, that's totally fine.
When you breathe in, you breathe in a color. Think of any healing color you like. Green, blue usually kind of works, maybe pinks. You breathe in a healing color and you imagine it going to right where you're feeling your cold symptoms, your throat, your neck, your head, wherever, and you fill that area with that colored light. Then when you exhale, imagine you're exhaling black toxins, pain, stress, congestion. Really see it leaving the body. Then you inhale that colored healing light and send it right to that area, the sinuses, wherever needs it. Then you exhale and you exhale. You really visualizes black gunky stuff leaving your body. It sounds crazy, but I swear it works. It really decreases your pain so you're breathing in colored light infusing the area, exhaling black toxins and make sure you end on an inhale and an exhale with the color that you've chosen.
So you end on that light energy coming into the body. Makes sense? So that was a lot. Everything is written down for you at Gita, brown.com so you can reference it at any time. But let me just again go through like the basics first, have that awareness that you are as powerful as nature because you are a functioning part of nature and from that awareness then develop your awareness about how your own energy flows. Do some yoga, meditation, Tai Chi, take walks in nature journal, start to develop like your awareness muscle. Then from there play with these different sort of natural remedies and there's so many others out there. A simple Google search will give you more and sort of see how they work for you. Think of yourself like a scientist. You're going to experiment with all of that and as you develop and refine your awareness, then you'll be able to wheel these natural remedies more effectively.
So you are exactly the kind of person that can do this. You are the kind of person that can manage your own health and wellness. You can absolutely train your awareness. It's not that hard. It can be really simple. Start today, start with something simple and slowly over time you'll be amazed at the things that you are doing. If you need a little extra help, just drop me a comment over at gitabrown.com I'm a teacher I love to teach, so if you drop me a comment there, then we can go back and forth a little bit and I can help you on your wellness journey. I would love to do that. So my friends, let's close with the chant for peace. That's bring the energy of love to close our class today. You can chat with me or just listen. This is a universal chat for peace. And I'll give you the English translation after
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
Which means: may the entire universe and you, my friend, be filled with peace and joy and love and light. Fantastic. My friend. Please feel well and I will see you very soon. Om Shanthi. Peace to you.