Meditation How-Tos with a Kundalini Guide

Women go to great lengths to feel and experience beauty—we buy tons of products and try multitudes of treatments. But, one of the greatest beauty tools is right in your house, waiting for you to give it a try. Unfortunately, you’re not going to like it. Just bear with me because it truly gives your skin that radiant glow you’ve been working so hard to get.

Hydrotherapy is an ancient tool used for radiant health. By that, I mean: cold showers! I know, I know, you get a chill to the bone just reading this, but the benefits are numerous and well worth the few minutes of cold water. A few minutes of cold water for a lifetime of health and beauty feels like a fair trade, if you ask me.

In Kundalini yoga, this is one of the biggest beauty secrets we have. If you look at many of the women who practice Kundalini, it’s not just the hormone-balancing effect of the practices and meditations, it’s also the daily cold showers that make these women absolutely glow. Cold showers are known to clean the blood in a way that nothing else can; it opens the tiny blood capillaries in the body where we store toxins that are very hard to remove—toxins that age us. These capillaries will open and flush out all the toxins and get the circulation moving through the entire body.

Regular cold showers will not only clean out toxins from the body, but will also balance the glandular system (your hormones), strengthen your nervous system (your ability to handle stress), and keep your skin youthful and glowing. Yogi Bhajan, the master of Kundalini yoga, says: "Showers should be cold. Cold showers preserve a woman as a woman; they correct imbalanced menstruation, prevent early menopause and skin problems, and they help her to keep her glow."

How to Practice Hydrotherapy

-Massage the body with almond oil or olive oil. This helps to neutralize the toxins as they are being released.
-It's recommended that women wear something to cover the thighs to protect the femur (thigh bone) from the sharp cold. This area of the body regulates the production of calcium and it’s very sensitive, so if possible, wear shorts or try to avoid getting that area cold as much as possible.
-After you massage with oil and cover yourself (or not), step into the cold shower and briskly massage your skin as if you’re cold and trying to warm yourself up. (Oh, wait, you are!) Move, laugh, scream, breathe. Do whatever you can to stay in there and briskly massage your body.
-Massage the arms, under the armpits, the breasts, your lower back, the backs of your calves.
-Let the cold water hit your face, your forehead, above your upper lip.
-Continue to rub your skin vigorously! Massage until you feel your body warming up (I know, it sounds impossible but this will actually happen as the blood rushes to the surface and your body is able to sustain the cold).
-When finished after a few minutes, dry yourself off with a warm towel.
-While many women chose to do this daily, at least once a week is good enough to start.
-If you need a video on how to do it right, visit the video here of incredible Kundalini yoga teacher Harijiwan teaching how to properly do this yogic practice (it’s a whole thing, trust me) and the many benefits of doing so.

Summer’s beauty is in full swing

So, how did you spend Fourth of July? Across New England, it seems, the weather was absolutely gorgeous. Up here in the mountains, the early morning was cool, almost chilly with dew on the grass. As the day progressed, blue skies became dotted with puffy clouds, afternoon temperature in the low 80s, nice breeze blowing, not a trace of humidity, temperatures cooling quickly once the sun set. Perfect, simply perfect, a dream of a summer day.

And everyone was out enjoying it. One of the things you learn quickly living in a vacation destination is how to minimize as much of the tourist hustle and bustle as possible and still do what you want to do. On summer weekends and holidays, that means going out early or late in the day, enjoying home when everyone else is out and about.

My sweetheart Em and I were up early on July 4, and took a walk on a nearby recreation trail to watch the sun rise. This wasn't a major hike, just a way to stretch our legs and get lungs and muscles moving. We didn't want to go too far or take too long. The air was cool for the moment, a nice breeze was blowing, there were no mosquitoes out, and even though this is a very popular short hike, we only saw a couple of other people.

Many songbirds in the area have already raised their first brood of chicks (we've been seeing striped-breasted young robins learning to fly and hunt on our lawn), and it's time for a second nesting. The air was alive with the audio warfare of males trying to establish and defend a territory to attract willing females. Robins, cardinals and doves were the most noticeable.

Wildflowers grow in abundance along this trail and the crown vetch was in full bloom. Gardeners and hayfield owners alike hate this aggressive weed with a passion. In favorable conditions, it can choke out more "desirable" flowers and more nutritious grasses in a hayfield. But, growing here, where it wasn't doing any harm, it was simply lovely, covered with flowers shading lavender to almost pure white.

We had a great time. There's nothing like an early stroll to start a summer day right.

By the time we got back to our car, the sun was well up and other people, most with out-of-state license plates, were starting to show up. As far as I'm concerned, they'd missed prime time. I don't understand why people on vacation are so willing to spend the best hours of a sunny summer day in bed.

There's a lake with a public beach and boat launch about a mile from our house. Before dawn, the beach was empty and only a few fishermen had put their boats in for the day. We could easily have paddled out for a quiet hour listening to loons, but we save that for non-holiday weekdays when there will be less boat traffic later in the day.

As we came back from our walk a couple of hours later, the place was hopping. Every available spot that would hold a vehicle and boat trailer was taken. It was still a little too cool for swimmers and sunbathers so the beach hadn't filled up yet – but it would. 

By early evening, however, the situation had changed. Because it was the actual holiday, lots of folks would leave a little early to try to avoid some of the worst traffic. Others would stay on for the big local fireworks display but had to get dinner first.

So I took a chance, strapped my fast touring kayak on the car (yes, I have different kayaks for different purposes) and headed for the lake. While there were boats waiting to pull out, it was easy enough to carry my kayak to the water and launch it off the nearly-empty beach. Paddling out through the channel that leads to the main lake I had to keep to the side to avoid the parade of slow-moving powerboats headed back to the launch.

As I had hoped, by the time I rounded the point to the open lake, most of the powerboats were gone. One ski boat went roaring by with a tuber behind and disappeared down the lake. One jetski buzzed by like an angry hornet before disappearing as well. That left one fishing boat easing along a weedy shoreline with an electric motor, and a handful of kayaks, canoes and SUPs venturing out onto the now-still waters. A couple of families were enjoying lakeside barbecues, so the lake wasn't as silent as it would have been before sunrise, but it was amazingly quiet for a busy summer holiday

I paddled quietly across the open water, ducked into a couple of quiet coves and circumnavigated an island or two, looking for loons and turtles and simply enjoying the solitude and the pleasure of paddling a sleek, fast, responsive kayak. Once you find your rhythm and the speed the boat wants to go, there's a real Zen to paddling that engages your muscles and leaves your mind free to observe and enjoy. The miles flow by as easily as if the water were flowing and you were standing still.

I wasn't in any hurry, but kept moving at a good pace and covered several miles down the lake and back. All the way back to the boat launch, I had the spectacle of the setting sun to keep me company. Who needs anything more? Life isn't a spectator sport. Get out and enjoy!