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Yoga For Migraine: Yoga Pose to Soothe

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Yoga For Migraine: Yoga Pose to Soothe

While I am certainly no doctor, I feel like an unfortunate expert on migraine headaches as I have suffered from them for over 10 years. I have tried many different methods of pain relief and prevention. I’m hot on the path to wellness thanks to a great new doctor but I can say with conviction that there is little worse than a migraine. Sufferers are likely to try anything to ease the pain of a migraine, and if one soul finds these poses to be soothing, as they have been for me, then it was a post written with a good purpose. I can’t say that regular practice can or will “cure” anyone of a migraine but yoga can aid in general relaxation and better sleep, which contributes to overall wellness. Personally, I found that yoga led to better sleep which removed one of the many migraine triggers from the lineup.

Those with tight or sensitive necks, tension headaches, and anxiety can also benefit from these poses, as can anyone wishing to gently unwind. They can be done daily as a preventative measure, or at the onset of a headache (which is when I always try to do them) and/or before bedtime. Do the poses gently and slowly, and stop if your head hurts more.

Here’s the sequence: 

Seated twist: Begin in a cross-legged position and draw tall through the crown of the head. Twist your upper body to the right, using your right fingertips on the floor to help you twist a bit farther. Keep your chin tucked into your throat, or gaze over your right shoulder. Repeat on the other side.

Yoga for Migraine | A Domestic Wildflower click through for a gentle set of yoga poses sure to relax and soothe.
 Gentle neck stretch: GENTLY draw your head to one side, letting the weight of your arm and head stretch the side of your neck. Do NOT pull, simply and carefully stretch. Hold for several breaths and gently release. Switch sides. Clasp both hands behind the head, and let the chin fold closer to the chest. Remain sitting tall and feel the back of your neck stretch. Release your hands and carefully roll your head upright.

Yoga for Migraine | A Domestic Wildflower click through for a set of simple poses that anyone can try to relax and soothe.Yoga for Migraine | A Domestic Wildflower click through for a set of simple poses that anyone can try to relax and soothe.

Knee up a twist: Draw your right knee up. Clasp hold, draw tall through the crown of the head and sit up on your sit bones. Twist toward the right, and if it feels good, bring your left elbow to the far side of your right knee. Place your right hand at your back, helping to twist you a bit farther. Gaze over the right shoulder. Yoga for Migraine | A Domestic Wildflower click through for a set of simple poses that anyone can try to relax and soothe.
Butterfly + foot massage: adjust your seated position to bring the soles of the feet together. Sit up tall and massage your feet. Many migraine sufferers experience poor circulation in the extremities during a migraine and warming them up can provide subtle relief. Fold forward at the hip and reach out. Gaze at the floor or close your eyes and continue reaching forward and breathing. Unfold and come to sitting on your knees.
Yoga for Migraine | A Domestic Wildflower click through for a set of simple poses that anyone can try to relax and soothe.
Child’s pose: Reach the upper body forward, using fingers to extend the reach. Continue gentle breathing as you walk your fingers to the right and left and then back to center. Consider bringing your arms back and resting them at your sides. Come back to all fours.
Yoga for Migraine | A Domestic Wildflower click through for a set of simple poses that anyone can try to relax and soothe.
Thread the needle shoulder stretch:  Slide your right arm under your body toward the left and come down to resting on the shoulder. Rest here for several breaths and repeat on the other side. Return to all fours.
Yoga for Migraine | A Domestic Wildflower click through for a set of simple poses that anyone can try to relax and soothe.
Cat & Cow: Inhale your spine to the sky, imagining the spaces in between your vertebrae expanding and growing gently. Your body will look like a frightened cat from a Halloween decoration. Gently exhale and let your pelvis tip forward and let your tummy sag and sink forward like a hammock. Open your chest and take your eyes to the sky. Unwind the spine again, and push back up to cat pose. Repeat as many times as you like, remembering to breathe.
Cat & Cow: Inhale your spine to the sky, imagining the spaces in between your vertebrae expanding and growing gently. Your body will look like a frightened cat from a Halloween decoration. Gently exhale and let your pelvis tip forward and let your tummy sag and sink forward like a hammock. Open your chest and take your eyes to the sky. Unwind the spine again, and push back up to cat pose. Repeat as many times as you like, remembering to breathe. Savasana or bedtime: Rest on your back, head supported by a pillow if need be, and close your eyes.
Cat & Cow: Inhale your spine to the sky, imagining the spaces in between your vertebrae expanding and growing gently. Your body will look like a frightened cat from a Halloween decoration. Gently exhale and let your pelvis tip forward and let your tummy sag and sink forward like a hammock. Open your chest and take your eyes to the sky. Unwind the spine again, and push back up to cat pose. Repeat as many times as you like, remembering to breathe. Savasana or bedtime: Rest on your back, head supported by a pillow if need be, and close your eyes.
Savasana or bedtime: Rest on your back, head supported by a pillow if need be, and close your eyes.
Rest easy, Wildflowers!

Salvaged Sewing: Camp Chair to Lingerie Laundry Bag

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How to Cultivate Lasting Friendship

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 When I started blogging, I thought that I would never, ever delve into the cerebral or the touchy-feely. And here I am already, writing about lasting friendship.

How to Cultivate Lasting Friendship

I don’t know the statistics but I feel like I am in a minority when I say I have the greatest friends with whom I have enjoyed friendship for years. My dearest friends are those I share memories with for 2 decades or more, and I’m only 31. Other friends, I made later, in college, and have still keep in close touch with despite distance and change. I have felt strongly, ever since high school when friendship turbulence blustered around my tightly knit group of girlfriends, affecting other souls but never us directly, that I was very lucky indeed to share company with such loving, kind, smart, hardworking, and supportive women.

Friendship starts out all about fun and I see now as I become ever more an adult that it is more about love, encouragement, and weathering the storms of life with and for one another and the fun is the cherry on top.

The list I will share below will be incomplete and evolving but it is a starting point for anyone who wishes to cultivate or strengthen existing friendship.

  1. Assume the best in people. I am so fortunate that my friends assume the best in me when I forget birthdays (I’m ashamed to admit I’ve done it more than once), arrive late, change or cancel plans, forget to return calls or texts, can’t attend, and share my copious feelings at inappropriate times. My friends know I’m busy, chronically tardy, and managing a lot in my life. I’m an imperfect person, and so are my nearest and dearest, and that is okay. I always know they mean well and are doing the best they can. It sounds simple but it is a crucial choice of the mindset that can affect your relationships enormously.
  2. Accept change. This is probably hardest for women moving from the metaphorical apartments with friends to homes with marriages and mortgages. One of our dearests had children earlier than the rest of us. Was it a bummer that she moved and missed out on lots of fun college capers? Sure, we would have loved to have her around but were we angry or offended by her absence? Obviously not because things change and that is the way life works. Do I feel a little wistful hearing about my childless and more carefree friends going on weekend adventures while I toil away washing tiny toddler clothing? Of course, but feeling resentment would be silly. Life changes at different paces for everyone and soon enough you might find yourself in the slow lane. Just be grateful that when your turn there comes, your friends will be there for you when things change yet again.
  3. Be friends with their friends. I love my friend’s friends. The gals my besties work with, went to college with, and have met in times and places I wasn’t a part of are just another element of my dearest to be appreciated. It is so much easier, and so much more enjoyable if the circles of friends can overlap. Make a genuine effort to extend friendship to those your closest pals have befriended. I have been warmly welcomed into a pod of UC Davis girls despite being a Chico State alumna, and included in outings full of nurses despite being a teacher. I can add nothing to their chats about work but you know what? They love my friends so I love them too. Their relationships don’t threaten yours; they complement it.  
  4. Plan time. I don’t spend time with anyone who would declare that they aren’t busy at all and that they have all kinds of time available for socializing. No matter your stage of life, Wildflowers, you and your friends are going to be busy. Plan time to see one another and enjoy one another. If a member of your girl gang can’t make it then no big deal; you will see her next time. I think that part is key: If you wait until the time is perfect when no one is going to be inconvenienced, you might still be waiting. The time spent together doesn’t have to be fancy or choreographed. Think quality over quantity.
  5. Build each other up. You know those days when it feels overwhelming that you are doing a terrible job at everything? Or when you feel undeniably fat, like a total failure, like your house is a wreck and your choices leave a lot to be desired? DO NOT be another voice in the crowd telling your friends that they stink. People rarely are asking for advice when they share their feelings. We speak in order to be heard, so listen when your pals vent about their family, their work, and the choices that may or may not have been the best. I’m a lover of quotes from all sources, and the Bible has it right on; “As iron sharpens iron, one [wo]man sharpens another.” Our role as friends is to build each other up, to celebrate our success and encourage when the sailing isn’t smooth. We sharpen one another, in the most powerful sense, and being a whetstone for our dearest friends is a duty not to be taken lightly.
  6. Love. When heartbreak strikes (and it will, sadly) your dearest, respond with love. There have been times that I had no idea how to help a friend experiencing something awful but I know that I did my best (see #1 above) by admitting I didn’t know how to help, offering and then doing what I could, and by hugging, crying, and laughing. I have theorized (on my own, privately, as I drive and wash dishes) that growing up has nothing to do with bearing children as popularly believed but with realizing, facing, and experiencing our mortality. When a friend’s strength is physically or metaphorically sapped by issues of mortality, be that strength for them, as best you can.

Rejoice in your friend’s successes and ache and then act for them in times of trial. Assume they are acting as best they can with what they have and do the same to them. Spend time together and treasure it, rather than the rating or quantifying it. Be each other’s cheerleaders and plan on a lifetime of love from one another.


I’d love to hear what you’d add to this list, Wildflowers. Share in the comment section below!  

How to Clean a Yoga Mat the Easy Way

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I have been a bit confused by the idea of store-bought yoga mat cleaners. I understand the fact that yoga mats get dirty, or at least a bit sweaty, but I haven’t followed why they would need a special type of cleaner to clean them. Other than imbuing your mat with a refreshing scent which admittedly would be nice, the claims that marketers use to compel us, yogis, to buy their products are astonishing and likely total baloney. The idea that a regular ol’ yoga mat would require a non-toxic, organic, gentle cleansing spray is bananas. Yoga mats are absorbent- some more so than others-so simply spraying them with a nice smelling spray doesn’t seem like it would clean it all that well, right? If your tee shirt (also an absorbent material) was dirty, you wouldn’t spray and wipe and hope for best. You would wash it.

While some expensive mats are made from more “natural” products, most are made from petroleum, the same stuff your car tires are made of, indicating to me that they wouldn’t require a delicate, fairy-dust infused cleanser. If you use yoga mat cleaner then, by all means, I hope you enjoy it but I won’t be purchasing any.
So, how did this Wildflower clean her yoga mat after it got genuinely dirty from being drug around the field for the photos above?
I put it in the washing machine. Yep, that’s it. NO soap, NO fancy cleanser, just warm water, and agitation.
I skipped the soap because a yoga mat would likely soak up the soap and it would be difficult to rinse all the soap out, potentially resulting in a slippery mat. Most washing machines have a bit of soap remaining in them and when I ran my load of 2 yoga mats, I saw that a few soapy bubbles were cleaning my mats inside the drum of the washing machine.
I used warm water, the gentle cycle, and no soap. The only other consideration is washing a mat requires a place to hang dry it (more online drying here) and I waited till we had a warm day ahead so it would have plenty of time to dry thoroughly.
I don’t have all the answers, however. I haven’t tried to wash one of the really big, round mats that instructors often use but I’m inclined to think it would fit in a standard washer. I haven’t experimented with hang drying the mat inside in the winter when drying laundry inside is harder because of space and the potential for mildew development. My thicker mat soaked up a lot of water, the way a bathmat might, and if I had to dry it inside, I’d probably have to set up a rack in the bathtub which is not as convenient.
I really hate the idea of people feeling like they need to buy a certain product to do a good job like my post here on useless baby food gadgets. I hope you feel empowered by this little laundry post and encouraged to do things the sensible way, even if it isn’t as popular.
If you resourceful Wildflowers out there have tips for cleaning yoga mats to share, please add them to the comment section below! Happy washing!  

Wooden Tools I Love

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While plastic has many, many virtues, and many invaluable applications, most of the time I hate it. I hate how it gets brittle, breaks, often it can’t be recycled most and when it can it isn’t recycled into a number that can be recycled again (lame, right?). Frankly, recycling is a time suck that I don’t enjoy. It is right up there with sacking up garbage in terms of activities I want to do after a long day. If a plastic item isn’t recycled, it sits for the untold number of years in a landfill somewhere which is totally gross, and dealing with said gross landfill will undoubtedly be a huge financial drain for society in the future.

Of course, I appreciate how my milk containers don’t break when I bang them on the trunk lid, and I love how plastics are used in the medical field to make us healthier in a wide variety of ways, but overall, I try to avoid plastic junk when at all possible.

Conversely, I love wood products. I love the idea of purchasing something that I don’t have to recycle in any time consuming or laborious sense. Wood lasts. When I wear out my wooden toothbrush, I toss it into the wood stove or into the compost pile. I love the idea that lots of wood products come from the US and support guys and gals here at home. By using wooden tools, we can slowly break the cycle of buying things designed to last only a little while and get in the habit of buying things that last a long time. I feel strongly that purchasing quality products end up saving money over the long run.

Here are some of the wooden tools I love to use in my home. The links below are indeed affiliate links, but rest assured I’d never recommend a product that I didn’t love and use (or ask Santa for) myself. You can click on the pictures and you’ll be taken to Amazon if you’d like to try them out, or you can seek out high-quality wooden goods at local craft fairs (my favorite place to find wooden spoons, for example) and shops.

This pot scrubber is perfect for doing just as the name implies. I like how it sits up on its own without falling over haphazardly the way long handled brushes do. This little fella sits at the ready sink-side and does a good but gentle job on all important egg-frying pan
This little gem is what I use on the grime in the bathtub, on the linoleum, and anywhere else that requires a lot of elbow grease. I also like that the handle isn’t as slippery when wet as a plastic scrub brush. It sounds silly, but I have banged my knuckles on the tub more than once using a plastic scrubber but never again.

And my favorite: The wooden toothbrush. I love these Izola toothbrushes because they are stamped with the months on the handle so I know when to toss them into the wood stove or compost pile. The bristles also are sturdy enough to last the suggested 3 months. This brand also has other varieties including ones with the handles stamped with inspirational words or with numbers. I left mine in the bathroom on a recent girl’s trip to Lake Tahoe and it brought about a huge laugh at me and my vaguely “natural” toothbrush choices but it gave me a chance for me to explain how much better wood is than plastic. My husband thinks they are silly and lackluster but to those who think similarly I’d point out that I still have had zero cavities. A coincidence? I think not 😉

I don’t own these clothespins but I’m sure I need to. They are made in America, have a lifetime guarantee, and are bigger and way better than the regular ol’ made in China version. Santa, please make note that I’d like these in my stocking.

These are just the products that I have replaced and hope to use in my little home. What other tools should be on this list, Wildflowers? Share in the comment section below!