Breast Feeding Tips and Homeopathic Remedies

Breastfeeding Your Baby Is Best: Breastfeeding builds a wonderful bond between  mother and  child.  A breastfed baby is usually a happier, more contented baby than a bottle-fed baby.  Breastfeeding builds a strong  immune system in your baby, which is another very good reason to breast-feed:  A strong immune system will help to protect your baby against infectious diseases later on, and will help reduce the severity of an illness should your child get sick.

Breast-fed Babies Do Not Get Fat:  There is no danger of over-feeding a breast-fed baby.  Demand-feeding, which is basically giving your babe a drink every time he or she needs some sustenance, does not make your baby put on weight.  Sometimes, your baby might want to be cuddled and fed, because they are uncomfortable with teething.  They do not necessarily need the milk.  Your body will recognize this and adjust the milk flow.  So you can safely comfort or feed your baby as often as is needed.

No Need To Worry About Germs With Breastfeeding: With bottle-feeding, there is always a risk of infection from re-using bottles and teats:  These have to be sterilized all the time, which is a big bother.  No need to worry about any of this with breast-feeding.

Breastfeeding will make your child’s immune system strong so that they are better equipped to fight infections without vaccinations: Some people will still choose to give their children vaccinations, but vaccinations are weakening to the immune system:  So  check  out the alternatives to vaccinations, such as homeopathy, before you decide to vaccinate.  You will need to have an alternative plan of action for when your child does succumb to the childhood illnesses if you do not vaccinate:  Homeopathy, I think, is the best option.

Breast milk supplies just the right nutrients to your baby, provided the mum’s diet is a fairly healthy, balanced and simple  diet.

Breastfeeding helps the hormonal functions to normalize in the mother, and also helps her to get back to her normal weight.

How To Help Lactation with Massage:  Sometimes there are difiiculties which occur with breast-feeding.  These are usually only temporary conditions. Massage of the Upper Chest Area can help to correct lactation problems.  Michael Reed Gach, author of ‘Acupressure’s Potent Points’ recommends massaging the points directly in line with the nipples on the breastbone, located between the third and fourth ribs.  These points, he suggests, are to be gently pressed three times a day for about two minutes.

Drinking Fennel Tea To Help Lactation: Fennel has powerful components which encourage milk flow. Make fennel herbal tea, using two teaspoons of fresh chopped herb to a cup of boiling water.  Let sit for five minutes, then drink.  Repeat two or three times a day until lactation has resumed.  I have used this fennel tea herbal remedy myself, and found it to be very effective.   Massaging the breasts with a teaspoon of olive oil which has just one drop of fennel oil in it can help to soothe the breasts and restore lactation.

Sunflower Seeds and Sesame Seeds Help Lactation:  This is a very old remedy.  Simply eat a handful of seeds three or four times a day until the milk flow has resumed.  Sunflower seeds and sesame seeds are very nourishing, and are rich in the essential fatty acids, so they give health to both you and your baby.

Massage With Warm Sunflower Oil: This is another old remedy for improving the milk flow.  Simply warm up half a cup of sunflower oil (or olive oil), and gently massage it into the breasts.  Concentrate on the chest area just above the breasts, gently pressing into those indents between the ribs. Use little circular movements on each spot. Work right across the chest, centre to outside and upwards.  Slowly work right up to the shoulders.  Do the hollow beside the arm, just below the  collar bone. Work along the collar bone, pressing in below it.  Finish with a gentle circular movement with both hands, taking in the whole of the chest, rib, and breast area.  Unless you are in the tropics, put on something to keep the chest warm, such as a light woolen singlet or spencer,  and a jersey or cotton shirt.

Ayurvedic Nutritive Treatment To Help Lactation:  Dr Vasant Lad, an ayurvedic practitioner, recommends using 10 shelled almonds which have been soaked overnight in a little water.  These are peeled and put into the blender with either a cup of hot milk or water.  A pinch of ground ginger root, a pinch of cardamom powder, and a pinch of saffron are added.  I would add half a banana for sweetening if you have it, or four chopped dates.  All ingredients are blended up into a palatable, highly nutritious, spicy almond milk, which is to be drunk morning and night.

Chinese Red Dates are given as a remedy for inadequate lactation in the ‘Chinese Barefoot Doctor’s Manual’.

Homeopathic Treatment To Help Lactation:

Ignatia 6X can be taken three times a day until lactation  normalizes.  Ignatia is a good remedy for shock and stress, as well as grief, and is especially suited to sensitive people who cry easily. It can also be used to treat insomnia in adults, and croup, which is a barking cough, in your young child.  Ignatia patients have an aversion to cold air,  tobacco smoke, coffee, alcohol, and strong odours.

Calcarea Phosphorica is also helpful in promoting milk flow. Headache may go with this remedy, with heartburn or rheumatic pain, cold hands and feet.  This is another good remedy to use after childbirth, to help alleviate shock symptoms.  Cold, damp weather and rain can make the calcarea phos patient feel worse.

Pulsatilla can be used to increase scanty milk flow.  The patient can be  sometimes tearful and sensitive to extremes in the weather with this remedy. Sometimes has shifting pains, and cystitis may be present.

One of the following remedies may also be useful for the purpose of increasing lactation:  Asafoetida;  Calcarea carb;  and Silica.

For Sore Breasts with Mastitis: 

Bryonia 30C will help reduce sore inflamed breasts with mastitis. Bryonia  helps to dry up fluids, so if you have engorged breasts, Bryonia will help to reduce them.  Bryonia can be used to help to dry up the milk when the baby is ready to be weaned.  I found this remedy to be very effective.   It is a good  remedy to use if the inflammation is especially hard.

Phytolacca is another good remedy for treating mastitis:  this remedy is for less hard obstructions than Bryonia.  A close friend used Phytolacca 30C, twice or thrice a day for several days until the inflammation went down.

When the mother has had a history of poor milk flow with previous babies, Dr John H Clarke, M.D. recommends the use of Calc. phos 3x, gr. x., h.s.s., taken for two or three months before the end of the pregnancy.

 

Castor Oil and Protein Treatment To Stimulate Hair Growth

This is a conditioner which uses castor oil, olive oil,  eggs, herbs, and other riches to help stimulate hair growth, and give lustre to the hair.  It is also a good recipe to use if the hair is damaged. The original recipe comes from the book ‘Herbs for Health and Beauty’ by Margaret Roberts, which is a great little herbal recipe book, published by Lowry Publishers, Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1986.  I give you here a rewrite of the ingredients she uses.

This conditioning treatment could be used regularly once or twice a week if your hair is thinning or is poorly nourished.  Once your hair has regained its health, with the help of good dietary measures as well, then it could be used less often.

Ingredients:

6 tbsps castor oil,

6 tbsps lanolin,

4 tbsps olive oil,

8 tbsp glycerine,

4 whole eggs,

4  egg yolks,

4 teaspoons of cider vinegar,

Two and a 1/2 cups warm water,

2 tbsps  shampoo.

Few drops of rosemary, neroli,  or lavender essential oil.

Put the castor oil into the top of a double boiler.  Add the lanolin and the olive oil to the castor oil.  Mix the ingredients together as they warm.  Take off the heat and let the mixture cool for five minutes only.

Then using an egg whisk, slowly whip in the glycerine, the water and the shampoo.  Lastly, add the cider vinegar, the egg yolks, and a few drops of essential oil.  Put into a jar with a screw-top lid and put into the fridge. Margaret warns that the mixture must be labelled ‘Hair Conditioner’ so that it is not mistaken for mayonaisse by any of the family.   The next day, beat up the remaining whole eggs, and add to the conditioner.

You apply the conditioner after washing the hair and leave it on for at least an hour with a shower cap on.  Use sunlight soap or shampoo to wash out.  Use a rosemary infusion, or a comfrey tea, or nettle tea,  as a final hair rinse.  The silica in comfrey, rosemary and nettles gives a great shine to the hair, and also helps to stimulate the growth of healthy hair.

Keep any remainder in the fridge to use next time.   It should last for at least a  week if it is kept in the fridge.

Nourishing Oils and Herbal Treatment For Hair Growth and Gloss

Warm Oil Treatment with Herbs For Damaged Hair: This nourishing Oil  treatment, combined with herbs,  is a good one to stimulate hair growth and to add lustre to the hair.  It can be applied once or twice every month to give your hair a boost. This  warm oil treatment takes a little time, but it is well worth the effort.  Any of these vegetable oils may be used in your warm oil hair treatment:  Avocado oil, grape-seed oil, wheatgerm oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, olive oil, or almond oil.

First of all, wash the hair.  Towel dry.  Now take one cup of your chosen vegetable oil.  Heat it up gently in a saucepan on the stove.  It should be just hot enough so that it is a comfortable temperature when it is applied to the scalp.  Put your finger in first, to make sure it is not too hot before applying to your head.

Part the hair, which should still be damp. Into each parting, dribble a tablespoon of the warmed oil.  Massage into the parting.  Then make another part, and repeat the process.  Continue until all the oil has been used up.  Give the scalp a good gently massage for a few minutes, and make sure the hair is all covered at the same time.

Now – You should have ready your chosen herbs to make a hot infusion for the hair.  Good herbs to use are nettles, comfrey, or rosemary, on their own or in combination, as these are all  high in silica, which helps hair growth; an onion on its own, skin and all, can be used.  Onion has been found to help stimulate hair growth;  a mixture of yarrow, lavender, watercress is also good.

Use 2 cups of your chosen herb, or herbal combination.  If you are using onion, then use one whole onion, chopped up.  Put your herbs into a saucepan and pour 12 cups of  boiling water over them.  Simmer gently for five minutes.  Strain, and let cool for five minutes so that it is a comfortable temperature to apply to the hair: fairly hot, but not burning hot.   Now dip a towel  into the herbal/onion mixture.  The towel should be not too thick and not too big, but just big enough to wrap around the head turban-style.  Wring out the towel and quickly wrap it around the head.  Cover the towel with a plastic bag or a shower cap and leave to cool.  Then heat up your herbal mixture again and soak the towel, wring out, and apply again while still hot.  Keep repeating the hot towel treatment for around an hour, if you are able.  The more heat and herbs, the better.

At the end of the hour, wash out the oil with plain soap, such as sunlight soap. It is best to take a shower to do this, as it will take several applications of soap lather to remove the oil.  Towel the hair dry, then make a rosemary infusion to use as a herbal hair rinse:  Use 2 cups of rosemary spikes with 4 cups of boiling water. Simmer for five minutes, allow to cool, then apply to the hair, massaging in the nourishing rosemary tea to the roots of the hair.  Let dry and brush out.

This is a very good, natural, non-toxic, nourishing oil and herb treatment to use for the benefit of the  hair:  It gives the hair gloss,  and also  feeds the hair follicles on the scalp.

Note:  Comfrey is a ‘miracle herb’, capable of restoring bones, building stong teeth, and aiding in hair growth.  Comfrey is banned in most westernized countries, mainly because of the efforts of  big drug companies, who do not wish us to have available this once-free-to-all healing and medicinal herb.  Join forces to get Comfrey taken off the banned list, so that we may all enjoy its benefits once more.

List Of Foods To Help Regrow Tooth Enamel

Repairing The Teeth

I have had many letters about whether people can, or cannot, regrow their tooth enamel.  There is no answer to this question – For a start, I am not a dentist and cannot give advice on people’s teeth, especially when I have no idea about the age, the health, the circumstances of the individual, and so forth.

Each individual case is different, which is why professional help should be sought if you are contemplating to follow any sort of health programme for the purpose of reversing a serious illness such as cancer or multiple sclerosis, or for the purpose of regrowing your tooth enamel.  I would advise you to see a good experienced naturopath, an ayurvedic practitioner, or a homeopath or herbalist. Consulting a naturopathic dentist would be a very good option if you wish to repair tooth enamel, as it is possible that the dentist could apply minerals to the teeth to help them repair themselves.

The Jacqui Davison/Gerson diet, and other wheatgrass programmes have worked well for curing many cancers and have repaired teeth in the process.  But there are other therapies which have worked equally well, such as a macrobiotic diet which is based on the Japanese diet, or the traditional Indian diet of Ayurvedic medicine. Indian people who have been brought up on traditional Indian food such as dahl, rice, and vegetable curries, with or without meat, usually have beautiful teeth, which shows how good this kind of diet is for the health.

I have written much about the Gerson therapy for cancer, and Jacqui Davison’s case, where new tooth enamel was grown while she followed Gerson’s therapy for cancer.

But not everyone has the ability, the perseverance, or the time, or the money, to put into following such rigorous programmes as Gerson’s, or other strict therapies recommended for cancer.

So – a modified diet is the best approach for most people, unless they are extremely determined and wish to follow the Gerson diet to the letter, with its castor oil doses every second day, daily enemas, and vegetable juices every hour, among other things.

A Basic Diet For Good Health:  I devised a special diet for my family many years ago.  I found  this diet to be good by trial and error. This diet was formulated  mainly to prevent my eldest child from suffering from eczema: Basically, all pre-packaged food, or processed food, was avoided completely so that no preservatives, colourants, or flavourings  were consumed at all.

All food was made at home. We omitted dairy foods, wheat foods, bread, sugar and yeast foods.  No coffee, tea or alcohol was used.  After following the diet for 9 months, to help my son’s eczema, we discovered one day that the small hole which had developed in his new front tooth had healed itself.  This proved that good nutrition, and avoiding harmful things in the diet, really does help tooth enamel to regenerate itself.  Although being young helps as well:  I have heard of other children who have had small cavities which have healed themselves naturally.

Now, I know that this diet  I devised is a similar one which is promoted for prevention and cure of candida.  This anti-eczema diet of ours is similar to the macrobiotic and Indian diets, where any cooked meats and fish are used, with any cooked vegetables and rice. But I was not following any specified programme as such:  I simply used all the foods which were healthy, and abandoned all that were unhealthy for us.  My son’s eczema was my barometer:  Eczema would appear on his arms very soon after eating anything which he was ‘allergic’ to, such as cow’s milk, wheat, and sugar, or yeast foods. He had been subjected to 245T aerial spraying over our house in the Hokianga when he was not much more than a year old. This had affected our health very badly.

After a while, I found that goat’s milk was tolerated by the whole family.  At first, I used fresh, unpasteurized goat’s milk to supplement breast feeding my youngest child. Then, when he was a little older, I found that powdered goat’s milk did not cause any reaction to any of my children, and so this was included in the daily diet also.  But for a long time, we did not use milk at all.

Basically, the foods we avoided were all wheat, all sugar, all dairy except for butter. Using butter was recommended by Walter Last – I found butter to be very healthful, but not so cow’s milk.

So I am going to list all of the foods which proved beneficial for us in preventing eczema, and which eventually repaired the enamel on my son’s tooth

List of Basic Foods To Help Regrow Tooth Enamel

All Cooking Oils were good, especially Olive oil, Grape seed oil, Rice bran oil.

All fruits are ok in small amounts, although citrus  or very acid fruits were not so good.  I found that using oil or protein with fruit helped the assimilation of the fruit sugar.  A banana mashed with an egg yolk, and a tablespoon of olive oil, with a little rice, and dessicated coconut, made a very good desert which was assimilated easily, without skin reaction.  This might not suit everybody with eczema or allergies though.  But generally, if you have a sugar disturbance, then eating oils or fats or protein with a fruit will aid the absorption of  its sugar content. Remember to munch a stalk of celery after each meal, especially if you have had a sweet dish. This is very important for children.

Alfalfa spouts:  These are very alkaline – one of the most alkaline foods of all.  Very good to include these in your daily salads.

Almonds

Almond milk is excellent, combined with sesame or sunflower seeds.  This is a good calcium-rich substitute for dairy milk

Arrowroot

Artichokes

Asparagus

Aubergine

Avocado and Avocado Oil

Basil

Beans – All dried beans were good.  Also fresh green beans

Beef

Beetroot – Grated raw beetroot in salads with grated apple.  Or cooked beetroot.

Besan Flour

Broccoli

Brown rice

Brussels Sprouts

Butter

Cabbage – Raw in Cole-slaw, or cooked.

Carrots

Cauliflower

Celery

Channa Flour

Chicken

Coconut – Fresh or Dessicated coconut

Coconut Milk or Cream

Comfrey – If you can get it.  Comfrey is especially high in silica and other minerals which aid the growth of the teeth, hair, nails and bone.  I used comfrey tea quite frequently, and occasionally put a leaf in with the silver beet, maybe two or three times a week.   Very good to use in the diets of growing children.

Cornmeal – Both fine yellow cornmeal and coarse grain. Tinned kernels were also good.

Cornbread

Courgettes

Dates – We used a lot of dates on Walter Last’s recommendation.  Walter wrote a wonderful book called ‘Heal Yourself’. Dates are an ideal substitute for sweetening. I used dates to sweeten desserts, with coconut as well.  These sweets were not as sweet as if you were to use sugar, but the family got used to these less sweet desserts. We found dates did not cause an allergic reaction, whereas sugar, wheat and dairy foods, except for butter, did.

Eggs.  Only use Free-range eggs. Preferably organic.  2 raw egg yolks are taken daily on the Gerson diet. Raw egg yolk is healthy, but not raw egg white.  The white must be cooked. Raw egg yolk can be used with olive oil to make aioli, a Mediterranean substitute for butter.  Aioli is a great way to add more protein and olive oil into the diet, as it can be used as a salad dressing, as well as a dip, or a replacement for butter.

Endive

Fish – All fish was good, except for smoked fish or flavoured tinned fish. Tinned tuna, sardines in oil were good. I avoided tinned fish in sauces.

Garlic

Grapes and Grapeseed Oil

Hazelnuts

Kumara or sweet potato

Lamb

Lentils

Lettuce

Millet

Mung Beans – Cooked and sprouted. Sprouted mung beans for salads are a great food, as they are rich in enzymes, vitamin C, and are alkaline in nature.

Oatmeal

Olive Oil and Black Olives

Onions – red and white. Spring onion and chives. All the onion family are very good.

Parsley

Parsnip

Pea Flour

Peppers – All peppers green and red

Potato

Pumpkin

Raisins – Like sultanas, we only used these occasionally.  Dates were better.

Rocket

Salsify

Sesame Seeds and Sesame oil

Silver Beet (in moderation – I would not use this two days in a row, as I found it had too much oxalis acid to use too often)

Spinach (in moderation – same as for silver beet)

Sultanas – I used these only in moderation and not very frequently.  Dates were better for sweetening.

Swede

Sunflower Seeds and Sunflower Oil

Taro

Thyme

Tomatoes

Turnip

Yams

All meats chicken and fish were used. I would say that we used more protein to replace wheat, generally, although we did use rice and cornmeal breads, and other grains from the list above on a daily basis.

We avoided all fermented foods while on this diet, including tofu and tempeh.  No vinegars, tomato sauce or soy sauces were used. Vinegars are yeast foods, which can cause candida. The above foods, generally, were good for treating candida. Fruits are used in moderation.  Too much fruit sugar can cause candida and eczema, which is why we used fruit in moderation.  We found fruit best if almonds or sunflower seed, or a drink of almond milk was taken at the same time.

Clean the Teeth with Alkaline Foods:  We used raw celery or carrot or apple at the end of any meal, especially if there was a dessert.  My children also had raw carrot apple,  and celery in their lunch boxes, to finish their meal, although they say they didn’t eat it very often.  However, I made sure that they did so at home.

Natural Constipation Cure With Water

Constipation should Be Avoided: Constipation causes toxins to sit around in the bowels, where they will be reabsorbed back into the blood. This causes auto-intoxication.

Adequate Water Is Necessary To Purify the Body,  prevent constipation, and keep the immune system strong. Constipation causes auto-intoxication, which results in sickness, and a generall weakening of the immune system.

Constipation Causes Cancer and Arthritis if it the condition is long-term. If the bowels are kept clean and regular, and free of constipation, then diseases such as cancer and arthritis do not usually develop, unless intoxication occurs from some other, external,  chemical poisoning.  Ten glasses of water should be taken by adults each day.  More than this is required if the weather is very hot, if you are physically active, and if you have a bigger than average  build.

Water is needed for a healthy bowel, and this is stressed by Dr Frank Hurdle in his book  ‘A Country Doctor’s Common Sense Health Manual’, which was published in1975 by Parker Publishing Company Inc., New York.

Dr Hurdle should know what he is talking about:  He  had a wealth of experience as a practicing physician before writing  his ‘Common Sense Health Manual’.  This experience includes 12 years in private practice, two years at Fort Logan Mental Health Centre,  two years in the United States Army Medical Corp, and several years working on research projects.

Dr Hurdle, who says that constipation is a world-wide problem, and that everybody suffers from this at some time in their lives,  cannot stress enough the importance of water  in preventing constipation and disease.  Here is what he has to say about the reasons for constipation, and the lack of water as a cause:

He gives a list of eight  ‘common things that provoke constipation’.  His list  reads:  1. Not enough fluids  2. Lack of abdominal muscle tone. 3. Not enough fluids  4. Lack of bulk in the diet.  5. Not enough fluids.  6. Nervous gut syndrome. 7. Not enough fluids.  8. Laxative habit.

Water is important for bowel function. The primary function of the large intestine is to reabsorb fluid from the digested food passing through.  You need to have adequate fluids in your diet so that there is enough fluid for the large intestine to absorb what it needs, and still leave enough moisture in the digested food so that it can pass through easily.  If your intake of water is too low, then you get constipated, simple as that.

Get Enough Exercise To Prevent Constipation:  Of course, exercise, and a healthy diet also play a part in the healthy digestion of food.  So make sure that you do get some regular exercise on a daily basis.  Light jogging,  or walking, or swimming, or tennis, or yoga, or skipping are all fun ways to exercise.

Eating a good breakfast is important to prevent constipation.  Breakfast starts the digestion working for the day, which includes intestinal function as well. If you have a habit of skipping breakfast, then you are shutting down your digestive system right at the time nature intends it to get cracking and start processing food.  This leads to constipation.

My friend Bernhard Petersen stresses that breakfast is very important. Eating a large bowl of cereal such as porridge with a grated apple on it, or a bowl of bran and yoghurt, or a plate of rice with dried fruits, followed by boiled eggs, or scrambled eggs, or some other nutritious food, is important for busy people.

Dr Dr Max Gerson worked out a very successful treatment for his cancer patients, and an important part of it was the eating of a large bowl of oatmeal porridge, taken with a raw grated apple each morning.

This porridge and apple formula was to provide bulk for the intestines, and to get the digestive and intestinal functions working optimally, as well as to provide nutrients.

His recovery programme for his cancer patients involved also the taking of 2 tablespoons of castor oil every second day, which was another bowel-cleansing technique.  Castor oil also detoxifies the liver, and reduces cancer tumours. This can be used by an otherwise healthy person once a week to detoxify liver and intestines. People treating degenerative disease such as cancer would need to take it more frequently, and on a regular  basis such as Dr Gerson recommended.

Coffee and tea drinkers take heed:  Drinking coffee or tea first thing in the morning can dull the appetite, leading you to think that it is OK to rush off to work or to child care or somewhere without that breakfast.  But this is very harmful to the body, bad for the nervous system,  bad for the general health, and will create constipation.  Too much coffee can also upset the acidophilus organisms in the bowel, which aid digestion. When these beneficial bacteria get killed off,  candida overgrowth can become a problem, and this can cause constipation, or diarrhoea in some cases.

Take Notice Of Your Bowel Impulses:  I believe that constipation exists in many people because they ignore the responses of the bowel:  When the bowel is stimulated and sending messages to go to the toilet in the morning, many people carry on with their hurrying, and pay no attention to the bowel responses.  If this is ignored, then the bowel will give up and probably not message you any more that day. You must respect your bowel, and give yourself time to use the toilet each morning.

Simple Water Cure For Detox and Constipation:  Enemas of course, are great for their immediate effect in clearing the bowels, and for supplying water to nourish and cleanse the intestines.  But here is a method for using water orally to clear the intestines of effete matter.  The method is to fast for three days, eating nothing except perhaps some stewed apple in the mornings.

Every hour throughout the day, take a cup of boiled water which is still hot, but sufficiently cooled to drink. Keep this practice up for three days.  About the third day, your bowels will clear themselves of any obstructions and effete matter. then you can begin eating again, starting with light meals of cooked vegetables and raw or stewed fruit, rice, and pulses.

Second Method  Using Water For Curing Non-Chronic Constipation

This is actually a Yoga exercise which can be found in Swami Satyananda Saraswati’ book ‘Asana, Pranayama, Mudra, Bandha’ published first in 1969, Bihar School of Yoga, India.

It is very simple to do, and you do not have to be practicing yoga for it to be beneficial.  Hopefully, if you are new to yoga,  this exercise might spark off a life-long study of yoga to aid your health.

Method:  First drink six cups of water in one sitting.  Then stand in the ‘Heavenly Stretch’ pose, or ‘Tadasana’.  This posture starts standing erect, the feet apart by several inches.  Clasp the fingers together and raise up the hands with fingers interlocked, above the head, palms facing upward.

Stretch the hands upward toward the sky, breathing in, and lift the heels off the floor.  Normally, you would do several motions, lifting the heels up off the floor, hands upward, as you breathe in, then breathing out, you would lower arms and heels together.  But we do this exercise a little differently  for the purpose of helping the bowels.

Instead of doing several up and down movements, you hold the pose on tip-toes, whilst you walk on tip-toe for 100 paces, holding the arms above the head, with hands upward to the sky.

Satyananda recommends this exercise for the first six months of pregnancy.  It helps keep the back strong, tones the legs, and stretches the intestines.

This alone is an effective cure for constipation  All the muscles in the lower abdomen get worked with the  combination of stretching upward and walking at the same time.  Drinking the water before you begin is important. This will usually encourage a bowel movement within a few hours.

How A Patient Was Cured Of Constipation and Laxative Dependency:  Dr Frank Hurdle gives some advice on how to avoid using laxatives, which weakens  the responses of the intestines.  He had a patient who had taken laxatives for many years, and who had what seemed an incurable dependency on these drugs.  Dr Hurdle devised a plan to get this man off the laxatives.  He told him to stop taking them and begin drinking plenty of water, for a start.   Next, he  advised him also to exercise on a daily basis.

The main dietary requirement was that the patient had to eat a large bowl of pure bran each morning, before eating anything else.  The fourth requisite was for his patient to tell himself each night at bed-time, that he would have a bowel movement first thing in the morning.  This affirmation was repeated every night faithfully, and the bowl of bran taken dutifully each morning, with plenty of fluids taken through the day.  The result was that the patient was cured of his ‘laxative habit’, and never had to resort to using laxatives ever again.