Crown Chakra Tune Up: Yoga Sequence From Stephanie Snyder

By Yoga Journal




Integrate your entire being from head to toe to experience a vast connection between your innermost self and all things.



Working toward enlightenment may seem daunting, unrealistic, or completely beyond the scope of your radar. But regardless of whether you practice yoga to stay fit and healthy or to work toward complete liberation, do not miss the opportunity to notice those enlightened moments that can come through a regular practice of insight and positive action. An enlightened moment can spring forth at any time, let this practice open you to the possibility and prime you to witness those moments of grace sprinkled throughout your day.



This practice is meant to integrate right and left, masculine and feminine, surya and chandra, ida and pingala (energetic channels that link into and through the main channel called sushumna), and your entire being from head to toe. Use this integration to experience a vast connection between your innermost self and all things.

Crown Chakra Visualization Meditation

Begin your practice seated and bring your hands into prayer (Anjali Mudra) at your heart. Bring your awareness to your pelvic floor and let it rest there until you feel grounded, supported, and relaxed. Then begin to glide your awareness up the front of your spine slowly checking in and resting for a moment on each chakra as you go. (Head back to the Chakra Tune-Up page for a review.) Imagine the spine as a stalk or reed and draw your awareness up through the reed. Once you reach to the crown of your head, imagine there at the top of that stalk of energy a luminous white lotus flower. One by one begin to open each petal of the thousand-petaled lotus. Imagine as you open the lotus that your innermost self is merging more and more with the universe. Let this happen in the most natural and beautiful manner. Spend as much time in this visualization meditation as you like.

Set Your Sahasrara Intention

Now set your intention for this practice. Here are some themes related to the sahasrara chakra that you may want to integrate into your intention: vastness; limitlessness; unity; seeing yourself in all beings to cultivate compassion; accepting your place and your part in the universe; awakening of consciousness; opening to spiritual realizations. Feel free to use any of these or choose your own. As long as your intention feels true for you it has value.

Standing Prayer Backbend

Begin standing with hands in Anjali Mudra. Close your eyes and take at least five big breaths, very long and slow. As you inhale, feel the energy ascend from your feet up through the crown of your head. As you exhale, feel the energy descend from the crown of the head down into your feet. Remember that this flow between earth and spirit is always intact.



With your feet firmly planted and your legs engaged, begin to lift from the pelvic floor as you lengthen your spine upward. Lift and broaden your chest while drawing your shoulder blades into your ribs for a gentle heart opener. Now gracefully bring your prayer hands to the mid forehead. Feel the back body lift the front body. Energetically open up to all of the potential that the universe has in store for you. Let this progression last 3-4 breaths total holding the fullest expression of this gentle backbend for only one full cycle of breath. Return the hands back to the heart to finish.

Warrior I + Eagle Arms

Virabhadrasana I + Garudasana Arms

From Tadasana step your left foot back about 3-4 feet, turning it out to a 45-degree angle. If you have any pain in the back knee, lift the back heel for a High Lunge instead. Keep your hips square toward the front of your mat as you bend your right knee to 90 degrees or less. Inhale reaching your arms up for Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I). Spend a breath or two here letting the hips open. Now bring your arms in front of you and stack the left arm on top of the right. Snake the arms around each other for Garudasana (Eagle) arms variation. Keeping a deep bend in the right knee begin to lift the heart, arms, and gaze into a mild backbend. Keep your feet firmly planted and grounded but feeling vast, open, and alive! Spend 4-5 breaths here and then release.

Revolved Bound Half Moon Pose

Parivrtta Baddha Ardha Chandrasana

This is a challenging but beautiful pose that enhances the cross-lateral balance mechanism, integrates total-body awareness, and provides opportunity for opening only by softening up.



From Warrior I with right foot forward, rock your weight into your right leg and touch the floor with your left hand. Extend your left leg back and your right arm up into Revolved Half Moon Pose. You are welcome to stay there and work up to the bind over time. To continue, bend your left knee and catch the left foot with your right hand. Find a steady gaze as you kick the left foot up to lift the chest and open through the heart and right shoulder. Spend five breaths here. Once you have the bind, soften up a little bit -- become receptive to the universal download and the pose will become easier, I promise!

Continue the Crown Chakra Tune Up by practicing the full sequence.

About Stephanie Snyder

Stephanie Snyder is a San Francisco-based vinyasa yoga teacher. She's written, modeled, and created DVDs for Yoga Journal in addition to presenting at Yoga Journal LIVE!

Join YogaJournal.com's #ChakraTuneUp2015 to tune in to and tune up your energy centers for a mind-body-soul health overhaul this year.

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A Case for Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

All of the necessary steps were taken as I tried medication after medication to combat my depression. I had been on an anti-depressant for 20 years and it was simply not working anymore. Months went by and there were no positive effects from each medication trial.



I went for a psychopharmacological consultation and was given three options: MAOI (another class of medication), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). I was terrified of ECT and did not want to deal with the dietary restrictions with the MAOI. I looked into TMS but learned that my insurance would not cover it. Before I could continue my research about TMS, I was hospitalized. My depression reached a severe point and I needed a higher level of care.



In the hospital I was given the same options that my consult gave me and after watching a DVD with my husband about ECT, we both knew I needed to begin this treatment. He just wanted his wife back; I just wanted to be myself again.



My experience of my first ECT treatment can be described in one word: terror. As a social worker, I was aware of the procedure but still had visions of torture from watching movies and TV shows that depict ECT in a punishing way. All of my fear was combatted by the warmest nurses I have ever encountered. It was over before I even knew it. I awoke from the anesthesia and felt proud of myself for taking a risk.



So, what happened after this first treatment? I had a euphoric response that evening where I felt things I had not felt in months. I was talkative and animated. I was allowed to go outside after dinner as I had that privilege and the sunlight on my skin felt unbelievable. That evening when I took a shower, the water felt like magic on my skin.



I did not have that type of response from any other ECT treatment. I have had a total of 23 ECT treatments from July 2014 to February 2015. I experienced the following as a result of these ECT treatments:



1. First and foremost, ECT was critical in saving my life. The last straw, which got me hospitalized, was me verbalizing to my therapist the specifics of my negative thoughts. While I believed them at the time, they did scare me.



2. Each treatment truly does build on one another. I was very aware of this process as it was happening. It kept me optimistic and hopeful.



3. While I have had some memory issues, the worst was about seven weeks into the treatment and it only lasted a few days. The best example of this experience was having a double session with my therapist and not remembering what we discussed during that hour and a half just two hours later. An ongoing issue has been finding words. I will be speaking and having a conversation and think of the word I want to say, but then lose it. This has been ongoing since that seventh week. It has improved over time.



4. My cognition has greatly improved since that first ECT treatment. Now, when my therapist is trying to reality-check with me, I can follow along and see different perspectives. I was unable to do that before treatment.



5. I can also recognize that I was severely ill. When I was in the depression, I knew I was sick but did not realize the extent. My negative thoughts became my new normal and I accepted them even though they also upset me.



6. I can "be with" people now. When I was sick I was unable to be present. I would read a book to my daughter but not really pay attention to her comments and questions. My mind was elsewhere. Now, I am experiencing "being with" in ways I was not able to practice before the ECT.



7. Not only is my cognition much improved, my ability to relate to others has, as well. I am able to accomplish so much in my therapy as we are working at such a high level. My psychodynamic therapy quickly became an analysis since the summer.



So what was most helpful for me during this experience?



1. I was included in discussions about my treatment and my thoughts and opinions mattered. I was an important part of my own treatment team and that felt empowering.



2. ECT itself is a safe and monitored procedure and should be advertised as such. My doctor in the hospital was very successful at promoting it this way.



3. Sense of humor can help. I was aware of what was going on around me and why I was going to receive ECT and any jokes I made about watching too many movies that depict ECT in a negative way were greeted with laughter from my doctor. His being laid back was very calming for me.



4. Use the statistics. My doctor was very clear about the percentage of patients who recover from depression after receiving ECT and this data was very helpful in making this treatment decision.



5. Work well with others. While I was hospitalized in CT, my therapist is in MA. They communicated well, which only benefited my getting well.



For me, the benefits of ECT have greatly outweighed my initial fears. I never imagined the positive results I would have in response to this treatment. Not only did it bring me out of a severe depression, it has benefited anyone I have a connection with as I am more communicative and involved in my relationships. Not only am I me again, I am a better version of me than I ever was before ECT.



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Mothers, Daughters and Eating Disorders

I am concerned when I hear the media or the counseling psychology community blame mothers for causing daughters to suffer from an eating disorder. Yes, it is true that a mother can pass on to her daughter her own disordered eating behaviors and negative body image. But if that is all we focus on, the underlying causes of a daughter's eating disorder and how food and body image issues get passed on and processed between mothers and daughters will not be discovered.



Mother blaming is patriarchy's age-old way of taking the focus away from the harm that it causes women by making women responsible for harming themselves. Blaming mothers is a form of prejudice, as Paula Caplan writes in her book "The New Don't Blame Mother." It is highly detrimental to the mother-daughter relationship and to women's emotional and mental wellbeing.



I work with mothers whose daughters have been diagnosed with eating disorders, and these mothers tell me that mother blaming makes them feel isolated. The culture of mother blaming increases the guilt they feel about any harm they may have inadvertently passed on to their daughter. And it leaves them with few avenues in which to find emotional support. Mothers find that when they share their personal reactions to their daughters' problems, they are often treated as being selfish and self-obsessed. When a daughter has an eating disorder, the family tends to narrow its focus down to what is happening with the daughter, which again leaves the mother emotionally isolated and unsupported, as she takes on the responsibility of managing her daughter's illness, along with everything else she does.



This narrow, mother blaming lens does not uncover the root causes of a daughter's eating disorder. What is needed is a much wider multi-generational and socio-cultural lens that examines how the daughter, mother, and grandmother are treated by their family and community. We need to focus on the emotional landscape in which women live, namely, how women are heard, understood, and emotionally supported within the family and community.



In families where a daughter is struggling with an eating disorder, women are typically not heard, understood, or emotionally supported. The family tends to fit into traditional gender roles where the mother does most, if not all, of the care giving, with little inquiry or understanding about what kind of care she needs in return. In the mother-daughter history maps I draw, the arrows that reflect who does the caregiving, extend from the mother and grandmother to their husbands, children, and other family members, with few arrows pointing back to them. This is what emotional neglect looks like. It sets mothers up to be responsible for everyone's needs, with little understanding that they too have needs of their own.



Eating disorders are a multifaceted problem. The fashion industry, for example, has a responsibility for the way they glorify thinness as beauty and power that girls feel pressurized to emulate. But I get concerned when the emotional neglect piece of the eating disorder puzzle gets ignored or sidelined as a contributing factor to the epidemic of female eating disorders. Daughters today are starving themselves, over eating, and bulimic as a reaction to the lack of emotional feeding that they, their mother, and their grandmother receive in the family. Their eating disorders are a reaction to the lack of inquiry women receive to what they emotionally need. Even though young women today are achieving levels of public visibility their mother and grandmother could not, women's emotional empowerment is lagging behind. The conversation that inquires after what women need emotionally is not being asked to the degree women need for their emotional and mental wellbeing, their equality, and their visibility in their relationships.



If we are to solve the problem of why so many of our successful, capable, young women are struggling to feed themselves, we must look at women's history of emotional starvation. The self-less caregiving role has always been disastrous for women. It makes women starving hungry for attention, or unable to digest the attention they do get, and some daughters express this conflict through the way they relate to food.



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If you're struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.



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Two Years Into My Eating Disorder Recovery, I Still Struggle to Believe People Really Like Me

By Claire Trainor



On the first warm day of 7th grade, everyone wore shorts to school. All the girls couldn't wait to show off their new spring outfits, colored shorts and tank tops with cardigans to cover our shoulders, per dress code requirements.



Everything was going well throughout the day until my friend showed me the texts his friends had been sending during the day: "Did you see Claire's legs?" "Yeah, someone should tell her dimples are for your cheeks, not the backs of your thighs."



Every time I remember it, I can feel my cheeks flush, my smile fade and my eyes well up.



In seventh grade I wasn't fat, but I was developed. I had the body of a 19-year-old by the time I was 13 (and I can say that without a doubt because I still wear the same jeans, dresses, and T-shirts.) But to the eyes of 13-year-old boys, fat and developed are synonyms.



And so beginning in elementary school and for most of middle school, I was teased for my weight and my body. And because the popular boys in my grade were teasing me, the not-so-popular boys didn't want to talk to me, either. All of my friends, my tiny, barely-developed friends, had crushes, went on dates and flirted with boys. I did not.



But the thing is, middle school students often don't know where to draw the line between bullying for weight and bullying for character. Like so much of our society, they believe that how your body looks dictates who you are as a person. Fat girls are less attractive, less worthy, more obnoxious and more unwanted. Skinny girls are the opposite: pretty, worthy, smart and desirable. And because they thought I was fat... well, the rest fell into place, too. I became the girl no one, even the other girls in my grade, wanted to be friends with.



Although by the time I started high school, most people were more developed than they had been and although most of my friends were sophomores or juniors (whose bodies, I now realize, looked strikingly like mine), I couldn't shake the feeling that my body was something to be ashamed of. It was this feeling, combined with the swirl of anxiety, depression, self-doubt, family problems, and academics that caused me to start restricting in April of my freshman year. By May, it was a full-fledged eating disorder.



Luckily, my friends had the foresight to find a way to inform my parents. Then, I began the two-year process of therapy, re-feeding, treatment, recovery, relapses, treatment, re-feeding, more relapses, more treatment and finally recovery (which has lasted now for two years). No one has said anything negative about my body to me since middle school. I'm in an incredible place in my recovery; I eat what my body wants and exercise when it tells me I should. I'm happy.



Still, I spend 20 minutes in front of the mirror trying to make sure there's nothing in the way I look that would prompt teasing. In my early teen years, I integrated other people's beliefs into my own thought patterns. The parts of my body I'm most unhappy with are the ones that provoked the most teasing: my stomach, lower back, and legs (although that may be in part to the fact that those are the areas diets target, as well.) Rarely do I have problems with anywhere else.



Beyond the body image problems, I struggle with believing that people are honest about liking me. Throughout middle school, people pretended to be my friends and bullied me behind my back. Now, five years later, I still worry about what people think and say about me when I'm not there. I worry that my friends put on a front but dislike me when I leave. Learning to believe that people could truly like me has been one of the hardest journeys of my life, but I'm getting there.



What most people forget about bullying is that it echoes throughout a lifetime and that it can be very easy to absorb other's voices into one's own. And as a result, we have a generation of bullied kids who don't know how to love themselves in the way they should. I have since forgiven the people who made my life miserable for years by realizing that their assessments of who I am as a person are entirely wrong.



I've taught myself to rely on the voices of people I trust and adore: my parents, sister, friends, and boyfriend, who never fail to support me on days I feel down. But regardless of the fact that I'm in a great place in my life, bullying had an indelible impact on my self-esteem that has taken, and will continue to take, years to unravel.












Originally published on Proud2BMe.Org



About this blogger: Claire Trainor is a freshman at DePaul University majoring in Creative Writing and Psychology. In steady recovery from an eating disorder, she wants to educate, support, and inspire those struggling in anyway. She likes her dogs, hot chocolate, and books. Claire currently runs a personal recovery blog.




Also by Claire:



Breaking the Skinny Mirror



NEDAwareness Week 2015!



What's Underneath?



A Recovery Post That Talks About Real Recovery




For more on Bullying and EDs:



Bullying Triggered my Eating Disorder



Is Plastic Surgery the Answer to Bullying?



Are you struggling with an eating disorder or do you know someone who is? Call the National Eating Disorders Association's toll-free helpline for support: (800)-931-2237.



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Failure to Launch Syndrome: What You Need to Know to Help Your Dependent Adult Child

Co-authored by Susan Anderer, Psy.D



Failure to Launch is not just another Matthew McConaughey movie, but a real-life struggle of young people, 19 to 28, who lack the tools to make the transition from adolescence to adulthood. While the McConaughey movie is a comedy where a young man continues to live at home and to enjoy being dotted on by his parents, the reality of children in this situation is a painful daily struggle to secure meaning, purpose, relationships, and independence in their lives.



Emotionally and financially draining, failure to launch children seemingly have little intrinsic motivation to move through life. Lacking the skills to function independently, these students have failed to navigate college and find themselves back at home, out of sync with their peers, and in constant tension with their families. The consequences are often substance misuse, depression, low self-esteem, and social anxiety. What is it that differentiates these young people from their peers who have made more successful transitions? The causes are complex and often multiply determined.



For one, there can be underlying learning and/or attention problems that have been present for a long time but do not have a significant impact on a student's functioning until they leave home. For bright students, often sitting in class alone allows them to adequately master material without putting in significant hours of study. This generally does not hold true at the college level, where some level of independent study is essential to grasp larger volumes of material. In addition, while class participation, projects and extra credit can help students to compensate for low test grades in high school, this is rarely the case in college where the grades are determined by two exams and a final. As a result, subtle or not-so-subtle learning issues get in the way of academic success.



Another factor contributing to a failure to launch is the high stakes college admission game and the investment of time, energy, money and ego that goes in to this on both the students' and parent' part. We see many families who cannot allow their child to function independently and risk potential failure in high school for fear that this will impact their "college choices." Yes, allowing a child to feel the negative consequences of their lack of study or failure to seek additional teacher support is uncomfortable and may result in lower grades, it allows them to develop a real awareness of their own skills.



Furthermore, when students feel the natural consequences of their behaviors, they tend to develop resiliency and grit that is essential to a successful launch. Parents who step in to rescue their children from a failing grade, an unfinished paper, or a disciplinary consequence are creating a pattern that perpetuates a need for ongoing rescue. Children don't magically develop these coping skills and resiliency simply because they leave home or reach a certain age.



For many students, while being away from home seemed like an exciting opportunity when they were in high school and tired of their old friends, the prospect of creating a new social group and new social identity are daunting. For students who have been in the same social circle since kindergarten, making new friends, redefining themselves, and cultivating deeper and more intimate relationships is overwhelming. Without their familiar social supports, many children struggle to find their place. This can be exacerbated by the presence of significant mental illness, many of which have their age of initial onset during this time.



Given the multiplicity of factors interfering with a successful launch, treatment is equally multifaceted. Engaging the family in setting appropriate expectations and limits, setting short-term attainable goals, assessing learning and attention problems, and creating a long-term plan are essential for getting students back on track. In many cases, it can be beneficial for young adults to live in a setting with other young adults, while being partially responsible for the financial arrangement.



The person should be given clear responsibilities and face natural consequences if he or she does not live up to the responsibility. Organizational coaches can be employed to help the individual establish plans that would assist in accomplishing goals such as finding a part-time job and managing money. Individual therapy can be of great benefit to address doubts about the person's own sense of effectiveness and ambivalence about entering adulthood. Therapy can also help a person to increase awareness of emotions and the ability to communicate them effectively. Finally, medications to treat underlying symptoms of attention, anxiety and depression can be helpful if prescribed judiciously.



Unlike the Matthew McConaughey character, even Sarah Jessica Parker alone won't be enough motivation to get it together. Persistence, the development of resiliency, introspection and self-understanding, and appropriate family support are the key to moving an adolescent into true adulthood.





Dr. Ascher serves as a clinical associate in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and is in private practice. Dr. Anderer is a licensed psychologist and certified school psychologist in Pennsylvania. Her private practice focuses on both the assessment of complex educational and emotional issues as well as intervention strategies for remediating these challenges.



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