Healing Benefits of Copper Water

Healing Benefits of Copper Water

Yoga | Massage & Bodywork | Ayurvedic Medicine

By Amalia May

A few summer’s back, I was working a a yoga retreat center in a small mountain town in Colorado, living in my first van with my dog, Ophelia. This place was the dreamiest spa I’ve ever worked at. I’m serious people. It was a BEAUTIFUL facility. It overlooked Pikes Peak, had natural hot spring pools, a colorful garden path, a volunteer based farm, and Ayurvedic treatments. At the spa, they served guests with copper water. After learning why this was an offering, I started drinking this copper water everyday. It not only grounded me, but also had so many beneficial effects to my body. It felt so good to drink this water.

Water. What we are made mostly of. What Earth is made mostly of. How lovely! Water, the most essential of the five elements to sustain life on earth.

Our ancestors followed a practice of storing water in copper containers. Storing water in copper jars is known to be a safeguard for healthy water to drink. But there’s so much more to copper water. To me, copper water can be a sacred practices. There are many health and spiritual benefits of drinking this glorious water, so keep reading to learn the how’s and the why’s.

There have been numerous studies on the positive effects of copper. In fact, it was recognized by eastern Vedic Indians thousands of years ago. This is called “Tamra Jal.” The properties of copper kill bacteria. When you store water in a copper vessel for at least 8 hours, the copper ions begin to dissolve into the water. By doing so, the potency kills harmful bacteria & fungi.

Copper water also reduces inflammation in the stomach, therefore being awesome for indigestion and infections. It helps regulate your liver and kidneys- detoxing your stomach of wastes and ensures proper absorption of nutrients from foods you eat.

Because drinking water from a copper vessel helps regulate your digestion and break down fat, it could help in weight loss. Copper water helps you eliminate more efficiently- keeping the good stuff and throwing out the bad stuff.

Okay, so I mentioned it is anti bacterial and anti inflammatory. Drinking from a copper vessel has an affect on the immune system, strengthening it. Copper water helps heal wounds quicker by strengthening the immune system and boosting the production of new cells.

Production of new cells? Yep. Because it’s packed with these cell forming properties, it can help the look of fine lines and wrinkles on your skin, slowing down the look of aging.

Spiritual practice:

A healthy balanced body helps you access Spirit. Think about it, copper is a conductor, so it will amplify your thoughts and increase your awareness. To me, drinking copper water is one of the most grounding

practices. Drinking copper supports an open heart during meditation and contemplation. Copper is grounding, therefore balancing your root and sacral chakras. In fact, copper is used to align the subtle energy bodies and used in sound & energy medicine.

So please, drink your copper you spiritual badass. ;)

More Benefits:

Protects from Infections

Improves Immune Health

Lowers Cancer Risk

Helps Arthritis/joint inflammation

Please know that an excess of anything isn’t received well within the body. The goal is to balance the body. So, you don’t need to drink copper water all day long. An excessive amount could do more damage than good. A cup in the morning and a cup at night is ideal.

My favorite way of receiving all the benefits of copper is to fill my copper tea kettle with clean water at night, letting it rest and ionize. First thing in the morning, I pour a cup’s worth and drink on an empty stomach!

Cleaning your Copper Vessel:

You don’t want to clean your vessel with dish soap. And, it doesn’t need to be cleaned after every single use. To clean, just use a little lemon juice, salt, and clean water. Lemon oil is easier for me living in a van. If you’re going to clean it with a few drops of essential oil, make sure it's a high quality brand.

It’s amazing that Ayurvedic teachings like this are being cultivated and shared by so many cultures around the world. I hope you learned something knew, and are inspired to give copper vessels a try!

Namaste, Amalia May

3 Ingredient Healthy Cookies

Three Ingredient | Healthy | Vegan | Paleo

By Amalia May

Three Ingredient Healthy Cookies. Yepper, you read that right, THREE ingredients. You probably have everything in your kitchen right now. You know what that means? Snack tiiimmmme.

I'm excited to share my go to cookie recipe. Last night Clayton and I were craving something sweet, so we decided it was a good night to fire up the oven in our van (for the first time!) We (me lol) were kind of nervous, just because we are in such a small space and it isn’t exactly normal to have a 400 degree oven running inside a vehicle.

We thought it was the perfect time to use the oven because the temperatures are dropping real quick here in Grand Junction, Colorado and ya girl is cold. While building the van we always talked about "making warm cookies up in the snowy mountains) Well, we did it and it was a success! The cookies turned out perfect! And, our rv camper oven doubled as a space heater for a few hours. :)

If you are anything like me, you try to eat healthy but have a major sweet tooth. Well, my go to is pretty much always peanut butter. I love homemade nut butters because they’re so much cheaper, and just a fun experience making from scratch! For this recipe, I used peanut butter. It certainly doesn’t have to be homemade, but keep in mind when you’re shopping for nut butter, look at the ingredients! If you are paleo, stick to almond or cashew.

This recipe also calls for honey. I highly recommend shopping local for your honey-raw organic honey within a 30 mile radius. I’ve extracted honey with my aunt before (which gave me a new kind of respect for bees), and we simply strained and bottled, like almost every local honey supplier. This means that it has all the beneficial nutrients and antioxidants. Buying from the store can be a different story. Read the label! Some store bought honey’s first ingredient is corn syrup. No good. If honey undertakes any kind of processing, it’s probably removing the most essential nutrients.

I know, you might be skeptical, a cookie recipe without any flour, sugar or butter..?

Trust me, you have to try this out! They are soft but chewy, and sweet but not TOO sweet. With the main ingredient being nut butter, they are packing with protein. They’re also healthy enough you won’t feel bad for eating a few.. Win ;)

Vegan Alternative….

You can always substitute the peanut butter out for almond butter or cashew butter to make it more paleo. If you are vegan, you can swap the egg out for flax seed. To make a “flax seed egg,” mix 1 tablespoon of ground flax meal or chia with 3 tablespoons of water and let set for a while. The flax will absorb the water. The combination should thicken up in about 15 minutes, but you can leave it for a half hour or until it gets to an egg like consistency. This really does work to moisten and bind, but I find that they aren’t quite as fluffy. But hey, it still does the job. I'm not quite vegan, but I do love trying fun alternatives.

Paleo Alternative..

For these cookies, I use peanut butter. But! If you are on a paleo diet, you can always substitute peanut butter for almond, cashew, pistachio, pecan etc. You also can reduce the honey to ¼ cup, but they might be a little dry.

To make the cookies, all you need to do is mix the simple ingredients together, stirring well! This is the time you can add in goodies! A few of my favorites are chocolate/white chips, raisins, dried cranberries, dates, coconut flakes- or you can make it breakfast by adding oats, nuts, and dried fruit. You really can make this your own delicious cookie!

Spoon the soft batter into small round balls and transfer onto a cookie sheet. It seems way too simple and way too healthy to be so good, but trust me. You’ll love them. Pop the cookie sheet into the oven at 350 degrees for 8 minutes. When you take them out, they will be a little soft, but that’s GOOD! As they cool they’ll harden just enough to be the perfect moist cookie.

I love this recipe because I always have the ingredients in my kitchen and it’s FAST, it’s EASY, and it’s HEALTHY!!!!

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3 Ingredient Healthy Cookies

Nut Butter | Honey | Egg

Prep time: 6 minutes

Cook time:8 minutes

Total time: 14 minutes

Ingredient List:

• 1 organic egg OR flax egg (1 tbsp flax meal 3 tbsp water)

• ⅓ cup raw honey

• 1 cup peanut butter (almond of cashew for Paleo)

Add ins:

• ½ cup chocolate chips

• ½ cup raisins/dried cranberries

• ¼ cup coconut flakes

• ¼ cup chopped pitted dates

• ¼ cup oats

• ¼ cup chopped dried fruit/nuts

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F

2. Mix peanut butter and honey in a bowl. In another bowl, whisk egg.

3. Combine and mix all ingredients together stirring well. Mix in any add in’s desired.

4. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Form a ball with a heaping tablespoon for each cookie. Gently press into each cookie with a fork to help cookie spread.

5. Bake for 8 minutes. They will be soft, but starting to brown.

6. Let cookies cool and firm for at least 5 minutes.

7. Now, use self control to not eat the entire batch. Enjoy ;)

Comment a picture if you tried this recipe, would love to see you loving these cookies as much as I do!

Namaste, Amalia May

Tongue Scraping for Better Health

Ayurvedic Tounge Scraping

by Amalia May

Yoga | Massage & Bodywork | Ayurvedic Medicine

What is Tongue Scraping?

What's that on your tongue?!

Have you looked in the mirror and noticed gunk on the back of your tongue?

Your tongue is a collection of muscles that allows you to chew, swallow, talk, and taste. But, your tongue can be a living ground for bacteria as well. Some of the bacteria on your tongue is good, and some can attribute to bad breath, tooth decay, gum infections, and more.

Oral health is VERY important to your health as a whole. Sure, brushing your teeth is great. But, think about it this way. When you scrub a dirty carpet, the dirt gets embedded down there, but if you scrape it, it’s going to come right off the surface. So, in addition brushing, flossing, oil pulling, think about adding tongue scraping into your daily routine.

Because the tongue and oral cavity are connectors to the mind-body system & the outside world, this vital organ is seriously critical for overall well being!

Jihwa Prakshalana, or better known as tongue scraping, is an ancient practice of using a copper tool to scrape your tongue clean. But what are you even cleaning off? What is that gunk?!

While you are sleeping, the body is working to process everything you ingested the day prior. In turn, “ama” or toxins, become visible on your tongue. Pretty crazy. They say you can tell everything about a person by their oral health. If you go to an Ayurvedic Practitioner, tongue examinations are very common.

Imagine that your tongue is a road map of the whole body. Like reflexology, the tongue has different sections for different organs. So if you think about it, this method of scraping is like giving your internal body a gentle massage.

How To Tongue Scrape:

In the morning, brush your teeth and floss like normal. Then, while looking in the mirror, open your mouth and examine what your tongue looks like! Like I said, it is a great body awareness practice. In the next paragraph we’ll briefly go over what different colors and textures indicate.

Stick your tongue out and gently run the scraper across the entire surface of your tongue, from back to front. This should be light pressure and shouldn’t hurt. If it does hurt, use even lighter pressure.

Rinse the scraper (sometimes I scrub the scraper with my toothbrush for extra cleaning) & rinse your mouth.

Tongue scraping is a super quick and easy way to leave your mouth feeling fresh and clean!

Dosha Imbalances

This is a traditional practice of Ayurvedic self care and is a perfect way to check in with your body. Listening to your body will tell

you a lot about the internal self and how well it’s functioning. It’s a great way to reflect on your choices of the past few days.

If you don’t already know your dosha makeup, there are plenty of online dosha tests you can take that will give you better insight!

Kapha Imbalance -thick, white coating

Pitta Imbalance-yellow coloration

Vata Imbalance-brown coloration

Notice how different foods affect the color/coating of your tongue too! If you notice anything visual clues that your tongue is not healthy, (black discoloration, pain, sores) I highly recommend seeing your dentist!

Benefits of Tongue Scraping:

Removing this coating can improve your taste buds! Who doesn’t want to have their food to be more satisfying?!

Tongue scraping increases your taste reception. This means you might feel you’re eating less & eliminating the desire for more sugars and salts.

Remember that your body- the entire system as a whole is always in constant communication. In Ayurveda’s teachings, we clear the mind when we cleanse and open these communication systems, or “channels” of the body. I'll use chocolate as an example because I LOVE chocolate. Dark chocolate communicates to our brain that we are in a good mood! In short, Foods like chocolate contain phytochemicals that signal the release of feel-good molecules & send a signal from your taste buds to your brain to feel better. If those channels are clogged, that communication wouldn’t happen properly. So please, scrape that crap off so you can really enjoy that chocolate.

Other Benefits:

• Prevent bad breath

• Improve sense of taste

• Clears toxins/ama, bacteria, dead cells

• Gently stimulates organs

• Body awareness

• Promotes oral and digestive health

Ready to take a step to better health? Get your Tongue Scraper now!

Namaste, Amalia May