Yoga With Pamela McDowell

In an earlier post I wrote about the importance of washing your hands in order to ward off the viruses that carry colds and flu and the bacteria that can cause various maladies such as salmonella infection.

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends soaping up for at least 20 seconds before rinsing with warm water.

Since writing that post, I started paying more attention to how much time I spend washing my hands.

Out in public, were it is almost certain that I’ve been exposed to some virus, I’m actually pretty careful about washing my hands for at least 20 seconds.

Around the house, though, I noticed not always being so thorough.

So I started wondering how I could make my hand washing long enough to be effective.

The obvious one to me was to turn it into a breathing exercise – a sort of sudsy pranayama…

Simply count and breathe…

Inhale: 1, 2, 3, 4
Exhale: 5, 6, 7, 8
and so on until reaching 20.

Then rinse thoroughly with running water.

Simple enough…

Then I started wondering if I could make it a bit more soothing, too. How about a short meditation?

While lathering up your hands, inhale, then exhale and imagine worries draining from your head to your left hand and into the soap.

Inhale, then exhale and imagine worries draining from your head to your right hand and into the soap.

Now inhale, then exhale and imagine tension draining from your neck and shoulders to your left hand and into the lather.

And repeat, this time during exhale imagine the tension traveling down the right arm into the soapy bubbles.

Now rinse away the tensions and worries while you rinse the soap from your hands.

Making yoga your routine:
Yoga in Your Everyday Activities
Chocolate Meditation
Your Yoga Journal

Sign up for the free audio series "7 Ancient Yoga Secrets to Modern Healing"

Tags: Health Tips, Yoga Practice Tips, Yoga Techniques //