Cure for winter cold — with photos

I’m one of those people who never gets sick. But this week, I’ve been slammed by a really bad cold. Wrestling with it has been an exercise in calming down and getting my brain to stop over-thinking.

My hunch is that I got sick because I’ve been running around too much. The way we all live today is so insane; maybe it’s no wonder that almost everyone I know is sniffling, coughing and sneezing.

In my case, I felt awful but just couldn’t bring myself to drop everything and crawl into bed. There was just too much to do — everything from worrying about crazy weather patterns that are bringing both flooding and snow storms, to taking down the Christmas tree and holiday decorations.

It took me a couple of days to admit I was even sick. By then, I had a scratchy throat which escalated into the usual symptoms involving nasty phlegm, mucus and snot. This situation, of course, forced me into a serious round of sinus cleansing…

If you do it, you know that this is a simple, inexpensive, super-effective home remedy that can help with allergies, stuffy noses and more. You also know that the whole sinus cleansing process of squirting sea salt water into your nostrils is rather painful and messy because all sorts of stuff drips out.

For a how-to on sinus cleansing, I have a blog post on it here. I wrote it in 2011, which was the last time I was really sick.

And now that I’m actually over the worst of it, I can see that it’s more than my sinuses that have been cleansed. Getting sick compelled me to get to bed early every night and eat healthy — no more out-of-control holiday binging!

Last night, I even started doing yoga again. It felt great to empty my mind and relax by going to  Yogaglo.com. If you’d like to know how I use this website’s online yoga classes, check out my post: How to do yoga online with my YouTube video.

So right now, I’m a saner place.  Turning off a busy brain is very hard thing to do. But I highly recommend it. Less rushing and more cruising is so wonderful that it even inspired me to do a little illustration for you:

Whatever you’re doing right now, I hope you can give yourself a little TLC. Some of us have lots we want to do and even more that we want to share. But all that love and goodness won’t get into the world if we’re weighed down by our constantly ticking brains.

Let’s hear it for freedom from thinking! What kind of liberating relaxation would you like to give yourself this week? If you have a few ideas, images or words to share, please jot them down in the comments below. The collective energy would be good for all of us.

And of course, I’m happy to start. This week, I’d like to crawl into bed and read an issue of  The New Yorker. A hot bath would also be nice. What about you?  xo