Both meditation and kava have benefits that include relaxing the mind and body. An ancient practice, meditation is a powerful tool for stress management. Kava can bring your mind into a relaxed state and can make it easier to focus.
More and more people have discovered the benefit of kava for improving their meditation practice and for relaxation in general.
What is kava?
Kava is the ground root of the kava plant. Used for centuries by the native peoples of Polynesia in traditional ceremonies, celebrations, and social occasions.
Gaining popularity throughout the Western world for its benefits, many people have found it an alternative to alcohol. With a peppery and sometimes bitter root powder taste, kava is brewed into a tea. It can be made at home or enjoyed at a kava bar with added flavors to enhance the experience.
What does Kava do?
When we drink kava, the kavalactone receptors in our brains produce feelings of happiness, relaxation, and focus. Often used as an alternative to alcohol for stress relief, many people who have never been alcohol drinkers also enjoy its calming effects.
Kava often produces a state of mind where people feel more focused, with the sadness and overwhelming stress from their day-to-day lives lifting. Kava can give people a lift and help with a more positive mindset.
What is meditation?
Meditation creates a state of calm, focus, and relaxation by clearing your mind and bringing your thoughts into focus. Practiced for thousands of years and still a growing field, meditation has allowed us to calm our racing thoughts and hone our spirituality for generations.
Benefits of meditation
Practicing meditation has so many benefits for both our mental and physical health. When practiced often, meditation can have remarkable results in our lives. Needing no equipment except your own mind and a little teaching, you can start enjoying meditation at any time. Some of the benefits of the practice include lower stress and anxiety, lower blood pressure, building creativity, and increased patience.
Mental health improvement
Our modern lives are stressful. We hold stress, anxiety, and other pain inside our bodies and minds. When people begin practicing meditation they often find relief from stress, overwhelm, and panic in the moment. They also find they become less likely to react to situations negatively.
Meditation trains the pathways in our brains to react to stress in the way we would prefer. It also allows a few moments of uninterrupted time during your day that you probably wouldn’t otherwise take. Focusing on our inner world is an important step in self-care and nurturing.
Improved sleep
Meditation practice can help not only with calming the body and mind for falling asleep but can create a calm state that helps you stay asleep longer.
Sleep problems are on the rise. Improving sleep hygiene by exchanging device usage before bed for a relaxing meditation practice can help create better sleep quality.
Types of meditation
Meditation comes in many forms. Some techniques are simple and require nothing but yourself and a moment of quiet. Others like some audio guidance or physical movement. It’s common to try different kinds of meditation before finding which ones work best for you.
Some of the more popular meditation techniques include:
- Mindfulness
- Yoga
- Walking meditation
- Guided meditation
- Visualizations
- Mantras
- Transcendental meditation
- Qigong
- Tai-Chi
Why do people use kava for meditation?
Both kava and meditation create a more relaxed and focused state of mind to improve the way you feel. For some people, their tension, anxiety, and racing thoughts can be difficult to quiet. This makes meditation a little more challenging or they feel that they are only getting partial benefit from the practice.
Kava encourages a state of relaxation and happiness before you begin meditating. Many people find they feel more focused when they drink kava, making it easier to create the right mental space for deeper meditation.
People who successfully meditate as a regular practice often find kava to allow them to reach a deeper state of calm and mental clarity while they meditate.
What is a kava bar?
Kava bars are bars that serve kava, in a relaxed and social environment. If you prefer not to make kava at home, kava bars can be the answer.
At Kavahana, the first kava-only bar in Los Angeles, we love bringing the wonderful benefits of relaxing kava to Southern California.
We use only 100% natural kava with no additives or fillers. We source our kava from Fiji and Vanuatu, ensuring the highest quality.
Why do people choose a kava bar?
People choose to visit a kava bar over making it at home for different reasons. Some just find it easier to get ready-made and deliciously flavored kava from a bar. Making kava at home is a process and requires some time, equipment, and doing dishes. For lots of people, the flavors available at a bar are much tastier than the kava they make at home.
Kava can create a feeling of increased socialization. That makes the experience of a kava bar many people’s preferred way to drink kava.
The Kavahana experience
As the first kava bar in West Los Angeles, at Kavahana we aim to bring the best kava experience to everyone. From people trying kava for the first time, to people who have enjoyed kava bars in the past and are excited that this relaxing experience can now be found locally.
With delicious flavors like brown sugar kava milk tea and honey lavender kava, we love that we can bring the kava experience to Southern California.
Whether you are already a keen meditation fan or have been trying without much success, many people find that kava brings a new source of relaxation to their practice.
