Tree Hugging in Winter for Clearing Out Heavy Energy

Barefoot on a 50 degree day in December 2020.

Barefoot on the Earth is such a great way to release heavy energy and recalibrate oneself. But what is one to do in the Winter when barefoot activity is just not the completely sane choice to make? Well, at least not any lengthy barefooting outside.

Here are three ideas to allow yourself to let go of, release, and/or wash away the heavy energy that we carry. Heavy can weigh us down energetically. Releasing this has healing impacts on the physical body, relaxes the nervous system and boosts the immune system (yes, this is proven phenomena from years of research in Yoga, Forest Bathing, and Energy Medicine work), as well as the mind and spirit.

1) Energy Bathing

Wherever you are, whenever you need to release heavy energy (think sad, angry, depressed… all often thought of as negative or dark energy):

• Close your eyes

• Think of yourself standing barefoot on the Earth, in your favorite outdoor space of course

• Visualize water or colorful healing light raining down on you, any color that makes sense to you

• As the color of choice comes over you, washing away heavy energy, visualize the energy you are letting go of, flowing into the Earth

• Stand and visualize this as long as you need to to feel lighter in Body-Mind-Spirit

2) Tree Hugging is a fine way to release some heavy energy into the Earth. Remember to do this respectfully of the Trees. Approach the Trees like you would people: until you have established a hugging relationship with them, ask politely before you dive in for the big hug. Would you hug strangers you meet on the street? Ok, if you are like me, maybe you would. But my kids tell me this is weird so use your best judgement.

• Take a walk in the Woods, listening to the woods. Yup, this means you will need to See, Hear, Smell, Taste, and Feel FULLY: a full on sensual experience. Think of Spring Rain and how you can smell the Earthy, wet floor in the Woods, taste the freshness of the Rain, feel the Rain misting on your face, hear the plop-plop-plop of rain on a rock, and see the beauty of the Rain’s mist and showers in front of your face. Immerse in this mindset with whatever is happening in the Woods today.

• Turn off podcasts/ music / and the urge to catch up on phone conversations. In fact, shut your phone ringer off.

• Approach a Tree of choice and ask if you can hug it. Wait for the Yes.

• Wrap your arms around the Tree and place your forehead up against the bark.

• Breathe in the Smell. Feel the barks texture on your forehead’s skin. Weave your heavy energy together with the Tree’s energy and wash it down the Tree’s inner trunk, through the roots, and into the Earth.

• Thank the Tree for transporting this energy into the Earth.

3. Or, try this Chakra clearing ritual.

Whatever you chose to do, to release what you no longer need, make it your experience.

Change up my suggestions to fit your needs.

Release, let go, and allow Mother Earth to recycle your heavy energy into healing energy.

Interested in learning more skills to change your Lifestyle Medicine to Self Heal in Body-Mind-Spirit?

Join me for the next Session of Sacred Circle Wise Women Mentorship.

Embracing Sausage & Hot Dogs

Hot dogs and sausages are foods we are often told to avoid. The scraps of meat, organs, and fat of animals are ground, spiced, and formed into sausages and dogs.

But what if we looked at these meat options from a different perspective?

Traditionally, people used all of the animal:

• muscle meat

• organs (eaten whole or ground into sausage)

• make bone broth for soup and then grind the bones into powder to fertilize the fields

• use the hides for tanning leather, etc.

Why are we grossed out by the thought of eating the organ, as the whole organ, or ground into sausage meat? The nutrients needed to form these organs are exactly what you get when you eat them. For example: eating heart nourishes your heart.

The key to embracing ground up meats, hot dogs and sausages of many kinds, is to embrace products made from animals that are organically and pasture raised. This means the animals are

• allowed to eat their natural diet,

• supplemented with organic feed only and preferable of their natural food preferences,

• not given hormones, steroids, and/or antibiotics, and

• the final meat products are an all natural preparation meaning no fake stuff in the actual meat products you will eat (preservatives, stabilizers, artificial colors & flavors, etc.)

Ask your local Coop, natural food store, and supermarkets to stock food fit to eat.

Find your local farmers who raise animals on pasture, animals who roam freely and happily in their grassy, wild plant fields. Tlhe link back there, and this one, will connect you to our local food guide published yearly by Gardenshare.

Eating local food:

• is more nourishing to your body cells and to the Earth, less miles to your plate and food maintains freshness and nutrients

• saves petro chemicals to move food about the Earth, the more miles your food is trucked… the more gas / diesel that is sucked up and burned

• supports local farm families and this is HUGE for local food security

• local farm families put that money back into their farm and your local community

• you create a community of farm happy people: both the farmers and the other farm customers

• gives you better control of the choice of best farming practices, your vote by purchasing local-organic-pasture raised food encourages more farmers to transition to Earth friendly & sustainable farming practices

• brainstorm on more ideas of why local farm products are better for you, the farmers, local communities, and the Earth

What we feed ourselves creates or destroys health. What we feed animals creates or destroys their health.

When we eat animal products that come from healthy animals, our body’s health is nourished.

When we eat products that come from unhealthy animals, our body’s health is degenerated.

Rooting Around In The Earth

The Earth, Herself and the soil we walk around upon, is loaded with microbes. It is the way of Nature. Our bodies have more microbial cells than human cells (The human body contains trillions of microorganisms — outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1.) Modern Human’s obsession with destroying every microbial organism is creating imbalances in our bodies and health, in all living beings, and in the general health of the entire planet.

In college for my RN degree, we learned the germ theory of disease. This germ theory (remember it is a theory not a fact) states that microorganisms, bacteria, virus and fungi, are the cause of most diseases. It is the cornerstone of modern medicine and treatment of diseases.

As soon as I finished nursing school, I began (honestly, continued) my training / learning in Natural Medicine-Natural Health. In my mid 20’s, I read a book by a talented and wise herbalist, James Green, called The Male Herbal: The Definitive Health Care Book for Men and Boys. James Green introduced me to a theory called Terrain Theory. This theory stated that germs cannot invade the body if the body is healthy. So when the terrain, the soil of our bodies - our flesh, is unhealthy, we are wide open and susceptible to inviting in micro-organisms that are not a natural part of our body’s terrain. Obviously, this will cause upset in the body’s health.

Think yeast overgrowth in the vagina. Yeast is normal there, in the vagina, but when the body is unhealthy, BAM, prime opportunity for the yeast to overgrow /over populate the vagina and you now have an irritating problem.

A light bulb went on in my head. This made so much more sense to me than the mindset that we are walking around constantly at war with every microbe we cross paths with.

Let go of the trauma of the 1950s people. Everything does not have to be heat, hot water, and/or chemical sterilized to death. Learn to live in harmony with microbes because when you kill them off with antimicrobials - antibiotics, you are killing the beneficial as well as the not so beneficial microbes.

Living in harmony with microbes means taking care of our body as Nature intended. See this link on Lifestyle Choices. Your natural living habits are your amazing Lifestyle Medicine habits that keep your terrain nourished and healthy.

• Eat Dirt: pull an organic carrot from the soil, wipe off obvious Soil (Dirt as W. B. Logan calls this Ecstatic Skin) , eat the carrot & be grateful for the Soil Microbes you are not paying 50 bucks for in encapsulated form out of a supplement bottle.

• 100% Whole Food Eating: food are the Sacred substances that nourish your every body cell

• Stop using antimicrobial hand sanitizers

• Stop using chemical and antibiotic antimicrobial cleansers in your home (see image below)

• Eat organic food

• Avoid all chemical in home, yard, garden, garage, etc.

• Live from a space of Nature because you are Nature.

Our Gut Microbial Health (digestive tract) is of top notch importance in the development, or not, of

• auto-immune conditions

• mood disorders: think anxiety & depression

• small intestinal and colon ill health issues

• The list goes on & on…

• Upcoming classes at Five Elements Living to create Healthy Gut Microbial Lifestyle Habits: https://www.paulayoumellrn.com/the-science-of-functional-medicine-classes

• Live a Whole Health Lifestyle for Your Well Being

Why I Am Not Vegan Anymore

I am asked these questions around food and eating quite frequently:

• What is the healthiest way to eat?
• You aren't going to tell me I have to be vegetarian or vegan to heal my health problems?
• What happened to you?!... You were vegan, you had it so right, why did you change?

Just what is healthy eating? Ask that question of 10 different people and you will probably get 10 different answers... some spewed forth with the enthusiasm of a food fanatic. Hey, I only say this as I know, I could be mildly fanatic in my hey day.     

I am grateful for age, wisdom, and my more laid back attitude (Thank you very much yoga). I am now more careful where and when I say my famous quote:   "I wouldn't feed that crap to my dog."               Which honestly is an insult to my dog, any dog. I have since replaced dog in that statement with my compost pile fully realizing it is an insult to my compost pile's amazing bio-diversity and work on this planet. *Why feed my compost pile junk food, GMOs, non-organic crap? I don't want that cycling back around into my garden plot OR worrying about the wild animals who eat out of the pile (including my dog!) and would be getting less than whole food choices. Yup, see I can be a zealot.

20+ years ago when I returned to Northern NY, my home (I grew up in Brasher Falls), I was vegan and had been for 5-6 years. Truthfully, I thought I would starve to death up here.  I quickly found Nature's Storehouse, The Potsdam Food Coop, and Birdsfoot Farm (I believe Birdsfoot was the only organic produce farm in the area at the time).

So, what made me toss aside my vegan ways, turn back the clock on my omnivorous eating? It was a circling back of wisdom I already held within. 

1. I was pregnant, 33, always hungry, and dreaming of my Mom's roast beef dinner, venison stew, and chicken and dumplings. Listen to your body. I did! Our bodies have a wisdom as deep and pure as the earth is old. I listened (with a little encouragement from my Dad that I would not rot in hell for eating meat AND he was worried about his grandson who was hanging out in my uterus at that time). Even my 100% whole food vegan diet, no packaged fake meats and cheese... processed food is processed food, was not supporting my pregnancy well.

2. A Wise Woman Native American made a simple statement to me one day (this was before I was pregnant), as we were talking about vegan eating, that brought me full circle back to the wisdom I already held within: "Everything you eat must die for you."  

Over the years this statement has held strength with me. Everything on this planet holds spirit in its being: plants, animals, the water, air, fire, the Earth herself. When we pull a carrot from the ground we are essentially birthing that carrot from its Mother, Mother Earth. That carrot is alive, alive with life force energy. The carrots roots are its umbilical cord to the uterus that was sustaining it, again, Mother Earth. Life force energy is spirit. To eat we must take a life. Who am I, as a human, to be placing higher value on one life over another. In the great web of life, all beings on this planet are required to balance out all others, all beings are equal.

Eating, actually everything we do on this planet, is a gift we receive from the Earth. Gratitude, deep and sincere gratitude, is a gift we give back to honor all the beings we use for food, medicine, building homes, driving cars, stuff we buy and own, etc. all which comes from Mother Earth. 

Yes, there is more to the story but this is enough for now.

As a kid, I knew this deep life force energy of all things. Kids just do. Trees and plants have always held special energy for me (they do for everyone). I spent hours of my summer up in trees: reading books, eating meals and snacks, lounging back against a sturdy trunk to drink my quart of Homestead Dairy's chocolate milk after school, and taking naps sprawled belly down across the length of a branch with my arms and legs dangling. I had favorite maple and white pine trees for climbing and "living" in. I had a favorite white pine for napping under: the years had piled brown needles under her branches and she faced south. Who could resist such a warm and fragrant bed? I would take my faithful friend Buster (a lop eared beagle), books, and water and head through the fields and woods to get to this pine tree a few miles from my home. Buster and I would camp out: me reading and napping in the fragrant, warm, brown pine needles with the south sun shining on me and Buster terrorizing the small animals of the woods until he was tired and napped next to me.

This deep life force energy of all things... we are culturally trained to forget it. So it was easy for me to think that the only lives I was eating that mattered were the animals. Coming full circle... the life force energy, spirit, in everything matters. (I still eat, enjoy, and am grateful for many vegetarian & vegan meals every week. Is not a meal of butter vegetarian? A meal of dark chocolate vegan?)

What are my healthy eating recommendations?

• 100% whole foods
• Grown and raised as close to home as possible, this means eating seasonally
• Eat only what you need to sustain yourself, over indulgence of anything is over indulgence
• If you know a food does not make you feel vibrant... don't eat it
• A food that makes you soar with happiness & energy? Eat it... well, if it is whole. Dunkin Donuts® do not count here.
• Be deeply grateful for every bite: grateful to the food, the Earth that nurtured the food, the farmers that worked hard to bring that food forth to your plate, fork, & table, the person shopping & cooking for you...
• Show your gratitude by eating in peace, chewing slowly & thoroughly so your digestive tract can do the work to bring the Earth's nourishment to every cell in your body

As We Express Our Gratitude,

We Must Never Forget That The Highest Appreciation

Is Not To Utter Words,

                              But To Live By Them.     John F. Kennedy

Native American Gratitude Prayer

We thank Great Spirit for the resources that made this food possible;

we thank the Earth Mother for producing it,

and we thank all those who labored to bring it to us.

May the wholesomeness of the food before us, bring out the wholeness of the Spirit within us.

*Any food you eat should have been grown with healthy, sustainable, biodynamic principles in mind:  How was this food fed? If a food, plant or animal based, was fed healthy food... its cells will be well nourished and therefore capable of nourishing your cells. If a food you were eating was fed less than whole food, that food will have less than whole nourished cells, and will be incapable of fully nourishing your body. 

For deeper diving into this feeding your food issue:                                                                                     What Does Your Farmer Feed Their Cows, Chickens, Pigs, Goats, Vegetables, Fruits...?

Time to Move with Spring Energy!

I love Spring. The renewal of life, energy, and all it brings is breath taking to me every year.

Today is March 5th. As I walked in the woods with my dog, I can feel the pull of the sun. It is getting warmer, brighter, stronger... another winter survived! I can smell scents that were not there even 2 days ago; scents of the coming Spring.

I even found a Great White Pine whose south side's snow was already melted away. I sat my butt, right in the pine needles, and pressed my spine up along this mighty pine's trunk. The sun was in my face and the pine needles under me were fragrant in the sun's warmth.

The earth I sat on.

The Great White Pine, looking up her trunk, as I sat in the sun.

Spring motivates movement: sap rising, buds opening, shoots sprouting, doors and window being moved up and open, people getting out of their homes, and on & on.

I want to encourage you to move this Spring. Get outside and reap the benefits of moving your body, being exposed to natural light, and breathing in the fresh air.

Movement of the body is a natural, sacred, and healing thing. People moved constantly to complete the tasks of daily living and food gathering (as I sit here click click clicking!) before modern technology and labor saving devices.

• digging
• gathering
• hoeing
• walking
• chopping
• on & on the movement went!

We have traded daily, steady and slow going movement for either next to no movement or run-run-run and get high intensity exercise into an hour movement. It is like we have to fit the whole day's movement, pre-tech, into 1 hour. From a functional medicine perspective, slow and steady is better. Slow and steady does not create the free radicals and inflammation of high intensity, high metabolism exercise. Slow and steady: walks, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, canoe, kayak, hike, bike, mt. climb, moderate weight lifting, push ups... movement for low impact and longevity.

Embrace the Spring the renewed energy of the sun, and more movement this season.

Things I do during my day of client support and education, business work, and blog / newsletter writing:

• get up and do a yoga pose or two or three every half hour holding the pose for 7 long, deep belly breaths
• stop to do the dishes while dancing at the kitchen sink
• walk around my house, up & down the stairs and toss in some push ups for good measure
• throw in a load of wash, I hang all of my wash so the bending to get clothes out of the basket and lifting arms to hang is a good motion to break up the sitting habit 
• go out for a walk around my home and maybe do a hand stand or two up against the red pine or the stone wall 
• resist the call of the Great White Pines in my back woods... or not and wander off to commune with the White Pines, sit with my back to her trunks, and gather some life force energy while enjoying the peace - solitude - and earthy scents of the woods (then it is back to work for me)

My requests of you:

1. Comment below and share what you do to move more as the Winter breaks into Spring.

Also, I have a request for you natural remedy peoples out there. The sacred, great white pine spot in the pictures above is a favorite spot of mine. Sitting with my back to the trunk, my face is towards the southerly sky and the sun. I am looking over a sweet little body of water. The problem is: when spring rolls on the poison ivy grows there.

2. Does anyone have a natural way of getting rid of poison ivy? Please comment below. 

My idea is to use my hand clippers and start clipping it back when the shoots are just popping up out of Mother Earth. If I keep doing this every few days, my logic is this clipping will starve the roots of nourishment (no sun on the new shoots means no photosynthesis keeping the roots nourished) and eventually kill off the roots and plants. 

I have never had poison ivy and walk through it frequently. Yes, I now avoid touching the plants as I have become older and wiser. As a kid, I did not care and never got more that 1 - 2 tiny blisters on my bare feed from trodding through poison ivy patches for the reward of a swim in the St. Regis River.

Happy Spring Equinox! Happy Spring Moving! Cheers.

PS  I know the season's names are not proper nouns, require no capitalization, but I cannot help but believe they deserve to be honored with capitol letters. The seasons are sacred; nature is sacred, you are sacred (you are nature).

Gluten Free Bread Recipe:   

http://www.paulayoumellrn.com/gluten-free-bread/

Life IS A Symphony

Life is a symphony meant to flow in harmony with self and all life on this planet.

When we live in this harmony with nature (we are nature) the music of the universe becomes the dance of life.

So many of us work against this flow, thinking we are wiser than the laws of nature; perhaps that we are above the laws of nature.

I invite you to do this:

1. Sit or lie down in a comfortable position,
2. Close your eyes,
3. Take 10 slow, deep belly breaths (breathing from the belly makes the diaphragm drop down and allows your lungs to fully expand, your breath of life!),
4. Envision yourself in the flow of life, all things in harmony,
5. Allow this vision to stay with you as you continue to deep breathe,
6. Start at your head and visualize each and every body organ & body part, one by one, until you reach your toes; visualize them alive with love, life force energy, that glowing white light,
7. Finish up with 10 more slow deep breaths.
8. Slowly bring yourself back to the present moment.

Your body, mind, and spirit should feel refreshed and alive, ready to meet the day's challenges with peace.

Anytime you arrive at a snag in your day, pause for just a moment, deep breathe and visualize the white light running from the center of your head to your toes. This is a quickie mindfulness meditation to bring calm and patience to the moment.

Remember your body is an amazing healing organism, part of the harmony of the universe. Allowing yourself to be in this harmony creates a healing effect in each and every body cell.

Healing Blessings, Paula