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.

Important Vagus Nerve Nonsense Compliments of Western Medicine

Image from this article: https://www.thecut.com/2019/05/i-now-suspect-the-vagus-nerve-is-the-key-to-well-being.html

I have been teaching about the vagus nerve for years, sharing this post and the post I wrote on how I discovered this vagus nerve healing fun, before vagus nerve - yoga science research was becoming more mainstream. 

Recently, I learned some interesting information in regards to the vagus nerve and western medicine.  Someone I love had a spell that medical people refer to as a vagal response. Have you ever heard the term "vagaled out."
When the spell was first happening, I checked for the obvious
-stroke check first and when I was clear that was not the issue... I quickly checked heart rate and heart beat strength.  Heart rate was way down & thready feeling, person feels like they are going to faint, and loss of color in the face. So I knew we were most likely dealing with a vagus response. 

I, of course, looked up information to share with the one weaving this spell, so their body's response would be better understood.
In looking up vagus response information, I tapped into all this research on how the medical field now knows that a toned vagus nerve supports weight loss. 
A paragraph from one study:
    A number of studies have demonstrated that pulsed electrical stimulations on vagus nerve could induce multiple physiologic functions related to food intake, energy metabolism, and glycemic control, which can result in appreciable weight loss20–22. An implantable vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) device for weight control was recently approved by Food and Drug Administration and commercialized20,23. Major concerns of current electrical stimulation are potential compensation mechanisms that blunt physiological responses14 and vicinity tissue damage that induces adverse effects17,24,25. In addition, the electrical system is bulky and complicated in operation. All the electrical stimulations need to be programed externally and the device needs to be charged periodically13,26. How to achieve real-time-responsive and self-sustainable stimulation remains a major challenge for this promising weight control strategy.                                         National Library of Medicine

I underlined the last sentence because, instead of recommending a inner conscience connection lifestyle habit, AKA Yoga, the medical field came up with an electrical implant to intermittently stimulate the vagus nerve to possibly tone it.
AND, the medical field seems clueless about Yoga and its ability to tone the vagus nerve.
Hmmm, maybe this is Yoga's beautiful method of supporting weight loss and healthy lifestyle choices: vagus nerve toning!

Instead of recommending Yoga for the vagus nerve's toning and health, let's do the typical western medicine quick fix BullShit (another word for nonsense) and implant people with electrical stimulation devices.
Toning the vagus nerve with Yoga prevents you from missing all the benefits of doing the actual work , a truly toned vagus nerve with the side benefits of weight loss: 
-Calmer disposition 
-Deeper breathing habits & lung capacity 
-Stopping the negative self talk 
-Ability to choose healthier habits without struggle or feeling bad
-And so much more. Read my many posts on Yoga's benefits, several of them being about weight loss benefits... the Sages of India knew what they were up to!

The field of western medicine have suppressed what the sages of natural medicine have known for hundreds and hundreds of years:
-Take this lab created pill instead of an herb, Nature's healing food.
-Have this surgery instead of changing your eating and lifestyle habits.
-Let’s implant this vagus nerve electrical stimulation device instead of teaching you time honored, Yoga inner conscious connection habits. 

Trust me, I am grateful for western medicine. In emergency situations, trauma, and acute issues; western medicine shines.
For the healing of chronic lifestyle diseases, western medicine leaves a lot to be desired.

If you believe in the ability of your body, mind, & spirit to heal itself... western medicine loses its pull to have you right where they want you: buying their medically recommended drugs, surgery, etc. 

Change Doesn’t Just “Happen”...Be The Change You Want To See In Yourself. 

https://www.paulayoumellrn.com/sacred-circle-mentorship

Sacred Circle Wise Women Mentorship™ was created to support students and clients with the tools to make lifestyle changes, to be able to self heal, and to Create Constant Calm with the tools of Yoga. When I first started teaching Sacred Circle, in person classes, we did Yoga together weekly. I taught the various tools of Yoga (it is not just poses) as a means of calming and toning the parasympathetic nervous system (vagus nerve). Just like doing daily push-ups creates whole body physical strength… having a daily Yoga practice creates whole body-mind-spirit strength! You are fortifying yourself to face the challenges of life with a skip in your step.

Sacred Circle Mentorship is now an online teaching & learning experience with the HIGHLY recommended option of joining the Yoga piece. Classes start Monday, September 14th, 2020. This is the 2020 5 week session teachings of the Earth Element. Earth Element focuses on physical health; a great place to start the years mentorship work.

Read here for more info on the self healing mentorship: https://www.paulayoumellrn.com/sacred-circle-mentorship

• A functional medicine health coaching experience to teach you the lifestyle medicine habits to put into place in your self healing life. 

• Sacred Circle is the perfect weaving together of the lifestyle medicine teachings (in the mentorship) and the vagus nerve toning through gentle, very beginner's yoga (in the yoga research group) so you can be the change you want to see in yourself! 

Read Here for more info on the Yoga education piece.

• This September is a special Yoga Education Research 12 week session. I am grateful for everyone who joins to contribute to the science of Yoga, Vagus Nerve info, and betterment of health & healing modalities for everyone interested in slow health education & slow healing. Thank You.

• Our purpose & your perfect opportunity: to tone your vagus nerve to keep you in rest and digest mode, calm you down so you can be in a comfortable personal space to make, and keep making, the lifestyle choices that will self heal your body, mind, and spirit and support weight loss and self healing.

• All classes are being taught virtually on Zoom (link to be sent to students soon).

• All classes will be recorded and sent to everyone so you can view again OR if you need to watch the recording because the live time doesn't work for you. Many students do this, join the class and watch the videos later (on their own time) to learn, grown, transform, & self heal. Modern technology has its advantages. 

  
  If you are looking for change, want to self heal, and want to tone that vagus nerve for a lifetime of advantages...

• Join me on September 14th for the Earth Element Session of Sacred Circle.

• You will be glad you did. I will be glad you did. We will be glad people ready to learn, grow, transform, & self heal.

The Wind/Air Session of Sacred Circle will begin in later October after a 2 week break post Earth Element learning. Two weeks gives time for assimilation and integration of the health education information before we learn new information.

Slow Health Education, Slow Healing

In 1986, the Slow Food Movement began in Italy. This was a movement to reclaim cultural food, the art and healing benefits of in-home cooking, and the sustainable farming of whole, real food grown locally.  This was a grassroots effort, that is now globally strong, to reclaim food from the corporate strangle hold. 

It is time to put this same grassroots action into our health care system.
Health care in this country, right now, is really just about disease management: how can the medical system suppress your ill health symptoms just enough to keep you functioning and somewhat happy.
Our current health care is not about actually restoring true vibrant health OR about true prevention of illness.
True prevention would teach you proper healthy care of the body, the real way to nourish the body with food, and actually prevent you from succumbing to degenerative lifestyle diseases.

Slow Health, Slow Healing is what I am about.
Slow Health, Slow Healing is what Sacred Circle Wise Women Mentorship™ is about. 

People have become accustomed to instant gratification with their health.
For example, if one goes to their primary care with high blood pressure issues, they are given a prescription medication and within a few days their blood pressure reading is "normal" again. (I use this example because it is an easy one to think about, a very common problem in our culture, easy to visualize the blood pressure cuff and reading procedure, and thoughtfully consider the situation and apply its concept to other health issues.)
No effort outside of filling the prescription and popping the pill daily. 
The question is: has any healing change been made, in the person's lifestyle choices, to change what actually created the downward spiral of personal health leading to the high blood pressure?
Everything seems fine, the numbers reading on the sphygmomanometer are within normal range again.
Here is where the problem lies: if zero lifestyle changes have been made, the lifestyle habits that created the high blood pressure (body damage symptoms), then the damage to the body is still happening.
The pretty number on the sphygmomanometer just hides the fact that nothing has really changed. A band-aid has been slapped on the problem. The problem will eventually lead to more problems unless change is made.
This story line can be used with any ill health symptoms and our "health care system's" business of just managing symptoms / controlling symptoms with artificial means. 

I support people's health around many, many of these lifestyle related health issues: (yes, working in cooperation with one's primary care practitioner IS ideal)

• high blood pressure and cholesterol issues

• cardio-vascular disease

• overweight and underweight

• thyroid health

• auto-immunity

• gut health

• anxiety, depression, and mood issues

• on & on

In the first couple of weeks of making lifestyle changes, a person's ill health symptoms can transform quickly. 
A good habit, I tell my clients, is to write down exactly how you were feeling (in body, mind, & spirit) before you start making changes. 
Then you can go back and put yourself back into this ill health feeling in 2 weeks, 2 months, 6 months, a year later.
Never stop reminding yourself how far you have come, how much positive change you have made, and the impact it has had on how you function, feel, and interact with yourself and others. 

After lifestyle transformation, if we could step back into ourselves to exactly one year ago and have this HUGE "Ah Ha Moment", we would 

• bow in gratitude to the work we have done with & for ourselves

• say a deep prayer to all of the powers that have held us together to accomplish what we have accomplished

• vow to only continue stepping forwards in the Slow Health & Healing process

I suggest you do this self evaluation, look back on my progress, journal keeping. Not daily, don’t stress yourself, but just often enough that you see the milestones of recovery AND can look back on how bad things once were. That is such a beautiful reminder to keep moving forward!

Slow Health Education & Slow Healing is what we do in Sacred Circle to Transform your health.

Fall and the Earth Element (The Physical Body's Health) is the perfect place to start on this Sacred Circle Year Health Coaching Experience. Fall, and back to school, has always signaled a new start, transformation for me.

Each Slow Health Education Session is 5 simple weeks long. Join one, to see how you like it, maybe you will be in love with learning how to slow heal yourself and then you will keep coming back for each 5 week session and another Element of Learning.

Mentorship is open to anyone & everyone who wants to learn to slow self heal their health back to vibrancy.

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

Drugs do not heal. Lifestyle changes do.

Self Healing has been an important part of who I am and what / how I live and teach since I was a very young adult. And, quite frankly, I intuitively knew this growing up. I was the kid asking Mom to buy me the "brown bread" not the fluffy white, Millbrook bread. Remember that stuff?! 

Nursing school was a HUGE wake up call that what our system of medicine actually does is generally not about healing the body. Modern Western Medicine covers up a person's ill health symptoms with medications. 

Let me explain briefly & simply, using blood pressure medication as an example. When a person takes blood pressure medication, and there are many types using different mechanisms in the body, the medication makes the numbers on the blood pressure cuff or machine go down. All looks well. Life goes on as per usual. But, if nothing is done to change what actually contributed to the high blood pressure developing:

• unhealthy food choices over years of living

• stress

• excess body weight

• sedentary lifestyle

• lack of contact with the Natural World, remember You ARE Nature…

then the damage that these above lifestyle habits wreck on the body are still happening. Yes, the medication may make your blood pressure look as if it has changed, and the numbers have changed, but what you do in your daily life that causes bodily harm and damage, down to each and every body cell, is still happening.

If you want to heal your high blood pressure or other health symptoms, issues, and diagnoses (and there is a *never ending list of lifestyle diagnoses)… You have to change your life.

Now let me explain another point: Western Medications have had very life saving impacts in many, many instances over the years & decades. Yes, Western Medicine is less than 100 years old. Natural Medicine - Herbs & Naturopathy - are thousands of years old. Let that thought sink in for a bit.

Western Medicine is amazing Emergency & Trauma Medicine. When there is an acute, gonna die right now or a trauma issue (think broken bones), Western Medicine can & does save lives and limbs. Using medications and medical skills for life saving moments is a VERY beautiful thing.

If you want to invoke real healing right down to the cellular level… this takes Lifestyle Medicine, Natural Medicine: changing the way you eat, live, and function in this world.

When You live and function as Nature intended, You will blossom with Vibrant Health & Longevity as Nature intended.

It IS that simple. Drugs, taken over the long haul, cannot heal your body.

Your body heals itself. That is what Nature does and You ARE Nature.

No one has deficiencies of chemical drugs. Illnesses are not caused by deficiencies of these drugs.

Change Your Lifestyle & Change the Way You Live.

Because Food DOES Matter in How Your Body:
Feels,
Functions,
Self Heals, &
Ages.

Free Natural Health-Lifestyle Medicine Information: Yes, click that blue link and change your life, heal yourself, make your life a better place to be!

*Just some of the diagnoses in the *never-ending list of diseases contributed to by one’s lifestyle habits:

• high blood pressure

• type 2 diabetes & obesity

• anxiety

• depression

• ADD / ADHD

• atherosclerosis, heart disease, and stroke

Wikipedia’s Lifestyle Disease Page:

Lifestyle diseases are defined as diseases linked with the way people live their life. This is commonly caused by alcohol, drug and smoking abuse as well as lack of physical activity and unhealthy eating. Diseases that impact on our lifestyle are heart disease, stroke, obesity and type II diabetes.[1] The diseases that appear to increase in frequency as countries become more industrialized and people live longer can include Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, atherosclerosis, asthma, cancer, chronic liver disease or cirrhosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, chronic renal failure, osteoporosis, stroke, depression, obesity and vascular dementia. In the UK the death rate is four times higher from respiratory disease caused by an unhealthy lifestyle.[2]

Some commenters maintain a distinction between diseases of longevity and diseases of civilization or diseases of affluence.[3] Certain diseases, such as diabetes, dental caries and asthma, appear at greater rates in young populations living in the "western" way; their increased incidence is not related to age, so the terms cannot accurately be used interchangeably for all diseases.[4]