Naturally Simple Ways to Weigh LESS...

Naturally Simple Ways to Weigh Less

and Live More Every Day of your life!

This is all about re-balancing your body, mind, and spirit to create a vibrantly healthy you... inside and out. So much more than the number on the "scales!"

1. Feed your soul with primary food.  Friends and family, physical activity, spirituality and a satisfying career feed us. Lack of primary food creates over-reliance on secondary, edible food.
2. Drink water. Most people are chronically dehydrated. We often mistake thirst for hunger. If you feel hungry between meals, drink a glass of water before giving into cravings. Limit liquid calories from soda, juice, sports drinks and “enhanced” waters.  Stick with nature made!
3. Eat a plant-rich diet. Plant foods are typically lower in calories and higher in fiber than meat, dairy and processed foods, while providing loads of essential nutrients.  Purchase your animal products from farmers who raise the food in a natural manner; healthy and naturally balanced foods make for a healthy, naturally balanced human. Make certain you do get enough fat and protein in your daily diet to satisfy hunger, appetite, and nutritional needs for YOU.  Each of our needs is different!
4. Chew your food well. Digestion begins in the mouth. By thoroughly chewing your food, your body will better assimilate nutrients; you will also slow down your eating. It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register that it is full. By slowing your eating, you’ll feel full, satisfied, and better nourished on less food.  More nutrients in each cell mean a healthier body!
5. Eat real food; avoid processed, packaged foods. Avoid products with high-fructose corn syrup or a long list of unpronounceable ingredients. (Reduce or eliminate refined sugars from your diet; glucose, fructose, any “oses”.) Packaged and convenience foods tend to be highly processed, lacking the nutrients your body needs, and are often loaded with empty calories. Avoid artificial sweeteners.  Avoid refined sweeteners, even stevia products.

If you have attended my workshops or been supported by me as a client:  Remember the cellular health information from the Whole Food slide show?  Feed your cells well!  Need to experience this workshop? Join me and the Local Living Venture on Thursday, September 25th for the start of the Whole Health and Healing Academy!  

A few more tips for balancing mind, body, and soul weight.

1. Eat raw foods:  raw fruits & veggies, raw nuts and seeds, raw nut & seed butters.  Raw foods are rich in nutrients that are not altered by the heat of cooking and provide natural enzymes needed in the body for many processes including digestion.
2. Eating enough healthy fats and protein to satisfy your appetite and your body’s nutritional needs:  choose naturally raised animal products for protein and fat and the omega 3's found in naturally raised meat, eggs and dairy products, wild salmon, avocados, walnuts, raw nuts and seeds.
3. Eat breakfast. Skipping meals causes your blood sugar levels to peak and dip, affecting your energy and moods. It can also cause overeating later on because you’re so hungry.  With this said, listen to your own body and what you know works for you.  Some people do much better without breakfast and have no problems with the rebound overeating later in the day.  Be conscious of you and your needs. I can personally admit I am not a breakfast eater.  I get hungry by 11 AM or so. I listen and follow my body's requests for food.
4. Eat mindfully. Turn off the TV. Get away from the computer. Sit down and savor the food you are eating with no distractions.  Eat from a space of unconditional self-love!
5. Get moving. Do any type of physical activity every day. Find movement or exercise you enjoy.
6. Get outside.  Your body needs fresh air and natural light.  You will create life long health benefits!
7. Sleep, rest and relax. Breath work creates relaxation, slow down & breathe deeply.  Ask me for my educational handout on breath work.  When you are sleep-deprived or stressed, your body will crave energy, causing cravings for sugary snacks and caffeine as an energy boost.
8. Schedule fun time. Boredom and stress can lead to overeating. Make sure to take time to laugh, play and participate in activities that bring you joy.
9. Find a mindfulness practice and use it every day. (Yoga, Tai Chi, Tae Kwon Do, Meditation, Prayer...)

PS  Just a reminder about the Whole Health & Healing Academy that starts Thursday, September 25th. Join us to create vibrant health in your life!

My Healing Yard

If you have ever wandered up my driveway to socialize, have dinner, perhaps a healing session or a holistic class, or maybe an evening campfire, you know my yard's wildness!  The first 2/3's, moving up my driveway, is wild and free.  My backyard is overrun with wild plants.

When my Dad visits he always asks: "Do you want me to come over with my lawn tractor and help you mow this place?" He loves to taunt me about my weeds.   (Shhh, never call them weeds to their "blossom." Such rudeness hurts their feelings!)

My yard, a disaster to my Dad, is a healing oasis to me.  I nurture wild plants that will heal asthma to zits, cancer to psoriasis, provide birth control options, heal your body's inflammation, and everything in between. Annoying weeds they may be to most, to me they are my humble, healing friends that I protect with the gentle fierceness of a mother. And, they graciously feed butterflies, bees, hummingbirds, and so many more wild creatures!

(All of the healing hints I will give, below, for my beloved weeds are but the tip of the iceberg for what each magical plant can be used for. Every plant has so many healing uses!)

Here we have Mullein (It is the tall plant with the yellow flower stalk), an amazing healing plant for asthma and your body's glands.  Mullein oil can be rubbed over the thyroid, the ovaries, the testicles, or any gland and you can take mullein tincture to nourish all your glands from the inside of your body.  

Yeah, I have a few cats about the home who like to get into the photo ops!  The Milk Weed, hanging out here with my friend Mullein, is also good for asthma, constipation, and is reputed to be anti-fertility by the Mohawks.  Milk Weed makes a fun, pink jelly for smearing on winter toast... don't forget the butter! 

Got zits?  Try Dandelion leaf and root tea.  Add some Burdock Root and Red Clover flowers to this mix and you have a gentle liver and skin nourishing blend.  

Of course, I would add my best friend Stinging Nettles to the above and every healing herb recipe. It just makes good nourishing sense to add nettles!

Red Clover Blossoms!

Dandelion's useful parts: leaf, flower, root.  Burdock Root.. you have to dig it OR buy some from The Kent Family Growers or Birdsfoot Farm!

Dandelion leaves... and underneath the leaves, for fall harvesting, are the roots.

Cancer?  The above blend does wonders to cleanse/nourish the liver and blood so your immune system can do its job in healing and removing cancer from the body.  Add some peppermint (below) as its healing oils and chemical constituents are amazing healing energy for digestive tract issues!

Thank you, Robin, for this wonderful mint variety.  Seems the deer like it too!  Smart animals.

Want to increase fertility and your ability to conceive?  Try a tea (medicinal strength infusion) of Red Raspberry leaf (below), Red Clover Blossoms (picture above), and Stinging Nettles (below). The link above has a "recipe" for a liver detox infusion.  Follow the same principles when making your "Fertili-Tea."  No simmering of the infusion is needed as you are using all leaves and flowers. Just steep the infusion overnight.

Red Raspberry Leaf, while you are collecting leaves for making tea... eat the berries!

Stinging Nettles, nestled up against my home.

Want to decrease fertility? Chicory Root tea (below) decreases sperm count.  Milkweed (see above) decreases female fertility.  Queen Anne's Lace, Wild Carrot (below), decreases female fertility and prevents pregnancy.

Red Raspberry Leaf (above) nourishes the uterus and reproductive tract throughout a female's life cycle.  My plant intuition says it has to be nourishing for males as well.

There are many herbs to control fertility, enhance pregnancy and birthing, and nourish the reproductive tract. That is a whole book waiting to be written OR grab a copy of Susun Weed's Childbearing Years.  This is a great place to start in learning female reproductive herbs.

Chicory:  the root is used as a medicinal infusion to decrease sperm count.

Queen Anne's Lace flower head: the seeds are used to prevent pregnancy.

The below Black Eyed Susan patch adorns the yard behind my house and garage (and you are only seeing about 1/5 of this flower patch!).  I leave it wild purely to heal my heart and soul (and my cat's as well... all 4 cats seem to love their wild flower jungle!).

Native Americans used the plant for internal parasites, skin wounds, earaches, snake bites, and the common cold.

Wild plants are wonderful.  Befriend one today!  Paula

PS  Stay tuned for Healing Backyard Plants, Pt 2

AND

The Healing Powers of the Great White Pine

Whole Heart Forgiveness

Whole  Forgiveness

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the  heel that has crushed it.”  Mark Twain

Learning to forgive yourself and others opens the doors to healing.  Who do you need to forgive?  What do you need to forgive yourself for?

In order to heal the physical body, we must first heal the emotional and spiritual bodies.  Forgiveness is a great space to be in to start this healing energy.  Forgiveness heals the heart.

I invite you to watch this video about an amazing self healing tool and Wayne Dyer's thoughts on forgiveness and healing:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDjuBXZy29s

Happy  Valentine's Day

February is a great month to think about heart health.  Good foods for healing the heart are onions, garlic, cayenne, hawthorn berries, motherwort, rosemary, passion flower (the heart IS a center of passion!), and my favorite herb for everything nourishing and healing, stinging nettles.   A whole food diet supplies the heart cells with the nutrients needed to continue beating long into old age.

To read my full article on whole foods and herbs for your beating heart's health, published in the current issue of the  Canadian magazine Herbal Collective.   Go to this link and click forward to page 9:

http://issuu.com/herbalcollective/docs/hc_febmarch_14

Be well, forgive fiercely, and love intensely, Paula

Wellness Vs. Weight Loss... The Real Deal

Healthy Habits Create a Healthy Body... a Healthy Life!

My beloved beets; nourishing food for the blood, liver... all of your body cells!

We live in a culture that constantly markets physical weight loss.  This makes sense as keeping an your weight at your best level supports healthier and more natural physiological functions. You are as healthy as the cells you reproduce every day. Think of my writings and workshops on whole foods and cellular health.

Yes, there is much more to the equation than being a healthy weight for your body type, as we know... "skinny bitches" (men as well) have heart attacks, other health challenges, and also die young.

So we are told to eat less, exercise more, ditch the desserts, bag beverages with calories, eat superfoods that are transported from all over the earth... but what is being left out of this physical equation?

Weight loss is a body, mind, and soul experience.  When we humans realize we are far more than a physical being, healing (i.e. weight loss as just one example of a healing challenge) becomes accessible and easier.  We are divine beings living in our physical bodies. When we embrace our heart-mind (emotions) and heart-soul (spiritual aspect), physical healing opens up and a whole new dimension is available to us.

How to?

To step into this space, I recommend to the divine souls I work with in healing relationships, to simply start making their lifestyle choices based upon wellness. When you are contemplating what you are thinking about eating next or what you are about to put into your mouth right now, ask yourself this question:  "Is this what is best for my wellness; best for every cell in my body?"

Use this question with all wellness choices:

• exercise,

• nurturing earlier sleep times,

• one more beer or not?,

• choosing a relaxation activity for self,

• volunteering to help someone or help a local cause...

Truly, most people think and work from a space of: "Will this food make me gain weight; will this go right to my belly, hips, and ass?"

The belly, hips, and ass mindset only creates a deprivation and guilt cycle in our hearts, minds, and soul.  If I eat it (or do not get out and exercise), I feel guilty.  

I am so bad. I have no self-control, no will power, discipline.  These self incriminating thoughts are pure BS.

But then... If I do not eat it, I feel I am depriving myself of something.  That something then takes on more and more power in our lives because if we are depriving ourselves of it, it must be something wonderful.  Generally speaking, when we evaluate this thought process honestly and from a space of wellness AND self-awareness, we can acknowledge that the "something" being deprived of truly is not a wellness, life giving, cell enhancing choice.

Life giving, nurturing choices are easier to make when our wellness is the space we live in and create from.

Positive energy begets positive energy!

Bodies come in all sizes and shapes.

Bone structure is different is all of us.

Look at your body as the gift that it is, the home for your soul to live & thrive in.

Treat it well. Honor it just as it is:

slender, small frame, juicy and voluptuous, beautiful bones of substance, etc.



Make wellness choices that nourish the Divine IN You.

Thorns or Roses

Thorns or roses?... your choice!

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”    Abraham Lincoln

Why I Love Yoga and Other Thoughts on Whole Food, Whole Health Healing

Frost, my Siamese Mutt Cat, doing her version of Downward Facing Cat Pose. She IS a natural at Yoga!

Why I Love Yoga…and other thoughts on local, whole foods!

And you are now thinking, what does yoga have to do with the food?  My answer is quite simple. When we create mindfulness through a regular yoga practice (or any other form of body awareness exercises: Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Tae Kwon Do), we consciously make healthier choices in all areas of our lives.  This means healthier food choices. 

Back to yoga.  Why I love yoga… because it works!  It works on many levels, see my above comment around food choices.  The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit word yuj and means to yoke or bind. Yoga is often interpreted as a method of discipline that brings union (yoking or binding) to body, mind, and spirit. Yoga is the study of the Self.  Yoga gives us tools to improve our lives by stripping away the illusions that block us from connecting with our true self, with others, and with life itself.

Yoga is a whole food that nourishes body, mind, and soul.  Food is sacred to the body; it nourishes and sustains us.  Love is sacred to the mind and heart; nourishing the very part of us, our spirits, that gives to others and back to ourselves.  Yoga is the breath of the soul; keeping our life force strong and our 3 parts (body, mind, soul) in harmony and union.

Getting down to the brass tack: I am an exercise enthusiast.  Those who know me, know this well.  As long as I am not sitting still, I am happy.  The list of activities I have engaged in goes on and on and blurs together over the years and decades of my life. I love and have loved them all.

For many years I was into serious weight training and I felt that I was very strong.  When I started to do yoga, I was humbled.  I could not push up into a back bend.  My arms would just not do it.  After a few weeks I had the back bend thing down.  Years later, I now do reverse push ups.  Push ups from the back bend pose!  The strength I have gained is through my whole body (mind and soul!).

Over the years I realized my yoga strength ran deeper than that.  My choices around food and other lifestyle habits became more conscious in a health promoting way.  I paid attention to eating with awareness, chewing food well, eating only what I needed, and stopping before I was stuffed.  These habits around food and food choices slipped in the back door; all part of the study of self (ha ha, yoga!).  All those years of doing yoga transformed the way I interacted with myself and the world around me and I did not even perceive it happening.

Positive things I noticed around food: not needing to fill my plate to the brim or returning to the potluck table for another round of food, being satisfied with enough, passing on the desserts as sweet foods no longer dominated my taste buds, feeling abundance and satisfaction with light meals, and reveling in the flavors / colors / textures / and gift that each meal brings.

When we stop the constant chatter inside our heads and still our minds through mindfulness activities (yoga and other body awareness exercises), we tend to make choices that are in alignment with what is best for our health without feeling deprived.  This is because we have learned to live in the present moment and are aligned in body, mind, and spirit.  That is the awareness that Yoga brings to our being.

A cluttered "chattery" mind and a body that is not aligned in mind, body, and spirit tends to make decisions based upon impulse and cravings without regard to what is best for long term health.

When we quiet our minds, we use our emotions to our advantage.  When our minds are busy, our emotions use us.

Change is defined as the process of becoming different, substituting one thing for another, biological metamorphosis, personal development especially if seen as personally "life-changing". Consciousness is awareness of one's own existence and behaviors, inwardly attentive and mindful.  Conscious change involves will and deliberateness, altering self in an intentionally conceived manner.

When we discover that something we are doing in our lives no longer serves our higher purpose as a human, conscious change is how we evolve.  When we discover that the lifestyle and food choices we have made, consciously or not, are not reflections of our higher selves, we move to make change.  We realize our bodies are not vibrating at our highest level of health and we seek out ways to change this:  to heal current symptoms and weight issues and prevent lifelong degenerative diseases from interfering with our vibrant quality of life.

Remember that life is always for us!  Life force energy is always moving towards the positive, health and healing.  It is humans who tend to go against the grain of nature and turn this flow of energy against ourselves.  If you allow yourself to be in this flow, positive things will just happen.

Yoga, or any body awareness type exercise, aligns our bodies, our minds and our spirits so we make life giving choices.  Yoga helps us to become normalized in our eating, to reach a pattern of habits that are normal and healthy for us.  Yoga (or any body awareness exercise) help us to walk into the Potsdam Food Coop, Nature's Storehouse, our local farm stands or supermarkets, and we can make choices that feed and nourish every cell of our being.  We walk out with life giving, whole foods to nourish ourselves and our families.

Update 3/2/2020: over the 8 years since I originally wrote this article, I have learned much info about how science has proven “how” Yoga works. Here is one article that is simple and to the point on Vagus Nerve Toning and Health. The words, in the image below, exemplify how toning the Vagus Nerve improves our wellbeing.

Simply put into words by Donna Farhi, world renowned Yoga Teacher: (image compliments of Trillium Center for Yoga & Health, Potsdam, NY)

A book to inspire you to create conscious living in your life.

This means you no longer make choices based upon emotional triggers. You instead make choices based upon inner wisdom and peacefulness.

Your Ticket to Inner Peacefulness, Buy On Amazon

Namaste  

 

PS  

Update 7/31/2019 I created and teach my Sacred Circle Yoga Mentorship because I see what a daily Yoga practice does for one’s health. This Whole Food / Functional Medicine Health Coaching Mentorship encourages you to add Yoga (any kind of poses and deep breathing habits) to your daily Lifestyle Medicine to retrain your body-mind-spirit to a place of peaceful calm. When we walk the Earth in peace & calm… we are capable of making the best decisions for our purpose on this planet. See the Donna Farhi image above.

Update 4/23/2018  Happy Earth Day!  This post has been used and published in several newsletters and journals in the 5 years since I wrote it. My wish is that the gift of Yoga, mindfulness, reaches out to help many heal emotional issues around food, food choices, and eating habits.  I have since created The School of Self Healing home study courses on weight loss, sugar addiction, and whole food eating that embody the mindful / yoga habits to support your feeling whole and happy in the healing choices you make. Much Love to All.

More Why I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Yoga Blog Posts, Yup, click on the "blue" back there. Enjoy reading as much as I enjoy sharing my Love of Yoga.

Update on 4/29/16 Great quotes from the book "The Little Red Book Of YOGA WISDOM" Thank you Shelby of Five Elements Living Retreat Center for always keeping my heart and soul open to inspiration.

• Yoga is the martial art of the soul and the opponent is the strongest you have ever faced: Your Ego. - Unknown

• Spiritual practices help us move from identifying with the ego to identifying with the soul. -Ram Dass

• Yoga exists in the world because everything is linked (connected). -Desikashar