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]

Cell - A - Brating Spring Foraging

                                               Clockwise from top:                                                   Dandelion greens, Wild Violet, White Pine, Wild Leek shoots.

It is April 23rd (Happy Earth Day yesterday!) and I am patiently awaiting Dandelion greens, Wild Violet leaves & flowers, and Wild Leeks. I am heading out soon, with my yogurt quart container bucket and trowel, to see if the mighty Spring Leeks have popped up big enough to dig.

It has been a long winter and a hard won Spring for us Waaaay Northern New Yorkers. Today is day 3 of sunshine and no snow floating down. The ground is finally bare, save for a few pockets of the "white stuff" here and there, on the northern sides of trees, hills, etc. 

*After a long winter of heavy foods, our bodies long for light and fresh. Our body cells crave the nourishment from the Wild Ones in our lawns. 

The 4 plants surrounding Mother Earth (image above):

Dandelion is a liver lover. She helps to promote bile flow from the liver into your gall bladder and on into the small intestine. This bile helps digest food, keeps you regular, helps balance gut microbial health, and so - so much more. Bile is a good thing. Dandelions are a good thing too. This Spring: enjoy the greens raw or saute' very-very lightly, eat the yellow flowers, and learn about the root for harvesting and use in fall and winter (Shhhh, forget I said that naughty word).  Dandelion is loaded with chlorophyll and beta-carotenes. 

Wild Violets are Springs gift of flavor, color, and Vitamin C. Our bodies love vitamin C after a long, dark, cold winter. This is why I love citrus fruit by the time February rolls around. No, citrus is not local, but sometimes a girl has got to do things to survive. Vitamin C is a scrub brush for the body, a bit of Spring cleaning for you cells to perk things up, get firey Spring into Summer metabolism revving, and boost the immune system after the cold, dark days.  Feel free to eat the greens and flowers in salads. See below for *sustainable harvest info. Always leave plenty for reseeding and regrowth year after year.

I just read a blog post on Wild Violets and how they are the bad ass weeds of your lawn. (From the post: One of the most difficult weeds to control in the lawn is wild violet.  This native plant may look cute and dainty, especially in the spring when it produces pretty purple flowers. But in reality it is an aggressive weed with an unusual flowering quirk that results in thick mats of leaves that can choke out your lawn.) Yes, I was and am laughing quite loudly. An aggressive weed?! Look out folk, the violets are coming to get you! Seriously people, violets (and dandelions) are pretty color in the sea of green. Who wants a perfectly groomed, institutional like lawn. Nothing like some wild flowers to break up the never ending grass AND violets only grow to a low height... no mowing needed where violets take over. Seems like a win win to me: color, food, no mowing required. 

White Pine: Placed here because I Love White Pines. They are a Tree of Wisdom. Pines are evergreen, like I need to tell you that. Their green-ness all winter long keeps the landscape colorful and is the hope of the Spring green to come. Their needles are high in Vitamin C.  Harvesting to make winter tea (be gentle when you make tea, keep it covered while steeping. See link above.) is a dose of Vitamin C. 

Wild Leeks: I will keep this info quick & simple. I love Leeks. There is much info on Leeks here on my blog, just do a search (Dandelion as well).  These Spring beauties are a gift to digestion, the intestines, the liver, cellular health, and life in general. Eat raw, saute' very gently, add to soups and stews (I add Leeks after the soup or stew is made and the heat is turned off). Just enjoy them, bad breath and all.

Please do so with extreme consciousness of only harvesting what you need for right now's meal. Do not ever over pick - over dig the Leek patch. Go to a different patch for your next meal. I really freak when I see people harvest huge pails of Leeks (or any wild plant) with no regard that they just destroyed the whole patch. Be kind. Take only what you need right now. 

My April 23rd Waiting For The Wild Ones Spring Tonic

• 1 organic lemon
• handful of fresh, organic cilantro
• local, raw honey
• well water (no chlorine or flouride)

1. Juice lemon and place juice in blender. I scrape out the lemon peel with a grapefruit spoon and add to blender.
2. Add 2 cups water to blender. Carefully rinse citrus juicer and add liquid to blender. Do not waste anything.
3. I eat a chunk of the lemon peel. Good nutrients here and anti-cancer antioxidants.
4. Add the handful of cilantro leaves and stems to blender.
5. Add 1-3 tbsp. local, raw honey.
6. Cover and blend to liquidy consistency. 
7. Let settle a minute or two and pour into a quart canning jar. Rinse blender carefully & slowly with gentle low stream of water, from top of blender down, to save every bit of goodness and pour the "cleaning water" into your quart jar. You should have a quart now. If not, fill the quart.  Enjoy.

I do not add ice cubes to the blender in Spring. We are trying to warm digestion as we move into the warmer weather. Iced drinks squelch digestion and contribute to poor digestion, reflux, etc. 

Relaxing by the Raquette, reading a book sipping my Cilantro Lemon Aid, and deeply grateful for the Sunshine of Spring!

*Please harvest very responsibly and never take more than 5-10% of the patch of wild foods. Other beings need to eat. The patch needs to be able to restore itself for sustainability for the next 7 Generations. Nature is not providing just for you. Be kind. Be gentle. Be conservative, caring, and Love the Earth's bounty.

My Yoga Mat IS My Magic Carpet

OR... Why I Love Yoga, Take 3!

5 years ago I wrote an article titled Why I Love Yoga and Other Thoughts on Whole Food, Whole Health Healing that has been published on several Yoga, Mindfulness, Health, & Healing websites (In a professional holistic Nursing journal as well). This writing was/is my attempt to lure you into a personal practice that will transform the manner in which you exist in this world and support you making the best health and healing choices with each and every choice you need to make.

Did I lure you? Are you immersing into yoga to change your inner landscape so your outer world blossoms?

Yoga plants seeds. Seeds that are possibilities for life long change. 

Yoga lifts you up (body, mind, and spirit) so you can soar and sway with the breezes of life, being calmly flexible.  Yoga also roots you down and grounds you into your life so you can be stable and steady no matter what comes your way.

Yoga has taught me, reminded me, that my human body is a sacred vessel for spirit. My body is the home of the divine essence that is me.

I am a soul in a human existence not a human walking around with a soul (Wayne Dyer, one of many, kindly reminded us of this).  Once we embrace our divine essence and purpose, in our human form, it becomes easier to make those healing lifestyle changes and stick to them.

Your lifestyle choices can and will build your soul a home that is a castle that can weather life with grace.  Your lifestyle choices can also cobble together a shack that feels unwell, daily, and falls apart easily.

When we come home to this, truly embody the fact that we are divine beings within a human body, it makes the task of choosing healthy lifestyle habits the path of least resistance. 

Our inner conversation goes from impulsively eating, without conscious thought, those two pieces of cake sitting there just because they ARE sitting there to being about making choices that are best for body-mind-spirit.

Building Castles not Shacks.

A regular Yoga practice creates new neural pathways of thinking in body, mind, heart, and spirit. These pathways create inner calm, peace, and presence in the hear & now. I have always called this Inner Conscious Connection. Mindfulness is the word we all here now.

Stepping off of my Yoga Mat Magic Carpet, navigating the world in a magical way, transforms the whole world into my Yoga Mat Magic Carpet. 

Sending Love from My Castle to Yours. Namaste. 

Join Shelby Connelly & I at Five Elements Living Retreat Center for a 3 hour Yoga - Acupuncture Mini-Retreat: April 8th (evening retreat) or April 11th (morning retreat), 2018

                                                       Beginner's Yoga : Letting Go Of Awkward                                                         Yoga-Acupuncture-Self Care Evening Or Morning Retreat

More articles to inspire you to jump on a Magic Carpet of your own:

• Why I love Yoga... Take 2

• More Yoga inspiring posts from Paula

Green is the Heart Chakra... Love Your Yoga!

Why I love Yoga... Take 2

When the weather drops below 45, I move to the porch: bright, cheery, & open window for fresh air. Below zero, bright sunny days, are still Yoga pleasant on the porch.

4+ years ago I wrote an article titled  Why I Love Yoga and Other Thoughts on Whole Food, Whole Health Healing. I have shared, many times, the ways in which Yoga benefits healing body, mind, and spirit. Type "Yoga" into the search bar, over there to the right, and you will find Yoga posts on weight loss, healing, body benefits, stress... you name it. I recommend it. Yoga that is.

Yoga is a self healing retreat every time you step onto the mat and every time you step out into your world living life from a space of deep interconnectedness that Yoga spins and weaves for you; that you spin and weave for yourself.  

If 45 degrees F... yoga on the deck is my preferred place to practice. Yes, cats are a reoccurring theme in this mindfulness; sensing & appreciating the peaceful energy.

So often people tell me: "Oh, I do stretching exercises, I don't need yoga."  Most people equate yoga with doing poses. Yoga is not just about the poses on the mat. That is part of it. Yoga is a way to bring presence of mind to your daily awareness. The poses are a way to embody mindfulness. Poses help to move life force energy, embody breath with movement, and guide our actions into a conscious connection with our true self.

Poses support you synchronizing breath with body, mind, and spirit. Breath is spirit. Yoga poses teach you how to be strong, flexible, and balanced in body, mind, and spirit so you can step off the mat and be strong, balanced, and flexible in all areas of your life activities, in all of your interactions, in your essence of being in this world.

Yoga is a way of being in the world that supports our moving with the flow of the universe, making conscious decisions based upon thoughtful wisdom and mindfulness around choice and consequence, and walking through daily happenings with a presence of peace and contentment (even when life seems to hand us chaos).

Magic happens when a person practices Yoga. Yoga is a tool to connect self with life force energy: inner life force energy and the life force energy of the universe (which are one & the same).  The universe pulses on and with life force energy. Practicing yoga is a way of tapping into this universal energy, wisdom, consciousness. Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years. All indigenous cultures have healing systems for tapping into the infinite. 

Deepening Practice for you... Yes, this is your Self Healing homework.    ; )   

I will happily send you the word document or PDF files of these below Yoga pose practices. You can print and laminate them if you choose. Email me with your request.   pyoumell@gmail.com

Yoga Stick Figures by Charlotte Bradley of Yoga Flavored Life.

The " Back Story" of Voluptuous V™

Sometime in early 2014, a friend requested support with menopausal vaginal symptoms. I did a Google search looking for a product to help soothe and lubricate her vulva and vagina. I found several that were sort of natural but nothing that met my standards of a product I would put in or on my own body. I have a deep commitment to health... if I would not eat it, I will not use it for body care. 

I gave up and told her that I would create a 100% natural and organic product to soothe her vagina voluptuous again. We had a good laugh in my kitchen and over many conversations since. 

2 days later I had whipped up a batch. I called it Voluptuous Vagina™.  VV™ for short. I wrote about it in many blog posts on my "other" blog that is exclusively for female centered health topics: WiseWomenRedTent   

For 3, 4 years... maybe longer, my gal friend used it. I gave out jars to friends and clients locally and in various places about the USA.

Forwarding to May 2017... I tell Shelby Connelly of Five Elements Living that I am thinking of finding someone to make it in big batches and sell under my label: Paula Youmell, RN, Wise Woman RN®. 

Shelby said without hesitation: Hell No! We are making it! 

I said: Seriously?

To which she said: YES!

Shelby is an amazing front end woman: designing product packaging and marketing our business/product together. I get to do what I love: create in the herbalist's kitchen.

Long story short... Five Element's commercial kitchen is where I hang my hat and herbalist's apron 2 days a week to make this luxurious formula for soothing the female anatomy. 

To learn more or purchase your 2 oz jar of Voluptuous V™, visit our website pages:

https://fiveelementsliving.com/shop/voluptuous-v-2-oz-jar/

http://www.paulayoumellrn.com/voluptuous-v-luxe-feminine-emollient/

We are committed to woman's health, topically & internally, for whole body-mind-spirit health. 

Grounding Yourself for Emotional Healing

1.    Remind yourself that you are in complete control of you.

2.   Start your day with an AM grounding experience. I do a blended visualization / meditation that takes 5-7 minutes and grounds me for the day.  I sit on the stone steps in my back yard with my feet in contact with the ground. (Urban dwellers, sit and visualize your feet in the grass, connected to Mother Earth!) I close my eyes and visualize white light coming from the ground, up through my Chakras and Nadis, then turns around at the crown Chakra and goes back into the earth taking all negative (dark light) energy back into the earth to be absorbed. I visualize white light coming from above, through my crown Chakra, and circling back up at my root Chakra taking negative energy back into the atmosphere. I do both of these twice.  Next I visualize white light coming from the earth again, up through my root Chakra.  When It turns the corner at my crown, this time it goes back into the earth and creates a root system from my tailbone down into the earth. Now visualize white light from the crown Chakra, turns at the root Chakra and turns again at the crown Chakra to go back into the earth.  Again, visualize the roots coming from your tailbone deep into the earth to ground you for the day’s challenges. Finally, I swirl white light energy around my body, from feet to head, like a twister moving up my body. This is to protect me from negative energy and other’s stress.

3.   Create peace in your life with a regular yoga practice. The benefits of Yoga are profound.  You will intuitively move towards healthier choices in your life. Your mind will become calm. Your body will respond physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually to the beauty of yoga.  Your body will be in the flow of life. This is true mind -body -spirit healing.

4.   Nourish your body with 100% whole foods. To get started on whole food eating, pick up a copy of my book, Hands On Health: Take Your Vibrant, Whole Health Back Into Your Healing Hands. Read the Free info on my website: Principles of Whole Food Eating,  Whole Health Lifestyle Choices, & more Free Health Info

5.   Get to bed and be asleep before 10 PM.  When your body is asleep before 10 PM, the level of stress hormones in your body drops. When you stay up late, burning the midnight oil, your body pays through higher levels of cortisol hormones. This is stress.  Sleep, sweet dream sleep, before 10 PM and your body’s glandular system works for you in a balanced manner, making happy feel-good hormones!

6.   Get outside every day, preferably moving your body. Yes, I mean exercise. Call it movement magic that heals the divine you!  Something as simple as a brisk paced walk in the fresh air and natural light can do much to reduce stress, create feel good hormones, help you sleep better at night, and ease the challenges of daily life so you can think clearly and make healing choices around food and your health habits. Get outside in sun/wind/rain/snow/fog, walk barefoot, sit on ground, hug a tree, rest your spine against an old growth tree… just breathe in the world around you. Your body, mind, and soul will thank you for this grounding, earthy experience.

Positive, holistically-minded, lifestyle choices make for healthier, happier living.  For a full list of lifestyle choices I recommend to my holistic health coaching clients, click here.     More Free Health & Self Healing Info, click here.

7.    Create a grounding habit you can return to, in a moment's notice, for immediate calming energy. Here is how...

• Find a body motion (hands in Namaste or prayer position or a Yoga Mudra that calls to you),
• a "saying" or mantra* (Amen, Namaste, Blessed Be, Mitakuye Oyasin, Om mani padme hum), and
• a visualization of a space in nature that is sacred to you.

When you close your eyes and do all three you will bring yourself to a place of inner calm. Proceed forth from a space of thoughtful action as opposed to emotional reacting.  The ideas in parenthesis are just that, ideas. Create a 5 second ritual that is your special way of coming into your calm. Use it daily. Use it in any moment that you need to stop and think rationally before you proceed forward in your next step or choice. This is a quick grounding experience.

Be Well; Very, Very Well, Paula   ; )

Extra posts on creating calm, grounding, and healing eating/health habits: 

• Create Constant Calm
• Why I Love Yoga and Other Thoughts on Whole Food, Whole Health Healing

To find more related posts do a search on my blog for: yoga, weight loss, &/or mindfulness.

*Saying or Mantra meanings, they are all Blessings

• Amen: So be it, the well wishing of your prayers & meditation being sealed for integration and to come to fruition in the world
• Namaste: Sanskrit, the Divine in me honors the Divine in you
• Blessed Be: Wish good and positive things upon self & others
• Mitakuye Oyasin: Lakota, we are all related, interconnectedness of everything, we are all brothers & sisters (all beings on Earth, not just humans)
• Om mani padme hum: Buddhist, No literal English translations, jewel in the lotus, invokes compassion