I am currently working on a healthy living series for youtube!

You guys... I AM VERY EXCITED.

I believe that if you can just influence the individual, be a guiding light, that that contact will have a butterfly effect and change the world. If 1 person watches the healthy living series, learns something and shares that with a friend, and that person shares with a friend... the impact is huge. Imagine if you watch,  share and makes changes!! What if all the people you touch start making changes to better their health, environment and relationships.   What is more of a threat to the evil of this world than kind, healthy, loving, confidant people?

In this series we will talk about 

• Diet
• Exercise
• Lifestyle
• Natural Medicine

We will do an overview of each topic, how we can begin to make changes in our life and live healthier more conscious existence. 

I will show an acupuncture treatment, cupping, shonishin (pediatric acupuncture), guasha, and how to use essential oils. 

I guarantee that if you let go of old patterns that don't serve you and implement some of the suggestions in the series, your life will dramatically change. 

Only you can do it.

You CAN do it. 

Great article and video for those of you who suffer from golfers elbow.

Golfers elbow guide

Try it and let me know how it goes

Its is also noted that this exercise should work for tennis elbow, just do the exercise the opposite way.

Tennis elbow article and guide

I usually start my day with liquids. Some days it is a warm water with lemon, or homemade raw cacao hot chocolate and sometimes it is a matcha green tea latte.

Most matcha lattes from coffee shops are full of sugar and not so full of matcha.

When you make things at home you can make the best tasting most nutritious version of your favorite food or drink. I add spirulina, maca, collagen, and raw honey to mine.
(if you click on each bold ingredient below, it will take you to what brand i buy, and the cheapest place i have found to buy them.)

Matcha: Originally used by Buddhist monks to stay awake during long meditations, now can be used as a energy boost without the overstimulating effects of coffee. It also lays claims to many health benefits. Its high in antioxidant, boosts the metabolism and helps detox.

Spirulina: In Chinese medicine we look at the color and taste of things to determine how it affects the Qi, blood and organs. In my opinion Spirulina is blood fortifier. It is dark blue green, which is the color of the element wood,  and almost metallic tasting like blood. The wood organ the Liver has a big role in the health of the blood. This is a great tonic for most women, and men, however women tend to be more blood deficient than men.   Here is a great article on the western benefits of spirulina.

Maca- Is a root native to Peru, and is said to have been used there for thousands of years. It is said to help balance hormones, give an energy boost without caffeine or jitters and is an adaptogen (meaning it is strengthening to the system and is overall nourishing/ balancing)

Collagen hydrolysate- This is a form of gelatin that has been processed to make it more digestible. Collagen is essential to strong nails, hair, skin, great for joints and joint recovery, high in protein, and amino acids and can help with digestion.

XTC oil- Here is the blurb from the bulletproof website:

Bulletproof XCT Oil, a unique energy source naturally found in small quantities in coconut oil, rapidly absorbs in your body and changes into ketones to give you long lasting energy from quality fats rather than sugar. 
​Adding Bulletproof XCT Oil into your diet will re-awaken your energy, assist in weight management, and optimize performance. Be Bulletproof, and power your mind and body with quality fats.
Bulletproof XCT Oil, comprised of both Capric and Caprylic fatty acids, can be easily added to any food or drink for a satisfying quality fat, and enhances other flavors without altering taste. XCT Oil also supports efficient absorption of fat-soluble nutrients.

Matcha Latte (my version)
* 1/4 cup water
* raw milk to fill your cup
* Tsp of matcha
* Tsp spirulina
* Tsp XCT oil
* Tbl collagen hydrolysate
* Tsp Maca
* honey, stevia or coconut sugar to taste
Warm up your water in a pan, not boiling. Put in matcha, maca, spirulina, collagen, whisk it all together. Add the milk and warm and whisk it all together. Add honey and enjoy.

This first post in the Cleaning series is going to cover something i find essential to any home.

Plants.

When it is summer our windows are always open, however as we move into fall and winter we start to shut our windows more.

As most of us know, our homes are full of toxins.  Everything we bring into it, what it is made out of, what we clean it with, it is all pretty toxic. Unless we have made sure that that isn't the case. However, if we live in the city, even the air that is filtering in, isn't all that clean. 

This is the world we live in, so what do we do?

Plants. Everywhere.

These are the top plants recommended by NASA for improving indoor air quality. Click to find out all of the recommended plants and too see what they filter specifically.

These are my favorite.

My family and I just bought our first home!

This moving has inspired a new found love for minimalism. When you have to pack up and move all your junk, you realize how much you don't want to have junk.

So in doing this i have managed to give away, sell, throw away an astounding amount of STUFF.

This really makes one think about why we buy things and why we keep stuff around. I am frugal, don't like spending money frivolously, and that can often turn into me taking every free thing offered to me and keeping stuff around that i may someday use, so that i don't have to buy it... when i need it... someday...

Which, then means i have a bunch of stuff waiting to be used someday...

This makes me think about the amount of time those possessions possess. I have to buy things to organize it, i have to clean it, i have to search for that thing when i need it and finally i have to move it. It is quite an astounding amount of time. I even started thinking about the things i think i need. Such as clothes and furniture. I started wondering if could par those things down. Less clothes, less furniture, less stuff. More time to devote to people and activities in my life that i enjoy.

Being that i am very busy and am constantly complaining to my husband and anyone else who will listen... about how i feel i never have enough time in the day to accomplish all the things i need to get done. This is huge. This sent me on a mission to simplify my, what i already thought was simple, life.

It isn't just stuff that i want to minimize, i want to maximize my living. So over the next few weeks or so i am going to attempt to show you how i am changing my life so as to inspire you to do the same.

This is a great youtube channel for body alignment and at home muscle education. I highly recommend checking out his other videos.

This particular video is talking about tightness in the hamstrings and how to reeducate your muscles to stretch better.

Stress leads to inflammation and inflammation is at the core of many diseases. I think we all know negative stress and inflammation are not so great. 

Stress can be from family, friends, work, finances, over scheduling, disorganization, physical (such as bad diet), poor health, it’s a viscous cycle), over or under exercising… you get the point. You
most likely have stress. Right?
                                               
                                                Ok. Lets figure out what to do about it.


First, identify what your major stressors are. Many times these are more veiled than we originally think. For example many people come in saying their stress is not that bad, however when we look at their life circumstances and their current health we realize that they are under a lot of stress but they are used to it... chronic stress. Sneaky.

Second, make changes. Do you need to say goodbye to some negative people in your life, get organized, change your diet, exercise, and basically move toward health. This is the hardest part for people, myself included, taking responsibility for your health. We all want someone else to blame and someone else to fix it. That’s not how life works, it’s ALWAYS you. We are the only thing in life we can control. Its human nature.

                Matthew 7:3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your
                            brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank
                                                     in your own eye?”

You can’t control the boss that makes your life miserable, but you can control your reaction or your employment at that job.

Third, implement practices that help cope with stress. There are stressors we cannot or are not yet willing to change, therefore we must change our lifestyle to help account for that stress.

Start a yoga practice. Yoga has been shown to reduce stress by combining body movement with mental focus in a way that bring awareness to the body and aids its attempts to deal with the stress.

Create a morning routine. Each morning we are given the opportunity to start over.

        My routine is wake before my daughter make my bed, breakfast, drink tea and make goals for         the day, do some stretching or (L)body movement,  Then I have set a calm intention and                     accomplished something before the chaos of the day has started. Your daily routine will                     probably look different than mine. The point is to establish routine and order before the day             officially starts, instead of pushing snooze until the last moment

Acupuncture is a great way to not only help stop that vicious cycle of stress and disease, disease and stress but to aid in overall prevention and treatment of the negative health effects stress had on the body.  Boosting the body’s own healing response it aids the body in healing itself. Acupuncture overall is a relaxing experience, the needles help the body reach a deeper place of relaxation than most people can reach on their own.

Not all stress is bad. If you don’t experience the stress as negative then perhaps it doesn’t effect you the same as the stressors that you view as negative.

I wanted to link a great article that explains in very simple terms how Chinese medicine works for pain. While i don't agree with everything he says and there are many ways to explain how Chinese medicine works, i really like the way he does it. Please take some time and read the multiple articles he has written on this topic. 

Chris Kresser is a fellow Chinese medicine practitioner and has a bunch of quality articles written on his blog. 

Let me know what you think.

Kamela