Category Archives: Natural and Holistic Wellness

Providing you with resources and recommendations for the natural and holistic side of health and healing.

25 Aug

Prepare your mind, body and soul

Pathways to Family Wellness Magazine

Whether you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or chasing your 2-year-old around, take a moment to pause and reflect. “Quiet your mind; listen to yourself, learn to t…rust what you are saying on the inside. Nothing is more important for parenting—nothing.”

A beautiful interview on preparing your body and mind with yoga and meditation by Sarah Kamrath with Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa: http://pathwaystofamilywellness.org/…/prenatal-yoga-and-chi…

01 Jul

Infant Massage Classes

Please Touch Me
A poem by Phyllis K. Davis

If I am your baby, please touch me. I need your touch in ways you may never know. Don’t just wash and change and feed me; but rock me close, kiss my face, and stroke my body. Your soothing, gentle touch says security and love.

If I am your child, please touch me. Though I may resist, even push you away, persist. Find ways to meet my needs. Your goodnight hug helps sweeten my dreams. Your daytime touching tells me how you really feel.

If I am your teenager, please touch me. Don’t think because I’m almost grown I don’t need to know that you still care. I need your loving arms, I need a tender voice. When the road gets rocky, then the child in me still needs.

If I am your friend, please touch me. Nothing lets me know you care like a warm embrace. A healing touch when I’m depressed assures me I am loved and reassures me that I am not alone. Yours may be the only comforting touch I get.

If I am your sexual partner, please touch me. You may think that your passion is enough, but only your arms hold back my fears. I need your tender reassuring touch to remind me I am loved just because I am me.

If I am your grown-up child, please touch me. Though I may have a family of my own to hold, I still need Mummy’s and Daddy’s arms when I hurt. As a parent, the view is different. I appreciate you more.

If I am your aging parent, please touch me the way I was touched when I was very young. Hold my hands, sit close to me, give me strength, and warm my tired body with your nearness. Although my skin is worn and wrinkled, it loves to be stroked.

Natural Helping Hands is a great place to learn how to touch those you love with confidence. We have classes available for the public. Please visit our website for more information, www.naturalhelpinghands.com  

30 Jun

Your Baby’s Brain

Your Baby’s Brain

The wise remain aware

of the spirituality of life.

Every mother has felt

the stillness and the stir

of Eternal Consciousness

in her womb. Remember that.

Bring that mysterious, silent moment

into the clamoring present.

—Vimala McClure

from The Tao of Motherhood

The development of an unborn baby’s brain is fascinating and it helps us understand the amazing benefits of massaging your baby. Knowing how your infant’s brain is handling all of the new things surrounding him enables you to approach him with both knowledge and compassion. Doctors Eileen and Tom Paris contend that part of creating a healthy relationship with our children is owning our feelings and expressing them as our own. They say, “For example, telling a startled newborn, with kindness, ‘I see you were startled when Mommy and Daddy yelled and had a fight. Grownups get angry sometimes, especially when we are tired. You’re okay, we love you,’ mitigates the effect of the fighting.” You may think, ‘How is a newborn going to understand that?.’ They do! Most of our communication is in the tone of our voice, our body language, and our intention. These are communicated very clearly to your baby. Even though it is true that adult fighting stresses children (even in utero), never feeling angry is an unreasonable expectation for either ourselves or our children. We can notice when we feel angry, own those feelings, and try to talk them out, reassuring the little one that everything is okay.

“The most complex information-processing device ever constructed is on its way,” says John Medina, author of Brain Rules for Baby. He goes on to say, “During the attachment process, a baby’s brain intensely monitors the caregiving it receives. It is essentially asking such things as “Am I being touched? Am I being fed? Am I safe?” If the baby’s requirements are being fulfilled, the brain develops one way; if not, genetic instructions trigger it to develop in another way. It may be a bit disconcerting to realize, but infants have their parents’ behaviors in their sights virtually from the moment they come into this world. It is in their evolutionary best interests to do so, of course, which is another way of saying that they can’t help it. Babies have nowhere else to turn.”

In her book, Philosophical Baby, Alison Gopnick says, “In adults, vivid awareness accompanies attention, and attention is linked to brain plasticity (the quality of being easily shaped or molded).  Attention literally allows us to change our minds and brains. If we made the backwards inference that brain plasticity implies attention, which implies vivid awareness, it would seem that babies are more conscious than we are. They are vividly aware all the time.” She concludes that infant awareness is steeped in “a kind of exaltation and a particular kind of happiness.”

Once I saw a video of a baby, probably 5 months old, sitting on a couch with her father on the floor in front of her. He began tearing pieces of paper. She giggled, and then laughed and laughed and laughed, so hard for so long I could hardly believe it. She was the perfect example of this “exaltation and a particular kind of happiness.” Alan Schore, in The Neurobiology of Child Brain Development, says, “The brain does not continue to grow and grow. It organizes, then it disorganizes then it re-organizes. This disorganization of the brain and the massive death of billions of cells and synapses is part of how the brain is growing.” He goes on to say, “Positive affects (meaning happy faces) are key to early development. They’re key to growth, they’re also key to not only positive psychological states but to physical health. Joy has something to do with the quality of life.”

Excessive stress responses also pump him up to be less trusting in general, less able to believe that life is on his side. This wiring of joy and intimacy happens not only in the infant but in the mother as well, a significant but often overlooked factor. “The infant and mother’s psychobiological systems are co-regulating each other,” says Alan Schore in an interview, “Joy is the key to attachment. By joining in the child’s joy in the first years of life, mother and baby are both “interactively co-regulating very high levels of positive emotion.”

I have written an entirely new edition of Infant Massage: a Handbook for Loving Parents, which will be released by Random House in February, 2017. The present chapters have been revised, updated, and expanded. There are five new chapters, including a chapter on your baby’s brain. This new book will introduce the art of infant massage to new generations of parents.

To locate an Infant Massage class near you, click here.

Celebrate Independence Day Safely

The mission of Pathways.org is to “provide free tools to maximize all children’s motor, sensory and communication development”  They offer information on how to safely celebrate the 4th of July along with other summer safety information.

                                                         Product Recalls

The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission provides up to date information on product recalls.  There is a search bar to search for more specific products such as, clothing, toys, furniture, etc. that have safety related concerns. The site also provides seasonal safety tips and other helpful information for families.  Click here to access this important information.
Vimala McClure, the author of Infant Massage, A Handbook for Loving Parents is the founder of the International Association of Infant Massage with headquarters in Sweden. Her work is the foundation for all of our trainings and classes.
 Find us on Facebook

http://www.infantmassageusa.org/learn-to-massage-your-baby/why-attend-a-class/

30 Jun

Healing yourself and others part 3

Another good well written article I am sharing. Why rewrite the stuff when someone already wrote it with style 🙂 (below is her blog post link, and copy and pasted article. In the copy and pasted part, I have removed the last part of her article because I have a different perspective about the “cannabis” issue, but it is all good in the end).

ENJOY

Source: The Sounding Off of an Unsound Mind

 

Let Thy Food Be Thy Medicine: part 2 -The Good

This may be the most important blog I ever write.

For those that have just tuned in, there is a part 1 to this tale. It is bursting at the seams with information that simply points to a much bigger, hairier ordeal. We must take responsibility for our own bodies and learn to take care of ourselves. It is important that you understand where we are as a society, so that we can collectively move forward. I will attempt to address the good that is happening, and what you can do.

For those that don’t know me personally, my father passed away one year ago from aggressive prostate cancer. To say that it sucked is an understatement of gargantuan proportions, but it caused me to delve deep into the medicine surrounding cancer treatments and what progress is being made. My father refused to do chemotherapy. I don’t blame him. The cure rate for chemo is around 3%. (The odds are better if you are young…It also depends on the cancer itself.)

In my studies, I think I stumbled upon a secret that most do not understand…and I need to share with you….and you need to share it with everyone you know…

Are you ready?!
You ARE what you EAT!

You mean you’ve heard that before?! You should have. That was originally said by Hippocrates, the father of medicine, in ancient Greece. He realized ALL the way back then that eating a certain way seems to ward off pretty much Every. Single. Disease.

The idea is simple really. You body is an interconnected set of systems that run on a specific fuel source…like a car. If you were to put marine fuel into your car, It would not run well. (For those who are unaware, boats run on a slightly different fuel than cars.) It is the same with our bodies.

A moment about cancer:

Cancer naturally pops up in our bodies, but is wiped out by our own immune system before it can become a real problem. It is only when that cancer can get a steady supply of blood and nutrients that it actually takes hold and becomes an issue.

Dr. William Li with the Mayo Clinic has done a lot of research about angiogenesis. (AN-G-O-JEN-E-SIS) It’s a big word that means blood vessels in your body can OVER grow. What he found first was that when we eat the typical western diet (aka–junk and bread and junk…and then maybe a vegetable…deep fried), we cause our blood vessels to grow so much that they can feed blood and nutrients to other things…and if a cancer can get hold of some of that….you get the idea….

Here’s the good news: Dr. Li believes that 2 out of 3 cancers are caused by diet…and can potentially can be cured by diet! You can watch his TED  Talk here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_5Z31mUmtc

Cancer is nowhere near the only illness that food can fix! Diabetes, heart disease, blood pressure… Google how to naturally prevent these things from happening, and you will always get the same answer… Lots of organic veggies, lean organic meat, and less  (or less traditional) carbs.

Now, organic can be expensive, but it is worth it to keep chemical pesticides and GMOs out of your body. I’m notoriously cheap…I recite this mantra while grocery shopping: I can pay more money for the food now or more money for the doctor later.

HERE’S THE GOOD NEWS: Organic food is becoming less expensive and more available all the time! In fact, the struggle of farmers to hang on to GMO corn is FAILING SO MISERABLY, we actually had to import over 40,000 lbs. of organic corn to meet the demand. Companies like Hershey’s are promising to be GMO free by the end of the year! Farmer’s markets are more popular than ever…The food revolution is upon us! I know that my state recently legalized raw milk sales… (I’m very excited!)

***I may try to write a blog on how to shop for healthy food amid all the fake healthy food soon.***

With regards to vaccines, the good news is that a revolution is occurring all around you…and it has recently caught fire with a little film called Vaxxed. Vaxxed: From Cover up to Catastrophe is a documentary produced by a well respected film producer who worked many years on the show The Doctors. He joined forces with Dr. Andrew Wakefield (Yes…THAT Andrew Wakefield…who incidentally was vindicated by the whistleblower from the CDC) to expose the world to the CDC’s fraudulent actions concerning the 2004 autism-mercury study.

It is changing lives. If you believe in transparent medical practices like I do, then support this film as it reaches your area, and get everyone you know to see it. The evidence is irrefutable. If you are particularly froggy and want to help more, try and join the support groups pressing to bring the movie to YOUR area.

Also, a local school in our area recently sent home flyers to every student giving some false information and scare tactics pushing the vaccine agenda. There are medical exemptions for vaccines in every state, and most also have philosophical and/or religious exemptions from vaccines. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO VACCINATE! Turn to social media…Look for local groups. Someone will help you.

Doctors are sold out to medicine, that’s true. However, more and more doctors are coming to realize it, and many are switching over to a more naturopathic style of healing. Also, more people are opening natural offices of medicine. BE ADVISED: These people went to school and trained just as hard as a traditional M.D. You are NOT crawling into the hands of an amateur as some would have you believe. As with any doctor, check their background, but they put in the same 8 years as your doctor.

The herbs and minerals prescribed by these doctors are generally safer than pharmaceutical drugs, and they tend to treat the cause instead of the symptoms… (Big shock: They almost always start with your diet.)

The dental industry is waking up, too! You can now find natural dentists that will remove amalgam (mercury) fillings and replace them with safer materials. They also forego use of sodium fluoride. (which isn’t the kind that helps teeth) (neither is what’s in the water system…but that’s a different blog.)

Everywhere you see corruption in the world, there is some sort of coup bubbling under the surface. If Batman were real, he would be preparing his vigilante bat-gadgets onto his utility belt because the whole thing is close to blowing like Mount St. Helens. There is a Chinese curse that says,”May you live in interesting times…” Well, I think it’s safe to say we’ve been cursed, but it is also exciting. We all have a choice to become a part of the change that will be in history books 100 years from now. It is our time to make a difference…not by rioting or being violent or ostracizing like so many other groups for revolution, but through simple actions. Carving a different path by simply buying organic, buying local, growing a garden, choosing a natural doctor, refusing a flu shot, or voting…These small acts of defiance are the key. Not all superheroes wear capes. You can’t change the world, but you can make a dent. Take the bull by the horns.(…and any other cliches you can come up with.)

Until my next rambling, I bid you adieu. Peace.

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29 Jun

Healing yourself and others part 2

this was a well-written article from a friend and I wanted to share it in here, instead of writing the same sort of things myself 🙂

ENJOY every bit of it. READ every bit of it slowly and well. IT is well worth your time.

Source: The Sounding Off of an Unsound Mind

It all started when my son was 6 months old. I was in the clinic awaiting the call back for his 6 month vaccines, and I picked up a Rolling Stones magazine. In it was an article discussing a possible link between vaccines and autism conducted by a Dr. Andrew Wakefield. As any parent who had never considered negative repercussions of vaccines, I was shocked and wanted more information before proceeding. I got up, took my child, and walked out. I spent the next few days wondering where to proceed. I attempted to obtain an insert from the vaccine box which supposedly would give me a list of ingredients. First, I was lied to.

Then I was simply told no. When I demanded to see the box the vial comes in, they escorted me out of the building. I knew at that point they were hiding things from the public. So I became a temporary anti-vaxxer…just until I could ascertain the details surrounding the doctors’ dirty little secrets…

I researched for over 3 years…reading every study. listening to every news report. I spent time getting my hands on vaccine inserts to read.  The more I studied, the more disturbing evidence I found.
Within a few months of that article being printed, I could no longer find it online. The CDC came out with a blanket statement that there was NO link between vaccines and autism because they did a SINGLE study, and the matter was CLOSED! (Capital letter closed because it was covered on every media outlet that this ONE study was enough to debunk any and all other work on the topic.) (Where was responsible journalism?! Where was responsible science?! Anyone in the science field knows you need years of studies to “prove” anything.) Only recently, Dr.William Thompson, a top CDC scientist who worked on the very study that “proved” vaccines and autism weren’t linked came forward as a whistleblower with documentation proving the CDC committed fraud by removing half the children from the study to alter results.

Since that time, every study that has shown no link to autism was skewed with the same bad science based on the 2004 study. Britain had ruined Wakefield’s career for even suggesting a possible link.
Well, I had been looking into this…I wasn’t so convinced.

There were loads of studies from around the world that were linking vaccines to possible problems with allergies, ADD, ADHD, autism, SIDS,  and even the spreading of the diseases that they were trying to prevent!

( side note: Herd immunity is a myth because in order to have herd immunity, you need 90-95% of the population fully immune to a disease…We don’t have that. THAT is why most outbreaks of measles and chicken pox happen in “fully” vaccinated communities…Without constant boosters every few years, your body is NOT fully immune. Also, it usually begins because a recently vaccinated person shed the disease. I had a grown friend contract the chicken pox because his daughter had recently received the vaccine.)

Here is a link to just 30 studies that suggest a connection between vaccines and autism. https://healthimpactnews.com/2013/30-scientific-studies-showing-the-link-between-vaccines-and-autism/
Oh…and Here is 125 MORE! https://www.scribd.com/doc/220807175/125-Research-Papers-Supporting-the-Vaccine-Autism-Link

The truth is, most (if not all) of the studies dismissing a link have some form of tie to the money.
These INDEPENDENT scientists had nothing to gain from these findings, and after seeing what happened to Wakefield, they had something to lose…like their career.

So, I did what my father taught me, and I followed the money.

Let’s talk about what you..the American citizen…don’t know.

I personally do not believe that organizations that control the healthcare and welfare of our country should be able to receive “donations” …huge sums of money … from the people who profit from us being sick. let’s take the American Academy of Pediatrics. Their number one sponsor is Merck Pharmaceuticals… The parent company for many of the vaccines your child receives.

Oh! If your child suffers a serious reaction or death from a vaccine, you can’t sue the company…Our government has created a fail-safe that bypasses due process. Instead, you must apply for an opportunity to be heard by a judge in a special vaccine court. You will wait years, you cannot appeal, and there will be no jury.

Following Merck are several other pharmaceutical companies making “donations”…and then formula companies (which recently came down and said in a medical journal that doctors should no longer call breastfeeding natural….They are losing too much money.)
http://www.examiner.com/article/pediatrics-journal-says-to-stop-calling-breastfeeding-natural

Medical schools are no better.

(taken from http://www.onegreenplanet.org/natural-health/how-medical-school-funding-from-big-pharma-impacts-your-health/)

“Did you know that, up until recently, U.S. pharmaceutical companies funded the majority of U.S. medical schools with very little regulation?
It’s nothing new to point out how flawed modern U.S. healthcare is in its treatment-based philosophies over preventative measures. This idea (and our doctors poor grasp on sound nutrition), however, seems to make a lot more sense when we realize just how far the Big Pharm arm reaches.
In 2008, AMSA (American Medical Student Association), in collaboration with The Pew Charitable Trusts, uncovered just how extensively pharmaceutical companies influenced medical institutions in the U.S. AMSA created a conflict-of-interests scorecard to show just how ethically academia was interacting with the pharmaceutical business:
  • 40 out 150 schools received an “F”, including Harvard, which had no conflict-of-interests policies in place. (Note: Harvard received an “A” on the next survey.)
  • Less than 15 percent of medical schools scored an “A” or “B,” insinuating the overwhelming majority of doctors have received a severely skewed education.  “
AS you can see, it is highly likely that most of what we know about modern medicine has had the opportunity to be seriously misled. If pharmaceutical companies write the paychecks, they control what is and isn’t studied, what is and isn’t learned in school. Is it so unlikely that they demanded the altering of results?! I mean, they are in the business of profiting only if they keep people sick.It is the same way with the food we eat. Do YOU think that the people in charge of our food safety should have monetary links to the companies that profit if we are sick?! I pulled this directly from the Monsanto website,”Prior to Sept. 1, 1997, a corporation that was then known as Monsanto Company (Former Monsanto) operated an agricultural products business (the Ag Business), a pharmaceuticals and nutrition business (the Pharmaceuticals Business) and a chemical products business (the Chemicals Business). Former Monsanto is today known as Pharmacia LLC. Pharmacia is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer Inc., which operates the Pharmaceuticals Business.”

It gets worse. 
The USDA is indirectly controlled by Monsanto…the people who brought us agent orange.
According to http://www.nationofchange.org
 “Monsanto’s growth hormones for cows have been approved by Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lobbyist turned USDA administrator and FDA deputy commissioner.  This was after Margaret Miller, a former Monsanto employee, oversaw a report on the hormones’ safety and then took a job at the FDA where she approved her own report.
Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist, wrote the USDA’s food standards, allowing corporations to label irradiated and genetically engineered foods as “organic.”
The recently passed and signed law nicknamed the Monsanto Protection Act strips federal courts of the power to halt the sale and planting of genetically engineered crops during a legal appeals process.  The origin of this act can be found in the USDA’s deregulation of Roundup Ready sugar beets in violation of a court order.  The USDA argued that any delay would have caused a sugar shortage, since Monsanto holds 95% of the market.
The revolving door keeps revolving.  Monsanto’s board members have worked for the EPA, advised the USDA, and served on President Obama’s Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations.”
These people are the best in the world at covering up corruption.
As you can see (unless you simply choose to be ignorant to your own detriment), there are some serious conflicts of interest lurking in the very organizations that control our health and food. The food we buy at the store is mostly highly processed. Most of that food is filled with known possible carcinogens, preservatives, artificial color, and GMOs. In the part 2 of this series, I will talk about the good news…what we can do for ourselves…and what is changing for the better.

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29 Jun

BAM! Healing at its best.

I have just recently had a powerful realization into the fact that we can see and help others through so much and never see it hitting us. BAM! it hit me. I crashed physically a couple weeks ago, and, through a week of process and counsel from human and spiritual means, health made an “about face” and was snuffed out to the core (literally). It was all done completely by core healing (4th chakra emotional releases) and mental “breathing”/listening; (there was physical cleansing, but it was because I was so shut down I could not eat, but only drink my food for three days). I will not go into the details, but it was a perfect example of liver, gut, core junk stemming from primary food alone (Primary food being things not on the plate). I have never experienced that before, only have seen it occur in others. It really makes an impression when one can truly release fear and anxiety and internal “holding” of past junk, and turn the physical body around in hours, immediately.

I could have been in the hospital using the medical testers, and they probably finding nothing wrong with me and at the same time arguing with them knowing I was in trouble because I could feel something was wrong and see signs all over me that something was wrong (bloated, yellow eyes, gray tongue, no appetite, etc.); I could have been paying loads of money to do so, and becoming worse in the process. I could have gone through unnecessary surgeries, tests, meds and more…YUCK!

I will add that I began the process, within that two weeks of “crashing”, to the point of the actual crash, with focusing on the herbal and food based healing. It was doing good, but it was not until the three days of releasing the core emotions that were locked up inside, that healing took the final destination in my body.

I am thankful for the truth to be revealed to me and that I having a listening ear to hear it. I want even more to help others hear it in themselves, more than I have already been doing all my life. I want you to be empowered and know that you know more than you every could imagine you know.

contact me and lets get some connections for you going.

29 Jun

Healing yourself and those around you part 1

FOOD IS BEING THROWN AWAY more than ever. We CAN, when people know what they are doing, plant and raise real food and keep the soil healthy! Even the organic stuff is being affected, but that can change.  We have guts that do not absorb well from the compromised, poor food we have been inflicted with. WE WANT TO BE ALIVE BUT WE EAT DEAD, TOXIC FOOD!

FIGHT TO KNOW!

I have lived a life of know only natural health and healing with food and with other modes of holistic healing and wellness.

I would like to encourage you to keep up with my web page here, my blogs, my Facebook page blogs, and also utilize other web pages and information such as listed below.  I have a lifetime of research I plan to put onto my web page, use in my live classes, and use in my daily client coaching and massage.  I would like you to encourage the youth to come into this world and learn all they can while they are young to avoid and prevent the things that can come up in later years.  I am an advocate for the youth being taught as I was and grow up with an approach to living that most have forgotten or know little about in this country of ours.

Again, below are just a few of the places you can grow and learn without being overwhelmed.  My sight will stay simple also, and link you to many connections to fit your own individual needs.

Let’s get healthy together!!  Let’s combat the growing number of mainstream health issues the pharmaceutical industry is not doing much for, except causing the populations to grow sicker.

 

https://www.andreabeaman.com/health/are-you-interested-in-health-me-too/#.V3Pqf_krKUm

 

 

http://www.chrisbeatcancer.com/about/

 

https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/category/nutrition/

 

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