2017 Year of the Rooster

As of last week, we are now in the 2017 year of the Yin Fire Rooster! Goodbye to that crazy bonfire of a year last year, 2017 brings a mix of going inward (yin) and expanding outward (yang-fire). 

The Rooster years are known to be filled with integrity and efficiency. Hard work is the key to achieving success in this Chinese New Year. 2017 is a great year to try alternative healing therapies to keep stress at bay so that you can use your potential to the maximum. :)

The Rooster character loves elegance in all things, so refine every arena of your life and every object in it. Lavish your time and attention on completing any task to the best of your ability and take delight in adding small touches of Beauty to each. 

This is not the same thing as decluttering. It is a call to scrutinize absolutely everything that you rely on for life and happiness. How sturdy are your underpinnings–housing, vehicles, savings, etc.? How smoothly do your daily routines flow? How healthy are your sources of food and friendship? This is the year to pour more loving, nurturing qi into the things that truly sustain you.

This yin Fire year means our deeper heart leads the way. Use it for discerning what to keep and what to let go. Expand it by opening up to everyone you encounter throughout your day. Share your feelings about your experiences and ask others to share theirs. Learn to enjoy hearing divergent opinions, realizing that the more variety a community supports with loving kindness and tolerance, the greater its security grows. The more our neighbors feel loved and secure, the safer and happier we all become.

What Are the Purple Dots on Michael Phelps? Cupping Has an Olympic Moment →

More and more athletes are using cupping therapy for pain relief and muscle tension - even the likes of Olympic champion Michael Phelps! He sported his cupping marks this year while competing and it’s making ALL the rounds on the internet. Read about his (and other athletes’) experience with cupping and how it can help improve blood circulation, relieve pain, and relax muscle tissue. I love seeing these old wellness therapies making splashes in the modern world!  

Teething Tea

My 7 month old son has been teething like crazy lately - poor guy is up crying several times each night, chomping at the bit and obviously in a great deal of discomfort. It goes without saying that we are also in great discomfort listening to him and going without sleep ourselves. Morning comes and he is his happy, joyful self again! I came across a recipe for Teething Tea that I’ve been trying the past couple weeks. I drink it myself as I’m breastfeeding him - but you can also give the tea directly to the child by bottle or dropper, and it may work faster that way, too. It tastes very yummy. I also make a pitcher of this tea for everyone at home that has a spoonful of raw honey added to it and my 3 year old calls it “Calming Tea” :) A great staple for toddler tea parties. Lemon Balm, Catnip, Chamomile & Lavender are all soothing herbs that calm irritability and relax the nervous system so it is calming in a true sense, and also good for cooling inflammation. 

Teething or “Calming” Tea:

2 Tbsp dried Lemon Balm

2 Tbsp dried Catnip leaves

2 Tbsp dried Chamomile flowers

2 Tbsp dried Lavender flowers

Place 1 tbsp of mixture into mug or glass jar with 1 C boiling water. Steep for 15-30 minutes (the longer it steeps the stronger it will be - also for very fussy babies try using 2 tbsp per cup). Have mom drink the tea (if nursing) or give to baby via bottle/spoon/dropper 1 oz at a time throughout the day. You can also soak a thin wash cloth in this tea, chill in the fridge, and give to baby to chew on - that’s a big hit! This tea is very safe to take over long periods of time. 

We also use Camilia homeopathic medicine and silicone baby spoons in our house for teething. What about you? Do you have a favorite remedy I’m missing out on?

Getting Sick? My Acute Self-Care Ritual

We all have supplements & vitamins we take on a daily basis for our individual needs… products we swear by and use daily for our health & beauty regimes, but what about when you are dealing with a sudden onset cold, or when you wake up with a golf ball-sized sore throat? At the VERY first signs I may be coming down with something acute - I start a very purposeful, emergency wellness ritual that I have refined over the years. There are so many useful tools for treating a cold or easing acute allergies or ear infections, so as Fräulein Maria would say - these are a few of my favorite things!

Hydrogen Peroxide / I trust using Hydrogen Peroxide almost 100% of the time when I notice an acute cold coming on. I gargle with it, and I also put a few drops down each ear for 5-10 min, then drain onto a towel. You can dilute it by 50%, but I just use it straight and rinse with water after gargling. This is just one of those measures I swear by. It will kill many bacterial microbes and pathogenic viruses that have entered the ear canal. H2O2 is always best to use right away when you notice symptoms in the first 12-24 hours. 

Elderberry, Echinacea, C, Zinc / You can take all these individually, but man that sounds like a lot of pills & I don’t do that very well. So I get these lozenges and have them in the house at all times. They are a powerful blend of healing agents - echinacea, zinc, elderberry & Vitamin C to help reduce the duration of disease and prevent illness from taking hold if you catch it early enough. 

Yin Qiao San herbs / Best Chinese herbs for warding off illness in the initial stages - I take it at the first signs of a sore throat, especially one that feels swollen, hot, raw, or burning. I take 3 capsules 3x/day. 

Raw Garlic Paste / aka my Warrior Wellness Paste. This stuff probably deserves its own post. I mix together 2 cloves of mashed raw garlic, 1 inch of raw grated ginger, 1 big Tbsp raw honey, & ½ tsp turmeric powder into a paste. I use 1 tsp of this paste in a mug of 1 C hot water (I actually put it inside a teaball and pour the water over it like making tea - that way it is pre-strained and you don’t have bits of garlic floating in your mug) and add the juice of ½ lemon to it. I drink this 2x day until the paste is gone. 

What are your self-care rituals? Would love to hear your tried & true remedies! 

Butter Mints

The concept of a butter-mint may sound crazy to some of you… mints made out of butter. Yes, pure butter! There are some recipes that call for a mix of butter & coconut oil or coconut butter… but I prefer the plain old, grass-fed butter variation that lends itself to a very silky, melty texture and pure taste of mint (instead of coconut-mint). But, what the heck are butter mints anyway? Right. Well, they are just little dollops of flavored butter, basically. In this case, flavored with peppermint extract, a bit of raw honey, sea salt, and some raw cacao powder. Very simple. They look like this:

But, why would you just decide to eat some dollops of butter?? Right. So, say you find yourself craving sugar every day. Or say your child is always asking for cookies or sweets - Butter Mints can be a great alternative to these things. It is impossible to eat many at once (I can’t do more than 3) as they are just dollops of healthy fat going in your belly - which fills you up quite fast as the digestion required to break that down takes a longer time than it does for a cracker or sugar cookie. Fat burns longer than sugar - and it also slows down the absorption of sugar so that you enjoy sustained levels of blood sugar instead of spikes. There have now been many studies that show fat doesn’t make you fat… it’s mainly sugar and excessive simple carbohydrates that do that, but beyond the weight issue, healthy fatty acids from grass-fed butter nourish and fuel our brains, establish good hormone health, and increase good cholesterol. I consider butter an essential food group for kids, especially. Read more about just how healthy butter can be here. I keep a jar of these in the freezer for my toddler (and myself too, let’s be honest) and he eats them as “special treats” often - because they are delicious! So, now that you are convinced it’s worth a try, here’s the recipe:

Pure Butter Mints:

  • ½ cup butter (1 stick), organic grass-fed butter is the healthiest! 
  • ¼ tsp. peppermint extract (or more to taste)
  • 2 Tbs. raw honey
  • Small pinch of unrefined sea salt
  • Optional: 1 Tbs. cacao powder for a chocolate version

Bring butter to room temperature, mix all ingredients in a bowl with a spatula until silky smooth and completely mixed. Place butter mixture into a plastic bag or pastry bag and use a pastry tip to squeeze nickel-sized dollops onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (or just cut the corner end off of your plastic bag). Place in refrigerator for at least 2 hours or until set - store in a glass jar in the freezer and eat chilled! 

Thieves Oil

Have you heard the story of the Four Thieves of Marseilles who successfully robbed people afflicted with the bubonic plague in the 14th Century? It’s rumored that their armor was a blend of herbs and oils diluted in white wine vinegar which they doused themselves with before going out & plundering the community… and they never became ill! A modern-day “Thieves Oil” exists today with numerous uses - household cleaning when diluted into a spray bottle, diffusing into the air for immune benefits, massaging on the feet with a carrier oil to help ward off colds and pathogens during flu season, or even using a few drops in a capsule to take orally for your immune system. If your family tends to get their fair share of colds and germs passed around each Winter, consider using a Thieves blend at home for wellness purposes - diffuse this blend for 30 minutes a few times each day in different rooms of the house to clean and purify the air while making your home smell divine. 

Thieves oil blend:

40 drops of Clove Essential Oil

35 drops of Lemon Essential Oil

20 drops of Cinnamon Essential Oil

15 drops of Eucalyptus Essential Oil

10 drops of Rosemary Essential Oil

Can we find Mindfulness in Tech?

My iPhone can be a huge mindless distraction at times and a huge help in others. I’m sure this is the case for most of us these days. I’ve been thinking of ways to make my iPhone work more FOR me than against me lately… so that I’m feeling more of the true usefulness it can offer, rather than the tempting diversions. I’ve come across a few great apps that promote mindfulness and healthy living (beyond your basic Nike & Health fitness apps) and am very happy to share them with you! 

Daily Water: This was just so relevant for me right now I had to download it. It can remind you to drink water / hydrate yourself at different times of day and towards a goal of 8 glasses per day (or however many you want) on average. I set it to remind me 3x a day to drink water - and find that’s more than enough notifications in one day to keep water in my mind  - and mouth. If you have trouble with hydration, I recommend using an app like this for a few weeks to get yourself in the habit of drinking more, then you can delete it! 

Headspace: This is a wonderful mindfulness meditation app for beginners. The free app gives you 10 meditation sessions (they call it the Take 10) that are based in mindfulness of the body and the environment around you. The guide has a nice, relaxed, British accent and his voice is very natural and personable to me. Once you complete your first session, the next one is unlocked for you for the next day - the idea is that starting with 1 meditation, 1x a day, for 10 days will help establish a habit of creating more “headspace” in your life. 

Stop, Breathe & Think / Calm: These are 2 other meditation based apps that I like. Stop, Breathe & Think uses lots of infographics like Headspace but has some nice guided meditations on different topics that may apply to your emotional/mental state - like one on Great Compassion, Gratitude, or Being Present. The guide tends to talk a lot through these sessions - so if you find that a bit much, you can simply use their self-meditation timer that has a lovely gong sound to begin and end your session for the more seasoned user. Calm also has a self-meditation timer, timed guided sessions of any length you may want - 2, 5, 10, 20 minutes - and some nice visual relaxation scenes if you are using it on a laptop or computer. It’s a great break from long hours of computer work! 

Moment: Like I said, the iPhone can provide many distractions and mind-numbing habits. If you find you are checking your phone gratuitously for emails, social media, news, photos, games etc on a chronic basis - consider an app like Moment that will let you know just how many times you checked your phone & how much time you are spending on your device in a given day. Some days will be more than others, but you can start to be more mindful, perhaps, of exactly what you did on your phone and whether it was helping you or hurting you (or others around you). They even have a family plan to monitor the kids phone usage if you feel it’s getting out of control. Their message is “Put down your phone and get back to your life.” Sometimes, I couldn’t agree more! 

As far as apps go, there is a thing as TOO MUCH information - even when it’s trying to be useful or make life more efficient- that can add more stress than benefit to your life. :) So download with care and delete when unnecessary. Oh, the conundrum of technology!