Mar
5
For some common sense about face lifts we turn to the ancient art of yoga to discover that your facial muscles are like any other muscle – exercise tones them, and regular practice can keep sagging jowls at bay, your forehead smooth and eyelids in place. Who knew! Well, I jest, but I was happy to find this simple routine of facial exercises laid out within easy reach of a bookmark for an on-the-spot workout. And they do double duty by relieving tension in your face, jaws, neck and shoulders. And speaking of relaxing, my cosmetician tells me that the main benefit of a facials is usually from the 20 minute massage, which, like exercise, increases blood and lymph circulation in the skin to stimulate nutrient transport and flush toxins from the skin. At my local salon I can opt to only do a 30 minute face (lifting) massage, which includes a light cleansing, peel and a good quality facial cream. It’s always instructive how much moisturizer your skin will absorb with massage helping drive it in. Try it for yourself.
Mar
3
Soft Drinks: America’s Other Drinking Problem
March 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
Many women who diligently watch their daily intake of calcium from greens, dairy products and supplements to protect their bone health, are unaware that they lose the benefits of their careful attention when they reach for a can of soda – while also increasing their risk for diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses. This article is reprinted with the permission of nutritionist and health educator Dr. Judith Valentine, Ph.D., who is delivering a program on bone health and osteoporosis Women Doing It For Ourselves: How to Build Strong Bones for Lifelong Vitality with us on aheadofthecurveatmidlife in April. To be on our mailing list for this program, sign in here. You’ll receive our free report, The Selling of Osteoporosis, and we’ll keep you in the loop. Read more
Feb
28
Defining Moments: Act on Your Insights
February 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
I found this beautifully written essay simple and powerful. Psychotherapist Mel Schwartz describes insights as initiators of change – but only if we pay homage to them. As forerunners of our growth, he says, they need our attention. If we don’t commit to our fragile new insights, we simply aren’t taking ourselves seriously enough.
From time to time, many of us tend to experience an occasional insight. An insight is simply the ability to change our filter and look at things differently. In moments of insight, there’s a sudden burst of clarity where there had previously been static; there is an epiphany of movement. It’s the a-ha moment. When we are firmly entrenched in our beliefs and rooted in our certainty, we’re not typically open to insights. To have an insight we need to temporarily suspend our beliefs and open to new Read more
Feb
26
Letting Go: A Practice to Forgive, Forget and Heal Hurts
February 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
While you’re reviewing your intentions for the year and deciding what you want to let go of and what you want to take with you this year, releasing a hurt, thought, injury or old issue may well be on your agenda. Use this simple process as a tool to help you. A ritual is a series of focused actions taken with a specific goal in mind. Use this process to analyze, specify and release a hurt, thought, injury or issue in your life. Part of the extensive site of the Love and Forgiveness campaign by the Fetzer Institute, its series of beautiful panels set to music takes you through a powerful ritual of focused questions and thoughts with the goal of helping you to let go and forgive. Leave the past in the past and free more of your energy to help shape an open future of possibility.
Feb
24
Eckhart Tolle TV: Creating a New Earth Together
February 24, 2010 | 1 Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
Eckhart Tolle, the runaway bestselling author of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, and The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, continues to inspire with his stated goal of creating an online community intended to help usher in a new state of consciousness into the world. A long time in the making, you can tune into Eckhart Tolle TV with a monthly membership that gives you live guided meditations, access to a private seminar series, an online community to chat with, and short question and answer clips of Eckhart answering member’s questions. You can also submit your own questions for upcoming recordings.
Feb
22
An Eater’s Manual for Anyone Who Eats
February 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto put forth three simple “rules” for eating healthily while being mindful of the impact your food choices make on the planet: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” His latest book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual uses these categories, but adds what he’s learned about the psychology of food and eating. “The games we play with ourselves about food, about how we confuse lots of food with lots of food experience. They’re not the same thing. You can have an intense food experience with less food. Europeans have intense food experiences but eat less food.” Pollan questions the premise that science is the only authority we have on matters having to do with food in our bodies. Long before nutrition science, culture guided us, with what’s now relegated to old wives’ tales. His goal is to resurrect that cultural wisdom, and the book is full of the rules of our grandmothers’ – 64 of them. Read more
Feb
20
Tips from Chinese Medicine on Staying Healthy During Deep Winter
February 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
In Winter’s Emotional Weather it’s suggested that winter is a time when energy retreats deep inside the body. According to traditional Chinese medicine, lifestyle choices should shift with the changing seasons, and winter is a time to explore the interior landscape of your body as well as your thoughts, feelings and aspirations. Physically, stretching, yoga practice, focused pilates, or Tai Chi practices open the bodymind through increasing flexibility, and strengthen and stabilize joints, tendons and ligaments. They help counter the prevailing contraction of mind and body, gently bringing to the surface thoughts, feelings and memories stored in muscles, making them accessible for review, release and transformation. If outdoors exertions are your way of recharging, your deep work may emerge in your dreams. Read more
Feb
18
Carolyn Myss: Why You Settle For Less
February 18, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
A central dilemma to come to terms with in so many midlife passages Carolyn Myss tackles the ‘spiritual stickiness’ of settling for less than what you want, in this piece on Oprah. Myss bypasses the easy answer of looking at ‘settling’ as a passive choice that lets you off the hook for the choices you’ve made that have given you what (you say) you don’t want. But then she digs deeper. How she resolves this dilemma reminds me of Werner Erhard’s admonition that “happiness is choosing what you’ve got.” Every choice does matter – even the passive ones, she says, and deep in your gut, you know it: “I would never have chosen this, but I am so glad I’m here.” On the mark. Read more
Feb
16
Vitamin D is in the news a lot, and it’s wise at this stage of life to pay attention. Why? Because vitamin D deficiency has been linked to many chronic diseases that tend to emerge later in life – from cancers, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and depression, to fibromyalgia, chronic muscle pain, bone loss, and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis. Why is vitamin D implicated in so many diseases? Because of how it controls and regulates gene function. By reducing cancer- promoting cellular growth, it’s a potent cancer inhibitor: vitamin D deficiency is linked to colon, prostate, breast and ovarian cancers. It also acts on receptors that send messages to genes. Optimal levels reduce inflammation to boost your mood, ease muscle aches and pains, and fibromyalgia. Read more
Feb
14
This Valentine’s Day, Develop the Second Most Important Quality in Your Relationship
February 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Posted by: Kathleen Daniel
When asked what the second most important quality to develop in a relationship is, beyond mutual recognition of spiritual awareness, counselors, teachers and author of several books including their classics, A Shared Heart, Models of Love & The Heart’s Wisdom, Joyce Vissell, RN, MS & Barry Vissell, MD would respond with a litany of qualities like appreciation, gratitude, understanding, sharing ideas, making the relationship a priority, a sense of humor, a healthy sexual relationship and a shared vision – until a couple in one of their workshop showed them that taking responsibility for your own pain rather than blaming it upon your partner underlies your ability to develop all the other qualities. Well worth a read, this excerpt is the gist of their insight: “Projecting your anger and pain upon your partner is a burden. … It is so tempting in a relationship to Read more
