Deep Belly / Diaphragmatic Breathing
Proper breathing is slow, deep and rhythmic. Deep means that the initial movement is from the abdomen. When you breathe, the movement starts low in the abdomen and then moves up to the chest. Are you shallow breathing? To check your breathing, place one hand on your low abdomen and one on your chest and take a deep breath. What do you notice? If your chest rises up first you are probably using your neck muscles to breathe, not your diaphragm. Incorrect breathing can contribute to neck and shoulder tension, shortness of breath, digestive concerns, gastric reflux and heart burn
Mindful eating: a how-to guide to feeding ourselves well
How you eat is as important as what you eat. Feeding yourself well is actually pretty darn easy and will help you to enjoy your food more! Ever stop to wonder what happens in your body when you have a sit-down meal as opposed to dining while multi-tasking or eating on-the-run to soccer practice? Physical effects of eating mindfully: Taking the time to dine resets the nervous system to “Rest and Digest” mode. In physiological terms, the Parasympathetic nervous system governs digestion and only operates in relaxation mode, as opposed to the “Fight or Flight” stress mode of the Sympathetic
When life gives you lemons…you’ve just been shown the bright side!
As a long-time lover of lemons, I never quite got the full meaning of when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I fail to see how getting a lemon is a down-on-your-luck, Charlie Brown experience like not getting picked for the baseball team. I guess the promise is that this sour thing could potentially be transformed into something positive through ingenuity or the right attitude. However, for me a lemon IS a gift, not something to overcome! Lemons are uplifting. They have: An invigorating scent that shouts out: Fresh! Clean! Just Picked! Freshly Squeezed! A gladdening color. A stimulating taste.
Lemon Balm: A powerful herbal medicine for our time
Melissa officionalis - Lemon Balm: Physical distancing and washing your hands are absolutely critical, but we must not forget that a strong immune system is fundamental for protecting our bodies from infection in the first place. We all need to focus on the basic pillars: proper nutrition, sleep, and gut health- these are critical for maintaining our wellbeing right now. In Naturopathic medicine practice, our goal is to “treat the person” not the disease or condition. We focus on the “terrain” more than the “organism”. This means we know that certain things make our terrain more inhospitable to infection and
Ume Plum Vinegar
This is a brilliant red, tart and tangy japanese vinegar made from the venerable umeboshi plum and shiso leaves. The umeboshi plums are fermented: they are sprinkled with sea salt so the juice is drawn out and soaked in shiso leaves. Shiso is an herb that is related to mint, but has a slight lemony taste. Besides adding a beautiful red color and flavor to umeboshi, shiso has strong antibacterial and preservative qualities ALKALINIZING! Now, although ume is acidic tasting (it is a vinegar after all!) , once it is in the body, it is actually alkalinizing (just like apple
Chia Seeds! (Salvia Hispanica)
These are the ultimate power food tiny wholefood of the legendary marathon running Tarahumara Indians of copper canyon in Mexico. Here’s some info to support this lofty status: Highest level of omega 3 (EFA=Essential fatty acids) in the plant kingdom. EFAs are great for brain, heart health, weight management, are anti-inflammatory) 2 TBSP chia seeds have 5 grams of ALA! as a comparison: 4 oz salmon= 2.09 gm, 2 TBSP walnuts= 1.1gm **unlike flax, chia seeds don’t need to be ground to get EFAS**- stable because they are so high in anti-oxidants 20 % high quality protein: 2 grams/ 2
Soothing Congee
Congee is a wonderfully soothing and easy to digest dish with Eastern Medicine origins. It’s essentially a very creamy medicinal porridge/soup. The ultimate warm and nourishing “get well” meal, congee acts as a tonic to a weakened or deficient system as it’s easy for the body to break down and assimilate its nutrients. The soup’s ingredients themselves act as demulcents: soothing and anti-inflammatory to the mucosa that lines our respiratory passages and digestive tract, which require particular tenderness when we are dealing with a viral or bacterial infection. Congee is very simple to make. While it has a similar consistency
REST AND DIGEST | 5 FOOD RULES for Charming your Body into Happiness.
The Food Mood Connection We are approaching the winter season which is an internal time of year, we aren’t being distracted by long days, blasting sun, so it gives us an opportunity (whether we are fond of this or not!) to look inside. Like many things in life, when we dig a little deeper, we get closer to the source – in medicine, we can get more in the neighbourhood of the underlying root cause. The source of good health-wellness-vitality, or the root cause of imbalance or disease. Just over a week ago, I held some workshops that looked at
