Posts Tagged ‘DIY-care’

The Positive Energy Bubble Meditation is one of many self-care techniques you can use to during therapy to shore up your positive emotional responses against inward or outward feelings of fear and negativity.

Self-Care: Essential Oils for Emotional Support

Safety note: Please realize that self-treatment has its limitations. You must seek professional help for any chronic, lingering or severe emotional or psychological symptoms you are experiencing. The use of essential oils for emotional support is discussed here as just one piece of the pie in your healing, as complementary care only. In addition, this website promotes the safe use of essential oils by these methods only: inhalation, intermittent diffusing and safe levels of dilution in a carrier oil for use on the skin. This website does NOT promote the ingestion of essential oils.

Can essential oils be used for emotional support? Is there evidence to back these claims? There is a small, but growing, body of research indicating that essential oils have a positive effect on mood. And research has also focused on the psychophysiological effects of essential oils at the molecular level as well. The studies indicate that there are positive effects and better designed and additional studies are needed.

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Arnica Oil Infused Salve for Muscle Pain

My work can be very analytical and intense, so I offset this by exercise and engaging in pleasant hobbies.

Here’s another easy remedy for you to make for simple comfort in everyday life. Make this salve for use in your home and to give to friends, too! Making salves with plant essences is a lot like cooking.  So, if you like to cook as a hobby this is a meditative fun way to pass a rainy day at home!

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Weekend retreats are just great. Getting away from your responsibilities, the phone, the devices, the social whirlwind, is a nice reset for your body and mind. The relaxation response has time to fully express itself, the hormones wind down, the muscles change from rock to softness, your neck and shoulders relax.  Puts your life in perspective. All these things that seem so important, well….you realize you are ok and all of our modern trappings don’t make the person. Good for your body, mind and soul. Do you wish you could reset more often?   Yes, those weekend retreats are quite a commitment of time and money.

You can create a nice DIY Wellness Retreat in your own home.  Some planning ahead helps you focus so that your weekend can be a haven where you are a human “being” in your home instead of a human “doing”.

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Clinical Aromatherapy

One of my life long hobbies is studying healing plants in the form of herbals, essential oils and flower essences.  I studied for my aromatherapy certification in 2014 with Liz Fulcher at her Aromatic Wisdom Institute in Pennsylvania. It was a wonderful course and she mentored me further into the secret life of plants. I discovered a whole network of wise women working with plant secrets. It was a great experience.

Anyway, here’s a recipe for a soothing congestion salve to help open up stuffed nasal passages I made for a friend who has three little ones who often get sick all at once, passing it around to each other!

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A definition and overview of DBT’s Distress Tolerance can be found here.

So, the basic foundation of DBT is to think about the idea that pain and suffering are part of life and can’t be avoided or removed. And learning to detach from the situation and not add more pain by judging yourself and others for what is.

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Today begins my 30 Days of Gratitude.

Day #1: I’m grateful for my good health. After fighting for my health for almost 2 years, I feel good once again and I’m grateful for every day that my body is healthy and functioning.

You can follow along for the next 30 days on my social media accounts for all 30 of the Gratitude Posts!

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Good self-care  (istock/kzenon)

 Happy Mother’s Day!

Be kind to yourself today.

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Evidence-based mindbody practices help alleviate pain, depression and anxiety (Istock/Zen)

This year, 2014, Maasumeh Kaviani, Faculty Member at the Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in Iran, and her team of research scholars conducted a study to see the effects of using lavender aromatherapy during childbirth on pain intensity perception, duration of labor, maternal contentment and Apgar scores. The researchers found the use of the lavender aromatherapy lowered the perception of pain, improved maternal contentment, but did not reduce the duration of labor. Safely using lavender aromatherapy in the birthing room is inexpensive, has no side effects and may be a holistic way to help women manage their births.

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#lifelist Birdwatching!

I’m a lifelong birdwatcher. I started when I was 12, on Long Island where I grew up. There was a magical park that was about a forty-five minute walk for me. Grant Park. I used to go next door into the middle school field, walk through the back field, crawl down the “rabbit hole” under the chain link fence there, into the apartment complex parking lot, through the parking lot and walk on over to the park. Can you imagine a 12 year old girl taking this walk herself nowadays? I loved the freedom! I felt like Tammy Sawyer!

I was fascinated by this other world, the misty lake, the magical marshy areas around it and the mysterious wood, populated by fairies and other magical creatures: salamanders, snakes and the birds!

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