Ways to Alkalize Your Diet

The idea behind an alkaline diet is that the nutrients that are found in supplements, alkalizing foods, and water can bring the body out of an acidic state and bring back balance. Alkalizing vitamins, minerals, foods, and herbs fill the body with new energy, vitality, and encourage better health. Alkaline foods, along with water, must be consumed in order to provide nutrients the body needs to neutralize the acids that are trapped inside the body and the toxins that are in the blood, lymph, tissues, organs, and cells.

When the pH balance (acid versus alkaline) inside the body is ‘out of balance’ the body tries to correct that sensitive pH balance. That process shows up as uncomfortable symptoms, including colds, flues, allergies, diseases, viruses, and bacteria. When the body’s pH level is in balance, the body reaches ideal weight and corrects negative health challenges naturally.
Transitioning to a more alkaline healthy diet requires a shift in attitude towards food. The important point to remember is that small changes go a long way. Add more alkaline foods to your diet gradually.

Here are 7 ways to make alkaline diets benefit you:

• Reduce your consumption of sugar and products made from sugar, including pop, pies, jello, jams and jellies, artificial juices, puddings, doughnuts, corn, syrups, chewing gum, sweetened drinks, cookies, breakfast cereals, liquors, and mixed drinks.
• Avoid processed and man made foods and condiments including ketchup, salad dressings, pickles, luncheon meats, canned fruits, breads, relish, cheese dips, peanut butter, prepared seafood, crackers, canned soups, hot dogs, sausages, and sweetened yogurt.
• Avoid cooking and heating foods and drinks in a microwave.
• Avoid or limit dairy, meats, fried foods, and fast foods.
• Increase your intake of raw vegetables and raw fresh fruits. You should include raw vegetables or vegetables with every meal. If your breakfast is only toast or cereal, stop eating toast and take fresh fruits or vegetable juices instead. If your lunches consist of sandwiches, substitute it with a fruit or vegetable salad. Have a large salad before you eat an entrée at dinner.
• Grains are an essential part of a balanced diet and are important in maintaining the alkaline balance in the body. Grains are a great source of vitamins, minerals, and important nutrients, including folic acid, fiber, carbohydrates, and antioxidants. By eating grains you can eat less but feel full. Grains should compromise about 20% of your diet.
• Drink at least half of your body weight in ounces of good quality water each day.

Creating the proper alkaline balance within your body will bring you increased quality of life. You’ll start seeing immediate improvements in your health. Your energy will increase. Your concentration will be stronger. You’ll build strength, stamina, and resistance to diseases. Your entire body will function more efficiently just like it was meant to do.

When Did You Decide to Put Yourself Last?

You feel exhausted, washed out and empty.  You've got nothing more to give.  You're waiting, hoping and praying for someone to whisk you away on a holiday, a very long holiday.

You are about to discover the ultimate rejuvenation formula to change your energy levels and
well being forever.

Imagine how amazing you are going to feel within as little as one week. There will be no more wishing, hoping and waiting, and no more putting yourself last.

Priority You Time Shouldn’t Happen By Accident : Promise yourself from this day forward not to let “priority you” time happen only by accident. Make a wise rejuvenation choice from this day forward to create daily, weekly and monthly “priority you” time. Take a stand. You deserve some time out, you deserve some fun, you deserve some space, your deserve some pampering and you deserve regular moments to rest, repair and rejuvenate yourself.

Stop putting yourself last. It’s time to start receiving more energy in than you are giving out.

The Priority “You Time” Formula:Go grab your diary now and allocate the following priority you times into your calendar.

• 1/2 an hour a day plus
• 1/2 day a week plus
• 1 day a month

Priority You Time Is All About Receiving:Priority you time is all about receiving and NOT giving energy. Put yourself first and:

• make your heart sing
• refuel your energy levels
• untangle your stress and tension held in your body

Even if you have absolutely no idea at this point what to fill your priority you time with …… it doesn’t matter. Pretend, guess or make it up. Soon life will reveal or remind you what makes your heart sing.

6 Princlipes of Transcendent Beauty

It seems to be hard-wired into our genes to want to be attractive and beautiful. The cosmetic industry knows it, and so do cosmetic surgeons–and their profits continue to pour in. But there are secrets to an ageless and infinite beauty that is within reach of all of us, without makeup, chemical peels, botox, or the surgeon’s knife.
These six principles of transcendent beauty are worth being passed along to your friends: they are real keepers. Read them here:
1. You must feel beautiful before you can look beautiful.
As the old saying goes, “There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.” When we connect with our inner beauty (which we can do with meditation), we connect with an ageless, infinite, and divine beauty that exists within all of us.
2. Get past the ordeal by mirror.
We need to get past the compulsion that drives us to root out our tiny imperfections and then feel guilt and shame when we see our reflections as inadequate. We need to get rid of negative feelings that cloud our vision of ourselves and instead begin to see ourselves the way our loved ones see us. And it also wouldn’t hurt to get rid of all our magnifying mirrors, which magnify “flaws”, and instead use lighting that enhances our reflections when we look into our non-magnifying mirrors!
3. Take responsibility for your own happiness.
Think of your inner self as a lighthouse standing steady with a constant beam despite the buffeting of the surrounding ocean. How powerful it is to envision your inner self as a sanctum protected from the vagaries of the outer world! It can also be empowering to analyze our situation, choose to be happy despite the aspects you can’t control, and take positive steps to change what you can control.
4. Live in the present.
One of the often overlooked ways to recognize the beauty within you is to concentrate on living in the present and to avoid basing your actions and feelings on thought and memories of the past. If you can become aware of this tendency, even for just for brief moments during your life, you’ll come to understand that others’ reactions to you are the result of what you project. If you want to elicit positive reactions from those around you, you need to express positive emotions and perform affirmative acts. From the beauty viewpoint, living in the present means accepting yourself as you are while not denying yourself as you were or might be.
5. Surround yourself with beauty.
Surrounding yourself with beauty–both tangible and intangible–is a time-honored technique for nurturing your soul. Keep living plants and animals in your home. Clothe yourself in beautiful garments–or, rather, garments that make you feel beautiful. Keep company with people who elevate you rather than bring you down–people who love you and show their love. Whether you believe in fortunes or fate, your life is yours to shape. And the most important and positive decision you can make is to bring beauty into your life.
6. Do at least one thing a day that inspires you.
We draw oxygen from the air we breathe, but we draw life from our passions. Keep your passions at the center of your days, whatever they may be–music, sports, cooking, reading, or writing. Whatever feeds your soul and makes it sing.

Adapted from Face Value, by Hema Sundaram (Rodale Press, 2003).

No Expectations Leave Us with Endless Possibilities!!!

We expect things in life. We expect things to be as they were in our childhood, the way we were brought up. We expect things to be the way we want them to be, the way we feel things should be. We expect things to be the way we want them to be in our love life, our careers, our families, our vacations and our relationship with others. We are conditioned to expect certain things to go a certain way.

The greater you expect things to be, the harder it is to deal with things that do not go your way! Having no expectations is one of the greatest lessons we can learn. This is not an easy concept to wrap your mind around. But what happens if you let go of the expectations? Are you ready to forget about what you think you want, and learn more about the endless possibilities that are available to you?

Here’s some tips on letting go of those expectations that you are carrying with you:

• Allow change to happen freely. All be itself.
• Let go of old ideas. It’s time to grasp new ones anyway.
• Embrace new ideas, no matter how different they are from yours. Learn that everyone can be right.
• Conflicting thoughts are not a threat. They can be a window of opportunity. Ask yourself “what can I learn?”
• Go into EVERY situation with an open mind. And this means every single one of them.
• Follow a new idea or opportunity where IT leads you, NOT where you want it to go. Do not form an expectation ahead of time.
• Take a new situation, one day at a time. Live in the moment with the new opportunities that are presented to you, just let them happen.
• Be available mentally, emotionally, spiritually for an approach that may be different than yours.
• Find the positive in EVERY situation that is presented to you. Why was this situation brought to me?
• Learn the lesson the Universe is tossing your way.

Progress is not possible unless people embrace new ideas, mind sets, skills and expectations to match the opportunities afforded by the introduction of something new to them! By allowing yourself to be open to ANYTHING that is new to you and giving it a chance, you can find your life going in the direction of new adventures and endless possibilities!

Try it today!

The Many Health Benefits of Laughter

What is better than a contagious giggle that goes beyond your control? Laughter is just a natural, easy to share, and spontaneous reaction that its no wonder it is so good for you. Laughter truly makes you feel better.

So, just what can laughter do for your health? It can:

• Lower blood pressure
• Increase vascular blood flow and oxygenation of the blood
• Give a workout to the diaphragm and abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg, and back muscles
• Reduce certain stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline
• Increase the response of tumor- and disease-killing cells such as Gamma-interferon and T-cells
• Defend against respiratory infections–even reducing the frequency of colds–by immunoglobulon in saliva.
• Increase memory and learning; in a study at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, humor during instruction led to increased test scores
• Improve alertness, creativity, and memory

According to humor expert, William Fry, M.D. of Stanford University, humor and creativity work in similar ways by creating relationships between two totally disconnected items, you engage the whole brain.

Humor works quickly. Less than a half-second after exposure to something funny, and electrical wave moves through the higher brain functions of the cerebral cortex. The left hemisphere analyzes the words and structures of the joke; the right hemisphere “gets” the joke; the visual sensory area of the occipital lobe creates images; the limbic (emotional) system makes you happier; and the motor sections make you smile or laugh.

So let’s laugh. Let's get a good laugh going. What makes you laugh? Go ahead, share your best in the comments below. Spread laughter and good health all at one time!

The Healing Secrets of Color

From ancient times, healers from all over the world have used color to harmonize internal energies so that the entire body is in better balance. This leads to greater overall health and well-being. Now, modern research has agreed by concluding that color can have a positive affect on our state of mind and overall health. Here is a list of common illnesses and complaints with the colors best suited to assist in healing them.

• Red: anemia, cold, leukemia, numbness.
• Orange: alcoholism, arthritis, common cold, constipation, depression, fatigue, gallstones, gout, kidney and liver disease, muscular stiffness, ulcers.
• Yellow: arthritis, jaundice, rheumatism.
• Green: angina, chest pain, gastric ulcer, heart disease, peptic ulcer, trauma.
• Turquoise: abscess, acne, asthma, boils, cold sore, dermatitis, eczema, fatigue, fever, hay fever, pneumonia, stings, stress, swelling, tension.
• Blue: anxiety, acne, asthma, backache, blisters, bruises, burns, cough, cramp, dermatitis, earache, emphysema, gallstones, hernia, herpes, hiccups, influenza, itching, laryngitis, PMS, sneezing, sores, sprains, stiffness, stings, stress, sunburn, tonsillitis, toothache, wheezing.
• Violet: Conjunctivitis, earache, menopause, mental illness, myopia, neuralgia, paranoia, warts.
• Magenta: Fainting, headache, migraine, morning sickness, nausea, shock, stroke, vomiting.

How to Use Color for Healing

• Simply visualize or imagine the color in your mind as you bathe or lie quietly on your bed, in order to restore your well-being.
• Purchase a colored light bulb in the shade you need. Insert into your bathroom fixture or portable lamp (making sure it is a safe distance from the water) and use it while you take a healing bath.
• Use natural food coloring in the bathwater. Several drops won’t affect your skin and will tint the water to a gentle hue.
• Burn a candle in the appropriate color as you meditate, bathe, or simple lie quietly.
• Eat foods of the same colors that you are wishing to work with.

It is not recommend that you use color therapy in place of medical attention, but rather as a compliment to your treatment plan.
　
　
　

12 Ways to Use Essential Oils in Your Daily Life

Aromatherapy is the use of essential oils for health and healing. It is gaining popularity as across the US as we continue to search for alternative and complimentary therapies. Many people are familiar with the term aromatherapy, but really aren’t sure how to use it in practical applications. Here are a few examples of how you can incorporate them into your daily life.

1. Diffuse lemon or orange in air with a ceramic or electric diffuser to fragrance the air.
2. Facial steam - add a few drops of lavender oil to steaming water, remove from heat source, place your face over the bowl and drape your head with a towel.
3. Bath water - add 4-10 drops of your favorite oil to your bath or jacuzzi.
4. Skin spray - add 4-10 drops of lavender, geranium, or tea tree oil to 2 oz. of distilled water in a misting bottle then spray skin for a fresh uplift to the day.
5. Linen spray to freshen sheets & towels - same as the skin spray but mix 20-30 drops to 2 oz. and spray your sheets. Jasmine and rose essential oils work well.
6. Room spray - same as linen spray but the concentration is 50-75 drops to 2 oz. of distilled water. Orange gives a crisp clean scent.
7. Hand or foot bath - add 10 - 12 drops of peppermint (to revive) or lavender (to relax) oil to warm water with 2 tablespoons of Epsom salts. Soak your hands or feet.
8. Massage oil is easily made by adding 10-20 drops of oil to 1 oz. of carrier oil (such as grapeseed, olive, or sweet almond). For tired, achy muscles, use rosemary or lavender.
9. Put a few drops of eucalyptus oil on a cloth by your pillow at night to help breathing when struck by a cold or flu.
10. Hot compresses are wonderful on sore, tired muscles. Add 5-10 drops of oil to hot (not boiling) water. Soak a cloth in the water, wring it out and place on the affected area. Repeat as needed. Again, lavender and rosemary are good choices.
11. Dab tea tree on acne pimples to help clear up the infections.
12. Revive old potpourri mixes by adding 10-20 drops to the mix and stirring.

Remember, that most essential oils must be diluted before use directly on your skin. Lavender and tea tree are the only two oils that can be applied directly on the skin. There are many excellent resources online that discuss essential oils and their effects on the body, spirit and mind.