Wellness Blog
Auto-immune diseases affect more than 23 million Americans, making them the third most common category of illness after cancer and heart disease. Some of the most common auto-immune conditions include rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, lupus, Hashimoto’s thyroid disease, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, and asthma.
And the incidence of these diseases are on the rise. Since the 1950s, the number of people with celiac’s disease has increase 4 times, lupus rates have tripled, and type 1 diabetes has increased 23 percent in the last decade.
First of all, let me just give a quick definition of what an auto-immune condition is so that we are all on the same page. Auto-immune diseases are disorders where, instead of focusing on attacking things that are invading the body like viruses, bacteria and other pathogens, the immune system actually starts targeting the body’s own tissue.
So what is behind this increase in various auto-immune conditions? What can we do to help make sure we don’t develop one of these illnesses?
In a nutshell, the increase in auto-immune conditions has a lot to do with changes in our environment in the last 100-200 years. With the rise of antibiotics and anti-bacterial products, our immune system is exposed to less frequent challenges that it needs to fight off and defend us from. While this might sound like a good thing at first, those challenges actually help train the immune system to do its job properly. It is interesting to note that auto-immune conditions very rarely occur in poorer nations with different hygiene and sanitation standards.
In addition, things like antibiotics and anti-bacterial products kill off the diversity of the GOOD bacteria in our bodies as well as the bad.
So one of the things that we can do to help decrease our likelihood of developing an auto-immune disease is to try and avoid taking antibiotics unless they are truly necessary and to not use anti-bacterial products. Give your immune system the chance to actually work to defend your body so it gets the training it needs.
If you are curious about this topic and want to learn more, I’d love for you to join me on Monday February 29th for a FREE webinar on the rise of allergies and auto-immune conditions. Registration is simple- just click here and input your email!
After working on painting and decorating my new office space, I’m excited to share a few pictures with you! I especially love the soft and warm yellow walls, the eggplant chairs, the soothing fountain AND I bet you’ll love the heated treatment table!!
Now through February 29th, take 25% off your first session with me! Call me at 503-347-0258 or email lyn (at) heart-fire-healing.com to schedule today!
What makes BodyTalk different from Western Medicine? What makes it different from other treatments and approaches?
Let’s use a simple example as a starting point… Let’s say you have a bad headache that is lingering on and on… You go to the doctor and what happens? More than likely you are given some pain medicine to help with the headache and that is that.
But think about how many different reasons there could be causing that headache- a food allergy, hormonal imbalance, a misalignment of your spine, stress… those are just the first few things that came to mind for me when thinking about this example. Even though there are a vast number of possible causes of your headache, more than likely you will simply be treated with the same pain medicine. Yes, if the headache continues on and on, tests might be ordered to try and figure out the physiological cause but it is possible you might just continue to receive pain meds even when they know the cause.
In a BodyTalk treatment, we are much more interested in the unique cause of YOUR headache. Is it because you keep eating a food that you are allergic to? Or is it because you hate your current job and dread going to work every day? Or is it caused by your fear that your spouse is going to leave you? YOUR story is unique and so therefore the BodyTalk session you receive to address your particular concern will be unique.
Even many other complementary and alternative approaches to healing often have a standard way of working with a particular problem. A chiropractor will look at how the alignment of your spine might be causing your headache and treat it from that perspective while an acupuncturist will often check your pulses and work with the energy meridians to resolve the headache.
While these treatments can be very helpful and beneficial, they do not integrate together the wide variety of perspectives that the BodyTalk System does- Chinese medicine, bioenergetic psychology, Ayurveda, the latest in Western science (including your microbiome) and BodyTalk is really the only system I know of that asks your body and mind what it specifically needs to address YOUR specific issue.
Are you curious about what BodyTalk can do for you? If so, now through February 29, 2016 I’m offering you 25% off your first session with me. Call me at 503-347-0258 to schedule!
Today’s post is another vulnerable one, drawing on current experiences in my personal life. 2015 was a rough year for me. It was probably one of the roughest years I’ve had… not THE roughest but it definitely ranked up there…
Other than getting married to my love, there were lots of very challenging things that happened in my life last year. Last spring, my husband was dealing with depression and anxiety due to a horrible boss who was harassing him and the situation led him to have to be off work on short term disability for a number of months. Watching the man I love have panic attacks and be in a depressed state was not easy for me. Sometimes I think watching someone you care about struggle can feel harder than struggling yourself.
It also wasn’t easy having him be home all the time. I work from home many days when I’m not seeing in-person clients and so having him here really felt like it threw things off with my routine, focus, and productivity. Fortunately he got the support he needed and improved and was able to get back to work (and his boss was moved into another position so he returned to work with a new boss!).
Our much anticipated wedding happened in early October and that was magical. It was truly a beautiful day and we had a beautiful honeymoon together. October was a great month for us and it felt like things were finally in a positive space and life was moving forward. My heart-fire was sparked up again!
Then, on November 8, we were rear-ended in a car accident. I experienced some whiplash but my husband developed more than just minor whiplash. He had severe pain in his feet, making walking even 100 feet agonizing for him. I was pushed into the role of being his caretaker since he could hardly stand or walk. The severe pain lasted over a month but he is now finally doing much better.
So what does this post have to do with living a heart-fire life? What does it have to do with you?
I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting in the past few weeks. While I started 2015 feeling like it would be a great year for me and I would continue to grow my passion and purpose through my work, circumstances along the way felt like a detour. Most recently, being my husband’s care giver and having to go with him to countless medical appointments, drive him everywhere, and do pretty much everything around the house left me feeling exhausted and with little time to focus on my work.
For me, my work with my clients is not just a “job”… it is my purpose, my passion, my joy, a big part of my meaning and my “why” in life and as that has had to be in the back seat, I find my heart-fire feeling like it is dwindling. I have felt like I have not been doing what I am meant to do with my life.
The other pattern that I noticed last year was that being in a committed relationship pushed me into a pattern of not prioritizing my own needs and desires. I share this because I think many women struggle with this. As women, it is easy to put ourselves last, to take care of everyone first and only when that is done to take care of ourselves. I stopped doing many of the things that I would do as part of my self-care routine when I was single, not because my husband asked me to or expected me to but because I started making myself less of a priority.
What is heart-fire living?
To me, it is waking up feeling energized, excited and raring to go for the day ahead. It is feeling fully alive, passionate, and connected to my deeper self. It is really living, not just going through the motions.
I have not made certain things that fill up my cup and fan the flames of my heart-fire (like meditation, yoga, and time in nature) a priority for myself and as a result, I can feel a difference in my body, mind, and spirit.
I believe in walking my talk and practicing what I share with my clients but I have found that harder to do with all the circumstances in my life and with adjusting to living with my now husband.
For me, 2016 means making those things that keep my heart-fire strong a priority. It means getting back to daily meditation, finding my yoga practice again, and taking more quiet time to listen to my inner knowing.
What does heart-fire living mean to you? And what is your heart asking you for in 2016?
As of January 15th, my office will have a new location! I will be relocating my office to 6055 E Burnside Street (inside Colour on Burnside).
The new location has easy access of I-84 and offers much easier street parking!
I’m very excited to get the space ready in the next few weeks and to start seeing clients there very soon! I will have Saturday access and am possibly going to offer appointments 1-2 Saturdays a month.
To celebrate, I’m offering you 25% off your next BodyTalk session when you schedule by the end of February! Call me at 503-347-0258 to book today!
Today’s post is another transparent and vulnerable one for me. As my husband continues to deal with a great deal of pain after we were rear-ended last month, I have been busy driving him to a wide variety of appointments and taking care of him. And being a care giver definitely isn’t an easy task. The number of times I have found myself in tears or feeling overwhelmed during the past few weeks has been quite a large number.
This week I was planning to go to one of my regular networking groups for a holiday luncheon but when yesterday rolled around, I decided not to go. The reason was quite simple… I have been in a very emotional and overwhelmed space of late and as an introvert, it is even harder for me to go out in a group of people who are happily celebrating the holidays and pretend that I am cheerful.
So I gave myself permission to stay home and do what felt more nurturing for me. If I went, I would have felt like I had to put a smile on my face and pretend that all was ok with me when in reality, right now is a very difficult time for my husband and I. I really dislike how pretending to be happy and ok feels because it is NOT real and I feel like a fraud.
I’m sharing this in my post because I know the holidays can bring up a wide range of emotions for many of us. We have expectations from family and friends about how we are “supposed to” show up to gatherings and events and be filled with holiday cheer. But the reality is sometimes we are going through a hard time and we don’t want to go be around a bunch of cheerful, happy people and put a fake smile on our faces.
I support you in making the right choice for yourself. Whether that is choosing to not go to a gathering or activity you don’t feel up for or going and being honest and transparent that everything is not perfectly cheerful and great in our world, do what feels right to YOU. Don’t feel pressured by anyone else to meet their expectations or to pretend that just because it is Christmas that you are in a cheery holiday mood.
This, my friends, is my holiday gift to you. Be true to yourself and your needs first and foremost and give yourself permission to feel sad or down if that is how you are feeling this holiday.
November was not an easy month for me. My husband and I were in an auto accident on November 8th and he has been in a significant amount of pain as a result. I have only had a lesser degree of back pain but he has had so much pain in his feet that he hasn’t been able to walk.
Now I am not one of those practitioners who hides that I have a real life with real struggles. I personally believe it is important for my clients to understand that I also have challenges, hard times, and frustrations just like they do. So in the interest of continuing to be open, honest, and vulnerable, I am writing this post.
But I am also writing this post because even in this dark time, I see the wisdom of our bodies. Our body’s are amazingly intelligent. And that is what I would like to share more about with you today.
Shortly after the accident, I developed a dry cough. Mostly it came on at night and kept me from getting great sleep. But then it started to get worse and I went into coughing fits that made me get up out of bed and try and calm down what was going on.
I wasn’t sick (even though some might have thought that). I felt fine- no other symptoms of a cold- just this obnoxious cough. So I started to tune into the cough and try and understand what it was trying to tell me.
Well the cough would get worse when I talked about stressful topics. And it would get worse when I was holding in what I really needed to say to my husband about certain things. So I started trying to voice what was going on for me and not hold it in, and that helped to some degree.
But the cough went on and on. I did go have it checked out, my lungs were clear and I was given a cough med, which did nothing- because the cough was really my body still trying to communicate with me.
At this time, my husband had to start sleeping in the recliner in the living room because of his pain. Not sharing a bed is something that I don’t really like. As much as I never though I would get used to sleeping in the same bed as someone, with my husband next to me, I sleep better most nights than I did before. But he needed to feel comfortable and I understood that.
But every night, when I went to go to bed at night (alone), I felt the tears start to creep in. I would allow myself to feel them for a few minutes and then shift to distracting myself and trying to go to bed. That was when the coughing fit would actually REALLY start. But I wasn’t quite connecting the dots yet.
This week, my massage therapist friend asked me to really feel my feelings. I had shared how hard it is at night with the current situation and that I feel sad. She suggested that night I go to bed and allow myself to cry myself to sleep.
And so I did. While the crying stuffed up my nose and made me cough while I was crying, after I had let it move through me, the coughing went away and I slept better than I had slept in a few weeks. And each night is getting better and better. The cough is almost gone now.
Our bodies are so incredibly amazing and intelligent and they try to communicate to us in the only way that they can. Mine was trying to tell me that by stuffing my sadness and grief, my lungs had to take on the burden of holding that instead of just expressing it so it could release.
So next time you are struggling and your body starts talking to you, my suggestion is to get quiet and listen. Remember, sometimes wisdom and support is needed from those around us to fully hear the message and that is just fine too.
Over the past few months I’ve been interviewing single ladies who are looking for love about their particular challenges and frustrations with the process of trying to find that special someone.
One of the common threads that I have been hearing from many of them is that it is not easy to know where to look to meet that special someone.
Some of the ladies who have shared their story with me are in their 40s and 50s and are divorced. They have shared that the world of dating has changed so much since when they were single years ago. Other ladies have been single for a long time and have shared that it isn’t easy to find the right fit through online dating or just trying to go out and be social.
I know from my own personal experience with being single for 9 years that it definitely can be challenging to find the right “place” to look for the kind of men you want.
But I also know from my own personal experience and from that of my clients that it isn’t necessarily always about showing up in the “right” place… Sometimes it is about something deeper within us.
This something deeper can include:
- what sort of energy you are giving off when you are out there dating or just being social
- whether you are walking around thinking “It is SO hard to find good men”
- having a great deal of fear around being vulnerable and having your heart broken
When those deeper things shift through doing your own inner healing work through something like my “Fizzle to Sizzle” group sessions or my “Ready for Love Program”, then it is amazing how you can do they same things as before and suddenly have more success!
When I did my own deep inner healing work last year, I simply had a free profile on OkCupid and suddenly I got a message from a guy who matched the criteria of what I was looking for. He told me when we met that he had felt totally compelled to message me after reading my profile… and I had had that same profile for many months.
From our first date that lasted 10 hours to how comfortable we felt with each other on that date and subsequent ones, something in me had changed to allow this relationship to appear in my life.
Do you have a story about your own experience of challenge and frustration with trying to find love? I’d love to hear it! Share below in the comments!
Want to receive my love and romance articles and tips on a regular basis? Sign up for my free email newsletter right now!
I have spent the past month having conversations with women about their experiences while dating and during their romantic relationships. One of the themes that I am seeing from these conversations is about how women tend to lose themselves in a relationship and how this is still, to at least some degree, expected by our society.
I’d like to share a couple of these women’s stories that highlight our ongoing challenges with expectations of our role as women, especially in the role of wife.
During my interviews, one of the ladies that I spoke with shared how in her first marriage, as soon as the ceremony was over, everyone started treating her as someone’s wife, not as her (the individual) anymore.
She described her experience this way: “The minute the ceremony happened, all these archetypes flooded into our bodies of what we were supposed to be. The tendency is to lose oneself and be the archetype.The day before the wedding I was treated as me, and the next day, literally no one talked to me that way. ”
Everyone continually was asking questions like “What are you doing to help your husband’s career?” and never asking her about her own career. She shared with me how invisible this made her feel.
The fascinating thing about her story was how, as soon as her divorce happened, everyone again treated her like HER again and seemed puzzled that she had had her own career all along.
Another woman shared with me her story of how she knew on the day of her wedding that her marriage was not going to last. On her wedding day, her new husband treated her like his property (which he had NEVER done before) and she was expected to spend the whole reception catering to the guests and not enjoying herself. When she asked him to dance with her, he replied “Today is not about you.” Her marriage only lasted 5 months.
What the stories I have been hearing through my interviews are showing me is that while we as women have made tremendous gains from the time in history when women had no say in who they married or whether they were expected to quit working and become housewives after marriage, there are still struggles to be treated as individuals with our own worth and value once we are in a relationship.
There are still common cultural beliefs that the man’s career takes priority, that a wife should still help her husband and focus on his needs.
The conversations that I’ve had have shown me that women still have to work to keep their own sense of who they are and their own individual needs when in a committed relationship.
It takes work and not bowing to society’s expectations of how a woman should behave when in a relationship… It takes supporting one another and getting support to stay true to your own needs, wants, and desires.
Do you have a story of how you struggle to still feel like yourself and that you matter in a relationship? Or do you have a strategy to help you not lose yourself to society’s expectations about women’s roles in a relationship? I’d love to hear it in the comments below!
Want to receive my love and romance articles and tips on a regular basis? Sign up for my free email newsletter right now!
One of the resources that I personally have found helpful in my communication with my fiance is Gary Chapman’s “The 5 Love Languages.” I want to share a personal reflection on why I find this useful in the hope it inspires you to consider checking it out.
A few months ago I found myself feeling a little frustrated with my partner when I was hoping that he would express his love for me by doing certain things for me- like helping with the dishes after I had cooked dinner. I didn’t want to have to ASK him to do this, I just wanted him to volunteer and was feeling disappointed when that didn’t just happen.
This was when my mom reminded me about this book and how useful it can be for couples to understand each other’s love languages.
In “The 5 Love Languages,” Chapman discusses how we like to give and receive love in 5 main ways. These are:
- words of affirmation
- acts of service
- receiving gifts
- quality time
- physical touch
What I realized is that I like to express and receive love through acts of service and quality time while my partner’s primary love languages are more about words of affirmation and physical touch.
While I enjoy receiving words of affirmation and physical touch, a part of me wants to receive more acts of service from my partner. However, by understand his primary love languages, I can realize that he is not neglecting to show his love, he just doesn’t necessarily think of acts of service first. We can then dialogue about how we express our love and what we are needing from each other.
If you are in a relationship, it can be helpful to read this book or at least take the online profile quiz because doing so can help you to understand each other’s primary love languages and can open a dialogue about how you might meet the other’s needs if you don’t have a direct match.
Knowledge, in this case, is definitely power and going through the process of understanding each other’s love languages can really facilitate better understanding and communication.
Have you taken the online quiz? Share your thoughts about your love languages and the usefulness of this approach in the comments!
Want to receive my love and romance articles and tips on a regular basis? Sign up for my free email newsletter right now!