Wellness Blog
In this short video, learn more about what worry has to do with the Spleen and Stomach and how worry can actually have a positive function.
Watch this video to learn more about how joy and sadness are connected to the Heart and Small Intestine in Chinese medicine. Also, learn about how sadness can be a good thing at times.
This is the first in a series of short videos exploring the connection between the Chinese Five Elements, the organ system in the Chinese Medicine philosophy and our emotions. I hope that you find it helpful to look at your emotions from a different perspective.
Please note that these were done as Facebook live so there is a little bit of chit chat and interaction at the beginning.
Last week was a doozy for so many of us. The results of the election in here the U.S. rocked many of us to the core and resulted in feeling a host of emotions, fears, and general overwhelm and ungroundedness.
For me personally, I woke up last Wednesday with a feeling like the world around me was suddenly different and I felt extremely off kilter. I spent most of that day just trying to process what I was feeling and there were numerous bouts of crying. As the week went on, I was still feeling off-kilter but was trying to move forward and find ways to get myself grounded again.
I have been hearing many people say that they are feeling the same way. Another thing I’ve been both feeling myself and hearing from others is that the self-care that we have been doing in the past might not be enough or the right thing for us right now.
I feel it is important to share this all so that you know that you are not alone in feeling off-kilter, scared, overwhelmed, and out of sorts. You are not alone if you feel like you are doing your regular self-care and it just isn’t working for you.
If you are feeling any of these things, here are some suggestions for you based on my own experience and wisdom.
- You might need to increase the amount of self-care you are doing right now. While the amount you typically do might work in calmer times, right now, you might need to give it a boost.
- You might need to change up what you are doing for self-care. For example, if you typically take a relaxing bath, you might try instead moving your energy by going for a walk outside. Try different things and see what helps!
- I would recommend considering taking a break from social media and the news on occasion. I personally felt myself feeling more and more activated and ungrounded last week as I kept reading about the increase in hate crimes, seeing the protests in Portland turn into violence, and seeing people making nasty comments to each other on Facebook. For that reason, I stayed off social media and the internet for most of the weekend last weekend. You might not need a complete break but maybe just consider limiting how much time you are spending reading news.
- If you don’t know how to tap cortices, learn how to now! This simple self-tapping technique just takes a few minutes but is a powerful way to rebalance your brain and reduce stress. You can use it as much as you need! Learn how here.
Those are just some very simple and practice suggestions that I have to help you get back into your body right now if you are feeling overwhelmed or ungrounded.
If those things don’t seem enough, I’d encourage you to seek support from me or from someone else who you feel called to work with. I’ve been seeing the election come up as a trauma for every client I’ve seen in the past week and I can help you process the trauma through the power of BodyTalk. I personally had to get some support around these from other practitioners so I can speak to the fact that this might be necessary- and it helps!
I have another group session coming up on November 30 to help support us all in coming together and healing in these challenging times.
Also if you are feeling like you’d like some extra one-on-one support right now, I’d love to offer you 10% off a session with me now through the end of November. Just mention this blog post when you come in!
Recent scientific research is beginning to form a new understanding of our brains and our bodies and is revealing that we don’t just have 1 brain but 3 brains! This knowledge was actually something that certain Eastern traditions (like Ayurvedic and yogic traditions) were aware of but Western scientific understanding is finally catching up.
So what are the 3 brains and what do they do?
The first brain is the one that we have always thought about- the one in our head. This brain is in charge of thinking, cognition, and perception. It helps us to make meaning out of things and masters our communication in language.
Our second brain is located in the heart. This is our emotional brain and it is also connected to what we value in life.
Our third brain is in our gut. This brain is all about our core identity- what is us and what is not us. The gut brain is also important for protection as it has many key immune functions.
The average brain (in the head) has around 100 million neurons but the gut has around 500 million nerve cells and 100 million neurons and is almost the same size as a cat’s brain! Our gut brains are also responsible for producing around 95% of the body’s serotonin, the “happiness hormone.”
The way that these 3 brains communicate with each other is through the vagus nerve. What is fascinating is that research shows that the majority of information flows up the vagus nerve to the head brain rather than down to the other two brains!
Anil Rayvanshi writes, “Recent studies have shown that heart sends signals to the brain that are not only understood by it but also obeyed. Scientists have discovered neural pathways and mechanisms whereby input from heart to brain inhibits or facilitates brain’s electrical activity – just like what gut is capable of doing. Thus both gut and heart mind help in overall thought process.”
So how can you utilize all 3 brains more effectively?
One basic way to work with integrating and synchronizing all 3 brains is through the Cortices Technique, a simple self-tapping technique that you can learn more about here.
Another way to utilize all 3 brains is to be more aware of their different roles. For example, allow the heart to express its emotional intelligence and wisdom by listening to it, rather than shutting down your feelings. With the gut brain, taking good physical care of your digestive system through eating healthy foods and using strategies to heal your gut can help optimize the gut brain.
BodyTalk is also a healing system that is focused on all 3 of these brains and getting them to communicate with each other more effectively. By receiving a BodyTalk session for a practitioner, your 3 brains can be optimized, synchronized and balanced to work more effectively. Learn more about BodyTalk by reading about it here.
When you combine the clinical findings of Applied Kinesiology, the expertise of Western medicine, the energy dynamics of acupuncture and the wisdom of modern physics and advanced mathematics, what do you get? A state of the art integrative holistic healthcare paradigm: The BodyTalk System, one of the current fastest growing complementary holistic healthcare systems in the world!
What is BodyTalk and Why is it truly holistic healing?
The BodyTalk System is a comprehensive and dynamic system of energy medicine that is constantly evolving. It unifies a large number of highly recognized healing methods and principles of knowledge into one all encompassing system. BodyTalk addresses the bodymind from a truly holistic perspective and recognizes that the physical, mental and emotional components are inseparable; hence, all levels are worked on concurrently.
The BodyTalk System does not diagnose or address diseases on a symptom level; it creates an energy balance in the body that involves the body’s own innate restorative powers. It can be used as a stand alone system to address all physical, mental and emotional health issues and can also be integrated to support any other healthcare modality to enhance its effectiveness and promote even faster healing.
Why is BodyTalk Unique?
If you think of the image of an iceberg, most of the bulk of the ice lies beneath the water’s surface. This is similar to how most of the underlying causes of diseases and illness are not immediately seen or known but are deeper than the superficial level. BodyTalk is a holistic healing system that works with a priority basis- which means rather than focusing on giving someone a diagnosis of what is “wrong”, we focus instead of what needs to be addressed first, then second, and so on. For example, if the liver was detoxified prior to ensuring the intestines were digesting and eliminating properly, the individual may get sicker if the toxins are not being released from the body. This means the BodyTalk holistic approach can eliminate the tendency for a “healing crisis.”
Once we use neuromuscular feedback to determine the priority for today, BodyTalk uses a variety of simple techniques to restore balance in the body and mind, as well as light tapping and touch over the 3 brains (head, heart, and gut).
To summarize, BodyTalk does not diagnose and uses non-invasive techniques that cannot cause harm in accord with the priority of its inner wisdom. It is truly holistic, and is complementary to other health care modalities, with which it can be seamlessly integrated.
How Does BodyTalk Work?
Areas in the bodymind that lack communication or synchronicity are addressed with the application of practical, effective techniques to facilitate wellbeing from within. This is done in an individual manner. No two clients, even those with seemingly identical symptoms, will have the same areas that are not communicating or working as a team with the bodymind. Much like the expression: give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats for life, BodyTalk facilitates the body’s ability to heal itself. Once the body’s innate restorative powers are empowered with this new enhanced communication, it is then able to more effectively heal the bodymind from within, enabling lasting patterns of good health.
If you are curious about how BodyTalk can help support holistic healing in your life, give me a call at 503-347-0258 or use the scheduler below to set up a free phone consultation.
The human body has an amazing potential for self-healing when we supply it with the right conditions. If our stress level is kept at a reasonable level, we eat good quality, nutrient rich food, and we get good rest (among other factors), our bodies are designed to be able to keep themselves healthy and functioning well.
Think about how your body immediately begins to deal with a minor injury like when you nick your finger while chopping vegetables for dinner. Do you stop to tell your body to clot your blood or to fight off any potential infection in the area of injury? Do you think about regenerating the tissue in the area? No! And yet the body immediately goes to work self-healing and doing those things. And this happens on a larger scale than just minor cuts, bruises and scrapes- our bodies are always working to keep us healthy.
The problem comes when our bodies get overloaded by stress and don’t have all the resources they need to resolve our health problems and self-heal. When I talk about stress, I like to use the analogy of a fuse box. When we are too stressed, it is like the fuses in our fuse box get blown and then it becomes hard for our body to continue to keep itself healthy or to heal from whatever health issues (big or small) that we might be having because our circuits are “blown”.
This is where getting support from BodyTalk can help. BodyTalk is an amazing tool to reset the body’s fuse box so that it can begin to heal. BodyTalk can also support things like improving your digestion so you absorb all the nutrients from your food more efficiently and can help you get better quality sleep too.
If you are curious about how BodyTalk can help “reset your fuses” and improve your self-healing ability, give me a call at 503-347-0258. I’d love to talk to you about what is going on with your health and how BodyTalk might be a great support for you! I don’t charge for phone consultations so give me a call today.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being a guest on Sharon Sayler’s radio show, the Autoimmune Hour. If you didn’t get a chance to listen when the show was live, you can listen the recording here. Our talked focused on BodyTalk as an effective approach to help with autoimmune diseases.
Here’s a little overview of what Sharon and I talked about:
What happens when we allow our body’s energy systems to be re-set with healing methods such as Body Talk? In this interview, Lyn shares that your body is designed to heal itself, and together we explore the ‘bigger picture’ of health including:
- How stored trauma and trapped emotions affect us
- How to breathe your way to feeling better
- How to talk to your body so it will answer you
- How to reframe unpleasant memory or emotion
Today’s post is a particularly “real” one for me. My husband and I, as well as our extended family have been in the midst of a particularly rough time. Between my aunt passing away a little over 2 weeks ago (while I was in the midst of taking my latest BodyTalk class) to my mother-in-law falling and breaking her leg last week, to some other situations that need our time and attention, I have had significant moments of overwhelm in the past month.
This post is not about the “story” of what is going on in my life, however. It is about reflecting on how we get through tough times like this.
One of the key things that I am getting a reminder of during this past month is the importance of making time for my own self-care, even in the midst of chaos and overwhelm.
As my stress level has been higher than it usually is, I have tried to carve out more time to do things like slow down and focus on my breathing. I’m also tapping Cortices (a simple technique that you can learn how to do through this link) even more than I usually do. I’ve also sought support from others- both family and friends, as well as getting support from different healing practitioners. I’m upping the number of BodyTalk sessions I’m receiving right now to help me process my grief, stress, and overwhelm. I’m tending to my body with massage and other forms of healing touch. While it can feel hard to make time for those things when I have more on my plate than I usually do, I know that without those supports, my bodymind will take too much of a beating. And just because I’m a wellness practitioner doesn’t mean that I don’t need support too!
Another big resource during times like this is to make sure to get a bit of time out in nature. Connection with the energies of the earth and breathing fresh air in beautiful settings is a key way to help stay grounded. I’m hoping to get a nice walk in outside today, rather than going to the gym and walking on the treadmill.
If you are currently going through a tough time, please know that you are not alone. And please remember to take care of yourself. Find simple strategies to help your body release stress, tension, and built up emotions. When we don’t allow the energy to have time to release, it can build up like a pent up volcano and cause all sorts of problems! Seek support (professional and social) when you need it. We all need a little help sometimes.
Also, feel free to share what strategies work best for you in the comments below this blog; I’d love to hear your strategies too!
We are approaching the summer solstice (June 21) and entering the Fire Element Season according to the system of Chinese 5 Elements. For me, the summer heat can be difficult to deal with (summer is actually my least favorite season) so I thought I would share some thoughts about how to approach managing from this 5 Elements perspective.
Before we dive into ways of dealing with the Fire Element, I want to just share briefly what this element represents.
The Fire Element energy is connected to the organ of the heart (hence the name of my business is Heart Fire Healing!). It is associated with the emotion of joy, which comes from having a good sense of who you are and your connection to something beyond yourself (whether for you that is God, Spirit, the Universe or something else). Joy comes from knowing who you really are on a deep level and loving yourself.
Fire Element time is about nurturing our creative energies and connecting to the abundance around us.
The Fire Element and the heart are also connected to ALL of our emotions and it is important for our health and well-being to connect to all of our emotions, whether “positive” or “negative.” The Fire Element is also connected to love and romance.
So now that we’ve taken just a little bit of an overview of what the Fire Element represents, let’s dive into some simple strategies for keeping it from going into excess, especially during the summer heat.
- Bitter foods are good for the heart and the Fire Element. Try to include bitter greens like escarole, endive, spinach, kale, and Swiss chard in your diet. In addition, eating foods rich in carotenoids (red, yellow, and orange pigment) are great for the heart and the immune system.
- Work to reduce inflammation. Strategies to do this include avoiding inflammatory foods like sugar, fried foods, processed foods, and certain types of grains. Adding Omega-3s in your diet can also be helpful. Regular exercise and stress relieving activities (yoga, meditation, etc) are also beneficial. Making sure you are getting enough Vitamin D also helps to manage inflammation.
- Make sure to stay hydrated! You’ve probably heard this repeatedly but it is essential. Foods like watermelon can be both cooling and hydrating for the body and can be a great way to get in hydration if you don’t love drinking water.
I hope you found this post helpful to understand summer time from a 5 Elements perspective and that you have some simple strategies to help you keep in balancing during Fire Element time.