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Learn How to Manage Stress Better

 

managing stress quote

Learn how to manage stress to optimize your health, both physically and mentally.

There’s a lot we’ve learned over the past couple of years filled with stress and worry. I saw the need to manage stress taking a bigger role in the conversations with my clients. Figuring out how to feel calm and safe in our bodies is a huge priority to me. 

What are some of the symptoms of stress?

-fatigue

-brain fog

-constipation/diarrhea

-hives

-hair loss

-headache

-muscle pain

 

All these symptoms are your body’s way of protecting you…it just doesn’t work for modern-day living.  We go into fight-or-flight mode, and it impacts everything from our digestive system to our immune response. 

Holistic Yoga

Dealing with your daily stress is the only way to help optimize your health. You can eat the BEST diet, take ALL the supplements, but if you don’t deal with your stress daily, you’ll never feel completely energized. (and we are not going for the wired, caffeine energy here)

 

READ MY TOP 5 SUPPLEMENTS FOR IMMUNE SUPPORT

 

How to Break the Stress Cycle

As a mother, there’s no shortage of stressful situations the past couple of years with remote school and missed events. But even now, there is the daily stress of getting out the door on time and running from event to event that has the potential to wear me down. 

burnout book managing stress

 

In book club last year we read Burnout, by Amelia and Emily Nagoski, and it helped me better understand how to reset the stress cycle. The short version is, we need to close the loop. Basically, if we encounter a stressful situation in our day, if we never process it physically it gets “stuck.” Our goal is to give the stress (the hormone cortisol) a chance to exit the body.

How do we do that? We can do something that makes us feel good from this list: 

-exercise/movement

-breathwork

-shaking

-singing/yelling (go find @the.schoolofmom and the #momscreen)

-meditation (see below)

 

READ MY 10 TIPS FOR BETTER SLEEP

 

The goal is to do something physical to close the loop on your stress. It may feel like a constant battle some days, so learn some simple breathing exercises to help bring your heart rate down. As a Holistic Patient Advocate, I’m always working with my clients to help them figure out what the right method is for them to feel like themselves again.

 

Ziva Meditation to Manage Stress

Meditation to Manage Stress

There is no shortage of different options for meditation. You can try transcendental meditation, kundalini, and Vipassana. There is no one “right” meditation for you, so I encourage you to try a mix of options.

I took the Ziva Meditation program at the beginning of the pandemic. I know it helped me stay productive and calm in those early months of being home together. There’s a free class next week Emily Fletcher is offering…3 Ways to Stop Making Your Life Harder Than It Needs to Be. Emily’s energy is magic so I’ll be joining the Wed workshop. (there’s also one on Tues evening)  

Easy Magic Stress Solution

Click here to sign up for one of the workshops, or catch the replay.

Stress is only as harmful as we let. Be open to finding a way to process it, work through it, and manage its effect on your body’s health.

 

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What is a Holistic Patient Advocate?

What is a holistic patient advocate? As someone who was the victim of medical errors, I am passionate about my new role. I was misdiagnosed and spent years on a medication I had no business being on. This is one reason why I choose to become a certified holistic patient advocate. I’ll explain what this means, and how it can help you.

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Efficiency May Not be the Answer I was Looking For

Notes from a Blue Bike. The path to living intentionally

As some of you know, I recently took a family vacation for a week to Disney world and to visit family. Throughout the week I read the new book  Notes from a Blue Bike: The Art of Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World written by my favorite blogger Tsh Oxenreider. It has felt like everyone is talking about living a more intentional, or mindful, life as 2014 begins. It’s even on the cover of Time magazine this month. I too have been feeling a tug to slow down and allow for more space in my life to savor all the wonderful people in it. Reading this book on vacation was a wonderful first step.

The book is divided up into the following categories:

  • Awakening
  • Food
  • Work
  • Education
  • Travel
  • Entertainment
  • Revival

It was the first book in a while that kept me up late at night reading. Maybe it was the relaxed vacation mode, but I just devoured what Tsh had to say about slowing down our pace in life. Her story unfolds in Turkey as we learn about how different our American culture is in terms of how we value our time, food sources and resources. In America, we value EFFICIENCY. Just scroll though Pinterest to see how many posts are proclaiming “How to be More Productive.” I generally rate a day based on how many things I cross off my to-do list. Reading this book, and thinking about our slow days at the beach, are making me rethink how I view my idea of “productive.”

Ordinary activities for contemplation

As a parent, there is a natural amount of chaos  and to-do’s that exists in our lives. However, we can control more of how we manage the chaos than we give ourselves credit for. Take birthday parties for instance. Over vacation we celebrated two of the kid’s birthdays. After giving the kids the gift of Disney, we realized that they didn’t need to have additional parties. Although it’s not the norm, after reading the book I felt better about my decision to swim upstream and do what’s right for our family. In our case, it’s keeping things simple.

So if you are inclined to slow down the path of your life and enjoy the one life you have, hop on the blue bike and settle in for some wonderful words. Put down the phone/email/Pinterest/Facebook/Twitter/etc. and just read. You may find you don’t want all those distractions in your life.

Here’s the video that I saw months ago before the book came out. It’s delightful and it may inspire you to make a change.

Notes From a Blue Bike is written by Tsh Oxenreider, founder and main voice of The Art of Simple. It doesn’t always feel like it, but we DO have the freedom to creatively change the everyday little things in our lives so that our path better aligns with our values and passions. Grab your copy here. I was provided an advance copy to review but all opinions shared here are my own. All Amazon links are affiliate links. Find more at #notesfromabluebike

Blue Bike Blog Tour

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Could you make your home more healthy?

For many moms, once they get pregnant, they become aware of buying organic food and making healthy eating choices. At some point,  you may question your beauty care routine, the cleaners you use in your home and the toys your kids are chewing on. Our buying choices are not that simple these days. Today there are more than 80,000 chemicals registered for use in the U.S., many of which have not been tested for human safety. These toxic chemicals are entering our home environment, and we need to be educated to make the healthy choice.

Support the Chemical Safety Improvement Act

Postcards I wrote encouraging US Senators to support for the Chemical Safety Improvement Act.

This month I’m partnering with Seventh Generation and Healthy Child Healthy World to spread the message to support the Chemical Safety Improvement Act (CSIA) that is up for approval by congress. This bill hasn’t been changed in 35 years, and clearly times have changed. Remember all the baby bottle manufacturers that had to remove BPA in it’s products? It’s not because the government told them to, it’s because MOMS got together and were very loud and demanded a change. It would be awesome to see more Moms get together and voice their support for CSIA. You can learn more here and also show your support of updating the CSIA.  The stat that always jumps out to me is that there are 1328 chemicals in the European Union that have been banned….only 11 have been banned in the U.S. Let’s do something about it.

So are you ready to learn a little more about what to be aware of on product labels? Who can you trust? I got to participate in a virtual Healthy Baby Home Party and even I learned some new info about what to be concerned with. Turns out the “natural” unscented baby wipes I have been using have some questionable preservatives in them. I’m going to try out the Seventh Generation Wipes and see how we like them. (Seventh Generation baby products are now easily found at Target!)

We watched this video and it was eye-opening. What do you think?

Makes you think twice about the toys the kids are chewing on…especially in my case with a 5 month old teething baby.

Ready to learn a little more? Join in the Twitter chat next week on Thursday, November 14th at 1:00 EST.

Click here to join in and follow the conversation: http://twtvite.com/healthybabyhome

Join Seventh Generation for a fun, informative Twitter party to talk about all-natural baby product options! We’ll also talk about the Healthy Baby Home Party which give moms an interesting and engaging way to educate friends and family on topics like creating a healthy environment for the next generation. There will be a chance to win a month’s worth of diapers and wipes from Seventh Generation! There will be 5 winners, all chosen randomly from answering trivia questions.

Hashtag: #HealthyBabyHome

Hosts: @TheMotherhood, @TheMotherhood25, @CooperMunroe, @EmilyMcKhann

(If you are not following me on Twitter yet, you can find me here @EmilyARoach)

 

I participated in this program on behalf of Seventh Generation and The Motherhood. It’s a cause that means a lot to me and the more parents that speak up, the better it will be for the healthy of our children. And their children. All opinions shared here are my own.

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