joy

The Healing Power Of Connecting With Others & How To Get More Of That Connection

    If you are gathering with folks you love over the upcoming holidays, you are actually boosting your health!  And if you are alone or not able to connect with others in the upcoming days, there are lots of ways to still boost your health through the power of connection — practical tips on that in a minute. But first, let’s review exactly what the health benefits are of connecting with others — something to keep in mind if you feel yourself growing irritated or annoyed or triggered by your loved ones over the holidays.  Even if they are […]

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The Dance… My Latest Original Painting And Why I Painted It

“What is to give light must endure burning.” -Victor Frankl     In turning 49. starting my 50th circle around the sun, I’m ever aware that time on this earth, any length of time, even one day of time, is precious.  I want to start thanking my body for the gift of waking up today in it.  And focus on what an honor that is, not the things I don’t like about it or the limitations I perceive from it. To remind myself, I wanted to choose a word of the year that evoked the energy of wearing my body in

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How To Discover Your Play Style, And Use It To Improve Your Health

          Play is not only a relief and a respite from the seriousness that stress, illness and trauma bring to our lives, it is actually therapy.   Play time is therapeutic time, point blank.  Child psychologists use this healing tool often, because play is a child’s way to express and release any inner turmoil or fears that the child doesn’t even consciously know they have.   But it isn’t only therapeutic for children, it’s therapeutic for adults too. In fact, I would argue that engaging in some form of play daily is one of the best things you can do to safeguard

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Hearing Birds Sing Might Be Just As Important To You As Your Next Paycheck, Here’s Why

    More evidence that Mother Nature can boost your happiness like nothing else can… a new study suggests that bird diversity is as important to life satisfaction as an income is. This study, published in Ecological Economics on Nov 2020, found that not only is happiness correlated with local bird diversity, but a 10% boost in bird diversity actually increases happiness to a similar magnitude as a 10% boost in income does! We’ve known for a while that animals improve our mood, health, and even boost longevity (I’ve blogged about how pets can do all of this and more

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The Healing Role Of Play, Right Now It’s More Important Than Ever

    I truly believe that even with the stress of everything we are facing right now, we can still feel healthier than ever if we intentionally set up supportive, comforting and deeply healing health routines. So all winter long, I’m going to be giving you a weekly blog post full of uplifting ways to improve your health, and every single idea is something you can do right in the comfort of your own home. Social distancing approved. It’s a new mini-series I’m releasing for you to help boost your health over these next three winter months. Forward this newsletter

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Need To Boost Your Hopefulness? I’ve Got You

    Yesterday I was talking with my husband and he was expressing how down he has been feeling lately about the current state of events in the world. I know he’s not alone. So today I thought I’d dedicate a blog post on how to immediately boost a sense of resiliency and remain hopeful even during times of immense stress and darkness. There have been several major medical studies released in the past few months that show the major, physical, measurable impact that poor outlook has on our brain function and brain chemistry. Like this one, published in Neurology

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The One Thing You Can Do Daily To Lift All Types Of Depression… Naturally

We all know that getting morning light each day significantly improves seasonal blues (or winter depression.) But a new study shows that light therapy lifts depression — even depression that is NOT seasonally related — *more effectively* than antidepressant drug therapy.   The assumption has always been that major depressive disorder is different from seasonal depression, but this study shows that light therapy can be used on it’s own to treat depression whether seasonal or not. Published in JAMA Psychiatry on Nov 18, 2015, this placebo controlled study supports the use of a non-pharmaceutical intervention over a pharmaceutical intervention, which

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