Archive for August, 2008
Manifesting Thoughts
Author: Callie
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read comments (0)The Principles of Successful Manifesting
Author: Callie
This wonderful little gem of an e-book is being given away *FREE* until 31st August 2008, by Dream Manifesto … have a read about its “hype” and then follow the link.
(I cannot vouch whether this link is spam-free, so please use a ‘disposable’ email address just-in-case!)
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Picture yourself three month from now… Achieving any goal, desire or dream in your life by using the latest mind bending discoveries of Quantum Physics and the most powerful source in the universe.
Imagine what your life would look like if you had the ability to fulfill all your life dreams – with no effort at all. Honestly, ask yourself:
Do you live your full potential?
Do you really enjoy your work?
Do you live in abundance & prosperity?
Do you enjoy your relationships?
Do you have confidence in yourself?
Are you happy without reason?
Discover The Quantum Principles to Create Your Ideal Life
What I am about to share in this life changing ebook will teach you the essential ways to harness the power of your mind and reveal the effective and proven techniques to achieve exactly what your heart desires. It is based on my personal research over the last 15 years.
Uncover the most crucial concepts to create abundance and prosperity in your life. Achieve financial freedom and live an extraordinary life.
What You Will Learn From This Book:
Dramatically increase your ability to fulfill any goal or desires by using powerful affirmation techniques.
Reveal your personal talents, strength and potential with five unique exercises.
Experience in every moment the excitement that you are the creator in your life by understanding the three quantum principles.
Free and expand your attention, and how focusing helps you make crystal clear decisions in life.
Enhance your imagination with powerful visualization methods that will help you see every goal or dream you have like it already happened.
Replace beliefs that limit you with beliefs that support your goals.
Act in any life situation with extreme self confidence.
Use the law of attraction to take full responsibility in your life and to create the lifestyle you always wanted.
Reach any goal in your life without ever giving up by discovering the power of your intention.
What’s really important for you in life by using seven highly effective goal setting techniques.
Attract abundance and prosperity in your life by following a profound secret most millionaires are using every day.
Learn quickly and efficient from any situation in your life with a simple trick that shifts your attitude in a just a few seconds.
and many more exciting topics … Dream Manifesto
Moisturisers 'raise skin cancer risk'
Author: Callie
The ‘ugly’ story of hidden potential dangers of everyday moisturisers has raised its head again, this time in The Independent newspaper.
Although I don’t believe we should feel scared by the relentless onslaught of ‘bad’ stuff constantly being thrust under our noses, I DO believe that we should be given information in a well-presented way to help us to determine the best choice for us, for our own families.
That said, I’ve always preferred to err on the side of caution – hence using Raw Gaia raw, living, vegan, organic skincare products both at home and with my clients, in addition to organic oils for body care. (Please visit Holistic Feathers for further information and how to buy these divine products directly from Callie – Holistic Feathers, Raw Gaia stockist in SW London).
Moisturisers used by millions every day may be increasing the risk of common skin cancers, scientists have warned.
Most such creams have never been tested for their cancer-causing effect on the skin. Now scientists have found that they increase the carcinogenic effect of sunlight in mice.
The skin cancers involved are common in humans. Although mostly non-fatal and easily removed, deaths do occur, especially from squamous cell cancers. These are distinct from melanoma, the less common form of skin cancer, which causes over 1,000 deaths a year in the UK but was not the subject of the research.
Experiments on mice had shown that when caffeine was given orally or applied direct to the skin, it appeared to inhibit cancer. Scientists at Rutgers University, New Jersey, planned to test caffeine as a cancer preventive in humans by adding it to a common moisturiser, Dermabase. Before starting the study they decided to test Dermabase’s carcinogenic activity.
To their surprise, they found that it increased the production of tumours in mice that had previously been exposed to ultraviolet light. They then tested three other common moisturisers, all of which increased the production of tumours by an average of 69 per cent.
The significance of the findings for humans has still to be established, the team reports in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.
- By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
(c) The Independent : 14th August 2008
Manifesting Thoughts
Author: Callie
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How stress can make you fat
Author: Callie
O.K., we acknowledge the title is a bit over the top, but didn’t it get your attention? No, stress alone won’t pack on the pounds, but there’s still truth in them thar’ hills. We thought we’d dig up some of the dirt on stress – fat and otherwise.
The fact is we think stress gets short shrift when it comes to the realm of health and wellness. As you know, we spend a lot of time talking about how our eating and exercising impacts our biochemistry. Stress absolutely, positively plays into this same picture. A great diet and diligent exercise routine are never wasted effort, but chronic high stress can put a serious damper on the benefits you should be getting from your healthy endeavors.
Let’s examine stress as saboteur. First off, we all know that a moderate amount of stress is good – natural even. (Grok didn’t live in Pleasantville after all.) In the face of danger, the physiological “fight or flight” stress response was crucial to our favorite caveman’s self-preservation. Ah, the flooding of adrenaline (a.k.a. epinephrine) and norepinephrine, the release of adrenocorticotropic hormone, the emergency shut off of the immune system. We notice the sweating, muscle tension and the heightened sense of smell and hearing, the sudden increase in heart rate (getting uncomfortable yet?). All these helped our ur-selves either attack that Sabertooth tiger or run like heck—to get away from the snarling beast. Flip to modern day when the “predator” is more likely a passive-aggressive co-worker, catty neighbor, daily traffic jam, or looming pile of bills in the corner, and suddenly the fight or flight instinct isn’t as relevant or particularly helpful. (But there’s always the “vacation from your problems” ala What About Bob?…)
Stress today is more often a chronic low-grade condition than the powerful punch complete with cathartic end. (Maybe that’s why we love adventure-thriller movies so much?) That low level of stress day after day acts as insidious antagonist, aforementioned saboteur. That adrenal action described earlier? The constant release of cortisol, our star of the hormonal show, eventually causes major functions in the body to shut down or operate at only a subpar level – immune function, digestion, endocrine function, etc. Do you get sick more often when you’re under a lot of stress? We thought so. Wonder why so many people have digestive issues in this country (besides the prevalence of obesity)? Ever heard of adrenal exhaustion? Stress is nearly always a – if not the – major factor. Oh, and the list goes on and on. A chronically high level of cortisol and other stress hormones impacts the brain, compromising memory function (Where are those stupid car keys?!) as well as the balance of dopamine and serotonin instrumental for psychological well-being.
Yeah, yeah, you might say. What about the fat connection? The bottom line is this: research has demonstrated that stress can contribute to the build-up of body fat as a result of stress’s effect on hormonal secretion and its physiological consequences. Let us explain. Cortisol sets off an increased rush of glucose from your tissues (including breaking down muscle tissue to make glucose). Yikes! Remember, the body thinks something major is going down. In response to the rise in glucose comes the rise in insulin. You know the drill. Do this again and again, day after day, and what do you have? Insulin resistance eventually.
In the meantime, the cortisol is signaling the body to store fat. (The body thinks it will need it after all.) Specifically, the body directs fat storage in the abdomen, around the organs, where there are more receptors for cortisol and a greater supply of blood.
A lot of research has been done on this in the last few years highlighting the contribution of stress to abdominal fat in particular.
And don’t think that you’re off the hook if you happen to be thin. A study out of Yale University looked at how thin women developed abdominal fat in connection with stress. Individual response to stress, not just “body shape” plays a significant role. Women in the study who reacted more severely to the study’s assigned stressors had more abdominal fat. The trend encouraged the researchers to suggest that in women’s case “it is possible that stress may influence body shape more than for men.”
So, where are the gentlemen in all this? The Yale researchers believe the same stress “relationships likely apply to men” but that it works within men’s tendency to accumulate fat around the abdomen anyway as opposed to around the hips, as many women do.
Ultimately, excess stress and associated cortisol levels can undo all of us, but we all have plenty of options to control the impact. As the researchers note, “smoking, alcohol and lack of exercise all contribute to greater abdominal fat.” Add to these other lifestyle factors like diet, sleep (duration and quality) as well as stress processing, and you’ve got plenty to work with.
For instance, research published last year in Nature Medicine highlighted the coinciding impact of a “high fat, high sugar” diet (always a bad idea) with stress on the release of a neurotransmitter, neuropeptide Y, which “increases fat cell proliferation and vasularization.” The researchers found “increased secretion of neuropeptide Y” when stress was coupled with the high-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. And so we’re back to where we started. Stress, by itself, does not make a person fat. Chronic stress, together with poor diet and lifestyle, will come back to bite you in the butt – or belly, we should say.
Our suggestions? Choose a lifestyle that supports hormonal balance. Eat a low carb, high anti-oxidant diet, exercise according to the Primal Blueprint model (overtraining actually raises cortisol dramatically), and get plenty of sleep. Take omega-3 supplements to help counteract the inflammation damage related to stress. But as for the stress itself? Find stress relief practices that work for you. Experts particularly recommend spending time in a quiet natural setting. (What better way to unhook from the modern world?) Experiment with meditation options – however simple – whether prayer, guided imagery, or TM. (Check out our past posts on stress and stress relief.) Finally, as a complement to these efforts, consider a cortisol balancing supplement to help you get a leg up.
Further Reading:
7 Tips to Beat Stress Right Now
(c) Mark Sisson, Mark Sisson’s Daily Apple
How to receive a massage
Author: Callie
I found this brilliant little piece on a new website, called Intent (via Deepak Chopra, the reknowned doctor who really understands quantum healing).
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Ask any therapist and they’ll tell you about the hoards of people who don’t know how to receive a massage. For your own enjoyment, here are five things to keep in mind the next time you find yourself on the table:
1. Don’t help! Your job is to lie there like a wet noodle. If we massage therapists need you to lift your head or move your leg, we’ll ask. Most of the time, however, we prefer that you allow us to lift and move your body without your assistance. We want you to relax your muscles as we work on them, not tense them up. And many times we like to use the force of gravity and the weight of your body parts to help us achieve a therapeutic goal. Here’s a simple test: If a therapist lifts your arm up off the table, and then lets it go, does it fall back onto the table, or are you still holding it up in the air? Hmm… you know who you are …
2. Relax in silence. There’s no need to try to have a conversation with us, and quite frankly, it’s easier for us to concentrate on what we’re doing if we don’t have to engage you in dialogue. Let your attention go inward. Relax, enjoy the sensations, be in the moment. Feel the massage. That doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t say something if you’re uncomfortable. Which leads me to #3…
3. Speak up if you need anything. If you’re unhappy with the way the massage is unfolding, please tell us what you don’t like about it and/or what you’d prefer. If something we’re doing hurts, makes you feel uncomfortable or uneasy, please say something. Many times I’ve found that when people are feeling discomfort, instead of saying something verbally they’ll squirm or change facial expressions. Body language isn’t as obvious as saying how you’re feeling out loud. Verbal communication is the best, most efficient way to alert your therapist that you’d like her or him to change a behavior.
4. Watch your caffeine intake. Showing up for your massage amped up after having ingested a large coffee won’t help you to relax. You’ll probably be very antsy and wish you hadn’t wasted your time and money on the massage. (Trust me, I’ve done it.)
5. Keep it clean. Don’t ask for sex. It’s not appropriate. (For heaven’s sake, people! Those days are long gone.) If you want to pay for sex, go see a sex worker. And I’m afraid this also needs to be said: for your own comfort, show up with a clean body. Do you really want your therapist to oil up your dirty feet and then drag the dirt all over the rest of your body? Whenever I get a massage, at the very least, I wash my feet in the bathroom before I get on the table, because I know that whatever I’ve walked in could end up on my face.
(c) Grace Wilson – via Intent
Meditation is great for the brain!
Author: Callie
It has been long known that meditation can help one to relax and so it therefore has always seemed to follow that meditation can also help on to use ones brain more effectively. Stress, which can accumulate easily in an industrialized society can also be easily alleviated through a variety of meditation techniques. Recent research shows that doing so actually changes the pattern of activity in the brain and thus helps the individual to perform better in their daily tasks.
Training the Brain for Relaxation Response
It has been found by scientists who have studied the brain responses of those who meditate regularly that not only do they cope better with stress during meditation, but also that their brains cope better with outside stress in general. The ‘relaxation response’ is a mode of calm thinking that allows for clearer thoughts to be made and those who meditate often seem to be able to tune in to this response relatively easily as this response is characterised by aspects such as steady and rhythmic breathing and a low pulse rate – things bought abut naturally during meditation exercise.
Although this is something vouched for over centuries by those who practice some form of spirituality, it is only now that Science is able to see the extent of the benefits that meditation offers to the human brain. It is even now thought that those who meditate regularly generally have a thicker outer cortex to their brain: The outer cortex is the part of the brain responsible for decision making and the processing of information. It is not yet known, however, if meditation is literally responsible for enhancing the structure of the brain, or whether it is the case that those who have a brain with a thicker outer cortex naturally have a propensity to choose to meditate!
Other recent studies have shown that meditation stimulates the area of the brain responsible for rational thought (the left pre-frontal cortex), thus leading us to make rational decisions even under pressure. This can be very helpful in a society where those parts of our brains designed to deal with primitive threats (such as attacks by wild animals, and so on) may become stimulated by similar but comparatively non-threatening situations, such as disagreements with your boss, and so on: Those who meditate can calm the part of the brain responsible for reacting to a challenge in an inappropriately aggressive way.
It has also been recently demonstrated that meditation helps people to apprehend changing detail in their daily lives: Whereas many people is rapidly changing events, as they hang on to what they initially grasp, those who meditate are more likely to be able to go with the flow and detect a series of changes – something vitally useful in the fast information technology age that we live in.
It seems that science is starting to acknowledge the very real benefits of meditation in a big way. In time this may lead to a huge move towards meditation being accepted as a commonplace activity essential to our health – no different from exercising regularly or eating properly. Those already aware of the benefits will be able to take great confidence in the fact that they have been acknowledged by people the than adherents to New Age Medicine and spiritual practice.
Article from www.meditationexpert.co.uk