10 Essential natural remedies that are a must for your Holiday 1st Aid Kit.

We all hope there won't be an emergencies but best be prepared in case there is:

1.  Rice or Barley grains.  Perfect to boil up and drink the water for an upset tummy.  Just add a small handful of the grain to about 2 cups and water and simmer.  Drink the cooled water. Excellent for calming the tummy.  If you can't boil or simmer the water then boiling water from the kettle would do.

2. Echinacea tablets This is included because it’s just so  useful. Echinacea helps support a healthy immune system. It also has antibacterial and antibiotic properties. If you start to feel something coming on, dosing yourself with echinacea is a good way to help you stay healthy. At the very least, you won’t stay sick as long. It works well in conjunction with vitamin C Your bonus item.

3.Ginger.  Stomach troubles are one of the most common issues among travelers. Ginger is adept at soothing stomach upsets. It works with remarkable speed and  has properties which actually aid your body in digesting. Ginger is good for combating motion sickness and nausea, so great to suck on the plane if you buy the sweetened natural ginger lumps.

4. Aloe Vera Gel  Getting sunburned can ruin your holiday, especially when you have to carry a backpack on those firey red shoulders. Rub some aloe vera on: - it promotes healing and relieves that burning sensation. Your sunburn will ease into a tan faster.

5. Calmomine Tea Bags.  Very calming and relaxing to drink but don't throw the bags away.  Wait until they cool and then pop them onto your eyes to calm the area around your eyes or pop them onto any particularly stinging sunburn patches.

6. Arnica Gel and  homeopathic tablets.   The gel, when used externally, is wonderful for removing bruises, bringing down puffiness or swelling, and easing deep aches. Internally, it can be used to alleviate headaches and help your body recover from trauma.

7.  Zinc lozengers:  If you're on a plane the air conditioning is the worst it has ever been and any germs being carried by your fellow passengers are circulated time and again through the stale air.  More people get sore throats after being on a plane journey than ever.  Take some zinc lazengers.  Zinc is a powerful immunity enhancer and sucking the lozengers help stop the absorption of the germs into your system.  They taste a bit urg but not that bad.  WE sell practitioner quality Zinc tablets and zinc lozengers.

8. Mint Tea Bags:  Mint is really good for settling the stomach for also for dispelling built up gases.  Air density changes in the plane, plus different food and water often create more gases than we are used to and it can be uncomfortable.  Make sure you have the mint tea to help your digestions.

9. Tea Tree Oil:  Tea tree is a great astrignent and discinfectant.  You should always dilute in water.  Helpful in cleaning scratches and cuts, as a mouth rinse and mosquito repellant.

10.  Liquorice Tea: Liquorice tastes delicious, is naturally sweet, and is super if you have a sore throat. It has mucilaginous properties that help keep dry throats from being scratchy, especially useful when traveling through smog and pollution. The tea can also be used to help get your digestion moving if the change of diet proves a little binding.  In it's natural form, a root, it is very useful for chewing on the plane to overcome smoking desires.  You can also buy the concentrated extract which comes in the form of solid black sticks.  You can break a bit off and add boiling water to drink.  The sweets and other products (even those sold in the 'health shops' are really only confectionery and have so many other ingredients that they cannot be counted for these purposes)

The key to using herbal and alternative medicine while traveling is to be prepared. Plan to use more than you would at home. Remember that some things are hard to find when you’re far from home. Knowing the Latin names of certain plants is a good practice to get into.  When using a herbal tea as a medicine it is worth knowing that you need to make a stronger brew than normal (at least 2 bags) and once you have added the hot water it is best to cover  the cup for 10 minutes so that much of the properties are not able to escape with the steam but drip back down again.

Have you got vision problems?  Do you need spectacles?

The eyes are muscles like many other parts of our body.  If they are not exercises correctly then they get weak and stop working at their most eficient.  You may have seen the black glasses with holes in them being used to exercise the eye focusing abilities and the eyes exercises by Aldous Huxley and later Bates and others who all claim that regualr exercise can improve your eyesight and reduce the need for vision aids.

For generations the people of Tibet have used natural methods to correct visual weakness and improve their eyesight. Chief among the methods employed has been the use of certain exercises which have proved useful over long periods of time. The figure below was designed by Tibetan Lama Monks to give the necessary corrective exercises and stimulation to the muscles and nerves of the optical system. The eye Muscles focus similar to a camera shutter. The purpose of these exercises is to strengthen the eye muscles to improve vision. A few minutes practice morning and evening will bring immediate effects and over a period of months a most definite improvement will result.  WE think they are a little easier than other methods we have come across.  Why not give it a go!

How to do it.

These exercises are to be done without eyeglasses or contacts. Do each movement for 30 seconds while in a sitting position, spine straight and do not move the head side to side. Move only the eyes.

First print off the image and pin it on a flat surface (wall etc)

1.) With the palm of each hand cup both closed eyes to relax them.

2.) Move the eyes clockwise around the outer circle of dots

3.) Repeat this movement in a counterclockwise rotation

4.) Move the eyes back and forth between the dots at 2 and 8 o’clock

5.) Repeat this movement back and forth between dots at 4 and 10 o’clock

6.) Blink the eyes briefly and finish therapy with the palming same as exercise #1

Repeat exercises as desired being careful to avoid strain. After beginning therapy wear eyeglasses and contacts as little as possible. In time these crutches will become unnecessary.

The process of repair and the reforming of the curvature of the back of the eye require specific exercise and the increase of the nutrients used only by the eye for its repair and maintenance. Like any other muscle the more exercise the more nutrients are needed.

The nutrients will reverse the loss of light processing and by taking extra selenium remove the deposits of ceroid lypofucsin, rancid vegetable oils, stored as cellular and subcelluar lipids in the form of darkened and discolored spots on the urea.

This type of damage is from the vegetable oils in the polyunsaturated configuration of the oils treated with hydrogen, (Trans fatty acids), causes the rancidity (free radical damage) of cellular fats.

Practitioner grade Selenium available from Mind & Body 

At the beginning of the year Zen was a mess

 

Then we had open days

 

 

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We've had great summer solstice art and chakra workshops bringing out the talents in participants

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Hypnotherapy and yoga training/yoga deepening

 

 

Charity events

and some very weird and wonderful happenings

 

 

 

Halloween and ghost talks

 

 

 

Christmas

 

Sprouts That Shout

 

Sprucing up your sprouts is a great idea as those little balls of green are packed full with essential vitamins and minerals to protect our health in the winter, yet not to everyones liking.

We tried something on the solstice that had people going back for more. Give it a try and let us know how you like the suggestions:

Creamy sprouts

There is something about raosting sprouts that seems to chainge their flavour.  This recipe involves Steaming the sprouts until they are almost ready to eat and them popping them in the over on a medium heat with a little olive oil and some finely chopped onions until they are beginning to brown and the onions are clear.

Remove them from the oven and place in a saucepan with double cream to taste.  Season with salt, black pepper and a little nutmeg.

Roast Sprouts and mushrooms

Similar idea

Roast the half cooked sprouts with finely chopped onion, chopped mushroom and crushed garlic.  Cook until the sprouts are beginning to brown.  Season with salt and black peppet.

 

Enjoy your sprouts.

Some pictures and stories about Conway weekend.  We will be adding further information so keep checking.

 

A lot of the things we do at the Mind and Body Centre are about stretching.

It's is fairly obvious that if you stretch your muscles they become more flexible and you move more freely even when you are not stretching.  There are fantastic  health benefits associared with keeping your body and muscles stretchy and suppke.

 Going a little deeper, Yin yoga is able to reach beyond the muscles to the joints, soft and connective tissues.This is extrememly useful for joint health and care.

Other things that can benefit from a good stretch:

Your perspective, especially in this current climate, being able to see things from more than one perspective can be very useful and enlightening.  They say that travel broadens the mind ....and thus stretches your zone of refernce.

Your imagination, the more you can imagine the more possibilities you can create for yourself and your world begins to open up for you.

But most of all the one things that you can stretch, ....that is the one thing that most people shrink from ... is your comfort zone.

Stretching your comfort zone mneans putting yourself into situatiosn that you don't feel comfortable in.  Doing things that would normally make you squirm.  The more you stretch it the looser it becomes and the more situations start to fall within it rather than on the outside of it.  In other words less things make you squirm.

One of the things that make many people squirm is taking a look at the  restrictions that they impose upon themselves.  The fear of addressing  the cause of limitation and resiirction in ones life is almost like an invisible cage.

A course of therapy can liberate and open the cage, but often  enbarking on therapy means stretching that comfort zone and beginning to open up.  It also means facing emotions that are lurking beneath the surface and taking them on rather than hiding from them and pretending they're not there.

Once you decide to brave the stretch then you can fairly quickly see a liberation of your emotional restrictions and find yourself doing things that you never believed you would be able ot.

So come on 1  2  3  streeetch

Andrea Lowe Senior Hypnotherapy and Course Tutor