August 2022 – yourhappyplaceblog

I recently heard a beautiful statement…Your body is a connection between heaven and earth.

I LOVE that!! It hit me soo hard the importance of finding gratitude and strength in this human experience. These bodies that move, think, learn, play…We sometimes easily forget the gift of strength, movement, simple actions that get lost in forgotten corners of our busy lives. We easily take for granted being able to take walks, to play with our children, to breathe in the fresh air, to learn something new, to exercise and push our bodies to a higher degree. We often get lazy and don’t utilize time to challenge our lungs or help our hearts be healthier. We all have human tendencies to sideline our health in one way or another.

What if we look at that great line above and continue to seek ways to truly connect with our bodies, our spirits and connect them in various ways. How intimately beautiful would that be. Like, a beautiful promise to ourselves. Take care of YOU.

Here are some ideas…

FOR YOUR BODY:

Move. Don’t limit your life to a couch potato, a Facebook surfer, a time stealer of any sort. Life is too short and there are plenty of things to take up and waste your life. According to Heart.org & The MayoClinic Get at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes per week of vigorous aerobic activity, or a combination of both, preferably spread throughout the week. To provide even greater health benefit and to assist with weight loss or maintaining weight loss, at least 300 minutes a week is recommended.

Movement is Medicine. What is the best medicine for YOU?? Whatever it is you enJOY doing. The type of exercise you choose isn’t important. What’s important is working all your body parts with rigor — meaning to the point of breathing rapidly or sweating — for five to ten hours a week -bluezones

Nutrition. Eat from the earth. Eat organic whenever possible to avoid those foods that have been nutritionally depleted in the farming process. According to Chopra A simple way to make sure that you are getting a balanced diet is to include the six tastes (sweet, salty, sour, pungent, bitter, and astringent) in each meal. The pungent, bitter, and astringent tastes, on the other hand, are anti-inflammatory and increase metabolism. These tastes are found in food such as radishes, ginger, mustard, peppers, spinach, mushrooms, tea, lentils lettuce, and so on. In addition to including the six tastes in each meal, focus on eating a variety of fresh and freshly prepared foods, while eliminating or at least limiting items that are canned, frozen, microwaved, or highly processed. These are “dead” foods that weaken health and accelerate aging.

Breathe. Breathing is energy. Breath brings oxygen into the cells, which ignites us with energy. Think about this—we can live without food, water, exercise…..but we need oxygen. We need the breath to cleanse, to move, to remove and all of it is done on varying levels of conscousness. We get busy, we dont take the time to breathe correctly and our shallow breaths don’t allow our bodies to function at its best.

Take a moment and learn to breathe to your best. Here is one example. There are many great exercises and resources to learn how to properly breathe and the exercises that will allow you to breathe fully.

*Here is a simple one that you can try at home:

Take a seat on a chair adopting the 90 degree rule (chin at 90° to floor, hips at 90°, knees at 90° and ankles at 90°).
Breath in through your nose for a count of four seconds, hold for two seconds and breathe out through the nose for a count of four.
Really focus your energy and thoughts on your breathing with your hand on your stomach (notice that your stomach is moving rather than your chest, indicative that you are breathing deeply). Repeat several times.

Breathing brings our body and mind together and for both to function well, they need oxygen. By learning how to breathe well:

You become healthier and stronger
More endorphins are released which improves feelings of natural wellbeing
Your muscles relax
Heart rate and blood pressure decrease
You can help control your emotions and fears
Natural cleansing will take place allowing energy to be directed more productively
Feelings of stress, anxiety and depression can reduce
You will have a clearer and sharper mind
You will feel more ‘present’ and more alive. *healing-feeling.com

Sleep. Here is a list of 50 different things to help you achieve the sleep you need. https://novoslabs.com/tips-to-sleep-well-sleep-better-fall-asleep-faster/?gclid=CjwKCAjwx7GYBhB7EiwA0d8oe-VS0LvUcaeUtBcdnZqSFe8OMYxLygHk-2yGCri4dx91T3BDryJJIRoCQUcQAvD_BwE

A couple of my personal favorites: if you are struggling to sleep, imagine yourself floating down a river and the river is taking you away from your stresses. You are drifting further and further into a deep sleep. Breathing and couting your breaths will also help you relax and drift off.

FOR YOUR MIND:

Quiet your mind. Be still. We have an abundance of noise pollution in our daily lives, so the small amounts of time you can just take in silence, quiet your mind and be still, the better. We take this quiet time so for granted and probably don’t even realize it. We are bombarded by television ads, people talking, the hum of electronics, the vibrations of cars we move in, children fighting, alarms going off….just sit and listen to the amount of noise you take in at particular times of the day and begin to see the various pollution points of your mind. Take note. Begin to lessen the noise, let go of our learned behavior of having noise in the background to feel less lonely, to feel productive, etc. Get comfortable being still.

Naturally light it up. This is for varying degrees of the body and mind. Natural is always better with pretty much anything, but especially light. Just watch the plants in your home and see where they are drawn. Natural light is the way. Open the windows, breathe in the air, let in the light. Turn off your led’s and lights that dim out our life giving essence. We need natural light, almost like we need air. Get outside whenever possibe and just bathe in the natural light. Soak it up whenever possible. The benefits of natural light: gives your body the “sunshine vitamin” D that helps your body with depression, sleep balance, helps prevent bone loss, and reduces your bodies risk of many other health risks like heart disease and many cancers. Natural light is also better than flourescents with eye stress and strain.

Light tips: Please make sure you are wearing blue light glasses, avoiding screens before bed and doing all you can to wake up to beautiful, natural sunlight. Ditch the curtains & allow sunlight in. Hang mirrors to bounce sunlight to various parts of your home. The natural sun will be the best way to start your day.

Reading & Learning. Challenges different parts of your brain that enhances comprehension, language, and makes you an overall better writer and speaker. As individuals we can never learn enough, so reading, learning and challenging our various skill levels & finding ways to enhance who we are is an overall great gift to our lives. When we become better–life gets better. We also challenge those around us by the example we set– to grow, to be challenged and to create those good habits that will lead to better skills for our lives.

Relaxation. You may just need a good rest. Nourish your mind and body by just taking a needed break. Relaxation is a personal preference of what you feel you need. You may consider a nap, a walk outside, playing with your pet, reading a poem, writing in your journal, meditation, mindfulness…anything you feel calms and relaxes you.

FOR YOUR SPIRIT:

Laughter is the best medicine. Laughter helps relieve stress, eleviate tension in the body, reduces pain by creating your own feel good endorphins (happy chemicals), brings about connections with people, makes you happy. My own personal stress-filled situations, like my husband losing his job, we always resort to watching a string of comedies to help keep the blues at bay. Here is an article on the additional benefits https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress-relief/art-20044456

Let go of negative emotions. release anything that brings about a draining energy, whether it is people, stressful situations, extra work that weighs on the emotions, etc. Find ways to productively eliminate added negativity in your world.

Have boundaries. Be aware of your personal needs and be able to say “no” Remember invitations are not obligations. Choose those people, activities, invitations, situations that you feel good and comfortable with and let go of feeling guilty for those that are not ideal for you or your life.

Be aware of energy you carry and the energies you surround yourself with.

Beautiful connections. Research shows that a good social support network has numerous physical and mental health benefits. It can keep you from feeling lonely, isolated or inadequate and if you feel good about yourself, you can deal with stress better. -Chopra

You do need to evaluate and ask yourself a very simple, but very important question about every person you surround yourself with. Does this person recharge or drain me? Do you enjoy them or feel drained by having them around or merely thinking about spending time with them? Energy of others is very vital to your own well-being. Take this very seriously.

Time alone. Take time to be still with yourself and evaluate your personal needs. Sometimes we just need to be alone and take moments with our own thoughts, the stillness of our own breath, a quiet minute to just be.

I smile as one of my little dogs seems to be very comfortable having some alone time. Periodically throughout the day, she meanders up our stairs to the loft to be alone. I often find her just lying in a sun spot taking a moment alone. Dogs always do seem to have some things figured out. smile.

Service. Doing something for another. Getting outside of yourself makes everything better and balanced. It is very easy for every single one of us to get lost in the busyness of our lives and to easily justify that we don’t have time to get involved in this or that cause. Change your thinking to…BE the CAUSE…BECAUSE Service is something that changes everything and everyone involved. Create something you get excited about and bring about your own cause that helps someone in some way. Whether you get lit up about making a book library to share with your neighborhood, you teach a free class in your community about growing dahlias, you start leaving kind messages for neighbors, sharing great quotes with complete strangers, start a food or clothing drive for refugees near you, help with shelter dogs, etc…the ideas are endless and especially if you take on your own ideas and BE the CAUSE in your community.

Pray. It does not matter if you have a religious affiliation or not, but to me prayer is seeking something greater beyond yourself and being humble enough to go to that place beyond. It could be going within to a deeper part and finding that humility to ask for those things you need for your life. It could be going to a church or temple and finding a type of peace there. It could be climbing to the top of a hill and crying out to the heavens for an answer you need. Whatever prayer is to you, there is power in humbling crying out, letting go, seeking answers, asking questions, knowing there is something greater for you to understand and being open to the prayers within your heart. I have had many times and various places that I will go and open my heart and soul to understand life a little deeper, ask for prayers to be answered. It is a personal place—that only you can go, but go. There is power in the depths beyond yourself and prayer can take you there. I promise.

Music. Music has a greater power than we have any idea. Music can transport you to specific memories, times in your life, meaningful moments, people, places, etc. It has the power to calm, the power to excite, the power to ignite your brain, to ease, to make you move. It has so many incredible qualities and you need to use music to your best life. Utilize its power when you need to move or when you need to be still, when you need motivation or need to remember something.

I was just driving with my daughter and she began playing a montage of a variety of different songs that took us back to specific years of her life, places we lived, moments we shared. It was such a sweet walk down memory lane through the soundtrack of our lives. It was wonderful to connect with the lyrics of songs that held such meaning. It was incredible. It was cherished.

Find something that brings you to the present moment. A little something I have come to love—I gather a rock or two every time I walk to the beach. When I get home I continue to create a rock cairn somewhere in my yard. I have varying sizes all over & it reminds me of being in the moment, stacking a rock, remembering the walk I just had and just being with myself for a small while. Whether you collect rocks at the beach and build small towers of cairns or you watch the birds come and go, watering your garden, or watching the waves crash on an ocean shore…whatever you can find that helps you to be present—do more of that.

There are so many other things you can do for the various parts of your mind. body and spirit connection, but I just wanted to touch on some of the key points that are vital to making your life a little more balanced. Do those things that make your soul sing, follow your heart on your health journey, listen within for answers, seek nature, do what you FEEL you need.

Peace. Love and Light in all you do. -H

I walked for hours with my daughter today at a beach strand line…the line of ocean debris that is left after the tides come and go. We walked seeking to find small ocean animals that may need a little saving–lots of snails beginning to shrivel from the sun beating down, but as we toss each one into the waves, I think of the sweet sea star story and how one by one we make a difference in saving them.

Then we came upon a very rare treasure—a giant barnacle. You can find plentiful shells covered in rows of tiny barnacles, but this barnacle was the size of my palm. It was huge!! I was eager to get it in the water and see if it would come to life and what it would do. My daughter dipped it into the fresh ocean water and we watched with anticipation. It slowly began to open its beak-like animal and it began to move its arm. It was fascinating. I was hooked. I wanted to find more and more. Sure enough, I came across more and more family-like structures that all seem to grow together on whatever they hold onto. We again dunked the barnacle families into the sea and watched. All the little home-like structures began to come to life. Movement. Life. It was amazing.

Life is full of tiny miracles that happen every day! We take so many small things for granted—take a breath. Take another one and think of the miracle it is to simply breathe. I definately have taken my lungs and breathing for granted. I had covid almost two years ago and my lungs still suffer every morning. I can feel the toll it has taken and I try to push my body to breathe more, to engage my lungs to breathe in and out, to fill with air, to be grateful for the miracle to breathe.

Nature is another reminder of the tiny miracles all around us—the timing of everything placed in nature always makes me pause. Look at the gorgeous panarama’s of nature everywhere you look. Trees dot horizon lines, mountains tower above valleys, the way the sun rises and sets, the timing of the seasons, the timing of everything. Look closely at the symmetry of flowers, the way a fern rolls and unwinds as it grows, the colors, the details…so many miracles. I am in constant awe of the seeimingly protected coast line that I live on. The forest of trees that reach for the sky and many are hundreds of years old, yet the way the coast is constantly misted with moisture always makes me humbly understand how perfect everything is timed. The temperature is a pretty constant cool and keeps the coast lush with the right amount of moisture to keep the forest flourishing. You walk the forest floor and it feels like a carpet of sponge. It is all a miracle in how beautifully everything is taken care of in the perfect timing of it all.

Your eyes that can see. Count that as another miracle. Your eyes are an incredible system: There’s the complicated process of irrigation, lubrication, cleaning and protection that happens every time we blink – an average of 4,200,000 times a year.-smh. The normal human eye has about 120,000,000 photoreceptors. -sta

YOU are an incredible miracle. No one will every exist like you. You are unique. This makes me think of another great treasure for life—Og Mandino’s The Greatest Miracle in the World book.

LOVE THIS.

“You are my greatest miracle… I love you and I am with you…. are you blind? No, you can see because there’s over 100 million receptors that I placed in each of your eyes enabling you to see all the magic of life from the snowflake, to a child, she’s a soaring eagle, and the look of love. Are you deaf? No, you can hear a baby laugh because I have built into each of your ears 24,000+ fibers which vibrates to the wind and yet you hear my breath and then you go to your favorite Opera house and Handle’s Messiah is playing and you are mesmerized. As you leave the theater children are at play…. and you hear, I love you!

You can move and travel the world and do great things to make the world better because you can stretch and run and dance and work for within you I have designed over 500 muscles with 200 bones and miles upon miles of nerve fibers which are synchronize to do magnificent things within. As you place your hand on your chest and feel the pulsating rhythm of your heart day in day out 36 million beats each year year after year. I, your God, put this heart in each of you and your heart pumps 600,000 gallons of blood each year through more than 600,000 miles of been any capillaries and arteries in each person. Within the 5 quarts of blood in each person are 22 billion blood cells and within each cell are millions of molecules and within each molecule there is an atom oscillating at more than 10 million times every second and with each second 2 million of your blood cells die to be replaced by 2 million more blood cells since your life began.

As you’re taking a deep breath of air you become cognizant that the breath of life is filtered through the 600 million pockets of folded flash which filter the toxins out of the air allowing you to have life. Furthermore, your brain manages and control of your body through the 4 million pain sensitive structures along with 500,000 touch detectors and more than 200,000 temperature detectors.

If not so you would not be in touch with yourself or your life and you would die if we were not touched by life and love through the over 4 million pain sensitive structures we are to be cared for and lovingly touched.

Are you feeble of mind? Can you no longer think for yourselves? I think not. Your brain is the most complex of my creations and within this 3 pounds is over 15 billion nerve cells more than twice the number of cells than there are people on earth. Therefore you can file away every experience you have in life including every sound you hear, every sight you see, and every experience you have from the first day that you were born to the last day of your life.

I have implanted in your life every sound you hear, every taste you smell, every reaction from birth till death so that I have implanted within each of cells more than 1000 billion billion protein molecules so that every incident in your life is there waiting only for your recall, providing you with endless capabilities of growth and learnings.

You are the most valuable treasure in the face of the earth what are you know who created you and there is only one of you. Never in all the 70,000,000,000+ human being to ever walk on this planet there has never been one exactly like you. Really never, until the end of time, will there be another such as you. From your father, and his moment of supreme love, flowed countless seeds of love more than 400 million and only one Infinitesimal cell joined within your mothers womb and these two cells now united in the miracle each containing 23 chromosomes and hundreds of genes which governed all your characteristics from the color of your eyes to the charm of your personality to every dimension of life I could have created 300,000 billion humans each different from each other but you are the priceless treasure the rarest of the rare.

When I first read this book it moved me so deeply with all the details of the many miracles within our lives, our bodies, the smallest miracles we don’t even give a second thought to.

Life is full of details daily that can move us to a greater understanding of the incredible gifts we receive every single day—-LIFE. Live it fully. Love endlessly. Give whole-heartedly and be grateful for the small things to truly appreciate the greatest things within your life.

Peace. Love and Light to you. -H

Month: August 2022

Mind. Body. Spirit.

Daily doses of Miracles