The Five Tibetan Rites

Recently I learned about The Five Tibetan Exercises. This is a great way to get going in the morning when you have very little time. This 10 minutes helps you get jump started...get your body functioning like a yoga cup of coffee. I really enjoy a full hour of yoga, but some days it is just not going to happen. Especially this week with this sinus infection. Not healthy. Any exercise seems stressful. So, enter The 5 Tibetans. A quick, less stressful way to stretch, tone, and stimulate the seven key chakras (if you're into that sort of thing). Here's a link to more information, printable pages, and full description of each short exercise: http://www.lifeevents.org/5-tibetans-energy-rejuvenation-exercises.htm

Indie Find: Good4You Herbs and Teas

I love my morning cup. I like to vary it up between coffee and tea. What I also love about tea is all the varieties that are caffeine free so I can enjoy them in the evening as well. I have purchased several teas from Good4You on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/good4you and enjoyed them all. They had a deal on Heartsy last week, so I stocked up. (Not familiar with Heartsy? Super discounts from Etsy shops! http://heartsy.me) You can order either loose teas or bags, whichever you prefer. I use a lot of loose teas but decided to try some bags this time. With great names and super fab artwork, this is a fun shop to browse. And excellent customer service makes it a breeze to purchase as well. Some varieties include: pure bliss chai, simmer down, wake up & live, for spring sniffles (speaking of Spring sniffles, we have some of that around our house right now, should have put that one in my cart!), and dream tea. If you are a tea lover, I highly recommend Good4You teas.

10 More Ways to Use Essential Oils

1. For aromatherapy scented towels, sheets, etc, place a few drops of your favorite essential oil onto a small piece of terry cloth and toss into the clothes dryer while drying. Or, add 5 drops of essential oil to 1/4 cup fabric softener or water and place in center cup of washer.
2. Add a few drops of oil to water in a spray bottle and use as an air freshener.
3. Add a few drops of essential oil to a pan of water and simmer on stove or in potpourri pot.
4. To blend your own massage oil, add 3-5 drops of your favorite (skin safe) essential oil to 1 oz Jojoba oil.
5. Put a few drops of essential oil on a cotton ball and place it in your vacuum cleaner bag.
6. To dispel household cooking odors, add a few drops of Clove oil to a simmering pan.
7. Potpourri which has lost its scent can be revived by adding a few drops of essential oil.
8. Unscented candle? Place a drop or 2 of essential oil into the melted wax as the candle burns. Use caution, please.
9. Smelly shoes can be remedied by placing a cotton ball dabbed with a few drops of lemon oil into the shoes.
10. For a relaxing bath, add to your warm water 4 drops chamomile oil and 2 drops lavender.

Tea Tree Oil

*Editor’s Note: This article does not replace medical advise.

20 Great Ways to Use Tea Tree Oil

For Health

1. Use a dab to treat acne.
2. An anti-fungal for treating Athlete’s Foot, eczema, various yeast infections, etc.
3. An antiseptic to be used on cuts and burns.
4. An anti-viral: it may lessen the symptoms of colds and flu. Try using a few drops in the bath.
5. Add to a vaporizer to loosen chest congestion.
6. Add a small amount to shampoo to destroy head lice.
7. A small amount added to your bath can help with persistent body odor.
8. Treating sinus infection.
9. For dandruff and dry scalp.
10. In the form of aromatherapy, tea tree oil is used to treat colds, persistent coughs, acne, toothaches, and sunburn.

For Cleaning

11. To create an all-purpose cleaner, combine 2 teaspoons of tea tree oil in 2 cups of water in a spray bottle.
12. Another version would be 14 ounces of water with 1 ounce of Murphy’s oil soap and 10 drops of tea tree oil.
13. Mix the above solution with kosher salt to scrub bathtub and bathroom tiles.
14. Add a few drops to dishwasher dispenser, then fill with a green dishwashing soap.
15. A few drops added to each load of laundry leave your clothes smelling cleaner.
16. Control mold with a tea tree oil/water spray.
17. Remove mustiness with that same tea tree oil/water spray.
18. To keep germs at bay, spray it on high chairs, car seats, and other high traffic spots.
19. 15 drops in a quart of water can be an effective insect repellent.
20. Be sure to take some with you when hiking and camping to put directly on insect bites or blisters.

Wii Fit and Me

I recently decided to commit to myself to getting in better shape. I'm not really overweight, but I noticed that I'm not in the best physical shape I could be in. So, with the help of Wii Fit, I've been trying to change that. For endurance, I'll stick with the cardio from my elliptical machine, but cardio alone doesn't build muscle tone. I tried going to a boot camp class at a gym, but it was too far away and I couldn't stay motivated to keep it up. So everyday for 1 hour I workout in the comfort of my living room with my Mii. I've developed quite an affection for my workout time. The way the exercises are designed, they are really fun to do, so getting in shape doesn't feel like such a chore. Yet often I wake up the next morning with a few sore muscles, so I know that I'm getting a good workout. And after exercising with Wii Fit, I get a good boost of 'feel good' energy. This is something that I've heard plenty about but rarely experienced. Regular cardio just makes me worn out, and boot camp made me sweaty, tired, and sore. So, if you've been thinking about jump starting a little exercise routine, I highly recommend you commandeer the kiddo's Wii for a little bit each day and give your Mii a workout with Wii Fit.

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. There's lots of great information on their website including: patient assistance, disease information, and breast cancer in the news. You can also find a mammography center near you. Some of the info from their site:
Did you know?
~Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the United States, aside from skin cancer.
~According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), an estimated 192,370 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed among women in the United States this year.
~Today, there are about 2.5 million breast cancer survivors living in the United States.
~Not all breast cancers are alike - there are different stages of breast cancer based on the size of the tumor and whether the cancer has spread.

For more info and resources, check out the site here: http://www.nbcam.org/

Organic Foods

Sometimes it's difficult to know whether you should really spend the extra dollars for organic produce, especially when the selection is poor. But according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) there are 12 foods that should be purchased as organic because they are prone to contamination with pesticides. These are: peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, imported grapes, spinach, lettuce and potatoes.
They also have a list of 12 other foods that are not so necessary to purchase organics because they regularly don't have any detectable pesticide residues. These are: onions, avocados, sweet corn, pineapples, mangoes, asparagus, sweet peas, kiwi, bananas, cabbage, broccoli, and papaya. Good info to keep in mind if your market doesn't have a large selection of organic produce, or if you're trying to keep your bill down. I recently found an organic head of lettuce that was hydroponically grown, and came in a cool package that included the roots for longer lettuce life. Aside from how cool it looked, though, it didn't taste very good and was very limp. So, I guess that's another consideration!! :)

Herbs Glorious Herbs

I love plants. I love having them around the house and yard, I enjoy them for their greenness, their prettiness, their usefulness. But my family members consider me famously bad at tending to them. My biggest weakness is forgetting to water. Some plants even with regular watering still die at my hand, and I really don't know what's up with that. But my sister-in-law knows how badly I want to be able to have plants and keep them growing, so for my birthday she got me a pot of herbs she carefully got started for me in a "self-watering" type pot. It has a reservoir at the bottom you fill with water and it keeps them happy for a week or so. I've done well so far! And I'm really enjoying having the fresh herbs around. We've used them for cooking a lot already, and so far even my trimming hasn't hurt them. Here's a picture of my herb pot on the deck...placed front and center so I can't look outside without seeing it and remembering to keep it watered. In the pot is some lavender, dill, rosemary, basil, and lemon thyme. Do you have any tips for helping me keep my herbs lovely and alive?

The Juice Fountain & Facial Maker

We just recently purchased the Breville Juice Fountain Plus. Quite a cool machine. Easier to clean than the cheaper juicer I had years ago (which I ended up rarely using because clean up was such a major pain). Now I'm having so much fun learning how to mix all kinds of fruits and vegetables to make healthy, yummy juices! I like to add a little crushed ice and a touch of milk to make it like a smoothie, but I'm thinking yogurt would be really good, too. My son likes to use it, because he loves smooshing stuff up, so he ends up getting more fruit and veggies in his diet this way. I've read that fresh juice retains more of the vitamins and nutrients than store bought juice. It certainly seems to give me a natural little "pick me up". My fav is apple, carrot and orange together. I threw in a little celery a few times, too, (ramping up to more veggies) and also strawberries and raspberries. And you can use the pulp in cooking (to make soups and such) and also as facial masks! I used the leftover apple, strawberry, raspberry pulp and mixed it with a little honey, and had a great instant facial mask. Full of antioxidants and natural fruit AHA's and enzymes, it made my skin look and feel wonderful. I've used fruit masks quite a bit, but if you've never tried it, it's an odd experience the first time. I try to do it when my husband and son are not around, because they tease me incessantly. I almost took a picture of my face slathered in fruit pulp but I just couldn't bring myself to do it! I had a really good goatee look going with a long bit of strawberry hanging from my chin, too. LOL I admit it's amusing to look at, but it sure does work well. Back to the juice, someone on Twitter recommended I try some grapes in the juicer, so that's on my shopping list for this week. Any other suggestions for good juicing recipes?

Me and my Neti Pot

Sinus Rinsing--Ahhh sounds lovely doesn't it? Not that pretty to watch, either, but effective in my experience. With our home remodeling season fully in swing, we have paint fumes, carpet dust, and hardwood floor shavings all around. Having read here and there about the benefits of irrigating the ol' nasal passages and how it can help with chronic congestion, I decided to give it a go. So, I rinsed every day with the Neti Pot for a couple of weeks and did find relief from my morning chronic plugged up nostrils. However, it was, I admit, difficult to get used to...that feeling of having water up your nose. I stopped. Couldn't bring myself to do it anymore. Then I changed from the neti pot method to the bottle method. This did make a difference for me...less uncomfortable, less of that "water up the nose" feeling, and faster to use. I've been using the pre-mixed saline packets that come with the Neil Med bottle. There's a good instructional video on their website: http://www.neilmed.com/usa/products.php#sinusrinse. I find that soon after rinsing, my sinuses clear up and stay clear throughout the day. I also wake up a bit less congested, so I'm guessing that I might be sleeping better as well, though I haven't noticed that specifically. I like that it's natural, drug free, and seems to do just as much as the Claritin did for me. Anyone else have experience with this sinus rinsing? I recommend giving it a shot if you have issues with sinus congestion.