HOLIDAY GIFTS & RECIPES: Therapeutic-Grade Essential Oils

Who knew that the ginger in those gingerbread cookies had the potential to soothe upset stomachs, stimulate sluggish elimination, strengthen our hearts, and relieve head congestion!

This Saturday 12:30-1:30pm (Oct 30), stop by Three Sisters’ Spirit after the Farmer’s Market. Kim Tedford will be here sharing a FREE presentation on the therapeutic aid essential oils can provide, along with ideas on how to incorporate healing in your gift-giving this year.

Sample Kim’s favorite, gingersnaps made with ginger essential oil. The therapeutic qualities of nutmeg, peppermint, frankincense, and myrrh will also be shared!

Then, check out our essential oil kits in the store; Relaxation, Creativity, and Fertile Myrtle. Or call Kim for a private essential oil consultation, 414.476.9335.

Finding Stillness

Find Stillness to Cure the Illness
by Leo Babauta

“Silence is a source of great strength.” ~Lao Tzu

It’s a busy day, and you’re inundated by non-stop emails, text messages, phone calls, instant message requests, notifications, interruptions of all kinds.

The noise of the world is a dull roar that pervades every second of your life. It’s a rush of activity, a drain on your energy, a pull on your attention, until you no longer have the energy to pay attention or take action.

It’s an illness, this noise, this rush. It can literally make us sick. We become stressed, depressed, fat, burnt out, slain by the slings and arrows of technology.

The cure is simple: it’s stillness.

Pause

Take a minute out of your busy day to do this little exercise: pause in the middle of all you have to do, all that’s going on around you. Close your eyes, and sit still. Breathe in, and breathe out, and pay attention to your breath as it comes in and goes out. Just sit still, for about a minute.

This stillness might seem like inaction, which we’re taught is a bad thing. It’s lazy, it’s passive, it’s against our Puritan work ethic. And yet, this simple inaction can change our world.

Stillness calms us. It gives us a small oasis of quiet that allows us to hear our thoughts, that allows us to catch our breath, that gives us room to breathe at all. It is the antibody to the stress and rush we feel daily.

“Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat.” ~Lao Tzu

The Strength of Stillness

Stillness has a calming effect on the world around us as well. By becoming still, we cause others to pause, to pay attention. Our quiet also quiets others. We set the mood for those who work and otherwise interact with us.

When we rush and set a frenetic pace, it stresses others and inspires them to rush frenetically too. Stillness has the opposite effect. It slows the world down, allows us to focus, gives us time for contemplation, for what matters most.

It takes strength to be still when others rush. It takes courage to be different, to go against the stream. But while others might think us weird at first, that’s OK. Sometimes it’s the weird ones that make the most difference. And soon, as our stillness inspires others to find stillness of their own, we won’t be the weird ones — we’ll be the ones with wisdom.

It takes strength to find stillness when the world around us is a chaos of activity, but it’s a strength that’s in us, and we need only to find it. Paradoxically, it’s stillness that will allow us to find that strength. Be still, look within, and it’ll be there.

Finding Stillness

It’s pretty simple, really, and you don’t need me to tell you to do this: to find stillness, you just need to take the time to sit still, every day that you can.

Find a time in the morning, when the world is still fairly quiet, to sit still. Don’t do anything, don’t plan your day, don’t check email, don’t eat. Just sit, and learn to be comfortable being still.

In practice, we’ll gradually find that comfort, and we’ll become good at it. If mornings are no good, find time during your lunch break, or after work, or just before you go to bed.

Find a place to be still. It can be a chair in your house, or a front porch, or the roof. It can be a park bench, or the beach, or a path in the woods. Let this be a ritual that you come to look forward to.

From this small place of stillness, calm will carry to the rest of your day, radiating like a soothing force. You’ll be calmer throughout the day, and learn to find little pockets of stillness everywhere: when you first start your workday, when you are ready to sit down and create, when you’re about to eat, when you are ready to exercise, during a meeting, even.

Practice, regularly. Practice, and learn. Practice stillness, and the stillness becomes a canvas upon which you can paint the masterpiece of your life.

“Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

© Copyright Leo Babauta. All rights reserved.

Leo Babauta is the owner of Zen Habits, one of the top 100 blogs in the world, featuring three powerful articles a week on: simplicity, health & fitness, motivation and inspiration, frugality, family life, happiness, goals, getting great things done, and living in the moment.

Woman

Embracing Womanhood

When one woman honors who she is, all women collectively move closer to becoming what they are capable of being.
There are many ways and myriad reasons for women to honor and embrace all that they are. And when any individual woman chooses to do so, all women collectively move closer to becoming what they are truly capable of being. By honoring her experience and being willing to share it with others—both male and female—she teaches as she learns. When she can trust herself and her inner voice, she teaches those around her to trust her as well. Clasping hands with family members and friends, coworkers and strangers in a shared walk through the journey of life, she allows all to see the self-respect she possesses and accepts their respect, too, that is offered through look, word, and deed. 

When a woman can look back into her past, doing so without regret and instead seeing only lessons that brought her to her current strength and wisdom, she embraces the fullness of her experience. She helps those around her to build upon the past as she does. And when she chooses to create her desires, she places her power in the present and moves forward with life into the future. 

Seeing her own divinity, a woman learns to recognize the divinity in all women. She then can see her body as a temple, appreciating its feminine form and function, regardless of what age or stage of life she finds herself. She can enjoy all that it brings to her experience and appreciate other women and their experiences as well. Rather than seeing other women as competition, she can look around her to see the cycle of life reflected in the beauty of her sisters, reminding her of her own radiance should she ever forget. She can then celebrate all the many aspects that make her a being worthy of praise, dancing to express the physical, speaking proudly to express her intellect, sharing her emotions, and leading the way with her spiritual guidance. Embracing her womanhood, she reveals the facets that allow her to shine with the beauty and strength of a diamond to illuminate her world. 


(Source: DailyOm)

heART and Soul Video

Martina made this video of our first heART & soul class.  To say how awesome and incredible it was in words doesn't do it justice - the video does a much better job of capturing the essence and spirit of our gathering.  Watch and (we hope) enjoy!!

simple and difficult

A fabulous new book!!

"Love one another and you will be happy.  It's as simple and difficult as that."  (Michael Leunig)

What if we simply walked into the world in a more loving way?  What if we learned the difference between loneliness and solitude?  What if we approacbed each situation with one four word question in our minds and hearts; "what would love do?"

mercury retrograde

Mercury, the planet of communication, turns retrograde in Virgo from August 20 to September 12.


Three or four times a year, Mercury appears to move backwards in the sky for approximately three weeks. This is an optical illusion since no planet actually moves backwards or even slows down in their orbits around the Sun. However, it appears to move backwards from our perspective on planet Earth, since the planet may be orbiting at a different speed than the Earth's orbit around the Sun.

Mercury retrograde periods introduce a certain level of confusion for us earthlings. As the planet of communication, Mercury rules speech, our listening abilities, negotiations, buying, selling, travel formal contracts and documents amongst other things -- all of which are affected when Mercury seems to slow down. Mercury rules how we perceive and interpret information and how we in turn act and react to that information as we interact with others.

The Leo Sun also opposes Neptune on August 20, which can have a lackluster, low energy, and marginally disappointing influence leading to muddled thinking and lack of motivation as we start this retrograde period. However, Neptune can be healing and very spiritual, and this can be an excellent time to chill out. August 20 can also have the thrill and flavor of romance about it and definitely a time to make your feelings known since we have a delightfully passionate and enthusiastic meeting of Venus and Mars in an exactly aligned conjunction in Libra.

Mercury retrograde periods affect each one of us differently depending on the placement of this planet in our individual birth charts. The effect on Gemini and Virgo signs, ruled by Mercury, will be stronger, but for other signs it is a time of trivial irritations. Being forced to slow down and develop patience can, however, be a blessing in disguise. It gives us all time to stop, go inward and reflect. Mercury retrograde periods can be times of heightened awareness and creativity, and an excellent time for out of the box thinking, which can sometimes lead to startling revelations.

Use the energies of this Mercury Retrograde period wisely and productively. Take an inward look at your strengths and potential and keep focused on the dreams and goals most important to you. 

Although Mercury retrograde is not the time to start any NEW projects, it is a great time to tie up loose ends and complete projects that are unfinished.

(Source:  http://www.astrology.com/)

Embracing Grief

Grief is Important

Giving ourselves permission to be with sadness actually creates space for us to begin the healing process.

Change is something that happens each and every moment in our lives. Since nothing is constant, it may sometimes seem as if we are losing something whenever things do change. Understanding that this is part of our daily existence and that there will not only be gains but also losses in our lives can help us more readily accept and deal with whatever happens. 

Whenever we lose something or somebody we love, it is important for us to take time out for ourselves and truly feel the weight of what we are experiencing. Although it may seem that doing so will push us into a deeper state of sadness, truly giving ourselves permission to be with whatever arises actually creates space for us to begin the healing process. This is because the act of grieving is a natural process, allowing us to sort through the range of emotions that are present in our everyday existence. Even though it may sometimes seem easier to involve ourselves in activities that take our minds off of our sadness, this will only make the route to healing more difficult. Unless we listen to where we are in the moment, the emotions we experience will only grow in intensity, and our feelings will manifest themselves in more powerful and less comfortable ways. Once we consciously acknowledge that these emotions are present, however, we are more able to soothe the sorrow of t! he moment. In so doing, we become more open to our natural ability to heal ourselves. 

Grieving doesn’t have to be a process that keeps us rooted in our thoughts of fear and sadness. For the moment we might feel despondent, but by expressing and coping with our true feelings, we face the sadness head-on. When we allow ourselves to accept and deal with our loss fully, we will then be able to continue our life’s journey with a much more positive and accepting outlook. This will make it easier for us to see that our grief is ephemeral and, just like our moments of happiness, it will also come to pass. 


(Source: DailyOm)