Ukiah, CA

Feeling your best takes TIME and EFFORT. Improving your well being requires a committment to balance and moderation in all that is both bad and good.

Pay attention to the way you show up in the world and the impact it has on the people and environment surrounding you. Also, notice how the energy of those surroundings and people impact your physical and emotional well being.

Find 10 minutes in your day to practice meditation. Close your eyes, find a quiet space and take deep breathes while focusing only on the present moment. When your mind wanders (and it will!), bring it back gently. A lot of people get discouraged because they feel the more times their mind wanders, the less the meditation is working. Actually, the act of meditation is like an exercise for your brain so that sole act of bringing your attention back from a thought to the present moment helps introduce more grounding to your every-day life.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach. Not even a one-size-fits-two approach! Challenge yourself to stop paying attention to marketing, celebrities and other people on what they are doing to "stay healthy". There is no single approach, in fact, what benefits someone you know may be harmful for you!

In order to properly nourish your cells, you need to consume food that was once LIVING also. This means making meals out of whole foods such as vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, meats. Avoid that which comes prepackaged, canned, or frozen.

Though food is a great part of culture and tastes so so so yummy, it's main purpose is to help sustain life. Consequently, we must stop eating things that just "taste good" and make an effort to reap the benefits that food was intended for. Just as food can support, it can also harm if the wrong foods are consistently consumed. Focus on eating whole foods that are not prepackaged, fried or processed. Begin to pay attention to the 6 tastes- sweet, salty, sour, pungent, bitter and astringent. A balanced meal should hold all tastes, keeping in mind that spices are a great way to add taste. Notice the physical properties of your food and how they can be used to balance physical symptoms in your body (i.e. You have dry skin so staying away from foods that physically appear dry and focusing on moist foods will help lubricate your body from the inside out.)

You may be eating foods that society has deemed "healthy" but if you aren't properly digesting them to retrieve all the nutrients for your tissues then what is the point? You have three people eating a salad. Two of these individuals will feel great afterwards but one will have bloating, and constipation afterwards. Why is that?  This individual's body did not digest the salad as efficiently as the other two. Digestion is the single most important factor to making sure that EVERY single part of your body is getting the proper nutrition. Next time you eat, pay attention to how you feel afterwards. The food you are eating may be recognized as "healthy" but may not be meant for you and the status of your digestive fire.

To have strong digestion, it is critical to eat your meals on time. Just like sleep, your digestion also works off a cyclic rhythm and benefits you most when you honor this time cycle. Around the same time each day ( you have about a 45 minute leeway), your body prepares an optimal digestive environment where all the juices and enzymes needed are released. When you eat outside of these time periods, your body is not prepared to digest which ultimately results in heart burn, constipation, diarrhea and other undesirable digestive disturbances. But what happens to this undigested food? Well, not only did you not get the nutrients in that food because it wasn't properly broken down, but the more often you do this, this "uncooked" food builds up in your body and begins to clog channels that usually allow proper energetic flow.

Nature is calming, grounding and an extension of us. What would you be without oxygen from the trees? Connect with nature because without it we could not continue to exist as a species. Notice the very well documented relationship between increased "screen time" over the last few decades and the increase of anxiety and depression. During this time, the connection with nature has been broken. We are not robots. We require connection with nature. Furthermore, notice how your body changes with the changing seasons.

Do you go to bed by 10/11pm and wake around 6am? Try it out every day for a month. Tell me how you feel.