by | Mar 29, 2017 | Uncategorized
Yesterday I went for a walk in my neighborhood, phone camera in tow, looking for signs of spring. As when we see signs of spring, we see signs of hope in our lives. Hope for healing, hope for renewal, hope to just be the essence of who we truly are inside, and hope for the courage to express who we are in the outside world with as much authenticity as possible. Yes, spring brings empowerment with it as we shift out of the heavy slumber of winter. On my mini adventure, I ended up in my backyard looking for signs of spring – I found one – the earliest of buds on one of the trees. A plump, green and golden bud ready to blossom and burst when the rains come later in the season.
What does this have to do with spring cleaning, well everything. As we shed the heavy layers of winter clothing to don on spring jackets, umbrellas and rain boots, so too do our homes want to be aired out, area carpets shaken, clutter reorganized for upcoming garage sales, and good, old-fashioned elbow grease to scrub away neglect and disuse. This weekend my kids were out of town visiting their grandparents and I took the opportunity to take stock of a few rooms in the house and see past their habitual appearance to how the rooms want to express themselves. I delved into the kitchen and the master bedroom. Yes, it was an all-day reorganizing, decluttering, scrubbing fiesta of those two rooms.
Self Care Practices Calgary
Being trained in holistic health practices and massage therapy, I became very aware of what an arduous process housework can be on the body. I take very good care of myself especially through functional fitness and nutrition so my body was cruising through it, loving it. If I hadn’t been in good shape though to do all that scrubbing, lifting and vacuuming I would have had a seriously sore back. I came up with a few tips for you as I don’t want to see any weekend cleaning warriors hobbling into my massage practice in pain when it is mostly preventable.
Top 3 Tips To Protect Your Back When Spring Cleaning
- Bend your knees, bend at your hips. Do not bend forward with straight legs, hanging from your low back. Get help with lifting heavy objects (even if you are feeling impatient!)
- Take rest breaks, eat regularly, drink lots of water. Spring cleaning takes as much mental energy as it does physical.
- Keep your shoulders down (away from your ears), tuck in your lower belly to your back. This protects your back, shoulders and neck from strain.
But What if You are Reading this Article too Late and You are in Pain?
- Rest (I know, frustrating, especially in the middle of a project, but please do it for a few days or you will injure your back worse)
- Ice bag or hot water bottle/wheat bag for 10 min 2-3x per day. Protect your skin with a cloth. *Use ice if the injury feels weak, warm and swollen or puffy. Use heat if the sore spot feels cool, contracted and tense. When in doubt, ice is the general protocol for injury.
- If it still isn’t improving at all or getting worse after 4-5 days, get it checked by a doctor, physio or chiropractor. Massage therapy can aid in relaxing the tissues and prevent tightening of other muscles protecting the injured area. It can help ease the mind as well. Licensed Massage Therapists like myself are trained to deal with injuries carefully to support healing and prevent injuring the tissues further.
Schedule an appointment today with Docere Wellness. Best Wishes for a Healthy Back During Your Cleaning Adventures this Spring!
by | Feb 27, 2017 | Uncategorized
Building a relationship with yourself that is healing, is much like tending to a garden. When a garden grows and prospers we see color, pungent beauty and luscious green leaves growing towards the sun. This takes practice, love, care and time, it is not a one time ditch effort for those results. If the garden becomes neglected, no longer loved, tended to nor valued, it withers, turns brown and becomes weak. There is still the spark of life deep in the earth, but if neglected or abused enough it becomes very hard to find. Some of the most beautiful gardens we see over the summer months have grown out of timeless love, patience and skill by their gardeners.
I remember when I was a child, my parents, although very busy at work, planted a two tier garden every year that covered half of our backyard. My grandmother would come visit and spend hours weeding and harvesting the vegetables. When I was quite young, I’d stand next to my dad and ask multiple questions (I’m still like that!) while he was digging potatoes out of the ground. Later we’d shell countless peas, scrub soil embossed carrots, and pull beans. When summer hail would come, we’d anxiously await the end of the storm to see if the garden would survive. It always did.
This is the amazing power of nature to nourish and grow with a timeless rhythm. This same nature flows through our own blood, bone and tissues. It ignites our brains, opens our hearts and inspires great health. These resources are available to us to cultivate at any time.
How To Tap Into The Power Of Nature For Your Health
There are numerous ways to do this, endless in fact, but if we return to the simple concept of self care, we are growing our own garden of health with these basic practices.
- Breathe – oxygen – use your lungs – breathwork, singing, laughing, blowing bubbles in the swimming pool
- Water – the staple of life. Consume half of your body weight in ounces of water each day. For example, a 150lb person is recommended to drink 75 ounces of water per day. More even in hot climates and with exertion.
- Nutrition – vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, proteins and fats to nourish you. Include lots of plant based food.
- Exercise – pull out the weeds, till the soil, plant flowers. Use a balance of cardiovascular exercise (egs. brisk walking, biking), strength training (egs. weight training, pilates, medicine ball) and stretching (egs. yoga and stretching) each week.
Healing NW Calgary
Want to thrive with a more natural lifestyle and holistic approach to building your health? I work with an amazing group of compassionate and skilled practitioners, all very talented in their respective fields – naturopathic medicine, chiropractic care, counseling psychology, craniosacral work, and life coaching. I practice massage therapy, reiki, and reflexology. This is integrative medicine – tapping into natural healing modalities to build and restore health. Any one of us or a combination of the above at Docere Wellness Centre can support you in building your self care practice. You don’t need to grow and tend to your health garden all by yourself. Everything you need is at hand. The most important role and the one in charge is the head gardener – that is you. Happy Spring!
by | Feb 21, 2017 | Uncategorized
Don’t Drop your New Year’s Resolutions – Get Clear on what you Value
The new year brings opportunity to start fresh, for new beginnings. To tackle that mound of organisation projects around the house, to start a new eating program, to incorporate exercise into your day, to finally sign up for that Spanish language course you have always wanted to take, and the list goes on. Momentum is strong, and this year will be different.
Then February/March comes, and you find yourself unmotivated and not thrilled about those resolutions you set for yourself. You might blame it on lack of will power, and you might decide it wasn’t all that important to you. Another way to approach whether or not your new year’s resolutions are a fit is to look at your values.
Living our values and making choices in line with our values on a daily basis is what supports us in living fulfilled lives. Without analyzing your values, ask yourself “What do I value? What’s important to me?” Identify five values that resonate, and ask yourself, “How fully am I living this value?” To help you get clear on what a value means for you, develop a value string. For example, you might notice that organisation is a huge value for you. An example value string might look like Organisation/freedom/calm/clarity.
Now that you have your top five values, set an intention around them to help you stay committed. If organisation brings you a sense of freedom, of calm and of clarity, be intentional about honoring that value. Whether it’s about scheduling in a few hours a week for organisation, or dedicating a whole day to it, notice what feels right and brings you joy, and commit to honoring what’s important to you.
“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are” – Roy E. Disney
Holistic Nutrition Northwest Calgary
Don’t drop your new year’s resolutions, or at least not those that are in line with what you value. They are too important to you. Get intentional, and enjoy a fulfilled year!
Make 2017 an amazing year! WINTER/NEW YEAR PROMOTION – sign up for three months and receive 10% off! Sign up for six months and receive 25% off! BOOK YOUR COMPLIMENTARY ONE HOUR SAMPLE SESSION TODAY! Call 403.452.6262
Amanda is a self-awareness and fulfillment coach. Amanda coaches and supports people in living healthy, balanced and fulfilled lives. She coaches and honors the whole person – mind, body and spirit. Her clients experience fulfillment in all parts of their lives – health, family, relationships, career, etc. – and they value and appreciate that all parts of their lives are connected, and that we all have responsibility in and for the world around us. She lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with her loving husband and three inspiring children.
by | Feb 3, 2017 | Uncategorized
It is February and love is in the air! This month it is time to get educated and aware of how to healthfully detoxify your body, mind and spirit. This is one very important practice for loving the self and taking good care of you. Detoxification has become a popular topic in the media, especially over the past couple of years. We hear about extreme cleanses, particular diets, calorie cutting and usually it doesn’t sound like much fun. The fact is, our bodies are always naturally detoxifying and if we don’t apply some smart principles in supporting or really understanding it, and go on a cleanse, we can make ourselves quite ill and in worse shape than before we started.
This month’s article is packed full of information and will be presented as a two part series, authored by Dr. Michelle Hagel and Lisa Lin, RMT. Dr. Hagel is going to discuss what toxicity is, and how to detoxify in a safe and healthy manner. In the second article, Lisa will talk about using massage and reflexology to support natural detoxification for improved health.
Using Massage and Reflexology for Detoxification
Massage Therapy supports the natural detoxification of the body to flush out metabolic byproducts from the body. Massage uses techniques such as manual compression, kneading, combined with gentler tissue manipulations performed by a practitioner. This manually stimulates the lymphatic and circulatory systems to release waste products and carry nutrition to the cells.
Reflexology works in a similar manner. This practice is most commonly applied on the hands and feet. In my practice, I use reflexology to complement the massage work and assist in reaching deeper areas of the body for healing. By applying pressure to various points and sections on the skin surface of the hands and feet, this awakens the body through the nervous system network. There is a “map” of the entire body on the hands and feet. Stimulating a point on the bottom of the foot, for example, sends a message via the nervous system to a corresponding organ, such as your liver. This message says to your liver, via your brain, “it is time to activate, allow blood and fluids to flow and optimize function”.
What is Happening in Your Muscles if They Become Toxic?
As Dr. Hagel discussed in her article, if the body becomes sluggish and congested with toxicity to varying degrees this impedes healthy circulation and natural cleansing of the organs, tissues and cells. Inflammation is a common culprit for aches and pains. Tissues swell and lymph becomes congested. We want healthy and well hydrated circulation to return the cells and tissues to good health. We do not want stagnation and chronic inflammation as this leads to further toxicity and dis-ease. In massage, we often see areas of pain and tension. Here, there is a holding pattern in the body, some of the tissues can become ischemic (without oxygen) and it becomes much like having a traffic jam on the freeway. You can feel this as a painful knot or a trigger point in a muscle. Through utilizing healthy detoxification protocols, the traffic jam gets sorted out car by car until the freeway is clear and functioning well once again.
4 Key Points to Remember with Massage
- Have a conversation with your massage therapist beforehand about how much pressure you are comfortable with during a massage, and if you have been ill recently, experienced significant trauma, have specific injuries or sore spots. Too much pressure can aggravate symptoms, disable the trust your body has with a practitioner and leave you feeling hurt, sore and fluish the next day.
- Hydration is really important before and after a massage. Your body uses fluids to flush out waste from your system generally – if you are dehydrated, detoxification will take longer, feel miserable and can aggravate the symptoms you are trying to free yourself from.
- Regular massage if it is a practice you enjoy, is like getting a tune up done for your car. It helps support the body to flush out toxins and bring nutrition into the tissues. The more you take care of yourself through regular exercise, rest, hydration and nutrition, the fewer massage visits you would need to maintain good functionality of your muscle tissues. You will be more prone to soreness after massage if you don’t take care of yourself and you only get massages when you are at a point of significant physical misery.
- After a massage – bathe and soak in Epsom salts for about 15 min (ie. 1/2c salts per bath, mix in the tub water). Keep a water bottle handy to drink to stay hydrated as the Epsom salts are detoxifying in their own right.
Massage Therapy Northwest Calgary
Now you have lots to think about. Let all this information sit with you and explore the suggestions that resonate with you. We have just surpassed January, the days are getting longer, what is one thing you can do today to support your health? Best wishes on your journey. Get Started Today!
If you missed Part 1 of this series from By Dr. Michelle Hagel, ND click the link below to catch up
PART 1 – Understanding Detoxification and It’s Impact
by | Feb 3, 2017 | Uncategorized
Whole Body Detoxification Calgary
It is February and love is in the air! This month it is time to get educated and aware of how to healthfully detoxify your body, mind and spirit. This is one very important practice for loving the self and taking good care of you. Detoxification has become a popular topic in the media, especially over the past couple of years. We hear about extreme cleanses, particular diets, calorie cutting and usually it doesn’t sound like much fun. The fact is, our bodies are always naturally detoxifying and if we don’t apply some smart principles in supporting or really understanding it, and go on a cleanse, we can make ourselves quite ill and in worse shape than before we started.
This month’s article is packed full of information and will be presented as a two part series, authored by Dr. Michelle Hagel and Lisa Lin, RMT. Dr. Hagel is going to discuss what toxicity is, and how to detoxify in a safe and healthy manner. In the second article, Lisa will talk about using massage and reflexology to support natural detoxification for improved health.
PART 1 – Understanding Detoxification and It’s Impact
We live in a toxic world in fact we are born toxic, as chemicals can cross through the placenta and umbilical cord from mother to child. We are then exposed to unavoidable toxins daily, toxins from environmental pollution, food sources exposed to pesticides, even toxic thoughts that we have about ourselves. Toxin build up can cause symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, headaches, joint pain, skin and digestive issues. Toxins contribute to many diseases such as dementia, Parkinson’s, chronic fatigue, infertility and other mental disorders. Children with increased toxic burden showed changes in mood, aggressive behavior, problems with attention and focus, sleep problems and reduced intellectual performance. Toxins change our health dramatically, increasing our risk of disease, impact our hormones and altering our appetite signals leading to weight gain.
What is detoxification and how does it work?
When we get down to the physiology it all starts with the mitochondria, these are cell components that provide energy for the body by converting from our food stores. Mitochondria are the metabolism engines of the body. Toxins can damage these components, resulting in buildup of fat and poor energy or exhaustion. When we detoxify we eliminate the toxins and wastes from our body so we can promote the mitochondrial function. This helps reduce the burden on the body specifically through 5 elimination pathways. The number one organ of elimination is the liver, the liver deactivates toxins and then eliminates the toxins. Second are our kidneys which filter and eliminate toxins through urination. We can eliminate through our skin through sweat. Lastly our lungs and circulatory system including blood and lymphatics will flush toxins out of the body. Supporting all these systems we can increase the body’s healing ability, improve immune system and live to our true ability.
Overweight = Toxic
Signs of toxic overload according to environmental medicine expert Dr. Walter Cinnion include: if you are more than 25lbs overweight and suffer from: allergies, asthma, autoimmune disease, bone marrow cancer, chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue, chronic infection, diabetes, fibromyalgia, infertility, or Parkinson’s. Toxic burden will make us tired, make us sick and make us fat. Studies have shown a strong correlation between toxic burden, elevated body weight and increase risk of diabetes. It is more difficult to lose weight than it was 100 years ago, as our toxic burden has increased. We accumulate fat because fat acts to protect us from fat soluble toxins, it stores the toxin in fat cells. By detoxifying you allow your body to release the fat it has been holding on to protect itself from the toxins. Detoxification is vitally important for weight loss, as fat-stored toxins are factors in becoming overweight. When you break the fat down (lipolysis) you allow the toxins to be released into the blood stream, which can cause headache, low energy or flulike symptoms. Individuals that lost 46% body weight loss showed an increase in pesticide level of 388%, because these toxins are no longer held in protection by our fat cells. It is important to lower toxic burden to avoid these symptoms and once you eliminate the toxins you can watch the fat melt away. Detoxing will help your body burn fat and reduce inflammation. Detoxing will also align the good bacteria in the gut, and these healthy bacteria will contribute to a healthy weight and appetite. Unfriendly bacteria or dysbiotic flora will cause sugar cravings and weight gain.
How to safely and effectively detoxify?
The goals of detoxification are to stop new toxins from accumulating in our bodies and get the current toxins out. Clean up home environment, diet and improve elimination. We can do this by:
- Supporting the liver by reducing/eliminating alcohol, smoking, and refined sugar.
- Pee your way to good health by increasing filtered water consumption and urinating every hour.
- Ensure adequate fiber and filtered water intake to ensure regular bowel movements.
- Exercise will increase circulation, lymphatics and lung function as well the toxins can be eliminated through the skin by sweating. It is important to wipe the sweat away within 15 minutes of workout to ensure those toxins do not get reabsorbed into the skin.
- One of the easiest techniques for detoxification is breathing, all too often we breath shallowly especially in a stressful state, so take a deep breath in and exhale out those toxins.
- Avoid exposure in the diet by eating clean (organic- especially dirty dozen), filtered water, using organic personal care products and cleaning supplies. Do not use anything topically that you wouldn’t consider consuming internally, consider that these ingredients are absorbed through the skin.
- Incorporate phytonutrient rich foods especially flavonoids- broccoli/cabbage, parsley, strawberries, blueberries, kale, and onions.
- Reduce stress, as stress is held in the gut, inhibiting our ability to properly digest our food which can increase toxic burden.
- Ensure healthy gut bacteria, with probiotics or fermented foods.
- Add some air purifying plants in your home: Spider Plant, Lucky Bamboo, Aloe Vera, Peace Lily, Rosemary to name a few.
- Speak with a naturopathic doctor about supplementation to aid in detox process, avoid low quality vitamins.
To Read PART 2 By Lisa Lin, RMT click the link below:
Using Massage and Reflexology for Detoxification
Detoxify your body, mind and spirit. Get started today!
