holistic health

My Experience with the COVID Vaccine

February 7, 2021 by Carol 2 Comments

Friday morning I had my second dose of the Moderna vaccine. After the first dose, the only symptoms I had were a very slight spacy feeling and an arm that felt like it had been hit with a baseball bat for about 36 hours. (I know what that feels like, my brother ‘accidently’ hit me once with one as a kid during a game!) The second shot is, for most people, a very different experience. I tell you this, not to scare you off the vaccine, but so you can be better prepared and know how to deal with it. The most important and helpful thing to do with the inevitable painful arm is KEEP MOVING IT. Stretch, pump your fist, hold your hand over your head and wiggle your fingers – even though it hurts, from the moment you get the shot keep it moving. Topricin is also helpful, and they may tell you to use ice, but as I explain below, the soreness is an inflammatory reaction that activates your immune system, you don’t want to suppress it.

By Friday evening I was feeling tired, a little achy, had a slight headache, felt a little queasy and started running a fever of 100.2.

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Thoughts on COVID-19 – part 1

May 9, 2020 by Carol Leave a Comment

On his deathbed, Louis Pasteur admitted that he was wrong about the germ theory, his famous theory that bacteria and other germs were the primary cause of illness. “The terrain is everything,” he said, and that is what alternative and holistic practitioners have been saying ever since. Bacteria and viruses are everywhere, and as we are seeing so clearly with COVID-19, some people get sick, some people get very sick, and most people are fine. So what’s the difference? The virus is the same, but their terrain, their inner environment, their receptivity and susceptibility varies greatly. It’s the host that is variable, not the virus.

So what does this mean in this pandemic? It means we can take control of the one thing we can control, supporting our systems to provide as healthy a terrain as possible. In looking back over my posts, I have written several times about the seasonal flu, and ways to protect yourself. There are a few differences with COVID-19 but mostly supporting your terrain, your immune system is the same.

There is a way in which this touches something very personal for me, this pandemic with all it’s talk of ICUs and ventilators, and it reminds me of a sad validation of the importance of terrain.

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Coronavirus – Supporting Your Immune System & Office Update

March 13, 2020 by Carol Leave a Comment

As we do our best to prepare and take precautions, it is also vitally important that we tend to our stress levels, our immune systems and our body, heart, mind and spirit.
Why do some people get very ill and others have a mild or undetectable response to any virus? That depends on many factors, especially on how well their immune system can respond to the challenge. The function of our immune systems is to recognize what is me, what is not-me; what is my body, my food, and what is a virus or bacteria or toxin and then mount the appropriate defense to keep us healthy. It is very important to support our immune systems to do their best to respond appropriately when confronted with any virus. So this is an especially crucial time to nourish ourselves on all levels – eat well, avoid stressors like sugar and junk food, take appropriate supplements, get plenty of sleep and stay connected to people we care about.
Fear produces stress hormones that send energy to our fight or flight mechanisms, taking valuable energy from our immune systems and our ability to digest and heal and repair.

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Quick Stress Relief Tips…

March 1, 2020 by Carol Leave a Comment

Trying to find the time to implement stress relief techniques can be stressful itself, so I wanted to share with you some quick stress releasing ideas. It really doesn’t take long to shift your energy and calm your nervous system and access a sense of relaxation and peacefulness. Here are a few of my favorite, very quick stress releasing tricks.

#1 – EXHALE… A few focused, deep breaths can shift your mood in a moment. Exhaling slowly stimulates the Parasympathetic part of the nervous system, the part that calms and nourishes our system. Inhaling stimulates the Sympathetic part, the part that controls the Fight or Flight response. Think about the difference between a quick gasp and adrenalin surge when you are startled, vs. a long, slow sigh of relief…

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Moods Are Like the Weather… Seasonal Affective Disorder

November 17, 2018 by Carol Leave a Comment

From a spiritual perspective, it’s been said, you are really the vast, deep, limitless sky, and your emotions are really just the clouds that come and go across that background. Sometimes they frame the sun and create a beautiful panorama, or a spectacular sunset. Sometimes they seem to block the sun and you can feel sad and gloomy. But then the wind blows, air currents shift and suddenly you are your true radiant self again…

As we move toward winter in the Northern hemisphere, we enter a time of challenging skies, often gray and cloudy, no longer balanced by the lush green of trees and plants. And many people find it difficult to remember the sun, remember the gentle air of spring, the brilliance of summer and most especially, their own inner light. They fall into seasonal sadness, also known as SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder. And it gets really hard to maintain a spiritual view on it all…

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Transformation, Toxins and Butterflies

June 6, 2018 by Carol Leave a Comment

The milkweed plant is celebrated as the favorite food of the monarch butterfly caterpillar. It’s also quite toxic, and in munching its way through many leaves, the caterpillar stores enough toxins in its body to render it, and the resulting butterfly unattractive and dangerous to predators. We all absorb toxic experiences, relationships, patterns in our early life.How much do we hold onto as protection? As we transformed from children to adults and through the many stages of our lives, what do we hold on to? What do we let go of?

In EFT tapping, we start with tapping on the side of the hand, known as the karate chop point, a part of the small intestine meridian. The small intestine in our bodies is what controls what we absorb into our body as nutrition and what we eliminate. What do we take in, what do we release… And that becomes a lifelong process, with the experiences of our lives, and the memories, traumas, issues of our childhood… What do we keep, what do we let go of? What nourishes us, what needs to be eliminated?

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How Do I Fit Meditation Into My Busy Life?

May 31, 2011 by Carol 1 Comment

The question I hear most frequently is “how do I find time to meditate? I’m stressed enough already, trying to find time to meditate is even more stressful!” Life seems busier, more rushed, more full of stuff to do every year. So how do we find extra time to do the things that will, theoretically, make us feel calmer, more relaxed, more centered?

It used to be with meditation, the longer the better. Now, in the age of tweeting, texting and shortening attention spans, people want something short and sweet. And actually, I think that’s just fine…

We are no longer in the days of retiring to a mountaintop to contemplate the Universe.

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The New Vitamin D Recommendations – Ignoring the Facts…

December 8, 2010 by Carol 4 Comments

I was shocked last week to hear that the long awaited revision of Vitamin D recommendations ignored most of the of studies showing the benefits of Vit D for preventing serious illness and optimizing health. The Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board – a supposedly independent government funded board – did indeed revise their recommendations for Vitamin D intake, but by such a small amount as to be almost insignificant. And more seriously, it gives the public, and allopathic doctors the impression that low Vit. D levels are not a cause of concern.

I beg to differ – this is a very big cause for concern! Thousands of studies have showed that higher levels of Vitamin D helps prevent 17 different types of cancer (including breast, prostate and colon cancer) the flu, asthma, heart attacks, strokes, autoimmune disorders, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, bone disorders, depression, chronic pain, poor balance and weakened immunity in addition to osteoporosis! These new recommendations ignore most of the newest information available and if followed, would leave millions of Vitamin D deficient people vulnerable to a host of largely preventable diseases.

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Enlightenment and flossing…

July 4, 2010 by Carol 1 Comment

A friend just sent me this zen proverb “After enlightenment, the laundry.” And I thought, “and after every cool, cosmic, transformative experience, you still have to floss…”

We search for the peak experience, for the magic bullet, the Answer, the Way… Even if it existed, there’s still the regular Stuff of life; laundry, flossing, and no matter how many times you cut your toenails, you still have to do it again!

If only we could be content with the Yin and Yang of life, the excitement and the mundane, the epiphany and the falling back into our old unconscious habits, inhaling and exhaling, transformation and cleaning up dog poop. Our eternal search for transcendence makes us glorious – our stubborn denial of the mundane stuff of life makes us like ostriches.

What’s your favorite contradiction? And is it really contradiction, or is there really Yin and Yang, in-breath and out-breath, light and dark for a reason…

~Carol

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Sunlight and Vitamin D

June 21, 2010 by Carol 1 Comment

It’s the first day of summer, and today was a gorgeous sunny day in the Northeast. Time to look at the benefits of sunlight and the dispel some of the fear that has been generated about sun exposure in recent years. Human beings evolved in a warm, sunny climate, and our bodies rely on sunlight, not food sources to produce Vitamin D.So much fear has been generated about skin cancers that many people never allow their skin to reap the benefits of healing sunlight (without Vitamin D-blocking sunscreens.)

And ironically, it is nutritional deficiencies of Vitamin D and antioxidants that can make us more prone to skin cancers. It is estimated that for every case of skin cancer eliminated by avoiding sun exposure or sunscreen use, there are 20 or more cases of breast or prostate cancer caused by the ensuing lack of Vitamin D!

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