After Christmas Letdown?Written by Susan Dunn, MA, certified Emotional Intelligence Coach
“You gotta pay price,” one of my clients is always telling me. She’s referring to what is a law of physics, and also way things work – what goes up must come down.The higher your Christmas, more exciting, chaotic and tumultuous, more likely you’ll be tumbling down just as far. Why? According to psychneuroimmunologist (big word meaning effect of brain and emotions on health, i.e., immunology), Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., our smart bodies want to establish equilibrium. Picture a graph on a midline. The midline is calm, routine. We can get very happy and go up; or very unhappy and go down. Therefore, if our emotions go way up, there will come a time when our inner wisdom brings us down low, so we settle back into that middle space. Does this mean if you have a terrible grief or depression, you can expect to be that happy at some time in future? I’ve seen it happen. It’s a tenet of Emotional Intelligence that if you don’t fully experience one emotion, you stuff down ALL emotions. In other words, if you face grief and go through it, not around it, you will carve out a space to be filled with happiness. If you don’t, you shut down, and become numb, in which case you don’t feel bad, but you also don’t feel good, and greatly limit your experience of life. So, if you’re having a “down” period now what do you do? First of all, accept it. You can last it out. To speed it on its way: 1.Get active. Exercise an extra hour. It creates physical energy, it clears mind, and flushes out toxic emotions. Do it especially if you don’t feel like it. 2.If you’re an introvert you may prefer something like yoga or Tai Chi. 3.Clean your house from top to bottom, doing physical work yourself. Do it like a ritual, that is, with meaning. This is to get rid of yuch, and make room for sunshine. This is a tradition in many cultures at New Year for a reason – because of what we’re all going through right now! Throw stuff out, sweep toward doors, vacuum then take bag out and dump it in garbage, wash furniture with something like Murphy’s soap.
| | Mad Cow NOT Bad Cow!Written by Jan McCracken
Mad Cow NOT Bad Cow!I don’t know which of biggest headlines are being read right now… Mad Cow or New Diets for a New Year (but I have my suspicions!). HOWEVER ~ let’s look a little further at REAL statistics… and do a little “common sense” comparison here… (by way, common sense seems to have disappeared completely in this great land of ours)! We look at number of deaths in all-out Mad Cow “epidemic”, if you will, in Britain… number of deaths connected to it… approximately 130. Shall we just mention here deaths that we are suffering RIGHT NOW from diabetes and obesity? So… let’s have a little closer look at that big animal in those green fields, contently chewing his cud and rolling those big, brown eyes… Some of you will get to this part of this article and toss it… so have a nice day! Some others of you will be curious and continue to read… How much do you know about our friend “the cow”? I’ll bet not much except that you prefer rib eye steak over NY Strip and that you buy hamburger when it is on sale and, and, and… Do you know nutritional value that “cow” brings to us? In addition to proteins, iron, zinc and vitamins B6 and B12, beef contains omega-3 fatty acids that are essential for life and gives us strong protection and immunities from vascular diseases! Our friends, cows, were designed to eat grasses and grains that were also designed for our diets! HOWEVER ~ our Creator made COW very special! What do you know about a cow’s stomach? Did you know that a cow’s stomach contains four rumination pouches that secrete many kinds of bacteria in digesting grasses and grains that a cow eats?
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