Fertility | Meditation and support program

Circle+Bloom

 

 

Circle + Bloom is a meditation program to help your fertility:

  • Natural fertility
  • IVF and other assisted reproduction
  • Pregnancy and birthing
  • Other women’s health and general health issues like PCOS, sleep and energy

 

The programs help you enter into a relaxed state and contain helpful information and visualisations to help you connect with the physical aspects of your fertility experienced in a calm and empowered way.

 

It may suit you if

You are looking to gain information to feel reassured but feel overwhelmed and stressed every time you read books or articles on the internet, this program will likely suit you really well. It helps you understand issues such as your ovulation cycle through the relaxation state, using breathing and visualisations.

 

It may not suit you if

You have a lot of knowledge already and are looking for a way to tune into a deeper level of pure relaxation without any content about the fertility process. You may prefer a general meditation program (browse on iTunes) or a Three-Principles approach instead, in order to access your own inner state of calm and wisdom.

 

 

 

I do not receive affiliate payments from any recommendations on this site.

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Plant-based diet reduces risk of breast cancer

 

Here’s yet another study that supports the simple, life-giving foundation that is the plant-based, whole-foods diet…

 

Having plenty of fruit and vegetables while young is one of the few ways that women can reduce their risk of pre-menopausal breast cancer, according to a new study from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.

 

strawberry-730447_1280

 

 

What’s a “risk factor”?

When researchers look at large groups of people, they see trends that seem to go together – correlations. Over different kinds of studies, these correlations show up again and again. Researchers can then say with some confidence that certain things are “risk factors” for certain diseases.

Smoking and lung cancer.

Obesity and diabetes.

Some people can do the risk factor thing and not get the disease. Others can get the disease and not have done the risk factor thing. Health is full of grey areas, unfortunately.

But strong tendencies mean they apply to many people, much of the time. These findings can then be recommended to the general public, especially if:

a) the thing that’s recommended is harmless or generally helpful; and

b) it’s something that people can control (ie eating fruit & veggies) rather than something that’s out of their control.

This study involved following a group of over 90,000 nurses over a period of many years so it’s a high-quality study – how actual health behaviours tend to result in certain health outcomes in actual people over time.

 

Plant-based whole-foods diet

While fad foods and fashionable eating plans come and go, these kinds of studies are showing, time and again, that the basis of a healthy diet that results in:

  • feeling good in the moment;
  • better fertility, creating new life; and
  • enjoying a healthier old age and probably longer life

 

is the plant-based whole-foods diet.

If most of what you’re eating comes from the green grocer and not much is coming from packets, you’re doing it! If you can recognise the ingredients on the packaged food as being made of real food, not weird chemicals and numbers, then that’s great too!

So how can you start shifting the balance from packets to fresh food?

 

Any step in the right direction is a good step

Habits take time, and if a change feels good then you’re much more likely to keep doing it, so take your time and have fun.

Here is your three-step process to becoming a whole-foods person:

  1. Next time you grab a packet of food from your pantry or in the supermarket, ask yourself “I wonder if I can make this from scratch?”.  This is the first step – “I wonder…”
  2. Later on, when the mood strikes you, play with going into research mode. Google: “recipe make [X] from scratch” or “recipe make [X] at home” and so on.  This is the second step – exploring, learning, contemplating, imagining. Have fun with this step! Take your time here 🙂
  3. Later still, when this mood strikes you, take action!  Grab a bookmarked recipe, hopefully you have the ingredients (or nip to the green grocer and get what you need), and have fun in the kitchen!  This is the third step – experimenting through action.

 

Make it fun, rewarding and enjoyable. Play some music in the kitchen, phone a friend to come & experiment with you, take photos for your Pinterest followers to cheer you on, enjoy an indugent herbal tea or good drop of wine as you cook… whatever it means to you, so that the whole experience is fun, interesting and something you’d like to do again.

And the result?  Well, if you’ve nailed it, then bookmark that recipe and feel really proud of yourself. You’re taking back power into your own hands. Less reliant on corporate producers, free from additives – both listed and hidden ones – and probably creating a tastier version of it too.

And if you, ahem, didn’t quite nail it – well, at least it was fun right? 🙂  There’s no learning without mistakes!  Try again with a new recipe, or try cooking a different thing altogether.  Keep experimenting, have fun and learn from what works as well as what doesn’t 🙂

So, those steps again:

I wonder if I can make this from scratch?

What’s on Google?

Have lots of fun trying it out

Gradually, over time, you will find that you’re increasingly enjoying a predominantly whole-foods diet… real food that you make with your very own hands. And if most of the ingredients are coming from the green grocer?  Then you’ve done it!  You’ve found the recipe for the good life 🙂

 

 

Click here for the Harvard Chan website

 

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The deep practice of parenting

 

Several hundred years ago, Liu Yuan taught “first cultivate oneself, then go about cultivating others.” In his teaching for the everyday person, Customary Words, he explains why this is the only way it works.

According to the teaching of Sydney Banks, we experience our life from the “inside out”, so our state of mind in the present moment is creating the way we experience those around us.

Here, Dr Laura Markham teaches this essential truth in the practice of parenting – the only way a parent can change their child’s behaviour is to change their own perspective first. Then healing and connection can naturally spread outwards.

 

The following article has been reproduced in full with permission from Dr Laura Markham (see original article here)


 

 

Want To Change Your Child? Start By Regulating Your Own Emotions

“Before I even notice, I’m already 10 steps into reacting with whatever issue is at hand with my kids. When I can remain calm, it certainly helps the situation as opposed to when I get heated up, which only makes things worse. It makes me sad to know that until now, I have not been a good example of emotional regulation at all.  And it’s so disheartening to see my kids doing things that I know they saw us do…..throw something, slam a door….”

Sounds familiar, right?  Regulating our emotions is at the heart of our ability to parent the way we’d like. In fact, it’s at the heart of most of the ways we trip ourselves up, from over-eating to procrastinating to fighting with our partner. It’s just so easy to get hijacked by our emotions and find ourselves already ten steps down the low road.

We often hear that good parents love their children unconditionally, but we all know that no parent always feels loving. So we’re left on our own to figure out how we can restore ourselves to a state of love during the inevitable ups and downs of daily parenting.

This very challenging task — regulating our own emotions so that we can guide our child lovingly rather than indulging in our own tantrum — is fundamental to good parenting.  But it’s not just good for our kids. This inner work also helps us to grow into happier people.

Is it hard? Yes. I think it’s the hardest work any of us will ever do. But it’s completely possible. Here’s the secret.

When you let yourself experience your emotions, they begin to evaporate. So by simply sitting with your upsets — breathing and feeling BUT resisting the urge to act, holding yourself with compassion — you clear out your own unfinished business, whether fear, hurt or grief. Love rushes in.

What about anger?  That’s just a defensive reaction to fear, pain and grief. Once you let yourself feel the more vulnerable emotions under your anger, they’ll evaporate — and so will your anger.

You might even say this process transmutes fear, pain and grief into love, because we’re creating love where there wasn’t love before. Our hearts stretch, and we grow as people, as well as parents.

But what about when your child is misbehaving? Are you supposed to just ignore his bad behavior and go meditate? No, of course not!  Children need parental guidance. But you can’t control or change another person. You can only change yourself, which changes how the other person responds to you. So as you change, your child changes. As we de-excavate our old emotional triggers, we become more effective in guiding our child so that he WANTS to cooperate.

That isn’t just a fancy way of saying that we become willing to tolerate something that we may have yelled about before, although that may be true.  For instance, we may realize that it’s okay for our child to feel angry, and stop reprimanding him for that, even as we teach respectful interaction. Or we may realize that her jacket on the floor isn’t nearly as important as how she treats her sister. Or we may begin to see our child’s strong will as a positive trait, and find better ways to partner with her.  None of these positive responses is possible if we don’t start by managing our own emotions.

But what if your child is stuck in a counter-productive pattern and really does need to change? Your own emotional self-regulation is also the key to helping him.

Here’s why:

1. Children learn emotional regulation from us.  Kids won’t always do what we say, but they will always, eventually, do what we do. If parents indulge in throwing things, slamming doors, and yelling, so will they. If we can stay calm, they learn that it’s not actually an emergency when they get upset, and they learn to calm themselves.

2. The emotional safety we create for our children is exactly what allows them to heal, grow and thrive. Like us, children WANT to feel happy and connected, but sometimes their fear or anger overwhelms them.  Our calm gives them a path back to loving connection. When they feel better, they do better.

3. When we provide a calm “holding environment” for our children, they feel safe enough to experience their emotions, which is what allows those big feelings to evaporate. Kids learn that feelings are just part of being human, and they don’t have to fear them — OR act on them.

4. When children respect us and feel understood by us, they want to follow our lead. They learn that they don’t always get what they want, but they get something better — a parent who understands, even when they say no. So the child becomes more open to our guidance, more likely to follow our rules.

5. Children are sensitive barometers of our moods and tensions. If we have an unresolved issue, we can count on them to subconsciously pick up on it and act out. So very often, when we work on our own issues, we find that our child’s behavior changes–even without our directly addressing it!

6. When we respond differently, so does our child.  Remember, it’s always your child’s action + your response that = the outcome. When we get triggered and react without thinking, we escalate the storm. When we respond more mindfully, we settle the storm, and create more connection. Less drama, more love.

The good news is, even if our children have learned some counter-productive habits, it’s never too late for them to learn to manage themselves emotionally. The key is our role-modeling.

Learning to regulate emotions is a lifelong journey. For today, just start by noticing your own moods and feelings.  When you get upset, resist acting until you’re calm. Just breathe, and shower yourself with compassion, so you can calm down before you act.

Hard? YES! But every time you do this, you’re actually rewiring your brain…and strengthening your ability to stay calmer in the future.

I guarantee you’ll see your child change, too.

 


 

by Dr. Laura Markham, founder of AhaParenting.com and author of
Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How To Stop Yelling and Start Connecting and Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings: How to Stop the Fighting and Raise Friends for Life

 

 

 

 

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Finding the extraordinary within the ordinary

 

See article “in-shine” for introduction to Liu Yuan

 

Dr Seidman, founder of Hunyuan Research Institute, has released the first in a series of translations of Liu Yuan’s teachings on the heart method and heaven nature.

Su Yan (Customary Words) is a teaching for the everyday person. Liu Yuan teaches through examples that are familar to people in their daily lives – relationships with parents, studying, loyalty to leadership, raising well-adjusted children and so on. These are issues that we all encounter and, by finding the proper measure in each situation in our daily life, we discover the path to becoming fully human – engaged, connected, committed and supported by the deeper principle – “heaven nature”.

While loyalty to the monarch may have been relevant to the common person several hundred years ago, nowadays we can apply this same principle to our relationship with any authority figures to help us to tune in to the deeper principle and ask ourselves what is the most beneficial action. Other examples in this book are more timeless in nature – how to maintain the right relationship with our parents, children, siblings and peers so that the “kind heart of heaven nature” flows through and supports our daily activities and nutures those around us, including ourselves.

With commentary by Dr Seidman to help the modern reader make the most of the text, this text is a treasure to read and re-read, to contemplate and discover.

E-book available from Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/l/cwords#

Su Yan

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The new year – Southern hemisphere style

 

The Northern hemisphere new year is in the middle of darkness, stillness and cold – candles are lit, warm food and drinks are taken, and from this introspective setting, people can imagine the emerging of new beginnings in spring.

In Australia? Long warm days, markets bursting with seasonal fruit, social gatherings that linger into the evenings, summer holidays of unwinding and restoring energy, celebrating the good life.

Whereas new year in the Northern hemisphere is about dreaming the new beginnings of things, or starting over, in the South it is more about seeing what we have and appreciating it, being grateful for the bountiful harvest.

With gratitude, our hearts naturally desire less. Being grateful for all that we have, we can resolve to cherish our good fortune. With fewer desires and full hearts, we can see just the right move that comes next – and resolve to do that one simple thing.

 

kiwi

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