Houses of Healing

You don’t have to be a Genius to manage your finances like one!

Your health, wellness, and well-being are an expression of many factors. They are multi-dimensional and multi-factored, and are impacted by all aspects of your life – including your finances. I can’t tell you how many times issues about money negatively and positively affect people’s perception of their health, wellness, and well-being.

Money is a highly charged issue and your financial situation carries within it many deeply embedded thoughts, beliefs, and hopes and fears. No matter what your income status is, it is to your benefit to learn about money, how to handle money, and how to make money work for you and not against you.

Part of developing a good relationship with money is to understand how it affects your daily life and how you can better manage your financial situation.

FinanceGenius is a nifty online site that is all about giving your information about key money areas such as family savings, budgeting solutions, insurance, mortgages, etc. They provide easy to understand information that will help you learn to make more knowledgeable financial decisions.

Several years ago my son's new car was totaled and he had only made payments on it for about a year. It turns out he didn't have gap insurance and after his auto insurance paid up he still owed thousands of dollars. At FinanceGenius they introduce you to the concept of Gap Insurance and give you resources to help you decide if it would be beneficial for you.

If a client is having trouble with their money, usually they rather avoid the whole money issue and not deal with it. Part of that fear is not really understanding how money works and how to capitilize on better ways of working with money. But whatever the fear about money the antidote is to face it head on and learn how to manage money better.

At FinanceGenius, you will find a financial resource center and partner network, plus articles about financial topics and a questions and answers about financial concerns. I bookmarked the site and you might want to also.

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State of Relaxation Meets State of the Art

One of my dreams is to have a massage therapist on call who gives me a custom daily massage. For the past ten years I have dealt with the fall out from a rotated left hip (actually “they” call it twisted and torqued). Whatever – the end product is lots of upset muscles resulting in pain, stiffness and lack of flexibility on my left side.

I manage it well with visits to osteopaths, chiropractors, physical therapists, TENS units, hot tub soaks, supplements, exercise, and many wonderful massage therapists. Works pretty good but the pain and stiffness is always an underlying rumble.

I’m convinced that a daily massage would work wonders. But even I don’t have time to spend the couple of hours a day it would take to make this part of my daily life.

When ever I see these massage chairs in the mall or some store I’m visiting I am eager to sit down to a heavenly relaxing massage. A lot of times though all I get is a bit of poking and prodding. Often I end up more sore than when I started.

Even though my past experiences with massage chairs have not been the most relaxing, recharging, and rejuvenating I still think that it would be valuable and possible to have a wonderful massage chair that actually replicates a good hands on massage. Well, over at Human Touch Massage Chairs they have some chairs that look like they just might do what they promise.

Their massage chairs look so comfortable. The company seems like they have done their research and have the technology to deliver a real quality massage. “Human touch is the only robotic massage® chair tested and recognized by the American College of Chiropractic Orthopedists as a valid supplement to back-care therapies. “

Alas, I have never tried one of these massage chairs but I can hope and dream for the opportunity to do so one day. I wouldn’t replace my visits to my great support team but I would look forward to my nightly relaxing massage in my own living room.

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Considering Internet Dating?

Women are relationship oriented. Relationships mean a lot to women. When a woman is in a “bad” relationship - a relationship that does not meet her needs - it always negatively affects her mood and energy. Good, sustaining, nurturing relationships make a difference to women and foster good moods and energy.

In the old days you formed relationships with people you met in your daily life. Work, school, home, church, groups – these are what provided you with your social contacts.

But these days Internet dating has expanded your reach of social contacts beyond your daily life. Internet dating has become a legitimate way to meet people.

I met my husband in high school and have been married 38 years. I’ve never used an Internet dating site and probably won’t ever use one. But a number of my clients wonder about these sites. They want to know:
• What dating sites are out there?
• What is the difference between the sites?
• Are they safe?
• What do I do when I go to one of these sites?
• How do I choose which site is best for me?

If you don’t have time to go out and meet people who has time to search through all the internet dating sites and figure them out. Primedatingsites.com can be a big help to you.

This sites reviews and compares the leading Internet dating and matchmaking sites for you.

Want to find a serious long-term relationship? Then maybe eHarmony is the best site for you because their site uses a system that determines compatibility for marriage.

Are you interested in just dating and meeting people? You have nine other sites to review and find the one that best meets your needs.

If you are interested in Internet dating take a peak at Dating Personals and see what leading dating and matchmaking sites work for you.

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Can you handle a little feedback?

Do you like to get feedback?

It can sure be annoying when you didn’t ask for it – am I right?

Even when you do ask for it sometimes it turns out that you would rather not have that feedback.

But if you want to get better at some particular skill feedback is an essential tool.

Years ago, after my husband’s heart valve replacement surgery, we tried HeartMath’s Freeze Framer heart rate variability biofeedback software. It's fun and it works. You can actually see as your stress levels relax into "the Zone." And it is gratifying to see your progress graphed over time.

But we wanted something that was more mobile and that we could use easily throughout the day. For that the new emWave Personal Stress Reliever is perfect so for our birthdays my husband and I bought ourselves one.

The emWave is a palm sized biofeedback type tool. It measures your heart rate coherence and lets you know how well you are managing stress with red and blue blinking lights and sound effects. We now use it everyday to quickly bring us back to balance whenever we feel stressed.

I have been practicing heart breathing techniques for a long time and the feedback from the emWave confirms that I’m not too bad at it. But it also turns out that there is a vast area of possibilities that I have not even touched upon yet.

And this cool little machine makes it so easy for me to expand my skills. As with any mastery that you may be building, it is a bit of a challenge but it is fun. I am finding that there is so much value in improving my heart breathing skills.

I resist turning my life over to machines but when they can help us easily reach out and expand our awareness of our health, wellness and well-being they prove to be a valuable and useful tool.

We love our HeartMath interactive stress relief tools much so that we decided to make an exception and carry them on our Evenstar Mood and Energy Wellness Center website.

Is Your Brain Chemistry is Out of Balance?

Peak performance starts with understanding our body’s physiology. Your brain chemistry drives you – it drives your energy levels, your moods, your thoughts, actions, behaviors, your beliefs, your desires, dreams, and motivations. And in turn these all drive your brain chemistry.

Neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine, create and reflect our feelings moods, thoughts and behaviors. They are a powerful group of chemicals in the brain that result in physiological and psychological changes in how we experience our lives. All behavior has a corresponding chemical pattern in the brain.

Behaviors and our experience affect our biochemical profile and our biochemical profile affects our behaviors and our experience. By picking up the yellow flags that tell you when your brain chemistry is out of balance you can take specific steps to put your self back "at choice" and in charge again.

Here is how you will know that an out of balanced brain chemistry is driving your behaviors.

1. You are not happy.

Contentment, happiness, appreciation are emotions not readily available to an out of balanced brain. Practicing appreciation, gratitude and forgiveness can promote optimal brain chemistry.

2. You are stressed.

A neurochemically imbalanced body is stressed – it is tired and listless, its mind is dull and foggy, it is weak, and it suffers needlessly more than it needs to.

3. You do not have insight.

An out of balance brain misperceives. And it misperceives in the direction of the imbalance. It does not have access to accurate perceptions. Because an out of balance brain misperceives it does not have access to insight.

4. You are driven to certain behaviors.

When your brain chemistry is out of balance, you are driven into unhealthy lifestyles and behaviors. You unwittingly begin to engage in activities, behaviors, and lifestyles that create neurochemical chaos in your body. You are not "at choice" - you are not choosing deliberate considered action.

5. You do things that you do not want to do but feel good to you in the short term.

When your brain is out of balance it drives you to do behaviors that will keep it out of balance. It seeks its own imbalanced baseline.

6. It feels good to continue doing the same old things that you want to change.

When you seek to establish a new baseline brain chemistry that supports a change you want to make, there are numerous physiological feedback loops that act to keep it at the old baseline. It will feel uncomfortable to change these physiological feedback loops.

The behaviors that keep you out of balance will feel good in the moment even though you may not want to be doing them.

7. You rely on what "feels good" to you as your guide to behavior.

When you have out of balance brain chemistry you can not rely on what feels good to you as your guide for what you should be doing, feeling, thinking, experiencing. You must take deliberate conscious actions that are specifically designed to bring your brain chemistry back into balance.

8. You do not recognize the need to choose a deliberate action designed to balance your brain chemistry.

When you are driven to a behavior, thought, feeling, experience it is exactly the time that you need not to do that because it will drive you further out of balance. An out of balance brain drives your behaviors and experience in the direction of the imbalance.

9. You believe that you can override your biology.

You alter your brain chemistry, manipulate your neurochemical profile and affect your body’s physiology every day by what you do and don’t eat or think, and how and where you spend your time.

Through your daily behaviors and the environments you create your biochemical profile and this is reflected in the emotions, energy, thoughts, actions, and psychological states that either bring you into peak performance or that block your best functioning. Neurochemicals are not the essence of who we are but they are the physiological brakes or fuel for the fullest expression of the essence of who you are.

10. You think that you cannot change.

You need 3-6 weeks of consistent action to begin to see some real noticeable results in your behavior changes. However, the brain seeks to return to baseline for about 3-6 months. So when you do not follow through with your changed behavior the brain will gravitate back to the original unbalanced baseline.

It takes 6-12 months of compliance with the new behavior to affect the enzymatic changes that change the brain chemistry baseline. When the baseline brain chemistry changes you are less subject to day to day drastic swings. The new behaviors that keep an optimal brain chemistry for you become part of what you naturally do.

You can have the knowledge, power, and technology to craft your inner and outer worlds in order to overcome the stress, resistance, and friction in them. Through your daily behaviors and the environments in which you spend your time you can create the emotions, energy, thoughts, actions, and psychological states that you want.

You can promote clarity, focus, peace, excitement or you can contribute to confusion, depression, anxiety, and conflict within yourself. The degree to which you have one or the other of these experiences is the degree to which you are in harmony with your body’s physiology or in conflict with it. How close are you to a balanced neurochemistry is the degree to which you will experience peak performance.

Take the time and effort to design and live a life that fosters your optimal brain chemistry. Open the way for optimal development of your personal resources, talents, and dreams- your Peak Performance.

Designing your life for Peak Performance can produce phenomenal results in improving your well-being, achieving your dreams, and living the successful, healthy and integrated life of your choice.

I use the Brain Chemistry Optimization Profile to assess clients' brain chemistry as a first step in designing a program that will bring them to Peak Performance and ultimately to the fulfilling life they truly desire. I am a Level II Robertson Research Institute Verified Biochemical Profile Clinician. I can help you balance your brain chemistry.