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3/5/2020 0 Comments

Essential Oils For Pain

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These oils are all known for being analgesic and have been studied are proven to reduce pain.
  • Eucalyptus is most commonly known to support the respiratory system. It promotes easy breathing. It is very difficult to “breath easily” if we are stressed out, in pain, feeling unsafe, scared or worried.  So in turn, not “breathing easily” will leave our body’s feeling stressed out, restricted, tight and unsafe, scared or worried. We need ample oxygen for our bodies to function properly and if we are not getting it, we are essentially is distress and we will feel it in our muscles. Eucalyptus also supports us in letting go of negative emotions and encourages us to feel grounded and soothed as we feel a renewal of life and good health revisit our ailing body and spirit. If you feel like you are surrounded by conflict, in survival mode, or with loss or grief, eucalyptus can bring relief and help you feel better fast!
  • Ginger is wonderful at helping us to live in the present moment and experience all the gifts the present is offering us. It encourages us to be our best selves and to live authentically and with purpose. In the same way that ginger supports physical digestion, so does it support how we digest all of what life brings our way. When we feel safe about what is coming, our bodies can relax and “going with the flow” a lot easier, therefore reducing stress, tension, and fear that often is the forerunner to physical pain. If you feel like a victim and like others are to blame, if you feel helpless or powerless or filled with anxiety, Ginger can help you turn these feelings around.  Maybe you need relief from feeling defeated, stuck or fearful about what is coming, consider allowing ginger to move these beliefs through you, so you can move on!
  • Lavender is known as the Oil of Communication. This not just communication between one another, but communication between our cells is enhanced.  Lavender encourages us to speak our truth and express our true selves, to ourselves and others. Feeling unheard, rejected and scared to speak your truth will cause pain every time. As humans, we are hard-wired for connection with others.  It hurts if we do not feel connected and like we can share who we really are with others. In addition, it calms and soothes our central nervous system, reduces anxiety, stress, anger, and fear and helps us to feel ok and enough within ourselves.. 
  • Lemongrass is often referred to as an emotional housekeeper.  It helps to clear stagnant energy and emotional clutter so we can feel free moving forward in life.  It is fantastic for muscle cramps and spasms as it helps remove stagnant energy from our body and cells and allows muscles to move easily and freely as well. Lemongrass also helps us get in touch with our wants and needs and allows us to decipher between what is truly needed and what are we holding onto out of fear (hoarding).
  • Marjoram is wonderful at healing deep emotional wounds or trauma.  Both of which are often found as underlying causes of physical pain. It soothes joints and muscles, which help us to move more freely physically and emotionally. It teaches us that it is ok to trust others and ourselves and supports us in letting go of past hurts and forgive those who hurt us.  There is no point in continuing to feel the pain of past hurt, it only keeps the pain in your present and in your body and leaves you feeling overly protective of ourselves. Feeling emotionally isolated or rejected also certainly hurts both physically and emotionally.
  • Oregano** is very supportive to those who hold on tightly to beliefs or thought patterns that no longer serve them.  Holding on to past pains will almost always lead to physical pain. Oregano wants us to be healthy physically and emotionally and helps to clear whatever is in the way to make it happen. It encourages us to let go of toxic relationships and negative attachments and supports is in releasing anger at others. It can also help us to reduce jealousy and feel less obsessive and materialistic.
  • Peppermint is a stimulant.  It stimulates our brain and neuronal activity, increases energy, improves mood, increases circulation, dispels heat from inflammation and irritation, and helps us see the joys in life.  It lifts us and helps us to rise above situations and see things from a new perspective. It can also help to reign in overflows of emotions and helps people to be more emotionally regulated. Unbearable pain, extreme stress and feeling of overwhelm can all be dispelled with peppermint. It helps is stay focused on what is truly important and let go of what is distracting us.
  • Roman Chamomile is very calming to our minds and bodies and helps us regain our sense of purpose in the world.  Those in pain often feel separated from and angry at our spiritual selves and rejection of our true spiritual purpose, It is fantastic at helping to heal broken hearts, recover from disappointment and to feel the confidence and motivation that one needs to have hope for the future and to succeed. Severely repressed emotions are resolved and broken hearts healed with the use of Roman Chamomile.
  • Rosemary is wonderful for those who have a hard time with change and transitions.  It allows us to move beyond a first assumption to search for deeper answers and to uncover greater knowledge about situations and experiences. It helps us feel less confusion and to find the answers we are seeking. Rosemary can also help dispel feelings of fatigue and exhaustion brought on my overwhelm and burdens, by helping us to move beyond our current mindset.
** This oil must be diluted with carrier oil for topical use.  It is considered a HOT OIL and will cause redness and burning where applied if not diluted.

Not sure which oil to try first? Download the EO's and Pain Checklist below to see which oil is best for your personal pain.
 
DOWNLOAD
  • EO's and Pain Checklist.docx


dōTERRA CPTG® Proprietary Blends for pain
 
Here are some dōTERRA CPTG® Proprietary Blends for pain, stiffness, and inflammation. For information on individual essential oils for pain, scroll down.

AromaTouch (the Massage Blend) - This blend combines the unique benefits of oils known to provide relaxing and comforting effects. AromaTouch combines our essential oils of Cypress, Peppermint, Marjoram, Basil, Grapefruit, and Lavender essential oils in a perfect blend that adds many important benefits to various massage techniques. This popular blend is a vital part of the doTERRA AromaTouch Technique, a proprietary method for applying essential oils to produce a profound whole-body wellness experience.

Balance (the Grounding Blend) - The oils in this blend are known for establishing feelings of calmness, peace, and relaxation.  It can assist one in harmonizing various physiological systems of the body and promotes tranquility and a sense of balance.

Deep Blue (the Soothing Blend) - This blend contains Wintergreen, Peppermint, Blue Tansy, and Helichrysum oils that are well-known and are frequently studied for their abilities to reduce soreness, alleviate pain, and

Past Tense (the Tension Blend) -Known for their soothing effects on both the mind and body, the essential oils in PastTense quickly, promote feelings of relaxation and calm emotions.  This blend has four of what I refer to as “Super Pain Oils”, meaning they all have strong anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic and analgesic properties. These Super Pain Oils are wintergreen, lavender, peppermint, and Roman chamomile. In addition to the four Super Pain Oils, this blend also has Rosemary which is a powerful anti-inflammatory and analgesic,  basil and frankincense which are wonderful anti-inflammatory and antispasmodic oils, as well as marjoram which is antispasmodic and analgesic. This blend will have you feeling more relaxed, in less pain and less inflamed in no time. And as a bonus, it comes in a convenient roller bottle for easy application. 

Rescuer (Kids Soothing Blend) - This blend was created for kids which means it is diluted for those with sensitive skin.  This blend is ideal for soothing and comforting, achy, tired muscles and joints. The oils in this blend, Copaiba, Lavender, and Spearmint are known for their abilities to help relieve minor aches and pains.

HOW TO USE:
Apply to affected area neat.  *oils must be used with a carrier oil as they may cause skin irritation.  Be careful and test skin as you go.
Either add a few drops of one or more oils to a carrier oil and massage into the area.   

Written by Keslie Mack, Keslie Mack Healer & Hypnotherapist
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3/5/2020 0 Comments

Pain and the Metaphysical Mind-Body Connection


What does pain do for us?
Pain lets us know something is wrong with us.  It signals us that the stove we are touching is hot and to move our hand or risk a serious burn.  It lets us know when to stop lifting or exerting ourselves physically. It tells us we have hit out limits.  It also tells us that we have damaged tissues as in breaks, tears, nerve problems, sprains or strains. It lets us be aware of our body and to pay attention to a certain area. It helps us to not reinjure an area before it has healed.  It can also alert us to more serious issues like cancer, non-malignant tumors, tissue damage, and other underlying issues that can cause bigger problems if not addressed. So since pain clearly lets us see that something is wrong with us physically, so does it point to what is wrong emotionally.  The good news is the solution to your pain, comes with what is your pain providing you? What is it calling your attention to? What is it trying to let you know is WRONG? What is it alerting you to?

Pain doesn't always have a physical cause, of course. Allopathic pain is pain that has no obvious physical cause for the pain. The tissue is healthy and functioning, yet pain is still very real and can also be disabling. In both cases, what the pain is providing you is still a vaer valid question and the answers are very valuable and can help you get yourself out of pain.

Now,  I know that this concept, that pain does something for us, can be hard to accept if you are currently in a lot of pain. So let me just say, I know, I've been there. 8 years ago if someone had told me that my pain had a purpose, a gift or reason for being here, I likely would have said then it must be here to punish me.  I must have been a bad person in another life or must be so rotten on the inside that I am being punished properly by hurting. That statement in itself is actually holding the key to my pain, in fact. You see I was punishing myself for all the ways I felt I was not good enough. At the time I could not have seen it, but now I know that these feelings still help me to get out of pain when it sneaks in.  

Let me explain more clearly, by sharing my pain and what it was doing for me. I used to be in nearly constant pain from my waist down.  My low back often spasmed and I had sciatica down both legs. My legs ached and my bones hurt. My low back had more stabbing pain that would often shoot down my legs changing the dull ache to temporary excruciatingly intense pain to my feet. Or it would shoot upward into my middle back and cause me to barely be able to move. Now physically, I had my diagnosis and the "cause of my pain". The MRI "proved" it. I have scoliosis (a curvature of the spine) in both my upper and lower back. Scoliosis has caused Degenerative Disc Disease. This means that chronic misalignment of my spine is causing my discs to deteriorate and not provide the cushioning they once had.  In addition to these two issues, I also have multiple discs that are herniated or bulging. I had proof and physical cause, it was all I needed, right! I was a victim to my body and there was, as my doctors explained it, no hope for recovery or a life without pain. I was told to learn to manage the pain the best I could and that the faster I accepted this truth the easier it would be. That learning to manage my psychological state and not get depressed was my best option. Just give in and accept. 

Well, thank goodness I didn't, because in 2013, after 7 years of being a chronic pain patient and having a handicapped placard, I did not renew my placard.  I was able to take my kids trick or treating and didn't need my pain pills or muscle relaxers or the alcohol that often was needed for long walks. I had gotten myself out of pain and was completely chemical-free! It felt like a miracle. 

So, what did my pain provide me? And how did knowing the answer help me get myself out of pain?   Mostly, it offered me a chance to ask for help. A chance to not do "everything" on my own. It allowed me to be, and to slow down and take care of myself. Without my pain, I would have never slowed down, never asked for help and continued to take on more and more.  I would have continued to put myself last, and made everyone else more important than me. I would have enabled my children to feel incapable and invaluable as a member of our family, as I was doing everything for them. My husband could have continued to not participate and to behave like a teenager and not the man he could be. Keeping him feeling inadequate, helpless, and unable to provide anything for me or the kids. My pain was providing a LOT for me and my family.  
Part of my healing process was to learn to get the things I truly needed in respectful, responsible adult ways.  I began asking for help from my husband. Inviting him to cook dinner once or twice a week, which he is perfectly capable of doing and even finds he enjoys.  I began asking for his help around the house, which created respect and understanding and helped him to feel like he had something to contribute besides just an income. I began creating chore charts for the kids and putting them in charge of age-appropriate chores, helping them feel valued, capable and proud of their efforts.
I also began taking time for myself, which allowed me to turn down my intensity and feel less bitter and resentful towards my entire family. Even if it was a 30-minute bath with Epsom salts and essential oils, it was for me. Tiem for me to make me the most important person in the whole world. What a concept that was!  I also began saying "no" to things I didn't REALLY want to do and say "yes" to things I wanted, even when no else gained anything accept me. When I learned to say "no", it allowed me to stop needing my pain to help me say "no", to stop using it as an excuse for not being able, when really I didn't want to.   

Now, pain doesn't always have to do with other people.  As I mentioned above, I felt like I was being punished by my pain. I even caught myself thinking, "that'll teach you" one day after I had lost my temper with my kids and spanked one of them out of anger and basically temporary insanity. I realized that I did believe I was bad and needed a good punishment to "teach me a lesson". And omg, I had just done the same thing to my poor child.   Once I heard this limiting belief in my head, it became a common theme. If I didn't get the dishes done or dinner on the table at the perfect time, I would hurt and hear this familiar mantra in my head "that'll teach you". 

Basically, I had an unrealistic expectation of what a mom and wife should look like, be and do and if I could live up to it, I deserved to be punished, so I was inviting pain to try to make me be better and more perfect.  By allowing myself to feel ok with who I was and ok with what I could do and all I was good at, I was able to stop beating myself up for it. 

There was one last thing my pain was providing me.  It was providing me a chance to acknowledge my fears around money.  As a child, our family was often financially stressed and I was very aware of this.  My mother worried a lot about money for many different reasons and I had adopted her beliefs, fears, and general upset when it came to money.  This was being manifested in my life as pain. When I would spend money on groceries or other needed household items and I was punishing myself for spending when we didn't have enough money to pay for it.  The funny thing was I actually did have enough money. My husband had a well-paying job and was tenured. We were fine, but my mother's money issues had permeated me. As an adult, I had unconsciously chosen to feel fear when there was none and it was very painful.  It turned out it was not the big heavy grocery cart in Costco that left me in tears walking to the car nearly every time I left, it was the big heavy bill at the end of the trip that did me in. When I realized this, Costco was no longer my nemesis!  
​

You see, pain is providing us all with something.  Maybe for you, it's time away from your job or to keep you from participating in a hobby with someone else for them.  Maybe you too are punishing yourself for not being good enough. Maybe you feel like you can't provide for your family or will never be as good at your job as your coworker.  Maybe you feel like your not a good enough parent or that you are inherently a bad person. Maybe you are carrying someone else's burdens or limiting beliefs. Whatever it is, looking at it and then learning to get those needs met in an alternative, healthy way, will likely leave you in less pain. 

Written by Keslie Mack, Keslie Mack Healer & Hypnotherapist
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3/5/2020 0 Comments

Awareness and Imbalance

It is important to remember that we all have innate strengths and gifts, as well as persistent challenge areas. Understanding the interplay of elements in our bodies and minds is an effective way to shed light on our self-awareness, helping us understand how to provide support precisely when and when it matters most. In Ayurveda, the predominant combinations of elements are seen as three main “doshas” By learning to see where we have tipped toward imbalance, awareness allows us to look for corrective paths.
Here is how elemental imbalance can manifest in each dosha: 

Vata (ether, air)
When out of balance, vata tends to cause fear, anxiety, isolation, loneliness, and exhaustion. It can lead to both physical and energetic depletion, disrupt proper communication, and cause all sorts of abnormal movements in the body, such as tics, tremors, and muscle spasms. Dryness can cause gas and constipation.

Pitta (water, fire)
When out of balance, pitta causes fiery, reactionary emotions such as frustration, anger, jealousy, and criticism. Imbalanced pitta is often at the root of inflammatory disorders, which can affect organs and tissues throughout the body. Fast digestion can result in frequent loose bowel movements

Kapha (earth, water)
When out of balance, kapha triggers emotions of attachment, greed, and possessiveness and can also create stubbornness, lethargy, and resistance to change. Physically, kapha tends to invite stagnation and congestion in organs and tissues throughout the body—including the mind.

An Ayurvedic Wellness Consultation can help make sense of your imbalance and suggest ways of tipping you back toward a path to vibrant health. Email 
 send2astra@gmail.com to schedule today.

​
Written by Astra Apsitis, Broken Tusk Wellness Education
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3/5/2020 0 Comments

It's All In Your Mind

The idea that the mind can change (self-directed neuroplasticity) is considered a foundational principle of modern psychology. Mindful practices - yoga and meditation - have been shown to affect the brain, giving rise to the popularity of meditation apps, retreats, and a multimillion dollar “mindfulness industrial complex” that supplies the public with endless options to calm the mind. All of which can serve to accomplish the opposite. And it all exists because most people are unaware of the non-pharmaceutical, natural pain relievers and tranquilizers in their own minds.  

It filters down to what we notice. When we are unaware of how we are receiving messages through our senses, we can find ourselves at the mercy of outside influences and incongruent social messages.  At the center of the chaos is our mental experience, swirling with memories, with its inevitable feelings of pleasure and pain. This unconsciousness leads to distraction, confusion, and chaos that creates a mental continuum of clutter. How can you possibly know the truth about anything - much less, your fabulous SELF - with all that mental noise? Without discriminative thinking, knowledge remains veiled by ignorance.
 
Patterns and habits of thought are the result of subliminal impressions linking together in thought chains. Left unchecked, these chains create neural pathways that keep us repeating the same behaviors without much thought. Through conscious action, this cycle can be broken. 

The Yoga Sutras tell us that the mind can change through experience. Yogic breathing practices can help center and balance the mind, building sustained mental calm that fosters resilience to withstand the storms of life. Control over emotions occurs naturally from the resulting clarity -the kind that can only exist once the clutter and noise of inner experience settles.  By learning to regulate awareness, attention, and emotion, unconscious negative patterns fall away, having lost their utility. And that, my friends, is freedom. Awareness is freedom.

Swasa Yam: The Yogic Science of Breath Control (Sun 3/8 @ 3 and again Thurs 3/12 @ 6) $20
No experience with yoga? No problem. We will take the time to establish a comfortable seat before teaching and guiding you through simple breathing practices, letting you experience for yourself the calming effects of your own actions. 

 
If you work on yoga, 
yoga works on you.
-Baba Hari Dass

​Written by Astra Apsitis, Broken Tusk Wellness Education
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3/5/2020 0 Comments

Aging Doesn't Have To Hurt

​We’re all getting older. Common complaints I hear from people around me (we’re all getting older!) include aching backs, stiff shoulders, sore knees...and a lack of flexibility. It begins almost imperceptibly - you reach for something on a high shelf and feel a twinge in the shoulder; a long drive leaves you struggling to stand up straight; an afternoon of yard work leaves you with aches that somehow take longer to go away. If you are like most people, you resign your fate as being on a scale of mildly to excruciatingly uncomfortable. Not enough for a doctor to diagnose some treatable condition, just enough to affect your sleep and overall mood.   

Just because you’re not feeling it today does not mean it’s impossible to feel at ease in your own skin. Aging gracefully is a choice within your control.  

People who have settled into a primarily sedentary lifestyle may find that yoga is a gentle way to reverse the tightness that comes from hours of sitting in chairs. Imbalance and pain in the body has a cause/effect relationship: limited hip flexibility can result in tight hamstrings and flattening of the lumbar curve; weak thigh muscles affect stability in the knees; and underused core muscles can lead to poor posture and low back discomfort. When one joint cannot move freely, the next available joint takes on the stress. A lack of flexibility is especially troublesome for men, whose bulkier muscle tissue can often take longer to release and feel stretched. 
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My first step in working with clients is finding ways to fully relax muscles that have been in a state of chronic contraction. I then guide people through a combination of somatic movements and gentle yoga, keeping a focus on mindful breathing. The recuperation and growth rate has been noticeable on many levels. Clients report more ease in their joints, better sleep, improved ability to manage strong emotions, and a general sense of optimism. I see that as pure gold and wish this for everyone.

If you feel like aging is getting the better part of you, contact me at send2astra@gmail.com Maybe I can help.
​
Written by Astra Apsitis, Broken Tusk Wellness Education
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    Seaside MindBody Wellness

    Authors: 
    Astra Apsitis of Broken Tusk Wellness Education
    Keslie Mack of Keslie Mack Healer and Hypnotherapist

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