​I am super excited to bring you this One Minute For Wellness Tip about how I recently relieved pain. 

I was asked to present German New Medicine at a conference for Bionetic practitioners. These are holistically minded practitioners who use a non-cognitive biofeedback unit called a SpectraVision to gather information about your body and your issues.  

Practitioners interpret the scans from many perspectives including the 5 Element Theory of Chinese Medicine and German New Medicine which is a great combo.

They had a new addition to the SV unit called the SLT - Sound Light Therapy.  It looked like a blow dryer but instead of blowing heat, it emitted light and sound, which I could not hear (see pics below).

I was immediately drawn to it and had an opportunity to use it on some of my sore spots.

I have old scar tissue from various sports injuries including a calcium encrusted metatarsal on my foot from karate trauma many years ago. 

More recently, my foot has received further abuse from taking ballet.  (Yes, from karate to ballet.....)  Being on pointe is rather brutal for.....older.... feet.

Old scar tissue and the aggravation of being on pointe has made walking without pain rather difficult.  Rather than stop ballet lessons - since they are WAY too fun! -  I've been doing physical therapy for the past year which has helped.  The SLT took it even further. 

Within an hour of finishing the SLT therapy,  I could walk 100% pain-free.  I had more joint mobility with my big toe - with about a 75% reduction in pain.  My entire foot articulates differently when I walk now since I don't have any pain. 

I had a ballet and pointe class 4 days later; I was apprehensive about even going on pointe since I didn't want to ruin my pain-free walking status. 

Good news: even 2 days after pointe class, I am still walking pain-free.  :)

According to German New Medicine, pain indicates either a Healing Phase or, if the pain is chronic or reocurring, it's a Hanging Healing. 

If left unchecked, physical changes occur which can be permanent (think of fingers bent from arthritis, a self-devaluation of the hands).  This is what happened with the calcification of my metatarsal. 

Resolving the issue is paramount and supporting the bones & tissues is also beneficial.  Therapies such as sound and light therapy and acupuncture relieve pain & inflammation which make you more comfortable during the Healing Phase.

I can attest that Sound and Light Therapy was effective for me.  For more information on the unit I used, see below. 

(And just in case you are curious: ballet is MUCH more difficult than karate!)

​One Minute for Wellness Tip:
We just missed it!  The American Academy of Sleep Medicine declared that Monday, March 12, 2018, was Insomnia Awareness Day.

Every night, millions of people around the world have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. 

Are you one of them?

Have you tried everything you can think of without good results?? 
Then consider your insomnia from a GNM perspective.

When you have difficulty falling asleep or if you wake up in the middle of the night, it generally means you were Conflict Active during the day OR you're still Conflict Active.

Being Conflict Active means that something triggered your psyche (your brain, nervous system and senses) during the day and it instantly changed your nervous system. 

Often, this change is below our level of awareness yet it can disrupt sleep, even many hours later.
To determine what triggered you, consider learning more about GNM so you can figure it out and resolve it.  You'll sleep sounder!

If you have difficulty falling asleep:
Think back to your day. Did something upset you? Have you been thinking about it since it occurred?

If so, then your psyche is keeping you awake so you'll have more time to resolve it. 

The lesson here: be aware of when you're Conflict Active and how that can disrupt your sleep!  Then learn how to downgrade the Conflict Activity. 

Here's a great little chart that gives you steps you can take to downgrade being Conflict Active so you can sleep sounder. Number 10 is my favorite!

In Health,
Andi

​

I had my 2nd foray into batching cooking today using a different menu planning website than the first time I did this a month ago.  Instead of using www.20dishes.com, I used https://onceamonthmeals.com.  

My goal is to cook enough at one time so I only have to cook once/month.  20dishes is great for doing a  weekly prep in one hour but I wanted a service more geared towards prepping and cooking once every 4 weeks or so instead of weekly. 

This meant learning yet another app which took getting used to.  I LOVE the recipe builder in 20dishes; once I got used to the recipe builder in onceamonthmeals, I was okay, but it didn't feel as intuitive as 20dishes.  

In 20dishes, I could visualize the whole week: the main course AND the sides for each.  With onceamonthmeals, I had one menu for the entrees and a different menu for the sides.  It just took getting used to. 

I did, however, find the perfect use for my microwave (which came with the house when we bought it).  It's a perfect "prep sheet" holder!!  It's important to hang your prep sheets close to where you're working and in this case, it was right over my stovetop. 

The meals I created this time were a little more complex than last time and I decided to cook more sides and larger main dishes.  Over this past month, I would say a few of our meals were a little on the light side: we needed a little more food.  This time: more robust menus and larger portions! 

The entrees I made this time include:

• Turkey with gravy (a no-brainer using left over turkey)
• Turkey and Sweet Potato patties (again, a no-brainer)
• Shepherd's Pie
• Ground Beef Hash
• Acorn Squash Stuffed with Sausage & Brussel Sprouts
• Rosemary Pork Roast with Fall Veggies
• Creamy Slow Cooker Thyme Chicken
• Orange Rosemary Salmon 

The sides I made:

• Roasted Wedge Potato Fries
• Steamed Broccoli
• Sauteed onion and Brussel Sprouts
• Sauteed Zuchhini & Onions
• Butternut Squash - baked

The stats:

This definitely took me more time, however, I made a lot more food. 

Overall, I spent $146.60 - NOT including the turkey!!  I made 48 meals so each meal is $3.05.  All of the meat was local, free-range, and pastured.  About 75% of the vegetables were organic.  We have enough meals so I'm thinking I won't have to cook again until mid to late January since we'll be eating out some, as well. 

As far as the two apps I used: I'm going to continue with onceamonthmeals because it suits me better, however, I really loved 20dishes and their menu builder.  Both services are great, however, the onceamonthmeals is less expensive per month ($27 vs $10).  Both give discounts if you sign up for a year. 

I'm one of those kinds of people who likes to eat high quality food - organic, free-range, pastured, food. I love food and I love to eat.....so let's just say I'm particular.  ;)

I'm also one of those kinds of people who really hates cooking at the end of a long day of working.  Who does??  I've had a love/hate relationship with cooking for about 15 years.  Make that 20, if I was being really honest. 

So I stopped cooking.  While my non-cooking husband raised a few eyebrows, he took it in stride.

Enough was enough. I just couldn't do it all: work, take care of my grandkids, help my mom, plan meals, food shop, AND cook on top of that.  I wasn't willing to budge on my standards, either.  I want high quality food and I don't want to cook.  So what did I do?

Meal Delivery
I explored paleo meal delivery services and signed up with two of them. For the past 5 months, I really haven't cooked.  Once a week, I log in, choose our meals for the week and voila!  They are delivered to my door.  One service was in Charlotte, NC (www.modpaleo.com) and one was in Chicago (www.factor75.com).  I would alternate them.  When we needed a change in menu, we'd switch to the other company, and went back and forth.  Both were absolutely excellent! (And if you sign up with either, tell them I sent you!)

We would come home at the end of the day, pop a meal into the oven and 15 mins later sit down to eat.  How incredibly unstressful that was!  And it gave me a break from planning, shopping and cooking.  I loved it!

Yes, it was a tad expensive, but not overly so ($12-$14/entree).  We could manage.  Still, it was a chunk of change every week and in some ways I missed cooking which can be quite enjoyable when you're not tired and hungry.  So I started to explore options: how I could cook (but not at the end of the day) and still enjoy the ease of popping a meal into the oven which is ready in 15 mins? 

The answer: Batch cooking. 

Batch cooking is when you cook a ton of food, make it into meals, and freeze some of it while putting the rest into the fridge all in the space of a few hours. That actually sounded like fun!  Perhaps I could turn this into a cooking show in my mind!  (Raise your hand if you like watching those chefs on TV!!  All that stress: who is going to win by making the tastiest dish???)

I explored a few online places that help you figure out your menus and decided on www.20dishes.com. The premise is that they will show you how to prep a weeks worth of meals in one hour. Then I sold my husband on this idea, after all, I was going to need his help. 

I signed up with 20dishes (the first week is free), chose a week of menus, printed out my shopping list and my prep list.  I also watched their intro videos that introduce you to batch cooking; those had some valuable tips for me. I also decided I was going to go further than just prepping: I was going to cook as much of the food as possible which meant it was going to take longer than one hour.

I shopped without wondering what I was going to make with this food. I already knew it: every food had a purpose.  I also utilized a local, organic produce delivery service: www.motherearthproduce.com.  This really helped so I didn't have to do as much running around and shopping. 

We chose this morning to take the plunge and do our first batch cooking. 

By 11:00, we had quite a few bowls filled with chopped, raw vegetables. 


​

Then I moved on to cooking while he continued to chop.


​I had two and three burners going at once..... ​

​.......and both oven racks were filled. 

Pretty soon we had beautiful bowls of steamed, sautéed, and baked vegetables, sweet potatoes, and oven fries. ​

Then I started compiling the food into meals.  That's the chicken carrot meal in the forefront and the baked trout in the back. 

​PJ worked on the 3 slow cooker meals.  He added all the ingredients for the pot roast into our crock pot.

The other two meals were loaded into heavy duty ziplock  bags and were put in the fridge. 

(And if you're thinking: plastic!  Oh, no! The meal is now toxic!  Learn German New Medicine so you can put this thought into perspective!))

This is the Pork & Pineapple Stew.  Yum! 

​This is NOT even all of them!!  I still have the pot roast and the two slow cooker meals in the fridge that haven't been cooked yet.  I'll cook those this week and divide them into some of these trays I reserved for them. 

PJ & I each did several rounds of hand washing dishes, plus we filled up the dishwasher!

So, are you just dying to know how much this cost and how many meals we now have??

Here are the stats:
Food:
The veggies were all grown locally and were purchased at farmer's markets and farms.  Same with the meat AND it was all pastured, free range meat and sustainably harvested trout.
Cost: $145


Meals:
We have 14 meals in the freezer. 
There are 8 finished meals in the fridge for this week.
PLUS: 6 pot roast meals, 6 lemon chicken meals, and probably 4 (maybe 5 or 6) pork pineapple stew.
​
These are not super-sized portions!  The protein in each meal was 4-6 ounces, plus there were two sides of varying sizes.  I'll add on a salad if we need more food to round out the meal. 
 
Total meals: 38, 19 for each of us.  ( I will also have lunch everyday from my meal the evening before, so figure I also have 38 lunches in addition to the 38 dinners).  I'm figuring it will last us between 3 & 4 weeks since we don't eat every dinner at home. 
​
Cost for each of the 38 dinner entrees: $3.82.  (And I was paying $14/meal with the meal delivery service!)
I'm also figuring this doesn't count the salad I'll make every week to augment a few of the meals for variety. 


Time:
We started at 10:00.  I was essentially done with cooking around 1:00pm.  We finished making up the trays, labeling them, and storing them around 1:45.  I finished mopping the floors at 2:18pm. Essentially it was 4.25 hours. 

I'll start gearing up for the next prep day in about 3 weeks.  For now, I can rest easy that we have some super scrumptious meals all ready for us every day.  And if all else fails, I can always put in an emergency order with one of the meal delivery services! 

​Have you ever tried batch cooking? If not, I highly recommend it.  If you have, drop me a line and let me know how it went for you!

This is one of the first videos I ever made for my website.  I filmed it in June 2014 in Mt. Shasta, CA.  While it's just a basic video (heck, I was still figuring out how to hold my iPhone!), I love the sacred location where I filmed it and I also love the message.  From my heart to yours.  I hope you enjoy it!

One way it weakens our vital energy is by interrupting our circadian rhythm - the 24 hour, day/night,
awake/sleep cycle.

When the sun begins to set, fewer light impulses are sent to the brain which is the pineal gland's signal to begin secreting melatonin to induce sleep.  It is secreted all night long until light impulses - traditionally (and preferably) from the sun - begin to stimulate your retina to send light impulses to the brain again which begins to decrease the melatonin until you wake up.  (Alan, R. NYU)

This is why most articles that outline how to improve your sleep mention that you need a darkened room to help your melatonin to release and stay releasing throughout the night.  

So What's The Problem?
Unfortunately, our modern lifestyles are often the culprit due to artificial light from the curlique, energy efficient light bulbs and the light from TV, computers, tablets, and phones.

The Center for Disease Control states that "Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Epidemic."  One reason for this? Artificial light. 

Gone are the days when we fall asleep soon after the sun sets and rise with the sunrise. Also gone is  the sun as our main source of light. (Source for graphic)

What's wrong with artificial light?

The problem with the light from computers, phones, tablets, and from energy-efficient light bulbs is that they emit a short, wavelength light known as blue light.  While all light can reduce melatonin, it is exposure to blue light at night that reduces our melatonin the most.  




What can we do?
I've recently discovered a wonderful solution.  It's an app called f.lux and I'm pretty sure it's the best thing since sliced bread.

It is a free app that you download to your Mac, Windows, Linux or iPhone/iPad, then set to your time zone (this is important).  It adjusts your screen throughout a 24 hr cycle by reducing blue light as the sun sets for your time zone.  

Ingenious, right?  You bet! 


Start Sleeping Better Immediately!
Since I've been using it, I've slept better than I have slept for a long time. 

My husband and I have chosen to NOT have a TV, so we use my MacBook Pro to watch TV shows and movies.  With f.lux, the display looks a little different - a softer, warmer light - and we don't mind it at all.  (Downton Abbey, here we come!) 

 I recommend this for anyone who uses any sort of electronic screen, especially after the sun begins to set where ever you live.  Download it to all your devices, and don't forget to turn some lights off in your house, especially the closer you get to bedtime. 

Sweet dreams!!








http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Letter/2012/May/blue-light-has-a-dark-side/

Check out this short video I made in Indianapolis at the Weston A. Price Conference about this special food consumed by many indigenous cultures.  I have it on a daily basis; learn why!  (Click below my picture)