family

What is Your Self-Love Language?

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What is Your Self Love Language

Gary Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages describes five different styles of showing your love. Whether it be to your spouse or loved ones. These include;

What Is Your Personal Self-Love Language?

How do you best respond to acts of love done by you for you? Most of us run through our days checking off our to-do lists. Ensuring that the needs of everyone else are met. By the time the day is over, you may be feeling tired or drained. Maybe even overwhelmed by the never-ending list of tasks that are yet to be completed.

Unfortunately, living like this is not benefiting your health or your relationships with;

  • Family
  • Friends
  • Children
  • Neighbours
  • Co-workers

It is time to tune in to what your self-love language is and start showing yourself some love.

Make Yourself A Priority

The five self-love languages are the same as what we listed above. However, you are going to be tending to the most important relationship you will ever nurture, the one with yourself.

This concept might feel strange at first. Especially if you aren’t used to focusing your attention on yourself. But I encourage you to power through those feelings. Really work hard on filling up your own love tank so that you can be a more grounded and happy person.

find your love language

Find Your Self-Love Language

Let’s take a look at how these different types of self-love languages could be applied to our lives.

  1. Words of Affirmation – The inner dialog that you have going on with yourself is vitally important to your health and self-image. Spend time everyday saying nice things to yourself.  While you brush your teeth, or in the car on the way to work, tell yourself 3 things that you value and love about yourself. With each passing day this task will become easier as you become more comfortable with having this type of dialog with yourself.
  2. Acts of Service – To perform an act of service for yourself, look at ways to fill your heart with joy.  It may be delving into your faith or volunteering at a local charity, or donating something to someone in need.
  3. Receiving gifts – Set aside twenty dollars per week (or whatever you can afford) to use to buy yourself something that you have always wanted, or invest in a hobby.
  4. Quality Time – Spend time doing something that fills you with joy and relieves stress.  It may be taking a yoga class, learning how to do a hobby, reading a great book, or it could be as simple as taking a rejuvenating nap.
  5. Physical touch – To show yourself love through physical touch, you could get a massage, a manicure or pedicure, get a new haircut, or get a reiki treatment. Other options would be to sweat it out at the gym or your favourite workout class.

Whatever your self-love language may be, start today by making yourself a priority.

Why Do We Make Young Children Sleep Alone?

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Sleep

Let’s think about this for a moment. Announcing to your children, “Go to sleep and stay there by yourself all night.” (while Mom and Dad get to share the night together)

This is simply an outdated model of children’s sleep habits, as research is now coming to light that there is an incredible amount of value that is added to the health of the child and the family by co-sleeping.

Putting a baby into a separate bedroom at night causes parents to wake for much greater periods of time and creates added exhaustion in early parenthood. It is much easier to have the baby or toddler right beside the bed with you, or depending on your level of safety comfort, sharing the bed with you. This makes it much easier to be able to comfort and nurse or feed your baby when he/she is unsettled in the night.

Babies are born very immature neurologically, and require close connection to their parents – not just during the daylight hours, but also at night! Being separated for too long elicits a stress response in the young child (ie. abandonment, fear, separation anxiety) and can cause issues with healthy development.

Additionally, when each child has her/her own separate room, it forces the size of the home to grow significantly, as the family is spread out across much more space (which requires more resources to build the home, energy to heat it, light it and maintain it). Sleep has become a detriment to our environmental that adds a huge carbon footprint.

Why did we stop co-sleeping?

Our ancestors used to co-sleep for much of their growing-up years, as well as many families across poorer nations where they simply do not have the real estate to have separate sleeping rooms.

In the 20th century, there were several prominent physicians, such as Dr. William Whitty Hall, who insisted that it was uncivilized to sleep as a family, and that it was associated with poverty and social ills. In 1928, behavioural psychologist John Watson argued that children should occupy their own rooms or risk stunting the child’s development. And in 1985, Dr. Richard Ferber wrote that solitary sleep was meant allowing the child to become independent and reminded readers that co-sleeping was a primitive practice.

What are the benefits of co-sleeping?

• improved infant emotional health
• promotes more convenient breast feeding• it is natural and healthy
• creates closer-knit families
• can help to prevent SIDS
• helps your baby feel safe and protected
• less intergenerational conflict
• deeper sleep as individuals learn to be unaffected by snoring, a trip to the bathroom or tossing and turning
• kids grow up to be more tolerant of each other and fight less
• have better capacity to share
• more caring attitudes toward each other

What are the risks of co-sleeping?

• loose bedding
• waterbeds
• if parents are under the influence of drugs or alcohol – won’t have same level of alertness and responsiveness as usual
• parents who smoke should not co-sleep – some studies indicate a higher risk of SIDS
• if parents are incredibly deep sleepers

If you are worried about the safety of co-sleeping with your little one, talk to your natural health care provider. There are also many options for having them sleep very close to you, but with a little added protection, such as this bassinet: https://www.thebump.com/a/best-bassinet-halo-bassinest-swivel-sleeper-luxe-plus

With Sources From:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-reiss-sleep-alone-20170324-story.html

Are you poisoning your family?

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Are you poisoning your family?

What are you cleaning with? What soap do you wash dishes with? Run the dishwasher with? Do the laundry with? What about your windows? toilets? sinks? floors? How do you control odours? Manage the dust collection? Are you inadvertently poisoning your family?

You probably have a giant bucket of cleaning supplies, solutions, soaps, detergents, sprays and poisons to combat the dirt, grime, dust and bacteria that tries to call your home their home too.

This bucket is filled with hundreds of chemicals and can cause very serious health problems for your entire family.

The worst part is that there are no regulations in this industry that states they must label their products with warnings about the health problems these products can cause from not only extended use, but even to use them once.

So, here is your warning label!

When we use these chemicals in our homes, they stick around for a very long time.
• They linger in the air and we breathe them in
• They stay on the dishes and cutlery until they combine with our food and find their way into our bodies
• They stick in the clothes we wash in the toxic detergents and cause our skin to absorb the chemicals
• They stay on the floor until our feet or our babies’ crawling tummies have absorbed the chemicals into their skin
• They go down the drain to further poison our aquatic life and then circle back around to the drinking water supply

Once these chemicals are used, they are with our planet forever. And they can cause serious health complications, such as:

• cancer
• allergies
• migraines
• hormone mimicking
• chemical burns
• kidney damage
• endocrine disruption
• skin and eye irritation
• throat and lung problems – breathing problems, asthma
• and many more serious health issues.

How to Avoid Toxic Chemicals?

Make your own cleaning supplies!!! You can clean 99% of your entire home with vinegar in a spray bottle, some baking soda and your favourite essential oils.

Toilets and sinks – spray them down with vinegar, sprinkle around some baking soda, add 3-4 drops of essential oil (lemon is great), leave it for 5 minutes and clean as usual.

For laundry detergents, dish soap, etc, begin shopping at your local health food store for non-toxic products. Speak with the staff to hear about their favourite options and try them out.

How to identify toxic chemicals?

These are some of the worst offenders, found in a variety of your household cleaning supplies. Avoid them like it’s your job!

• Ammonia
• Coal Tar Dyes
• MEA (monoethanalomine)
• DEA (diethanolamine)
• TEA (triethanolamine)
• Fragrance (can be a mixture of the more than 3000 chemicals existing that create fragrance)
• Pthalates
• Nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs)
• Phosphates
• Quaternary Ammonium Compounds
• Silica Powder
• Sodium Hydroxide (Lye)
• Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
• Sodium Laureth Sulfate
• Triclosan
• Trisodium nitrilotriacetate

These chemicals are found in dish soaps, disinfectants, laundry detergents, cleaning towelettes, toilet bowl cleaners, deodorizers, surface cleaners, abrasive cleaning powders, all purpose cleaners, fabric softeners, degreasers, dishwasher detergents, stain removers, car wash products, air fresheners, floor cleaners, oven cleaners, glass cleaners, window cleaners, drain cleaners, stainless steel cleaners, rust removers, and automobile cleaners.

With Sources from:
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/health/science/toxics/the-dirt-on-toxic-chemicals-in-household-cleaning-products/

Do You Want to Kill Your Stress Once and For All? Do This.

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Kill Stress Once and For All

Stress has become an epidemic in our society. When someone asks “How are you?” the majority of people now answer “stressed”.

This is now a normal, accepted answer to which the reply is a nod in understanding, “Yes, me too.” It’s like we’re keeping up with the Jones’ to see who can be busier and more stressed out.

This has got to stop!!!!

There are obviously major reasons why we would feel stress, and this is our body’s way to kick on our adrenaline processes and potentially our fight or flight so that we can get through a trauma, injury, major life change or passing of a loved one.

But the daily stresses that are climbing and adding up need to be seriously revised.

The first problem is not having enough time to get everything done that life demands. The answer is that you need to ask for help.

Your children can be a great source of your home stress, so ask them to help you. Depending on their ages, give them special tasks to complete to help out around the house.

There is no reason your teenagers should hit the couch when they get home from school. They can help to start dinner, get their lunches ready for the next day and help to care for their siblings.

This is not taking away their freedom and childhood, it is giving them life skills and responsibilities that I promise, they will thank you for in the future. (What student wants to get to college or university, away from home for the first time and have absolutely no idea how to feed themselves? Let’s give them a chance!)

The most important thing you can do is to live in the present moment.

Right here in this moment (the only moment we actually have) there is no stress. We are consciously present. We are just working on this one task. There is no worrying about getting it done in time, ohh I only have 2 more hours, etc. because that is not living in the present moment. The stress arrives when we think about the future and think about how something will affect us when it arrives. But if we try to stay just in the moment we have, your stress will diminish drastically.

The other important thing you need to do is to detach from outcomes.

Put no weight or importance on the outcome of any event. This is again, living in the present moment. For many things, we literally have no control over many situations and worrying about them can make us crazy. The outcome will unfold over time and we will deal with whatever happens at the time. Because we will be practicing being present in each moment and taking things minute by minute.

We must begin to consciously decide how our lives want to look and feel.

I’m sure that you are in agreement with me, we’ve all experienced enough stress for the rest of our lives just in the past few years. It’s time to let go of the panic of worrying about the future and fretting about the past and choose, decide today, to make every moment one of joy and contentment.

It’s so much nicer to live in a mindset that you actively choose, rather than to be sucked into the societal pressure of being stressed all the time. Your health will be so much better, and your personal and family life will be much happier. Share this new mindset with your family and friends to help them reduce their stress. Obviously it takes some time to train your mind to stay present but over time it will get easier and you will have a much more serene life.

Toxins in Plastics are Putting Your Family at Risk

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Avoiding plastic isn’t just good for your family, it is also good for the environment. According to a report by the United Nations, in every square mile of ocean, there are on average, 46,000 pieces of plastic.

That’s a plastic state of emergency!

Toxins in those plastics then leach out into the water and affect marine life, or they pose a risk to marine life by getting tangled in the plastics or ingesting them.

Why is plastic bad for your health?

• It disrupts the endocrine system and can have negative effect on reproductive systems, growth and metabolism
• Studies have linked plastic exposure to breast, prostate and colon cancer
• It leaches into food and drinks (especially when heated …never microwave anything in plastic!) (Actually, never microwave anything! But that is a topic for another day).

Studies have actually shown that it doesn’t even take repeated exposure to BPA, a common toxin in plastics, to cause health issues. One particular study compared two groups of people:

Group A: drank a beverage from BPA-lined cans.
-within two hours, they had a rise in BPA found in their urine and a rise in blood pressure during the same period. The BPA was 16 times higher in Group A’s urine than in Group B.

Group B: drank the same beverage from a glass container.
-no heightened BPA in urine.

(Hidden) Sources of Plastic:

• inside lining of canned foods and pop cans
• plastic lunch boxes
• water bottles
• receipts
• plastic wrap
• plastic and paper cups
• kitchen storage containers

How can you eliminate the use of plastic?

While in recent years many stores have encouraged the use of reusable bags instead of plastic bags, it is still not enough to to reduce the plastic waste that ends up in landfills every year. The Bulk Barn has recently announced that they will be allowing the use of reusable containers instead of plastic bags. Consumers are encouraged to bring their own clean, glass jars to the store to fill up rather than using the traditional plastic bags. This concept is a huge step in the right direction to reduce the environmental impact we are placing on the Earth.

• Store leftovers in mason jars or glass containers
• Use silicone lids rather than plastic wrap to keep foods fresh in the fridge
• Use a glass or stainless steel water bottle
• Use a stainless steel travel mug of coffee or tea
• Avoid the use of plastic disposable cutlery and plates for parties
• Purchase fresh fruits and vegetables and avoid buying processed foods that are packaged in plastic

• Recycle!! Teach your children to reduce their use of plastic products and to recycle. Now more than ever we need to take good care of our planet.

With Sources from:

http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/avoiding-toxins-in-plastic
http://www.citynews.ca/2016/09/27/toronto-bulk-barn-trading-in-plastic-bags-for-reusable-containers/
http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/avoiding-toxins-in-plastic

Why and How to Pass on Plastic


https://wellnessmama.com/54748/hidden-sources-of-bpa/
https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/sya-bpa/
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/bpa-crosses-placenta-is-active-form-in-fetus/

Put Your Phone Down & Go Outside!!

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unplugged

How many times have you checked your phone today?  Email?  Facebook?  Instagram? Snapchat?  Linked In?  Text Messages?  Many of us just simply do not make it a priority to get unplugged and spend time outside.  Of course, in the northern hemisphere, the climate has a great deal to do with this.  If we don’t play an outdoor sport, or actively enjoy outdoor activities, we may spend the whole winter on the couch!

Alternatively, during the heat of the summer, many of us stay indoors for the air conditioning!!!  This gives us way too much inside, without the opportunity to get fresh air and movement!   It also gives us a great deal more access to screen time.

When is the last time you unplugged and went outside to ENJOY being outside?  Not just running to your car because you’re late for work?

There are many studies showing that many of us are addicted to our devices.  We are compulsively checking notifications, bells, chimes and rings.  We are tuned in to hear our device from miles away, even if we never let it out of our sight!

This problem is compounded for our children.  The time that they spend with a device is time that they are not interacting with you or other humans.

Technology & The Effects On Children

At a young age, children look to their parents for reassurance and direction.  This is where they need to receive feedback on right and wrong, as well as connecting with you while developing normal attachments.

When young children play games on a screen, win a game or get an answer correct, there is no one there to offer reassurance, so they lack an opportunity for confidence building by connecting with you.

The same is true when the kids are playing without a device.  They look to their parents for reassurance.  If you are not unplugged and busy on your phone, you miss an opportunity for eye contact, a smile or something to let them know you are paying attention to them.  Click here to read, “Is Today’s Technology Destroying Your Health?”

What Is The Answer?

Get unplugged!!  Find a few hobbies that your whole family likes to do, and do them often!  Play board games, go hiking, skiing, or skating.  Learn to dance, go swimming or learn a new healthy recipe to make together.  Put your favourite devices in another room.  Turn off the TV and maybe put on some music instead if you are at home.  For a great family recipe, click here for our Chocolate Bread/Cake Recipe.

It’s so easy to surf the channels for something to watch, browse YouTube, hit Netflix or scroll through your social media feeds and relax.  But don’t forget to actually find some ways to spend time with your family and grow together.  Try learning a new skill, enjoying a new hobby or connecting more frequently with your loved ones.  Click here to discover 50 Fun Things to Do Outside With Kids as a Family.

Additionally, it is really important for you to turn your devices off at least an hour before bed to wind down naturally.  Many of us work on a computer during the day, on top of having our device attached to us.  The artificial light so close to our faces in the evening can wreak havoc on our circadian rhythm.  Evenings are a time to enjoy more dull light, to let our bodies know that it’s time to slow down and ease into sleep.  With having around the clock access to artificial light sources, it can make it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep.  For more information, click here to read, “Ten Tricks To Get The Best Sleep EVER!”

So have fun developing some new hobbies with your family, and put your phone down every once in awhile!!!