Are your Cravings really an Addiction?

Are your Cravings really an Addiction?

The Brain and Addiction Following on from last Blog article about Cravings, you now hopefully have a better understanding of the difference between “body hunger versus mind hunger”. In short, one is genuine and the other is playing tricks on us. Let’s look a little deeper into understanding the parts of the brain that are activated when we crave specific foods. In 2004, participants in a study were asked to think about a favourite food. The participants’ resulting fMRI images displayed three primary areas in the brain that lit up: the hippocampus, insula and caudate. [Source: Monell] The hippocampus, located in

READ MORE

Is Your Food Making You Sick?

Is Your Food Making You Sick?

Gut Bacteria & Your Food Is the food we’re eating on a regular basis the reason why we get sick? If we change our food, could we change the state of our health? Can we also affect our moods by making changes in our diet? I firmly believe we can. The collective human microbe colony weighs about 1 and a half kilos – as much as our brains! Bacteria outnumber our human cells by 10 to 1 and live predominantly inside our gut. Gut bacteria, also known as the Microbiome (pronounced micro.bi.ome) lives off of the food we eat. The problem is that certain foods feed good bacteria

READ MORE

How to Slow Down, Take Stock and Enjoy Life More

How to Slow Down, Take Stock and Enjoy Life More

Slow Down, Do More Do you feel like you’re always on the run trying to get ‘stuff’ done? Always feeling a little behind, like there’s no time to catch up? Do you regularly feel or have thoughts that you’re overwhelmed, stressed, rushed and hurried, and never have time for yourself? In our modern fast-paced world, life balance is a major problem that we all struggle to maintain. I’m certainly no exception to this. There are just so many things I want to do, experience, create and share but there never seems enough time for all of it. I know many of

READ MORE

How to Create Healthy Personal Boundaries

How to Create Healthy Personal Boundaries

Creating Healthy Boundaries Imagine you KNOW that you’re the most important person in your life…. You wake up with energy and can’t wait to get going! You look in the mirror and love what you see! You make time to calm your mind, move your body and feed your soul – every day. You love yourself – and it shows with every thought you think, word you speak, and food choice you make. If you don’t immediately and whole-heartedly believe YOU are the most worthy and deserving person in your life, then time to reassess why, and where the bulk of your

READ MORE

Meditation Basics and Dr Ian Gawler

Meditation Basics and Dr Ian Gawler

Meditation Basics Last week I had the wonderful pleasure of having Dr Ian Gawler and his wife Ruth over to my home prior to his Toowoomba seminar on “The Science of Health, Healing and the Mind”. Together we recorded an interview for my YouTube channel over a cuppa and some raw chocolate, discussing some of our favourite topics: lifestyle medicine, mind-body healing, epigenetics, cancer recovery, psychoneuroimmunology, and of course, meditation. Throughout an evening of research and inspiration, I saw many people inspired to begin meditating after experiencing a taste of inner peace first hand. Often people are curious about meditation

READ MORE

The Quickest Way to Healing

The Quickest Way to Healing

The Way to Healing Please don’t think for one moment that I don’t have bad days or bad weeks where I feel overwhelmed, tired and fed up, and just want some time to myself. I’m not so great at resting when there’s so much I could be doing, so having to lay back for the last five weeks with my knee up after surgery has challenged me. Feeling vulnerable and frustrated that I haven’t been able to do things for myself and have to ask for help (especially when the children were home on school holidays) certainly tested my ability to stay cool under pressure! DEEP

READ MORE

How My Late Mother Inspired My First Wellness Retreat

How My Late Mother Inspired My First Wellness Retreat

My First Self-Love & Wellness Retreat Take Time Out Before You Burn Out Many of you who have met me in person or follow my writings know that I lost my Mother to Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma when I was 24. Even though nearly 16 years have passed, her influence on my life still permeates each and every day. My mother was a most wonderfully warm woman, who never thought twice about helping anyone. She was generous and thoughtful, quick to laugh and smile and she was always ready with a helping hand or a soothing cuddle. As I meet more and more women throughout my work, I think of

READ MORE

Let go of Anger and Find Inner Peace

Let go of Anger and Find Inner Peace

Let go of Anger, Find Inner Peace When I was a teenager – angry, in denial, resentful and heavy hearted – my reality was believing I was the victim of mistreatment and neglect. I had no sense of personal responsibility, control or conviction. I simply modelled the coping skills of those who raised me. I learnt how to get angry, yell, scream, blame, over-react, sulk, lash out and quickly ignore matters that were too emotional to feel. After each blow up, things would go back to normal – quickly forgotten, as if they never happened. This frustrated me so much when I was left

READ MORE

Benefits of Meditation to Reduce Anxiety

Benefits of Meditation to Reduce Anxiety

Reduce Anxiety with Meditation Oprah and Deepak do it. The Beatles were huge fans. Russell Brand does it daily. Even Ellen DeGeneres, Clint Eastwood and Hugh Jackman do it. Yes, they all found meditation. I discovered meditation nearly twenty-five years ago, to aid in my stress and struggles through the beginnings of adulthood. Now, using Meditation Therapy, I teach others how easily this ancient practice can significantly plant the seeds for health and healing in modern life. What’s Good About Meditation? The benefits of meditation have been thoroughly researched and documented by world class research institutions such as Harvard University,

READ MORE

10 Tips to Stress Less Now!

10 Tips to Stress Less Now!

Stress Less Now! Stress is now the number one underlying cause of all illness and disease in modern society. If you’re not sure what stress actually is or how it affects the body (physiologic responses) then check out my article on What is Stress that also includes 10 tips for promoting the Relaxation Response. Over-stimulation, achievement, demands, stimulus, finance and relationship challenges, children and lack of exercise…. the responsibilities all adds up. If we’re not stopping regularly to recharge our minds, bodies and spirits, then chronic stress hormones begin to damage the body and lead to illness and disease down the track. You

READ MORE

I Miss My Mother on Mother’s Day But I Remember What She Taught Me

I Miss My Mother on Mother's Day But I Remember What She Taught Me

I Remember, on Mother’s Day Many of you who have met me in person know that I lost my Mother to Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma when I was 24. And even though nearly 16 years have passed, her influence on my life still permeates each and every day. My mother was a most wonderfully warm woman, who never thought twice about helping anyone. She was generous and thoughtful, quick to laugh and smile, and she was always ready with a helping hand, and a soothing rock-me-gently cuddle. One of her greatest disappointments was knowing she would not see her daughters mature into mothers, and her grand-children be born

READ MORE

This One Thing Can Change Your Life

This One Thing Can Change Your Life

Change Your Life With This One Thing It has always amazed me how the Sun has an ability to not just warm my skin, but blanket me in an invisible sense of positivity, joy and gratefulness for being alive. There are so many small yet significant occurrences that happen around us every day, just waiting to provide a little more happiness, purpose and ease in our lives, if only we’re paying attention. It’s in these little moments of awareness, attention and acknowledgement, that we find some of life’s precious lessons: When a loved one smiles at you and let’s the

READ MORE

Do You Feel Safe in Your Body?

Do You Feel Safe in Your Body?

That weighty feeling Who’s been on a “diet” before – lost weight, regained weight and done the whole thing over again? I’ve tried numerous diets over the years and a few methods I made up myself. But nothing ever truly worked until I learned to listen to my thoughts and understand what my beliefs and fears were saying to me unconsciously, continuing to trigger my fat storing hormones. What’s the difference between losing weight and regaining, and losing weight and staying there? It’s our emotional, mental and spiritual experience of whether we feel “safe” at a lower weight and comfortable

READ MORE

FREE ONLINE SCREENING “Lose the Stress, Lose the Weight”

FREE ONLINE SCREENING "Lose the Stress, Lose the Weight"

Lose the Stress, Loss the Weight It’s here! The online world premiere of Jon Gabriel’s newest documentary film, so I wanted to be sure you didn’t miss out: Watch Now! World Premiere of Tapping for Weight Loss (online for 10 days!)* “Lose the Stress, Lose the Weight,” is a powerful film created by Carol Look, Jon Gabriel and 12 remarkable (and brave) volunteers who are struggling with stress-related weight gain. In my professional and personal experience, stress is the #1 issue we all need to work on to achieve weight loss and well-being long term, so I can’t think of a more effective approach than learning stress management tools you can do at home (alongside

READ MORE

Lose the Stress and Lose the Weight

Lose the Stress and Lose the Weight

Mind-Body Weight Loss If you’re stressed out, worried, fearful or lonely, the impact on your health is immediate and the hormonal imbalances created are the same imbalances that cause food cravings, which also lead to weight gain. This stress, tension and fear might be a demanding job, a hectic family life, an abusive spouse or any of the millions of emotional challenges we all face in life—but the biochemical result is the same. Your hormones become imbalanced, your food cravings increase, and you’ll very likely gain weight. As time goes on, your cortisol levels rise, your blood sugar sky-rockets, your

READ MORE