Wellness Way for Women: Holistic Health & Wellness Coaching

Improve Your Lifestyle and Well-Being with
The Wellness Way for Women

There is magic in changing lifestyle habits using sound nutrition, physical activity, stress relief, spiritual mindfulness, and positive psychology techniques, using a Western and Eastern approach to health and well-being.

Wellness Way for Women an innovative personalized wellness program - a holistic approach integrating physical, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, and home environmental wellness -  is an in-person or remote Online coaching approach with Karen. In-person energy healing and chakra balancing sessions are also available.

Karen's mission is to help women achieve their goals and create a sense of well-being.

While there is no magic pill, when healthy choices and energy healing sessions are combined, life can be magical.

Contact Karen today through the blog's email link. I am also easy to find on  Facebook, Karen Best Wright

Personal Wellness Goals for 2023

Karen Best Wright, B.S., M.A., Holistic Health & Wellness Coach

 Holistic Health & Wellness – Personal Goals for 2023

Every January, millions of Americans make promises to improve themselves - better health, improved organization, more money, better relationships, and more happiness. Most of these individuals will not stick to their resolutions. Why is that? One reason may be that New Year resolutions rarely consider how all six areas of wellness create balance and well-being, which improves the ability to achieve the desired goals.

Goals such as "losing 20 lbs.," quitting smoking," or "obtaining better employment" are worthy goals, but rarely are they accomplished without the influence of all areas of wellness. Holistic wellness includes physical health, emotional health, social health, intellectual health, spiritual health, and environmental health. These six areas of wellness factor into the success of accomplishing any important goal or resolution.

The three examples of losing weight, quitting smoking, or getting a better job are all influenced by physical health, emotional health, social health, and even intellectual well-being.

This process is called holistic health and wellness. All areas work together to create a synergistic well-balanced life. If a person wants to lose weight, she most likely will not thoroughly study all areas of wellness that could affect her success. However, it is possible to recognize the most apparent areas of wellness that will impact progress. In the example of losing weight, one's overall health is likely the first thing a person will consider. Emotional wellness is also vital because emotions often drive people to overeat or eat the wrong foods simply from habit. Social interactions often influence how and what a person eats. Intellectual wellness is also involved, as it allows a person to learn proper nutrition.

No matter which goals a person chooses to improve during 2023, they will all be influenced by other areas of wellness. When writing down goals for the New Year, note all areas that will impact your ability to accomplish these goals. Those who have become discouraged and don't want to make any resolutions could start with something relatively easy. It may be as simple as walking around the block three or four times a week. Whatever your situation, do something.

'Tis the Season ...2022

Karen Best Wright, B.S., M.A., Holistic Health & Wellness Coach

December is a month that celebrates multicultural, spiritual celebrations. Christmas is the most common celebration in the United States. However, it is not the only spiritual celebration. December can bring awareness to our multicultural society and focus on personal spiritual and social wellness.

Christmas, a Christian religious holiday, celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Christmas Day is on December 25th. Celebrating Christmas includes giving gifts to others and decorating homes with Christmas trees, lights, and other festive decorations.

Hanukkah is the Jewish eight-day, wintertime "festival of lights." The nightly lighting of the eight Chanukah candles, the menorah, is part of the celebration. There are special prayers and holiday foods such as latkes and sufganiyot. In 2022, Hanukkah begins at sunset on Sunday, December 18th, and ends at nightfall on Monday, December 26th. Hanukkah celebration dates vary from year to year.

Winter Solstice / Yule is the oldest Winter holiday in existence. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year and celebrates the days getting longer, bringing more light to the earth. The festivities traditionally were lighting the Yule log, singing songs, giving gifts, and sharing a special meal with friends and family.

Kwanzaa is an African American holiday; that celebrates family, community, and culture. It focuses on seven principles: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. The Kwanzaa celebration is from December 26th until January 1st. Individuals and families decorate with candles, colorful lights, and African-themed art.

Regardless of the December holiday celebrated, it is a season for giving and sharing with friends and loved ones. It is also a time of reverence for one's spiritual beliefs. It is truly a time to strengthen one's spiritual and social wellness.

Improving Wellness through Gratitude

Karen Best Wright, B.S., M.A., Holistic Health & Wellness Coach

Experiencing the benefits of gratitude is much more than enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner with friends or family. Practicing gratitude in life can improve physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness. While thinking positive, thankful thoughts is beneficial, writing them down is more effective. Even more, verbally expressing thoughts of gratitude can be empowering.

There are two aspects of gratitude. The first is to think, write, or speak thankful thoughts, which is necessary. The second aspect goes a step further. It is to live a life that expresses gratitude through one's behavior.

The first aspect of gratitude is activities (thinking, writing, speaking) that help develop it as a personality trait or state of being. The more one thinks, writes, and speaks words of thankfulness, the easier it is to achieve a disposition of gratitude.

For example, when one leaves the house in the morning and encounters a torrent of rain, what thoughts immediately come to mind? Thankful thoughts might be, "I am so glad it's raining. My flowers need the water." Or, if it's been raining for days and more rain isn't needed, the thought might be, "I'm sure glad I have good windshield wipers."

A beneficial activity to build a life of gratitude is to write down your thankful thoughts. It can be a family activity or a solo one. If for a family activity, tape a large piece of paper on the fridge or some other convenient place and encourage family members to share a thankful thought each day. If this is a private activity, then a simple notebook works well. Verbally sharing your thoughts of gratitude helps cement this entire process.

It is unrealistic to believe one can always be positive. However, it is realistic to see how focusing on the positive improves personal well-being. It also benefits those around you. Just ask a friend.

Simplify and Improve Personal Wellness with the Four Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Karen Best Wright, BS, MA, Holistic Wellness Coach

Do you get stressed when looking for a lost item, knowing you just saw it but now cannot find it? Do you buy things you do not need and then shove them in a cabinet or the back of the closet? Do you keep too many things due to sentimental value? If this feels familiar, it is time to work on the four Rs. Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

Refuse: This means to stop getting things you do not need. Just because something is on sale or is "cute," does not mean it is necessary. However, that does not mean everything you get has to be necessary, but it does warrant thinking two or three times before adding it to your home or life.

Reduce: This simply means having fewer items of things you do need or want. Everyone needs dishes, but how many dishes? Everyone needs shoes. Again, how many pairs of shoes does one person need? Your space and how organized you are may determine how much stuff is too much.

Reuse: Finding creative ways to reuse items rather than buying everything new can be rewarding. Using cloth bags, rather than plastic, reduces toxic garbage. Buying concentrated dish soap with reusable dispensers reduces waste and saves money.

Recycle: Recycling means making something new out of something old. A creative craftsman can take something completely apart to make something different. However, recycling is often available at the commercial level. Take advantage of local recycling centers.

Simplifying life using the four R's can reduce stress. Reducing stress improves one's well-being. So before purchasing something or receiving someone else's unwanted items, determine if you need them and where you will store them, or else you may just add to more clutter and stress.

How Toxic People Affect Emotional and Social Wellness

We read a lot about toxic substances in the environment and even in our foods. Most of us would not willingly ingest toxic chemicals or inhale toxic fumes.

What about toxic people? How do we identify them, and how do they affect our lives?

Six Characteristics of a toxic person

1. A person who belittles you or lies to you.
2. A person who does not follow through with commitments.
3. A person who is physically abusive (that’s the easiest one to recognize).
4. A person who acts nice to you to your face and then gossips about you behind your back.
5. A person who blames everything on you until you begin to believe it.
6. A person who focuses only on negativity and victimhood.

It might be easy to simply avoid the toxic person if you are not in a relationship of any sort. Put up your mental barrier and move on or away from the person. It’s not so simple if you find yourself in a relationship with a toxic person.

Learn to set boundaries. You are not someone’s emotional punching bag. If you feel stuck, you may need help from a supportive person, whether a good friend or even professional help. When you realize that a person in your life is toxic and is harmful to your emotional wellbeing, you need to be the one to take the first step to protect yourself from their toxicity.

The healthiest way to live is to learn to recognize toxic people in the first place and learn to avoid them or do what you need to do to protect yourself from them.

Never believe you deserve to be treated poorly. Just like toxic substances harm the body, so do toxic people harm one’s emotional health or peace of mind. If you find yourself dealing with toxic people, make a change. Don’t wait until your self-esteem or mental peace is all but destroyed.

Don't Wait until You are Sick to get Well.

Don’t wait until you are sick to get well. What the heck does that mean? It basically means prevention. Many illnesses and diseases are long in coming and may not manifest until the later stages of the illness. We may have an imbalance in the body which leads to an illness.

Take a cold sore for example. The cold sore seems to pop out of nowhere. One minute we don’t feel. The next our lip is tingling, and we soon have a full-blown case of a nasty cold sore on our lip. Stress is often the cause that triggers a cold sore. Why wait until the painful sore appears to treat it? Why not prevent it in the first place? There is a prescription medication for a cold sore, but there are also natural remedies that work just as well for many people. When I feel a cold sore coming on, I immediately reach for my L-Lysine and tea tree oil to keep from having a major break-out. If I know I am going to face something very stressful, such as a trip (even a vacation can be stressful for me), any type of crisis, or even house guests, I can prevent the cold sore outbreak by being proactive with taking the L-Lysine and focusing on relieving the stress of the upcoming event – when possible. This is just one simple example of preventing an illness before it happens.

Many illnesses are silent such as diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, and even cancer. They have a process that develops over time. Focusing on eating healthy foods and living a healthy lifestyle with the intention of preventing these diseases gives one a better chance of avoiding them. Prevention is a much better option than treating an existing disease with drugs, that will likely have side effects. If you have lived a healthy lifestyle and still get ill, you have a better chance of overcoming and surviving and maybe even reversing the disease. Maintaining a healthy body is the key to most illnesses.

Detox the Body Naturally

By Karen Best Wright

Published in Albemarle Tradewinds

AlbemarleTradewinds.com

Products to detox the body is big business. There is no shortage of products touting body detox. Three things to think about when it comes to detoxifying the body 1) Why detox, 2) How the body naturally detoxifies, and 3) How to assist the body in detoxing.

Why detox the body? Every day people are bombarded with a toxic environment. It may come from the food we eat with pesticides, additives, preservatives, and maybe even the water we drink. It may come from things we physically touch – plastics, cleaning products, poisons, soil in our gardens, or even the dirty public handrail we use when going up or down a staircase. Or it may come from the air we breathe – car fumes, dust, smoke, cleaning chemicals, and even manufacturing by-products. Toxins can damage organs such as the liver, kidneys, lungs, skin, and the heart.

The body has several natural detox processes. The liver starts the detox process by filtering the waste in the blood and excreting the toxins through the kidneys and intestines. Over-loading the liver, kidneys, and intestines with toxins will erode the healthy functioning of the organs.

The skin, being the largest organ of the body, also assists in removing impurities from the body through sweat and skin pores. However, toxins can also enter the body through the skin. Use protection when dealing with chemicals that affect the skin or lungs. The lungs remove carbon dioxide from the body and may remove other toxins through phlegm. Healthy organs can remove most of the toxins that enter the body.

However, the body may need additional help to remove harmful toxins that have been ingested or inhaled. The first step is to avoid toxic substances, to begin with – think smoking, food additives and preservatives, and even heavy perfumes or deodorants. Diligence will not prevent the consumption or inhalation of toxic substances completely. A simple Internet search will yield many products to purchase claiming to detox the body. Avoid as many toxins as possible, then start with a simple detox program.

Drinking plenty of water (coffee doesn't count), specific herbal teas, and certain foods will assist with body detoxing. Drinking lemon water is popular and simple. Dandelion root tea, Burdock root tea, green tea, and apple cider vinegar with "Mother" are also known to be good in detoxing the body. Foods such as fresh leafy greens, apples, broccoli sprouts, turmeric, spirulina, beets, and ginger are also helpful in removing toxins from the body.

Not removing the toxins in the body can result in damaged organs, illness, and even death. Make detoxifying the body a conscious and everyday part of life.

Meditation: Different Ways to Meditate

Meditation: Different Ways to Meditate

My first attempt at intentional meditation was no less than a total flop, at least in the way I was trying to learn to meditate. Just the word "meditation" means different things to different people. Consequently, I do not believe there is just one way to meditate. The purpose of meditation is to evoke a physiological change that relaxes the body and reduces the heart rate. Some people meditate to relax and rejuvenate the body, some meditate for spiritual enlightenment, and some meditate for both reasons.

As I mentioned, my first experience with intentional meditation didn't go very well. I was living at a yoga Ashram for a month several years ago to learn yoga and increase my spiritual abilities. As I sat on the floor in a room filled with others, the energy I felt emanating in the room was actually too overwhelming to me. So I often skipped out and spent the hour quietly walking down a rural dirt road. I would now call that a walking meditation or contemplation. At that time, I just thought I was failing at all attempts to meditate.

Over the years, I have had various experiences, some more enlightening than others. There are tons of materials and books on the market to teach about meditation, so my words will not be extensive on the subjective. Mostly, I will describe what I consider my more successful experiences.

My second real attempt to meditate brought an amazing experience. Since I didn't seem very capable of just "emptying" my mind of thoughts, I sat and focused on the palms of my hands and just felt. Before I realized it, I could feel the energy pulsating through my hands in the most amazing and calming way. I could tell it was not simply my pulse, because I could feel that too. I had two different energies moving throughout my body. I just sat, experiencing something completely new to me, and let the energy flow. I sat like this for about 45 minutes; then the sensation simply stopped. I wanted to grab it and say, "please come back." I sat there in total amazement and deep relaxation, feeling totally rejuvenated.

Another time, I was actually sitting in a group guided meditation session. This doesn't usually work very well for me, but something was different this time. Right off the bat, I could tell I had tuned out the woman guiding the session. I really have no idea what she was saying. I was off somewhere else. Eventually, I could hear her calling us back into reality, but before my body or mind was willing to join everyone else, I had an amazing spiritual experience that I will not even attempt to describe here.

If this type of meditation does not work for you, at least practice simple deep breathing practices while relaxing each part of your body. Many people enjoy moving meditations with and without music, walks in nature, and other activities that produce an enjoyable relaxed meditative state, allowing for meaningful contemplation.

Deep breathing and relaxation help with stress reduction, pain management, and even improved problem-solving skills. To sum it up, time devoted to prayer and meditation always pays off - in one way or another.

When working with Karen as a health educator and wellness coach, you will be encouraged to discover ways that promote relaxation and peace of mind, opening up a new way of thinking, living, and changing your lifestyle habits.

Living Intuitively part 2

Continued from Living Intuitively part 1:

My last post ended with the point that dreams are very personal and will most likely not mean the same to different people, even if dreaming about the same topic.

However, I do agree with the idea that when you dream about a house, the house often represents yourself. If you dream about being in a house, are you in the basement, kitchen, or attic, and what do those areas of a home represent to you? There are several good books available, I just avoid the ones which only focus on the idea that certain symbols always mean certain things.

Over the past many years, I have discovered there are four categories of dreams that I personally experience. These categories are as follows:

• Appear to be total nonsense - depends on what I watched on television the night before.

• Are teaching dreams - dreams where I am actually learning an important concept that helps me in my waking life.

• Are prophetic dreams - these are dreams that in some way or other come true. I may dream a family member is sick, and they are or soon will be. I may dream someone is in danger. These are particularly disturbing because I often can do nothing to prevent the event. But usually, there is still something in the dream that explains its purpose if I look hard enough. This may help me deal with the crisis, once it happens. These are always personal. I do not dream about national disasters ahead of time. At least not ones I understand.

• Demonstrate a stressed-out psyche - these dreams make it very clear that I am very stressed out in waking life, and I need to pay attention to what is going on.

Really paying attention helps build intuitiveness. However, do not make rash decisions, based on your "gut" feelings without rational thinking as well. On the other hand, you don't want your "thinking" to over-power your "feelings" either. Intuitiveness uses the two - feeling and thinking - balanced together.

Living Intuitively part 1

Living Intuitively

Learn the difference between "intuitive thoughts and physical emotions." They can guide you to your highest good. Intuitive living produces creativity and peace, not fear.

Simply stating (perhaps oversimplifying) living intuitively is using your sixth sense in your everyday living. Keep in mind the expression of being intuitive can mean different things to different people. A mother's instinct that often proves true is being intuitive. Yet her intuitiveness may not go beyond her immediate life and those of her children. Others may refer to well-known psychics such as Edgar Cayce or Arthur Best as being intuitive. Everyone can learn to live intuitively, but not everyone receives answers about other people's lives, probably very few actually are intuitive to that extent.

Learning about your own intuitiveness is where the trickiness begins. Learning to understand and trust your "gut" instinct as something you should act upon, requires learning to pay attention and understand yourself and practicing receiving, without reacting. For example, just because you get a really bad feeling when you meet someone, does not necessarily mean that the person is a serial killer. It may mean that there is something about the person that triggers a negative memory from your subconscious that has nothing to do with the person you just met. However, the information - that initial instinct - may still be important in understanding yourself and helping you make decisions about yourself. Plus, there is always the chance that the person who sent your emotions into a tailspin really does have something to hide. So just be aware of what you are feeling and what is going on around you.

Growing into a more intuitive way of living will actually teach you to pay more attention to what is going on around you and your own inner thoughts and feelings, thus allowing you to be more open to the obvious as well as the less-than-obvious possibilities and obstacles you face.

Some people find it easier than others to develop intuitiveness. In fact, there has been some evidence that the sensitivity toward being intuitive runs in families. If this is the case, my guess is that eventually, science will figure out the brain connection of why some people are more naturally intuitive than others.

Intuitiveness may come in the form of sensing or feeling something (for me I describe it as a "swishy" feeling that just passed through me); heightened senses such as smelling, hearing, and seeing things others do not see; and having meaningful nighttime dreams that actually guide you in one way or another. I do want to caution you again that just because you have strong emotions about something, you need to figure out the "why" you are having the emotions. Are you tapping into your sixth sense or do you have an anxiety disorder and your emotions are coming from some hidden crisis you buried in your subconscious. However, that knowledge is still valuable.

My personal intuitive abilities have mostly been centered around my own life and those of my family. Occasionally, unannounced or not sought after, they may be about someone else, but not frequently. For example, whenever I was pregnant (I have 8 children), I would dream about whether or not I was carrying a boy or girl. My husband and I would decide on baby names before the baby was born based on my dreams (this was before ultra-sounds). I really didn't think this odd. My brain (subconscious mind) knew what my body was nourishing. I really didn't see it as some amazing spiritual experience. It was just something that happened. 

I personally pay close attention to my dreams and usually keep a dream journal. Dreams use a lot of symbolism, so they often cannot be taken at face value. They need to be figured out if they seem meaningful enough to put forth the effort. I don't personally subscribe to some of the theories I have read in many books. Dreams are very personal. I believe two people can dream about similar things, yet they may mean something very different to each person. For example, if two people dream about a snake, one person may have a pet snake and the dream means something positive, while the other person is terrified of snakes and the dream has a totally different meaning.

Dreams are only one way someone may experience being intuitive. More on dreams will be written in my next post. The important aspect is to try and become perceptive on whether your feelings come from a buried negative part of your subconscious mind or what I call the Sacred Mind, which to some would be called their higher consciousness.

To be continued...