The Best Natural Facial Treatment for Tired or Neglected Skin!
Wash face with 2 T. oatmeal mixed with just enough water to make it moist. Rub oatmeal into face and scrub lightly. Allow it to dry and brush it off lightly with your fingers.
Stir together: 2 T. soft goat cheese or feta; 10 drops seabuckthorn berrybotanical oil; 5 drops purerose essential oil; 5 drops carrot seed essential oil. Spread this blend around your face using upward and outward strokes. Pay special attention to under eye area. Allow it to sit for 15 minutes, then gently brush off any residue. You may rinse with pure water and lightly pat dry, or allow it to dry naturally.
Boil 12 ounces of pure water with 1 T. astragalus root. Simmer for 30 minutes, adding more water if necessary. Strain and add 20 drops lemon, sweet orange, or blood orange essential oil. Place in a spray bottle and spray over face and neck. This toner can be made ahead of time, and will keep for several weeks. It will tighten your skin and diminish wrinkles and sagging, giving skin a youthful appearance.
Repeat this natural facial treatment 2 to 3 times a week. After the first three treatments, you will begin to see and feel a difference in your skin, rather like turning back the clock on the aging process! This is a very simple and time-honored recipe from a grandmother from India who shared it with me. I hope you will love it as much as I do.
Thirteen Changes You Can Make to Raise Your Frequency and Change Your Life
Eat more greens! Most of us do not eat anywhere near the amount of greens that our bodies need to thrive. Organically grown greens are loaded with minerals, antioxidants, and phytonutrients. Salads are okay, but will not give us all the minerals that we need, even if our digestive systems are in PRIME health! It is wise to eat plenty of cooked, simmered, or steamed greens, at least 2 cups a day. Good greens for regenerating the body are: Dandelion leaf, spinach, watercress, kale, cabbage, chard, lamb’s quarter, collards, beet greens, leaf lettuces, cilantro, broad leaf parsley, nettles, sorrel, arugula, etc. Avoid iceberg lettuce–it is devoid of the rich nutrients that deep green colored leaves provide. If you have trouble eating greens, try adding green mixes to your smoothies–our free Green Nutrient recipe is here.
Drink caffeine–free herbal tea daily! The greatest support for replacing the nutrients that are missing from our foods today, is herbs. Make a tea using any or all of the following ingredients. Drink 1 cup to 1 quart every day. These are tonic herbs that can be used long term with no adverse effects. The herbs for making this tea include: Nettles leaf; dandelion leaf; passion flower leaf and flower; damiana leaf; sarsaparilla root; red clover leaf and flower; alfalfa leaf; oat straw; Fo-ti root; blessed thistle leaf; chickweed leaf; yellow dock root; roasted chicory root. Replace your adrenal–depleting morning coffee with these health enhancing herbal teas. Add berries, stevia, dates, or maple syrup to improve the flavor. These herbs are available in bulk in most health food stores; and if you can not find them, you can grow them in pots or in your garden. Contact Richter’s for seeds and starts. Thirteen changes can make a difference!
Drink fresh fruit and vegetable juices! Fresh juice is much more nutritious, for a degenerated system, than whole vegetables and fruits. With much of the fiber removed, the intense nutritional value of juice is available with very little energy required to digest and assimilate. You don’t need to spend a lot to get started. You can find juicers or Vita-mixes on EBay; or pick up a high speed blender at your local second hand store. Drink 8 ounces of fresh juice every day and watch your energy level rise. Smoothies also fall into this category, check out our free smoothie book download here.
Limit your dairy food consumption to plain, live culture yogurt or kefir. Don’t purchase the popular brand name ones, that contain sugar, dextrose, gelatin, artificial colors, (even propylene glycol!). The best yogurt is one that you make yourself from fresh cow’s or goat’s milk. A close second is available in health food stores, Horizon brand or Mountain High brand. Another good brand is Nancy’s, and it is quite sour tasting–for those who like it sour. Plain yogurt with live cultures feeds the flora in the digestive tract that is destroyed by antibiotics, over use of alcohol, coffee, yeasted refined breads, and refined sugars. Regular homogenized milk and processed cheeses are some of the hardest foods for many people to digest; and contain fats that change the way our liver processes fats–creating havoc in our systems. And while you are at it, replace refined sugar with honey, maple syrup, or maple sprinkles–(which contain more absorbable calcium than cow’s milk!).
Limit your meat and animal protein consumption to 15% of your total diet! For anyone who doubts the necessity of this, please read a great book by T. Colin Campbell titled, The China Study. The overwhelming scientific evidence presented in this book, along with the author’s personal experience, are enough to convince even the greatest sceptic. Most people wonder what they will eat, in place of all the meat they are eating, and how will they ever get enough protein? It is important to realize that protein is in everything from whole grains–quinoa, wheat, oats, etc.–to potatoes, to lentils, beans, and legumes. You can still eat meat every day; the answer is to eat it in very small amounts, like a garnish (no more 1 lb. steaks, or buckets of chicken!). And eat it with rice, potatoes, vegetables, and salad greens. Replace store bought poultry and meat with organically grown, farm raised beef, chicken, buffalo, or wild game meats. Animals that are fed foods that they would naturally eat, and who live in a more natural environment, have a healthier body chemistry than those that are grown in giant industrial barns and fed chemically derived, hormone laced feed processed from plants (and animals!) that they would never eat naturally.
Avoid store bought bread! The single strains of yeast that make bread rise high and create that fluffy texture, are a contributory cause of the massive candida imbalances that are rampant in our culture today. Before the 1930’s, most bread was made at home, from whole grains and sourdough culture, which contains many of the hundreds of varieties of yeast just floating in the air around us. When specific yeasts were isolated and marketed to make bread rise higher, we went to consuming 50 or more strains of yeast to just one or two strains. The flora in our digestive systems no longer had a healthy diversity, and candida went way out of balance–contributing to many symptoms and health conditions.
Change your fats! Avoid eating margarine, vegetable oils, butter*, processed cheeses, Crisco, lard, partially hydrogenated oils, and animal fat. Replace them with more raw whole seeds and nuts; organic whole nut and seed butters; cold-pressed olive oil; coconut oil; and cold-pressed flax seed oil. These oils will reverse the aging effects of short chain fatty acids contained in the foods above. They will actually clean out arteries over time and reverse plaque in the circulatory system. Use at least 2 tablespoons of cold-pressed oil daily, on vegetables, grain dishes, in smoothies, and salads. *The only butter that our bodies can actually benefit from would be butter produced fro grass fed cows, which can be beneficial in small amounts.
Eat fermented foods! Fermented foods feed the flora in our digestive systems. Without the right flora (bacteria) living in the digestive system, we can not get the nutrients our bodies need to maintain vibrant health. When we don’t get those nutrients over time, the body often goes into a famine response, storing fat and holding on to everything it can. This makes it nearly impossible to lose weight, no matter how little we eat. When the body believes that it can not get the nutrients it needs, it can not let go. Fermented foods include Bubbies brand pickles and sauerkraut; many brands of Kim chee and fermented vegetables, available in health food stores; live cultured yogurt or kefir; and real whole grain sourdough pancakes and breads (not commercial ones). Thirteen changes are all it takes to change to change your life.
Limit or eliminate tobacco, alcohol, recreational drugs and pharmaceutical drugs! These are all contributors to liver damage, lung and kidney degeneration, and can make it nearly impossible to recover your health and vitality. Pharmaceutical drugs often need to be weaned carefully from the system; find a doctor or health care practitioner who specializes in getting people off drugs, and get support to do it, especially if you are taking drugs for a serious condition. Your life will be better without these artificial substances in your body. (If you are taking drugs for a serious condition, get advice from a medical professional before trying to get off them).
Walk every week! Walk; even just for 5 minutes every other day. Start somewhere that is fairly easy to sustain, then gradually work up to 2 or 3 hours a week. If walking is difficult, try getting a rebounder and bouncing; or take a beginner’s yoga class or Qi gong class. Any exercise will do wonders, if you have not been doing any regular exercise at all. Your body needs movement to sustain its vitality and health. Stop suppressing! Suppression is the “emotional cause” behind many physical diseases and conditions. We all grew up in a culture that values suppression and does not teach us to express our emotions, thoughts, and feelings in order to keep our minds clear. Every night, look into your own eyes in the mirror and tell yourself the truth about what you felt, thought, and perceived over the past day. Let your feelings become okay, and give yourself space to feel them. Buy Louise Hay’s book, You Can Heal Your Life; and use it to dig up the buried emotional patterns that are making you sick.
Stop suppressing! Suppression is the “emotional cause” behind many physical diseases and conditions. We all grew up in a culture that values suppression and does not teach us to express our emotions, thoughts, and feelings in order to keep our minds clear. Every night, look into your own eyes in the mirror and tell yourself the truth about what you felt, thought, and perceived over the past day. Let your feelings become okay, and give yourself space to feel them. Buy Louise Hay’s book, You Can Heal Your Life; and use it to dig up the buried emotional patterns that are making you sick.
Learn to forgive! Make a practice of forgiveness every day. Buried resentments lead to cancer, heart attacks, organ damage, headaches, and many conditions and symptoms. Read the book, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, by Karol Truman. Use the script, and forgive those who have hurt you in the past. This will go miles in helping your body recover from cancer, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and any degenerative disease or condition.
Find your true spiritual expression and create a fulfilling spiritual life! Everyone is different; some of us are born into a religion that fits like a glove, and we develop a fulfilling relationship with God or a higher power (as we each perceive it). It is important to find what fits for you, and to develop a relationship with a higher power that feels authentic to YOU. If you were not born into the right one, be brave enough to let go of what does not fit for you, and start searching. Ask the divine power for help in finding your own “spiritual home”. Learn to live with integrity; read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, and begin living it. Thirteen changes make the shortest path to fulfillment and vitality.
These are simple changes, but not always easy to make! Try focussing on one change at a time, and wait until it has become an easy new habit before trying another. Save the hardest ones for later, and begin with the easy ones.
Once you have made a number of these changes, you will look and feel different than you did before. Your body will be vibrating at a higher (cohesive and life enhancing), your immune system will be stronger, and your chronic symptoms will begin to fade. Your mind will get clearer and attunement to the environment around you will become stronger.
Notice: If you have been diagnosed with a disease or are taking pharmaceutical medications, find a medical practitioner that can guide you BEFORE trying to make changes that could impact your body’s health. Some medicines must be removed very slowly and gradually, to avoid upsetting or life threatening symptoms.