Healing Music; Healing Sounds

Healing Music, Healing Sounds

Here’s an article Kathleen wrote for Natural Awakenings magazine, published in September, 2016. As primeval drumbeats echo across an African savannah, the rhythms circle the globe, picked up by the chants and rattles of shamans gracing Amazonian jungles and Siberian tundra. They’re repeated in Gregorian chants filling medieval cathedrals and Om meditations resounding in Himalayan … Read more

stress cascade

Thyroid and adrenals: The Stress Cascade

If you’re a regular reader, you know I talk a lot about stress. We all have it, and in our modern life, where we are almost always plugged in, it is becoming increasingly difficult to break the toxic stress cycle that can have profoundly negative effects on your health.  Largely, I’ve talked about natural ways … Read more

Hypothyroidism

Stress Can Contribute to Hypothyroidism

Are you stressed? I’m sure most of you said, “Oh, yeah!” If you said you’re not stressed, I’d probably cock my eyebrow at you or assume you are a Zen master. Stress is a part of our every day lives. It’s unavoidable. It’s not a question of whether we have stress, but how we cope … Read more

Easing the Sting of Grief

Easing the Sting of Grief

Note: I wrote this article for Natural Awakenings magazine a few months back. It seems very appropriate in view of the deaths that many have so painfully suffered in recent months. Grief can come suddenly as the result of an unexpected death, the loss of a job or a serious illness. Or grief can be … Read more

breathe for life

Breathe for Life

We can live for weeks without food and days without water, but we can only live for a few minutes without air. Breath is the stuff of life. But the air we breathe goes far beyond the scientific composition of air, the nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and other elements. The power of prana In the practice … Read more

too much stuff

Too much stuff!

True confession: I am a catalog addict. I’ll read any catalog, even if it’s for farm equipment or shipping materials, in which I have zero interest. Mind you, I rarely order anything from these catalogs. I just like to look at them. So when the latest catalog came from a national bedding store, I naturally … Read more

meditate to manage stress

Meditate to Manage Stress

(from 10 Best Ways to Manage Stress by Kathleen Barnes) Meditation isn’t complicated or particularly esoteric. Meditation is simply stilling your mind. Since we know the mind and body and spirit are all interwoven, stilling the mind will heal body and spirit as well. Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years, but modern science … Read more

tend and befriend stress coping model

A Kinder, Gentler Stress Response

I’m sure you‘ve heard of the “fight or flight” syndrome. That’s the response to a threat—real or imagined—that triggers the survival mechanism that floods your body with hormones and nerve stimulants. At that moment in time, there is nothing more important than survival. Nature shut down all non-essential body processes and prepared our ancestors to … Read more