Lavender oil If you only use one essential oil, this is it! Lavender (lavandula angustifolia) is the most versatile of all essential oils. Most commonly known for its relaxing effects on the body, therapeutic-grade lavender has been highly regarded for the skin. It may be used to cleanse cuts, bruises and skin irritations. The fragrance is calming, relaxing and balancing – physically and emotionally. Carrying a bottle of lavender around with you is like having your own personal first aid kit, perfume and pick-me-up. Here are 13 ways you can incorporate lavender in to your daily life: 1. Calming Rub 2-3 drops of lavender oil in your cupped palms, then use the inhalation method to draw the scent all the way into your amygdala gland (the emotional warehouse) in your brain to calm the mind. Then, rub on the feet, temples, wrists (or anywhere) for an immediate calming effect on the body. Great for use in crowded areas like planes or subways to carve out your own personal oasis. 2. Sleep aid Again, use the cupping and inhalation method. Then, rub a drop of Lavender oil on your palms and smooth on your pillow to help you sleep. 3. Bee sting / Insect bite Put a drop of Lavender oil on a bee sting or insect bite to stop itching reduce swelling. 4. Minor burn Put 2-3 drops Lavender oil on a minor burn to decrease pain. I recently did this after I spilled scorching hot tea on my hand at Starbucks and luckily had my lavender with me. Result: NO redness, swelling or pain. NO sign of any burn. Lavender works wonders! 5. Cuts Drop Lavender oil on cut to stop bleeding, clean wound, and kill bacteria. 6. Eczema / Dermatitis Mix several drops of Lavender oil with a nut or vegetable mixing oil (coconut, sesame, etc) and use topically on eczema and dermatitis. I have a dear friend who suffers from severe eczema and swears by this. 7. Nausea or motion sickness To alleviate the symptoms of motion sickness, place a drop of Lavender oil on end of tongue, behind the ears or around the navel. 8. Nosebleed To stop a nosebleed, put a drop of lavender oil on a tissue and wrap it around a small chip of ice. Push the tissue covered ice chip up under the middle of the top lip to the base of the nose and hold as long as comfortable or until the bleeding stops (do not freeze the lip or gum). 9. Dry or chapped skin Rub lavender oil on dry or chapped skin. 10. Chapped or sunburned lips Rub a drop of lavender oil on chapped or sunburned lips. 11. Hay fever. Rub a drop of lavender oil between your palms and inhale deeply to help alleviate the symptoms of hay fever. 12. Dandruff. Rub several drops of lavender oil into the scalp to help eliminate dandruff. 13. Cold sores. Put a drop of lavender oil on a cold sore. 14. Flavor booster! Add a few drops of lavender to any recipe you want to enhance. Favorites: add to your water or tea (especially sparkling!), brownies, bars, cookies, dessert recipes, raw chocolate or salad dressings. Enjoy! As you can see, Lavender is an essential oil that can uplift your life (and mood), heal and entice in a variety of ways. It's a great secret weapon to have on hand at all times! Please leave a comment below with any essential oil questions and tell us what your FAVORITE uses for oils are!
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There I stood, for what felt like the millionth day in a row, picking and poking at the acne on my face. This problem had been going on since I was 17 years old and ten years later, it wasn’t getting any better. If anything, it was getting much worse. Now the acne had started migrating downward, showing up along my jawline and neck as well as on my face. Deep-rooted, cystic acne that never seemed to go away. I didn’t know what to do anymore. Living With Adult Acne I had already tried every acne product on the market. Sure, some of it worked temporarily, but it would eventually stop working and then the acne would get worse. Some days I stayed at home because there just wasn’t enough makeup in the world to make me want to show my face in public. Some days I wanted to scream and rip my skin off because I hated so much what I saw in the mirror. I felt ugly and gross. Other women had beautiful, glowing skin and I looked like a pizza-faced teenager. I’d heard the term “adult acne,” but I never expected to experience it myself. Especially considering the skin I had as a child. Growing up my skin was gorgeous. It was soft, hydrated and beautiful. It was like perfect porcelain. Then around the time I was graduating from high school, my checks started breaking out, badly. I blamed it on the cortisone shots I was getting from my doctor to manage the pain in my neck, but when it never went away, I started to suspect something else. A Break In The Case As I got older, the acne got worse, and other health problems showed up: heartburn, anxiety, acid reflux. It was the week of my 26th birthday, my face was badly broken out and I was having heartburn almost every night. Then in the middle of the night, I had a panic attack. Freaked out and looking for answers, I turned to my doctor. I wanted to get to the bottom of the problem once and for all. After an unsuccessful attempt to get an answer from my doctor, I took matters into my own hands and enrolled in a distance-learning nutrition school. I was going to get to the bottom of these panic attacks and heartburn, and finally have an answer. I dedicated the next year of my life to studying nutrition and learning all about food and its effects on the body. Then something amazing happened. I was listening to a lecture on food allergies, and the doctor who was teaching the class started listing off all the symptoms that gluten and dairy allergies produce: anxiety, heartburn, GERD, acid reflux, stomach pain, ear infections, sinus infections…the list went on. One-by-one the symptoms started resonating with me. Constant ear infections? Check. Sinus infections? Check. Reflux, stomach pain? All the time. Maybe I had food allergies. Eliminating Gluten and Dairy For the next week, I removed all gluten and dairy from my diet. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I was committed to giving it a shot. After all, nothing else had worked. The first few days were rough to say the least. I missed cheese. I had dreams about pizza and crispy loaves of Italian bread. But I wasn’t having any stomach pain. I wasn’t having a single episode of heartburn. And amazingly, without even trying, my acne was clearing up. It was clearing up! It was like a miracle happening right in front of my eyes. When I reintroduced gluten and dairy into my diet after the elimination period was over, I immediately saw my symptoms—and acne—return. Amazed and so grateful, I cried. I finally had the cure for my acne. A cure that no one was talking about. Don’t eat chocolate or greasy food, sure, I’d heard those acne tips before. But removing gluten and dairy? News to me. They certainly didn’t mention that in all the magazine articles I’d read about “getting rid of acne for good.” Now I’ve been gluten-free, dairy-free AND acne-free for almost three years, and I’ve never felt or looked better in my entire life. If you’ve been struggling with acne for what feels like most of your life, if you’ve tried everything and nothing has worked, give an elimination diet a try to see if gluten and/or dairy could be your problem, too.
Are you smiling right now? If not, this inspirational video from SoulPancake should fix that. Hope it makes your day like it did ours! One gem from the star, Kid President: "I took the road less traveled. And it hurt, man. Really bad [....] NOT COOL, Robert Frost." Have you ever truly madly fallen in love? I did. What does it mean to fall in love, or be in love, or even stay in love? In Buddhism, striving for that which is outside of our true nature is seen as wasteful. Arbitrarily seeking fulfillment in another is an attachment based on a craving which will always ultimately end in suffering. Perhaps in this searching one can take one step closer to finding one’s true nature, one’s true vocation, one’s true purpose. Time is so short, the memories are fading away. Truth is a cascade of moments. Enjoy the breath, flowing in and out ceaselessly like the waves on the shore in timeless perfection. This is the only true reality. Even if you die for your lover, is that not sacrificing something that is not yours to give? In loving you, I love myself, but in loving myself, selfishly I neglect you. In living for you, I forget my own needs. When the love of your life leaves you, how can you not be left empty? But can love leave a wound and why should emptiness leave you bereft? How can real love devastate you when real love is the absence of superficial egoic needs, the absence of falsehood, and all real love is the presence, and the present? With love, there can be emptiness, but no feeling of emptiness. Can you actually remove love…can it ever be extinguished or forgotten? If love is the presence, the sacred consciousness, the Divine expansiveness, is it possible to subtract from it, remove from it, and delete it from your consciousness? Is it possible to forget it? Love is an experience of being whole. When we link it to another, we become dependent on that other for the fulfillment or satisfaction of our love fantasy. True love does not require a vehicle for its fulfillment or expression. Real love is not demanding. Another way to look love is within the context of the first of Buddha’s noble truths: "life is dukkha." Dukkha is divided into: 1. Suffering 2. Change 3. Conditioned states A brief exploration of Dukkha: 1. Suffering Consciousness as the created form, or the potentiation of thoughts, fills the universal ether. This immediately creates an existential loneliness, which can never be entirely filled until it (the creation) is no longer separate from the formlessness of Divine consciousness. This separation is loneliness. This is the suffering part of dukkha – the separation from God. 2. Change This world of created forms, and as yet uncreated potential is always changing. As we enter it, we change, and eventually pass through it, to the beyond. One thing is certain – the fluid of life is a changing stream. 3. Conditioned states We are affected by everything around us. Energy created can never be destroyed; it is merely transferred or transformed to evolve into a new form. Thus everything that is affects everything else that is. The spider weaves its web, creating a living matrix of awareness. We experience romantic love within the context of these three aspects of creation. We suffer most when we are in fear. Sometimes the pain can seem insurmountable…we can seem alone in the vast expansive universe. Yet, at its core, suffering is an illusion. Our fear of suffering is often far worse than the suffering itself. To be identified with something outside of yourself, is to invite suffering. Suffering is derived from perceiving a loss. Authentic love is whole, complete and in essence, beyond suffering. The absence of love is suffering. The illusion of loss leads to suffering. When something dies, you don’t lose it, because you never owned it. We suffer most when we are attached to the illusion. True love does not leave a wound when it is lost, because true love can never be lost. Once created, “it” exists forever within the unity of the Divine sphere. The divine conversation of love is something beyond a mere notion or discussion; it is ALIVE, filled with the budding possibility of a butterfly about to open its wings for the first time. Love Ceaselessly searching for the ultimate feeling of completion. That which is searched for exists already within. O lovers, what are you looking for? You already have it. Today, don't wish it was another day. Wish it was today. Then you will realize yourself already blessed. This is true of love: don't wish for something that already is within. For in the final analysis, one cannot fall in love with that which is outside of the self – one's true nature is already love. So falling in love is really just coming back home. Enjoy the paradoxes. And most importantly, keep falling in love!
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