What Is Fascia And Why Is It So Important To Keep It Healthy?

Your fascia – the interconnective tissue beneath your skin – has often been called the “missing link” in modern medicine. All your muscles, bones, arteries, veins and cells LIVE INSIDE this connective tissue. Science has proven that fascial restrictions are often the cause of skeletal misalignments that result in joint pain, headaches, chronic pain and conditions like depression, TMJ and fibromyalgia.

Unfortunately, most forms of exercise, including yoga, neglect the fascia. They don’t nourish or hydrate this interconnective tissue. In these classes, award-winning yoga instructor Brett Larkin guides you through the movements science has proven your fascia needs to be healthy: unprogrammed movement, biomorphic movement, undulation and variations on Yin yoga to work DIRECTLY with your fascia for optimal health and well-being. No prior movement experience or knowledge of the fascia is required. All you need is your body — and awareness.

Connection Activities for Parents and Kids

Connection is the foundation for human relationships. For some kids, particularly those with attachment issues, anxiety or sensory issues, connection is challenging and may even feel threatening to them. These connection activities can bridge the gap and help foster the parent-child bond.

Connection with their primary caregiver comes so naturally for most children, but for others, it can actually feel threatening or uncomfortable. Children who have experienced early childhood trauma (including prenatal trauma or stress), who have had multiple caregivers and homes (foster care, adoption, kinship care), who have sensory issues, or who suffer from anxiety can struggle with connection. The fix is not as simple as incorporating intentional connection activities in your home, but these activities can be a piece of the puzzle and are a step towards better attachment.

While some of these connection activities are straightforward, others require a bit of explanation. I have provided a video below where I explain some of them in more detail as well as explain ways that you can adapt the ideas on this list for kids who are resistant to connecting. Below the video, I share a list of ideas for choosing a special song for your child because that is a question I have been getting often from parents after they watch the video.

Foods You Should Never Keep In The Fridge

Often we believe that keeping our food in the fridge is the best way to maintain freshness and longevity. While this is the case for many day-to-day food items, there are several common foods that are far better left out of the refrigerator, both for taste and nutritional value. Cold temperatures can actually accelerate the decomposition process in some foods and cause them to lose their original flavor and vital enzymes. Keeping these items in the fridge won’t cause any serious harm, yet being aware of the most beneficial ways to store your food will help to prosper your own health, as well as help to lower food waste. We are all globally responsible for 4 billion tons worth of food wastage per year. So taking small precautionary measures to understand food storage can have a bigger impact than simply having great tasting tomatoes on hand!
Here are the top ten items that are best left out of your refrigerator.

Tips To Help Reduce Bloating and Improve Your Digestive Health

Nobody likes that bloated feeling!

Usually occurring at the worst timing for you, bloating can be caused by common triggers such as stress, food sensitivities, and a lack of digestive enzymes, among other things.

The good news is that there are plenty of steps we can be doing each and every day to help reduce bloating while helping to improve our digestive health. Here are 8 steps you can start doing today:

1. Mindful Eating

You may have heard about the two parts that make up our nervous system – the sympathetic, which is needed for our ‘fight or flight’ response, and the parasympathetic, which is also known as ‘rest and digest’. We need to be in a relaxed state, or without sympathetic dominance, to be able to digest our food optimally. Eating mindfully means that we are relaxed enough for our parasympathetic nervous system to do its enormous job of digesting food and absorbing its nutrients.

How To Stay Healthy While Traveling

Traveling can take a toll on the body physically, mentally and emotionally. While travel often involves excitement and anticipation, the experience can also trigger anxiety, stress and fear. Traveling disrupts our natural circadian rhythm while low oxygen levels, humidity and sudden changes of pressure all have varying levels of negative side effects. Luckily there are several ways you can minimize and combat the effects of flying and travel .

With a little forward planning and awareness, your journey can be comfortable and have you arriving at your destination ready to enjoy your time away. These simple tips will ensure you the smoothest journey possible.

How To Reduce Anxiety In Less Than 20 Minutes… And It’s Not Yoga!

Every day we are exposed to a variety of stressors, and whether we are conscious of them or not, they can overwhelm us and our physiological systems. When we experience stress our adrenal system increases production of cortisol, which triggers the release of glucose into the system for a boost of energy. Stress and cortisol production are useful when we need to kick into action, but continually high levels of cortisol due to sustained stress can be damaging to the body and mind. This can leave us in a state of constant stress, burning out our adrenal glands, and leading to illness and fatigue.

I Did Juices, Smoothies & Soups For A Week – Here’s What Happened!

I was looking to improve my general health and wellbeing and was feeling tired, bloated and heavy a lot of the time and it was even showing in my skin. I knew it was to do with some bad eating habits I’d developed from spending a lot of time in front of computers and giving in to the weekend temptations with lots of meals out with friends. Working at Food Matters, I know how to eat healthy, but sometimes I just don’t (we are all humans, right?), and I thought a great way to launch myself into a better routine would be through doing a full 7 day cleanse and starting with a blank slate, so to speak. I knew cleanses had the power to help you lose weight , improve digestion and get better sleep but I was cautious about starting a cleanse that would include extreme detoxing or starving myself, I love my food! A realistic and gentle cleanse was really what I needed because I didn’t want to subsist only on lemon juice or some other fad cleanse that could be hit or miss anyway. So James challenged me to complete the 7 Day Food Matters Cleanse. 

Ways To Find Balance In Your Life

How many balls do you have in the air right now? Work, family commitments, bills… we juggle so much every single day it’s no wonder depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide with more than 300 million people suffering globally. So how can we cope? Click here for some practical tools to keep you sane in this crazy world…

1. Drink More Water

Dehydration is linked to depression and other mood disorders because 85% of the brain tissue is water. But how much is enough? It all depends on your weight, outside temperature and how much you exercise. The best way to tell if you’re drinking enough is the color of your urine, if it’s a pale yellow you are adequately hydrated but if it’s dark yellow start pounding the H20. Water quality is also an important factor, get yourself a good filter so your water source is clean and pure.

How To Reverse Brain Fog In Less Than 20 Minutes

Over 70 percent of the human body is composed of water and every single function in the body relies upon proper hydration, including the activities of the brain and nervous system. Lack of water to the brain can cause numerous side effects, such as difficulty with focus, memory, brain fatigue and brain fog, as well as headaches, sleep issues, anxiety, depression and moodiness. What most people don’t realize is that the average adult loses up to two liters of water a day through sweating, breathing and eliminating waste. If you are not topping up your body with water throughout the day, then this can have a dramatic effect on your brain function and overall health.

Hemp Food Products Approved For Consumption In AU & NZ

After an ongoing campaign, low-THC hemp seeds have finally been deemed fit for human consumption and hemp seed based foods are now approved for sale in Australia and New Zealand, effective as of 12 November 2017. Prior to this approval Australia and New Zealand were the only western countries that banned hemp in food form! This is despite the fact that across Europe, Canada and the US, hemp seeds have been widely enjoyed in food and oil form for many years and have been proven to be a highly nutritious and sustainable food.

It is astounding how hemp seed food products have previously been so restricted in Australia and New Zealand, but their association with marijuana meant they were demonised – falling under a classification that prohibits all species of cannabis from being added to food. However, you can’t get ‘high’ from the hemp foods now approved to be sold in Australia as they are too low in the hallucinogenic substance THC (delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the cannabinoid associated with the psychoactive properties of marijuana.

How Does Olive Oil Support Liver Cleansing?

Over 30 million people in the United States live with a liver-related health concern.[1] Typical Western diets filled with toxins like sugar and alcohol certainly don’t help. In fact, severe liver conditions like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease are on the rise in the United States.[2] If your liver health isn’t where you want it to be, then you should know all the resources you have at your disposal.

Toxins and chemicals are the root cause of almost any serious health concern, and your liver is no different. Liver cleansing, when done correctly, can help flush the liver of accumulated bile, toxins, and chemicals. Additionally, relieving your liver of harmful organisms will help you maintain a healthy body and mind. While there are different variations of organic liver cleansing regimens, nearly all take advantage of one key component—olive oil.

Difference between Imagination and Fantasy

Key Difference: Imagination is the experience that one has when they deal with reality, or how they deal with reality, while fantasy is an unrealistic byproduct of that imagination.

It is often easy to confuse imagination and fantasy as being the same thing or even similar things. However, these are completely different from each other but highly related. Let’s understand both the terms in detail.

Imagination is defined by the Dictionary of Psychology as, “the reorganization of data derived from past experiences, with new relations, into present ideational experience”. This means that imagination is often based on real experiences, or a person’s experience with their own reality. It is safe to say that imagination is how one views the world. For some it could a half glass full, while for others it can the half glass is empty. It is often a recreation of the world. So, if one is asked to close their eyes and describe a place, they would re-create an image in their head about their perfect world and this would be imagination.

How To Cleanse With The Change Of Season & Keep From Getting Sick

Here in Australia, winter is behind us and Spring has finally arrived. Despite the warmer temperatures and budding blooms, you might also be feeling this shift internally, as well. We’re discussing the best ways to cleanse with the new season and detox from the more stagnant months. Find out how to stay healthy, vibrant, and energized with Spring.

For those of you who are heading into Fall and Winter, details for your season change can be found in this article.

In Spring, your mood may feel brighter, your digestion faster, and you find yourself craving foods you haven’t in quite some time. It’s only natural. With the shifts of the seasons, we change too, and Spring, especially, has a new vibrant and dramatic energy that kicks us into gear and gets us moving after the more static Winter season. However, Spring is also a transitional and dynamic season, known for its lion/lamb shifts in temperature and climate. Despite the warming temperatures and green surroundings, Spring is also a time that many find themselves under the weather with colds and seasonal allergies . Go with the flow, so to speak, and eat what Nature provides, and you’ll likely find yourself in good health.

Crazy Or Just Wise? A Mental Health Awareness Week Feature Film

Each year millions of Americans face the reality of living with a mental health condition. However, mental illness affects everyone, directly or indirectly, through family, friends or coworkers. Despite mental illnesses’ reach and prevalence, stigma and misunderstanding are also, unfortunately, widespread. At Food Matters TV we are raising awareness of mental health week by releasing the film ‘Crazy Wise.

What can we learn from those who have turned their psychological crisis into a positive transformative experience?

How and Why You Should Try a Sugar Detox

While some people jokingly refer to themselves as sugar addicts, the truth is no laughing matter. Refined sugar causes real, clinically verifiable addictive patterns in your brain and ruinous effects on your body. The average American consumes between 22 and 30 teaspoons of added sugar every day.[1] That’s sugar that you could easily cut from your diet entirely by making intelligent dietary decisions—or you could if sugar didn’t have you hooked. A sugar detox is a way to break the hold sugar has over you.

Basically, a sugar detox is when you cut all sugar out of your diet for a set period of time. ALL sugar. That means no honey, no maple syrup, no agave syrup, no white bread, no alcohol, no natural sweeteners, no artificial sweeteners, no high fructose corn syrup. You’ll be amazed by how much better you’ll feel when you cut the added sugar.