This article is a nice overview of how distance reiki works. https://www.reiki.org/reikinews/distanthealing.htm
I will be offering distance reiki after I complete my Master Reiki training in March 2019. This will be available via phone or video call. The session will last sixty minutes. 
Even if you aren’t religious, giving thanks for our food is something that really benefits us. Many may be worried about over-eating on Thanksgiving Day with all the rich-tasting foods, many of the dishes being ones we don’t typically have throughout the year. The day becomes a dreaded day when we feel we can’t hold back and may feel that we will ruin our diets or gain weight. This doesn’t have to be true and it isn’t true. Be thankful for the abundance of food available to you. Offer up thanks for your food. Be truly grateful to have food to fill your belly. Savor each bite you take. Sip on a favorite drink. Enjoy the company you’re with. Don’t rush through the meal. Only take a small serving of each dish. If you really want seconds, take it without feeling guilty. Eat a piece of pie.
Go for a 20 minute walk after eating, even if it’s cold.
Hug someone. Tell another how much they mean to you or what you’re thankful about them.
Call a friend or relative you haven’t talked to in awhile.
Text your co-workers a quick “Happy Thanksgiving.”
In all, enjoy this day and don’t let food get in the way of your happiness.
For the last six or so years I’ve been feeling a pull toward healing work. I was a licensed massage therapist for over ten years and had been introduced to the healing art of energy work during my training. Now, many of you may be skeptics of energy work. Some of you may believe that it shouldn’t be practiced or used on a person due to certain religious beliefs. I am not going to go in-depth about this in this blog post. There are many scientific studies out there if you prefer science-based beliefs. This is just what I felt surface as my truth and I wanted to tell it. Sing it, per say, in writing.
From a young age I have been a spiritual person. When I was about five years old, I asked Jesus into my heart and life. Over the years, I had some experiences that made me keenly aware of the spiritual realm surrounding us. Oftentimes people, upon meeting me, would remark that I “had an old soul.” I also seemed to connect better with older folks and didn’t have much in common with my peers.
After the death of my daughter is when I really started to feel this pull toward healing work energetically. I’m not saying that I’m going to out right heal people completely, but I might alleviate pain, be it physical, emotionally or spiritually. In regards to not believing in this type of healing or not believing it’s something, in particular a Christian would get into, remember this type of healing goes back a long time in history. Jesus was a healer. He healed without even touching a person. The same applies to energy work. Why couldn’t other human entities heal in this same way? Jesus was in human form when he healed. Others in the Bible were healed miraculously by ones that God saw fit to give the gift of healing to or ones filled with the Holy Spirit.
In particular, Reiki was and is the modality that has caught my attention. I have completed level I and II so far. Next year I hope to take the master level III training.
Last year I felt called to take a health coach training class. I feel that food can be healing and ties into how we live our life. There are many interesting documentaries about the food industry, which foods are the best to eat, and how the way society influences our food choices. If after watching these or if you don’t like to watch documentaries, shoot me an email on my website and I’d be more than happy to set up a free consultation to discuss your healing food journey more in depth.
Here’s a website with some good food documentaries listed: https://www.google.com/amp/s/decider.com/2017/07/06/the-10-best-food-health-documentaries-on-netflix/amp/
Some of these films are anti-meat. I’m not necessarily anti-meat as I eat meat personally. I do believe that many eat an excess of meat and that we do need to be aware of this.
I also see exercise, or intentional movement, as a must in healing oneself. I’m a big fan of yoga and walking outside. It’s beneficial to the whole body system and helps build resistance to disease and illnesses. Prevention is key in staying healthy and well. Stagnant energy isn’t a good thing. Move your body, clear your mind, and eat whole foods. Try out some energy work too and find out for yourself how amazing you’ll feel afterwards!
Most days I crawl into bed, beneath my white quilt scattered with colorful feathers and a soft, fuzzy throw blanket(we keep it cool at night to promote sleep). This is where I think of you. You, as in my blog and readers. Several months ago I was all about writing everyday and seemed to have a pretty good routine down. Now, I thought 21 days was a magic number in helping one establish a habit. I wrote practically everyday for that amount of time and see here I’ve been missing many, many days as of late. I wanted to put myself out there, be more open and vulnerable. I can say, it is harder than one would think. Some of the journal prompts were so easy and seemed quite silly to me, but others made me delve into myself more than I had done in awhile. A couple made me wonder why I hadn’t thought about that particular thing before. I actually had to look some facts up(on Google if course☺️), to be able to answer the journal prompt fully.
This afternoon, while waiting for the charcoal to be ready, I read a short blog post on writing for just ten minutes a day. Now I could at least try to do this. So, thank you, Kara, from http://www.kelizabethfleck.com/ , for inspiring me to hop on my blog for just a bit of typing a day.
You may see a journal entry or just something that I felt I needed to write that particular day.
Now to read for a bit before this cold room induced sleep over-takes me.
My sister had her baby on Thursday, the nineteenth, at 7:07 A.M. I was happy and honored to be in attendance during her labor and birth. It had been awhile, I would guess three years since I’ve attended a birth now. I used to be attend births many times during one month.
It was, at least to me, a nice and easy labor and birth. Though I felt weary after as I’m not used to getting up so early in the morning(3:30 A.M. I was awoken).
I spent most all of the day at her house helping out with laundry, dishes, and food. Also making placenta prints, along with assisting in photographing the placenta. Then I helped with preparing the placenta to be dehydrated and made into nourishing capsules. https://www.mamanatural.com/why-eat-your-own-placenta/
Friday we got our things ready to hit the road as my sister had her baby and we’d been camping on her land for the past month.
We are at our home base in Tennessee for two weeks before heading to Missouri for a rally with other fulltime RV families. This is my first rally to attend and I’m excited to meet more folks like us.
Saturday I did a major Costco haul as I hadn’t been near one in over a month. I also hit up the grocery store. Whew, it was a long day getting stocked up on food and then the fun part, finding places to put it all in an RV.
Today was completely a time for relaxation. We caught up on some shows on Netflix and Hulu as it was a rainy day.
I’m hoping tomorrow I will be back into my routine of journaling and reading. But, these past few days have been good and busy. I am still waiting on the rest of the photos from our RV photo shoot. I’m excited to share these with you all!
Today was cold with light snow being blown by strong winds. The girls and I snuggled in bed a bit longer this morning since it was so chilly out and Brent is out of town. It was close to 9:00 A.M. before we were done with breakfast and started book work. After this was done, we watched Pippi Longstocking. Then the girls went outside to play with their cousins while my sister and I went for a walk.
I made lactation cookies today for my sister. My phone was disabled for many hours due to an update(the recipe is saved to my phone), so I used a different recipe this time, but my favorite is this one: http://www.drmomma.org/2010/08/lactation-cookies-recipe-increasing.html?m=1
So, on to my journal Entry for today.
What five things would I spend $5 on for fun or self-care?
I know I need to be more accepting of myself. Like I wrote in Journal Entry no. 1 about being a critical person, I tend to be critical of myself. I’ve read many books and articles that say to “just accept yourself.” Why is it so hard for me to just accept myself? I’ve come to see I need to set my mind, daily, on being grateful and happy about things unique to myself, that make me truly me. I like when I did a yoga video from Yoga with Adriene, and she had me place my hands on my abdomen and say a word of thanks for all it does for me, day to day. It is one area of my body, in particular, that I’m unhappy about. But, in doing that exercise, I see I’ve been very ungrateful to this body part. It has done, is doing, and will do so much for me. My abdomen area has helped carry four babies, helps hold in numerous, vital organs, helps me stand tall, helps me with breathing, so, so many functions in which I seem to take for granted.
I accept myself. I love myself just the way I am(even if those statements sound cheesy😊). xoxo tummy
I am taking these journal entries straight from my paper journal. I’m also following the book, “365 Journal Writing ideas.” I will not write exactly what each prompt is as I want you to still want to perhaps get the book yourself and try it out as well. So, I’ll title these as a daily entry with a number to set them apart.
Happiness to me is a feeling of contentment. It is where I feel satisfied with what I’m doing day-to-day. In the past, I would have described myself as rather unhappy and a worrisome person. Over the years, I have(most recently), learned that happiness is really a “mind-over-matter thing. I tend to be an overly critical person and that can make one an unhappy person. I have to work daily on my habit of being a happy person. I do this by meditating, prayer, reading something inspirational, exercising, eating well, and trying to keep a positive attitude throughout the day.
One memory(of many!), of when I felt really happy was after the birth of my second baby. I was able to have her at home and she was such an easy-going baby! I enjoyed my post-partum time with her a lot.
I would say a time when I made someone else happy is when I make them a favorite meal. I enjoy cooking and it gives me pleasure to see someone enjoying he food I made for them. I know if I make one of my children or husband a favorite dish or meal, that makes them very happy. I love sitting down with my family for a meal and enjoying it with them.
The other day I received an email from a homeschooling email list I’m on and she had listed in it free or reduced rates Kindle books. One of the ones that came up when I clicked the link was, “365 Journal Writing Ideas:A year of daily journal writing prompts, questions, & actions to fill your journal with memories, self-reflection, creativity & direction.”
I’ve pondered journaling and have done a little here and there in the past, but never was dedicated to it. I ended up downloading the book. During one of my reflection times last week, I felt that I should take what I’m writing in my paper journal and post it to my blog. Now this is a big step for me. I am not a very open person and I believe this will make me vulnerable to my readers. But, I had such an overwhelming feeling that this is what I should do and that so many who read blogs actually crave that close, personal look into someone’s self.
So, I will continue to post about our travels and health stuff, along with my daily journaling. I may not get them up every single day, but I promise I’ll get them all posted within the week of writing them.
We are in Camp Verde currently and it is chilly here! It’s really nice as there’s hiking trails right next to where our coach is parked, as you can see in the photo above.
After spending a month in the warm Phoenix area, the cooler weather is refreshing. We also had rain which we hadn’t seen in a month.
We met so many nice full-time families in Phoenix. We had a great time becoming acquainted and learning their story of why they went full-time on the road. The scenery was so interesting there as well. Very different from where I’ve visited in the past(mostly south east part of the U.S.). Brent loves that there were no mosquitoes around to bite him. It’s so dry and dusty here! Our family did several hiking trails there(only short ones with all three girls). We really relaxed a lot while there. They had a nice swimming pool and hot tub on the camp grounds.
Brent bought a cool portable speaker so we can listen to music outside since he was able to be outside without getting bit.
I’ve been doing the 30 day yoga challenge through Yoga with Adriene this month. I also have continued doing daily, guided meditation. This has been my self-care. It’s nice to do something little like this and not spend a lot of money on self-care(nails done, shopping, etc.).
I do enjoy adding in essential oils or a nice incense to my daily routine. I also love the warm glow of my salt lamp.
I’ve been trying to do more weekly meal planning as it’s hard to put any extra food away in the RV kitchen area. One meal that was a big hit is Ancho Chile Chicken with re-fried black beans and roasted red bell peppers that I found in a magazine I had.
For breakfast, I’ve narrowed down my girls’ choices to: Kodiak Cake mix
Eggs, bacon or sausage(once a week), cereal or smoothies. I typically have a smoothie, oatmeal or eggs with veggies or even leftovers from dinner the night before.
We do our school in the usually in the morning. The girls have enjoyed doing the workbooks I got them and I read aloud to them. We are currently reading the Little House and the Prairie series.
They continue drawing every day and have enjoyed using Art for Kids Hub on Youtube that another full-time family recommended. The drawings they do are amazing from this channel!
We explored Sedona this past weekend and it was amazing! The beauty of the red rocks and landscape were breathtaking. This photo doesn’t do it justice, you’ll have to come see it for yourself.
We hiked a couple trails at national parks, Red Rock State Park and Slide Rock State Park. Also, we went to the Montezuma Castle. That place I liked for all the vegetation they had labeled there. I learned about so many neat plants that the people there had used medicinally and eaten.
We had originally planned to go see the Grand Canyon, but with the temperatures in the teens and none of us have cold-weather clothing, we are heading back to Tennessee this week now. There, we will catch up with friends and family, go to the dentist, eye doctor and general doctor check-ups. Yes, we still do normal, everyday things like everyone else.
It’s been a great few months exploring different places and I look forward to exploring more in a couple months!
