Edition 31 ⏚ Staying Grounded
How to stay grounded in a perceived world of chaos.
Enjoy this week's tips, resources, and strategies.
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❤️ Stephanie 🧠✨🤸♂️🌱
The Freedom to Live 5 things Friday
Every Friday, 5 things of value from the integrative health sciences.
The best of the best functional medicine, educational resources, research, quotes, books, tips, advice etc. all from the key pillars of the integrative health system.
1. Grounding!
Literally and Simply! kick off your shoes and socks and connect your feet to the ground. Sand, dirt, pavement, it doesn't matter, but, preferably pesticide free grass!
Grounding, or Earthing is one of the simplest overlooked practices out there to simply have skin contact with the negative ions of the earth. Just being grounded, changes our nervous system state from sympathetic mode (fight-flight) to parasympathetic (rest, recover, digest), it lowers your heart rate and energetically calms the body.
In the electrical world, everything is grounded for safety. I think we need to visualize this for ourselves, and start a daily grounding practice to the physical earth.
The first morning dew is a perfect time and place to get started!!!
Maybe take your morning routine outside this week.
More on grounding here: Grounding the Human Body: The Healing Benefits of Earthing
2. Cold Water Therapy
This is one of the fastest ways to literally throw yourself in to the present moment and get out of your head is with a cold plunge. It forces you to breathe. Once you get past the first 20 seconds, the initial shock of it, you can begin to breathe through it using a variety of breath techniques, or simply, box breathing: breathe out to the count of 4, breathe in to the count of 4 and repeat.
The cold is always uncomfortable, it never gets easier, and there is always the desire to escape it. But overtime it strengthens the mind with a physical and mental practice.
Cold water therapy has been used for decades in athletic training recovery to calm sore and overworked muscles, reduce inflammation, but also helps with immunity, circulation, aging, cellular-energy, and much more.
Cold plunging, however, is not for everyone especially for individuals who are in a heightened stress nervous system state. It can do more harm than good. It isn't a good idea to further shock the body.
Like anything, this is a graduated process and practice. Start small and build.
Cold showers are also a good way to get started.
Check out my outdoor DIY garden hose shower! I'm using this as part of my morning routines (faster than filling a tub), for post-workouts, or rinsing off on hot days.
3. Nutrition Factors: Improve Metabolism & Weight Balance
Low calorie are low-energy diets and they are not a long-term solution. These “solutions” are often nutrient deficient and/or are missing major food group categories.
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The main danger of the low-cal “lifestyle” over the long-term is that metabolic rate can be significantly affected. Because energy intake below needs can depress resting metabolic rates by 10%-20%, or the equivalent of 100-400 kcal/day.
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This drop in basal needs, as a consequence, decreases the amount of energy needed to maintain weight.
The discussion almost always involves more than calories in calories out, sure this is important, but how are nutrition plans supporting these 5 important factors below?
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1. Thyroid;
2. Iron;
3. Blood Sugar and Cholesterol;
4. Liver;
5. Cortisol and Stress.
How is thyroid being supported? Have you tested the full panel including antibodies? What about Iron?Often symptoms of low energy, low motivation, low thyroid can be related to a deficiency in iron. Then what about vitamin C! this vitamin helps the absorption and bioavailability of iron. See how there are so many factors, always the "fix" is not one thing, but a collection of lifestyle and nutritional practices.
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If you are unsure about where to start, I invite you to book either a 30 minute nutrition consult, or a 1hour integrative health assessment. Both services include a detailed symptoms questionnaire done prior to the session to really dive into underlying imbalances to help you build a plan and blueprint to live by.
Upcoming Topic with Chef Collin, Mondays at 11EST on Instagram Live. Follow me on Instagram here to tune in to our weekly conversations.
👉 How to boost brain function with 5 foods and lifestyle factors
4. Toxicity Quiz
The whole premises of my practice is the Functional and Integrative Medicine approach: Remove Toxicity and Replenish Deficiencies to Rebalance the body.
1. Remove
2. Replenish
3. Rebalance
Start here with taking 10 minutes to look at your toxicity load with this questionnaire.
If you need help with your results, please set up a complimentary call by emailing, or texting back.
stephanie@thefreedomtolive.ca
647-838-7833
5. Exercise: Plan it. Set Up. Do it. Enjoy it.
This is the conclusion. The more I set the intentions, plan, physically get the gear ready the night before. Actually do it and stop "awefulizing" it in my head....lol It's a never ending journey. Might as well fall in love with the process and so I repeat: Enjoy the journey!
I hope this email newsletter blog has inspired you to go in to next week with more grounding techniques.
The world is definitely a little cooky right now and more then ever we need to get back down to earth.
Enjoy the upcoming week.
❤️ Stephanie