Holistic Lifestyles are more than salves and essential oils. I feel like a lot of the time when we hear Holistic we think essential oils, hippies, eclectic individuals and sometimes we lean towards a more negative mindset. It’s the “thats not the norm so its weird” mindset that kinda brings those thoughts to our minds. To which, yes, if this isn’t what you are used to it can be weird and strange. I remember being “why does it matter” to start but now, oh I see why it matters. So in this blog post we are going to go over some of the Holistic approaches that we are bringing into our lives this year and some that we are hoping to start! To which, yes, salves and essential oils will be in that mix but it won’t be the only thing in that mix!
I do know that I will most likely find myself making lot more than what I am listing so I think come winter, I will need to do an updated list of what I actually made! But to start all that I am listing, I will be adding what the goal is for this specific item. It may not work for everyone and some people may react negatively. So when trying the herbal side of the Holistic lifestyle, I recommend slowly introducing these items into your diet and take the time to watch how you react to it. Same with any salves or the topical side of the herbal medicine. Watch how it reacts and keep note if you have any sort of reaction to them. Herbal Medicine is a wonderful option for your health and I personally prefer this route but it also can react differently for everyone!!!
Our biggest goals for our household will be standard first aid, nausea control, dry skin, allergies and head colds. So to start we will be trying our hand in making Dandelion Salve for dry skin. We have already harvested plenty of dandelions and now we just need to infuse some oils for it! Ginger Tincture and homemade herbal teas will be mixed up for nausea control. The ginger tincture though, can be taken around meal time to assist digestion. For Colds and allergy season, I would like to make an Elderberry Tincture and some homemade cough drops. These are items that we can obviously purchase but I am hoping to make them at home.
Holistic health doesn’t stop there though. Did you know Holistic health is multiple layers? For example: mind, body, lifestyle, emotions and spiritual are just a few of the categories. Im sure there are way more than I personally even know. But essentially everything in life has a Holistic alternative. So even though we are doing the salves and herbal side of life, we are also doing the entire Holistic lifestyle change too. So how are we implementing the holistic lifestyle for ourselves. Here is a list of just a few of the items!
Red Light Therapy
Sauna Bag
Journaling
Meditating
Ice Bath
Gua Sha
Dry Brushing
We have also started to put up boundaries that will help our family. Maybe we don’t need to help everyone all of the time. Maybe we need to actually focus on our family and our homestead instead. We spent a decent chunk of time helping others in the past but what we started to learn is that we were burning ourselves out and not being able to take care of all the things that we needed. Our go to answer is always “yes” when it comes to helping others, but maybe we need to find our Best Yes. To which I have been working on reading said book by Lysa TerKeurst: https://amzn.to/43JF6Lb so that I can actually implement the best yes into my life. We absolutely love being able to help others and it is our go to reaction but if it hinders our lives and when it comes to having health struggles, if I give all of my good days to others, then what am I giving to our family. So Holistic is also a lifestyle change for us too. Starting with our best yes and boundaries.
We are also going to work on the mental side of Holistic health and that entails journaling, meditation, processing emotions and working on more self love talk. The emotions and self love talk will probably be my biggest struggle as I can easily think negatively when it comes to myself. For example, if I take some time to relax, I typically think that I am lazy. In reality we are changing that mindset to realize that I am actually resting and relaxing for my body to be able to heal. This also can be assisted through meditation and journaling. The mind is a very strong thing! It can easily make your day good or bad with the simple outlook of life. But in the case of chronic illness it is the mind that can make or break how the episode will end sometimes. It is up to the mind to keep me out of an episode when we are so close to starting.
The spiritual side of life is going to be something we continue to rely on and keep our eyes on The Lord. Always implementing devotional time on our own and having a time to ourselves to really dig deep into the word. We spend every day with each other but the journey with The Lord needs to also be something we handle on our own. Yes walk with others but I want to build my connection with him always. After all, he is surely the person I rely on a lot when I am not feeling well! The spiritual side won’t change much but more so implementing that I take a solid chunk of time to just be present with my devotionals.
In general, we are going to work on every aspect of our lives to be a more holistic life style. More natural, enjoying the outdoors, setting boundaries, continually learning, rest, exercise, eating nurturing foods and just taking the time to listen to my body. Those are just a few examples. The Holistic lifestyle truly covers so many angels of our lives that I could go on for a while listing out the ways to add it to our lives.
With all of this, I hate to say that none of these items will completely heal me with Cyclical Vomiting but we have to look at it like “I need to at least put in an effort to better my health.” I can’t just sit around and hope for the best. These tactics may actually be helping my body with less episodes. The only way to find out would be to stop everything I am doing and I won’t be doing that any time soon. That would just defeat the purpose.
In the next few blogs, I am going to chat with you about some of the things that I listed above and what their benefits are to the body. I will also explain what my goal is to assist my body. As each item has so many benefits but in reality I have a set goal for each item on what I could use the benefits for. So join me for the next few weeks as I go in depth on those topics, their benefits, and my goals for how this will aid in my health journey. Maybe you’ll learn some new things and add them into your journey too. I will say some of these topics will be quick and easy explanations so some posts may be short blogs. But at the same time, thats ok, I think with how much information I will be throwing your way, you may just need that short blog break in between!!!
Catch ya next week!