Tips For Taking Care Of Your Winter Clothes

Winter laundry has its own distinct character and needs. Things get cold and wet, dirty, and crusty. We wear heavier weights of clothes of course, and our washers get a real workout. It seems like mine is going constantly. To make your winter clothing last longer, feel great, and smell fresh, follow these simple rules for laundering cold weather clothing.

Wool. Wool can be wonderful but lots of people avoid it because they mistakenly think it cannot be machine washed. For the most part, this is not the case, but check the label first. If it says that you can machine wash it, for best results and to keep it from becoming scratchy, use a perfume and dye-free detergent. Add a towel or two as well, which will help absorb the great amount of moisture wool can hold. Always wash wool on the gentle cycle. Lay woolen items flat to dry.

Maintain Your Living Space To Keep It Organized And Clean

Christmas is over. You have lots new stuff. You have lots of old stuff. In fact, if you don’t do something about it soon, you are in danger of a friend or family member reporting you to that show Hoarders. Before things get that out of hand, be proactive and make a pre-New Year’s resolution to put things in order. Here are some great tips for helping you de-clutter and de-stress.

Pick a Room, Any Room. It can seem overwhelming to consider what needs to be done in each room of your home, so micromanage. Begin in one room and stay there, exclusively, until it is done. This does not mean that you have to complete your task at one given time. You might find it helpful to set a timer for one hour and give yourself a break for a bit before continuing. A break might include watching television for 30 minutes, having a snack, or taking a walk. Repeat for every room in your house.

The Heart Of Humanity: Sitting With Our Sadness

When we are dealing with sadness it is important to really sit with it and have to courage to do so

The last thing most of us want to hear or think about when we are dealing with profound feelings of sadness is that deep learning can be found in this place. In the midst of our pain, we often feel picked on by life, or overwhelmed by the enormity of some loss, or simply too exhausted to try and examine the situation. We may feel far too disappointed and angry to look for anything resembling a bright side to our suffering. Still, somewhere in our hearts, we know that we will eventually emerge from the depths into the light of greater awareness. Remembering this truth, no matter how elusive it seems, can help.

Have You Considered Making 5 Different Resolutions?

We all know the most common resolutions concerning health. However, have you considered that these resolutions are merely branches emanating from a single tree trunk? It makes more sense to create resolutions which strengthen your core identity. Your ability to change depends on a good self-concept.

The first resolution one needs to make is to: Harness your power!

5 New Year’s Evolutions:

* Change your verbiage, especially when you qualify a compliment with a negative. For example, “Wow, I did twenty pushups. I didn’t think I would be able to do that.” Instead, “Wow, I got stronger. I did twenty pushups.” Words are powerful persuaders.

12 Household Cures for Indigestion

There all time when we all over-indulge in rich or spicy foods and suffer the uncomfortable, sometimes painful, results: indigestion. If you don’t want to go to the store or don’t like the idea of yet another over-the-counter medication, there are a number of household remedies you can try and get immediate relief.

Almonds. Eat about 10 skinned almonds or mix a teaspoon of almond oil in warm milk to relieve indigestion. Almonds are high in fiber and reduce constipation, too.

Baking Soda. Mix a half a teaspoon of baking soda with warm water and a few drops of lemon juice and drink it slowly.

Complete the Year Consciously

These few days before the start of the New Year have a magical and sacred quality to them. I appreciate the lull in activity that often takes place this week and the opportunity we have to reflect back on the year that is ending, as well as to create new possibilities and intentions for the year that's about to start. It often seems more exciting to focus on our "resolutions" for the coming year than it does to look back. However, before we jump ahead and start making our goals for next year, it's essential that we complete the year that is about to end consciously.

As much as I personally love this completion process, I usually have mixed emotions reflecting back on the year. There is often excitement, gratitude, and joy for all of the wonderful accomplishments, experiences, insights, and more. There is also sadness, disappointment, and sorrow over the things that I didn't accomplish, the people and things I'll miss, and the places in my life where I struggled or failed.

Healing Crooked Genes

Most of us think of genetics as fate. Tough luck if some of your genes are programmed for trouble. Well, there is ,more to it than that.

It now seems likely that genes can be reprogrammed, through something as simple as a basic shift in attitude or change in life style. It’s the discovery in a field of genetics called epigenetics that has identified a biochemical code carried in our DNA. Epigenome is the name of this code has been given. It acts on genes like a dimmer switch. Epigenomes can turn up the power in genes that make life wonderful and turn down the power in those that make life difficult.

IMS Founder And Meditation Teacher Joseph Goldstein's Talk At InsightLA Next Week

Right after "Plop-plop, fizz-fizz," the first thing that comes to mind when I hear relief is . . . .

A handful of Buddhist teachers have been credited for making classical training accessible to Westerners without dumbing it down and Joseph Goldstein is one of them. His message is clear, too: if you're suffering you can find relief through meditation. And you don't have to be Buddhist to meditate.

The last time Joseph Goldstein gave a public talk in Los Angeles was in 2003 and that was the first time I saw him teach in person. I had heard audio tapes of his lectures and read some of his writings but they hadn't prepared me for the power that underscored his soft-spoken presentation. I could feel it and with that feeling of presence came a visceral sense of release and relief. His book One Dharma had just been published and he talked about a time, early in his meditation practice, that he tried to untangle what he saw as inconsistencies between two schools of Buddhist thought. He struggled to 'figure out' which view was correct until he realized that one didn't have to be right and the other wrong, that it was possible to understand both views as means to an end rather than statements of absolute truth. "Well," he told us, "that was a huge relief."

My Favorite Tips for Making the Law of Attraction Work

1. Act “as if.” A recent study showed that the brain waves generated and neurotransmitters released when someone visualizes sitting on a beach (for example) are exactly the same as the brain waves of a person who is actually sitting on that beach. Your mind (and the Universe) doesn’t recognize the difference between what you perceive as “real” and “imaginary.” It only reads vibration. The easiest way to attract something into your experience is to evoke the FEELING and VIBRATION of already having it, and then hold your attention to that feeling as long as possible, preferably until it becomes second nature. Feeling as if what you want is already here may seem like a exercise in delusion, but remember, reality is pliable. Your physical reality is constantly changing and conforming to the energy frequency you are holding.

11 Tips: Will Your New Year's Resolutions wear THIN?

Whether you are one of the 44% of Americans who make New Year's resolutions or not, the new year does present an opportunity to reassess, revamp and revive.

Here follows 10 tips from the Our Lady of Weight Loss Vault that speak to ...

Why do our New Year's Resolutions Wear Thin???

1. How Excited and Inspired Are You, Really? Are the goals you set your own, or are they coming from the 'shoulds' - 'musts' and 'have tos' that other people have laid upon you? If you are not excited, forgetaboutit.

2. Did You Bite Off More than You Can Chew? Be realistic for goodness sake. You can't start off with 300 pound weights. Try a 3 pounder first! Small changes create big results.

Are the new airport body scanners safe?

YES: The radiation dose is too small to be dangerous.

Kimberly Applegate, MD Vice Chair For Quality and Safety in the Department of Radiology at Emory University School of Medicine

* You get more radiation from the flight itself.

In March, some airports began installing a new security device called a backscatter machine. It uses low-level X-rays to create an image that reveals if anything is hidden under your clothing. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says that one scan is equivalent to the radiation you get flying two minutes at cruising altitude—and if that were harmful, we’d have been warned to not fly at all.