What Are Essential Oils & How Do You Use Them?

                                 

                    Essential Oils 101

What are Essential Oils?

If you have ever enjoyed the scent of a rose, you’ve experienced the aromatic qualities

of essential oils. These naturally occurring, volatile aromatic compounds are found in 

the seeds, bark, stems, roots, flowers, and other parts of plants. Essential oils provide 

plants with protection against environmental threats and play a role in plant pollination. 

In addition to their intrinsic benefits to plants and being beautifully fragrant to people, 

essential oils have long been used for food preparation, beauty treatment, and health-care 

practices.

How Do I Use Essential Oils?

Essential oils are used for a wide range of emotional and physical reasons.

They can be used a single oil at a time or in complex blends in one of three methods:

1. Aromatic

Certain essential oils, when diffused, can be very stimulating, while others can be calming 

and soothing. Diffusing essential oils can also cleanse and purify the air of unwanted odors.

2. Topical

Essential oils are easily absorbed by the skin and can be safely applied 
topically. Apply one to three drops to your palms, soles of your feet, 
or temples.

3. Internal

Certain essential oils have a rich culinary history and can be used as 

dietary supplements for targeted wellness. Essential oils are exciting 

and very potent when it comes to taking care of your own and 
your family’s health. Whether you’re applying essential oils topically, enjoying the aromatic benefits 
through diffusing, or taking essential oils internally, the positive effects of essential oils are boundless.
That’s why you’ll want to be certain that the essential oils you are using will deliver everything they 

they promise. Be sure to choose essential oils that are organic, potent, and pure.

     Staying Young and Healthy with Essential Oils

Essential oils are extracted from plants and have been used for centuries for therapeutic purposes. 

Because your sense of smell is closely connected to stress-response and emotional centers of the 

brain, they can have a powerful effect on your mood and your general health.

My personal favorites: Lavender, Peppermint, Orange, Frankincense, and Lemon.

      Lavender oil is very relaxing and is often used to help with insomnia. It is also good for burns 

      and cuts.

     Peppermint oil added to a glass of water creates a refreshing drink that is uplifting and good 
     for the digestion, but make sure it’s organic, pure, and therapeutic grade. It’s delicious!

Lemon oil in a small spray bottle is great to clean with - especially countertops and floors. 
     Your home will smell wonderful. Use 5-7 drops and some castile soap.
       
     Orange oil showed anxiety-reducing effects In a study done where it was compared 
     with a control, .
      
     Frankincense was called “liquid gold” in ancient times and is very effective for pain, skin 
     conditions, and inflammation.


Interesting Facts:

     
     Clove oil was used for hundreds of years in dentistry as an antiseptic and local anesthetic.

         

     In 1937, a French chemist burned his hand, and plunged it into a vat of pure lavender oil by mistake. It healed almost immediately!

      

     In WW2  lavender was used to treat injured soldiers.

     

     *****As always, with anything that can be therapeutic, check with your doctor– especially if you are 

     pregnant or have a specific medical condition. 

                                     For more information please go to:
                              www.LifeIsWonderful.com          

4 Ways to Kick the Sugar Blues

4 Ways to Kick the Sugar Blues

Do you love sugar, but know it is time to cut back? Here are 4 easy ways to reduce the amount of sugar you're eating, or get it out of your life for once and for all. Some people can deal with it by eating less - others find that they need to let it go completely . Either way, these 4 simple steps will help.

1. Don’t allow yourself to eat unconsciously

We all have so much on our plates, metaphorically and in reality. It's easy to push anxiety and stress aside with sweets. Start making your sugar treats just that - something very special. Eat slowly, appreciating every bite, savoring every git of it, and make sure to add some complex carbohydrates to slow down how quickly it hits your bloodstream.  butter, eggs, cream, nuts or avocado to slow the sugar absorption.

2. Plan ahead

A primary rule is to stay a few steps ahead of the white demon, never go to the grocery store when you're hungry. If you work or volunteer somewhere that has a lot of candy, cake, or donuts around, go fortified with your own healthy snacks. Carrots and celery are always good of course, but if you want to feel you're having a treat, make some air popped popcorn, spray it with olive oil, and sprinkle some sea salt on it. Find a tea that you really like, that doesn't need sweetener. I don't like the taste of green tea, but I love it when it has ginger in it.

3. Fermented foods can save the day!

For some reason, fermented foods are known to help reduce sugar cravings. Tempeh,  kombucha, kefir, miso, fermented sauerkraut, and fermented condiments all have beneficial flora that will diminish the damaging effect of sugar, especially when they're eaten at the same time. 

And better yet, those micro-flora will ingest some of the sugar themselves! 

Over time, fermented foods can also help to reduce your sugar cravings dramatically,

4. Add Chromium Picolinate to your Supplements

A recent study tested blood sugar levels after eating white bread and found that just having 400 micrograms of chromium reduced blood sugar afterwards by 23%. It has been shown to reduce carb cravings and stabilize blood sugars, and the best part is that people with the greatest carbohydrate cravings had the best results!

Once you have cut back on your sugar intake, it will get easier. And if you remove it from your diet completely, then taste it several months later, you'll be amazed - it won't taste good anymore! Hard to believe, but true. And the health and beauty benefits will be a bigger reward than you may even realize. 

              Want to Sleep Like a Baby? 

         Don't Use Your Cell or Tablet Before Bed!

It's become a common habit to check our cellphones or read something on a tablet before going to sleep, but it turns out that that wreaks havoc on our sleep cycles - and that's according to Harvard Medical School scientists! They discovered that the wavelengths of light in both cell phones and tablets can suppress the sleep inducing melatonin in the brain, which is essential to a good night's sleep.

"We have biologically shifted ourselves so we can't fall asleep earlier," according to Charles A. Cseisler, a professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School. 

Why? The light from a phone or tablet signals your body that it's time to be awake--not time to go to sleep. Your brain processes that light as if it's sunlight, which tells the body to be awake, and it stops managing melatonin - the hormone that let's the body know it's time for sleep.

So when you're doing that last minute check for email, seeing     what's going on on Facebook, or reading a book on your tablet you might think you're winding down and getting ready to nod off, but the reality is that your sleep cycle is disrupted, and it's actually it harder to go to sleep and stay asleep.

This not only causes fatigue and irritability (not to mention    unwanted wrinkles), it can cause health problems.

It also creates a vicious cycle. You check your emails, your brain thinks it's time to be awake, and you don’t fall asleep when you had planned. Then, since you're up anyway, you might go onto your phone or tablet again - which signals your body to stay awake. 

When you finally do get to sleep, instead of getting the necessary 7 or 8 hours of sleep, you end up getting 5 or 6, which is very harmful to your body because it doesn't get the time it needs to cleanse and repair itself. 

This lack of good solid sleep not only causes fatigue the next day, it causes lack of focus, poor memory, and distractedness. It can make it harder for students to learn, and people who don’t get enough restful sleep are more prone to depression, weight gain, and other health problems. 

Getting fewer than 8 hours of sleep compromises alertness, reaction time, productivity, mood, and efficiency, according to Australia's Sleep Health Foundation.

The best solution is to put the cell phone or tablet down at least an hour before sleep. This will give your brain the proper signal that it's time for a restful night's sleep.

Instead, take a nice warm bath, listen to relaxing music, Ido some yoga, meditate, or read a book the old fashioned way.

If you still find getting a good night's sleep challenging, I highly recommend listening to audios that are designed to relax you into an excellent night's sleep, so you will wake up feeling like a million dollars in the morning. 

I am happy to offer you 30 days of free audios that you can listen to right on your phone  so you can fall sleep easily - and just as importantly, stay asleep. I can't think of many things that will help you look and feel years younger than your biological age. (just turn the light the other way when you turn it on) 

If you want to listen to these wonderful audios for 30 days,  absolutely free  just email me at diannawhitley@icloud.com and I will send them to you - no strings, and no credit card required. 

The even more amazing thing about this gift is that you will also receive access to over 600 sessions on Stress Reduction, Learning Acceleration, Sports Enhancement, Making Sales Easily, Weight Loss, and more. Not only will you get better night's sleep -  you will get better tools to handle all your daytime activities as well!

Stress is More Fattening than Ice Cream!

   

Stress is More Fattening than Ice Cream!

One of the most important ways to stay young looking, and feel your best, is to be at your ideal weight. That can be challenging in this stressful world, because stress is more fattening than ice cream, chocolate, candy, popcorn, and bread! 

The reason for this is that stress releases a very powerful hormone that signals the body to stock up on food and take a break.This hormone is Cortisol, and its the body's way of slowing us down so that we don't burn out. The result is that we feel tired, sluggish and hungry - so we feel like lying around, watching TV and eating carbs, sugar and other comfort foods. 

Worse yet, Cortisol tells the body to go into fat storage, and to store far in the adipose tissue of the abdomen, making a person look more and more like an avocado on tooth picks. And when the majority of weight is in the abdomen it can lead to storing fat on the inside of the abdominal cavity, which is dangerous and may lead to diabetes and heart disease.

One of the biggest ironies is that people go on diets to lose weight - and dieting is stressful! It makes as much sense as deciding you want to save money - then throwing your dollar bills out of a car, driving down the highway. It's counterproductive. 

Dieting is ranks #7 among the top 10 stressors! Dieting forces you to think and act in ways that are totally foreign and not natural. And dieting by it's very nature is something you do for a while, then stop. 

So if you eat because you feel stressed out, then go on a diet, you are compounding the problem even more, because you're then doing the 7th most stressful human thing on the stress charts. 

And if you've failed to lose weight by dieting more than once, now you have created a pattern for failure that gets more and more ingrained, and will likely continue until you change your strategy.

The solution to this self perpetuating pattern? Learning to think, act and respond differently. There are different ways to do this, but the one I recommend the most is guided imagery, relaxation, and/or hypnosis. In that relaxed state, you can adopt the habits, attitudes and behaviors of a "naturally thin" person. 

If you want more information, or 30 days of free access to to an entire library of audios that will help you to become a naturally thin person by simply listening to sessions that will allow you to automatically change your reactions and knee jerk reactions to food and the stressors that make you want to eat, just write me at diannawhitley@gmail.com Hypnosis helps to change the way you think, act and respond to your world and your environment in a virtually stress free way.

Call now! (714) 331-6699.

Daydreaming Keeps You Young!

I think daydreaming keeps you young. Photos like this transport me to other places, and give me the feeling that I am almost there. 

I don't just see a cafe in Croatia. My imagination takes flight, and I conjure up what it would be like to visit there, or even live there. I picture myself sitting there, having a cup of tea, (or wine) looking down at the boats below - or maybe being in one of those boats. 

I feel the sun on my back, and the wind on my face. I think about the hotel room I might stay in – something simple, near the heart of things – somewhere local people might stay on a weekend of a holiday.

I imagine the people I might meet. English is spoken almost everywhere, so that wouldn’t be a problem, and when you’re a woman travelling alone, it’s easy to start conversations with the people around you. I think about the food, the music, the little stores, the historical sites, and then I imagine other places nearby that I might visit, like Greece or Italy. 

All in all, these thoughts might only take a few minutes, but they are like a little vacation, and they inspire me to keep a sense of adventure and curiosity in my life, for that is a big part of what I think keeps us youthful, full of energy, enthusiasm and loving life.

And the best part? Daydreaming like this often causes me to take action, and before I know it, I’m planning a trip or on my way to a new country or city. And I plan to keep doing that until I’m well into my 90’s, or even beyond. And THAT thought helps me to keep doing all the things that will keep me healthy, strong, and full of the energy it takes to continue living life to the very hilt!

What is Hypnosis? Can it Really Help Me?

There are several ways hypnosis can be used to stay young.  It can help people lose weight, quit smoking, cope with pain, have less stress, and more confidence. It is a very effective way to get rid of bad habits and establish new ones, and it can bring huge relief to people who suffer from things like headaches, Fibromyalgia and IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome, all of which are very aging. 

Hypnosis is a much simpler state than most people think it is. Hollywood has distorted the way people think about it so much, I prefer to describe it as tapping into the power of suggestion and visualization while in a relaxed state.

Everything starts in the mind. The subconscious is the control center, determining everything from our body temperature and blood pressure to our habits and emotional reactions.

All hypnosis is self-hypnosis in the end, as no one can be made to do something they don’t want to do, and it works because of the power of suggestion. 

Athletes, actors, and business people use it to perform at the optimum level.The power of the mind is so strong, surgeons used hypnosis during the Civil War, when they didn’t have anesthesia

A trance is very much like daydreaming. Daniel Handel, a physician at the National Institutes of Health describes it as similar to watching a movie that makes you to lose track of time. “You are in an altered state of consciousness…deeply absorbed but responsive to suggestions.”

Handel uses hypnosis with cancer patients who feel nauseated during chemotherapy sessions. Just the thought of the sessions, the smell of the hospital, or the drive there can make some people feel sick. “It’s a learned response,” he says, and explains that teaches them to relax and put themselves somewhere pleasurable instead.

The power of the mind is so strong, surgeons used hypnosis during the Civil War, when they didn’t have anesthesia

Matt Damon quit smoking with hypnosis. Kate Middleton used it to alleviate her morning sickness, and Tiger Woods used it to improve his golf game when he was new to the circuit.

People often tell me they don’t think they can be hypnotized, but that is hardly ever true. There are only 3 reasons people can’t be hypnotized: they have a very low IQ, they are on drugs or alcohol at the time of the session (they are already in a trance), or they are determined not to be.

The last category doesn’t mean someone with mixed feelings. Most people who want to stop a bad habit do have some conflicting feelings about it – but if they want to stop, hypnosis is the easiest and fastest way to do it.

And contrary to what most people think, the smarter and more imaginative a person is, the better subject they are for hypnosis.

If you want to experience the power of relaxation and visualization, I would like to send you the access to over 600 different audio sessions at absolutely no cost - no obligation, no credit card required. Just send me your first name, last name, and email, and I will set you up with an APP that you can use right on your phone. Whether you want o lose weight, have more confidence, relax, or sleep better at night, I can't think of a better way to do it. For more information go to www.YourCustomizedCoaching.com - but if you sign up there, you will only get 7 days for free, and you will have to put in your credit card. Either way, I highly recommend it - it's absolutely life changing! You can also call me for a free 30 minute consultation at (480) 389-1019.