With Winter upon us, the shorter days and frigid temperatures can be enough to try even the most cheerful among us. Many of us feel a little less than great over cold and dark Winter months, but for some, those feelings can grow into an overwhelming sense of depression known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). 

Why is January 1st the magical date that everything changes and we magically start doing all the things we want to do?  This also extends to starting anything on the first of any month, or Mondays, for that matter.  Why do we have to wait for these specific days to change, and are these the best days to start?

For the last month or so, I’ve been getting newsletters and social media posts prompting me to buy my new planner for the new year, to name my “word of the year”, and to set my resolutions, intentions, or feelings for the coming year.  Of course, this also comes with prompts to buy all the things to help me finally achieve all my goals…  

On a cold winter day, there is nothing better than sitting curled up in a cozy chair with a comfy blanket, a warm drink and a good book. There might even be a fireplace or wood-stove nearby.

For many, including myself, this deep rest is something we crave in this season. More so if we’ve been ‘sprinting’ and ‘doing’ most or all of the rest of the year. In this season, the days are shorter and the nights longer; our drive to get things done isn’t as strong and that’s okay! It’s not supposed to be. This is a season of hibernation for a reason. This is also a season when Yin is at its height. The longest night of the year (the Winter Solstice) is also the most Yin night of the year. Quite literally the opposite of the Summer Solstice and the longest day of the year (ultimate Yang).

The coming winter is sure to bring that magical first snowfall, the excitement of the holiday season, and, inevitably, a familiar chorus of coughs, colds, and runny noses. Whether they follow our children home from school, or we encounter them at work or in the check out line at the grocery store, winter sniffles are a ubiquitous part of the season.

No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, habits are at the heart of everything you do. Making them work for you is where the magic happens. Motivation is often the driving force behind the beginning of change when trying to change a habit.

In my last article, we looked at the five things we need to successfully complete any goal or task, namely motivation, resources, vision, process, and details. In particular, we looked at how these last three - vision, process, and details - interact with each other, and how to make them work to your advantage.

Many of us struggle to get things done – whether that’s a long term work project or simply folding the laundry (ok, maybe especially folding the laundry).

There are many wonderful motivational speakers and resources that offer anything from gentle encouragement to a proverbial kick in the rear to help folks accomplish their goals. I am not one of these people, and this is not a motivational article.

This is about the things we need besides motivation to accomplish a goal, and how to make those things work for you. 

We can’t stop habits from forming and nor do we want to!  Habits help us!  Habits are great when they work for us and not against us.  Whenever we want to change our routines, we need to change our habits.  This is especially true every time there’s a change in season or a change in routine.  Think back to the end of August and the beginning of September.  There’s a lot of change in a couple short weeks.  Not having habits and routines that support you can make changing things harder than it needs to be.

Changing habits can be as easy as making the new habit easy or making something we want to stop doing more difficult.  As humans, we naturally gravitate towards easy over hard - let that work for you in this case!

My favourite season is finally here!! Okay, almost – it officially starts on Saturday. I LOVE autumn and everything to do with autumn. I love the warm days and cool nights, the amazing food (the farmers markets are full of amazing food), chai, soups, all the cozy sweaters and so much more.

Saturday marks the halfway point between the longest and most Yang day of the year (the Summer Solstice) and the longest and most Yin night of the year (Winter Solstice). Yin and Yang will be exactly equal on Saturday. After Saturday, Yin will begin to grow as Yang begins to wane. This is a season of change, a season of pivoting. It’s an important season because it represents the bringing in of all the work that has been done this year. This might be work on your health, work on your relationships, work on your home, work on your business, work on something else entirely.

Personally, I am currently pursuing a degree in Health Sciences. Navigating my path back to academia as a mature learner has introduced its own set of challenges, including the delicate juggling act of harmonizing work, family commitments, and scholarly pursuits. I've also had to embrace the task of acquainting myself with emerging technologies, all the while recognizing that my ability to absorb copious volumes of new information is not quite as swift as it once was.

Incorporating the demands of learning into an already busy life has compelled me to become very efficient in learning and coursework. I have been intentional in creating study habits that give me the best chance of staying on top of coursework and being successful in exams.

We’ve been chatting about how habits are formed, how they affect your daily life and how to start making changes. If you didn’t catch the previous two articles, you can read them here: How Habits Affect Your Life + How to Make them Work for You and How to Change Your Habits and Make it Stick - Part 1.

Simply put, habits are an unconscious response to a specific stimulus. If you get cut off in traffic, what’s your automatic response? If you’re feeling stressed, what’s your go-to solution? If your pet or child comes to see you and wants a hug, what’s your response?

In my work with adult clients, a frequent theme that arises during sessions is that of boundaries.

They are the limits we place to protect our needs, our hearts, our bodies, amongst others. Few of us have learned healthy boundaries during our childhoods, and the effects can be felt throughout our adulthood. There are many challenges in establishing and maintaining boundaries, but the most common complaint is what I would like to challenge.

When we stop to consider the myriad of things that can affect our mental health, our focus is so often on the negative. Things such as painful memories that have a detrimental effect on our emotional well-being, triggers that can take us from ‘OK’ to ‘Nope’ in no time at all. And while these definitely play a significant role in our mental health - or lack thereof - it is equally important to explore the power of positive experiences and emotions.

Positive experiences or ‘Glimmers’ as they are sometimes called, are the moments that bring joy, contentment, and a sense of fulfilment, and they can have an equally profound impact on mental health.

Our lives are run by habit. We wouldn’t be able to do the majority of the things we do in the day without habits. This doesn’t make habits wrong, right, good, bad, healthy, unhealthy… Habits simply are. Habits by nature are subconscious and exist solely to respond to different stimuli (pop over and read How Habits Affect Your Life if you want to understand why habits better).

"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." - Health as defined by the World Health Organization

I've come to believe that if I want to thrive, I must invest in my health. If I want to merely survive, I can treat health as an expense and treat symptoms as they arise.  For years I treated my health as an expense and opted for the cheapest solution.  I struggled with iron deficiency anemia, chronic fatigue syndrome, debilitating periods and more.  Unlike most practitioners, I understand chronic illness and the struggles it creates because I’ve lived with it.

Living with a chronic illness is an immense challenge that affects millions of people worldwide. Traditional medical treatments often focus on managing symptoms, but what if there was an alternate approach that could tap into the mind's innate healing abilities? Hypnosis is a therapeutic technique that employs the power of suggestion and deep relaxation to alleviate symptoms and improve the overall well-being of individuals with chronic illnesses.

Did you know that hitting the snooze button actually makes it harder to get out of bed in the morning?  

Studies have shown that we get most of our REM sleep (or dream sleep) in the latter part of our sleep cycles (these cycles happen multiple times throughout the night).  We also get more REM sleep overall in the early morning hours.  REM sleep is the most restorative part of the sleep cycle.  When your alarm goes off in the morning, you’re most likely disrupting REM sleep; especially if you wake up from a dream.  By choosing to hit your snooze button instead of getting up, you are starting another sleep cycle and may be reentering another REM cycle within that sleep cycle.  

In my twenty plus years as a herbalist, there has been one class of remedy that people have complained about consistently – the digestive bitter.

We, as herbalists, are not being cruel or perverse when we recommend that you take one. We know the bitter flavour can come as a bit of a shock to folks used to the average North American diet, but bitters have a plethora of benefits that really do make them worthwhile.

All these ‘psychs’ are confusing!

When you’re looking for help for yourself, or a loved one, it may feel like mental health services have their own language. All the different terms for therapies, professional designations and various agencies/centres can be frustrating and discouraging. 

I am here to set the record straight. I am going to provide you with some insight into each of these professions, with a combination of facts as well as my experience working with each of these healthcare practitioners.

When I was a child, I used to beg my parents for a pet; sadly, they never gave in.  However, I found a way around that!  I started babysitting our neighbours pets when they were away, this began a lifelong love of cats (and the occasional dog).

Little did I know then what a profound effect having pets would have on me.

My husband and I currently have four cats - Jane, Darcy, Toes and Lizzie.  They each have such unique personalities and quirks.  I truly can’t imagine life without them.