Smoking is an addiction that’s programmed into our consciousness. It used to be prescribed by doctors in the good’ ol days, because it gave you more stamina. People who smoke just can’t seem to kick the habit – and it’s not their fault. These cancer sticks are designed to tuck you in and keep you stuck. To be able to quit, you need a really strong support system and plan set in place to be able to actually rewire your brain.

This is what happens after you stop:

20 Minutes

Your heart rate will go back to normal as well as your blood pressure. You will feel more sensations in your hands and your legs. The organism will slowly start to clean itself from the nicotine, which can make you crave for another cigarette, but try and be persistent.

8 Hours

You inhale carbon monoxide when tobacco is burning and that substance bonds with your blood cells.

That prevents the oxygen to bond to your cells and cause dangerous cardiovascular diseases.

You can cut that level of carbon monoxide on half by not smoking for 8 hours. Your oxygen levels will turn to normal and you will lower the risk of a heart attack.  Continue reading →

Life seems to have a plan for us even before we know it.

In fact, our paths are often so well laid out for us that before we know it, we’ve signed up for some sort of ambiguous university degree.

This happened to me. I chose to study dental hygiene because 1) it offered a good-looking salary and 2) the city I grew up in offered the program. Naturally, I did what was expected.

Thankfully though, I’m a quitter. With only one year left to finish, I decided to walk away from my career as an oral hygienist because 1) the stress of it was expediting my hair loss and 2) I was very unhappy.  So, I listened to my intuition, or common sense as some may call it, and left the program.

Eventually, I re-kindled my childhood love for writing to mitigate my shame for leaving school, never with the intention of building a career out of it, of course, because how many writers actually get paid for their work?

But somehow, after embracing my inner quitter and picking up an improbable hobby, I rolled two doubles and landed on free parking, or, in layman’s terms – I got hired as a writer.

Turning your passion into a lucrative career may seem impossible at times, and if your passion involves creativity it may seem “stupid” to try and tackle, but there are methods to help make your dreams a reality that anyone can apply if you are finally ready and determined to make things happen in your life.

Let me elaborate.

1) Ask yourself what made you happiest when you were young.

Before you became jaded by life, i.e., car payments, rent, student loans, etc., what got you the most excited when you were a kid?

Perhaps it was using your easy-bake-oven to make mom mystery cakes (seriously, what the heck was in those?), reenacting scenes as Rose from Titanic in your friend’s swimming pool

(No one? Just me then…), painting “nice” pictures for your art teacher, or pretending to ride a unicorn (in which case, stop reading this article because that will never happen). It doesn’t matter what that something is, the point is to think back to what got your inspirational juices going and made you happy. This means more than you realize. Continue reading →

Sex is one of the most common ways we feel deep euphoric bliss in our lives. It creates a feeling of pleasure, liberation and euphoric release, releasing bio-energy within our body. Of course, sex can also cause a lot of problems in our lives. There can be negative consequences associated with sex when it is not engaged in or perceived in a sustainable, connected and bliss-giving way. It can affect our self-esteem and throw our intimate relationships out of whack, particularly when it is viewed only as a way to achieve orgasm, not as a shared energetic connection.

By understanding the trends of the underlying hormonal activities associated with sex and orgasm, and how the change in our chemistry affect our moods, behavior, desires and wants, we can work with our body’s hormonal system to make sexual interaction a more spiritual and rewarding experience.

Understanding the Hormones

The main player among the wellbeing hormones is dopamine, also known as the reward hormone. Then there is prolactin, the hormone of satiation, and oxytocin, the love and bliss hormone. All these hormones interact powerfully affecting our moods and desire for intimacy and bonding. And although we might believe that dynamics within the relationship has a conscious element to it, there is also a deep physical hormonal element that contributes to our experience.

Within our brain there is a code that tells us what we need to do to be happy, healthy, wealthy, glowing and living within our life’s purpose. When we do those things, and we experience things such as social interaction, pair bonding and orgasm, our endocrine system responds by releasing oxytocin.

When we first fall in love we become bonded by rising levels of oxytocin, which is the love and cuddle hormone, and we also feel a peak in our dopamine levels. When we start having sex with that person, we experience a big release of dopamine, which comes like a huge wave in the brain during the orgasm. It feels amazing! However this is then followed by a significant drop in dopamine levels immediately after orgasm, which brings hangover-like effects. Generally speaking, the timing of this hangover varies by gender; the reaction tends to be immediate in males and slightly delayed in females. Continue reading →