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 →

Ayurvedic philosophy states that decisions we make in regards to our daily routines either build resistance to disease or reduce it.

Let’s take a healthy practice that invokes this philosophy – adding pineapple to your first glass of water every morning. Here are 10 great reasons to do so.

1. Fight inflammation

Pineapple is a great source of bromelain.

Bromelain is an enzyme with anti-inflammatory characteristics that helps the body rid itself of toxins that affect various tissues and organs in the body.

Regularly consuming pineapple can help with mild forms of arthritis as well as various sports-related injuries by reducing the amount of inflammation and pain.

Source

2. Lose weight

The fiber in pineapple means that it takes longer to digest – this causes the body to maintain a ‘full’ feeling for longer, preventing cravings.

Thiamine, found in pineapple, can help boost your body’s metabolism through converting carbohydrates into energy.

Source Continue reading →

Since 1995, 1100 activists have been killed for speaking out about animal agriculture. Among them, Dorothy Stang a woman who dedicated her life to protect Brazil’s rain forest and it’s inhabitants. In 2005, Dorothy was murdered while walking to her home by a hired gun of the cattle industry.

In a report released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, it states that cattle rearing generates more global warming green house gases than the entire transportation sector.

“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems,” senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official Henning Steinfeld said. “Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”.

Raising animals for food consumption uses 30% of the world’s water, 45% of the world’s land, and is responsible for 91% of the destruction of the rain forest. Among these shocking figures, animal agriculture is also the leading cause of the oceans dead zones, the leading cause of habitat destruction and the leading cause of species extinction.

Hydrolic Fraction for Natural Gas (fracking) has long been thought to be the leading cause of water usage and contamination as it consumes 100 billion gallons of water per year. Yet, when compared to animal agriculture, there is no comparison. Weighing in at 34 trillion gallons per year in the United States alone.

This means that 2500 gallons of water are required to produce only 1 lb of beef. To put that into perspective, that would be as much water usage as showering for 2 months.

Animal agriculture produces 65% of the worlds nitrous oxide (a gas with the global warming potential 296 x greater than carbon dioxide) and it is estimated that by 2050, this industry will see a 80% increase, as the demand for meat and dairy continues to rise. At this rate of growth, it is estimated that the rain forest will be completely depleted in 10 years.

” Without using any gas or oil or fuel from this day forward we still exceed our maximum carbon equivalent green house gas emissions of 565 gigatons by 2030″ – Environmental Researcher Dr. Richard Oppenlander

According to two environmental specialists in a 2009 World Watch report, animal agriculture is responsible for 51% of all greenhouse gas emissions, while the transportation sector equates to a mere 13%.

This begs the question, why is no one talking about this?

Our environmental organizations are failing us and they are failing the ecosystem. These groups who are supposed to the saving the world are just standing by. This should be the main focus and yet when you visit their websites, there is nothing to be found on agriculture. Why? because these organizations are like corporations, and profit is a bottom line.

1500 years ago, animals roamed free, accounting for 99% of the biodiversity and humans were the 1%. Today, there are only 2% of animals roaming free on the land and humans account for 98% of the biodiversity.

It’s time to wake up and realize that raising and killing animals for food, is precisely what is killing the planet. Meatless Monday’s aren’t enough, its time for a global shift. We are in the middle of the largest mass extinction of species in the last 65 million years. We have to change, we have to evolve.

by LJ Vanier

Sources

http://www.cowspiracy.com

Many of us suffer from headaches, unfortunately, conventional medicine helps in only a few cases and only if the medication is consumed immediately following the first signs of a headache. It is important to note, however, that all of these various medicaments are accompanied by side effects or harmful consequences. Luckily, according to numerous research efforts, there is a universal and harmless cure that is a product of nature itself – cannabis.

The latest work of Dr. Eric P. Baron from the Headache Center in Cleveland is a review of randomized, controlled researches that estimate the role of cannabinoids in pain management. Moreover, the study point out that cannabis is potentially therapeutic in healing headaches.

Also, the summary denotes that the use of cannabis plays an important role throughout history i.e. it was once the primary tool of medicine, and it was recommended by numerous, eminent doctors for various diseases, especially headaches and migraines.

Throughout the decades, this plant made a fascinating journey from a legal and prescribable cure to an illegal plant according to political and social factors rather than science.

Nonetheless, with an ever-growing support for a multitude of medicinal uses of cannabis, the misinformed conception of cannabis fades away, and a dramatic pressure for the legalization and research of medicinal cannabis has emerged.

Dr. Baron points out that doctors receive education with regards to history, pharmacology, clinical indications, and proper clinical use of cannabis since patients will inevitably ask questions about how to treat numerous diseases, including chronic pain.

Furthermore, she adds that 71 percent from the review of the 38 published randomized and controlled research efforts concerning the effects of cannabinoids in pain management deduce that cannabinoids have an empirically provable and statistically significant effect on pain mitigation.

Hence, this study is supported by human biology itself. In fact, CB1 receptors (cannabinoid receptors) are 10 times more concentrated that the-opioid receptors in the brain. Continue reading →