by Lisa Cito

Today, December 21st is the Winter Solstice. This is the first official day of Winter and the shortest day of the year, as well as the longest night of the year.

Here are 4 Ways to connect to this days energy...

1) Through yoga asana​

The benefits of utilize warming aromatherapy with cinnamon, clove, ginger or rosemary are trifold, affecting the body, mind and soul at each layer.

Today only (Wednesday 12.21.22), we are offering our Grow Wellness aromatherapy at 10% OFF as part of our Holiday 10 Days of Deals! Fun fact: our aromatherapy blends have been professionally designed to target different benefits and contain triple-tested full-spectrum CBD as well!​

Connecting with our loved ones is another wonderful way to warm up your soul this Winter!

So celebrate this day and embrace this beautiful season of fresh cool air while creating and stimulating warmth in our bodies through yoga, aromatherapy, hot yummy drinks like cider and hot chocolate and being around loved ones to warm the heart and soul.

Peace and Love

Namaste  ​

Lisa Cito​

​Join in for a night of tapping into your creativity and connecting with your deeper self in a light hearted atmosphere with Lisa Cito at Grow Wellness. Be prepared to have fun while you get your visual, mental and spiritual connection to expand as you design from your heart into your unique mandala art piece. Make sure to grab dinner beforehand so your fueled up and ready to create beautiful Mandala Art! Holiday Cocktails, Mocktails & Supplies provided! 

Paint, Sip and Meditate.   

Spots are limited so be sure to reserve yours before it fills! 

by Michael Rosenbaum

Unlike physical stressors, emotional stress is just your reaction to what ever presents itself in your life. It is something we add to the situation. There is nothing that is inherently emotionally stressful, nothing! Even if you find yourself in a dangerous situation, you may feel fear but you don’t have to add to that situation with worry, projecting into the future, anger, etc. The added stress you add to a situation can block your ability to make a clear choice that will create a solution to the situation. 

We are a spiritual being having a human experience right now. We have had hundreds maybe even thousands of other lifetimes in other bodies.  The memory of that is still stored in your superconscious mind.  You have probably cultivated many different gifts and abilities in other incarnations and they are a part of your tendencies in this lifetime.  But what if you could activate those gifts in your present lifetime and step into your power in a new way or even be guided in a new direction in this lifetime?  Would that be helpful?  Does that inspire you?
 
Ask yourself if you have now reached a time in your life where you are ready to re-awaken parts of yourself that are in alignment with your Higher Self that will help you express your unique gifts in this lifetime?  If so, this workshop will help you do this.
 
Through a special group, past life recall process you will be guided by your Higher Self to a part of yourself that is ready to be re-awakened. To open up the doorway to your special gifts that were activated in a past life experience so you can grow and mature them to a larger extent in this lifetime.
 
This is an invitation to all those who are ready and willing to re-awaken and expand a gifted part of themselves. If this is you, Just come with an open mind, a clear intention and a deep curiosity and leave the rest to your Higher Self and the spirit guides that will be there with us. No prior experience is necessary.  The classes are designed to gently prepare you and take you through the different processes.

 Past lives are just as much a part of your life as this life…. they are present within your consciousness in your unconscious mind and are the basis of all your tendencies.  It is the learning, challenges, upsets, traumas, loving
encounters, skills you cultivated in all those incarnations all working inside of you that drives your focus in this life and is the basis for what you can perceive and process. It is what makes you “you” and it is your soul that is
watching and integrating all the things that happen to you in each lifetime. The soul uses these experiences to evolve itself and in that way, also evolve the group consciousness of the world. Each incarnation is built on
what you have learned and have not learned in past incarnations and is designed to allow for the greatest possibility for growth and evolution. Having free will we don’t always choose the path of evolution.

As a result, things that are unresolved in a past life are still unresolved in you now. If they are not dealt with and the energy freed and transformed, these perceptions and belief patterns and emotional upsets will continue to
act on you in this way throughout this lifetime and in lifetimes to come.

When you choose to look into your past through the lens of your soul and higher mind, you can free yourself and create new pathways in your lower mind and evolve at a much quicker rate. To access a past life memory requires that you go into a deep meditative sate where you are accessing your superconscious and unconscious mind.  this requires practicing and learning to focus your attention and stay with that focus and also to trust, let go and allow.  To accept the images and feelings and impressions that arise in your awareness without analyzing or trying to figure them out.

Being fully present in your awareness, allows you to be present in the experience of your past life. To be fully present, it needs to feel like it is happening right now.  Don’t be afraid to live the experience that way in the
present moment for in a way you are activating that experience, and it is a new and real experience in the moment and because of that you have the ability to change what happens in terms of your response to it… you can shift your perception and in the shift of perception is where the healing happens.  Not just in that lifetime but in your present lifetime and possibilities of things to come in the future…. remember you are one
overall presence and you can dive into any point along the timeline and change your perspective which allows for something new to arise in the present moment. 

If you choose to do a past life regression with a qualified practitioner, make sure the purpose of it is for healing and transformation not just for entertainment.  When I do a past life regression my purpose is to change the perception in the past life and see how it is bleeding through in this lifetime and change the perception in this lifetime and how you can begin to live your life differently from this new perception so your future follows that perception also.  I also want to make sure that we close the veil of that past life so it no longer bleeds through to manipulate your perception in your
present life.

A past life regression is a self-enquiry process to discover some of the hidden motivations for current triggers and patterns in your present life. This allows you to become conscious and aware of how you programmed
yourself through that past life perception and from that new and expanded perception, choose to make new choices and change the perception.  Your experience in life is driven by your perception, change the perception and your life begins to change immediately.   Whatever you can do to discover and change the perception will lead to changes whether it is a past life regression or a meditation, or any other process that opens up your
awareness in this way. One of the things I always encourage with my clients is to form a strong connection with their “Higher Self” because that expanded perception holds much wisdom and if you allow that part to direct
your life, you will start to make very different choices and the resistance and suffering in your life will begin diminish and fall away.

2 Hour - Past Life Regression Session
2 Part - Group Past Life Regression Workshop Series

Call (203) 403-3710 or email us at office@growwellnesstherapy.com to schedule your next session!

Group Past Life regression
Reawaken a special gift you cultivated in a past life
Two 1 ½ hour classes
Led by Michael Rosenbaum, ACHT, MP

This is an invitation to all those who are ready and willing to re-awaken and expand a gifted part of themselves. If this is you, Just come with an open mind, a clear intention and a deep curiosity and leave the rest to your Higher Self and the spirit guides that will be there with us. No prior experience is necessary.  The classes are designed to gently prepare you and take you through the different processes.

Vegan Blog Sites:
1. www.bianca.zapatka.com

2. www.connoisseurusveg.com

Vegan Brands:
1. Quorn (myco-protein; aka mushroom based)

2. Beyond Meat

3. Impossible Foods (Beyond and Impossible are interchangeable based on which is available)

4. JUST Egg (Egg alternative – comes in a bottle that is reminiscent of a mustard bottle. Makes wonderful scrambled eggs.

5. Nutritional Yeast (Add to dishes to get a “cheese-like” flavor; 5g protein per serving; serving = 2 tbsp)

Corn and Potato Chowder
(makes 4-6 servings)

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
3 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
4 cups vegetable broth or water
salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 cups fresh, frozen, or canned corn kernels
1 cup plain unsweetened soy milk
1 tablespoon minced green onions or chives, for garnish

Method:​

My guilty pleasure is to watch health-based documentaries while eating a bag of chips and drinking Mountain Dew. Six months before the pandemic, I watched Game Changers on Netflix (a documentary about elite athlete performance on plant-based diets vs. those on animal-based diets), fully suited up. I fell asleep. But when I woke up, I remembered the last thing I saw was a giant bodybuilder with a fantastic set of mutton chops. So I told my husband, “I want you to see this guy.” and he got caught up in the documentary and by the time we finished it my husband said “I'll hate it, but I'll try it.”

All I wanted was more vegetables in my diet – not full-blown ONLY vegetables. My husband is a butcher; he has proclaimed that he could survive on “meat, cheese, and bread” and be alright. He got tears in his eyes when we were first dating and I asked if we could be vegetarian for a month, followed by the question of “Can I cook my vegetables in animal fat?”. So now, this man, who I'm not even sure he can recognize a vegetable, wants to go vegan? It means I have to, too. I was a pescatarian for most of my late childhood. I know a vegetable when I see it. We jumped in without looking – cleared any dinner plans, went grocery shopping, read every label. You would be surprised by how many things you eat regularly are vegan. Oreos?! Vegan.

Within three days of switching to a plant-based diet, my husband has now made a social media post to hold himself accountable, volunteered one of our few days off together as a “family meal night” to invite friends over to show them how delicious and affordable vegan eating is, woke up without an alarm and fully alert, and has not dozed off on the couch within an hour of finishing an animal-based dinner. He continued to work as a butcher. And insisted on taking the time (sometimes from the time we woke up, until dinner time) to prep for a meal.

The only reason we stopped our vegan diet was because of the pandemic. I was out of work for three months – my primary verbal interactions were with my roommate's cat. I went to a grocery store once during the onset and absolutely hated it. It made more sense for something from the butcher shop to be brought home.

By: Alicia De Mello

 5 Steps To Treat Your Trigger Points at Home!

1. Warm the area completely.
                    - That can be done with a heating pad, hot shower or simply just a gentle massage. Introduce touch to the area. Feel around. Imagine a piece of string – if you were to put that string between your fingers and slide down the length of it, it should be smooth. Sometimes there's a small knot in the string that will be more than noticeable. If string equals muscle, that knot equals a muscle knot. That's going to be to be a potential area to address. Take notice of areas that are tender or sensitive. (For trigger point maps to show you where to look for trigger points on your body, head to THIS ARTICLE)
              - Example You have a headache near your temples. Run your fingers through your hair as if you were shampooing your hair, focusing the area from your temples to just above your ears and slightly behind the highest point of your ears. The temporalis muscles is about 3-4 fingers width from the highest point of your ear. Pretend you're in Grease and you're slicking the sides of your hair.

2. Apply pressure
                    -It shouldn't be excessive. You're not trying to squash a bug out of existence. You are your own best judge on pressure. Don't be too hard on yourself. Knots and trigger points don't come into being over night. They're not going to disappear in the same amount of time. On a scale of 1-10, find a balance somewhere between 5-7. It might hurt and be uncomfortable, but it shouldn't be unbearable.

3. Hold.
Hold pressure for 8-60 seconds. And release. Give yourself a break. You did great. By holding pressure to a knot, you're reducing blood flow. When you release, it causes a rush of blood to the area. This step can be repeated with 30 second release time intervals. Sometimes, this hold-release method is enough to release a trigger point.

4. Cross-Fiber Friction (XFF)
                      - If the trigger point doesn't release from hold-release intervals, XFF can be effective. Muscles, for the most part, run in a uniform direction. If a muscle runs up and down, utilize a rubbing motion to go against the grain (so in response to up and down, go side to side). Again, it shouldn't be unbearable. We're not trying to start a fire with two sticks. You're trying to “unravel the knot”

5. Stretch.

For more blog articles by Alicia, head to our Blog Library! Alicia has written an excellent blog on Reflexology as well as Neuromuscular Therapy and is an expert in the massage field.