Finally, after much agonizing, I have pretty much finished the new site design for Feel Good Girl. I kept the basic color scheme and added some girlie touches (woo hoo!). There are still lots of little details to take care of but I hope this makes the site easier to use.

Part of my intention behind the site update was to make this site to function more as an online magazine with news and information about holistic health, energy healing and more.

If you like the site and would like to support it, please consider sending a small donation:

http://feelgoodgirl.com/donate

If you check the donation page, you'll see there are some nice bonuses...things that are cheaper than if you paid for them elsewhere. I'll leave that as a teaser in hopes you'll at least click on the link! ;-)

More to come...namaste!
Stephanie

I am working on improving my nutrition and in my reading figured out that I was probably severely deficient in DHA, one of the omega-3 fatty acids. This is the one that helps with brain function. (ALA, which I was already getting from plant sources such as flax seed, helps the heart.)

One of the reasons I was not previously taking an omega-3 supplement is that they usually come in these big horse pills that cannot be cut in half because they are filled with fish oil. I suppose you could just open the pill and eat the oil, but that doesn't sound very pleasant, does it?

Being one of those people with a bizarre psychological issue with pill swallowing (since I was a young child), I always look for alternatives to pills. I can take small pills (a small tablet is just fine), but larger pills I need to cut up and put into food to take. The main reason I have been remiss in taking supplements regularly is the pill factor.

The United States Senate just pushed through a vote on the health care bill. I am frankly quite upset about it. I simply do not want to be forced to buy conventional medical insurance when a) I honestly can't afford it right now b) what disposable income I do spend on health care, I prefer to spend on alternative health care.

I am one of those people constantly mentioned in the health care debate - one of the uninsured. I did apply for coverage some years ago but was denied due to my pre-existing condition, chronic fatigue syndrome. However, I have come to prefer paying out of pocket for my health care. And most of my health care is alternative in nature.

When I first had chronic fatigue syndrome, I went from doctor to doctor. None could help me, and some doubted whether I was really sick because the illness wasn't very well-known at the time. (I got it over 20 years ago!)

If there's one takeaway I got from watching the Biggest Loser finale last night, it's that being the right weight makes you better looking.

Note that I wrote being the right weight. Not being thin per se.

One thing that happens sometimes on the Biggest Loser is that contestants go way overboard sometimes in an effort to win the big prize. Contestants may dehydrate or starve themselves to the point of looking emaciated, not healthy. We saw a little bit of this last year when Helen won, looking more scarecrow-like than healthy.

This latest season fortunately did not reward someone who looked skeletal - Danny, the winner, looked like the right weight for his height. And he looked fabulous! His face had changed so much he said people didn't recognize him. He looked 10-20 years younger.

Thank you to everyone who has sent in kind comments about my website. I am looking to upgrade and enhance it - more content, more news, more holistic resources, more frequent updates. Perhaps not quite as overflowing with content as, say, NaturalNews.com...but covering a lot of alternative health issues and adding more spirit to the mix.

Embarking on such a project takes either time or money. Or time that can be spent making more money. Both of which I am in somewhat short supply of. Therefore, if you have enjoyed my site in some small way, and would like to ease my burden just a tad, a small donation would be greatly appreciated. $5-10 would be great, but even $1 would do:

http://feelgoodgirl.com/donate

However, I would not turn down the help of a magic donor who gives me a lot more. :-)

This economy is kind of sucking for a lot of us, so your generosity is appreciated. If money you do not have, then send good wishes.

Thanks and namaste,
Stephanie

I rarely buy ice cream, but I do buy pie on occasion, and when Albertson's offered me a free box of Breyer's ice cream with a purchase of a pie, I could not refuse.

So I bought Breyer's vanilla ice cream - you know, the one with the vanilla beans. Only, when I opened up the ice cream, the beans seemed a lot smaller than I remembered them. I did a quick Google search and it turns out there's more than just smaller vanilla beans (or bean flecks) - Breyer's "all natural" ice cream also has an ingredient that it did not have before: tara gum.

Tara gum is apparently some sort of stabilizer that is made by grinding the endosperm (?) of tara tree seeds. It was added to Breyer's ice cream to make the product more consistent despite the temperature differentials that happen during transport. (Apparently, some customers were complaining of ice in their ice cream!)

I did not watch Obama's health care speech in part because I did not expect him to say anything truly revolutionary on the subject of health care. Our current health care debate in America is an emotional one, but I feel our approach is all wrong. Trying to funnel more people into a broken health insurance system is not the way to go. Even adding a public option will still maintain the status quo of people buying "insurance" just to get their basic health needs taken care of.

Health insurance, in my mind, should never be about health maintenance. It should only be applied to those catastrophic events that we would otherwise not be able to pay for: a broken leg, a serious disease.

I'll be finishing up Xen Healing Level 3 this weekend. As a special pre-order package, you can order all levels of the Xen Healing audio courses (Levels 1, 2 and 3) for the discounted price of $100 until Monday, August 17, 2009.

You will receive:

Xen Healing Level 1 audio course
Xen Healing Level 2 audio course
Xen Healing Level 3 audio course (to be delivered Monday, August 17)
Personal evaluation and certification for each level (valued at $25 per level)

More information on each level can be found here:
http://elementalreiki.com/xenhealing

If you have already ordered Xen Healing Levels 1 and/or 2, you are welcome to order this discounted package and I will give you a Xen Healing "Works" distance healing session for each level you have already purchased, value $100 (see http://xenhealing.com/distancehealing.html). You can use this healing for yourself or another.

You can get the courses here:
http://elementalreiki.com/xenhealingpackage

Found on totallyhappy:

When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote "happy."

They told me I didn't understand the assignment.

I told them they didn't understand life.

I went to an introductory healing event at The Gateway in West Los Angeles recently. Thomas Gates was presenting his healing system called "Healing Spectrums for Health and Wholeness."

I found Gates to be an extremely modest, gentle soul. Healing Spectrums was not a healing system Gates created by studying other healing modalities. It was given to him by spirit after he went though a near-death experience in his 20s.

Healing Spectrums for Health and Wholeness is a non-touch healing modality that uses awareness to uncover blocks in the energetic system that Gates calls "artifacts." The artifacts are anything that might be causing dysfunction in the mind or body. Gates explained that artifacts are sometimes lodged memories from childhood that can manifest as physical issues. In one example, he explained how getting bit by a dog as a child was causing TMJ in an adult client.