Health & Wellbeing

Health & Wellbeing Wimborne firm tackling candida

Ever heard of candida? Candida is actually a type of fungus that normally lives on the skin and inside the body. It is typically found in places such as the mouth, throat, gut and vagina, without causing any issues. However, if candida grows out of control, it can potentially cause problems such as thrush, urinary tract infections and skin problems amongst other health issues. In today’s culture of high sugar diets, consumption of fast and processed foods, problems concerning candida overgrowth are on the rise. A local business based in Wimborne called Boil and Broth is helping people to overcome candida-related health issues and its founder, Rachel Down has created a website (boilandbroth.com) that provides people with information to support people and locally made products available to buy. Rachel says candida overgrowth is a gut health problem caused by an imbalance of your gut microbiome. She offers a 12-week ‘be candida free’ program that advocates a very low sugar diet combined with using her own designed, organic health products such as bone broth and kefir drinks. Bone broth (made by boiling the bones from beef, chicken and lamb) is increasingly being shown to be beneficial in supporting a healthy digestive system. It is rich in vitamins and minerals, including calcium, iron and magnesium. Bone broth also contains collagen which appears to help reduce inflammation. Some studies show that bone broth may help protect joints and potentially improve the pain and stiffness in joints. Kefir is also gaining in popularity and is a healthy, fermented food. Kefir is a combination of good bacteria and yeast fermentation. Often consumed as a drink or yoghurt, it is full of probiotics and friendly bacteria and can potentially boost your immune system and improve gut health. If you’re interested in learning more about improving your health, then take a look at Rachel’s website. Products can be ordered and delivered to your doorstep. As with anyone thinking of making changes to their diet it is always advisable to check with your GP first to ascertain what is suitable for you. Rachel’s website also includes a host of free recipes, naturally very low in sugar, which are easy to follow. In recent months, due to the growing popularity of her products, Rachel now offers a bone broth pet range too. As with all her boil and broth products, they are made with locally sourced ingredients, and the bone broth is made from organic, grass fed animals.

...with Emma Hammond

A walk around...

with retired Dorset rights of way officer Chris Slade

ALDERHOLT

Alderholt is in the far east of Dorset on the boundary with Hampshire and not far from Fordingbridge. Much of it is boring housing estate roads, so we won’t go there. On your way to the centre of the village, call in at St James’ Church in Daggons Road. In the graveyard a large labyrinth has been laid out, the biggest I’ve come across, and I suggest you walk the convoluted trail of about 400 paces each way, possibly meditating as you do so. When you’ve done that, continue to the village cross roads and park near the Co-op. Walk a furlong westwards, back up the road, then take a footpath on your right, leading into some pleasant woodland that you can explore in a loop before returning to where you began. Then take the bridleway heading south westwards. After a mile you’ll be on open access land where you can wander at will over the heath land of Cranborne Common. It’s worth diverting down to the south to visit the Decoy Pond. Look out for birds, beasts and butterflies but be wary of ticks, which tend to lurk among the bracken. The soil in the area is mainly clay and gravel and is acid so most of the trees are conifers and there’s lots of bracken and gorse. The vegetation adds a pleasant scent to the air. When you visit an area you can often deduce the geology by looking at the older buildings to see what they’re made of, for instance chalky areas will have cob, stony areas flint, stone in the Purbecks, but here, as there’s so much clay, nearly everything is built of brick. Depending how much meandering you did while exploring the woodland and common, you’ll have walked about four miles.

Health & Wellbeing Anchors Away! How to recapture wonderful feelings

By Susie Carver, consulting hypnotist with Sea Change Hypnotherapy in Wimborne

Ever wish you could bottle up a great feeling so that you can experience it again and again? Well here’s the good news –you can. Anchoring is a staple tool of my practice as a hypnotherapist, and I never tire of seeing how transformative it can be. An anchor is a trigger that is connected to a particular state or response. We’ve all experienced it – such as when a song on the radio reminds you of a particular time in your life or a smell takes you back to a place from childhood. Bang –we’re instantly back in that moment, feeling exactly what we felt. In a therapy session I use a specific touch and a word to enable my clients to create an association with their desired target state. This gives them a very practical and simple tool that they can build on outside the therapy room. Over time, the simple act of feeling that touch (such as pressing a finger and thumb together) and hearing that word will become enough to recreate the positive feeling of the target state. Sounds too good to be true? It really isn’t – but it does take dedication to make it really effective and automatic. Here’s how I do it: First, I help the client to associate into a positive state by closing their eyes and recalling a really strong, happy memory. I ask them to engage all their senses and feel what they would have felt, see what they would have seen, hear what they would have heard whilst in that state. When they notice that feeling beginning to reach a peak I ask them to open their eyes, touch their finger and thumb together and look at their hand while saying out loud their chosen word. I tend to use ‘FANTASTIC!” or ‘AWESOME!’ After around five seconds I get them to release the gesture from their hand, ‘shake off’ the state and return to some kind of neutral. We then repeat the exercise a couple more times and all those positive emotions then become ‘stacked’ on the anchor. After that, every time the client experiences a happy or positive emotion they can add to this stack by using the specific touch and word while they are in that moment. And eventually, over time, the combination of that gesture and word will transport them immediately into a resourceful, positive state. Anchoring is such a powerful tool, and can be particularly useful for anyone wanting to find more confidence, overcome a fear or manage anxiety. Best of all, when you need to get into that resourceful state, it’s discreet to do – nobody will have a clue what you are doing! But your unconscious mind will always know - and it will allow you to change your state quickly and effortlessly. Now isn’t that an amazing trick to have up your sleeve?

n seachangehypno.com hello@seachangehypno.com Eat the frog – it might not be that bad

“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning, and if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” Mark Twain

Fear not, eating a frog is merely a metaphor. I’m not suggesting that you should be eating frogs! So where was Mark Twain going with his ‘eating the frog’ quote? Well, he was suggesting that if we get our worst task out of the way first thing in the morning then we can go through the rest of the day knowing that the worst is behind us. How often do we put off tasks because we imagine them to be too hard, too long or too dull? Or maybe we fear them or try to avoid them altogether. We can keep tasks rolling on our to-do lists for days, weeks or even months, procrastinating over them until such a time as they become urgent. And then often we find that it didn’t take half as long to complete as we thought it would, it wasn’t as difficult as we’d imagined it would be and it was actually rather enjoyable! Likely we feel quite pleased with ourselves when we’ve completed them but then ask ourselves, ‘why didn’t I do it earlier?’ There are many reasons why we procrastinate, from fear, overwhelm, being too busy, easily distracted or a bit of a dreamer. But there are things that we can do to try to help ourselves; we can visualise having completed a task, write a timeline of what we want to achieve and by when, break tasks down into smaller tasks, prioritise tasks in order of importance, be aware of things that distract us and schedule time to tasks. So try to start each day with the biggest, most important, most dreaded and least appetising frog on your list before you do anything else and before you think too much about it, for this will be the task you are most likely to procrastinate on. If you can eat the frog early in the morning, then it will have a greater impact on your day as you will be using your best hours to do your most mentally taxing work. It will also leave you feeling good, more motivated and productive. If it’s hard to get started, try one small part, often once you start you will get the motivation to keep going and finally, if you have more than one frog, eat the biggest and ugliest one first!

n Victoria Arnold is a life coach from Wimborne Victoriaarnold.co.uk