How to Spring Clean The Forgotten Things

Cleaning keeps our place feeling nice and fresh. It’s good for the mind and even better for ensuring a high quality of life. How often do we clean everything, though? That’s what spring cleaning is for—finishing the usual cleaning activities, but then taking it a step further for a really deep, thorough clean that covers more than just your space. While most spring cleaning guides might give you a breakdown on things you already know, we want to dive into the things that you forget (ignore) when it comes to doing a thorough cleaning.

Electronics

Our electronics are some of the dirtiest possessions we own. Did you know that your cell phone has around 25,000 germs per square inch, making it dirtier than a public toilet seat? Our phones are such a ubiquitous part of our lives that many of us forget just how much we constantly expose it to bacteria and germs. Think about it: you probably take your phone to the toilet, right? You also probably lay it down on just about every surface imaginable, whether it’s in your home or in public spaces. It’s a good idea to invest in some cleaning wipes to keep those germs off your phone because whatever is on your phone then gets transferred to your hands and face. Don’t forget about your tablets, keyboards, mouse, and laptops too. Those also get dirty quickly as we use them for just about everything. Going further, beyond just the physical germs of our electronics, it’s a great idea to clean through some of your old files that you have stored in your phone, tablet, and computer. We might not be aware of just how much junk files we carry that are slowing down the performance of our devices. If you know you have some files that you don’t need, delete them off your device or transfer it to a hard drive so they’re archived and not hindering your present. You’ll be surprised how much was just taking up unnecessary space.

Cleaning Supplies

Seems weird, but most of us miss thinking about cleaning our cleaning supplies like the vacuum, sponge, broom, toilet brush, or toothbrush. You’d think that your supplies get cleaned during the process of cleaning, but they don’t! Cleaning your supplies every now and then will ensure that your space will be effectively clean too. Give your vacuums a good wipe down of the dirt they’re carrying when the container gets about 75% full. Your sponge and toothbrush can be cleaned using a mixture of 1:1 hydrogen peroxide and water. Hydrogen peroxide is a natural disinfectant that’s safe for the body so it’ll work wonders on getting rid of the germs on more sensitive items that affect what goes into your mouth. Try cleaning your toilet brush with bleach, and your brooms can be cleaned by hitting them against something solid like a tree or pole so the dust can come out of the bristles. (Just make sure there’s no one around to inhale the dust!)

Old Information

This is something hidden that most of us are completely oblivious to cleaning out. Inside of our minds we hold trillions of informational circuits that dictate our everyday perception, behavior, thoughts, emotions, and actions. Some of these circuits are beneficial for our function and survival, but most of them are old information that actually hold us back from living the life that we want. So what qualifies as old information? Beyond the clutter and mess in our physical space, there is dust that we all carry in our mental state. Do you feel sometimes that you’re flooded with negative thoughts and emotions that are either produced in your own mind or put there by the media or the people around you? Past trauma, heartbreaks, failures, bullying, rejections...everything that you’ve experienced that is not properly processed in your mind (especially from childhood) stays as old clutter that affects your present state. Try to step back and picture momentarilythe overall progression of your life and self-reflect. Can you pinpoint a specific time in your life where you faced huge loss? Maybe a shifting point that caused you to view the world, yourself, and others differently? While you may think these past experiences are only inside of your head, they actually affect outward behavior and actions, too, which in turn, impact yourself and those around you. If you can identify a certain thought pattern or old information that no longer serves you, take a deep breath in through your nose and imagine releasing that information out as you exhale deeply through your mouth. The pain, the heavy memories, the stress...let it go and shed it as an old layer of skin. If you approach this carefully and with pinpointed, conscious thought, you can leave the experience with a cleared mind.

Cleaning out more than just the obvious things in your environment has extremely positive ramifications on your health, happiness, and peace. A true clean involves purifying energy within your own self beyond just your physical space. Follow these tips along with the cleaning that you typically do and you’ll be inviting lots of clean energy into your life and an even brighter, healthier mind and spirit. 

4 Exercises for Your Heart That Are Not Cardio

A healthy heart is a huge component to overall health, and high-intensity cardio workouts are most often seen as the best way to take care of your heart. The only problem is, cardio is stressful, which could be counterproductive to easing any tension you might be holding around the heart. Good news is that there are some specific exercises that are good for your heart that won’t leave you feeling the stressful aftermath of traditional cardio exercises. In honor of February, which is national American Heart Health Month, here’s a list of our favorite non-cardio heart exercises that will benefit you:

Toe touches

You probably didn’t think that stretching your legs had anything to do with your heart, right? Turns out, it has a lot to do with it. In a conducted study from 2008, scientists at the University of North Texas and a handful of Japanese university researchers found a direct and clear correlation between flexibility and heart health. The study, which involved 526 adults varying in age and health, showed that participants who were more flexible in their legs and back and could touch their toes easily had less arterial stiffness, which is vital to a healthy heart. The same went for the opposite—those who showed low flexibility and could not touch their toes showed a higher rate of arterial stiffness leading to the heart. You don’t have to go rushing to the cardiologist if you can’t touch your toes, but it’d be a great idea to start a routine of stretching at least once a day for ten minutes or so. Try to work up closer and closer to being able to touch your toes while sitting down, and then eventually build up to reaching past them if you can.

Push-ups

Push-ups are an all around good workout to stay in shape. Not only do they develop your arm muscles but they also keep your heart in excellent shape. Your body has 12 major merdians, or energy channels, that carry energy to all of your organs, joints, and muscles. The heart meridian flows in your arms from your pinky leading up to the heart, so the pressing motion of a push-up activates this pathway and promotes a healthy flow of energy and blood to the heart. Try doing as many push-ups as you can without stopping for one minute and practice doing these at every hour. You’ll see what a difference this can make physically and mentally!

Full-body tapping

As we accumulate stress and tension through daily life, meridians can have blockages and issues similar to arteries. Tapping is a great way to break up the blockages in your body that may be stuck inside like ice blocks—especially in the heart and chest area to get a healthy flow of energy to the heart. So before or after you do your stretching and other exercises, fit in some body tapping to your routine. A great tool to use for this is our acupressure ball massager, which we highly recommend to tap your body easily—especially those hard to reach places.

Chest opening

The conception meridian runs down the front and center of your body, and chest opening is a great way to unblock energy that keeps the chest area clear and open for the heart and lungs. This exercise also opens and loosens the back muscles, which are tied to heart flexibility and health as mentioned earlier. This one is especially a good one to do throughout the day so keep this simple routine included in your group of easy-to-do heart-serving exercises. We especially recommend this one for the office! It’s a simple exercise to do to on your own to quickly release stressful energy. Make sure that while you’re doing chest opening, keep your eyes forward even while rotating your torso and arms.

Now you’ve got a handful of exercises to keep your heart healthy without even stepping foot into those running shoes. If you do all, or even just a few, of these heart-healthy exercises once per day, you’ll gradually increase your flexibility for body, meridians, and most importantly—your heart.

5 Steps to Mindful Eating

The holidays are perhaps the most tempting time to break our usual healthy eating habits. Some of your favorite foods are being served, so putting on the holiday pounds can become a harsh reality if we’re not careful during all of the festivities. But, fear not, because we’ve got you covered! Adopt our five tricks during your next holiday feast and you can remain mindful through the temptation and steer clear of overindulgence.

1. Go for the smaller size. Portion control is widely known, but it could leave you still feeling hungry afterwards from knowing that you ate just a small amount. A trick for eating mindfully, while feeling satisfied, is controlling the size of your plate. Imagine that you’re standing in line waiting to serve yourself a plate of food at a holiday gathering. You see before you a whole table lined with your favorite foods, and you just can’t wait to sample all of it. At this moment, it’s instinctive to reach for a big plate and start loading it with all the foods you want. BUT, instead of reaching for that big plate for the delicious offerings, try grabbing for a smaller plate and putting the food there. Yes, it’s straightforward, but we often grab a full-sized plate for every meal when we really don’t need that much food. Grabbing the smaller plate limits our portions and overall meal size, and leads us to lower intake. Our brains psychologically feel more satisfied eating a small plate of food that is full, rather than the same amount of food placed on a larger plate; this makes it appear as if it’s less food when it’s not. Turns out you didn’t need the huge plate after all!

2. Landscape your plate. With all of the options you might have during holiday mealtime, it’s important to keep good ratios among your food groups. It’s an easy mistake to load half of your plate with simple carbohydrates that bloat your gut. A best practice for landscaping your plate is like this: fill half of your plate with vegetables, add a fist-size of a source of protein, a handful of complex carbs like whole grains and starches (try sweet potatoes, corn, pumpkins or beans). Get a smaller portion of a simple carb like bread or pasta and the smallest helping of desserts.

3. Chew each bite 30 times. Chewing, like walking and breathing, is so second nature that most of us don’t really chew our food properly. The eating process is usually far too rushed since it’s done out of habit, so that causes us to chew food too quickly and swallow too soon. The result is larger chunks of food that are harder to digest and can clog up your intestine. Those larger, unchewed chunks of improperly digested food can also lead to leaky gut—an uncomfortable digestive ailment that leaks toxins from the gut back into the body. A way to practice mindful food consumption is by chewing your food at least 30 times every time you put a new bite into your mouth. Each chew will continue to break the food down, and you might even taste different layers of flavor in the food you are eating. Chewing your food 30 times also prepares the food in your mouth for easier digestion once it goes down to your GI tract.

4. Slow your pace and put down your utensils. It’s something that doesn’t cross the mind too often, but this is a powerful small change that will keep you mindful and attentive while eating your meal. Our habit is usually to keep our forks in our hands and just keep going bite after bite before our stomachs can catch up with us and we suddenly realize that we’ve been full since 20 bites ago! Beyond being a bad habit that leads to unhealthiness, it’s just another way to take us away from being mindful and present with each bite. Try this instead: After each bite, put your utensils down. When we hold our fork constantly in our hands, we fall into the trained habit of loading out mouth with another bite as soon as we’ve swallowed the previous one. Putting your silverware down after each bite will set a break period and time to focus on the food that you’re currently chewing, rather than going through the motions mindlessly.

5. Limit your water while eating. Most people, out of habit, wash down their meal with a huge glass of water or drink. It’s easy to be guilty of this since eating makes us thirsty, and the drink usually helps us get it down faster and satiate our thirst. Well, the real reason we’re thirsty after eating is because our foods contain much more sodium than our body needs so our bodies crave water to compensate that. And did you know that using water to aid in chewing is actually bad for digestion? When we drink a lot during a meal, it lubricates the food and leads us to improper chewing, which in turn makes the food more difficult to break down, taking longer to digest. Consuming large amounts of water while eating fills up our stomach way faster, taking up more space and causing gastric reflux. While some may recommend not drinking water during a meal at all, we’d say that’s not entirely necessary. You can drink in moderation as needed—just don’t intake too much or you’ll disrupt your digestive process.

Put these methods into practice so that you can both enjoy the holiday festivities and avoid mindless consumption when the meal is served. If you often find yourself feeling overstuffed or unsettled after every meal, you can adopt these tips outside of the holidays, too. As long as you remain mindful and do everything with intention, you can find a balance between healthy enjoyment and indulgence—it just takes a little bit of your care and attention.