Welcome everyone to Carnival of Healing #60! I'm so sorry for the delay, but it's finally done. I wasn't feeling well -- had another asthma flare-up on Friday night, hence the delay. My sincere apologies to everyone awaiting for the Carnival.

Echoes in Eternity

The other day, I was chatting with my 11-year-old daughter and I was telling her that she is growing into a teenager, and she has to make sure she eats right and gets enough sleep. "Because", I said, "taking good care of yourself is very important". She said, "Yeah, it's like putting on your oxygen mask first". Wow, what a pleasant surprise! I use that "putting on your oxygen mask" analogy a lot when I write about Intensive Self-Care. All this time, I wasn't aware that my daughter has been reading my articles and taking it all in. I mean, I've sent her my newsletter, but she has never commented at all, until now. It was a great reminder for me that as parents, we have great responsibility to be a good role model for our children, especially when we don't think they are watching/listening.

Erek Ostrowski at Verve Coaching gives a real-life example of how a Concerned Parent has to make tough choices to be a good parent without losing her best friend. He stresses the importance of holding a clear intention based on your commitment, setting a good example, and (I think most importantly) trusting yourself & your instinct as a parent.

It goes way beyond our children, though. In fact, we'd never know the impacts we have made (and will make) on others' lives and the endless ripple effects that followed. As my Kung Fu Master Gary Carbone often says, "What we do in life echoes in eternity".

At this day & age when the Internet and technology connect the whole world as a global village, there's never been a time in history when every "ordinary" person could easily impact the world. Patricia at A Better You Blog challenges us to write down 30 Things That Take 30 Seconds Each: Which Will You Do To Change The World? Everything on the list should take 30 seconds or less to do, yet they will produce positive impacts on you, people around you, and/or the entire world. She said, "Imagine if millions or billions of people each did one of these- how would the world be different?"

Polliwog submitted a touching post written by Bob Bobbarama at Bobbarama. Before Hitting the road for a good cause , Bob reflects on his emotional journey, as he gets ready to join the support crew for 4,500 men and women in a three-day, 60-mile breast cancer walk. Despite his recent heart-breaking loss, Bob wrote, "I realized today … feeling the groundswell of powerful emotions in a room filled with caring people, watching that simple but overpowering video, wiping away the tears running down my cheeks … that it’s time to live again, because there are so many people who would love to still be here today to do just exactly that."

Law of Attraction

Frater Epistis at Epistis.Org shows us How to manifest your life by holding positive intention with total focus. The trick, he said, is that you have to totally believe whatever you wish will manifest. He describes it as a child waiting anxiously for the Christmas present and completely believing in its arrival. We can all relate to that, right?

Have you wondered why you seem to attract the same type of people into your life over and over again? John Hill at Universe of Success explains it from the vantage point of Law of Attraction in Why Do You Attract Certain People?

In his second post, John Hill at Universe of Success reminds us to Enjoy Change while we walk on the spiritual path. He said, "Enlightenment doesn’t happen overnight, it is about gradual changes that seem right to take when the opportunities present themselves." He urges us to let go and allow the journey to unfold the way it does, instead of holding on too tight.

Heal Yourself First

One of the common pitfalls in setting priorities is that many people often sacrifice their long-term priorities for short-term goals. When you are overwhelmed by work and everything else in life, is exercise/fitness the first thing to go? In a post Finding Time for What’s Important, Caroline Latham at SharpBrains reminds us why taking time to devote to our fitness is critical not only for our physical health, but also for our emotional well-being, self-image, relationships, etc.

Coincidentally, recently I've had some health issues to deal with, and it really made me appreciate my body, my health, and everything (material and otherwise) I have in my life. Ironically, health is one of those things that we often take for granted, until we lose it. The challenges with my health forced me to make conscious choices and re-prioritize my life so I can take care of what matters most. It's posted here at Intensive Care for the Nurturer's Soul.

Dealing with chronic pain is undeniably challenging. In Think - Dealing with chronic pain, Vreni Gurd at Wellness Tips explains that chronic pain often has more to do with the body's over-sensitive "alarm" to pain, rather than the actual physical tissue damage. Therefore, it is important for patients to overcome the fears & discomfort to return to as much physical activity as possible, in order to avoid making their physical condition worse.

Raymond David Salas at ZenChill.com givs a very informative overview of a South American herb Stevia - The Sweet Herb. Raymond reported that besides being a no-calerie, natural sweetener, Stevia has other heath benefits such as regulating blood sugar, lower blood pressure, inhibiting plaque, gum disease & tooth decay.

Aparna at Beauty & Personality Grooming teaches us how to use Water therapy for insomnia and headache. When you can't unwind at night, a relaxing bath might be all you need to melt the tension away. A hot foot bath can beat over-the-counter painkillers in bringing you fast relief for headache.

IB at Fibromyalgia Research Blog shares a recent research finding that plumeria acuminata has anti-inflammatory properties. Such properties could benefit many fibromyalgia patients who have underlying inflammatory conditions that triggered the onset of their fibromyalgia.

Caroline Latham at SharpBrains teaches us how to improve short term memory, with various strategies & exercises suitable for different situations & styles of learning. As Caroline points out, our brain works slower as we get older, and it's harder to focus. In fact, she said, "Most memory complaints have nothing to do with the actual ability of the brain to remember things. They come from a failure to focus properly on the task at hand". That's one more reason to stop multi-tasking!

The conventional wisdom is that getting enough sleep is important for your overall health and memory. However, if you aspire to be an insomniac, Madeleine Begun Kane at Mad Kane's Humor Blog offers a sure-fire recipe in How To Become An Insomniac.

That concludes this edition of the Carnival of Healing. Thank you so much for everyone who participated this week, and thank you for your patience! As always, a link back to your blog will be greatly appreciated. Next week, the Carnival will be up at Life Without Memories.

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Labels: awareness, being mindful, Blog Carnivals, Carnival of Healing, commitment, conscious choice, healing, health, Intensive Self-Care, Law of Attraction, making changes, priority