Hair care
Add sodium bicarbonate to your shampoo and rub into your hair, shampooing as normal. Just add a small amount in the palm of your hand , add the shampoo and off you go...
Rinse and dry.
Your hair will be shiny and manageable and the sodium bicarbonate helps remove any residue that gels, hairspray etc, have left behind.

Foot bath
Dissolve 3 tablespoons of sodium bicarbonate in a basin of warm water and feel your feet relax. especially good after a long day or before a pedicure. 
You can also use as a foot scrub. Inexpensive and invigorating. Mix into a paste and massage into your feet. 

Refreshing Bath Soak
For silky smooth skin and big dose of relaxation, add 1/2  cup of  sodium bicarbonate to the bath.

Facial & Body Scrub
Mix into a paste and gently massage in circular motion to scrub away dead skin cells, rinse thoroughly and leave yourself with soft, glowing skin. 

Refreshing mouthwash
Add a  teaspoon in half a glass of water, swish and gargle and then  rinse. This will neutralise odours and leave you with fresh breath. 

Hand Cleanser and softener
Mix a paste of 3 parts sodium bicarbonate to 1 part water, or add 3 parts sodium bicarbonate to gentle liquid hand soap.  apply to your hands and then rinse clean for soft clean skin. 

Smelly shoes
How embarrassing when you have smelly shoes, now there is no need to worry! 
Shake a little sodium bicarbonate into the shoe when you take them off.  It works by absorbing odour causing moisture while neutralizing existing odours. Use at least once a week or more if you wear the shoes frequently. Tap out excess baking soda before wearing your sneakers again.

So these are my suggestions on how to use sodium bicarbonate as a natural ingredient for personal hygiene. If anyone has any other tips please feel free to share....
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Calling all dieters....hear ye! hear ye! 
So you want to lose weight.
You have tried all the diets, starved yourself exercised until you ache all over and it´s just not working.

or...

You managed the diet , exercised, looking great however struggling to keep to what you feel is your ideal weight.

The reason?

What you believe about dieting and how to lose weight is arse about face as we say in Scotland.



​Successful dieting is not about losing the excess fat, it´s about keeping it off. 
Diets, no matter what kind, don´t work. As soon as you come off the diet the weight starts piling on again, and it´s harder to shift this time around. That´s why most diets are referred to as the yo-yo diet. 

This is the BIGGY - diets are NOT a long term solution to weight control.

                                                                         As always I like to KISS - Keep It Super Simple 

In order to lose weight and keep your ideal weight you need to first of all 

• hydrate your body
• oxygenate your body
• RELAX!

All of the above will balance the body´s intrinsic nutrition which is essential to be able to process what we put into it.
Then and this is what we need to look at arse about face.......

• balance your blood sugar
• eat a balanced diet ( that word balance again)
• do not skip meals
• light exercise

By balancing your blood sugar and stabalizing it you will  impact your body on a level most diets don’t even consider
In general the only people that think about their blood sugar are people who have been diagnosed as diabetic, however, this is the key to successful weight loss and control.

Your body is constantly striving for balance, when any system is out of balance it results in dis - ease and your health suffers. Every illness and disease is simply an imbalance in the body. Find the imbalance, correct it and we restore health.
Excess weight is an imbalance in the body. 

Your blood sugar level is the amount of glucose, from what you eat, that’s circulating in your bloodstream to provide energy to cells immediately or be stored for future use. 
When we eat, our body converts carbohydrates into glucose, this is how we get our energy. When our blood sugar levels rise the body produces a hormone called insulin in order to allow the glucose to enter your cells and give you energy. 
​
Insulin and weight gain​
When  glucose is able to enter your cells then glucose levels in your blood drop. The higher your blood sugar , the more insulin you produce.  Glucose that your body cells do not  use accumulates as fat. If you have too much insulin circulating it will also hinder the body´s ability to break down fat. So as you can see increased blood sugar leads to increased insulin production.
Ironically, not getting enough sugar can also lead to putting on extra pounds! 
Eating too little glucose can lead to a low blood sugar level, causing your body to go into “starvation mode” and then it will burn your lean muscle instead of the fat .  

So how do we do this using the KISS method?

1. Make sure you drink enough good water daily.
Are you hungry or thirsty? Quite often when we feel hungry the body is actually thirsty.
Water helps the body metabolize stored fat, rid the body of waste (as in unwanted fat and toxins), and is a natural diuretic and a natural laxative.
The way to tell if you are hydrated enough is how often you have to pee and whether your urine is clear with no strong smell. If you do not have to pee every 1 - 1.5 hours during the day and your urine is concentrated and smells then you need to drink more water. What simpler way could the body have to tell us we are dehydrated. How many of us listen!

2. Maintain a healthy acid/alkaline balance in the body.
This can be done with diet. 

3. Eat regularly throughout the day to maintain blood sugar levels. 
Avoid eating white flour products , eat more fruit, vegetables, nuts and berries.( these all help to burn fat and maintain blood glucose levels) Avoid drinking soda, replace with carbonated water if you need the bubbles!

4. MOVE
​You do not have to suddenly become the most frequent visitor at the gym. Take a walk, stretch and bend, whatever you are doing do it consciously and exaggerate the movement a little. 

5. Relax!
The biggest hurdle people face when they are focusing on their weight is , they are focusing on losing weight. Change the focus = lose the weight!

The above is meant to give you an oversight into how easy it can be to maintain your natural body weight. It does not have to be difficult and it is not about depriving yourself. If you would like more details contact me for a chat!

I am always being asked about the importance of nutrition during the healing process.  
Is it better to eat more? or eat less? What foods provide what the body needs and how do we know. 
It´s not rocket science really, the body requires nutrition to give it energy, to provide the building blocks that it needs to heal.
The body is in a continuous state of regeneration, self - healing and self -medicating. This is automatic. 
When we feel out of sorts it is our body´s way of communicating that it is lacking in something and it´s our job to listen. 
There are two main things that use huge amounts of energy: digestion and healing. 
Lets look at this for a minute. 
Digestion: when we eat it takes an enormous amount of energy for the body to breakdown and process the food that we consume. If we eat a diet which consists of mainly processed foods then this uses more energy. 
That is why after a big meal you feel sleepy. It can take several days for the typical meal to pass through your body. It takes all of your energy trying to digest that big meal. The body works overtime.
The more natural the food the easier it is for the body to extract what it requires. 

Healing: when we have any kind of illness or dis-ease the body will naturally heal. Depending on what 
resources are available determines how long the healing takes and how effective it is in returning to optimum health. 
So what can we do to help this process?

Did you know that humans are the only species that continue to eat when they are unwell? 

                                  NO ANIMAL IN NATURE EATS FOOD WHEN IT IS SICK,
                                                                   EXCEPT HUMANS!

Animals instinctively know what is best for them and they FAST! Man is the only creation on the earth that will force himself to eat when he is sick.
















If we look at it in the simplest terms, the 2 main processes that require the biggest energy are digestion and healing, therefore it follows that if we are to heal quicker we need to provide as much energy as we can to allow that to happen, make sense?
We obviously have to provide the body with nutrition in the easiest form for it to process using the least amount of energy possible. This is why juicing, smoothies, natural supplements and fasting are part of every holistic healing process. 
If you have a chronic illness or a serious dis-ease I recommend that you talk to a nutritionist, preferably a natural therapist and most importantly of all "Listen to what your body is telling you!"

If you are interested in reaching and maintaining your optimum health contact me NOW!

Proper breathing is one of the most beneficial things that you can do for your physical and emotional health. 

We can survive for a time without food or even water. We cannot survive without breathing!

Breathing not only supplies our organs with oxygen, it also rids the body of waste products and toxins.

When we are in pain, stressed or anxious we have a tendency to hold our breathe or breathe shallow breathes. This sends a distress signal to our brain and can make the situation worse.
By using breathing exercises we can avoid this. 
Are you a chest breather? or an abdomen breather?
Place your right hand on your chest and your left hand on your abdomen. Breathe in , which hand moves higher. If your right hand is higher, you are a chest breather. If your left hand is higher, you are an abdomen breather.

When you are Chest breathing it is inefficient because then the greatest amount of blood flow occurs in the lower lobes of the lungs, areas that have limited air expansion in chest breathers. Rapid, shallow, chest breathing results in less oxygen transfer to the blood and subsequent poor delivery of nutrients to the tissues. This is a learned habit, so therefore, like when you  learn to drive, you can train the body to improve its breathing technique.
If you do this consciously and regularly you will breathe from the abdomen most of the time, even while asleep.

Daily exercises
Breathing exercises should be done at least twice a day, when you wake up and before you go to sleep.It is also beneficial to do them if you feel stressed, anxious or are in pain.

• Breathe in, through your nose, feeling your abdomen expand higher than your chest, this fills the base of the lungs with oxygen.. (if it helps you can count as you breathe in.....1..2..3..4..)
• Hold this breathe for a few seconds, not uncomfortably long just pause,  and then exhale slowly, through your mouth, 
•  As you exhale feel the breath move through your body releasing all tension
•  Remember to exhale completely, contract the abdominal muscles, completely emptying the lungs.
• Repeat this so that you do 5 breathes in and out.
• Repeat at least twice a day but you can also do these exercises while watching television, standing in a queue or at other times throughout the day. The more often you do them the quicker you will breathe like this automatically.
• As you learn to breathe consciously exhaling properly exhale through your nose, only exhale through your mouth to practice full exhalation.

For more information contact me at www.lindaledwidge.com 

              Pearl - a person or thing of great worth



Who you are is a result of where you have been , the experiences you have had and most importantly, how we process them internally.  

We are taught so often that we have had so many"bad" things happen in our life and that in order to heal we have to learn how to deal with them and let them go.
What if ?......what if we had never had a "bad" experience?  What if every experience we had ever had held within it a pearl of wisdom.
We are so busy looking at how to deal with the "problems" that we seldom look for or see the good in any given situation. 

What if we looked at this in a different way. Are you prepared to think outside the box for a minute and consider something different? 
I believe that all the experiences we have contain a pearl of wisdom within them. Every "bad" experience we have forms a layer that over time, if we allow it to, becomes a pearl.

Pearls are formed as a defense mechanism against a potentially threatening irritant.  A layer of "nacre" is laid over the threat and , over time, many layers make the mother of pearl.
In the same way that an oyster makes a pearl we can turn the "irritants" in our life into pearls.
The pearl is a metaphor for something rare ,fine, admirable and valuable.  

                                 We are all natural pearls - all shapes and sizes. 

                                                        I AM A PEARL ! Are YOU?