Have you ever stopped to think about what keeps you from becoming someone else’s lunch? I don’t mean the bear in the woods. I mean the microscopic troublemakers that would find parts of you a very comfortable place to settle down and raise a family.

Our bodies encounter microorganisms throughout the year, and our immune systems respond to those encounters continuously. Some exposures result in infection, others are successfully contained, and many pass without our ever becoming aware of them. Previous immunity, the particular microorganism, and the amount of exposure all influence what happens. But our overall health and the conditions in which our bodies are functioning are also worth considering.

Being “in a mood” isn’t necessarily a character flaw. Our moods are influenced by what is happening around us, what we are carrying emotionally, and what is happening inside our bodies. Sleep, food, daylight, and our health all have a part to play.

We often think about changing our moods through positive thinking, changing our circumstances, or finding something enjoyable to do. Yet there is another avenue available to us, one that works through our senses and doesn't require us to reason our way into a different emotional state.

Have you ever finished a day feeling completely exhausted, even though you've spent most of it sitting? You've answered messages, solved problems, made decisions, worked through unexpected difficulties, and spent a considerable amount of time worrying about things you cannot immediately change.

Have you ever been absolutely convinced that someone was upset with you, only to discover later that they had something entirely different on their mind?

if food provides our body with energy, why doesn't eating more always leave us feeling more energetic? The answer begins with understanding that the energy contained in food and the energy our bodies can actually use are not quite the same thing. Food supplies the raw materials, but our bodies must digest, absorb, transport, and transform those materials before they become useful to our cells. Every part of that process depends on a remarkable collection of nutrients, enz

Before we can become more discerning about what we experience in the presence of another person, it is valuable to become familiar with how we feel when we are comfortably centred within ourselves.

We began by noticing how a person or a place can affect the way we feel. Perhaps the next question is what others experience in our presence.

There is always more to a conversation than just words. Understanding energy exchanges, personal boundaries, and the part we play in how we feel. Most of us have experienced it. We spend an hour with someone, sometimes considerably less, and afterward feel as though we have worked an entire day. Our body feels heavy, our thoughts are scattered, and the enthusiasm we had before the encounter seems to have disappeared. Nothing particularly physical has taken place. We may have

Most people first meet aromatherapy through the nose. They smell lavender and decide whether it appeals to them; they recognize peppermint almost immediately, and they often have a much stronger reaction to something like patchouli because it carries such a distinctive personality. One person may love it, another may associate it with a particular decade or person, and someone else may decide instantly that it is not an aroma they want anywhere near them.

We spend a great deal of time thinking about whether we are moving our bodies enough, but there is another kind of inactivity that receives much less attention. We can be surrounded by stimulation all day and still use a surprisingly narrow range of our senses. A television can give us colour, movement and sound. A phone can give us photographs, voices, music, maps, conversations and entertainment without requiring us to move more than our eyes and a finger.

There was a time when feeding a family involved a great deal more than deciding what to pick up on the way home. Meals were planned around what was available, what could be afforded, what was growing, what had been preserved, and what could be made from the ingredients already in the house. Cooking was not treated as a special interest or hobby because, for many families, it was part of running a household. The person preparing the food learned through repetition.

The question worth asking is not whether convenience has been good for us. In many ways, it clearly has. The more interesting question is what may have disappeared alongside the effort, waiting, sensory involvement, and decision-making we worked so hard to remove.

There is something valuable about looking three months ahead because it gives us enough distance to imagine a meaningful difference without pushing the future so far away that it becomes vague. Ninety days is long enough for strength to improve, routines to settle, meals to become easier, a project to move forward, or one neglected part of life to receive the attention it has been waiting for, yet it is still close enough that we can picture ourselves standing there and looki

In the cycle I think of as the Fire Cycle, the time between the fall equinox and the winter solstice, we gather in the results of our choices. We see what our attention helped to grow, what we neglected, and what took root without our noticing. It is a good time to ask: What will I carry forward?

Most homes are already filled with scent long before anyone opens a bottle of essential oil. Shampoo, laundry products, hand soap, candles, cleaning products, plug-ins, perfume, fabric softener, room sprays, and personal-care products all contribute something to the aromatic environment we live in every day, yet because scent has become so closely associated with making a house smell pleasant, it is easy to forget that aromatherapy offers us something quite different.

There are movements we once did without giving them any thought at all. We bent down to tie our shoes, stepped over something in our path, climbed stairs, reached behind our backs to fasten clothing, crouched down to retrieve something from the floor, carried groceries from the car, stood up from a chair without leaning heavily through our arms, and sat down on the ground without first wondering how we were going to get back up again.

It is also especially useful if you live somewhere else in Canada and are wondering whether we can still help you. You do not have to live close to Nova Scotia to have a conversation with us. We work with people remotely, ship across Canada, and can discuss products, custom formulations, and appropriate service options no matter where you are located. Sometimes ten minutes is all it takes to answer the question that was keeping you from reaching out in the first place.

You cannot make an informed choice about something you’ve stopped noticing. Something can become part of your normal environment long before you ever stop to ask whether you actually want it there.