Family Love Village

FLV Presents: Reflexology For The Whole Family

2012-02-15T23:30:00.000-08:00

Thishands-on workshop will explore reflexology and how it can be used as a way to activate the body's self healing mechanism. By massaging specific points on the foot we can stimulate specific regions of the body that are calling out for attention.

Thesystematic application of pressure to the reflexology points stimulatesthe body's ability to rejuvenate and heal itself. Treatments open the subtle electrical channels that become blocked due to emotional and physical imbalances.

Reflexologycan be a great opportunity to connect with your partner and child whileoffering them a natural and intentional healing. Reflexology for children can begin at birth. Not only is it a wonderful way to develop that important bond between parent and baby but it's a valuable tool forparents to help children cope with stress in a healthy and nurturing way. By giving regular reflexology sessions, you can also stay in tune with your child's foot developments and with any issues they may have, such as infectious conditions (i.e. athlete's foot) or problems caused by ill-fitting shoes.

Learn How To:

Give a relaxing foot massage that feels good and heals
Touchspecific points on the foot for specific issues (such as allergies, constipation, bed wetting, insomnia, teething and more)
Boost the immune system
Get the digestive system flourishing from issues, such as colic or upset stomach
Heal back, knee and other aches and pains naturally

ShezzaWalters has been practicing massage and reflexology for ten years. Shehas also studied a range of therapies, including kinesiology, hypnotherapy, NLP, life coaching, trigger point therapy, and reference point therapy. She has spent the last ten years abroad, mainly working as a therapist and body worker in England and Goa, India.

Sheis also a natural health and well-being journalist. She has a regular column in Absolute London magazine and writes on one of the most influential and powerful health promoting websites at NaturalNews.com.

Shezzaoffers sessions and teaches courses. She has worked extensively with both adults and children. Her absolute passion is helping people awakento their own shining brilliance in mind and body. http://www.shiningbrilliance.com

WHEN: Saturday 2/18/2012 @ 5-7pm with Potluck to follow
WHERE: The Yogi Tree ~ 4475 Vineland Avenue ~ Toluca Lake, CA 91602
WHAT TO BRING:

$15 per family for the presentation
$8per family if you plan to use the conscious childcare in the Sprout Lounge. For each additional child, it is 50% off the original price. Please RSVP at famluvvillage@gmail.com 2 days BEFORE the workshop

For Dinner, bring: Your own dishware to stay green and a healthy main or side dish for the potluck.

FLV Presents: Handling Children’s Emotional Moments and Aggression

2011-12-30T12:25:00.000-08:00

Hi FLVillagers! FLV is excited to welcome the new year by learning more tools to help us communicate consciously with our children. Our vision is to create a conscious parenting movement where our children evolve into unconditionally loving citizens of the Earth! If we take the time to nurture and cultivate this connection with our children now, we are instilling in them not only how they are to themselves but how they interact with others and the planet. If you think about it, we’re not raising children here,we’re raising adults. Please join us for our very first workshop in 2012. Happy New Year to our beautiful, ever-evolving village!

When children’s tensions result in big feelings and aggression—biting, hitting, pushing, kicking—both parent and child need tools. We’ll talk about the root causes of children’s emotional outbursts, how parents and caregivers can help the aggressive child, and how parents and caregivers can address their own tension as they handle difficult situations.

Presented by Sadie Van Gelder & Heidrun Matthies, Hand in Hand Parenting
Saturday, January 14, 2012 @ 6:00 - 7:45 p.m.

Sadie Van Gelder is a Los Angeles–based certified Parenting By Connection instructor for Hand in Hand, a nonprofit organization devoted to nurturing parent-child connection and offering resources, training, and lots of support to parents of young children. A mother of two girls, ages 9 and 5, she is also an editor specializing in articles on psychology and health. As both an editor and a parent, she is constantly on the lookout for trustworthy information, and she says Hand in Hand is the best parenting resource she has come across. “When you're noticing a pattern that isn't ideal, or going through a challenging transition, Hand in Hand offers a different way of looking at all sorts of issues and helping both you and your child,” she says. “Seeing so many benefits for my own family and others makes me want to spread the word.”

Born and raised in Germany, Heidrun Matthies moved to Los Angeles in 2001. After an extensive career in human resources, she was looking forward to changing her life journey by becoming a stay-at-home mother to her now 3.5-year old son. Not ever having been much around babies and children before giving birth herself, Heidrun was in awe and in shock about the complexity of raising children, which seems not to be on the forefront of public concern. Discovering the Parenting by Connection approach put Heidrun at ease and gave her lots of hope that our generation and the one growing up can be capable of tackling the challenges that our times present. By using the various Parenting by Connection listening tools, Heidrun was able to assist her son with his healing journey of several traumatic events as well as overcoming a diagnosed speech disorder. In addition, using this approach has helped her develop closer relationships with her family, friends, other parents and people in general. The successes Heidrun has yielded by using the Parenting by Connection approach inspired her to enroll in the Hand in Hand Instructor Certification Program with the goal to help getting the word out, both in the US and in Germany. Heidrun enjoys facilitating Parenting by Connection Study Groups in Los Angeles and has assisted as a teacher in a toddler drop-off program.

WHEN: Saturday 1/14/2012 @ 6-7:45pm with Potluck to follow

WHERE: The Yogi Tree ~ 4475 Vineland Avenue ~ Toluca Lake, CA 91602

WHAT TO BRING:

$15 per family for the presentation

$8 per family if you plan to use the conscious childcare in the Sprout Lounge. Please RSVP at famluvvillage@gmail.com 2 days BEFORE the workshop

For Dinner, bring: Your own dishware to stay green and a healthy main or side dish for the potluck

As a side note, there will be a booklet "Listening to Children" Set for sale at $25 for those interested. Patty Wipfler warmly and sensibly walks you through the challenges of parenting and explains how children’s emotions work. The booklets cover the tools and opportunities for each of us to do the best possible job of raising children. The booklets that comprise the set are: How Children's Emotions Work, Special Time, Playlistening, Crying, Tantrums and Indignation, Healing Children's Fears, Reaching For Your Angry Child, Setting Limits, and Listening Partnerships for Parents.

Please know that when there is something of value that FLV feels families can benefit from, we will allow the opportunity to purchase items after the workshop. Since conscious parenting is FLV’s primary goal in helping to co-create a conscious parenting movement, having easy access to these resources on hand is important to give these options for families that are interested. Please know you are not obligated to purchase any of these resources unless desired. Thank you.

The FLV Experience at Dance to Freedom - Sat 12/22/11

2011-12-08T16:39:00.001-08:00

We are also excited to announce that the FLV Experience will be participating in a life-expanding immersion event for families called Dance to Freedom. It is located at a breathtaking location called the Hummingbird Nest Ranch.

FLV will be providing some fun and educational workshops and presentations based on FLV's heart principles of conscious parenting and eco-holistic living. And of course the EAKK! (EcoArt Kidz Kollectiv!) program will be there to provide fun activities for the kids.

Not only will we be providing some of the eco-educational fun but our very own FLVillage DJ, FatFinger will be bringing out the beats for us to dance to (among other amazing djs and musicians).

Dance to Freedom :: December 22 Ceremony & Winter Solstice Celebration

SHARE THIS UPDATE:

Dance & create with me 12/22 all night in Simi/LA area http://dancetofreedom.eventbrite.com for passes, kids free!

NEWS TO SHARE:

21 hours of extraordinary experiences designed to empower transformational families

Workshops in movement, music, monkey chant, arts, creative expression, communication

Family ceremony and arts event for the start of winter on December 22nd, ceremony at 6PM

Private all night celebration includes live and DJ music, performance and movement arts

Create new rituals with your family with remarkable workshop leaders for music, healthy living, embodied care

Hosted by Be Embodied, a women-led startup creating safe, healthy space for families to communicate and connect

BYOB - No alcohol will be served at this event and we aim to Leave No Trace - pack all items in and out to camp

Find freedom in your body. Be present and joyful with your extended family. Encourage transformational expression

This is a private event and no tickets will be sold at the gate - passes are limited and some will sell out

Doors open for the celebration at 9pm with featured DJs including Treavor Moontribe, Jesse Wright, DJ Fatfinger, Hooni and more to be announced as Project Alma hosts the lawn stage. The Be Embodied Adornment Gallery will feature an indoor unplugged lounge, maker galleries, gifts and surprises all night. Enjoy conscious vending and the palatial patio at the Hummingbird Nest Ranch with hot tub, fire area, healthy food, amazing music and art throughout this expansive ranch.

Stretch yourself in new ways, weave a net of gems for your life and prepare to be your most brilliant on 12/22 with friends and family!

WHERE

Hummingbird Nest Ranch

Simi Valley, CA

North of the 118/Kuehner Road

WHEN

Thursday December 22nd - Friday December 23rd

3PM: Gates Open

4PM: Workshops and Adornment Gallery Features

6PM: Ceremony Gathering Circle

7-9PM: Winter Solstice Ceremony: Weaving Indra's Net

9PM: Gates Re-open for Celebration

Gallery closes late, music all night

Noon on 12/23: Leave No Trace

COST

Ceremony & Celebration: $50 in Advance by 12/21

Ceremony & Celebration: $30 for Youth 16-20

Ceremony & Celebration: Free for Kids

Celebration: $30 for Adults by 12/22

Celebration: $15 for Youth 16-20

Celebration: Free for Kids

Maker/Vending/Artist Space: $60-$100 for space to sell your works

Angel and Sponsorships Available for Your Installation Experience (house rentals also available)

Tickets: http://dancetofreedom.eventbrite.com

http://www.dancetofreedom.com/

Facebook: Join/Attend the event, invite your friends: https://www.facebook.com/events/278472965527111/

FLV's Winter Solstice Celebration on Sat 12/17/11

2011-12-08T12:21:00.001-08:00

I wanted to share something with all of you. This past weekend I was part of an amazing Goddess Ceremony where we released old thoughts/patterns that no longer served us and proclaimed new ones that we wanted to manifest for the new year. This reminded me of a very similar ritual FLV did last year.

So I wanted to add one more thing that we will be doing for Dec. 17th's gathering. Not only will we be having an awesome workshop with Jessica Deltac but it will also be FLV's Winter Solstice Celebration that evening. And to continue in FLV's tradition, we will be doing a ceremony called "Releasing of the Old and Igniting of the New".

How this ritual works:

1. At the end of the workshop, each person will be handed 2 pieces of paper.

2. On one piece of paper, you will be asked to write down an old pattern/old behavior that no longer serves who you are or want to be as a parent/spouse/individual.

3. On the 2nd piece of paper, you will be asked to write down a conscious behavior/pattern or way of being that you would like to manifest as a conscious parent/spouse/individual for the new year.

4. The first piece of paper will be immersed in water. Last year, we burned the pieces of paper but since we will be inside the Yogi Tree, we will put the pieces of paper in water.

**Since we are not able to burn the pieces of paper in the yoga studio, another way to release them is into water.

5. The 2nd pieces of paper you get to keep as a reminder. I would suggest keeping it somewhere that you have easy access to reading it as a reminder of what you want to shift in your lives. A good suggestion: on your refrigerator so that you can see it every day.

We are excited to be sharing this Winter Solstice ritual with all of you this year and hope that all of you can join us for FLV's Winter Solstice Celebration and a very informative workshop with Jessica Deltac on How Parental Fear Gets In the Way of Our Children Finding Their Passion!

And if you'd like to also join us, we will be having a Playdate For A Cause (PFAC) the day after on Sunday 12/18/11 "Wrapping From the Heart".

To get more details, please contact us at famluvvillage@gmail.com. Thank you.

Peace & Ignition,

Your FLVillage Tribe

FLV's Playdate For a Cause (PFAC): Wrapping From the Heart

2011-12-08T12:17:00.001-08:00

Greetings FLVillagers!

As we enjoy this special time of year and take note of our incredible lives with gratitude in our hearts, let us look at how we can spread this abundance to our community, city, and planet.

One way is by donating and volunteering your time. Here is a fantastic website listing a number of well-established charities that makes it easy to do the research on what organizations might interest you: Charity Navigator.

How Our Village Can Be of Service -

Upcoming Playdates for a Cause (PFAC):

There are a few great organizations in need of our help and we are definitely open to suggestions.

I am in touch with a couple of local shelters that work with homeless women, teens, and children, (Good Shepard Shelter), as well as one for domestic violence survivors.

FLV is planning to gather gifts for all the mothers and children and would like to invite you and your families to be a part of this PFAC with us.

To stay within the spirit of our EAKK! (EcoArt Kidz Kollectiv!) Program, we are asking families to bring gently used items from your home. If you don't have anything gently used, we are requesting if you could please purchase something new that isn't wrapped in plastic. The items could be in the form of adult and children's clothes, toys, books, baby items, such as blankets, baby bottles, etc. It is our intention to provide 30 gifts for 11 mothers and 20 male and female children, ages 1-15.

We will be utilizing the philosophy of our EAKK! program by using recycled shopping paper bags, re-usable gift bags, newspapers, and any other recycled wrapping materials (i.e. burlap bags, etc) that you may have in your home to wrap the gifts instead of going out and buying wrapping paper. This PFAC also gives us an opportunity as creative inspiration for our sprouts to draw pictures on the "wrapping paper" to give their own personalized touch.

We will be providing some wrapping materials, such as shopping bags, scissors (including some kid-safe scissors), tape, glue, and crayons but if you have some recyclable materials that you would like to bring to create more pizzazz for the sprouts to use, we would greatly appreciate it.

We will meet at The Yogi Tree for our "Wrapping From the Heart"event on Sun Dec 18th between 2 -4pm. Please bring your donated items and/or recycled wrapping materials. Holiday snacks to share are welcome, but optional.

We're excited that we will be able to help out several families in need and hope that you can join us for this PFAC!

Sincere Gratitude and Holiday Hugs!
From the FLVillage Team

FLV Presents: How Parental Fear Gets in the Way of Children Finding their Passion

2011-12-08T12:08:00.001-08:00

Jessica Deltac with her 2 adorable daughters taken 3 years ago. Her 2 daughters are now 7 and 4.

Join us for a very informative workshop facilitated by guest speaker, Jessica Deltac - author of the blog Mudpies & Butterflies: Where Families Learn Alongside Each Other (www.thedeltacs.com) and founder of educational parkday of the same name.

It is natural to protect our children from emotional harm and physical injury, but at times this protection prevents children from engaging in their world. Due to inbred fear, a child may not even view it as their world. By experiencing new stimulus and risks, children and adults are free to discover the genesis of their calling. Jessica Deltac believes that passions are the most positive form of motivation for all people. Most parents want their children to be led by their passions, but have difficulty with loosening the reigns enough to allow the freedom to discover them on their own. In order to connect to our passions – we must be brave, supported and open-minded. A legacy that all FLV parents strive to endow.

Come experience a shift in perspective about time, safety and communication to best empower your child on their path of connecting to their passions (from infancy – teendom).

TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED:

- What if I could have prevented the ow-ee? Embracing natural harm – a wise teacher.

- How do you avoid the tick-tock? Unnecessary stressors in punctuality

- What lies between words and furrowed brows? Unraveling our meta messages as parents

- Will she/he ever be old enough to hold a saw? Understanding and encouraging successful risk-taking

- What if I know nothing about what they love? Allowing mentors into your child's life

To get a jumpstart on the workshop read Jessica's blog The Safe Way to Saw.
As well as the 2 links in the first paragraph: Ted Talk on 5 Dangerous things we should allow our kids to experience and NYTimes article – Are Playgrounds too Safe?

Jessica Deltac has a Masters in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University here in Los Angeles, as well as, an undergraduate degree from the University of NC in Chapel Hill in Religious Studies. Her path of attachment parenting began on her first date with her husband who shared that he wanted all of his children to be homebirthed. Her bumper sticker on the family car now reads: Happy Family Onboard! We homebirth, co-sleep, breastfeed, homeschool and enjoy each other's company daily. Are you this Happy?

WHEN: Saturday 12/17/2011

WHERE: The Yogi Tree ~ 4475 Vineland Avenue ~ Toluca Lake, CA 91602

WHAT TO BRING:

$15 per family for the presentation

$8 per family if you plan to use the conscious childcare in the Sprout Lounge. Please RSVP at famluvvillage@gmail.com 2 days BEFORE the workshop

For Dinner, bring: Your own dishware to stay green and a healthy main or side dish for the potluck

And please join us for our holiday PFAC: Wrapping From the Heart the following Sunday 12/18/11 from 2-4pm.

We will also be celebrating the Winter Solstice this evening by joining in FLV's tradition "Releasing of the Old and Igniting of the New".

For further details and/or questions about either event, please email famluvvillage@gmail.com. Thank you.

Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils and Its Medicinal Uses for the Whole Family

2011-11-15T12:44:00.001-08:00

This educational, insightful, hands-on workshop will explore the medicinal uses for therapeutic grade essential oils. Jennifer Kelly will cover history of oils, medicinal uses for common ailments, why therapeutic grade versus aromatherapy quality and how you can rid your cabinet of harmful drugs.

As conscious parents, we want the best for our children. We want to keep them healthy and vibrant. Knowledge of therapeutic grade essential oils and their use gives us the power to take control of our health and teach our children to do the same. Her family has never used over the counter or prescription medications. They have always used essential oils for the care and well-being for themselves. We will explore how to rid our homes of toxic chemicals and replace them with clean vibrant essential oils. There will be a hands-on demonstration and a Q & A session.

LEARN HOW TO: ·

• Boost You and Your Child's Immune System
• Relieve Stress and Tension for You and Your Baby
• Get your Digestive System into Peak of Efficiency, Help With Colic or Gassy Babies
• How to Reduce Fevers, Clear Ear Infections, and Other Common Childhood Issues
• Replace Damaging Toxins in your Personal Care Products
• Learn Anti-Aging Properties of Essential Oils

Jennifer Kelly, CPT, KRI Instructor, Postpartum Doula, Nutritionist - She started her journey towards health and alternative healing in 1998 when after becoming pregnant with her son. She chose to have a homebirth not knowing where it would lead. Thankfully, it has lead to a beautiful journey working with amazing people and sharing the information she has learned to facilitate healing and transformation.

Jennifer went on to study nutrition and therapeutic grade essential oils and received a CARE certification in Raindrop and Vita flex Techniques with therapeutic grade essential oils. She was starting to see amazing results for people, but knew there was more to learn. In 2004 Jennifer completed Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training and in 2006 Completed Post Partum Doula Training. She felt that she was getting closer to the right combination of body, mind, & spirit tools to really make a difference for her clients. It wasn't until she found and trained in FNRA, Functional Nutrition Reflex Analysis that she knew the journey to truth, health and joy was complete.

Jennifer is a Certified Personal Trainer and Kundalini Yoga Instructor trained in the Khalsa Way, a Certified Post Partum Doula and Nutritionist, and has been teaching, training, and working with private clients in the Los Angeles area for the last 8 years. The Khalsa Way emphasizes healthy birthing and child rearing using the ancient principals of Kundalini Yoga and combines well with her Postpartum Doula practice. She has studied FNRA and is extremely knowledgeable in nutrition as well as creating a healthy non-toxic environment for families. She has one birth child and has fostered 8 children over the past 10 years ages 13 weeks to 18.

WHEN: Saturday 11/19/2011

WHERE: The Yogi Tree ~ 4475 Vineland Avenue ~ Toluca Lake, CA 91602

WHAT TO BRING:

1.$15 per family for the presentation

2.$8 per family if you plan to use the conscious childcare in the Sprout Lounge. Please RSVP at famluvvillage@gmail.com 2 days BEFORE the workshop

For Dinner, bring: Your own dishware to stay green and a healthy main or side dish for the potluck

For further details and/or questions, please email famluvvillage@gmail.com. Thank you.

What We've Got In Store For You in October

2011-09-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. FLV has several fun events happening this month! We have definitely been keeping ourselves busy to create fun and educational events for all of you to enjoy.

SATURDAY 10/1/11

This upcoming weekend on Saturday 10/1/11, FLV will be having the EAKK! Lounge at an event called Los Angeles Decompression. We will be creating eco-friendly art projects for all the kids including Family Love Yoga, World Music for all the kids and a fun parade for all to join.

We are excited to bring a more kid-friendly environment to an already fun event! Not only will FLV be there but there will be music, art installations, performances, circus acts and much, much more! If you have ever heard of Burning Man and always wanted to experience a piece of it, then this is the event to go to!

Doors open at 1pm. To get further details, go to LA Burning Man.

SATURDAY 10/8/211

We are excited to announce that we have a special guest speaker, Glenna Rice, joining us on October 8th. Normally we hold our gatherings on the 3rd Saturday but since Glenna will be in town facilitating another workshop, she was open to holding a special introductory workshop just for us.

Below are the details:

SUNDAY, OCT 16, 2011

Family Love Village is proud to be a part of the 2011 Aids Walk on October 16!! We would like to invite you to join us for this important Playdate for a Cause! Please take a minute to read what Family Love Village is about and why we chose to be a part of Aids Walk LA 2011!

Family Love Village's mission is to connect and support families and caregivers locally to practice and learn more about conscious parenting. Information, resources and support allow families to develop their main focus on a gently guided approach to communicating with their children, as well as the ability to make natural, holistic and eco-friendly decisions. Our community consists of FLVillagers of all backgrounds, race, religion/spirituality and socio-economics. Our ultimate vision is to birth a conscious movement by co-creating villages globally in order to build a sustainable world that not only our families, children and caregivers can presently benefit from but for future generations to come.

Playdates For a Cause Program

Family Love Village coordinates outings where we serve the bigger community with our children. This allows us to not only give back to the community but we give back to our children, as well because they in return receive the experience of conscious living and compassion.

We want YOU to join Family Love Village for this year's AIDS Walk Los Angeles!

AIDS Walk Los Angeles is a 10-kilometer (6.2 mile) fundraising walkathon benefiting APLA and other AIDS service organizations throughout Los Angeles County. This is an inspirational day filled with energy, excitement, hope, and even celebrities!

To learn more about our team's involvement or to register through me, please email me at soniatandl@msn.com. I can tell you all about our team recruitment and fundraising events and answer questions.

Register online: Visit the AIDS Walk Los Angeles website at aidswalk.net/losangeles and click on "Register to Walk" and then "Join a Team." Simply select our team name from the pull-down menu!

Register by phone: Call the AIDS Walk office at (213) 201-WALK (9255). Be sure to give our team name when you register!

Don't forget to select the option to be part of the Star Walkers Club at the time you register! Star Walkers are participants who set a goal to raise $1,000 or more for AIDS Walk Los Angeles. You can also become a member of the Star Walkers Club by setting your fundraising goal to $1,000 from your Fundraising HQ after you register.

Once you register, you can download a Sponsor Form from aidswalk.net to keep track of cash and checks that you collect. You will also be set up with a personal fundraising Web page to collect online credit card donations. You will receive an e-mail confirmation with your login information to access your Fundraising HQ. Visit aidswalk.net for more information to help you get started. Encourage your family members and friends to register online to walk with our team - the more the better!

We hope to see you on Sunday, October 16!

With Love,

Sonia, Tangee, and Crystal

Documentary & Dinner Night Featuring "Bag It"

2011-09-07T01:42:00.000-07:00

On Saturday July 17th, FLV had our first Documentary & Dinner Night. The featured film was called "Bag It". And let me tell you, it was definitely an eye opener! I mean I already knew the detrimental effects of plastic bags and plastic in general (thus the reason why I stopped receiving plastic bags when shopping and the reason why Andrik's toys consist mainly of wood) but watching this movie solidifies my support in doing my best not to buy plastic items. But what do you do when EVERYTHING is practically made, wrapped and sealed in plastic? Just witness this, the next time you step foot in a grocery store, try to find how many items that do not consist of plastic - it will be very slim, trust me. It is literally discouraging seeing every aisle plastered in this stuff. But I do my best to buy as many items as I can that don't consist of plastic (which at times can be challenging) but like I said I do my best and I do my part to stay committed to being more sustainable and health conscious.

Here's the trailer to the movie that has inspired me to be an even more eco-friendly geek!

I was truly inspired by this documentary's message (as everyone else was that evening) and want to share it with the world! But for now I'll share some interesting and appalling facts that I derived from the Bag It website and notes I wrote that evening:

In the United States alone, an estimated 12 million barrels of oil is used annually to make the plastic bags that Americans consume. The United States International Trade Commission reported that 102 billion plastic bags were used in the U.S. in 2009. These bags often wind up in waterways or on the landscape, becoming eyesores and degrading water and soil as they break down into toxic bits. Their manufacture, transportation and disposal use large quantities of non-renewable resources and release equally large amounts of global-warming gases. Ecologically, hundreds of thousands of marine animals die every year when they eat plastic bags mistaken for food.
Governments around the world have taken action to ban or restrict the use of plastic bags. In 2008, China banned the use of ultra-thin plastic bags, and it is estimated to have eliminated 40 billion bags in the first year. Ireland placed a fee on plastic bags and reportedly reduced consumption by 90%.
Towns all over the United States are rising to the challenge and standing up to the oil, gas and plastic
industries. San Francisco has banned plastic bags. Seattle has fought a hard fight to place a fee on single-use disposable plastic AND paper bags, only to be shut down by the American Chemistry Council, a group that profits greatly from the production of plastic bags. The ACC spends millions to combat anti-plastic bag campaigns. In spite of this challenge, U.S. cities including Austin, Boston, New Haven, Portland, Phoenix and Annapolis are considering bag bans or fees.
The production of plastic bags requires petroleum and often natural gas, both non-renewable resources that increase our dependency on foreign suppliers. Additionally, prospecting and drilling for these resources contributes to the destruction of fragile habitats and ecosystems around the world.
Annual cost to US retailers alone is estimated at $4 billion.
In a landfill, plastic bags take up to 1,000 years to degrade. As litter, they breakdown into tiny bits, contaminating our soil and water.
When plastic bags break down, small plastic particles can pose threats to marine life and contaminate the food web. A 2001 paper by Japanese researchers reported that plastic debris acts like a sponge for toxic chemicals, soaking up a million fold greater concentration of such deadly compounds as PCBs and DDE (a breakdown product of the notorious insecticide DDT), than the surrounding seawater. These turn into toxic gut bombs for marine animals which frequently mistake these bits for food. For more information and statistics, please visit Reuse It.
Single-use disposables like water bottles, coffee cups, plastic utensils and take out containers make our lives more convenient. About 2,480,000 tons of plastic bottles and jars were disposed of in 2008 around the world.

Unfortunately, plastic is not disposable and the use of these items leads to environmental degradation. After being disposed, plastic containers and water bottles get placed in overflowing landfills, clogged rivers, and our ocean. And when the plastics break down, they do not biodegrade. Instead they break down into fragments that contaminate our natural resources.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces about 4.4 lbs. of garbage every day. That’s 29 lbs. per week or 1,600 lbs. per year. The United States produces approximately 220 million tons of garbage each year. This is equivalent to burying more than 82,000 football fields six feet deep in compacted garbage. This amount of trash could cover the state of Texas two and half times and also fills enough trucks to form a line to the moon.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of the Pacific Ocean created by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. It's a plastic soup that in some areas has concentrations of plastic 40 times greater than that of plankton. That means there is 40 times more plastic than food for the marine animals to eat. Scientists estimate its size to be at least twice the area of Texas.

80% of the plastic and trash that finds its way into our oceans comes from the land. It takes about five years for garbage from the west coast of the United States to make it to the gyre and about one year from Asia. Plastic debris in the ocean doesn't biodegrade. It photodegrades, meaning sunlight and water break it down to smaller and smaller pieces that are mistaken for food by fish, sea birds and marine mammals.
BPA has the characteristics of estrogen, a hormone that determines sexual traits and is key in the development of brain function and nerve cells. Recent studies have linked BPA to breast and prostate cancer, enlargement of the prostate, early onset of puberty, hyperactivity in children, obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
Biologists studying BPA and phthalates are in agreement over the harmful effects of both chemicals. These chemicals are now proven to be toxic, endocrine-disrupting, hormone level-changing, and disease-causing. Do your best to avoid them by reading labels, using reusable containers and bottles, and seeking out BPA and phthalate-free products.
You can get further details on the above topics at Bag It Movie.
Where does the plastic go beyond the blue bin? And was the recycling logo created as a marketing strategy just so ACC (American Chemistry Council) can make more plastic products out of non-renewable resources? Check out this link for further details.

Here are a few more links to learn more about plastics and what others are doing to make a difference:

The Story of Stuff
B.E.A.C. H. (Beach Environmental Awareness Campaign Hawaii)
Ecology Center
Cradle to Cradle and here's a link from TED TV with William McDonough
365 Days of Trash - one man's goal to not throw away trash for a whole year
How Do You Bag It? - Another great post about the documentary from a blog called Attainable Sustainable.

As Jeb Berrier (the film's main character) asks, "Why would you make something out of a material that is going to last forever, and you're just going to throw it away?"

WAYS TO AVOID PLASTIC:

1. Reduce single use items
2. Bring your own cloth shopping bags
3. Bring your own stainless steel water bottle
4. Bring your own coffee mug (have you ever noticed that when people go to a coffee chain, they order their coffee and receive them in those coffee cups (which are LINED in plastic) and end up drinking the coffee at the coffee shop?? Then 20 minutes later, they discard the coffee cup and once again is a single use item back into the landfills and oceans.
5. Buy it used
6. Buy less stuff
7. Buy less cans and more bottled goods - did you know that canned food is lined in BPA?? But there is hope and at least several that have made the transition to BPA-FREE cans.
8. Volunteer for community clean up

So the facts are pretty crazy (and this is just a taste of what facts were given in the movie). I highly recommend this movie to everyone!!! I feel the desire to spread and share this movie with all willing to watch and especially share it within the school system. Hey if the ACC is trying to brainwash our children by adding it in the textbooks for schools (read more here), then why can't we educate them with the truth! Hmmm....perhaps I should propose this to the producers of this movie if they haven't already started doing.

So yes our very first Documentary and Dinner night was very enlightening and has actually brought alot more awareness to those present that night. One of our FLVillager mamas has even gone grocery shopping and forgot her bags at home and just like Jeb in the movie, put all the groceries in the car without bags and brought it home. Even myself (the eco-friendly freak that I am), am even more aware and no longer buy almond milk because of the plastic tops that they come in (which was a good point in the movie - since when did they start using those and why? They poured perfectly fine without those dang plastic tops!). Now I make homemade almond milk at home and not only is it way less sugar than the store bought versions, I feel good about knowing exactly what is in the milk and feel good that one less plastic top will be found in the carcass of an Albatross bird.

What are ways YOU can make a difference and stop using plastic? Check out these links:

1. Green Guides - How To Avoid Plastic
2. The Good Human - 10 Ways to Reduce Plastic Consumption
3. Eco Child's Play - 10 Ways to Avoid Toxic Plastic

Family Love Yoga with Crystal D'Angora

2011-09-04T01:30:00.000-07:00

Crystal D'Angora and Baby Rane

FLVillagers joined together with their lil ones in tow on Saturday August 20th with FLV's very own Playdate For A Cause (PFAC) Leader, Crystal D'Angora.

This was our first workshop where the children were included in the class and it was definitely a nice change that I know all the families appreciated. I loved the way Crystal interacted with the kids along with the engaging activities that she provided for them. She showed us a combination of movement, breath, and meditation methods to strengthen and lengthen our entire bodies that emphasized on balance, strength, and flexibility, as well as Kundalini techniques taught by Yogi Bhajan. Not only what is a fun physical workout but the inclusive exercises Crystal showed us are proven to improve children's proprioceptive and developmental awareness.

Learning how to breathe with our children, get centered, stretch, play, rejuvenate ourselves, and allow the energy to flow was such a wonderful way to bond with our families! It was definitely a fun way to spend a Saturday evening together!

Here's a little bit of history about our beautiful Crystal:

Crystal D'Angora combines nearly 10 years as a certified Kundalini and children's Yoga and Pilates instructor and an eclectic background in theater, dance, Kundalini and Hatha yoga to create a holistic fusion of physical expression and discovery. After teaching theater to homeless and abused youth through Los Angeles Free clinic's "Project Able," she attained a Bachelor of Arts degree from UC, Los Angeles in Literature and Child Development. Her own yoga experience, which began in 1995, re-ignited the same sense of playful freedom from her youth in theater and dance, but also offered additional methods to heal physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Crystal's passion for conscious choices in both birthing and parenting is supported by years of nanny experience, her undergraduate degree, and her commitment to a yoga and wellness oriented life-style. She continues to find new ways to create a safe and fun environment for students (ages 2 years and up) to explore and express their unique physical and mental gifts. Crystal's current work as co-founder/instructor of the Light Leaders Yoga teachers training program for children's yoga teachers, in addition to teaching various yoga classes and workshops at Golden Bridge, The Yogi Tree (FLV's home), and in her home studio, are all great sources of joy and growth.

Crystal combines her many years as a Pilates and Kundalini, prenatal, and children's yoga teacher with her new mommy-hood and love of movement to help you find the joy of movement in your body. You will enjoy structural re-alignment, balance, flexibility, and strength in an easy-going environment that puts your role as "parent" first!

Yoga and meditation are some of the best tools to model a playful sense of confidence, concentration, and self-discipline for our babies/toddlers. We know that when parents feel calm, confident, and loved that our children can thrive. The vigorous Kundalini yoga kriyas, coupled with meditation and deep relaxation, is a perfect fit for parents and the energetic and active young bodies and minds of our little ones.

And here are a couple of samples from the class that Crystal sent me to share with you:

Hot air balloon -Tuning in

A. Basket - Easy pose – -Sitting tall, with pretzel legs (child pretends to be in the basket of a balloon).

“First we want to make the riding basket”

*Next, use your imagination to turn your body into a big bright balloon. Can you find your balloon’s color and shape (third eye)? Place your hands on your tummy and fill it with air, now let it all out” (3x’s)

            B. Prayer Pose – Rub the hands for “Hot air”

            “The air in our balloons have to get hot to make it fly. Can you pretend to make a fire by rubbing your hands together?”

            C. Mantra –“Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo (I bow to the teacher in my heart) or Ohm (the sound of the Universe).” This reminds you to listen to your body when it tells you how it feels (i.e. if it needs a break or an extra rest.

            “Wow! You were really flying.”

2. Yoga Hokey Pokey - (Sun Salutation or Surya Namaskar)

Start slowly with basic steps only:

You bring your hands up high. Bring your hands down low. You jump right back and slither like a snake. You bring your tail up high and wag it like a dog. Start all over again! Then begin to add parts such as warrior jumps, (...Bring your tail up high and jump it to and fro, etc.). This is also a great opportunity to invite children's creative suggestions!

These were just a couple of examples of the family fun we all got to experience! It was definitely an amazing way to share some quality time with our lil ones, as well as get some exercise (physically and spiritually).

The following are some pictures of this evening...

Streeeeeeeeetch!

Look at that nice form!

Warrior Pose

Wow! Look at that head stand!

Ahhh...relaxing!

Touch your toesies!

A message from Crystal:

"I founded Light Leaders Yoga after 8 years of developing my skills as a children's yoga instructor. With concrete evidence that yoga and meditation help to improve children's overall performance in school and general well-being, we know the need for yoga in young lives will only increase. We also know that for children living in the stress of today's world, yoga helps kick out any surplus of negativity, fear, anxiety, anger, depression and other undeserved pressures which trickle down onto their young spirits from society. Yoga and meditation are some of the best tools to instill confidence, concentration, and self-discipline. We know that when children feel calm, confident, and loved they can succeed.

I have direct experience with the effects that this powerful yoga has on young students and have noted ongoing progress in their lives as a result of a weekly practice. We, as parents, can share and spread these teachings and techniques with our children to connect more deeply every day. Using this mindful and playful practice, let's help to create healing communities for the next generation across the world."

Are You As Prepared For The Next Natural Disaster As You'd Like To Think You Are?

2011-08-06T03:15:00.000-07:00

Hi FLVillagers! Some of you already know that I wrote an extensive post back in May about Emergency Preparedness. I was so impressed by how thorough my friend Alegre's presentation was at another family group Dalmacio, Andrik and I are a part of that I just had to have Alegre share her wealth of knowledge to some of her fellow FLVillagers, as well.

Since I had already written about it prior, I will not be writing a new version of it. But I will share the post once again here. Yes I admit, it is quite overwhelming to read through it BUT very informative and indeed very important!

Since the text here is short and sweet, I thought I'd share some pics of that evening. Enjoy!

And now for some videos that I would like to share with you in getting prepared before September 26, 2012. This is not meant to scare you but make you become aware and do what you can to stock up on your emergency preparedness supplies.

The FLV Experience at Our Very 1st Festival!

2011-07-27T01:41:00.000-07:00

It was May 2010 and I had a vision: to bring the Family Love Village Experience to an amazing and inspiring green music and arts festival called Lightning in a Bottle (LIB). I wanted to organize speakers who would share their wisdom about conscious parenting, sustainable living and holistic wellness for families attending the festival.

Although it wasn't in the stars for my family to attend that year, the Universe was definitely aligning everything to ensure it would happen in 2011! And I have my good friend Arpad's birthday celebration to thank for that one. Thanks Arpad for your beautiful soul and for being born! Woohoo!! It was that very night that I saw Josh Fleming (one of the founders of The Do LaB and creators of LIB).

When I saw him, something told me that this would be my only chance to share my vision and see if him and his brothers along with the rest of The Do LaB crew would be open to this vision. He loved the idea and told me to get in touch with Marsi. I was so ecstatic that I believe I emailed her that same night and well...the rest is history! What was a mere dream a year ago was rapidly gushing forward into fruition!

Four months later, I had pulled together my resources and manifested a team of amazing speakers, leaders and volunteers excited to be on board with creating the ultimate FLV Experience! From holistic wellness to conscious birthing and parenting to homeschooling to raw foods and eco-friendly skincare for the whole family to Baby and Me Yoga & Pilates to even sharing a sustainable way of communicating your babies elimination needs! We had pretty much covered every aspect of parenting for families and curious bystanders to learn about what we had to offer them. Including the most fun part, creating eco-friendly art projects and activities for children through FLV's EcoArt Kids Kollectiv (EAKK!) program!

Not only were we bringing the FLV Experience but we organized our very first FLV theme camp!! Which I could seriously have never done without the amazing bad-ass organizer and DJ, Sammy Bliss! (Oops did I just say ass?)... This whole experience at LIB got me all excited and well, my potty mouth can't help itself!    LOL Ok so it's a mild potty mouth - I remember the days (pre-Andrik) when a certain four letter word was considered my first language! LOL Anyways, the word bad-ass best describes just how awesome Sammy Bliss is and how amazing he was with helping to coordinate our camp for us (of course with the amazing help of his beautiful wife, Rayna and all the families that camped with us)!  I was amazed at how many families joined us for our very first theme camp at LIB and that wasn't even all the families that were listed on our facebook group. I'd say we had at least around 60+ members (including lil ones in tow) that were excited to be with other like-minded families! Not bad for our first year! And yes we had the dopest location, right next to the biggest sandbox I've ever seen!! :o)

It was a lot of hard work to get everything organized within 4 months but we did it! And to actually see our name and logo on the LIB website made all of those sleepless nights of working until 2am every night to get things done (not to mention my "Clark Kent" job, organizing our local monthly gatherings and being a mama to a very active 2 year old) made it all well worth it!   I couldn't believe it! It was actually happening!

To share in our rejoice, here is a link with the list of FLV speakers and workshops.   And here is the link to all the fun EAKK! activities that we prepared for the kids (thanks to our innovative and hard working EAKK! leader, Sonia Von Wike and all the volunteers that helped us prepare before and during the festival). Sonia actually pre-made 50 green journals by herself for the kids to write about regarding their experience at LIB (as you could see with the picture in the beginning of the post)! And wow! Talk about mad props to the boy (I believe his name was Zack) with his art!

We were really excited to be a part of a bigger collective for the kids at the Kidz Village where we joined forces with Melissa Wynne-Jones from Mystic Family Circus and Audette Sophia from MagiKids.

Upon arriving at LIB, everything was just so surreal. My heart welled up with tears of pure bliss. One of my goals was actually happening! Even during one of our EAKK! activities at Kidz Village, Sonia came up to me with tears of joy. I was (and still am) in such deep gratitude to everyone for believing in my vision and for happily taking this journey with me! I'm especially thankful to Marsi (bless that woman's soul for having to put up with my slew of emails)! Anyone that knows me, knows that I can tend to get a little carried away with writing...er, novels. LOL

Speaking of novels, I think instead of writing another novel, I'd rather share the experience through the pictures and videos instead. Oh wait - you thought what I wrote above was a novel...hahahahaha! Ok continuuing on...Alot of the pictures that I took (and thankfully that my dear friend Regan took when I got too busy) were of all the kids and families during the EAKK! activities and art projects since I practically lived there the whole weekend. LOL Note to self: must get to LIB earlier and stay later so I can actually enjoy perusing the rest of the festival! :o)

So here ya go! Enjoy!

PREPPING BEFORE LIB:

These are pics of some of us prepping the EAKK! projects before LIB. The whole concept behind the EAKK! Program is to recycle items from your home, restaurants, schools and businesses that would normally end up in the landfill and use them for art projects for the kids.

Ok I know this looks bad having beer bottle caps as part of the kids art projects but the kids actually painted over the beer symbols and used them to decorate their journals, drums and basically anything that could use a little pizzazz!

Beans for the music shakers

Although these were plastic eggs, they were all recycled from Easter egg hunts the month prior to LIB.

A sample of a drum that Sonia, our EAKK! Leader made.

Stargazing anyone? A bunch of us FLV families recycled empty toilet and paper rolls for crafting "telescopes".

Chimes or Noise clankers or even a bomb!? (as one older kid creatively made it into)! Either way, curious to know what those plastic tubes are? Well you know those rolls of paper that print out receipts at restaurants? It's the holder for the receipt paper. And there were tons and tons of them piling up waiting to go into the landfill until Sonia saved the day, took them from her work and found a very creative way to incorporate them into an art project!

Sample of the book designing for the kids to journal in about their LIB experiences.


Noise clankers, journals and guitars! Oh My! The "guitar" Tangee is playing is a recycled almond milk container with rubber bands as strings

THE FLV EXPERIENCE AT LIB:

Our very 1st banner. FLVillagers Ariel and Oti Vergez helped cut out the words and logo. It took my hubby, Dalmacio 14 hours to hand sew most of the words and logo. Damn, I love that man of mine! Oops there I go swearing again! ;o)

Our 1st EAKK! activity of the weekend: The Sensory Hike

On our hike, the kids touched ice

I bet this guy never thought his dreads would be a fun part of a sensory hike!

The "tractor" was the only thing Andrik wanted to touch on our hike. He loves his vehicles that's for sure!

Alas! We made it to the Kidz Village!


Time to bust out those books to design and journal what you experienced at LIB!

An overjoyed Sonia!! Our incredibly creative EAKK! Leader!

Here's Zack (I believe that's his name) with his awesome eco-friendly LIB journal!

Me and Sonia giddy as can be!

Mirabelle


Lola and Ozmo with his glitter 'stache


Greg Larsen and his lil man

Regan

Lisa and her lil one

Me, Lauren, and Super Izzo!


Dana & Myles

Disco Nap!

Even us parents need a nap!

Alexandria and her lil one

FLV's very 1st art installation: The Nature Man Projekt! We dedicated this to Marsi, the Do Lab boys and the LIB team!

FLVillage DJ's: Fatfinger and Sean Mace spinning the boombastic beatz for the kids!

Evita and Jonah

Story time or booby time? How about both?


Travis and Sean with their mini-me DJ's (Rylo and Sasha)

Eva

My beautiful Samurai!

Dr. Solar getting his groove on!

My 2 boys enjoying the balance of life!

Had enough with looking at the fun photos? Well here's a few awesome videos that our dear homey, Smitty beautifully created that has a few snippets here and there of our FLV crew:

So there you have it! FLV's first emergence of being a part of a bigger movement, a bigger collective that was beautifully celebrated with like-minded beings who were there to experience not only boombastic beats and awe-inspiring art but to embrace consciousness together...

2011-07-06T16:23:00.000-07:00

Are you guys still here? Wow thank you a thousand times over for still wanting to check out what I passionately write about. It truly has been a busy few months for me so I do again apologize for not writing as much as I would like to. There have been a lot of positive transitions for the Family Love Village and now have an amazing team of leaders, innovators, thinkers, doers and be-ers on board to bring our vision to the next level of elevation! Which is why I have been on hiatus with writing in our blog so please be patient as I do my best to write and post from previous gatherings in the last couple of months. I WILL get to them! :o)

In the interim, I wanted to share something with all of you for some heart-warming inspiration. I saw this on my cousin, Maya's blog, Urban Organica and I just had to share! Now this is what I'm talking about!! This 11 year old boy, Birke Baehr is truly an inspiration that all of us adults can learn from! This gets my heart pumping full of passion for what I am wanting to create here for the children of our village - especially since our children are the citizens of the world!!

And yes I do believe that this is the shortest post in history that I have ever written! LOL With that said, please enjoy the video.

If that inspired you, check out Teenagers Inspiring Positive Change and a Global Community of Young Changemakers.

Can Neuro Emotional Technique (NET), Chiropractic Healing and Nutrition Influence You & Your Family's Overall Health?

2011-06-11T00:46:00.000-07:00

Dr. Campbell and his beautiful wife/assistant, Jacquot

Dr. Timothy R. Campbell, D.C. is a licensed chiropractor in the state of California. He has been in practice for the last twenty-six years. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Cleveland Chiropractic College in Los Angeles, he continued at Cleveland Chiropractic College teaching for three and one half years. He taught chiropractic technique, principles and practice, and was a clinician in the school clinic helping student doctors perfect their techniques and diagnostic skills.

His formal education includes a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Cal Poly, Pomona, and post-graduate studies in Chiropractic Orthopedics (Board Qualified), Applied Kinesiology, Thompson Terminal Point, Neuro Emotional Technique, Contact Reflex Analysis, Cranial-Sacral Technique, Homeopathy, Herbs, Vitamins, and Nutrition.Dr. Campbell resides and has a private practice in Sherman Oaks, California.

We all store emotions within our body that can lead to imbalances in the nervous system. These imbalances often express themselves as energy / meridian blocks, disease, and pain. Dr. Timothy Campbell shared with us the benefits of Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) and relieving physical pain associated with emotions. He mentioned that clearing emotional blocks can affect our health on a physical, mental and spiritual level. He also stated that NET combined with the benefits of chiropractic healing and nutrition (the Triad of Health) are relative to one another.

The Base of the Triad:

The base of the triad deals with Structure of the human frame. It deals with the base of the spine which is the sacrum and the illium, the spine, and the cranium (skull bones). 80% of the nerve system is encased in the cranium, consequently it has a big influence on your well being. The TMJ (temporomandibular joint) and the extremities make up the rest of the structural aspect.

The Left of the Triad:

The left side of the triangle deals with the Biochemical and/or the nutrition. This can have an effect on how well all the organs and hormones function in the body. This in turn determines how well the body eliminates toxins from normal body metabolism. A backup of toxins in the system can produce a myriad of symptoms in the body.Therefore good nutrition and vitamin supplementation is imperative in these stressful times in which we are living.

The Right of the Triad:

The right side of the triangle deals with the Mental and the emotions of the individual which can have an effect on the other sides of the triangle. As a result the emotions can have an effect on the structure precipitating a chronic low back problem. Or the mental/ emotions can have an effect on the chemical aspect of the body.

BIOCHEMISTRY:

What we input in our bodies (i.e. proteins, fats, cho's, minerals, vitamins, probiotics, nucleotides, water and fiber), what our outputs are (i.e. feces, urine, lungs, mucous and skin), metabolic waste and lifestyle (i.e. chemicals, toxic metals, radiation, pathogens and allergens). If someone is getting sick all the time, he/she may have a messed up gut. So having good quality probiotics is a must.
Number one reason why people come into Dr. Campbell's office is because people are dehydrated. If you're dehydrated, you're not polar to begin with. We are made up of about 80% water. Ideally if you're urinating 4 times a day, you're losing about 8 ounces each time. So 8 x 4 = 32. So you're losing about a quart of water there. And you figure with just the moisture that comes out from just breathing that would be another quart there. And if you do any type of exercise and are perspiring, there's about another 1/2 to another quart. So we are about 3 quarts down with water a day. As we get older, people start losing height on their vertebrae and we wonder why and it's because those disks are made up of about 70% water. As you're going along through your life and not intaking enough water, when you hit 50-60 years old, you have dehydrated disks, it's pretty tough to rehydrate them.
The number 2 reason that people come in to his office is sugar. People are intaking too much processed sugar, even agave is now considered just like white sugar. ADD & ADHD - all these issues are controlled by diet. To neutralize people and kids that have been diagnosed with ADD & ADHD: take B-Complex, use good quality oils, keep them hydrated and change their diet. Soy oil and canola oil are bad for you and are inflammatory and toxic. If you're going to cook with oil, use coconut oil, peanut oil or grape seed oil - these 3 options can handle heat. Do NOT cook with olive oil. It doesn't do well with heat and becomes carcinogenic and causes more pollution and toxins within the body. If you cook with olive oil, it breaks down.
Chemtrails - Dr. Campbell started noticing that alot of patients were starting to come into his office sick starting from November until the present. So he started doing research (along with my hubby, Dalmacio) and discovered that chemtrails could be the cause for so many people getting sicker these days more frequently. One of the chemicals that the chemtrails are spraying is aluminum. Their concept is that aluminum will bounce the UV back into space. But what ends up happening when the aluminum comes down to the earth is cars start kicking the stuff up which is intoxicating to the nervous system, clogs it up and backs it up. So if you do immunizations and have done 5 consecutive flu shots that is 5 years in a row which means your chances of Alzheimer's Disease goes up 70% percent by the time you hit old age. Not only does it have aluminum but also mercury and barium (which is a toxic metal that shuts down the immune system) and other chemicals in it. Bees are very sensitive to barium and their guts are pretty sterile. There has been an analysis recently and they are finding barium. Bees as we know pollenate all our flowers, plants and helps our food supply so you can imagine if they have barium in their system, what is being transferred into our food system? As a preventative, if you take Alpha Lipoic Acid (300mg) once or twice a day it will help to get rid of the heavy metals in your system. But you must also take cilantro to help as a gravitator to putll out the metals by urinating or deficating it out. You can either get fresh cilantro, capsules or tinctures ( the alcohol-base absorbs quicker). As a side note, you need to be very careful of the source of blue green algae you take because it can be infinitive for pulling stuff into the body (i.e. mercury) so that it can chelate through your IV or it will seep somewhere else. So going to back to the benefits of cilantro - it helps to get it out of your system.
Dr. Campbell suggests not vaccinating your children because they still put aluminum and mercury in several of the vaccines. If you're wanting to bring up your child holistic, make sure they have enough sleep, healthy diet and good probiotics for a healthy gut, you wont need these vaccines. Coconut oil is good to help with the digestive tract because just like mother's milk, luric acid helps the immune system.
Onions and garlic are good for your liver (has alot of sulfur in there). It helps to kill parasites, bacteria and viruses. But if you do garlic pills, you have to make sure it is NOT odorless because it doesn't do anything.
Fish oil is good for you and you need oils in your system. Everyone thinks that oil is bad for you and that raises your cholesterol but cholesterol is not the bad guy. Sugar is! Sugar screws up your oil balance and then screws up your hormones. So when consuming fish oil, crack it open to intake the oil. When you do this it absorbs through your system 80% as opposed to swallowing the capsule- which only gives you 20%. If you get your vitamins in liquid form, it brings it up to about 90% absorption.

Naya is definitely a yummy sweetener! That's for sure! ;)

Which are good sweeteners and which ones are bad? Agave and white sugar that have been through an acid wash which makes it white are both bad. Yep - Agave folks. To learn more about why it is bad, go to Agave Nectar: Good or Bad? The good ones are dark sugar cane, stevia, xylitol . Please note to make sure xylitol is kept away from dogs! Aspartame (which now is called to amino sweetener) breaks down into formaldehyde and formic acid (formic acid is like what the ants do when they bite you and give you viruses and formaldehyde is the stuff they embalm the deceased with). To paint a more clear picutre, Monsanto makes Asparatme (a.k.a. Amino Sweetener). I don't think I need to go further after that statement, right?!

Speaking of Monsanto, for those that are not aware of this, they make alot of GMO (genetically modified) grains, such as: wheat, barley, rye, spelt, and corn amongst other things (i.e. remember Agent Orange and RoundUp? Yep the same company). Anyways, gluten has component parts called gliadin molecules which are a protein that acts like a foreign bug/bacteria to us. So the immune system goes into red alert. They started showing CT scans and found that a normal brain is variations of light grey and black but if somebody has a reaction to gluten, what they've found is that the brain lights up like a bulb. Which means there is alot of inflammation. They've also found a cross reaction with milk - so if somebody has gluten problems, leaky gut, digestions problems, constipation, or diarrhea - they most likely have a gluten issue.

There are alot more health issues these days, ie. Autism, vaccinations, gluten, milk, all the different pesticides and herbicides that clog up the system. If you look at a 3rd world country and most of their diet is raw, they are alot healthier than the U.S. The U.S. is the 41st in the world as far as health and we're the most expensive healthcare system in the world. And guess who controls it all? Pharmaceuticals and AMA. Just know they cannot make you take vaccinations.

Dax & Jessica

METABOLIC WASTE & LIFESTYLE:

Examples of metabolic wastes are chemicals, toxic metals, radiation, pathogens and allergens. Examples of toxins in lifestyle are drugs, alcohol, smoking, etc. Did you do alot of heavy drugs? How much did your body get exposed to the above and how did your body react to this stuff. If you are taking alot of pain killers, it starts to shut down your nervous system and is doing yourself a disservice. If you want to do something with pain, get into Tumeric, white willow, etc. This is the nutritional side of the Triad of Health.

Structure -most chiropractors focus on structure. Dr. Campbell focuses on more than just the structure. He gets into the cranial, pelvis and TMJ. Cranial bones move. Anytime you breathe out, your bones move. Alot of patients come in for TMJ, like a pendulum on a clock. If you're pelvis goes out and cranium is trying to balance, the TMJ is going to try and balance the rest of it. So you want to keep everything over the pelvis so that you don't look like you're walking sideways. TMJ - grinding the teeth (have alot of nerve endings there) -the body is trying to grind (i.e. brushtism) the cranium in place. Alot of csection babies have cranium issues - cranium bones don't compress when doing csections. Might want to get a bite plate guard at night (called a warming fit). Bottom night plate - put on the lower instead of the upper because the upper can stuff the cranial motion.

Immune system is usually 60% in the digestive tract so if you check stomach, small intestine, large intestine that will tell you how your immune system is doing.

Kangen water is trying to get you into alkaline type state. Alot of medical establishments put you on drugs to shut down the hydrochloric acids though the PH in the gut should usually be around 3-4. If you take antacids like Malox, Tums, Pepto Bismol, Predaset, it changes your gut into an alkaline state right off the bat. But the reason why they're getting the heartburn is because the pyoloric (sp?) valve isn't getting the hydrochloric acid to get that PH balance up so what happens is you end up stewing like a pot. And then it overflows and goes into the esophagus which could cause esophagus errosion. To avoid this from happening (or ways that can help the situation), you need to pick up the hydrochloric acid and then get the acids in your stomach down by changing your diet, as well as taking Zinc and a B complex.

Alot of times people drink beverages with their meals, and what happens is you dilute digestive enzymes. If you drink Kangen water, you have to wait about 1 1/2 to 2 hours so you can wait for stomach contents to move out of there before you put the kangen water in there at PH 8 or 9 or else you could get acid reflux issues. Everything has to be in balance - especially with what foods you eat Some great alkaline foods are: vegetables, salads, avocados, coconut, and almonds. If you eat acidic foods like chicken, fish, and turkey, you need to mix this with alot of vegetables. You can't just mix your acidic foods with grains because the grains are all acidic again. Now there are alot of GMO's in glutens which can lead to inflammation and getting Fibromyalgia. Suggestion: Get more alkaline foods into your diet!

It is truly amazing how the organs relate to our emotions and how the emotions relate to our health issues. Neuro Emotional Component (NEC) - this is best described from a website that I researched online. See this link for further details on NEC and how Neuro-Emotional Technique can take you to a new level of healing where counseling may have left off.

Dr. Campbell noted that in some cases, there is a psychological reversal. For instance, if someone is dealing with depression, it could be caused by a sugar imbalance. Therefore, the neuro transmitters aren't getting in and doing what they're supposed to do. That's why there is Parkinsons, Dimentia, etc.

NEURO-EMOTIONAL TECHNIQUE (NET):
The next hour Dr. Campbell showed us how to muscle test. Unfortunately this is where actually being present to experience how NET and muscle testing work would be most easiest to describe. Going back through the recording, I would prefer to refer you folks to a couple of websites to learn more about NET and muscle testing to better explain the process and how to do it. I also thought it would be easier to share a couple of videos to describe it much clearer than me trying to go through the last hour of our gathering's recording to decipher the important information. Plus, I have to admit, it did save me a lot of time - especially with my crazy busy schedule. And to tell you the truth, that was one of the reasons why I procrastinated waaaay too long in finishing this post. I finally told myself, I have to find a solution that can easily describe NET without having me go through and play, stop, type...play, stop, type for 2-3 hours! Phew - talk about a weight lifted off my shoulders on that one! I mean, heck this is what it's all about right? Being conscious and communicating in a conscious way! So there you have it, not only did I find balance, I got my needs met and am finally, finally getting the dang thing posted on the blog to share with the rest of you folks! So with that said, here you go:

For those who would like to learn how to do muscle testing on yourself, I found a few links that could help you with this.

Muscle Testing.
How to Muscle Test
Kinesiology Tips.
To learn about the history of Applied Kinesiology, Applied Kinesiology: In Retrospect.

his website

Below are some pictures of us having fun learning how to muscle test on each other.

Even babies and doggies were getting into NET! ;)

L.O.V.E. Parenting with Jessica Williams on Saturday April 9, 2011

2011-05-19T17:14:00.000-07:00

L.O.V.E. Parenting: Parent Education for Progressive Families

Many parents who have chosen an alternative, progressive parenting path, one that is deeply rooted in honoring their child, get derailed as the babies get older. Issues like sharing, siblings, social-interplay, communication, autonomy, and discipline come into view and present challenges to the most well-meaning parents. As well, a second pregnancy, the birth of a sibling, and the early years of siblinghood often create challenges that can leave parents feeling overwhelmed and at their wits end. L.O.V.E. Parenting can help!

L.O.V.E. Parenting is confident that you can manifest a harmonious relationship with your children at every stage of the game. L.O.V.E. Parenting understands the challenges faced on a daily basis and addresses the uniqueness of each situation with insight and the commonalities with compassion.

L.O.V.E. Parenting techniques promote effective communication with respect for the whole family. A sampling of favorites include Set The Stage, the Family Unity Speech, Need-Want-Ask, and WEL-C: Witness, Empathy, Limit, Choice. L.O.V.E. Parenting helps families to parent with love and to L.O.V.E. Parenting; Listen, Open, Value, Enjoy.

Jessica Williams created L.O.V.E. Parenting with private coaching, classes and workshops in Los Angeles and worldwide with Skype. She teaches L.O.V.E. Parenting at The Sanctuary Birth & Family Wellness Center in West LA and at Birth & Beyond in Santa Monica. She is a featured weekly writer for Mothering Magazine's "All Things Mothering" online blog. Her birth and nursing articles are being published in The Mother Magazine, UK and The Complete Mother, USA. She is a contributor for the Nurture Center, CA. She has presented multiple workshops for the pediatric practice of Dr. Jay Gordon, Santa Monica. Jessica Williams lives in her native Los Angeles with her husband and their three children.

Jessica shared a host of parenting techniques that can be applied and suggested that we see how each technique resonates with our own parenting philosophies.

The following are a few of her signature techniques:

NEED-WANT-ASK:

The first technique has to do with communicating with your partner or the partnership of the people that are supporting you as part of your family. This technique can be used with not only your child but with any adult that you're trying to communicate with (ie. your parents, your caregiver, etc). It is called Need-Want-Ask. At each moment, you can ask yourself, "What do I need?" and "What do I want in terms of what actions that will support my needs? And have I asked for it?". Sometimes we think that it's so clear with what we want at that moment that we tend to assume that others know what we need too.

For instance, here is a scenario:

The mom has been home with the baby, has been nursing all day, hasn't taken a shower, and has had one meal instead of three. She's tired, hungry and overwhelmed. And then the partner comes in after being at work all day and dealing with their stresses for the day. They're wanting to come home to wind down a little bit, maybe have a beer, check their emails, etc and it's so obvious to them what they are wanting. In that moment, when they are walking through that door what they would love to hear is perhaps: "Honey, I've prepared your favorite meal. The baby is taken care of. I appreciate all the hard work you do to provide for this family. You're so good looking and I've booked us a weekend getaway and my parents are coming in to take care of the baby". And what the mom is wanting to hear is "Honey, I see you. I see the job you're doing with being with the baby all day and I appreciate all that you do. You're so beautiful. Let me take the child and I've booked you a massage."

So you can see that it's kind of a combustion of both needs. Part of what can be effective in parenting is getting a little bit of that self care happening for yourself (this may look different for each person). That may look like needing an hour a day to get something you need taken care of. What is the piece at this juncture? If I had an hour to myself, am I wanting a massage, am I wanting to take a yoga class, am I wanting to work out? Or to go to a cafe to write a book or to socialize with a friend? And what would be the most restored for me? Am I needing restoration? Am I needing inspiration? Am I needing renewal?

Homework: Write down 3 categories: Renewal, Restoration and Inspiraton and then make a list of what would fall in to these 3 categories. Make yourself careless.

Some of the stresses that can be alleviated is time management. For example, a married couple is having another baby. The mom is pregnant and needing a hand with taking care of the older child. When the husband walks in, he's wanting to come home to a stress-free environment after being at work in a stressful environment all day. One solution is to have a kitchen timer timed at 15 minutes. So when the husband walks in, he gets the first 15 minutes off duty. Because if the mom was able to make it until 5:30, she can make it until 5:45pm. This gives the partner a chance to unwind for 15 minutes. When that timer goes off, then the wife has 15 minutes completely off duty. She can go shut the door and listen to relaxing music, meditate or whatever is going to give you that moment of solitude to restore or renew or inspire.

If something is re-occurring on the schedule, it will happen. Meaning once you both have made a commitment to put it on the schedule with 15 minutes for your partner and 15 minutes for yourself, you will begin to alleviate the pressures of coming home to a stressful environment or feeling like you're doing everything. Or maybe that first 15 minutes the partner is off duty when he/she walks in and then it's family time. Then perhaps on Saturday for those 5 days that you gave your partner 15 minutes, it would then add up to an hour and 15 minutes that you can use for yourself. You can make your own schedule with this and see what you both are needing.

For instance, with Jessica's husband they were able to work out a schedule where for one hour a day, her husband would be on duty with their 3 kids. So on Thursdays from 5-6, Jessica would leave the house and drive a couple of blocks away to a cafe and was able to write a rock and roll memoir. Her life before her children, she was able to make music and was in a band but of course after having 3 children, her life being in a band changed but at least with this hour she was able to write about her experiences with being in a band.

So make a list to see what it would be like to have that hour. And if your husband or wife can't do this, then start getting that support system with either a mom, a nanny or what Tangee is creating here with the Family Love Village by creating a new paradigm and going back to the days of old which we would all live here and work together. Even if it means we now have to work a little harder to create the community structure, it exists. You come to these gatherings, deepen your connection and you call upon each other so that you can help one another out.

Time management and money management - make your choice and make sure it's on the schedule reoccurring. That way you and your partner know it's coming and during a day to day life, it becomes more easeful. Self care is the first step. Then you're Need-Want-Ask. "What do I need? I need a little support." "So what do I want? I need a date with my friend. Have I asked for it? Have I emailed all my friends and made a date". Then put it on the schedule. And if it's on the schedule, it will be more than likely that you will be able to get your needs met.

What Jessica feels so passionate about is the Mama Trade and showing up for each other for support. For example, here's another scenario:

Four families get together every Tuesday (for the ones that aren't working) and Thursday. And on Tuesdays, two mamas are with the 4 kids - bonding and having adult conversations. Then the 2 other moms are out for 2 hours, getting their needs met (running errands, or having restoration or inspiration) and then on Thursdays the other two moms are bonding/talking with the 4 kids while the first 2 moms are getting their needs met. That way twice a week, your kids are having playdates/peer interaction, once a week you have to yourself and once a week you're hanging out and doing what you'd be doing anyways with a friend.

By doing this little bit of tweaking into a system, you are building some support for yourself. Another example could be, Sunday 5-7pm the parents have their time and the kids know this. The parents value each other, they're best friends, they are in love with each other. You guys are parents and will be together for 50 or so years and that's a long relationship. So the question is "How do we make this boat float? How do we make this ship sail for the long view of life together and what do we need to put into place to support that vision?"

(l to r): Renee, Cindy (Andrik's nanny) and Mary

To summarize, part of the first thing is the notion of self care, notion of Need-Want-Ask, notion of putting on a reoccurring schedule, and this notion of identifying what helps and what makes it fun and feel better. For example, maybe putting out an email or list of any other single moms or any other adopted moms or where the homeschooled families with 8 year old girls that are into doing things without media. Or how about all attachment parenting lists and/or homeschool lists. Whatever it may be that you're interested in. It's about finding your support - it's like starting a business but in this sense, it's for your family and you're parenting.

SETTING LIMITS AND HAVING TO SAY NO:

The next topic is on having to deal with your child's frustrations and anger. The old paradigm in the 50's was about power over, shaming and blaming, punishment and rewards. "Don't speak unless spoken to"! Now you have a new generation of new progressive families that honor their child and value them and is an equal part of the family but then you still need to have certain aspects of the 50's. For instance when you go into a restaurant, you still need restaurant manners (can't climb on the table or throw food, etc).

But if your child begins to have certain behaviors, for instance, at a restaurant, you start to have this panicky feeling. You don't want to shame them or yell at them or hit them but you end up feeling very flustered or leaving early. What ends up happening is that parents start to avoid going to restaurants altogether. Or for example, "We don't have people over because our daughter doesn't share her toys" or "we don't go to gas stations with our child in the car because he gets antsy", etc. You start to avoid doing certain things as a family so as not to be put in those types of situations where your child will start behaving in a way that will make you feel uncomfortable. So what ends up happening is without learning how to move through the distress, you'll start to notice that you're world will start shrinking.

The question is, how do we navigate this type of behavior when their having big feelings? The first thing as a conscious parent is to be aware that your child's response has to do with big feelings. At some point, children will become very vocal ("I hate you", "You're a mean mommy or daddy", etc) or they might use their bodies to express themselves by hitting, biting, pushing, etc. Or perhaps you have an older child and a 2nd baby that you're trying to put down to sleep and the older one is trying to wake the baby up, etc.

Part of where L.O.V.E. Parenting comes in is how do we get the behavior that we need in a different method? Here are a few techniques:

1) SET THE STAGE - (in an upbeat manner) where you tell them what is going to occur and what you expect of them. For instance, if you need to take your child to the doctor's office, you can say "We're going to the Dr's office. And what I need is quiet voices and then we're going to wait. And then we're going to go inside his office and the Dr's going to check your ears and eyes. " What you are doing here is basically walking them through what will happen. Being compassionate during this is helpful too. Even empathizing with them that it may be a long wait or perhaps even boring while waiting for the Dr to call us in. But by setting the stage for them of what is going to happen, you have given a little frame of reference for your child. They get a context of what will be happening. It may not be the whole story of what will happen but it's the frame.

Another level of setting the stage (depending on your energy level and how you're feeling) is setting the stage with excitement and depth. For instance, you're going to the restaurant. If you're feeling energetic and excited, then you can go even further with setting the stage and actually create a story.

"Honey, we're going to a restaurant tonight. There was this man who had a dream to start his own restaurant and he created a menu of yummy entrees and desserts. And then there is a busboy who has a dream to be an architect but his job for the time being is to give us water and set down the water and refill the water, and set down the water. And then there's this beautiful waitress who wants to become an actress and she goes to auditions during the day and is a waitress by night. And she has to be upbeat and polite when serving us...."

You set this whole stage of "The Restaurant". And then your child gets a little vibe that they're stepping into another world. Because for children, they are in their own little worlds and are selfish in the sense that they are hungry, or tired or they want this or that. So instead of blaming and shaming them or feeling embarrassed yourself, you can create this world around the restaurant. This is again to be done before you go to the restaurant. It can be done at home, in a casual setting when everyone has been fed and well-rested so that when you set the stage about "The Restaurant", it's easeful and relaxing.

Casper

Siren and Mama and Daddy in the back (Mari and Robert)

2) Another way to set the stage is by giving your child the script. For example:

"So if you were at the restaurant and you were upset and got out of your chair and said "I don't wanna stay here!" (and say it as if mocking how the child would say it). Then you could ask him/her "Now would that be helpful or not helpful?" Then the child could answer "Not helpful". And then if you draw on the piece of paper and then you start ripping the paper angrily, would that be helpful or not helpful?" "Not helpful." "And if you got upset about your water and set it down really hard, would that float the boat or sink the ship?" "Sink the ship." This is a great way of letting off your own steam of how frustrating it is when those things do happen. Yet you can make it fun and they can laugh at it and then it gives them an opportunity to see how that would well...basically, suck.

3) You can also feed them with what wouldn't be helpful and feed them with what would be helpful. So by the time they get to the restaurant they are more aware of their behavior. Once you give them the whole restaurant story, you can ask them:

"So given that you know about the busboy, the waiter, the cook, and the waitress, what would be helpful when we get to the restaurant". If they are old enough, they could tell you what they can do. For example, they can say, "We sat down, then we ordered and then we had small talk", etc.

Quick Review: What is setting the stage? Giving your child the narrative of what your expectations might be in a way that they might be able to participate in the process. You start doing this as part of your family culture - even if you think your child isn't cognitive. It just becomes part of what you do with your child that way they begin to learn this way of communicating. Even if your child is for example, 18 months old, you can still set the stage. It would just be a more simpler story that you can tell or even act out. But you must have a level of fluidity and just flow with what may happen.

Ikedo Martial Arts Metaphor:

Jessica likes to use a metaphor with a martial arts move from Ikedo. She used an example of a person coming towards you with their sword. The first slice, Jessica doesn't move. She absorbs all of the impact from the hit of the sword. The second time her opponent tries to slice, she moves her body this time so that the sword misses her body. The notion that your child can have their full expression but rather than "I'm going to block right against it", it would be "I'm going to move out of the way and witness them". I see you and your feelings but I'm not going to absorb all of it and I'm not going to necessarily change my course of action in response to your negative reaction to what I've told you.

This can get tricky for parents when your child hears the word "No" and you are setting the limits and trying to stick with what you said. There are times though that you may need to change your direction when you have already said "No". If you're using your true mother's intuition and father's intuition and you're seeing a red flag of true distress from your child, this would be a time that you can decide if you want to change your mind. For instance, "You know I'm hearing that this is a different level of discontent and I'm hearing your distress. I'm going to pause and call this friend and break our commitment. And even though we are a family that upholds our commitments, I'm going to make an exception because I'm seeing the true distress that you are having and that we cannot do this plan."

Casper cruisin' around and visiting Tamra

But generally if there is a commitment that your family has made and there isn't a red flag of true distress coming form your child, you can set boundaries with the notion of "We made a commitment, we spent money for this class and we will follow through", etc. If your child gets upset with the "No", witness with your child what they are feeling with empathy. "I hear you and I understand that this may not be your first choice AND we made a commitment to these people. The other families are expecting us and I've made a good plan for you (we're not in abusive situation). We have snacks and there will be art projects with other kids. We've made this plan and we are going". It's not like, "get in the car whether you like it or not" type of attitude. It's about coming from a place of empathy and making it light. "I hear it's not your first choice. I've had that happen to me where I made plans and said I was going to make it but I didn't feel like it at first."

This helps to get through the discomfort instead of coercing them to do it. Because you don't know if perhaps they are scared or nervous about going somewhere. But you get through it the first time and then perhaps revisit the question of whether your child truly wants to do this plan again - so that you're not making it an arbitrary plan for your child. You do the first follow through and make sure you, as the parent, are not being in total reaction to when they hear you say "No". To summarize, the above steps:

1. I hear your "No"
2. Get out of the way (Ikido metaphor),
3. Witness what they are feeling and then explain that you as a family will do the follow through with the commitment.
4. Then after the first follow through, then we can revisit and ask "Are we a family that should make this plan again or should we make another plan?" This technique is not coming from a place of forcing them to do something they don't want to do, it's teaching them to get through the discomfort.

PARTNERING FOR THE LONGTERM WITH YOUR PARENTS AND IN-LAWS:

There's always a difference between the generations. The progressive families believe in attachment parenting that elder generations are shocked that your family does (i.e. "What do you mean you're not vaccinating", or "What do you mean you're still breastfeeding and co-sleeping and not putting your child through school", etc)?

The same way it behooves you to navigate with your partner and/or childcare giver for the longterm, it behooves you to partner for the longterm with your parents and in-laws. Assume the generous thoughts and assume that you might end up changing your mind (i.e. you may choose to co-sleep with your first baby but not for the second one, you may not do extended breastfeeding for your first child but then want to for your second child, etc).

You want to say to yourself: I'm going to assume you're coming from a place of love and I'm going to see that vibrating first because you, as the parent, are on the leading edge position. You can make your energy bigger and invite your parents and in-laws to love your child on the same level with you.

You could also explain to your child too that there are different rules when your with mommy and daddy and different rules with grandma and grandpa. You may have to meditate on this one to see if it's really a big deal to you for instance, if they drink soda once in a great while when they're at Grandma's and Grandpa's. Get a reality check for your own heart what's going to create the most peace and harmony and ask yourself "How can I invite them in?" If you invite them into your parenting philosophy, you're inviting them to do what you want them to do. You actually do want your parents and aunts and uncles to be part of your child's life. And it's only natural that you might get a little tight and upset when they do things differently than you. But if you can get through that and create the space. You circument and make it about what they have to offer and invite them to participate in that way. So when they say "Don't touch" - instead of saying "Oh we don't say it that way" (which could rub them the wrong way and could be pretty hard on them and could make them feel like "Fine take care of your own kids"), you want to ask yourself: "How am I going to get the most out of this situation?"

You can say something like "Thank you mom for having us in your house. I love how neat and clean it is. I'm not sure if you remember how it was when I was 2 years old so do you have any extra sheets that we can put down on your carpet?" Rather than the whole time worrying that your kid has dirty hands and is touching the grandparents neat stuff.

So instead of the grandparents getting upset and saying "No don't touch" and instead of telling them to not say that. You can go over to your child and proactively parent him/her in front of your parents the way you want to say it. You can also set the stage with your parents. Start with love. "I love you both and am so glad that you're a part of our lives. And so grateful that we get to spend time together. (This is considered soft selling it). I know it may sound kinda strange or wacky but we're trying this thing where we say it in a way that let's him have a choice. So we say "Heaters are really hot. Do you think it's a good choice to touch the heater?" And let him see that were trying to empower him to make his own decisions in the world. I know it sounds a little out there but if you can try it out with me and indulge with me on this?"

This softens things and allows the family to see how you do things. To summarize: Come at it with love, give a compliment, invite them to do what you want them to and then give them an example of how you want to parent your child.

As a parent, you want to give your children skills to navigate through life and create an emotionally, physically, spiritually, safe, and vibrant life for themselves but the one thing you can't teach teach them is how to fall in love. We can teach them love and to be loved but we can't escape the harm whether it's peer pressure or domineering in-laws. So you teach them to walk through the world and give them these L.O.V.E. parenting tools.

The last technique Jessica shared with us is called WEL-C: (Witness, Empathy, Limit, Choice):

Witness - I see you, I hear you:

"I see that you do not want to share that toy with your sister or friend and you're wanting to get that toy from them".

Empathy - Come from a place of understanding with empathy:

"I really understand that feeling where I didn't want to stop what I was doing. I've been there myself."

Limit - Set a limit:

"You may not grab that toy out of her hand" or "In this family we don't hit".

Choice - Give your child a choice:

"You can put down that toy and give it to her or you can find another toy to play with " OR "You can grab another toy to see if she wants to trade with you" OR "We can put a timer on and you can both play with it each for 5 minutes".

"You can hang with us in a way that keeps all the bodies and emotions safe or you can take some time to reset yourself if that's feeling too hard to be next to her without hitting her".

ADDITIONAL CONCEPT - SAME AMOUNT OF LOVE:

This may help the longterm of the Family Love Village's sustainability and that is when you step into this community together (whether it be this village or a co-op group or a playgroup or your homeschool group, etc), there is the notion that if you can practice these L.O.V.E. Parenting tools with each other and each other's kids that within that moment that your kids know that you're going to advocate for each kid in the room the same amount of love. Meaning - I'm going to love that child as much as your child in that moment in the room.

For instance, if your child gets upset that you're holding another child. You can witness "I see that you're upset that I'm holding Tangee's baby and I love you so much". Empathy: I've felt like that too. Limit: I'm going to hold Tangee's baby because we're in community together. Or you can sit right here and help me comfort Tangee's baby or you can take a moment if that's too hard for you."

But it's a real clear notion that what they get from you is that "my mommy has love to give". A good example is tonight, Jessica's daughters didn't want her to go tonight to the Family Love Village gathering and wanted her to stay home with them. She witnessed their need "I hear you". Empathy: "I miss you too and love you so much and love spending time together." Then they understood that "Oh they are wanting to learn from you?" And now because her children get the idea that whenever their mom leaves to teach a workshop, they get excited now because they are curious to know what other parents have learned from her.

It's the notion that I'm going to love these kids and my arms are this big and I can hold 6 kids with me. And of course my kids know who I'm going home with. And then they see that my mom's got love and she's going to honor each kid. Which helps them when their on their own in the playroom and there's one pillow to play with and they figure out a way to play with it together. Play is the work of childhood, toys are the tools. Just the same way, you come into my house and use my plates and my furniture, the toys belong to the house (of course if there's that one special toy, your child can put it away) but letting them know that the toys are part of the furniture of the house and we all use it.

GUIDED MEDITATION:
At the end, Jessica had us close our eyes and walked us through a guided meditation, envisioning us with our children. Hearing them and witnessing them and also continuing to set the course as you sail the ship and they are on that ship with you. Navigating, seeing the sights, feeling the wind, pointing out things in the horizon that you didn't see and you point things out to them. Picture your own ancestors, your own unique lineage, your grandparents, great grandparents, what they struggled through and how they thrived and then think of yourself aligned with your partner or the two beings that gave birth to your child. Think of you and your partner and your unqiue lineages to give birth to your child or the other children that came to you. Breathe that in and giving thanks striving to keep yourself with that alignment so that you can bond to your children and clearly hear their discontent and their joy. Witness them and hold them up energetically and allow them to navigate the world on their own with your guidance.

It was a beautiful ending to a beautiful gathering. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to eat with Jessica afterwards for the potluck but it was for a very good reason: she had set the stage with her children and had given them a timeframe that she would be home to be with them and had honored their family time together!! What a wonderful way to role model her techniques to us!

It was such a joy to have Jessica with our village that evening. So much that we intend to have her back for a more in-depth workshop. To learn more about Jessica Williams and her amazing work, go to L.O.V.E. Parenting.

An Evening with Ruth Beaglehole - Saturday March 19, 2011

2011-04-26T01:13:00.000-07:00

Ruth Beaglehole and Tangee

Introduction to Nonviolent Parenting: An Empathy-Based Approach to Raising Children

Every parent and every child has experienced deep feelings of frustration and anger. You are not alone! Raising children can be very challenging!

Nonviolent Parenting is an entirely new paradigm for the adult-child relationship. It is a move from our society's dominant paradigm of conditional parenting to nonviolent parenting. Conditional parenting is all around us; parents either punish or reward children for their behavior. If children are good, they get approval and a reward. If they are bad, attention is withdrawn and they are punished. This conditional parenting undermines a child's sense of self worth and self -dignity as a vital, alive, feeling human being.

Nonviolent parenting offers an optimal relationship and the conditions in which children can thrive and grow into healthy adults. By building a tight emotional bond of understanding, nurturing, support, trust, warmth and compassion, a child reaches a high level of emotional development. The tools of nonviolent parenting respect the science of early brain development and are grounded in the knowledge that to raise healthy children, adults must be in relationship with children through the giving of unconditional connection. Respecting the science of brain development fosters a deep respect of the life force of all living creatures. It teaches connection and support between adults and children in the most profound way possible.

Ruth Beaglehole MA. is the founder and Executive Director of Echo Parenting and Education (formerly known as the Center for Nonviolent Education and Parenting), a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting parents and teachers to break the cycle of early family violence by learning the philosophy of nonviolent parenting. She has spent her life considering the needs of children, seeking support and nurturing for children as full human beings, using the principles of respect, healing and connection. Ruth's professional journey parallels her personal journey and has given her the empathy, courage and dedication that has fueled her groundbreaking work; creating a new paradigm of unconditional parenting that is the soul of Echo Parenting and Education.

She has been a preschool/parent educator for over 50 years. She is the author of "Mama, Listen! Raising a Child Without Violence – A Handbook for Teen Parents." She co – authored the Echo Center's Nonviolent Parenting Curriculum, co-author of "School Readiness Learning Module" of the North East Los Angeles School Readiness Center and the It Takes a Community Curriculum (ITC) for the Department of Mental Health, Los Angeles. She is an Early Childhood trainer in nonviolent child-raising and ITC for parents and professionals and an active member of the leadership group of Magnolia Place Initiative, supporting the implementation of ITC and Strengthening Families Five Protective Factors.

In this gathering, Ruth Beaglehole introduced to the FLVillagers, a philosophy of parenting based on:

1. Exploring ourselves and our children through a lens of empathy and understanding.

2. Teaching emotional intelligence by learning a language of feelings and needs.

3. Setting respectful, clear boundaries.

4. Exploring strategies and tools that will help you successfully create the parenting relationship you want with your child.

5. Discussion on two paradigms of parenting (conditional and nonviolent), attachments and brain development

Loving her children wasn't an easy process. Ruth was a survivor of sexual abuse. When she was pregnant, she had this overwhelming feeling to love her children in a way that she wasn't given the opportunity. She wanted to break the cycle, emotionally connect and create a different experience for her children. What was it going to be like to love her children in the most profound way that she could. Her daughter was deaf so Ruth set out to learn how to communicate with her daughter. For her, it was about learning the language to communicate with all of her children. Back in the 60's, it wasn't really about women burning their bras, it was more about women telling their stories.

One of out of 3 girls and one out of 5 boys are sexually abused before the age of 18. It is stored as secrets. One out of 10 end up with addictions. We're in the job of people making. It's ultimately about us. What do we bring to this job? What is our own projectory of healing? At times we think about healing as going to a therapist but healing can also be about creating a coherent narrative. We, as a human race, can all be in a state of healing each other and to really do this work well, it takes an incredible consciousness. And this consciousness that we need is rooted in an incredibly important research-based practice. It's really not about whether we had a good or bad childhood - to make sense of our own lives. The ability to have a coherent narrative and understand a reflective practice of where we tend to freeze up when it comes to our inner healing and what has been our life's journey - the place we learn from is our upbringing. That process of looking to have a coherent narrative is important because one of the core principles of giving to your children is to give them their own coherent narrative and in order to do this, we have to be able to give our own narrative.

With Ruth's story, she was able to later on see that where she froze was in her own fear and pain. She didn't talk about it and she hated her perpetrator but she never did the work internally to really heal herself. It was all about him and he was going to pay for it rather than heal herself. To men, this journey can be incredibly difficult because we struggle with a sexist paradigm and for most men there's one emotion they get to feel and that is anger. The layers of sexism that is put upon us, the fear of your son crying because of the fear of the messages of homophobia or "big boys don't cry" attitude. Ruth believes the future lies in the way we raise our boys - to raise really gentle, sensitive boys is so important. She suggested reading "Parenting From the Inside Out" by Dr. Dan Siegel.

Dominant paradigm - we all experience it. For example, you're at the cashier and your baby is crying and others wonder when you're going to shut your child up. Other examples of the dominant paradigm are: "I'm going to leave you here", "Children are born manipulative", "If you keep holding that baby, you're going to spoil him". Judgemental, disconnecting ideas about children and parenting. Even what is considered positive discipline: time outs, rewards, bribes, praise, countdown (1, 2, 3), and taking away toys is considered dominant parenting. These are all about disconnection. These are not building the emotional intelligence of our children.

One example that Ruth likes to share is from Marshall Rosenberg's method:

Jackal - Power over, judgement, (i.e. "I'm the parent, you're job is to respect me"), which is all fear-based. The Jackal's point of view is "If we could just give our children just a little bit of fear then they'll listen". This is the voice of criticism and judgement. Ruth used my husband, Dalmacio as an example since he was late arriving to the presentation because he was getting batteries for the tape recorder to record the presentation. "Why were you late? Do you realize how disrespectful that was to make me wait? Why are you smiling? Wipe that smile off your face!"

We're not about power over strategies of discipline. We are emotional coaches and emotional coaching comes from a place of connection

Giraffe - giraffes have the biggest hearts of animals (26 lbs) and is used as a metaphor with emotional coaching. It's about connection and empathy. It's about moving from evaluation to observation. It's another language and it's a struggle to learn this language. Nonviolent Communication lays out the grammar. The grammar is observation, feelings, needs and requests. To emotionally stay connected with our children - EVEN within the most challenging moments. And it's a practice for ourselves to regulate ourselves and to stay present for our children.

Praise vs. Celebration

We have an epidemic with the word "Good" - i.e. good job, good boy, good girl, good sitting, good eating, good climbing up the stairs, etc. What we're doing is making our children become addicted to intrinsic rewards. They become addicted to that praise. Reward cycle and praise. Instead of rewards, move towards a celebration through an observation. "You climbed up the stairs". Try to imagine what the experience means for the child rather than taking it away and making it through us, through our filter. And when we say "good job" what we're really saying is "I like that" and it becomes conditional parenting. If you do what I like, I praise you. If you don't do what I like, there could be silence or things taken away.

Study the neurobiology of your baby. Every time you give an empathetic statement, hold him gently, touch him gently. Every experience your child ever has gets wired into the brain. If were silent or angry towards them, this gets wired into the brain. And it ultimately gets translated into "This world is scary and nobody tells me what is going on," or "Things are scary in this world and it can't be trusted". And just the same, if we are gentle and empathetic, it can be translated into "My feelings get acknowledged" or "Oh I can trust this world." As parents, we are actually sculpting our children's brains. Neuroplasticity - This information has been getting more recognition within the last 15 years. If our own brains didnt get connected and wired with connection, empathy and warmth, everytime we tell our story and every time we weep through some trauma, it can get inbread through connection. It's not just a brain, it's an amazimg bunch of neurons and synapses and are always reforming and connecting. And so the experience we have, we can fix that part of the brain. For instance, post partum depression, it's so important for those neurons in the brain to have connection and to get the support to heal. Everytime we have a connection, we are recreating the neurons. The synapses that aren't used, get pruned away and we want to make sure we're not pruning away the synapses needed for connection. We are sculpting our children's brains through our empathy, our touch, and our tenderness.

And yes it does get more challenging as our child grows. For instance, at the age of 2 years old, when they start to say "No", "Mine" and doesn't want to leave the house, etc. But it's a matter of seeing through a lens of empathy and understanding with our children and how we communicate to our children.

95% of communication is nonverbal so we have to be very aware of our facial expressions, our body language, gestures, and the tone of our voice in which we communicate. It is important to communicate what needs to be said in an empathetic manner because your child will learn about expressing themselves through you. For instance, if you're tired - you can explain to your child in a gentle way "I'm tired and need to take care of myself" vs. being frustrated and taking it out on your child.

Smilin' Dana

Spring & Milo, Eddy, Taryn and Evita fully engaged

Taryn, Evita & Alfonso

Jen, Todd (the owners of the Yogi Tree) and their daughter Joanna

My hubby, Dalmacio's sweet smile

So now that we've discussed Emotional Intelligence, Sculpting the Brain, and Celebration Instead of Praise - the next topic is on Limits and Opening.

Every human being spends every minute of the day trying to meet our core basic human needs. Children don't know the strategies so they look to us to help guide them with their strategies. As our children get older, we have to struggle to move from looking at behavior as good or bad, nice or not nice, respectful or not respectful - to looking at a behavior as a strategy to meet needs.  So when we see our child kicking and crying on the floor (which Ruth doesn't label this as a temper tantrum), we look at this as the cortisone flooding of the brain. Not as defiant or naughty behavior - it is more about "That is my child trying to get her needs met and she's not getting her need met". We can redirect them into other strategies that can meet needs. Opening is the connection and empathy. And ultimately we want our children to feel safe.

Limit with an Opening

A successful strategy is thinking beforehand. For instance, you have to go grocery shopping, ask yourself if you need to take them to the store. And if you do, then create a Limit with an Opening. Scaffold them to be successful. Examples of strategies is about prethinking, preplanning, making books ahead of time before going to the store or the restaurant or dropping your child off to the babysitters rather than getting yourself in the middle of it and then you get frustrated because now you're tired and hungry (which, by the way, this is the worst way to parent is when you're hungry). It's about where am I at? Where do I need to be instead of blaming my child for their behavior?

How about when your child breaks things? With a 2 year old, it takes some work. The higher brain is the problem solving, analytical brain. A 2 year old isn't in that part of the brain yet and they are very impulsive and curious. For example, when a child is eating at the kitchen table, they normally tend to want to throw their plate - this is them learning about gravity. Although parents may not want their child to do this, the child is not at the age where she knows that this could possibly break. So instead of getting frustrated with your child, you could give them bean bags to throw.

Children need alot of opportunities to explore and be physical. So for instance, if your child likes to climb on the chair or on the table - it may be really important to say "developmentally my child is really into climbing". So if it's not ok to climb on the refrigerator then give them things that they can climb on. Finding a limit yet at the same time finding something that they can do.

As for hitting - toddlers do not intentionally hit (it's not violent) - meaning, they're not in their higher brain. At this age, it's very impulsive.  One solution to this issue is instead of getting upset at our child for hitting another child is to redirect. For instance, you can say "Let's be gentle with each other". Then observe what she is trying do. So if you're child is wanting a toy that another child is playing with, it's about modeling the language: "I'm going to hold you", or "I'm going to help you to get you another toy". If she doesn't want the other toy, then you could say, "If you want to play with that toy, then we could wait to see if your friend is done with the toy." If it becomes too challenging and none of the above seems to be working then suggesting to take a walk (changing the environment for the child) can also help your child to regulate.

A concern one of the FLVillagers had was just recently having a baby and helping the older sibling to adjust. Ruth suggested a book written by Gabor Mate and Gordon Neufeld called "Hold On To Your Kids - Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers" - an attachment theory for older children. One of the ways to create connection for parents and their children is to avoid too many playdates. Create sacred family time together. Especially for older children because they are more into their peers. And peers become the most important people in your child's life so it's important to be present, nurture, care and spend family time together. The consciousness is how do we keep the attachment alive as our children get older. It's about connecting emotionally and that doesn't include doing homework together - homework doesn't replace connection time.

Nonviolence - what it means to really respect the life force of another human being, animal and/or plant life. At birth, most people love their children deeply, and love is essential to infant brain development, determining whether or not a child will thrive later in life. Yet, this love gets compromised by a lot of things; stress, fear, poverty, racism, unresolved problems or a parent’s own unresolved childhood trauma. Nonviolence helps the adult to manage all that disconnects them from feeling, thinking and experiencing the child. It supports the adult. It teaches them to step back and celebrate their child when anger, anxiety and withdrawl threaten their connection. It gives parents tools to break their own cycle of violence and projections from their childhoods, and this is a very, very profound thing. It teaches the language of emotional literacy. A dialogue that immerses the adult in emotional connection to child; feelings, needs and modeling behavior for children. It makes space for the emotional process of a child in the adult’s life. It stresses the understanding of child development, encourages a clear whole picture of the child with the ultimate goal of staying connected. It builds a structure of family values that emphasize safety, support and values with limits that do not constrict the child, but support learning and development.

Just from experience, I can honestly say that I'm grateful for learning these tools that Ruth shared with us. Dalmacio and I took a private group 6-week course a couple of months ago and received such wonderful tools to continue supporting our beliefs in conscious parenting. Some tools we were already aware of since we were already on this path and some tools were new to us. For instance, writing/drawing books for your child to help introduce a situation that they will soon experience that might seem challenging or scary. Me and Dalmacio's first book to write was called "Andrik and the Other Caregiver". This was a book I wrote about how there are times when his nanny, Cindy takes time off of work and when we go to the Family Love Village gatherings, that he is safe and can have fun with the other kids and the other caregivers in the kids room (a.k.a. the Sprout Lounge).  Along with Dalmacio's cute and eye-catching illustrations, Andrik was really able to understand this concept. That very day that we wrote the book, he was completely fine in the Sprout Lounge and only cried once for me to have "mommy's mook" for comfort because one of the other kids was a little bit rough (of course without meaning to be - it was just an impulsive reaction).

Other books that we have written are "Andrik and the Doctor's Visit" when he fractured his elbow and "Andrik and the Dentist's Visit" for his first dentist appointment. Although the doctor's visit book didn't go over too well because it was already after the fact that he had to go to the emergency and was traumatized by the whole experience but the book about his first visit to the dentist went over sooo well! I incorporated his favorite thing (machines like cranes, excavators, hardware tools and compared them to the machines and tools in a dentist's office). Of course, you don't have to be an elaborate writer or artist to create these books. Just keeping it simple and drawing stick figures still gets the point across and really helps to set the environment for your children when they actually go to experience the things that might normally be "challenging" or scary.

I hope all the above information gave all of you readers some wonderful insight and tips to help move you forward with staying connected with your children. The Echo Parenting and Education believes that if children are raised with care; we are teaching children to care for themselves, others, and the wider community. Thus, their simple slogan:

Raising Children With Care, Raising Children To Care

To find our more information about their programs and/or booking a private group class, check out their website.


The potluck afterwards

Spring is the Season for Family Festivities - Save the Dates!

2011-03-28T01:12:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. I wanted to share some workshops and activities that are happening in April!

I also wanted to share another event that I thought could be our very first Playdate For a Cause this year! Some of you may not know know but a part of my vision for FLV is to not only have our monthly gatherings with guest speakers but to also go out into our community and make a difference in the world, thus Playdates For A Cause! :o)

Several of you joined us for March's gathering with Ruth Beaglehole from the Echo Education and Parenting Center (I believe this is what she said they are now changing their name to). While perusing through their website, I discovered that they are having a festival at the end of April - which I thought would be a wonderful gathering for those interested in joining. I felt it would be a Playdate For A Cause because we are supporting an organization that believes in non-violent and conscious parenting (that's a beautiful cause to support, I feel!) :o)

So below are details for both events. Please RSVP if you will be joining either one of these gatherings or even better yet, both!

SATURDAY APRIL 9, 2011
L.O.V.E. Parenting: Parent Education for Progressive Families

Many parents who have chosen an alternative, progressive parenting path, one that is deeply rooted in honoring their child, get derailed as the babies get older. Issues like sharing, siblings, social-interplay, communication, autonomy, and discipline come into view and present challenges to the most well-meaning parents. As well, a second pregnancy, the birth of a sibling, and the early years of siblinghood often create challenges that can leave parents feeling overwhelmed and at their wits end. L.O.V.E. Parenting can help! L.O.V.E. Parenting is confident that you can manifest a harmonious relationship with your children at every stage of the game. L.O.V.E. Parenting understands the challenges faced on a daily basis and addresses the uniqueness of each situation with insight and the commonalities with compassion. L.O.V.E. Parenting techniques promote effective communication with respect for the whole family. A sampling of favorites include Set The Stage, the Family Unity Speech, Need-Want-Ask, and WEL-C: Witness, Empathy, Limit, Choice. L.O.V.E. Parenting helps families to parent with love and to L.O.V.E. Parenting; Listen, Open, Value, Enjoy.

Jessica Williams created L.O.V.E. Parenting with private coaching, classes and workshops in Los Angeles and worldwide with Skype. She teaches L.O.V.E. Parenting at The Sanctuary Birth & Family Wellness Center in West LA and at Birth & Beyond in Santa Monica. She is a featured weekly writer for Mothering Magazine’s “All Things Mothering” online blog. Her birth and nursing articles are being published in The Mother Magazine, UK and The Complete Mother, USA. She is a contributor for the Nurture Center, CA. She has presented multiple workshops for the pediatric practice of Dr. Jay Gordon, Santa Monica. Jessica Williams lives in her native Los Angeles with her husband and their three children.

“I am so excited I could dance on the ceiling. Truly amazing woman and I love her parenting take and her advice. Jessica is such a pure person with valuable information and the skill to articulate it.” Carrie-Anne Moss, Actress & Mother of three
“Many, many thanks, Jessica. All you have shared has helped tremendously. So insightful and generous. I love what we are doing and I’m so grateful.” Lisa Bonet, Actress & Mother of three
“Jessica is one of the most grounded, inspirational women that I have had the pleasure of knowing. I have always been impressed by her calm and inspired way of parenting. I highly recommend sitting down with her to chat if you’re struggling with any kind of parenting issue or even just need some support or encouragement for the road you’re on.” Kristen Hundley, Founder of West Los Angeles Attachment Parenting
.

WHAT TIME: 5PM-7PM; Potluck dinner afterwards

WHAT TO BRING:
1) Pen and Paper,
2) Something healthy and yummy to share for the potluck
3) Your OWN dishware and utensils to stay green AND
4) $$ for the childcare services (the amount TBD when the final count of families RSVP) and in case you would like to purchase The L.O.V.E. Parenting CD: Techniques, Visualization & Affirmations, please bring $20, as well.

PLEASE NOTE: If you could please RSVP if you will be using the childcare services. It is highly recommended so that the parents can fully focus on the presentation and get the abundant information given to us for free. I would need to know how many children and their ages. If you do decide not to use the service and will be bringing your child and they start to get a little noisy, then we will ask you to please go into the children's room with them. We ask that you do not leave your child there without your supervision, out of respect for the parents that have already paid for this service. Thank you.

WHERE: The Yogi Tree Studio ~ 4475 Vineland Ave - Toluca Lake, CA 91602

SATURDAY 4/30/11
Peace Through a Child’s Eyes

The Echo Center offers each year the Festival of Childhood: Peace through a Child’s Eyes, which is an open-air street festival that is free for everyone. It is always held in conjunction with the Day of the Child and National Child Abuse Prevention. For one whole day the block is filled with music, laughter and color as children and families visit community booths and take part in arts and health activities. All activities are free!!

WHERE: At the Echo Center - 1226 N. Alvarado Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90026
http://www.theechocenter.org/festival-of-childhood.html

More Lifeschooling Resources - Living and Learning with Preschoolers

2011-03-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share some more wonderful resources in regards to homeschooling. Some of you were present at (or perhaps some of you read about) our past gathering we had with a panel of inspiring homeschooling and unschooling guest speakers that the Family Love Village had back in November.

I had listed a plethora of resources on there but I wanted to share a few more with anyone who is interested. Simply because I love offering resources that helps support FLV's heart principles and the information Dalmacio and I just received last night, I feel is definitely within alignment with our conscious parenting values.

Dalmacio and I joined a teleconference called Living and Learning with Preschoolers and we listened to the first teleconference last night! The host, Diane Flynn Keith (founder of Home Fires - The Journal of Home Schooling) had a guest speaker, Karen Taylor (the director of Cedar Life Academy, a Private School Satellite Program (PSP) for homeschoolers in California). The information in just this first call was uplifting and relieving. And it felt really good to know that alot of what was shared in this first call is pretty much all the things we (we meaning Dalmacio, Andrik's nanny, Cindy and I) are creating with Andrik.

As a matter of fact, the way I found out about this teleconference was because one of the guest speakers on the panel of FLV's homeschooling gathering, Michelle Barone is one of the guest speakers for this conference, as well! Thank you Michelle for paying it forward! :o)

I'm excited for the next sessions and can't wait to learn more tools on life schooling. For those parents who want to join, it is not too late to register for this teleconference. The sessions get taped and you have the opportunity to listen to the recording at your convenience! For the cost of the teleconference and the insightful information and wisdom given, I feel is very well worth it!

To get a brief idea of what the Living and Learning Preschoolers teleconference has to offer, below is what the program includes:

Six One-Hour Sessions as Follows:

1. How & Why You Should Teach Your Preschooler At Home

2. Playful Activities to Nurture Your Young Child's Mind, Body, & Spirit

3. Parenting Preschoolers: Development, Discipline, & Family Dynamics

4. Raising Smarter Preschoolers: A Father's Perspective

5. Food Fights: Meals, Nutrition, & Picky Eaters

6. A Home Preschool Curriculum: Fun and Playful Ways to Learn and Grow

And here are a few more wonderful resources on homeschooling:

1) An Introduction to Homeschooling

2) Director of State Homeschooling Organizations Throughout the US

3) Resources for Homeschooling Gifted and Talented Children

4) Carschooling - An Alternative Approach to Homeschooling

5) The Best of ClickSchooling - How To Use the Web To Get a World-Class Education

6) And then don't forget all the resources from the actual Living and Learning With Preschoolers teleconference of all the guest speakers listed on the panel.

So I hope this helps you and your family with further options and resources. Here's to all of us creating a life of continuous pro-active learning and loving with our children!

Emergency Preparedness by Alegre Ramos

2011-03-22T01:53:00.000-07:00

Just in case you are wondering if you missed out on an FLV gathering, you haven't. I am posting this because Dalmacio and I attended an Emergency Preparedness workshop presented by one of our fellow villagers Alegre Ramos (owner of Green and Greener - an eco-friendly store located in Studio City, CA) for another group we are a part of called Holistic Moms Network (HMN) and felt it was such an important topic that I felt I needed to share (especially after the tragic occurrences in Japan).

I am soo grateful that Alegre did this presentation because I actually was planning to have another friend, Aaron do this presentation for the Family Love Village this year but he had moved away last year. So when I heard Alegre was doing this presentation I approached her to see if she'd be willing to do a presentation for our village, as well and am very excited to announce that she will be coming to us in the next few months!

For the time being, here are my extensive notes on this very important topic. And yes this is going to be a novel (lol) and I will not apologize this time for the lengthyness of this post (like I normally do) because, well... I feel you and your family could benefit from all the information listed in this post. So here goes:

4 STAGES FOR PREPARING FOR AN EMERGENCY:

STAGE 1: PLAN AND TRAIN - Estimated cost is around $100 and takes about 30 hours.

Part of planning is sitting down and creating a plan. This can consist of getting your important documents (i.e. driver's license, ID, birth certificate, SSN #, etc ) and making copies of it. Copies to go in 1) each To-Go kit, 2) a fireproof safe outside the house (actually it's best to keep the originals in this fireproof safe), and 3) 3 flash drives - one in your To-Go Kit, one to a trusted family member, and one at the office. You can also fax yourself a copy to your email address, as well. Videotape and photograph all of your belongings of important and valuable items so you can show the insurance. A good note is videotaping the date on a newspaper to show proof of the date that you are videotaping. Fax yourself your bank statements, a copy of your mortgage, insurance paperwork, your pet's chip ID, etc. It's also a good idea to have recent photographs with your pet so that you can show proof that your pet belongs to you. It's also important to have recent photographs of family so you can identify them.

Create and type a wallet sized emergency plan. Make copies and laminate them. Each To-Go Kit should have a laminated emergency plan card! (The "To Go" kits will be described in detail under Stage 2 below)

Here's an example of a wallet sized emergency plan:

Grab flashlight/lightstick and shoes under bed. Duck/cover under solid piece of furniture AWAY from glass or in interior hallway. DO NOT switch on lights until you are sure there is no gas leak. If you smell gas, shut it off. Turn off water to house to keep it clean and potable and turn off electrical breakers (individual first then main.) Water heater good source of drinking water. Stay where you are if it’s safe, you may want to go to nearby park (nothing to fall on you) but call each other or out of town contact so that someone knows you are safe. If you can’t get a hold of anyone and not safe where you are, head to [designated location]. Leave a note under your door mat saying where you’ve gone. If you are passing by [location on the way], stop there & leave a note in “message drop” saying day/time, where you are going, your condition, and anything else important. Message drop locations: My house: Potted orange tree to the right of hose in front of house, Your house: Pot under living room window.

If we can’t reach each other, out of town calls may still be possible, once safe check in with: 1st [out of town contact] 646.322.XXXX (cell) XXX@gmail.com, 212.412.XXX (work land) 2nd [out of town contact] XXXXXX@lilly.com, 636.346.XXX (cell) or 317.276.XXX (work land).

Our phone numbers and networks:
Dalmacio & Vivi Verizon: 818.333.XXX and 310.259.XXX, land
818.708.XXX | Linda/Michael: AT&T 818.634.XXX,
818.634.XXX/818.635.XXX, land 818.776.XXX | Bob: AT&T
213.447.XXXX | Davon: Sprint 213.926.XXX | Eddie: land
310.476.XXXX

Remember: 911 for emergencies
-Same network cell phones more likely to work with each other
-If cell phones don’t work for calls, texting may still work
-Landlines have their own electricity source

Other important aspects of planning for an emergency is making a disaster plan with 1-3 other families. There is peace of mind in numbers. It's always good to have other people that have your back and vice versa. Part of planning with a group, it should be decided who's house is the best location to store supplies and in the event of an emergency should all go to this location. Once you have decided who's house that everyone should try to go to, it's a good idea for everyone to help pitch in with the supplies.

Other examples that are part of planning is safe guarding doors and putting child-proof latches on the top cupboards so that your glassware doesn't fall down. If you don't already have one, get a landline that plugs into an electrical source in case your cell phone doesn't work.

Get your community organized. See if your neighborhood is open to organizing an emergency plan together. Google map the streets in your neighborhood. Find out the ages of children and elderly. Find out who has what skills in your neighborhood (i.e. your neighbor 3 houses down is a fireman, etc). And find out where the gas meter is for each of your neighbors on either side of your house.

I. Steps to Creating a Plan:

1. Pick your SAFE ZONE inside the house. The safest place is under heavy furniture but if that furniture is surrounded by windows, then that wouldn't be a good place to pick as your safe zone. Another good option is interior hallways where there are no pictures or glass within the vicinity. This is a good place to pick because normally you don't have to worry about doors swinging open. During an earthquake, even in a hallway that doesn't have anything breakable, it is still wise to duck and cover. NOTE: Majority of injuries occur due to flying objects!

2. Make sure to have your "To Go" kits near the Safe Zone.

3. Prepare a bag for "Under Your Bed" supplies. This consist of: 1) a pair of tennis shoes, 2) hard hat, 3) crankable LED flashlight, 4) glow sticks, 5) whistle, 6) mask, and 7) goggles. If it's in the middle of the night and it's during an emergency, grab these supplies and go to your Safe Zone. I also put both my cats' carriers next to the "Under Your Bed" supplies in our open closet. Since our bed lies on a Japanese tatami mat close to the floor, we don't have the option to put these supplies under the bed. And since our closet doesn't have a door on it (which is probably a good thing), we have the supplies on a rack close to the floor in the closet.

4. Do NOT turn your lights on due to sparks.

5. Know where your gas meter is ahead of time. That way if you smell gas after an earthquake, you will know to go to your gas and turn it off. To turn off your gas valve, turn the valve clockwise and the knob should be horizontal. It is also a good idea to know ahead of time where your neighbors' gas meters are at in case you need to shut their gas off. There is a handy gas shut-off tool with no moving parts that you can tie to your gas meter (unlike a wrench with moving parts it won’t rust and be inoperable so it’s perfect to just leave out at your gas meter “just in case.”). If your gas meter doesn't have an auto shut off, it's advisable to get one. When Alegre's neighborhood did their planning, one neighbor called around and many companies were willing to give a discount for doing multiple houses at once. Also, when you go on vacation remind your neighbors that if something happens while you are away to turn off your gas/water/electrical for you.

6. It's also a good idea to turn off your water because whatever is in your water heater is good drinkable water. It's also good to know how to turn off your electrical, as well.

7. Once earthquake is over and it is safe to go outside, grab your "To Go" Kits.

II. Training - Training is also an important part of Stage 1. You can check to see if your local fire department offers training for emergency preparedness. This is FREE to the public. You can also go to http://www.cert-la.com/ and download certificate programs there and learn more information on getting certified.

1. It's important to know that during an emergency, it can take up to about 3-5 days for emergency services to get to you and your loved ones. So it's best to be prepared and take it into your own hands during this time by following the 4 stages of preparation. It's suggested to prepare for at least 4-5 weeks worth of supplies.

STAGE 2: CREATING "TO GO" KITS - Estimated cost is $300 and takes about 6 hours

I. Home To-Go Kit:

Pack the following items in a large and sturdy backpack:

Laminated wallet sized card with your typed Emergency Plan.
Leather gloves (to get glass out of the way)
Medical latex gloves
Crankable flashlight
Glowsticks
Wrench
WD 40 lube
Matches
Shovel
Crowbar
11. Map of your area (identify parks, fire depts and safe places to go)
12. Female hygiene
13. Food (energy bars, dehydrated foods, nuts except for oily nuts like walnuts, chocolate - make sure it's a shelf life of at least 5 years)
14. Water (change every 6 months)
15. Pen and paper to leave notes
16. Antibacterial
17. Masks & goggles
18. Small bills
19. Carabiner
20. Whistles
21. Plastic bags for sanitation
22. Clothes (for warm weather and cold weather)
23. Hat
24. Shoes
25. First aid kit
26. Copy of important documents (paper and/or flashdrive)

NOTE: The top 4 most important items on this list are: water, hat, shoes and first aid kit in case you have to walk far and it is hot).

II. Work To-Go Kit:
1. All of the above PLUS the following:
2. Flash drive with copies of important documents at the office
3. Need to create a separate wallet card Emergency Plan for your office
III. Car To-Go Kit:
1. Everything that is listed in the Home To-Go Kit PLUS the following:
2. If you have a baby or toddler, an extra baby carrier
3. A favorite toy that your child won't miss, books, crayons and paper for your child (I thought of this one since it may help to keep your child occupied after an emergency or to have things that help to calm them down, such as a favorite toy or book).
4. Leash for your pet
5. Harness for your pet
6. Formula for your baby
7. Eco-friendly baby wipes
8. Eco-friendly diapers
9. Knife and/or box cutters (My hubby Dalmacio is a firm believer in box cutter/utility knives and loves this brand.)
10. Binoculars
11. Water filter on top of Kleen Kanteen bottle water
12. Toiletries
13. Rubber tubing/surgical tubing
14. Mosquito control
15. Compass
16. Crank radio or solar radio
17. Check books
18. Head lamps
19. Emergency Response Kit
20. Dog kit (saddle bag) - you can get one that has everything needed for pets
21. Booties for your dog - in case they have to walk on glass
22. Clothes for your pet in case it is cold
23. "Guide to Wild Foods and Useful Plants" Book
24. "US Army Survival Manual"
25. Lamp light
26. Batteries (Home Depot has batteries that have a shelf life of 15 years). It's best to keep in the original packaging, standing upright!
27. Hydrogen Peroxide
28. Coffee filters - this is helpful when deciphering and filtering water to make into drinkable water
29. Thermal blankets
30. Emergency sleeping bags
31. Tube tents

NOTE: The above To-Go lists AND the Emergency Plan are examples of what Alegre and her family created for what was important to them (I added a few things that I felt were important to my family). These lists can be modified to fit what you and your family feel is valid and important.

STAGE 3: MAJOR HOME SUPPLIES: Estimated cost is $1000. This is storage for water and food.

Rule for water: 1 gallon per person per day. For 1 month, you may want to have up to 100 gallons. You can get ring barrels (55 gallons each). If it's a plastic container, make sure it is NOT sitting on the concrete because chemicals can leach into the container. So it's highly suggested to put the ring barrels on top of cardboard. Since long-term survival is all about water, it's a great idea to have a way to filter the water, as well as have purification tablets on hand. Boil/filter/purify…whatever you have to do to have fresh water! You can get these at camping stores. Here’s a long info page on emergency water storage that is a good resource to review.
Store home supplies in a trash can that has wheels outside so that you can roll offsite.
Examples of food to store: dehydrated foods, nuts (avoid oily nuts like walnuts), beans, rice.
For pets: canned food. We do our best not to have dry kibble because kibble is not good for our cats to eat but in this case of an emergency, it doesn't hurt to have a bag of grain-free dry kibble, as well.
Tent & sleeping bags
Old cast iron skillets
Stainless steel utensils
Cardboard boxes and aluminum. You can cook food as a solar cooker this way.
Portable solar panels, such as Silicon Solar
Keep bikes accessible and part of preparedness

STAGE 4: MAJOR HOME IMPROVEMENTS - Estimated cost can vary depending on what improvements you feel you need to do for your home.

Get your windows tempered.
Bolt foundation and visible studs
Secure top heavy furniture (especially if taller than wide)
Secure electronics
Secure water heater (move it outside if you can)
Secure cabinets
Get fire extinguishers
Remove chemicals from the house and make sure to bring to a safe center for disposal!

Phew...You made it to this point! Congratulations! I know there's alot of information here to digest but it's soo worth reading through all of it. And just so you don't get too overwhelmed, you don't have to do all of the 4 stages at once. Alegre stated that if you at least begin with Stage 1 ("Plan and Train") and Stage 2 ("Create your To Go Kits"), this could take a few years to do. So do what you can but start NOW!

And just to continue with my tradition of posting references, I wanted to share more information. Remember how I mentioned in the beginning of this post that my friend Aaron was going to be a guest speaker for the Family Love Village but moved away? Well good news, a mutual friend of ours sent me a link to a post that Aaron put on his blog. Not only was there one but there are two posts on his blog, Transitional Forces that I feel are great resources. So please check out: Shaken Up and Earthquakes and Whistles.

Other great resources are:

True Readiness: A wonderful website that offers emergency kits and other survival needs. And they are local (Woodland Hills, CA). And the best part is the customer service is amazing!
Quake Kare: Another website that carries a variety of Emergency Kits that provides some of the items listed in the To-Go kits. The company is a local company too. They are located in Moopark, CA.
SOS Survival Products - Another emergency store located in Van Nuys, CA.
Gluten Free & Vegan Survival Foods: I did a search and found this company that sells gluten free and vegan survival foods which is important for Andrik and myself since he is allergic to wheat/gluten, dairy, corn, eggs, and cashews. Although I haven't yet figured out how to get to the actual option to review the foods they sell. I may have to call them to find out. Actually I would just skip to items 7 & 8 below for sites that are easier to access for their organic and allergy free items.
Earthquake Country: a great reference for earthquakes
Linda Pruett- If you live in the San Fernando Valley, ask to be part of her email list. She sends out important information in regards to emergencies. Her email is textmgt@att.net
Organic Survivalist Site - "A Resource Website For Emergency Preparedness & Survivalism From a Holistic Perspective" - the tagline says it all! Sooo glad I found this site! :o) I absolutely LOVE this site! One of the posts on this site that I'm truly grateful for is: Water Purification & Storage - Healthy Ways to Store Water.
Also check out this other post from Organic Survivalist Site: Hemp and its EP Benefits
Storable Organics - This site has organic food in bulk, such as quinoa (which is one of the best EP proteins out there for vegans/vegetarians) and organic brown rice.
Allergy Free Foods - this one is really awesome with good prices for 25lb and 50lb bags of bulk foods that also have organic choices!
Essential Living Foods - Amazing site for organic superfoods

Phew...Ok I feel a whole LOT better now that I've shared all of this insightful information that can better prepare all of us! Sending you and your loved ones much loving energy as you create your emergency preparedness! And if there is an emergency that we do end up experiencing, may we all feel reassured at least just a little bit, knowing that we are more prepared than we were before!

I would like to end this post with a loving and affirmative prayer towards the souls that are being affected by natural disasters throughout the world.

I set the loving intention that all the souls being affected by natural disasters are healing - whether it's for physical, emotional and/or spiritual healing. Knowing that they are not alone, that there are people here to help them - whether it's actually being physically there to lend a hand or through donations or through prayers - we as loving beings are continuing to keep the vibrations high and envisioning global healing NOW. Knowing that as aware beings, we are setting the intention to continue leading and role modeling conscious and eco-holistic living. By being conscious, by being eco-friendly and by living a more holistic lifestyle, we are setting the pathway for this global healing to continue through us role modeling and creating this healing in our own backyards, our own homes, as well. I am ever-so-grateful for the families that have joined the Family Love Village and for my fellow readers on this blog who are continuing to join us on this conscious journey for it is within this space where change occurs. Just by supporting and having the willingness to actually "be the change we wish to see in the world", we are making a difference...we are a creating the conscious shift on a vibrational level. And I thank each and everyone of you for being on this playing field of conscious BEINGness for yourself, for your families, for Mama Gaia, for the animal kingdom, for ALL living things. And with this deep gratitude, I release this prayer towards all living kind to experience this shift with us. I release it into the winds, into the oceans, into the embers and into the earth - knowing that we are ALL one with each other, one with animals, one with creatures, one with the planet, one with life. And so it is...Aho, Aum and Amen.

Mark Your Calendars for Saturday 3/19/11 with Ruth Beaglehole!

2011-03-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

Introduction to Nonviolent Parenting: An Empathy-Based Approach to Raising Children.

Every parent and every child has experienced deep feelings of frustration and anger. You are not alone! Raising children can be very challenging!

In this gathering, we will be introduced to a philosophy of parenting based on:

• Exploring ourselves and our children through a lens of empathy and understanding.

• Teaching emotional intelligence by learning a language of feelings and needs.

• Setting respectful, clear boundaries.

• Exploring strategies and tools that will help you successfully create the parenting relationship you want with your child.

• Discussion on two paradigms of parenting (conditional and nonviolent), attachments and brain development

Ruth Beaglehole MA. is the founder and Executive Director of the Echo Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting parents and teachers to break the cycle of early family violence by learning the philosophy of nonviolent parenting. She has spent her life considering the needs of children, seeking support and nurturing for children as full human beings, using the principles of respect, healing and connection. Ruth's professional journey parallels her personal journey and has given her the empathy, courage and dedication that has fueled her groundbreaking work; creating a new paradigm of unconditional parenting that is the soul of The Echo Center.

She has been a preschool/parent educator for over 50 years. She is the author of "Mama, Listen! Raising a Child Without Violence – A Handbook for Teen Parents." She co – authored the Echo Center's Nonviolent Parenting Curriculum, co-author of "School Readiness Learning Module" of the North East Los Angles School Readiness Center and the It Takes a Community Curriculum (ITC) for the Department of Mental Health, Los Angeles. She is an Early Childhood trainer in nonviolent child-raising and ITC for parents and professionals and an active member of the leadership group of Magnolia Place Initiative, supporting the implementation of ITC and Strengthening Families Five Protective Factors.

WHEN: SATURDAY 3/19/2011

WHAT TIME: Presentation from 5pm-7pm and potluck afterwards.

WHERE: The Yogi Tree ~ 4475 Vineland Ave ~ Toluca Lake, CA 91602 ~ 818-760-0112

WHAT TO BRING:

1. Something yummy to share for our potluck

2. Your own family's dishware & utensils (to continue to stay "green")

3. $$ for childcare services (if you will be needing this service)

**PLEASE NOTE: If you could please RSVP if you will be using the childcare services. It is highly recommended so that the parents can fully focus on the presentation and get the abundant information given to us for free. I would need to know how many children and their ages. If you do decide not to use the service and will be bringing your child and they start to get a little noisy, then we will ask you to please go into the children's room with them. We ask that you do not leave your child there without your supervision, out of respect for the parents that have already paid for this service. Thank you.

Igniting the Spark After Becoming Parents with Dr. Cheryl Joy Bratman

2011-02-25T00:44:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when parents get overloaded with taking care of their lil ones, running errands, working fulltime (or part-time), bringing the kids to their game or recital, getting food on the table, getting the kids ready for bed and cleaning the house – they tend to become so exhausted that they lose sight of themselves and their partners. Sometimes a quick peck on the lips is all that we have energy to give to our significant other or sometimes we even neglect ourselves with our own self-love and care. Before these precious lil souls entered our lives, we were able to have more opportunities to take care of our own needs and share loving and connecting moments with our partners. So the question is, how can we ignite that spark back into our lives with ourselves and our partners and create a balance between being a parent and a spouse, as well as getting our own needs met?

In order for children to learn about self-love and how to create a healthy relationship with a significant other, this could be shown by the parents modeling this type of healthy interaction. Dr. Cheryl Joy Bratman who was our guest speaker for February has been a very integral part of my own family's journey and I was extremely excited to share her abundance of wisdom to the village.

Dr Bratman and myself. I LOVE this woman - she is a shining light of love energy!

Dr. Cheryl Joy Bratman is a masterful healer, teacher and writer. She has been in private practice as a Chiropractor for 27 years and as a licensed Spiritual Practitioner since 1999. She works with individuals, couples and families doing body/mind/spirit healing which includes physical modalities as well as emotional and spiritual counseling. Formerly a trial attorney, her passion is public speaking and facilitation of groups on healing energy, spirituality and sexuality. She has been a Lead Facilitator for many accredited classes at the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, California where she teaches Science of Mind principles and has been a monthly contributor to Agape's "Inner Visions" publication for over ten years. Dr. Bratman lives in Los Angeles, California and is the mother of two young adult sons.

This gathering was by far, me and Dalmacio's favorite one! Dr. Bratman really created a sacred space for all of us that night! She began with a 15 minute guided meditation by Esther Hicks "Getting Into the Vortex" which grounded all of us and really set the tone for the rest of the evening.

It was truly such a special workshop. It wasn't a lecture on how to get our needs met, she actually created a more dynamic environment for us to actually engage with one another. I was actually very excited that everyone was able to open up and let go of any uncomfortable fears of sharing in this sacred space because it was about honing in on what you really wanted, really needed in order to get your needs met. I think everyone that was present at this gathering should give themselves a big loving hug for being able to step out of their comfort zone and step into their awareness! And the only way that this was going to happen was if couples played...and boy did everyone play! It was definitely a fun, hilarious, exhilarating, emotional, uplifting, comforting and releasing (just to name a few adjectives) workshop!

Crystal and Cory

Jarreau, Lauren & Isaiah

One topic that kept coming up throughout the night between all the couples was intimacy and sex (or shall I say, the lack of). We hear it all the time - about couples not having as much sex after having kids. Whether we're too tired and drained or have our own "brain diarrhea" (as Dr. Bratman likes to put it) or stress that overrides our desire to want anything that feels good to us - it was in some ways, very comforting to know that we are not alone with feeling this way. Whether married for 12 years or 2, the issue is there. And it wasn't only just about the physical aspect of it - it is the intimacy, the connection that is missing, the misunderstood body language or the miscommunication or no communication, in some cases. Or perhaps for some, it was all of the above. Either way, every relationship has most likely come across the topic of the lack of sex after having kids. The question is how can you re-create that connection, to bring that spark back to life?

Dr. Bratman shared some insightful tools to help the couples communicate their desires to one another. One of the tools was called "active listening". She guided each couple through the following steps for each couple's situation:

When sharing your feelings or requests, take the time, when you're not tired, so that no matter what issue is coming up for you, you can look each other in the eye, maybe even touch each other so that you feel the tenderness between the two of you. That way it's not adversarial or blaming/shaming each other because this doesn't get either of you anywhere.
When speaking to your loved one, you want to use the "I" terminology about what it is you're thinking or feeling. For example, instead of saying "you make me feel...", you would say "I am feeling..."
If there is a direct request about something you would like, then you want to say that there is a direct request that you would like to share.
After you have shared your request, the partner then looks you in the eyes and repeats what your request is. This is to confirm that they heard your request correctly (i.e. "I hear that you would like to connect at a deeper level with our sexuality..." or "I hear that you would like to go out on a date more often which means finding someone to watch the kids so that we can spend loving, quality time together.")
Once both have been able to state their requests and actively listen by repeating what the other partner has requested, this then opens the door to a more loving, respectful way to communicate with one another.

Dr. Bratman stated that when we practice this tool of active listening, it truly helps with clear communication of what you want or need. She used the analogy of someone learning how to play the piano and practicing the scales. Once they get good enough, they can learn to play songs. Just like the pianist has trained himself to express his art, when you exercise this technique over and over again with your partner, it can then become easier to share your needs and desires in a healthy way. This tool is a framework with an intentionality so the more that we can practice active listening, the more we can flow and dance with it (and with your partner)! ;o)

In this intimate setting, the families were able to really connect with their partners and express what they truly wanted for themselves and from their spouses. Whether it was wanting more intimate moments to share with one another by making decisions (as a couple) on setting healthy boundaries with their children in order to create more time with one another or it was expressing what you want by actually communicating your desires and making it clear about your loving intentions - it was clear across the board that what the underlying challenge between the couples is creating that spark back into your relationship. Ya know, that giddy butterfly feeling you used to get in your tummy; that fiery passion that you both felt when you first fell in love!

(L to R): Corey, Kyle, Renee, Dana, Clif, Sonia & Sean

(L to R): Dana, Clif, Sonia, Sean, Jen & Todd (the owners of the Yogi Tree, FLV's new home) and my beautiful hubby, Dalmacio

Again I was so very grateful for everyone not only actively listening but actively participating. Whether it was about the relationship or the parenting, we all truly gained something from what every one shared that evening.

Out of respect of the couples and to continue to keep the space as sacred, I will not go into detail with the events of this evening. However, the following are a few tips that Dr. Bratman gave to the couples during our "love sessions" which I wanted to share because I felt anyone reading this could gain insight from:

There is a difference in what each person might need to understand what's being communicated. And when you really love someone, you not only are faced with what it is you might need or want, but you are tuning in to what your partner might need or want too so that you can give back AND ask for what you need so that it can be a win-win.
Always "check in" with one another. Inquire vs. assume what the other is feeling or thinking. One of things that is most challenging for all of us humanoids is that we tend to make assumptions. One of the agreements from the book "The Four Agreements" is 'Don't Make Assumptions'. So if you have the courage to inquire, it is so much more beneficial in any relationship (whether it be your partner, your children, your boss or a friend, etc) because the assumptions we might be making may not be appropriate for what's really going on inside of somebody else.
You can't make anyone else feel anything. That is an inside job for you. Your beauty is an inner glow. Unless you do the inner work for yourself, regardless of where your partner is at so that you begin to sense and connect to your own beauty (your spiritual beauty as well as your physical beauty), then nothing your partner does or says (i.e. "your beautiful", "you look amazing") will seem true because you yourself don't believe it. Part of cultivating your sexuality can be done through the inner work (whether it's through meditation, journaling, or some kind of processing for yourself in your private time) so that you can really appreciate your own inner beauty and feel beautiful.
To add to tip # 3: on the reverse side - if you are feeling stressed out and you state that your partner is making you stressed out - this is not true either. No one is "making" you feel stressed out. You are choosing to feel this way and need to take responsibility on your behalf vs. blaming anyone outside of yourself for how you are feeling.
When you go through each chapter of your child's life, there will be new issues to face. When approaching these challenges, if the parents can come together with love without judging, and can say "I feel and I would like," it makes it alot easier on both of you to brainstorm together on healthy boundaries for your children that you both can agree upon.
Guilt is a waste of creative energy. It's an avoidance of taking responsibility for our choices. Let go of the guilt (i.e. "not spending enough time with my husband" or "not spending enough time with my baby", etc) and just be clear of what your decisions will be. When we let go of the guilt and just let our children know what we're doing (i.e. going to dance class or taking time to meditate), we are role modeling to them that we love ourselves by taking care of ourselves. And just the same, when couples express tenderness and "active listening" in front of our children, we are role modeling healthy communication.
When we carry around our "stories", this is just what it is - a story, a racket (highly recommended to click on this definition) that we are holding onto that isn't benefiting ourselves, our spouses or our children. Let's use the following statement as an example:

"I can never go to the gym to workout because my daughter needs me to be the one to put her to sleep at night". This is a racket that you are making up for yourself to believe. A story made up in your head that your baby won't be able to sleep without you, therefore the end result is you not being able to get your needs met. If you just let go of your racket and trust that everything will be fine with daddy being able to handle it - this once again allows your baby to witness you taking care of yourself and allows for daddy to have the confidence in himself that he can do the job just as good.

As conscious parents, part of our goal with being conscious and unconditionally loving to our children is role modeling a loving connection with our partners. This is how our children learn firsthand about love for themselves and between other humans. But if parents are too exhausted and get irritable with one another when their children are present (or towards the children) then the kids are not able to see the tenderness and even touchy feelingness between their parents and are missing out on an entire part of role modeling they can learn for when they are adults in a relationship. Being able to see the love energy between parents is a really important aspect in coupledom.

Again, I was truly in deep gratitude for our beautiful spiritual practitioner and friend taking the time to be a guest speaker for our village. It was a blessing to have Dr. Bratman play with us that evening in such a way that I know each couple received much insight from this amazing woman.

Dr. Bratman and my 2 boys in the Lil Munchkin Room (a.k.a. the Healing Room)

On that note, I wanted to end this post with one more loving message that Dr. Bratman wanted to share to our village:

"I offer the February Family Love Village session to you as an opportunity to learn about and utilize various tools and techniques to further enhance your ability to express yourself clearly with your partner and get your own needs met. My intention is to inspire and assist you on your path of consciousness evolution, as a parent and spouse, by helping you develop excellent communication skills of compassionate listening and respectful speaking. I invite you to become a witness to your own experiences and to share your thoughts and feelings with integrity and honesty. By consciously choosing to open up more profoundly, you will be able to observe the transformational power of the Universal Source at work in your life. May your journey be blessed with love, joy and peace."

Mark Your Calendars for Sat 2/19/11: Igniting the Spark After Becoming Parents

2011-02-18T00:23:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! Please mark your calendars for a very special gathering in February.

The topic: Igniting the Spark After Becoming Parents

Sometimes when parents get overloaded with taking care of their lil ones, running errands, working fulltime (or part-time), bringing the kids to their game or recital, getting food on the table, getting the kids ready for bed and cleaning the house – they tend to become so exhausted that they l...ose sight of themselves and their partners. Sometimes a quick peck on the lips is all that we have energy to give to our significant other or sometimes we even neglect ourselves with our own self-love and care. Before these precious lil souls entered our lives, we were able to have more opportunities to take care of our own needs and share loving and connecting moments with our partners. So the question is, how can we ignite that spark back into our lives with ourselves and our partners and create a balance between being a parent and a spouse, as well as getting our own needs met?

In order for children to learn about self-love and how to create a healthy relationship with a significant other, this could be shown by the parents modeling this type of healthy interaction. I introduce to the Family Love Village, Dr. Cheryl Joy Bratman who will give us the tools on how to create this balance. She has been a very integral part of my own family’s journey and am extremely excited to share her abundance of wisdom to the village. And what better timing since it is the month of Love – near Valentine’s Day. But this even goes beyond this significant date – the importance of our love doesn’t necessarily have to be celebrated on one particular day or anniversary. Or even with a significant other. This gathering isn’t just for couples either. This is also for individuals wanting to create that healthy balance of self-love, as well! So let’s celebrate love everyday for ourselves, for our partners and for our children!

Dr. Cheryl Joy Bratman is a masterful healer, teacher and writer. She has been in private practice as a Chiropractor for 27 years and as a licensed Spiritual Practitioner since 1999. She works with individuals, couples and families doing body/mind/spirit healing which includes physical modalities as well as emotional and spiritual counseling. Formerly a trial attorney, her passion is public speaking and facilitation of groups on healing energy, spirituality and sexuality. She has been a Lead Facilitator for many accredited classes at the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City, California where she teaches Science of Mind principles and has been a monthly contributor to Agape’s “Inner Visions” publication for over ten years. Dr. Bratman lives in Los Angeles, California and is the mother of two young adult sons.

Below is a message she wanted to share to the village:

“I offer the February Family Love Village session to you as an opportunity to learn about and utilize various tools and techniques to further enhance your ability to express yourself clearly with your partner and get your own needs met. My intention is to inspire and assist you on your path of consciousness evolution, as a parent and spouse, by helping you develop excellent communication skills of compassionate listening and respectful speaking. I invite you to become a witness to your own experiences and to share your thoughts and feelings with integrity and honesty. By consciously choosing to open up more profoundly, you will be able to observe the transformational power of the Universal Source at work in your life. May your journey be blessed with love, joy and peace.”

WHEN: SATURDAY 2/19/2011

WHAT TIME: Presentation from 5pm-7pm and potluck afterwards.

WHERE: The Yogi Tree ~ 4475 Vineland Ave ~ Toluca Lake, CA 91602 ~ 818-760-0112

WHAT TO BRING:

1. Something yummy to share for our potluck AND your own dishes (plates/bowls/cups/utensils). Majority of families have all agreed that to continue supporting one of our principles of being eco-friendly that the best way to do this is to bring our own eatery items instead of having to continuously buy this stuff that will end up in our landfill.

2. $$ for childcare services (if you will be needing this service)

PLEASE NOTE: Please RSVP if you will be using the childcare services. It is highly recommended so that the parents can fully focus on the presentation and get the abundant information given to us for free. I would need to know how many children and their ages. If you do decide not to use the service and will be bringing your child and they start to get a little noisy, then we will ask you to please go into the children's room with them. We ask that you do not leave your child there without your supervision, out of respect for the parents that have already paid for this service.

Also, we're excited to share that the hired caregiver is open to learning about FLV's core principle and that is gentle guidance with our cihldren. I felt it was important that this be an overall encompassing belief, not just for the parents but for whomever watches our children while the parents are in the workshops. Thank you.

We are so excited to see all of your beautiful faces and to share FLV's new home with you!! Please RSVP to the actual event invite that was sent out to you. Thanks a bunch!

The Social Entrepreneur Empowerment Series

2011-02-10T15:49:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone. I just wanted to share with everyone a FREE teleconference that I've been joining for the past couple of weeks. It's called the Social Entrepreneur Empowerment Series. And let me tell you, I am just sooo inspired, empowered and fired up (no pun intended) about the plethora of resources, information and tools that these guest speakers are providing for social entrepreneurs that want to make a difference in the world in creating a more loving, peaceful and sustainable planet!

I just listened to an interview w/ the founder of this project, Ryan Eliason last night and am in such deep gratitude for what he is creating for us entrepreneurs! I am deeply passionate about listening to as many interviews as I possibly can - as part of my commitment to going full-force with my vision for Family Love Village!

For more details, check out The Social Entrepreneur Empowerment Series. You'll hear from NY Times #1 best selling authors, self-made millionare entrepreneurs, and global visionaries such as Marianne Williamson, John Robbins, Ali Brown, Fabien Fredrickson, Julia Butterfly Hill, Lynne Twist, Bruce Lipton, Bill Drayton and more inspiring pioneers of social change.

The first wave of guest speakers are still available and I believe it will be available to everyone even after the series is done. The first wave is to inspire you with guest speakers' achievements and the 2nd wave is to empower you by giving you the tools to create your own achievements. We’re already in the second wave of guest speakers which is only available within 24 hours of recording from each day that interviews are given. Even if you only listen to 1-2 guest speakers from the 2nd wave, I guarantee you will receive a benefit from it for your own social entrepreneur movement or business. I can almost guarantee by just listening to even just 1 interview that you'll be so inspired and empowered to want to listen to all of them! And if this peaks your interest to Get Details and RSVP, you will still be able to listen to alot of the interviews now!

I feel that you will truly benefit from this and leave with numerous valuable strategies you can implement right away, including the latest thinking on: social change, green marketing, conscious marketing, mission-based business, online movement building, client attraction, book authoring and marketing, branding, niching, outsourcing, generating a mindset for success, the blueprint for launching a social enterprise, standing out on the web, attracting a global following, building a financially-successful enterprise, product launch formulas, time management secrets, social media strategies, leading fundraising methods, and more to help you triple your bottom line - people, planet, and profit!

So I just wanted to share with all of you what I've been up to these days and what has been ecstatically moving me forward with my vision for our village and the villages soon to be created throughout the world!

Peace & ignition,

Your fellow villager,
Tangee

Community Within the Animal Kingdom

2011-01-25T10:41:00.000-08:00

They say when someone within your village goes through a challenging time, that the village comes together for support. They pull all their resources together, they consult to the Medicine Man or Medicine Woman of their tribe for natural, healing modalities. This is such a comforting thing, to know that an entire village will stand by each other to ensure that all are supported. A comfort that is beginning to flourish within our village. It's also comforting to know that this is the case for our furry animals, as well. Because even in a village, animals are treated with respect and all living things live in harmonious energy with one another. It reminds me of that wonderful and heart-warming movie, Avatar. And how truly inspiring this vision of interconnectedness they had with all living things. Our society is starting to shift towards this movement - where barriers are released, where humankind will wake up and treat each other, animals and Mama Gaia with gentle consciousness. And I definitely envision the Family Love Village being a part of that movement.

For now, I would like to share a piece of what community can create. My heart is swelling with tears of gratitude to all the loving souls that continued to give us support for our beautiful girl Chachi. Dalmacio and I wanted to share our story to the village because well...when there's community by your side, it truly helps to get through the challenges a little bit easier. I wanted to share to you about the unconditionally loving community that was built around their love for a white and brown-spotted beauty.

Chachi's sweet smile

It is with great sorrow that today at around 12am, we had to put our beautiful girl Chachi to sleep. It was a very hard decision but we just didn't want our pretty girl to suffer anymore. It had been over a month that we were taking care of her. From making homemade organic baby food (although Dalmacio didn't like calling it that - out of respect for Chachi so let me rephrase that - organic Chachi food) to eco-friendlier cloth pee pads that Dalmacio made (I just couldn't take another moment of using those disposable pads to add to our landfills) to exercising her to Daddy sleeping in the living room with Chachi for a whole month to be near her if she needed anything..to researching and giving her as much holistic & alternative medicines and therapies that we could, as well as giving her Reiki and Quantum Touch healings almost every night. To us, all of this wasn't a have-to, it was just what we believe in and wanted only the best for our daughter. Yes, our daughter. To us, Chachi and her two cat sisters (Dartagnia and Star) are family. And what beautiful family members they truly are. Laurie Reyon, one of the pet communicators that we were honored to connect with said the most empowering thing to us. That dogs are here to model to us humans unconditional love and that cats are here to model to us self-love. Us humans can definitely learn alot from these special beings about this empowering feeling.

What began as a possible herniated disk (the actual cause still unknown) had crippled her hind legs. Yet there was still hope, especially with the wonderful donation that the Ozzy Foundation had given to us to get Chachi her own wheel chariot from Eddie's Wheels. But tonight was the night that we just knew...we just knew that the hope that she still wanted to stay in her snowy white vessel was getting too difficult to withstand. Earlier in the day, I had asked Chachi to let us know whether she wanted to stay here (previously she kept communicating through the pet communicators that she wanted to stay) or if she was ready to transition to the Other side. I had asked her to please make it clear to us what she wanted and what would be in her highest good.

Oh my sweet, sweet Chachi...she was the epitome of unconditional love...even with her protective growls towards some people that she didn't know too well, it was all just her trying to act like a tough girl to protect Andrik and myself. She was all show and bark. Oh but once Chachi got a full sense of your genuine energy, it was all over, she was nothing but ALL LOVE! You couldn't get rid of her once you walked through that door. :o) Little do most people know is our cat Dartagnia is the Alpha of our house. Whenever we would call Chachi over and she wouldn't come, it was most likely because Dartagnia was blocking the hallway and Chachi was too scared to pass by in case she would get swiped by Dartagnia's claws... It was actually quite funny seeing a 65lb Pitbull scared of a 10lb cat!

This is how I like to remember our beautiful girl. Smiling and standing strong

But even through the sleepless nights and this deep heartache, Dalmacio and I are in such deep gratitude. We are thankful to Ramsey and Buzz for asking us to adopt Chachi. We are so honored and still remember what Ramsey said over the phone: "we can't think of any better parents for Chachi than the two of you." Such sweet words that echo in my heart now...thank you Ramsey and Buzz for entrusting us to create a loving home for her.

We are grateful to alot of beautiful souls. For the continuous healing energy & monetary support from our family and loving support from friends...for Sandy Smith with her special gift to communicate with Chachi along with her reference to Evey Gold who consulted with us on natural remedies and for introducing us to two wonderful specialists: Pam Holt who gave Chachi the most relaxing massage ever and Suzanne Weed who gave Chachi Acuscope therapy the last 2 weeks of her life. To Laurie Reyon for her spiritual insight and gift to communicate with Chachi. To the Ozzy Foundation (as mentioned above) for their loving generosity to donate money to get Chachi a wheelchair. To my friend, Renee Stonehocker from Capitol Drugs for her suggestions on homeopathics. To Jennifer Kelly with her suggestions on essential oils. To the wonderful staff at the Holistic Vet Center for their genuine support and care, as well as Veterinary Specialists of the Valley who also helped us throughout Chachi's health issues and for helping to elevate Chachi to her next transition. To Dartagnia & Star for holding the healing space for their sister. It was truly amazing that these beings who normally show self-love, gave unconditional love to Chach and gave her "sniff" kisses. Star even slept out in the livingroom for the last few days to keep Chachi company at night (normally Star is next to my feet at night).

I know it's a long list of people to thank - just goes to show how truly uplifting it can be when we raise the vibration high, pay it forward and open ourselves to the support of community. I also wanted to share this knowledge of amazing references who helped us through all of this. Perhaps it could help someone else with their furry kids like it did with us.

My girl and I connecting

Oh Chach - I already miss you sooo very much. I miss the nonstop kisses you'd plant on my face (or whenever I'd put lotion on my legs - always wondered what was the point when you'd lick it all off. LOL). And I miss the way you would always keep my feet warm when I worked at my desk...I miss your pink, pink belly and those genuinely sweet eyes of yours with the lil brown spot that covered your left eye...I miss that brown spot on your lower back that Daddy would always say was your "off" button but that you never turned off because you were just so full of life and energy. I miss the way you would tear down the road as fast as lightning and zip on by us like a speeding bullet. And to think you were still doing this a couple of months ago at the age of 10. And most of all, I miss your unconditional loving heart. You truly are the epitome of unconditional love. Thank you Chachi for being here with us through thick and thin. For being so, so patient and loving towards us and Andrik. We'll never forget how you guarded the bedroom door as I gave birth to your little brother. Thank you for being the protector of our home and the sweet, sweet soul that you are. We know that you're vessel is gone but your soul still lives on and are here with us right now. It is with great comfort knowing that our other two beautiful kids, Jade and Sugar are waiting for you on the Other Side.

Here's her "off" button that I was talking about that didn't actually turn off. LOL

Until we meet again, we love you.

Chachi "giving peace"

The Family Love Village Has a New Home!

2011-01-20T11:43:00.000-08:00

Yep it's true!! After many, many months searching and searching, the search has finally come to an end. And the Family Love Village (FLV) can now create new beginnings at our new home! I'm extremely excited to announce that Jennifer Kelly and her husband, Todd have opened their loving arms to us at their breathtaking yoga studio, The Yogi Tree in Toluca Lake. I did my best to try and stay centrally located for most of the families. Unfortunately I couldn't find it central enough to those that live further out but that was a tough one to do. Perhaps those that live further out might feel that once a month to commune with like-minded families who support and want to learn more ways of conscious parenting might find this worth the trip. OR perhaps those that live further out, might feel compelled to start your own family village in your city (or perhaps you know someone that might want to become a leader). If you or you know of someone that would be interested in becoming a leader of your own village, please send them my way so I can give them support in co-creating it together.

Ok sorry - went on a tangent there...LOL Back to our new home...it is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL space! With a separate room (which is the healing room) where our kids can play. This healing and loving space resonates so well with our village! I am truly grateful to Jennifer and Todd. I also want to thank Crystal for suggesting the studio and for introducing me to Jennifer and Todd.

We also have the opportunity to use permanent childcare services for our monthly gatherings. The cost is $30 for 1 caregiver for 2 hours which is a steal when you think about it. Of course the more families that RSVP with their children, the less the parents have to pay. And if more than just 1 caregiver is needed then I will do my best to make it as cost effective as possible (yet still allow the caregivers to make a decent income for themselves, as well). I truly feel though that the opportunity to get a free presenation from professional experts and the opportunity to receive holistic, conscious and eco-friendly knowledge for you and your family truly is a great deal for childcare that normally would cost more anywhere else (not to mention if you were to pay for a workshop on this knowledge). I'd like to thank Dawn Stevens for all her amazing efforts to get us childcare services for future gatherings!

AND the best part of the childcare services is that I am committed to making sure that the caregivers that watch over our children are open to learning and following the same core beliefs of gentle guidance to our children as does the Family Love Village!

I also wanted to express my appreciation here and thank each and everyone of you for making the village what it is. Because without you and your willingness to learn a more conscious, holistic and eco-friendly lifestyle, the village wouldn't be what it is today. So thank you for being such an integral part of the village and here's to many wonderful experiences in our new home!

Much love to you all,
Your fellow villager,
Tangee

Benefits of Homeopathy with Renee Stonehocker

2011-01-19T01:09:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, January 15th - the Family Love Village (FLV) gathered at the Yogi Tree yoga studio in Toluca Lake. It was an intimate gathering of 6 families and I was extremely excited because there were so many new families that joined the village, not to mention families with older kids! It has been a vision of mine to have older kids involved as well because I didn't want the Family Love Village to be restricted to only families with babies and toddlers. I've wanted FLV to expand from families to single parents to caregivers/nannies to babies, toddlers, to young children to adolescents and teenagers. Afterall, there is such diversity in villages throughout the world that I wanted that same diversity to bring families and children of all ages together. And at this gathering, it definitely did!

The evening began with a presentation given by Renee Stonehocker on the topic of Homeopathy. Renee is a parent of four children and has three grandchildren. She is an advocate of natural health and nutrition, has been using homeopathy for 30 years and consults on homeopathy at Capitol Drugs, a pharmacy for alternative therapies.

She is a La Leche League Leader and a proponent of natural childbirth and attachment parenting. Believing in wellness, not just an absence of disease, Renee advocates the empowering of parents and families to make their own choices in health care and other areas of their family's lives.

Renee has a background as an educator, and has taught workshops on communication skills to parents and La Leche League Leaders. She also home-schooled her children through primary and high school.

Before I go onto to share what Renee had said throughout the evening, I wanted to give a brief history and description of Homeopathy that I derived from a couple of websites.

*Homeopathy has been practiced in the United States for over 170 years. Homeopathy is the preferred medicine by members of the Royal Family in England and homeopathy is widely prescribed by physicians in Europe and Asia. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) is considered the Father of Homeopathy. A physician, scholar, teacher and scientist in Germany. Hahnemann coined the term "homeopathy" from Greek terms, meaning similar suffering, to denote the basic law of similars.

**Homeopathy is a medical science developed by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), a German physician. It is based on the principle that “like cures like”. In simple words, it means that any substance, which can produce symptoms in a healthy person, can cure similar symptoms in a person who is sick. This idea is referred to as the “Law of Similars”, and was understood by Aristotle and Hippocrates and mentioned in ancient Hindu manuscripts. It was Hahnemann, however, who turned it into a science of healing.

Here are examples of this principle:

a. An onion is a substance which makes your eyes water and your nose burn. If you are having an attack of hay fever with watering eyes and a burning nose, a homeopathic remedy made from onion can relieve it.

b. Poison ivy causes redness, intense itching, burning, blistering and sometimes stiff muscles. Homeopathically it has been used for everything from herpes and burns to eczema and arthritis.

c. When you are stung by a bee you feel a burning, stinging pain and the tissues surrounding the area swell up. Some relief is gained from applying cold to the area. If you had swollen tonsils with burning and stinging pain relieved by cold, a homeopathic remedy prepared from the same source could cure.

A second principle of homeopathy is that you should give the least amount of medicine necessary to evoke a healing response. This is called the “Minimum Dose”. We all know that normal medicines can cause side effects, leading to much suffering or even death. In an effort to prevent side effects, Hahnemann began successive dilution with agitation of his medicines, to find the point at which they would be therapeutic, but not toxic.

Another wonderful resource that I found online gave an in-depth description of homeopathy along with descriptions of potency and the difference of potencies. This same website also gave a wonderful breakdown of the following:

- Classify symptoms to determine dosage

- Evaluate and record symptoms

- Dosage guidelines

- Intervals between doses

- How to modify dose and when to increase or decrease dose

- What is an aggravation and how does it help determine dose?

*Quoted from History of Homeopathy
**Quoted from What Is Homeopathy

Okay now that I gave you a little bit of an idea what Homeopathy is, let's continue onto what Renee shared with us:

Homeopathy is used for both acute and chronic conditions. Renee isn’t a trained homeopathic but she has been using it for over 30 years and has been working at Capitol Drugs for about 8 years now. Homeopathy treats the whole person – it’s not just about one part of the person that gets treated. Remedies are also tailored to what the individual is going through. For instance, what are you eating, your emotional state and other aspects of your life are looked at, as well. There is a difference between consulting a homeopath for constitutional remedies and what Renee offers. What Renee would use is more of clinical, whereas a classical homeopath would sit down with you for an hour or so and even go into genetics of your family and then come up with a constitutional remedy.

What Renee loves about homeopathy is that it is diluted and very safe. It can be used for babies, children, adults, and animals. Homeopathy uses natural remedies: plants, venoms, even crushed ants for instance. Basically anything in nature has healing properties that homeopathy can use. It’s an energy medicine which Renee likes to use the analogy that it is like a finger print. There is something left of the original substance, the soul of whatever remedy that is being diluted.

Most homeopathics are designed to dissolve under the tongue. They are small pellets. Hylands is great for children because they dissolve quickly under the tongue. Boiron are like little beebee’s which are harder pellets. When manufactured, the remedy is shaken/pounded and then the medicine is poured onto the pellets so the medicine is on the outside – which is why they say not to touch it with your fingers because the oils on your fingers could change the properties of it. So it is best to put the pellets in the cap and then put it under your tongue to dissolve.

There are other forms of homeopathy that come in the form of liquid, as well as topical. Most topicals are for healing cuts on the skin (i.e. Calendula), muscle soreness and bruising (i.e. Arnica gel). There are so many remedies, single and combination remedies, as well.

Because homeopathy is a sensitive medicine or an energy medicine (as mentioned above), certain things anecdote it/cancel the remedy out. Which is why they say to not drink or eat anything 15-20 minutes BEFORE taking the homeopathic AND 15-20 minutes AFTER. And then there are also some remedies that actually anecdote each other, such as Belladonna and Aconitum Napellus (also known as Aconite). Which is why it's best to speak to a specialist or look it up in a homeopathy book or online.

Dose floating is beneficial for when you have a chronic issue where you give the remedy every 15 minutes and lasts within an hour. This is suggested for when you want the remedy to work quickly. As homeopathy is repeated, it is more effected. It's an imbalance, a dis-ease - the remedy stimulates you to get back into balance. If you're not sure if a remedy is working, try it for a full day and if symptoms don't change, then you can try a different remedy (again this is where you would seek a professional or your homeopathy book to see what other remedies can assist).

One thing that families always seem to be concerned about is when a child has a fever. The biggest issue is when the fever spikes but to prevent a convulsion occurring, you can give a remedy, such as Aconite. In healthy kids, fevers usually don't indicate anything serious. Although it can be frightening when your child's temperature rises, fever itself causes no harm and can actually be a good thing — it's often the body's way of fighting infections. Often parents try to give Tylenol or medication to bring down the fever when instead they could give homeopathics to assist with it. And not all fevers need to be treated. High fever, however, can make a child uncomfortable and worsen problems such as dehydration. If the child is so miserable and uncomfortable then there are times when you do need to get the Tylenol out or go see the doctor for antibiotics and there's nothing wrong with that. But what's nice about homeopathics is that you can start that first to see if that helps and maybe you won't have to get that point of having to take other medications.

If you have to give antiobiotics, there is a particular form of a probiotic that you can give that won't kill the good bacteria in your body. This is called Saccharomyces boulardii (which is a tropical strain of yeast first isolated from lychee and mangosteen fruit). They make one for kids called Florastor Kids.

One topic that was discussed in great detail was ear infections. Since there were so many questions in regards to this topic, I felt it was important to list the remedies.

Ear Infections:

One of Renee's favorite remedies is Aconite. In the early stages of getting sick, such as getting a tickle in your throat, take Aconite every 15 minutes for the first hour. So first try Aconite to see if perhaps it's the child coming down with a cold. Renee prefers this over Oscillococcinum because Oscillo is catered more towards mainly the first signs of flu symptoms whereas Aconite is used for the first signs of either a cold or flu.

Aconite is also great for panick attacks, a shock, sudden onset (especially when exposed to wind or cold), good for croup. There's a saying: "When in fright, give Aconite!"

If after trying Aconite and your child still has an ear infection, then try Belladonna. Belladonna is used for anything that is red, hot, swollen, throbbing, a high fever that comes on, someone that is incoherent from the fever and night terrors to name a few.

Other remedies for ear infections:

1) Take your child to see a chiropractor to get adjusted. You want to make sure that it is a chiropractor that specializes in children.

2) Onion Earmuffs.
Indications: Use to soothe and promote healing of minor ear aches due to infection.
How It Works: Aromatice oils from the onion decrease pain and are anti-microbial.
Directions:

Slice a fresh onion in half.
Place in a microwave for 1 minute or a conventional oven on 400 degrees for about 10 minutes
Handle onions with oven mitts and place open faced as close to the ears as possible without becoming too hot. Do not touch the onions to the ear as this may cause a burn. Onions can be wrapped in cheesecloth or other porous material if necessary.
Hold the onions in place for 20-30 minutes. Repeat as often as desired.

3. Lightly saute garlic in olive oil. Remove the garlic infused olive oil and put it in the child's ear. Or for those that prefer a quicker way can purchase Mullein-Garlic ear drops.

A couple of great resources that I found online in regards to ear infections are:

1. Homeopathic Remedies for Ear Infections- this gives a list of symptoms
and which homeopathic can help depending on the symptoms.

2. Childhood Ear Infection: Alternative to Antibiotics and Ear Tubes - another great resource about ear infections, underlying causes and natural treatments. It's lengthy but worth the read.

Below is a brief list of various homeopathic remedies for common symptoms. There are of course so many different remedies and symptoms out there. Two books that Renee highly recommends families to have in their household is called The Family Guide To Homeopathy by Dr. Andrew Lockie and Natural Baby and Childcare by Dr. Lauren Feder.

Homeopathic Remedies

Aconite: Sudden onset, exposure to cold, wind, shock, fear, croup, early stages of getting sick. Rosy and chubby babies.
Apis: Bee stings, swellings, red (not lower than 30C during pregnancy)
Arnica: Muscle soreness, aches & pains, bruising, surgery, working out, trauma
Arsenicum: Food poisoning, stomach flu, restlessness, anxious, diarrhea
Belladonna: High fever, hot, red, throbbing (headache). Ear infections for right side, night terrors, incoherent, jarring pain. Sturdy, vigorous child.
Chamomilla: Colic, teething (wants to be carried, but refuses what's offered), calming
Gelsemium: Flu, dull headache, stage fright, trembling, fear of DDS
Hypericum: Nerve pain, esp. fingers & toes, pulling, tearing, shooting pains
Ipecac: Active vomiting
Ledum: Insect, spider bites. Puncture wounds.
Nux Vomica: Nausea, vomiting, sensitive to environment (hangovers), headache (lack of sleep). Overindulgence (clearing from liver). This is also good to give a child before and after a situation that disconnects them from their environment.
Phytolacca: Breast infections. Sore throat, swollen glands.
Pulsatilla: Emotional, weeping (depressed). Engorgement. Easy, changeable, crave affection. Shy child, sleeps with hands above head.
Sulphur: skin conditions that are dry and itchy, rashes, eczema and psorriasis. A good topical remedy is Fluorosone cream.
Thuja: Warts. After vaccinations.

I also wanted to list something that Renee mentioned that evening which doesn't have anything to do with homeopathics but was a very helpful tip. It is a remedy for arthritis and it is peanut oil, as suggested by Edgar Cayce. As stated in the Edgar Cayce readings: "The primary use of peanut oil in the Cayce readings was as a massage oil ingredient. It was described as a "food for the nerves AND muscular forces" and a specific preventive measure against arthritis."

After the presentation was over, the parents reunited with their children (who were playing in the other room with the caregivers). We ended the evening with a delicious feast and connected with new villagers. Not only did we welcome 2011 with new families but by the end of the evening, FLV had a new sanctuary to call our own at the Yogi Tree Studio. Excitement and gratitude filled my heart that night! It was a perfect ending to a new beginning for FLV.

Family Love Village Has a New Logo!

2011-01-17T14:37:00.000-08:00

I wanted to share some really exciting news with everyone! First of all, I want to thank one of our veteran villagers, Ariel for his amazing talents with creating our new Family Love Village logo (see above in the headliner). I am extremely happy with the new look and feel and hope that you like it too! :o)

If you want to brand your business with extraordinary work, check out Ariel and his partners' website at: VujaDe Studios. He also created a new logo for my sister blog: Made With EcoLOVE that I'm excited to share, as well!

When The Shift Hits The Fan!

2011-01-12T10:00:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone. As the new year begins, I wanted to share my passion and vision for the Family Love Village. For those of you who are new to this blog, the Family Love Village is a group of like-minded families that support and/or are open to learning about various ways to model and nurture a more gently guided approach to communicating with our children, as well as, eco-holistic living.

It all began with a book called "Connection Parenting - Parenting Through Connection Instead of Coercion, Through Love Instead of Fear" - by Pam Leo. This very book began my journey of wanting to share this gentle way of communicating with our children to families open to learning another way to parent than what we were brought up in or what we have learned from mainstream society. This was the foundation that the Family Love Village began grounding its roots in and still is to this day.

If you haven't had the opportunity to read this book, I highly recommend it. It's an easy read and has great exercises at the end of each chapter. I wanted to share this wonderful resource as it has helped to shape what the village is truly about. To find out more information, check out the website at Connection Parenting and Consciously Parenting.

I wanted to share with those that might be interested a FREE teleconference happening this weekend. I get a monthly newsletter from the Consciously Parenting organization and thought this would be a beautiful way for those interesed and for our village to start the new year together, in supporting our conscious parenting journey.

Please read the following information below for further details.

Much love to all of you!
Your fellow villager,

Tangee

When the Shift Hits the Fan

Did you realize that we're in the middle of a huge parenting paradigm shift? If you've been hanging out with us here at The Consciously Parenting Project for any length of time, you've already realized that we don't look at things in the same old way. In fact, we may have said things that seemed like we were speaking a foreign language when it comes to your kids and your parenting. Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief, in his brilliant lecture at the ICPA conference in Washington, DC in October, discussed the shift in which we now find ourselves. This is a time around the world that what we thought we knew is falling apart. He went on to say that the way our society and our world is running isn't sustainable and everything is shifting because it simply must.

I've been feeling the earth moving under my own feet and have observed it happening with many of the people I know, too. Bruce Lipton declared that it needs to happen and that he welcomes it. Wow- I wasn't that excited about it before. But it means that we are open to many new possibilities that simply didn't exist before. While the unknowns of it all are still somewhat scary, I left feeling very hopeful.

I teamed up with Lisa Reagan, founder of Families for Conscious Living and editor of Pathways Magazine, and we spoke together at the conference about what this shift looks like in families. What does it mean for you and for me? Where do we get stuck? I loved Lisa's take on what we think this shift means (we need to do lots MORE on our already overflowing to do list) and what it actually means (we're changing out our to-do lists for a different way of looking at our parenting and our lives). This great conversation is a nice place to start in understanding what the paradigm shift actually means to you and me in our every day lives. I also shared my Brain Stoplight ™ tool to give you a new way of looking at your own behaviors using our current understanding of the brain in very simple terms.

You can listen to this conversation and many others for FREE next weekend starting at 6pm Eastern (New York time), Friday, January 14 until Sunday, January 16 at 6pm EDT. When the Shift Hits the Fan: Empowered Parenting in the Paradigm Shift with me (Rebecca Thompson) and Lisa Reagan. It is a great way to set the stage for this amazing conference where we'll be Navigating the Current!

This is a great way to start off your year- inspired by some of the most interesting people working with parents today! Be sure to join us by registering here!

Posted by Rebecca Thompson, M.S., MFT of Consciously Parenting

The Family Love Village Makes Headlines at Cafe Gratitude!

2011-01-10T15:56:00.000-08:00

Salutations to my beautiful family and friends! As you know, about a month ago, I started doing this awesome online playgroup with others on a book called The Abounding River. And if you didn't know about me attending this playgroup, you can read all about its wonderfulness here.

I was so inspired by what was coming up in my life after joining the group that I emailed Cafe Gratitude to see if I could write about them in both my blogs because everything that they value is exactly what I believe in and the epitome of what the Family Love Village is all about (from conscious and holistic living to creating community to supporting a sustainable presence on planet Earth and much more). So once I got the excited approval to share what this wonderful community is all about from one of their Cafe Gratitude's writers, Karin Winter, I wrote away.

After I was done, I sent an email to Karin and gave her both links to the posts on both my blogs (which both were written slightly different to tailor to each blog). If you'd like to check out what I wrote in the Made With EcoLOVE blog about them, check out GrateFULLness). I again thanked her for this opportunity to be apart of this creative, collective consciousness.

About a week later, Karin wrote me back and mentioned that she had featured both my blogs on their Friends of Gratitude page. When I read the newsletter, I was excited, humbled and honored with what they wrote.

Just thought I'd share with all of you. Here's to an abundantly fruitful new year for all of us!

Much love, abundance & joy ~

Your fellow eco-scout villager,
Tangee

Winter Solstice Celebration - Part II: Topic - Coping Skills by Cody Dale

2010-12-31T10:00:00.001-08:00

Cody Dale is a Child Behavior Specialist. She has been working with children for over ten years and has majored in both Early Childhood Education and Child Development. Cody began her career by teaching in an infant/toddler room at a pre-school in Huntington Beach, California. With high ratios and over-stimulated children, she found that she just wasn't getting the one-on-one time she really desired with kids and after two years, began her journey to becoming a nanny. Throughout most of her career, she was involved in RIE training. Just within the past year, her career has taken her down a very gratifying path and now teaches classes and workshops as a Parent Coach in both the Tahoe and Orange County areas.

In this post, I will be sharing what Cody discussed with us at our Winter Solstice Celebration. The topic was on how to understand what our toddlers/young children are going through in these learning/growing stages and how to learn coping skills to teach our children when they get upset and frustrated (or as my family likes to call it “big feelings”).

As mentioned in the book, “Connection Parenting – Parenting Through Connection Instead of Coercion, Through Love Instead of Fear” by Pam Leo, the author talks about when a child’s needs are met (i.e. when they are well-fed, well-rested and when they have been given emotional attention) how cooperative they are. One of the things children may not understand at this age is how to conserve energy the way adults can. When an adult thinks about a typical day, they think about all the things they have to do, and while that can be overwhelming, it does give us the ability to conserve energy throughout the day so that we don’t run out of steam halfway through. Children on the other hand, don’t have that ability. So even though you may have done your absolute best to get their needs met, a lot of times our kids expend all their energy in excitement or play and can then become tired and frustrated by the time us adults still have to run an errand (i.e. grocery shopping). This is where learning how to show our children coping skills come into play in situations like these. Or when children get frustrated with a toy, when playmates on the playground are doing something they don’t like, or when they want something they can’t have. Coping skills are important to have throughout life and now is a great time to teach them techniques that will work for them through adulthood.

One of the first things you need to decide as a parent is what kind of coping skills you want to introduce to your kids. When kids are babies, some parents offer methods, such as pacifiers or special blankets. But now that your kids are older they are capable of using other coping methods. One of the things RIE teaches is not to take away a child’s pacifier/stuffed animal or special blanket until they are ready. But as kids get older and become more active and more involved with school or classes, the less those methods work because they can’t take them everywhere (and if they do it keeps them from being able to fully participate in the activities they are doing). So creating coping skills that children can use anywhere and eventually can do on their own is important.

The following methods are techniques that Cody likes to use when teaching kids about coping skills:

1) Taking Deep Breaths

It sounds obvious but people don’t realize that even young toddlers can do this. However, you must teach them this technique BEFORE they are upset. It’s most effective to take a time when the kids are awake, fed, and happy and just show them some deep breathing exercises. Some children like pretending to be a dragon, or doing very loud over exaggerated breaths. After showing them the breathing exercise, you can explain to them that sometimes when you are upset it is really helpful to do these things. Remember, it will not sink in the first time, it is a skill that must be worked on, but they do learn quickly!

Another thing that RIE teaches is that it’s okay to explain to your kids emotions, such as telling them when you’re frustrated. This helps kids get in touch with their emotions and reassures them that everyone feels this way sometimes. For example, if you’re feeling overwhelmed or frustrated, you could tell your child (in a calm way) that you’re going to sit down and take some deep breaths. Sometimes even go further and asking them if they want to help can be beneficial. This is the age where kids love to be involved and help! This process could actually be fun for the child helping you and showing you their deep breaths. And it could also be a bonding experience that will put both of you in a good mood.

The next time they are frustrated you can ask them if they want to take some deep breaths. They might not want to but feel free to do it yourself (especially if the situation is getting you overwhelmed too!) and a lot of times they will join in. Of course you never want to force them to use a coping skill because that is counter-productive and breaks down the bond between the both of you.

It is also helpful to practice skills that you would like for your child to learn before they are in a situation where they will need them. One good example is having tea parties to practice table manners before taking them to a restaurant. This of course works with coping skills, as well. A great suggestion is to play pretend with your child and ask them to show you different emotions. Ask how they might act when they are feeling a certain way (sad, happy, excited, etc.). You could even ask them “If I was upset what could I do? Often times, kids may answer by saying “Try deep breathing”! This is a great way to teach them how to brainstorm and another way to reinforce coping skills.

Note: deep breathing exercises seem to work really well with both active and calmer kids.

2) Re-Centering Yourself

Another method that works really well for children is to take them into another room (preferably the bathroom), turn the lights down low and take a few minutes away from the situation to give a few snuggles. This could even give an opportunity to talk/ask them about their frustration (not to reprimand or scold as this, of course, breaks the bond). Alot of times kids become over stimulated and by doing this technique, it really helps them to calm down. Just like most adults need time and space to re-center themselves (i.e. whether it's taking a few breaths to relax, meditating, etc) when they get frustrated and/or overwhelmed, children do too!

An example that Cody shared:

“One of the little girls I work with, named Samantha, has really done well with this. It’s actually something I have been doing with her since she was born (she’s now almost three). Samantha loves to snuggle and when she would get frustrated as a baby I would take her into her nursery or the bathroom, turn down the lights if I could and just sit and rock her for two or three minutes. She would lean into me and sigh and cheer right up and we’d walk out of the room both recharged. Now that she is older Samantha recognizes when she is frustrated (sometimes with a little help), and goes into the bathroom by herself. She closes the door (we have made the room baby proof and make sure we can hear her) sits in there for a few minutes, sometimes talking to herself and then walks out, cheerful as can be!"

If there is not a bathroom for a child to go to, they can always go off to a corner and turn their back to everything that’s going on and re-center themselves. Keep in mind that you will need to assess what your child’s personality is. Active children often get more frustrated if you use methods like sitting and calming down with a grown up. If you discover that re-centering technique isn't helping, perhaps going outside with your child and running around the yard a few times to release their energy would be more beneficial. And if it's too cold, then perhaps dancing or doing jumping jacks or basically anything active that will help to release their frustrated energy.

3. Self-Soothing

Part of respecting and connecting with our children is reading their cues and allowing them to self-soothe (if they want to or are capable of doing). Children will give you signs of what they need in order to calm down. The trick is knowing how to read them! As parents and caregivers, we tend to want to always help or "fix" things and sometimes we try so hard that we forget to take a minute and just stop and see what our kids are telling us.

Another example that Cody shared:

“One of the things that brought this to my attention is an incident I had with one of my kids, Charlie, a few years ago. One of my best friends had watched Charlie since he was born and they (along with myself) and the kids I watched had play dates nearly every day. Charlie was very comfortable with me and I had watched him on many occasions when his nanny was busy. However, one night when I went to his house, even though he greeted me with hugs and kisses and excitement, when his mom left he was really upset. He was crying and carrying on in a way I had never seen him. He was about two and a half at the time and I spent a few minutes trying to talk to him, asking him if he wanted a hug, explaining to him in a calm voice that mommy would come back, trying to distract him, trying to figure out if he was hungry or tired….and when I had tried everything I could think of I finally stopped and observed him and realized he was staying on the other side of the coffee table from me, showing me with his body language that although he wanted to be in the same room with me (he could have run to the other room), he didn’t want me physically near him. The more I thought about it I realized that anytime I suggested anything to him he got even more upset. Finally, I realized that all he needed was for me to simply sit there and be there for him. As soon as I did that he cried for another minute or so and then calmed himself down. He took some deep breaths on his own, put his head down on his arms and when he lifted his head he gave me a teary eyed smile and came over to me with his arms up for me to hold him. I picked him up and he cuddled on my lap for a few minutes and when he was finally calm I apologized to him for not listening to what he was trying to tell me and we had a great night.”

STOP, OBSERVE and really watch what your children are doing. So often they are telling us what they need with their body language or words, but we are so wrapped up in our own thoughts it is difficult to see.

Even children that have not been taught coping skills know how to calm themselves or will show you what they need to calm down. We see in videos with young babies that when they are overwhelmed by a situation they will turn their head away and not look again until they have calmed down. Many parents try and force kids to look at them or talk before they aren’t ready because they don’t realize that what these kids are doing is self-soothing!

Some kids will come over to you for a cuddle right away and just want to be held. Some will try to talk to you, some will run away and find a quiet corner, they WILL show you what they need! And one of the most important things you can do is to just stop and give them what they need. When you do this, they calm down so quickly you will be surprised (keeping in mind that sometimes what they need is sleep or food). Once they are calm, it gives a better opportunity for you to talk to them. For kids that run off and need alone time, give them a minute or two and then quietly and calmly go over and ask if you can talk. If they say “No” or give you an indication that they are not ready, try and sit down without saying anything. A lot of times they will let you stay in the room with them and within a few minutes they are ready to talk.

As adults we have so much on our plate that we always feel like we don’t have enough time, but when you stop and deal with these things as they come up, it takes a shockingly short amount of time out of your day and you really will make it up with how cooperative your child becomes afterwards.

This philosophy is also explained in Connection Parenting. As quoted from the book: "It takes the same amount of time and attention to meet children's emotional needs as it does to deal with behaviors caused by their unmet emotional needs. Either we spend time meeting children's emotional needs by filling their love cup or we will spend time dealing with behaviors caused by their unmet needs. Either way we spend the time."

4. Emotional Coaching

When using Emotional Coaching, you must wait until the child is ready to do this. This doesn’t mean that the child is not upset anymore, but merely that their crying is slowing and their breathing is starting to return to normal. That is when they are able to talk and listen. Before that, all they need is a cuddle or someone to be there for them.

It’s very important not to invalidate your child’s feelings. For instance, if a child falls down, most parents/caregivers try to not react and tend to say “It’s okay”. This can actually be damaging to tell a child this. As part of social understanding, kids will look to you to see how to react but NEVER tell a child that it’s okay! The reason for this is because if the child was scared by a fall or if it does actually hurt and you invalidate their feelings by telling them “it’s okay”, it not only breaks down the bond between you two, (because you are not validating their feelings), but it may also leave them feeling confused and incapable of understanding what they really feel. We want them to be conscious of what their body is feeling and be able to articulate it. So it’s very important to ask questions instead of giving answers. If you think the child is okay you can stay where you are and say something like “Oh, you fell down, are you okay?” Don’t overreact because that will cause them to be even more upset. Just ask instead of telling. This technique can be used for when they are sad, frustrated, etc.

In the past year, Cody has been researching the way the arts, specifically theater, helps kids with emotional behavior. She has found with kids is that not only do they absolutely LOVE puppets, but puppets can really help them understand their emotions. You can use puppets to show emotion (stories where one puppet is frustrated and the other puppet talks and helps the first puppet) as another way to show them coping skills. For instance, once they see a puppet deep breathing it can be a lot more fun to get involved. It can also help in communicating with your child by using the puppet. Alot of times a puppet is easier for the child to talk to. Either purchase a couple of puppets or even better yet, make it a fun project by making them. You can make them pretty easily with socks and a few arts and crafts or even with things around the house.

Emotion Coaching

What are the five elements of emotion coaching?

1. Be aware of a child's emotions

2. Recognize emotional expression as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching

3. Listen empathetically and validate a child's feelings

4. Label emotions in words a child can understand

5. Help a child come up with an appropriate way to solve a problem or deal with an upsetting issue or situation

Dr. Gottman's research found that children of emotion-coaching parents had more abilities in the area of their own emotions than children who were not coached by their parents. In other words, these "coached" children grew up to become what Dan Goleman has referred to as "emotionally intelligent" people. What are characteristics of these children? They:

• Are able to regulate their emotional states

• Are better at soothing themselves when they are upset

• Can calm down their hearts faster after an upsetting incident

• Have fewer infectious illnesses

• Are better at focusing attention

• Relate better to other people, even in tough situations like getting teased in middle school

• Are better at understanding people

• Have better friendships with other children

• Are better in school situations that require academic performance

***This information was taken from The Gottman Relationship Institute website.

Winter Solstice Celebration - Part I

2010-12-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

"Winter solstice! A time of transition in the annual war of light vs darkness, cold vs warmth, abundance vs shortage, life vs death! All people in our northern climes have tended to view this as the crucial time of year. A time to hold ceremonies designed to assist nature in rebounding from the path toward oblivion to one directed toward prosperity. A time to huddle at home with family and friends in love and worship, or a time simply to hibernate, as much as possible, sleeping more, and attempting to keep ones mind on other things.

It has often been said that the greatest joy tends to follow deep sorrow. What is so wonderful about the winter solstice is that once we are past that moment of time we can look forward to brighter skies. Slowly at first, then more rapidly as we go into January and February, days get longer and everything around helps us celebrate the increase of light. It speaks well for the human spirit that our greatest religious/spiritual celebrations take place at winter solstice time, as people radiate warmth of fellowship and love on these dimmer days. The festivals of darker days are really celebrations of light."

This really resonated with my feelings of how children are our celebrations of light! So it was only fitting for our December gathering to be a Winter Solstice Celebration. A year ago in December marked the Family Love Village's 1st Christmas gathering to welcome our very first guest speaker. That guest speaker was Cody Dale who spoke to us about RIE. For 2010's Winter celebration, once again Cody Dale was invited back to help us bring in the new year with a new topic on how to learn coping skills for our children. The presentation will be fully described in Winter Soltsice Celebration sequel. For Part 1, I wanted to share what we did for our celebration (especially since Part II will be a little on the lengthy side since there was so much important information that Cody shared with us).

As you might already know (from an earlier post), I have been participating in this 42-day online playgroup based on a book called the Abounding River which helps abundance, self-love, creativity, awareness, gratitude and generosity flow in your life. One of the practices is on being generous. I started thinking of how could the village create generosity this Christmas season. And at first I thought of Toys for Tots and how they help give joy to children in need which is a great idea but to me, just adds more to the consumerism and since it has to be a new, shiny toy in its new, plastic container, that it would be just one more thing added to our landfill (which all of you know me by now, I'm a geek for living green!) LOL

So I started doing some research on companies in the Los Angeles area that accepts gently used baby/toddler toys, books and clothes and found one called Baby2Baby. So I sent them an email to let them know I would like to host a drive to give presents to children in need and to see if they offer such a thing with their company during the holidays. I spoke to one of the founders and she was happy to accept the gently used gifts.

Unfortunately, after our gathering, when one of the village mamas (Eva) tried dropping off the items, she got lost and by the time she found the Baby2Baby location (7 minutes after their scheduled drop-off time), they were already closed. So Eva ended up donating all the toys and clothes to another wonderful non-profit organization (which I have mentioned in a prior post), Alexandria House - which is a transitional residence for women, teens and children in need. It felt good to hear that the children were really happy to receive these gifts and that the Family Love Village was making a difference in these kids' lives!

It was a wonderful evening where the villagers reconnected with some of the families that we hadn't had the opportunity to see in awhile (due to distance/location) and to welcome new families, as well. The potluck feast was a wonderful spread of Holiday yumminess.

To end the evening, I had passed out small pieces of paper to the families during dinner to participate in a ceremony to and for ourselves. I called it "Releasing of the Old and Igniting of the New" - where each person wrote down an old pattern/old behavior or thought that no longer serves who they are or want to be. Then on the 2nd piece of paper, each person wrote down a conscious behavior/pattern or way of thinking that they would like for themselves to become as conscious parents/spouses/individuals for the new year. After dinner, we all cuddled by the fireplace outside and shared what we wanted to release and set them free into the fire and then shared what we wanted to ignite in replace of the old. I suggested for the 2nd piece of paper to be kept somewhere where each individual can have easy access to it as a reminder of what we want to shift in our lives. Dalmacio and I put ours on our fridge. Although Dalmacio couldn't actually be there for the FLV gathering (due to taking care of our dog), we actually did this ceremony with my family when we had them over for Christmas dinner.

This ceremony was such a beautiful way for us to end our gathering. It really resonated well with the the description of what the Winter Solstice represents - with winter being a time of transition (as mentioned in the beginning of this post) and why there are religious/spiritual holidays/rituals that surround this time of season; because the festivals of darker days are really celebrations of light. To me these pieces of paper can represent perhaps an unconscious way of being that we want to release so that we can let our conscious lights shine in the new year! Because it was such a beautiful experience, I think it will be a ceremony that the village can do together for years to come.

Building Community

2010-12-23T16:02:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I joined an online playgroup based on a book called The Abounding River by Matthew and Terces Engelhart. I was invited by my beautiful cousin Maya Hackett, the author of her own inspiring blog, Urban Organica to join her, along with other amazing and inspiring families and individuals. At first I found myself being in resistance because I was so overwhelmed with recently moving, unpacking and having just organized and completed the Family Love Village gathering on homeschooling (which I apologize because I haven't had a chance to re-read through everything from that night in order to write about it in this blog), as well as just cleaning up/settling in after my son, Andrik's blessing ceremony - which by the way all happened within ONE week of us moving to our new home. Yes, you heard it correctly, my family moved once again. That was twice within 4 months of each other. A friend of mine joked and asked if we plan to move every fiscal quarter. LOL No thank you!! We plan to stay at this house for some time! And yes, a house! An actual house!! No not yet bought - renting; but still, an actual house! :o)

So anyways before I go off on another tangent (for those that have been reading my blog know all too well I can do this), I wanted to talk a little bit about the book and the playgroup. So after Maya had explained what this playgroup blog was all about (again being openly resistant). LOL Even writing these words down sound ridiculous but to further explain, I was open, just not fully available to play wholeheartedly - especially about the part about writing in a THIRD blog! I mean come on, it's hard enough for me to write in 2, and now I've gotta write in a third one (which by the way, I seem to be writing in this 3rd blog more often than my other 2 - which after doing this playgroup, trust me- I'm one inspired writer who has lots to talk about in both my original blogs so don't you worry, my intimate group of dedicated readers! I've got plenty of love to share. Ok there I go again- on another tangent! lol). Back to the story. I wanted to be open and decided heck why not check it out. If several of my cousins and theirs spouses that I completely respect and admire are playing then why not check it out.

So yes, the book. The Abounding River - well the title definitely had a nice flow to it. And that's exactly what it's about. This book helps you to create abundance in your life. In this book you practice loving yourself, adoring yourself, accepting the world, being generous and grateful every day and experiencing being provided for. And I have to say that even though I’ve only just begun, I am really enjoying this playgroup. It’s a private online blog where we share our thoughts, feelings and experiences of the exercises given in the book. I’ve read books before and done exercises but this one is different, it feels really good to get the support from other families and individuals that are doing the book, as well. We’re creating community here with family members, friends and people who we have yet to meet in person but whom I feel I already know.

I know..I know - you may be wondering what does this have anything to do with what this blog is about? What does it have to do with families and love and villages, right? The answer: EVERYTHING! Not only is this a book (as well as a board game - intriguing right?) but the authors have built a whole community around this concept and now have several restaurants in the bay area (and one that I'm excited to announce is opening up in Los Angeles around Dalmacio's birthday March 5th) called Cafe Gratitude.

When I looked up the website, I was ecstatically inspired and even more excited to be part of the playgroup now! Their philosophy is everything that my family believes in and supports! Below is what I copied and pasted from their website:

We choose to work in partnership with vendors, customers, and the community in making choices that support the environment we share. Plastic containers & water bottles have been eliminated from our retail store, and we often request that new and treasured vendors repackage their products in cellophane or glass - just for us. But that is only the start. Here is a short list of the environmental commitments we are steadfastly loyal to:

If the organic variety of produce is not available, we do not choose conventional.

We use non-bleached, 100% cotton cloths for napkins. After being used, these napkins are sent to the auto industry for rag-use purposes. This creates an additional life-cycle and eliminates the use of harmful chemicals such as bleach, which is used in common laundering practices.

We filter our own water at all locations.
All our food scraps are composted and are often sent to the Be Love Farm.

We recycle our paper and cardboard.

Our dishes are washed with the most environmentally-friendly products.

All of our books, private labels, and menus are printed on recycled paper with soy based ink. Our offices also use recycled paper.

We take pride in our high standards, and we thank you for every dollar you share with us, further empowering our investment in the environment.

The community we have built is inspirational and we thank you for being a part of it. The gratuity offered to your server is shared with every hourly employee who worked that day. This means that every baker, dishwasher, kitchen line, bartender, host, and food preparer share in the generosity you bestow on your server. You not only provide for one, you provide for all. We have made it a practice to help one another in times of financial challenge, personal growth, during addiction recovery, healing from disease, repairing a car or even replacing stolen bicycles. We support one another’s artistic performances, share housing, and transportation. By experiencing the power of community, we take care of each other, knowing that the same support is available in return. Imagine EVERYONE working in an environment where, on a daily basis, you are celebrated and held as nothing short of amazing; every day, you are created as great!

Café Gratitude serves a menu of 100% organic, 100% vegan, local fare. Our food is free of refined sugar, flour, and additives. We have an extensive menu of raw foods and have recently expanded to serve cooked foods in many of our locations. We create all of our own food -from the produce bin to your plate - so we can avoid serving certain common allergens like wheat, soy, and peanuts. Over 45% of our produce comes from our Be Love Farm, and the compost from our Cafes is returned to the farm to nourish the next meal.

Yes, we love and appreciate the opportunity to open our doors seven days a week and serve the best organic food available, but even more, we are inspired by the awakening of our collective consciousness. Standing in the possibility that we are responsible for our experience of life, we encourage our community to focus their attention on qualities that inspire and empower, not just at work, but in all areas of their lives.

Okay I just fell deeply in love with this community just with reading the above statements from their website! This blends so well with my vision for the Family Love Village! To be able to inspire and empower families and caretakers throughout the world as a collective consciousness towards gentle guidance/communication with our children and eco-holistic living is a passion I am willing to absorb my heart into fully. I'm thrilled to be be in the game and connected with yet another community that believes in the same things that the village does!

With this wonderful opportunity to play and practice with this online group and self-connectedness, I have been experiencing loving moments to and for myself. I've found that this is very sacred and vital for me to find the balance between doing my best to be a conscious mama (as my cousin calls it: a conscious parenting advocate), and to be a loving and conscious wife, as well as loving myself and getting my own needs met. Although this is definitely a fact that everyone needs to get their needs met in order to keep the happy sanity within the home, we don't always get them met. But thanks to the playgroup and the book, I am beginning a new journey towards re-discovering myself and planting new seeds along the way.

Gratitude is one of the vital keys to self-healing and self-loving. Thank you Abounding River and Cafe Gratitude for existing so that we can exist in a more loving, abundant and sustainable way. Here's to eating, living, and creating concsious communities!

Homeschooling...Actually Lifeschooling is More Like It!

2010-11-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, 11/20/2010, the village gathered at our new home. Yes we moved once again (that was twice in 4 months) but this time it was to a house! Yes, an actual house. LOL

And we only had a week to unpack (majority of the stuff - several boxes ended up in my office for the time being). I was quite the busy mama with helping to pack, move, unpack, organize 2 big events back to back (Saturday was the Family Love Village and Sunday was our son, Andrik's blessing ceremony) and both gatherings were at our new home. Pheww...talk about needing a vacation!

But I do have to say that both gatherings were very successful - besides the part where I lost my camera. Yes the camera that had all the wonderful photos and footage of the homeschooling workshop. Sighhh...so unfortunately there won't be any fun images for you to see for this post. Sighhhh...ok moving on.

So although it was a cold and somewhat drizzly/rainy night, alot of families showed up! I was very excited because not only did my cousins, Maya Hackett, Elrik and Franz Jundis travel from up North (Elrik who was also visiting from the Philippines) come down to be guest speakers but so did the author of Deschooling Gently and Zenschooling, Tammy Takahashi, as well as her son Cameron, along with Michelle Barone and Renee Smock. And oh boy we're we all in for a treat with this wonderful panel of guest speakers!

Before I continue on, I wanted to give you references of what homeschooling and unschooling is? Most parents, if not familiar with it, think of homeschooling as your child learning by themselves and isolated. Of course the first thing that comes to mind to most parents is, "what about socialization with your child? This could affect their social skills since they don't interact with other children". Well this is quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. There are definitely ways to have your child(ren) socialized (if not already in a group homeschooling type of environment) and that is by joining homeschooling/unschooling groups. And once you start researching groups, you'll be pleasantly surprised with just how many groups are really out there in Los Angeles!

Ok back to what homeschooling and unschooling is. I actually found a good post on the definition of homeschooling by one of the guest speakers, Tammy Takahashi.  For more great insights on homeschooling, (or as Tammy likes to put it, deschooling gently and zenschooling), check out her blog called Just Enough and Nothing More. And one of the other guest speakers, Renee Smock actually gave me some really wonderful and informative links on unschooling and one of them gave a great description.

So back to our gathering. I hate to admit it but not only did my camera get lost that weekend but my notes for that night weren't the best. Not only was I hosting but I was also communicating back and forth with Andrik's nanny, Cindy who was watching our kids so that the parents could fully focus on the guest speakers. So I had to be the messenger to the parents whenever their children were asking (a.k.a. crying) for them. Lesson learned - must have my tape recorder at these meetings from now on!

So please forgive my not-so-organized notes of the evening. But although I won't be able to share all of the golden nuggets of information given that night, I do have a wonderful list of references and books I will be sharing at the end of this post to make up for it.

The evening began with the guest speakers introducing themselves and how they came about homeschooling/unschooling their children. So here are the notes from that night, or at least what I was able to decipher from my chicken scratch.
My cousin, Elrik Jundis (Chairman of the Philippine Permaculture Association) has been homeschooled since he was young. At the age of 7 years old, he learned how to cook and organized the meals for 30 boyscouts (which is very impressive for a child that young to do, if you ask me!). Throughout his life, Elrik has been drawn to a Montessori style of homeschooling and actually worked in a Montesorri school. In his experience, Montessori can be a perfect place to develop a child's sense of awe and appreciation for the divine. Also in his experience, it is one of the best systems for creating independence and critical thought. Him and his wife are currently homeschooling their 2 year old son, Ravi with this method.

I'm sure most of you would like to know what Montessori is. So here are a couple of links to peak your interest:

1. Montessori Method
2. Montessori Education
3. FAQ on Montessori

One great description that I would like to share on here is the concept of how the protection of the "best" in each child is through respect of choice and concentration:

"The most important discovery that Dr. Montessori has contributed to the field of child development and education is the fostering of the best in each child. She discovered that in an environment where children are allowed to choose their work and to concentrate for as long as needed on that task, that they come out of this period of concentration (or meditation or contemplation) refreshed and full of good will toward others. The teacher must know how to offer work, to link the child to the environment who is the real teacher, and to protect this process. We know now that this natural goodness and compassion are inborn, and do not need to be taught, but to be protected."

My other cousin, Maya Hackett (Elrik's sister) also spoke of her experiences of being homeschooled. Since she didn't like being told what to do and thought outside of the box as a child, the traditional school system was actually stifling her learning (which both her brothers could attest to, I'm sure). She has been unschooling her 3 boys with a Waldorf-inspired learning environment. An extraordinary author of her own blog, Urban Organica has a medley of posts on the types of wonderful experiences her children learn in this type of environment.

For more details on the Waldorf Education, here are a couple of links to peruse through:

1. What Is Waldorf Education
2. Why Waldorf Works
3. Waldorf Education - a marvelous interview with Sarah Baldwin of Bella Luna Toys

And here is a brief description of the Waldorf Education:

Developed by Rudolf Steiner in 1919, Waldorf Education is based on a profound understanding of human development that addresses the needs of the growing child. Waldorf teachers strive to transform education into an art that educates the whole child—the heart and the hands, as well as the head.

My other cousin, Franz Jundis (the youngest brother) didn't actually speak on the panel but held the loving space as a homeschooler for the gathering.  And even though no words came from his mouth during the presentation, his loving soul vibrated throughout the room. And can I just say, not only is Franz an amazing healer, he gives thee BEST hugs! :o)

Tammy Takahashi, author of Deschooling Gently and Zenschooling, shared her experiences with homeschooling her 3 children. She shared the importance of being adaptable. Unfortunately the school system is not teaching our kids how to adapt in school. If we open ourselves to being flexible, especially when children are struggling or butting heads, we can take the blinds off and see what works for the child.    Children intuitively understand this. They naturally adapt to homeschooling - parents do not. What parents can do is just trust and know that our children will adapt. You have to be really aware with your children to know what they are into, what their interests are.

There are 3 ways to choose for education:

1) Homeschooling - where education isn't in a traditional style. This gives you freedom for you and your child. You create your own curriculum. Under the homeschooling umbrella is: Waldorf-based philosophy of learning, Montessori, being tutored (which is very detail oriented) to name a few. There are different styles of homeschooling/unschooling - it just depends on what fits for your child and your family.

2) Enroll in a charter school - you meet with a counselor who provides guidance with a curriculum. The beneift of this is it's free. The downside is it requires some standards, such as testing.

3) Independent study programs - which provide legal protection but the downside is you have to pay just like any private school.

Cameron Takahashi - Tammy Takahashi's 12-year old son was the most inspiring guest speaker on this panel. It was his first time being a guest speaker and I have to say the villagers were impressed! He got the most questions from us that's for sure and spoke eloquently and intelligently with his answers.   He shared his experiences of what it's like to be homeschooled and how socialization is definitely not an issue. He's a very busy kid with homeschooling groups that he is a part of - one being the Huckleberry.

Renee Smock - a wonderful woman who homeschools her children (ages 6 and 8 years old). Unfortunately this is where things started to get foggy and where I was getting pulled in several directions and was unable to write down notes. Which of course I feel aweful that I was unable to write anything down. She was definitely a very sweet woman who gave us an aloe vera plant as a housewarming gift! Although I was unable to take notes at this time when she was speaking, prior to our gathering, she gave me a plethora of resources on homeschooling and unschooling. I have her to thank for majority of the links that you will see listed below.

Michelle Barone - a licensed marriage and family therapist, as well as, a Certified NET Practitioner, Neuro Emotional Technique, which is a exceptional mind/body technique for trauma, stress reduction and changing unhealthy patterns. (Note to self: must have her back to be a guest speaker on this topic).

She holds four life California teaching credentials (K-12), Adult, Learning Handicapped and Severely Handicapped. She has published numerous articles for parents, is a contributor to The Homeschool Book of Answers by Linda Dobson and presents workshops on a variety of topics pertaining to families. She has been homeschooling since 1987 and is one of the founding mothers of the largest secular homeschool support group in the Los Angeles areas. She has also been an expert witness for homeschooling custody cases and is the author of Finding Your Way.

Throughout the presentation, several parents were concerned about their kids being able to be socialized while being homeschooled. Michelle wrote an excellent article on this topic called "Socialization and the Homeschooled Student".

Again, although I was unable to offer alot of important things mentioned in the actual presentation, I think there are definitely alot of resources available for your reading pleasure! And speaking of resources, here is the list I had mentioned earlier:

WEBSITES/LINKS:

1. Tammy Takahashi

2. Michelle Barone

3. Urban Organica - this is my beautiful cousin, Maya Hackett's blog on unschooling her 3 boys along with her creative crafts and yummy recipes. I absolutely LOVE her blog! She just recently moved her blog to here. I figured I'd give you both links so you can get a taste of her past posts and her new posts.
4. Sandra Dodd

5. Joyce Fetterol

6. Beginning to Unschool

7. Why I chose Unschooling, by Joyce Fetterol

8. The Roll of the Unschooling Parent

9. Teaching vs. Learning

10. Life Without School Community Blog

11. HomeSchool Association of California - if you join their yahoogroup, it gives great resources and topics that homeschooling families share.

12. Wee Folk Art - blog on Waldorf homeschooling and crafts

13. Mudpies & Butterflies - a wonderful resource of a woman, Jessica Deltac, who creates/coordinates village parkdays & excursions throughout Los Angeles for homeschooling families

14. Huckleberry - Center for Creative Learning based in Newhall, CA

BOOKS:

1. Deschooling Gently by Tammy Takahashi

2. Zenschooling by Tammy Takahashi

3. Finding Your Way by Michelle Barone

4. Parenting a Free Child by Rue Kream

5. Sandra Dodd's Big Book of Unschooling by Sandra Dodd

OTHER GOOD LINKS/BOOKS ABOUT LEARNING & EDUCATION:

1. Anything by John Holt

2. Better Late than Early by Raymond Moore and Dorothy Moore

3. John Taylor Gatto

There are many different styles of homeschooling/unschooling. And yes - it can be overwhelming to decide which to choose. For my son, I will be exploring a blend of Waldorf and Montessori to see if this resonates with what he enjoys and thrives in. My best advise to anyone interested in homeschooling/unschooling is to go through these links and resources on this post, do your own research and feel from your heart what you feel would be best for your child and your family. I hope this post has inspired you to learn more and just know that if you do take this path with your children, you're not alone. There is a plethora of resources, support groups and community out there!

After this gathering, one of the moms had thanked me for organizing this topic and had referred it as "lifeschooling" - which as you can see from the title of my post, that I loved her description of it. And it really is true - homeschooling, unschooling, Montesorri, Waldorf, Secular, whatever you want to call it - it really is about engaging with your child/ren, really honing in on what interests them with learning and most importantly, joyfully experiencing life with them.

I would like to leave you all with something that Tammy's son, Cameron expressed to us adults that night that truly put a smile on my heart and what I feel is the epitome of what learning is all about:

"There is 'seeing' learning. There is also 'hearing' learning.  And then there is 'feeling' learning - which is experiencing..."

Conscious Birthing with Special Guest Speaker, Elizabeth Bachner

2010-10-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth talking about connecting with the baby in the womb

The Family Love Village gathered together on Saturday 10/16/10 for yet another wonderful event. This time the topic was on Conscious Birthing with a very special guest speaker, our midwife, Elizabeth Bachner.

Elizabeth Bachner, LM, CPM & L.A.C., who was voted DASC Midwife of the Year 2008, is the owner of GraceFull Birthing. She combines her Medical skills as a California Licensed Midwife, Acupuncturist and Herbalist to provide both safety and care for your entire family. Elizabeth’s passion for conscious choices in both birthing and parenting is supported by years of nanny experience, her undergraduate degree in Child Psychology from The Elliot Pearson School at Tufts University and as a graduate of Dr. Ray Castellino’s Foundation Training in Pre and Perinatal Psychology. Elizabeth views birth as not only a sacred event but also as an initiation. Every birth offers the parents an opportunity to learn what it is that their children want them to learn - in order to be able to parent them with grace.

Travis, Eva & Professor Rylo

The first topic that Elizabeth spoke about was connecting with the baby while in the womb. This is such an important part of the parenting journey. It all begins while the baby is growing in your belly. Babies are fully present even when they are developing in your belly. And they learn by example, so when the mom is going through the full range of emotions, if you actually talk to the baby and teach them how to be present with their feelings -whether positive or negative, these tiny evolving munchkins will begin to understand what feelings are and can differentiate between the feelings.

I remember when I was going through some stressful moments during my pregnancy and Elizabeth had told me something that I will always remember and cherish as the beginning of my journey towards conscious parenting. She told me when I'm feeling stressed, hurt and/or frustrated to let our lil munchkin know that these emotions that I was feeling were mine own - that these feelings were not his; that I was experiencing this sadness or frustration but that he didn't have to own these feelings as I did. And to explain that I was sad because of an external cause and had nothing to do with anything that Andrik was doing. To me, this made so much sense. It just resonated with me because I truly believe that these souls even when they are developing in our tummies are conscious beings. We are all made up of energy and whether it is positive or negative energy, all energy vibrates to a particular tune. And whether we are expressing ourselves through words, emotions, and/or actions - it is all a way of communication. So it would make sense that communicating consciously with our babies while in the womb not only creates a special bond between mother and child but also paves the path towards conscious parenting.

I did this throughout the whole pregnancy and still communicate to Andrik that my emotions are mine even up to this day. Even when daddy and myself have an argument, I always explain to Andrik that we are arguing but it was not caused by him, that he is not at fault at all. That way he can differentiate between our emotions and know that he is not to blame. As a side note, the most important part of Andrik witnessing an argument between us, is experiencing when we make up and show affection and empathy!

Mike, Hannah and their lil bun in the oven :o)

Tom, Gen & their lil bun in the oven

The next topic Elizabeth discussed was how to have a conscious birth - whether at home or in a hospital. What is consciousness? It is the state of being conscious; the awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts and surroundings. Elizabeth went on to explain that conscious birthing begins with the choices of how you want to birth, where you want to birth, whom you want to be at the birth, creating a birth plan of what you want and don't want at the birth, etc. It is a state of being aware of and embracing a birth that resonates for you and your family.

Conscious birthing is also knowing the difference between pain and suffering. The majority of births, properly supported by a provider and/or birth companion (such as a midwife like Elizabeth) who is experienced in helping women cope with labor, can occur with the mother un-medicated but not experiencing suffering. Pain in labor is normal; suffering is not. It has been well documented that this support significantly reduces the need for pain medication, c-section, and other interventions.

Conscious Birthing is also getting out of the Christian paradigm of feeling like you're "good" or "bad" and into the new way of embracing all and being present. It is knowing that the storm is passing through us but the storm is not who we are. It is also honoring the "No" and choosing who you want in the room while giving birth. Conscious birthing is also having the support person knowing where they're attention is during the birth, being present and honoring what the woman needs during this time. Every action, whether it's a bathroom break, taking care of yourself by eating or sending a text should be a mutual cooperation and support for the mom and baby.

The next topic Elizabeth discussed was how to give birth without guilt or shame. The goal during birth is for the mom to be really present with what she is feeling or experiencing and to let go of any "secrets" that may make her feel guilty or ashamed. For instance, "I need to fart but don't want anyone to hear me" or having secret judgments about the birth, such as "I’m supposed to birth with an orgasm or it won't be perfect!". Elizabeth explained that birthing without guilt or shame is having no expectation of what your birth should look like, willing to go through the pain and experience the birth, that sometimes there is Karma and then there is Dharma and to trust your intuition. She also mentioned that the hardest thing for mothers to get comfortable with is gas and poops during labor. But during labor, you just have to take off your Wonder Woman cape and birth like a rock star! :o)

Elizabeth wanted to quote a magnet that she liked on my fridge that pertained to birthing like a rock star. At the time, I couldn't remember the saying but when I looked on my fridge, the magnet that I had once thought was a strange quote made so much sense to me now:

"One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star." ~ Nietzche

Professor Rylo & Uncle Dalmacio

Sasha & Andrik

The last topic that Elizabeth covered was how to heal from afterbirth post trauma. She highly suggested getting SUPPORT, getting rest and getting a new perspective - that you did NOTHING wrong!

Unfortunately at this time, Andrik was very active and needed my attention so I missed most of this part. So I decided to do a little research on this topic and found some websites that I thought the Village readers would appreciate:

1) Healing Trauma
2) Healing A Traumatic Childbirth Experience
3) Healing From Pregnancy and Birth Trauma
4) Rebirth After Birth Trauma (I found this post very intriguing and inspiring)


Yvonne & Kien

Elizabeth ended the workshop with some loving and thought-provoking words to share with the villagers (which I had actually received from her notes that I printed out before the workshop and wanted to share):

What makes a good parent? It is not what it looks like – it is what it feels like. A good parent knows who they are (boundaries, how they feel, grounded, where they are in the world); is willing to make an effort; is able to be in relationship with kindness – and state boundaries with kindness and keep the child safe from harm. That is what love is.

Kids learn by example. Be the example of loving to your self, know your self, have healthy boundaries for yourself, create a safe space – feel safe in yourself… with love and kindness to all!

Elizabeth believes that when people are supported and trusted they are able to birth, parent and live with Presence, Connection and Grace. Parenting begins way before the actual birth. When parents feel well supported and trusted during the pregnancy and birthing process, they will create a strong connection to their inner wisdom and continue to parent in an ease-filled, joy-full relationship with their child.