Healing Happens Therapy

you can heal, we can help.

Relationship & Intimacy Expert, reconnecting couples through counseling so you can rebuild and get on with the best parts of being in a relationship!

Certified Nutritional Advisor and Professional Life Coach, helping motivated people take back their health, reach their goals and integrate a sense of balance in their lives.

Need a Life Coach or Health & Wellness Coach? What They Do and How They Can Help You

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You can’t be an expert on everything. Life can get overwhelming and we can get stuck in places we desperately want to get out of. Therefore, it’s only logical to sometimes ask for help.

Generally, each of us has our realms of expertise. Some of us choose to share that knowledge. Two good examples: life coaches and health & wellness coaches. It doesn’t get any more fundamental than what they teach: seeking balance by choosing balance.

What Does a Life Coach or Health & Wellness Coach Do?
A holistic way to answer this question is to point out that such coaches make the big connections. For example, let’s say you and your partner are in the midst of a rough patch. Taking some time to yourself or choosing to attend couple counseling together is great. But what about when those outside factors kick in again?

Life can toss an infinite variety of challenges at us. The best way to greet these challenges is with a sense of balance. This comes from a balanced approach to managing your life. You address concerns both inside and out. You learn to recognize how it all connects.

Life coaches and health & wellness coaches vary in their approaches and their backgrounds. What they share in common is a passion to guide. Coaches gather information and offer guidance in those parts of your life that feel stuck or unfulfilling.

How Can a Life Coach or Health & Wellness Coach Help You?
1. Create a game plan
There’s an old saying about knowing the rules well before you break them. The same can be said for having a solid plan in place. Before you try spontaneity, you need to understand the basics. Working with a coach empowers you and provides a structure of core strategies and new ways to evolve whether it’s with body mind or soul.

  1. Learn fun ways to get active
    Our tech-based culture encourages a sedentary lifestyle. Coaching inspires us to learn fresh ways to sweat and smile. How about yoga, dance, and more at Oakland’s Flying Studios?
  2. Become the architect of your eating habits (and supplementation)
    What you consume will dictate how much energy you have to live a full life. Hydration, healthy meals, smart supplementation—it all adds up to fuel us well. Consult an expert to guide you through this ever-evolving process.
  3. Have someone to contact beyond weekly sessions
    It’s often tough to get appointments with doctors. Therapists and personal trainers are all yours—one hour at a time. A life/health & wellness coach is more a presence in your daily life. Besides face-to-face sessions, you may do phone calls or video chats. In addition, there’s 24/7 access to email or chat messages. To start, this kind of contact is crucial. Over time, you’ll develop new problem-solving skills and begin trusting yourself as much as you trust your coach!
  4. Develop a self-care regimen
    Even with steady contact with your coach, the onus is on you for self-care. The basics include the aforementioned healthy eating habits and daily activity. Add in regular sleep patterns and reliable stress management and you’re treating yourself the way you deserve to be treated. With self-care in place, you’ll find you are more receptive and enthusiastic about the coaching you receive.
  5. Live in the present moment
    Look into your past and find your regrets. Gaze into the future and your anxiety may kick in. In the present moment, however, all you have is here and now.

Where Do You Find a Life Coach or Health & Wellness Coach?

Look no further. At Healing Happens Therapy & Coaching we offer a wide range of health services—including life coaching and health & wellness coaching. All of our services share a vision. We understand that mind and body are one. Therefore, true health is created by honoring an integrated approach. Call today for a free 10-minute consultation and discover how you can become the captain of your own destiny.

Filed Under: get your sexy back, goals, health, healthy relationship, motivation, nutrition, self care, self help, self love, therapy, weight loss

Ways to Stay Healthy and Happy During the Holidays: Supplements & Best Practices

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Does decking the halls count as cardio? The annual holiday season is more than a time of celebration, family, and conspicuous consumption. It’s when we casually and willfully break all those good habits we’ve created for the previous 11 months.

We eat junk, drink way too much alcohol, and get way too little sleep. Factor in the family drama and rampant overspending and, well, you can kiss “health and happiness” goodbye. But what if I told you that you can enjoy the holidays without experiencing a complete health breakdown?

How to Stay Healthy and Happy During the Holidays

Supplements

Let’s first dispense with the common refrain that “there’s a new miracle pill every day.” Yes, there are those who try to cash in on inaccurate claims. But nutrition, as a whole, is more static than we might imagine. The nutrients and supplements we require are easy to learn. But, like everything else, we need focus and commitment to using this information safely and effectively.

Did you know that the mineral content in fruits and vegetables has decreased by at least 60 percent since 1940? The reasons for this are too many to list. But they all add up to us needing more than good eating habits to stay at our best.

From national chains like GNC to smaller, mom-and-pop shops like Lakeshore Natural Foods and Milagros De Mexico, Oakland is brimming with places to learn We need to also be aware and look for a “no compromise” ingredients as supplements are not regulated in the US and we must demand quality bioavailable products. As a Certifed Nutritional Advisor, I’m happy to go over which brands I recommend for quality and assurance.

Best Practices

1. It all starts with basic self-care

The best way to develop health-related discipline is self-care. The best first step towards holiday health is self-care. It’s nice the way that works out, huh? What is basic self-care? We’re glad you asked:

  • Regular sleeping habits
  • Healthy eating choices (and remember those supplements!)
  • Daily exercise and activity
  • Stress management and relaxation techniques ( and omg the adaptogens, now those make you feel great!)

2. Communication

“Silent Night” may be a popular seasonal tune but silence is not best for you. It’s essential that you speak up—politely and as early as possible—about your personal needs. Make those in your life aware that you’re planning to have fun but perhaps not as they will. Honestly, there’s no rational reason to toss all your common sense habits just because it’s December. The trick lies in conveying this clearly but not belligerently.

3. Solitude is not selfishness

There will be times when you indulge. The healthy trade-off is balance. Holiday fun is not a contest. You don’t lose points for sitting out a few plays. Honor your needs. Take time to yourself to balance out the inevitable social splurges.

4. Plan active events

So much of the holiday festivities involve us sitting still—eating, drinking, and so on. Once again, in the name of balance, why not plan some active events? For example, try a group hike before the meals are served and drinks are poured. Ice skating burns some calories too!

5. Create new traditions

This can get tricky with the purists but, in the end, people will do what’s fun. Collaborate and create traditions that mix healthier foods, activity, and a drastic decrease in toxin consumption.

Give Yourself the Gift of Guidance

Take out an old-fashioned pen and paper. Write “holiday shopping” at the top and begin that list by promising yourself the gift of guidance. This year, you can unwrap a present that will never stop giving. We all have our areas of expertise. In addition, we all have limits on our time. Therefore, it’s not always realistic to assume we can find the time to learn all there is to know about the connection between mental health and physical wellness. At Healing Happens Therapy, you can get firsthand knowledge from an expert professional.  Come in, let’s get your life on track. Be your best in 2018!

Filed Under: burnout, health, new years resolutions, nutrition Tagged With: , , , ,

How Hepisil can Help You Cope with the Napa Valley Fires

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As the term suggests, natural disasters happen naturally—leaving us to figure out how to cope during and after. Fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, floods, and other such events can be life-ending. For survivors, natural disasters are often life-changing. The impact may be traumatic.

The Emotional Impact of Natural Disasters

Like any traumatic event, reactions can vary from individual to individual. But there are always common threads to be found, e.g.

  • Anxiety and depression
  • Intense mood swings and irritability (grow increasingly unpredictable)
  • Become withdrawal, anti-social, and fearful of another disaster
  • Loss of concentration and focus
  • Difficulty making decisions
  • Vivid, ongoing flashbacks
  • Physical Consequences of Large-Scale Wildfires

Intense psychological issues—like those listed above—can manifest quickly into physical symptoms. Survivors of something like the Napa Valley wildfires may experience sleep and eating issues, headaches, nausea, and immune dysfunction.

The release of evermore airborne toxins also puts an intense stress on the liver. This impacts the many crucial functions performed by this, the body’s second-largest organ. For example, the football-sized liver is responsible for:

  • Metabolism of nutrients
  • Synthesizing of glycogen for energy
  • A wide variety of natural detoxification processes
  • Under normal circumstances, it’s always important to practice liver support. For those living near the Napa Valley wildfires, from Oakland to San Jose, it’s even more urgent now. Wildfire smoke contains fine particles. These particles can cause, among other things:
    • Coughing and sore throat
    • Sinus irritation
    • Burning eyes
    • Nasal issues, runny nose
    • Bronchitis
    • Fatigue
    • Shortness of breath
    • Heart palpitations

This particle-caused toxic overload leads to an over-stressing of the liver. Thus, this is the ideal time to consider natural counter-options like Hepisil.

What is Hepisil?

Hepisil (also spelled Hepasil) is a natural supplement, a blend of antioxidants designed to support and maintain the liver. Its primary ingredient is Milk Thistle Extract, an invaluable antioxidant that plays a major role in supporting the enzyme systems involved in the body’s detoxification process.

Other ingredients include:

  • Alpha-lipoic acid
  • A patented olive fruit extract Olivol
  • Green tea extract
  • Turmeric extract
  • Choline
  • N-acetyl L-cysteine
  • Biotin

How Hepisil Can Help You Cope with the Napa Valley Fires

  1. Milk Thistle Extract is a powerful detoxifier. As mentioned above, wildfires = fine air particles. Inhaling this air puts a big-time demand on your liver’s workload. Hepisil’s main ingredient is designed to ease that load through detoxification.
  2. Milk Thistle Extract has anti-cancer properties. In addition, a sudden increase in airborne toxins can include carcinogens. This is particularly dangerous for the lungs. Milk Thistle Extract has been shown to be a powerful anti-cancer fighter.
  3. Alpha-lipoic acid can reduce chemical toxicityComplementing the Milk Thistle is Alpha-lipoic acid. This crucial antioxidant works as a bulwark against the daily toxic onslaught.
  4. A powerful blend of other antioxidants in the mixHepisil’s ingredient list reads like an antioxidant army. To focus on one example, green tea extract’s polyphenols have been found to chelate metals and promote anti-cancer activity.
  5. No prescription needed with minimal/rare side effects. We all know how tricky it can be when it comes to pharmaceuticals. From pricing to side effects, the risks are well-documented. Hepisil is not a prescription, but you should look for pharmaceutical grade supplements like Usana brand. The overall price and risk are both significantly lower than a prescription drug.

Choosing an Integrated Approach

In times of crisis, our recovery may depend on us choosing a holistic approach to healing. Specifically, when dealing with the aftermath of the Napa Valley wildfires, it’s essential to seek out a practitioner who understands the value of an integrated approach. At Healing Happens Therapy, you will be helped from the inside—with full respect for the connection between physical wellness and mental health.

Filed Under: health, nutrition Tagged With: , , , ,

Ditch Dieting Anxiety: Healthier Ways to Approach Weight and Wellness

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Diet. Even just the word itself is often a source of anxiety. It can stir up feelings of guilt and shame and kick our negative self-talk into high gear. But we can approach weight and wellness in a healthier way. A shift in perspective may be required but it’s absolutely possible!

Why does dieting stress us out so much?

No one feels good when restricting themselves. Thanks to social media, we also feel more pressure than ever about body image. Dieting is a double whammy. We stress and obsess over the specifics, calorie counts, and ingredient purity. And we also get hit with all those body image issues. Dieting is stressful and often counterproductive for many reasons, e.g.

They aim a temporary fix at a long-term concern.
The whole idea of a diet is to “go on” it until you stop. This could be because you reached your goal or simply gave up. A healthier approach to weight and wellness would involve a big picture view of eating habits.

You must allocate so much mental energy.
The time and energy needed are exhausting. Turning something natural into a rule-laden sacrifice requires us to expend energy in very unproductive directions.

There is a lot of bad information out there.
It was bad before the Internet. And now? There is far more bad and dangerous advice than anything useful. Everyone is an “expert” and credentials are virtually impossible to verify. How can this not lead to dieting anxiety? We can’t morph into nutrition experts overnight. Find an experienced, qualified mentor.

Why is it important to maintain healthy eating habits?

It would be wonderful if we could condition ourselves to reject all imposed body standards. We’d no longer conform to society’s demands and eat whatever we want. Thinking for yourself is a wonderful idea. Eating whatever you want is another story.

Our bodies (and minds) require us to pay attention to what we consume. It’s not just about calories and sugar content. To feel our best, we must take responsibility for our lifestyle choices. Again, a great place to start is to find a mentor.

A Few Healthy Ways to Approach Weight and Wellness

Lifestyle
It’s not a trend or fad. It’s not something we do for a month before our sister’s wedding. Taking responsibility for our eating habits is a lifestyle change. We tweak it and re-evaluate it, of course, but it’s still a long-term decision.

Get active
Burning calories goes hand in hand with counting calories. Our body craves movement. Movement keeps us lean, flexible, and functional. This is another reason why “diets” stress and fail. They don’t address the need for activity. Step away from your phones and laptops and go try a spin class at RIDE Oakland!

Practice portion control
This is a good bit of nuts-and-bolts advice. One of the hardest parts of changing our eating habits is reducing or possibly eliminating foods we love. Don’t start with that challenge. Instead, go with portion control. Commit to eating a small amount less at every meal. In no time, you will have seriously decreased intake and proven to yourself that yes, you can change. Tackling this change will make it easier to then address dietary content.

If you’re thinking, “Sure, I’ve heard all this a million times…”

It’s common to hear people bemoan how “there’s something new each week” when it comes to diet. Things can get confusing and therefore, demoralizing. As touched on above, weight and wellness is a loaded combination. Ideally, we can get input from someone who understands the emotional and physical factors—and how those factors combine. At Healing Happens Therapy, we help clients take a look at the whole picture. We address this challenging issue from the inside out.

Filed Under: balance, health, nutrition, weight loss Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Nutritional Supplements and Your Mental Health: Why So Important?

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www.HealingHappysTherapy.com

You’ve heard it enough times on the radio during your morning commute through Oakland. You’ve seen enough beautiful bodies jogging through the Bay area to know it. You’ve read enough health and wellness blogs to get it: Your body loves a tall glass of water. It craves fruits and veggies, and runs optimally on just the right amount of protein and fiber. Throw in 30 good minutes of daily exercise, and you’re likely to feel pretty fit.

But what about your mind?

Are those things enough to ensure you’re mentally fit as well? Well, to be sure, the mind and body are connected.

It stands to reason that healthy thinking happens best in a hospitable environment.  In fact, recent research indicates that depression, anxiety, and personality disorders benefit from nutritional supplementation.

Let’s look at what we know:

Nutritional supplements can help offset the nutritional deficiencies that contribute to mental disorders.

Affordable, manageable disease prevention is much preferred to lengthy expensive cures. Increasing awareness of dietary deficiencies may help head off mental health trouble at the pass.  In the 2008 Indian Journal of Psychiatry article, ”Understanding nutrition, depression and mental illnesses,” researchers noted:

“On the basis of accumulating scientific evidence, an effective therapeutic intervention is emerging, namely nutritional supplement/ treatment. These may be appropriate for controlling and to some extent, preventing depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, eating disorders and anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD), autism, and addiction.”

Nutritional supplementation helps seal “holes” in our diets. They restore optimal brain and gut function. Improving these functions relieves negative thinking, sleep deprivation, chronic pain, and other mental health detractors.

Science tells us, too, that significant inflammation almost always accompanies mental health challenges. Processed foods and sedentary lifestyles mean that supplementation is fast becoming necessary. It may even be critical to stemming the trend of nutritional deficiency and resulting inflammation.

Wellness experts show a link between depression, chronic inflammation, and problems in the gut. They maintain that nutrient supplementation is likely so effective because vitamins and minerals are potent anti-inflammatories. A theory that appears to hold up under scientific scrutiny.

Nutritional supplements can provide a natural enhancement to, or replacement for, prescription meds.

Many people want to feel better, not dazed or slowed down by meds or anything “unnatural.” Thus, natural alternatives have become more desirable. Knowledgeable and responsible supplementation often removes the need for large amounts of medication. This is increasingly attractive to patients.

Natural substances that ease distress while enhancing prescription drug effectiveness are attractive as well.

Nutritional supplements can reduce rejection of other mental health treatments.

Supplementation is supported by evidence proving its effectiveness, along with a safety record that far outpaces the pharmaceutical industry.

Is it any wonder that natural supplements often prove far less threatening or worrisome to many patients? This alone leads to increased cooperation by patients throughout the entire treatment process. With supplementation, therapists report fewer issues with side effects and treatment non-compliance. Thus, the chances of lasting mental health improvement improve.

So, what’s the takeaway?

Understanding the interrelated nature of your mind and body is vital when making nutritional choices. Loss of appetite, sleep, and self-control are markers of taxed mental health. Something basic and fundamental may be lacking if you are experiencing these issues.

As you seek help, it may be wise for you and your therapist to track your nutritional intake along with your moods. It may make all the difference between just managing mental health problems and thriving mentally.

At Healing Happens Therapy,  Kelly Montgomery is a licensed clinical therapist as well as a certified nutritional advisor.

Filed Under: depression, health, nutrition, self care, vitamins