There’s just something about the rich, delicious blend of chocolate, coffee and bananas that makes me go a little nuts! That’s why I added almonds and replaced the espresso with decaf in the Wired Mocha Monkey Smoothie for a new twist on an old goodie.

This smoothie is small yet mighty! It’s only 300 calories but it’s packed full of nutrients and flavour. Enjoying this quick liquid breakfast will start your day off with a powerful punch of potassium, vitamin E, manganese, magnesium and vitamin B6.

Add the right protein powder and you can double, triple or even quadruple it’s nutrient density!

The soy protein isolate I used added an extra 100 calories but nearly doubled the potassium, tripled the protein levels, more than doubled the vitamin B6 content and added a significant amount of vitamin B12 (important mood enhancing vitamins) – just to name a few!

Mocha Almond Monkey Madness

Makes: 1 serving (app. 18 oz)

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup raw almonds, ground
• 1 small banana, frozen
• 1 cup Almond milk, plain
• 1/4 Swiss water decaffeinated brewed espresso, organic if possible
• 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder, unsweetened
• 1 serving of your fav protein powder

Preparation

1. Grind almonds first.
2. Add remaining ingredients except for the protein powder.
3. Blend on high.
4. Add protein powder. Pulse to blend with smoothie.
5. Enjoy!

Nutritional Information (protein powder is not included in the following calculations)

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“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Happy Thanksgiving, America! This special day is set aside for gratitude. Did you know that some people think gratitude is so important that it will change your life? This post explains the power of gratitude and gives you some practical tips for achieving it!

Do you believe in the Law of Attraction? Before dismissing it as New Age hooplah, look to your own experience for evidence of it.

For instance, when you genuinely smile at someone, do you not usually receive one in return? When you’re grumpy, don’t you notice that most often people will react in kind?

The Law of Attraction is at work whether we accept or deny it. There is one key element about the Law of Attraction when using it to improve your life: emotional energy.

Positive emotions (like joy, abundance, gratitude and love) net you positive results.

Armed with this knowledge and in honour of Thanksgiving in the U.S., the easiest way to begin using the Law of Attraction to your benefit is being grateful. I know what you’re saying. “How can I be grateful for everything in my life when I’m not?”

Well, you don’t have to be grateful for everything in your life. The secret is to focus on and appreciate the aspects of your life that you ARE grateful for. By loving your life now, according to the Law of Attraction, you’ll love your life later!

From The Secret, Daily Teachings, Day 295:

Gratitude is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to transform your life. If you become truly grateful, you will magnetize everything you need, wherever you go, and in everything you do. In fact, without gratitude, nothing can ever change. Your life will change to the degree that you use gratitude an begin to feel grateful. If you are just a little bit grateful, your life will change just a little bit. If you are very grateful, your life will change a lot. It’s up to you.

So now that we understand the power of gratitude, how do we apply this to our daily lives? Let’s start off with awareness:

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Did you know that the CDC estimates American patients contract over 1 million infections in the hospital every year while being treated for something else? While many health debates rage, the one thing we can all agree on is that no one should get sick visiting a doctor.

As we learned a couple of weeks ago in Swine Flu Truths Revealed, secondary infections grossly overestimate the number of deaths attributed to influenza.

Some people admitted to the hospital end up contracting other infections, from pneumonia to antibiotic-resistant staph (MRSA), while under treatment.

The Not on My Watch Prevention Campaign is about educating patients and healthcare professionals in the prevention of hospital-related infections. This program is led by Kimberly-Clark Health Care, a company who believes that Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) are completely avoidable with proper prevention habits.

A few facts from the press release:

• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at any point in time, 1.4 million people worldwide suffer from infections acquired in hospitals. Read the rest of this entry

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Robert F Kennedy Jr. reveals the results from his investigation into vaccines and concludes that vaccines are making the sickest generation in America’s history.

The good news is that this is another respected source spreading the truth about vaccines. Big shout out to reader Dee, for sending us this extremely important 8 minute video (Part 1):

Editor’s Note: This guest post features Toronto freelance writer (and my respected friend), Grace Cherian, who specializes in writing for holistic health professionals. Today she shares with us several forms of expressive therapy and their healing potential.

We’re made up of body, mind and soul. If one of these aspects goes out of kilter, that adversely affects our overall health. But the expressive therapies can help us to stay balanced.

Last year, I joined Creative Works Studio (CWS) after seeing a display of the works of some of the artists from the studio. CWS is a community art program of St. Michael’s Hospital which operates in partnership with the Good Shepherd Non–Profit Homes Inc.

The expressive therapies such as drawing, painting and sculpting help us to reconcile inner conflicts, release deeply repressed emotions and foster self-awareness as well as personal growth. They also help us to heal.

On November 26, CWS will be launching our 2010 calendar and an exhibit, the theme of which is Reflections on Joy. I’ve sculpted an elaborate clay peacock candle holder and completed two Joy paintings for this exhibit.

Painting

I go to CWS regularly because I’ve experienced the power of art to heal me. For instance, one of my Joy paintings depicts a baby with a sunrise in the background. The baby represents my youngest brother, Wilson, who died very tragically fourteen years ago when he was just thirty years old. Wils lit up my life. The sunrise in the painting represents that.

As I discussed this painting with Isabel Fryszberg, the facilitator and occupational therapist at CWS, I began to weep. The painting evoked many mixed, deeply buried feelings that had had no other outlet: the joy Wils had brought into my life, regret and guilt over not having done certain things with or for him, etc. But the tears were incredibly cathartic and helped me to heal a little from losing Wils.

Dance/Movement

For some of us, our spirits soar when we let our feet fly. Others, particularly those who prefer more structure or who feel we have “two left feet,” gain the same sense of release and inner peace from the martial arts such as Tai Chi. Those of us who are recovering from physical, sexual or emotional abuse may find these techniques especially helpful for gaining a sense of ease with our bodies. The underlying premise to dance/movement therapy is that it helps us integrate the emotional, physical and cognitive facets of “self.”

Music/Sound

Many of us turn on soothing music to relax or snazzy tunes to help feel upbeat. Research suggests that music stimulates our body’s natural “feel good” chemicals (opiates and endorphins). This stimulation improves blood flow, blood pressure, pulse rate, breathing and posture changes. Music or sound therapy has been used to treat disorders such as stress, grief, depression, schizophrenia, autism in children and to diagnose mental health needs.

Prose/Poetry

Writing provides us with another creative outlet to work through and heal from difficult experiences.

For many of us, healing is a spiritual path, a transformational process and a way of being. The creative process provides us with a powerful healing force. Making art frees our bodies’ healing mechanisms. It unites body, mind, and spirit.

Grace Cherian is a Toronto-based professional copywriter. For more information about her, go to www.gracecherian.com.

How do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you are? If you want to start feeling great in 2-3 weeks, I suggest that you take an online health assessment tool by a trusted source and regard their advise!

USANA Health Sciences has a useful online health assessment tool that takes about 10 minutes to complete. I took it today and based on my current lifestyle, they recommended a variety of nutritional supplements and small changes I can start doing today to improve my life!

Good news is that I’m taking most of the supplements already. Whoo Hooo! And the suggested lifestyle changes, which I downloaded in a .pdf from the tool, will be easy to follow.

Click here to get your health assessed and allow USANA’s health experts give you some individualized advise.

If you’re ready to try USANA out for yourself, contact stephanie [at] livelighter [dot] org and I can hook you up with a trusted associate.

Some say the ancestors of the Mayans were from Atlantis. This ancient civilization sunk into the sea almost 13,000 years ago, the last time the Earth experienced a shift like the one predicted to occur around 2012. If you’re preparing for 2012, print this recipe out and put it with your dried lentils!

The movie 2012 was incredible! This post and recipe is in honour of a being alive at this fascinating time in history and for the sensational work of Roland Emmerich. I’m excited to see what the future will bring and will be preparing in fun, little ways.

Like stocking up in dried legumes (which last forever) and experimenting with healthy recipes:

Atlantian Lentil Soup: 2012 Special

Ingredients

1 cup dried lentils, soaked overnight and rinsed
2 tbsp olive oil
3 large carrots, chopped
1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped
1 onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 inch ginger, peeled and chopped
2  (19 oz.) cans diced tomatoes
6 cups veggie broth
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp turmeric
1 tbsp cumin
2 tbsp tomato paste

Preparation

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The Mayan calendar ends on December 21st (or 23rd), 2012. This ancient prophesy is over 5,000 years old and predicts that the world as we know it will end. In celebration for tomorrow’s opening release of the new blockbuster movie, 2012, this post is about how you can physically prepare for Armageddon.

Let’s clear up a few things first. This is a movie. While there may be some truth to it (never say never, right?), the worst thing we can do is play into the doom and gloom that Hollywood likes to create for our entertainment!

If you haven’t seen the trailer, here it is:

Many who believe in the 2012 phenomenon look at the Mayan prophesies as an earthly cleansing. Much like a birth, there may be violence, death and destruction as this era ends and we enter into a new beginning.

The cataclysmic events portrayed in the 2012 movie will most likely not happen on a single day. Some people, like Drunvalo Malchizedek, believe that the end of days predicted by the Mayans happen in a window of time and that we’re already experiencing it.

There may be a kernel of truth here, considering the recent swine flu pandemic, Hurricane Katrina, the deadly 2004 tsunami, out-of-control HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa and global warming, to name a few.

Some argue that there has been no significant change in the incidence of natural disasters, disease and illness. Others maintain that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. And fast.

Whatever you choose to believe, here at Live Lighter, we’re preparing for 2012 in any case. We’re taking a proactive, positive approach, though. Not out of fear but out of faith, reason and logic.

Since we cannot control natural disasters, we choose not to worry about these what ifs. We trust that whatever will be, will be.

As for disease and illness, we know our bodies are magnificent machines. Nature made us perfect and as long as we take good care of our bodies, our natural defenses (a.k.a. immune system) will fight off any foreign invader that attempts to wage war with us internally.

Live Lighter’s Simple Guide to Preparing for 2012 Read the rest of this entry

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Are you searching for a (natural) magic bullet for preventative health and curing illness? Including colds and flus? Well, you’re in luck because there’s growing evidence to suggest that the healing rays of the sun, even if the sunshine has to come in a pill, is exactly what the doctor ordered!

What is vitamin D? It’s a fat-soluble vitamin synthesized in the skin when exposed to sunlight that is also present at low concentration in some natural foods, and in many artificially-fortified food products.

Why is it so important? Not only does optimal vitamin D levels increase your immunity to common colds and flus, it helps treat a laundry list of illnesses and diseases.

Here are just a few:

• coronary disease
• lung disease
• autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and lupis
• allergies
• many cancers including prostate, breast, colon, brain tumours, leukemia and myeloma
• osteoporosis/osteopenia and osteoarthritis
• depression and many other mental disorders including schizophrenia
• high blood pressure
• migraines
• epilepsy
• PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome)
• diabetes mellitus (both types 1 and 2)
• fibromyalgia
• obesity

From Vitality in Dr. Rona’s article, Vaccination Controversy:

If you have an infection, the truth is you need more vitamin D. That’s a given. In other words, vitamin D acts as a natural antibiotic. It works against every type of microbe (viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites).

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Politicians and government health officials are urging us to get vaccinated as health insurance. So for the past few weeks, we’ve been investigating exactly how healthy it is to get vaccinated for the H1N1 and seasonal flu. We’ve discovered there are HUGE health risks involved.

One of these risks is the development of neurological disorders. Although rare, this particular type of side effect is completely debilitating.

Before choosing vaccination, please consider the unfortunate case of Desiree Jennings, a beautiful 25-year-old cheerleader from Virginia who received a seasonal flu shot in August and 10 days later, developed what medical experts call, dystonia.

Here’s a 2:18 minute news clip from Inside Edition:

Since they’re rolling out the H1N1 vaccination before properly testing them, coupled with the fact that pharmaceutical companies and doctors are legally protected against lawsuits in these cases AND there’s no funding for vaccine injuries, we have to ask ourselves: “Is it worth the risk?”

What do you think, Readers? Will you be trusting your health to Nature or man?