Category: Blog

“Tick” season has begun. Here are some tips to help you enjoy nature, understanding the reality of Lyme Disease

Posted on by Tom Kelly

Ticks are not something most people are used to talking about but with Eastern Ontario a hotbed for tick activity and cases of Lyme Disease it’s so important to fully understand the reality we are living with. Let’s face it, if you like the outdoors even just a little bit or have a pet that leaves the confines of your home this article is for you! And by all means, don’t stop here, get as much information as you can and share with friends, family and me.

As I said, ticks are gross and I know having met them up close and personal. I was out walking a trail in late November five years ago and was bundled up, tucked in, I had a baseball hat on with a hoodie over that, my shirts (3) and coat done up right to neck, pants were tucked, shirt sleeves and coat covered the light gloves I was wearing (I was bundled up and warm) . I was walking with our dog and recall only once crouching down to untangle his leash. At home just a couple hours later I peeled off my warm clothes and changed my shirt. On my belly was a deer tick and it had already attached firmly to me (ya, first impression “this if fucking gross”) As I went to remove the tick I realized he/she was not going to come off easily, so I looked up the removal procedure and quite easily had the tick off. I put it in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer. The following day I stopped by my family doctors office and was examined, then they arranged to send the tick to Winnipeg for testing. It was determined that I would await test results and treatment if required would begin. By the end of that week, I was called and the tick that rode home with me during my walk had tested negative for Lyme (good news).

  

Here are couple images of a deer tick (one shown feeding). Remember there are other kinds of ticks and all should be addressed in the same way (with caution).

My encounter with a tick defied logic. It had been below zero at night for weeks and yet a tick lived, got through all my clothing and made its way onto my tummy. Even the people I spoke to who track tick behavior were surprised, thinking they would have died off for the season long before my encounter, but they hadn’t. So if ticks are living in colder months like November and it’s now Aprill, these tiny pests will be with us for at least the next 7 months so we need to be prepared!

Getting out into nature is critical for all of us in the summer months and we can do this carefully. The best defense is knowledge and awareness, but keep in mind that I found a tick on my tummy but they will attach just about anywhere so you really need to look yourself over carefully! Yes, check between your toes!

If you are hiking with your partner you can help each out by looking the other one over, it might end up being your post-hike excitement! We’ve got to find a way to make coexisting with these gross little bugs fun!

Tick Tips!

Grass

The easiest thing you can do is to keep your yard and outdoor living space trimmed. Cut grass low (ticks love long grass) and remove piles of leaves and other debris. This will automatically reduce your chances of having ticks in your yard.

Add a fence

It’s important to ensure pets don’t bring ticks into your yard and home, one of the most common ways that humans get tick bites. The best thing to do is ensure pets that live in the home with you do not roam in wooded areas. Installing a fence or keeping pets confined only to yard areas that are mowed short is one of the single most important things you can do to decrease human exposure to Lyme.

Groom pets

Daily brushing and inspecting your pet for ticks is important. After they’ve been through an area where ticks might inhabit check your pet before bringing them into your home. This will help prevent ticks from catching a ride into your living space. Keeping pets out of bedrooms and off of furniture during tick season (late spring, all summer & early fall) will decrease the chance that you or your family members will get a tick bite after a tick has dropped off a pet. Talk to your veterinarian for more strategies on keeping ticks off of your family pet.

Use Cedar Oil as a natural tick deterrent

It’s easy to holistically and naturally repel ticks.

Simply spray exposed skin with cedar oil. Cedar oil is safe, all natural and removes the need for DEET or other toxic chemicals that cause neuronal cell death. Cedar oil also repels flying insects! Spray directly on skin, pets, around doorways and porches and windows, it’s safe to use directly on the skin.

Tick check

Even after doing the first 5 tips, you still need to physically double check your body for ticks every time you are outside. Throughout the day and prior to bathing, double check your body, groin, armpits, scalp, hair, and clothing for ticks. Going directly into a shower after spending time outside is the best way to make sure ticks don’t drop off into your home or stay attached to you long enough to transmit Lyme.

If you can detect a tick before it anchors on, you’ve just prevented transmission entirely. You can strip off clothing and place directly into the wash after working outside, then hop in a shower to wash up.

Tuck in hair “Pony up”

Wear long sleeves and pants whenever possible to help keep ticks from reaching your skin… tucking in your shirt at the waist and if possible tucking pants legs into your socks.

Put long hair into a ponytail, bun, or even better — tucking it all up under a hat is a very easy way to cut your risk of tick bites dramatically because ticks love to grab onto long hair when walking through long grasses and wooded areas.

Use Your Dryer

Simply running your clothes, bedding, towels, garden gloves, hiking boots, etc… through your dryer will kill any ticks you don’t see.  All it takes is one hour tumbling on high heat (or 90 min on low heat) and even fabrics or shoes that you can’t wash or get wet can still have all the ticks removed and killed just by a spin through your dryer. And if you are on a vacation, especially vacations with hiking or lots of time spent outdoors or to wooded areas, try to stay in hotels or cabins with dryers. Let your clothes take a tumble while you do a tick check and grab a shower and you have gone a long way to preventing Lyme disease entirely!

If prevention fails and you do have a tick bite from an infected tick, getting treated for Lyme disease immediately is the best thing you can do to prevent long-term “sequelae” from becoming an issue.

So what do you do if you are bitten by a tick?

Remove the tick

Gently and firmly remove the tick with tweezers as close to the skin as possible (not squeezing the body of the tick, which may help enable the bacteria to squirt into your bloodstream) and most importantly: save the tick. You can also use thread (in a loop) to slip over the tick and bring down to the level of your skin, tightening the loop and carefully pulling in a direction that allows the head to slid out easily.

Test the tick so you know if it carried Lyme or not — this can give you instant peace of mind!

It is infinitely easier to get a tick tested than wait and see if you become infected with Lyme. First of all, human Lyme tests can be inaccurate and delay prompt treatment. Second, the myriad of symptoms for Lyme disease (as we will discuss next) is a great mimicker for hundreds of other illnesses and there is no one reliable way to diagnose Lyme through symptoms. And lastly, Lyme treatments become much less effective as time goes on. So submitting a tick for testing (place the tick in a plastic bag with a moist paper towel) and give it to your local physician is the best way to know if you need Lyme prevention treatment or not.

Or you can simply head over to tick report.com to have a tick directly tested.

This is a service that allows you to send a tick directly to a lab and have results emailed back to you within three days. It may be preferable to go directly to your family physician, who can give you an antibiotic to have on hand to take immediately if the results do come back positive for Lyme.

It’s important to note that less than half of people who contract Lyme disease actually have the classic bull’s eye rash reaction at the bite site. So don’t get caught waiting to this marker to show up!

Of course, if you see a bullseye rash, report this immediately to your physician.

Symptoms of Lyme are more insidious and actually more common. Symptoms like: fever, joint pain or swelling, muscle pain and weakness, irritability, headache, mood changes, increased susceptibility to other infections (as your immune system compromises over time) and most common: fatigue.

So testing a tick and getting immediate antibiotic treatment for Lyme is the best thing you can do to prevent chasing vague symptoms like fatigue and headache for years to come.

Boost Your Immune System

What can you do while you wait for tick test results?

Starting some immune boosting supplements is always a good idea after a tick bite while you are waiting for tick test results.

My favorite is Vit D, Vit C, Probiotics, and an Immune Boosting Supplement called Quick Defense by Innate Resources. Boost your immunity with supplements right after any suspected exposure will give you a head start in treating Lyme before it’s even had time to express symptoms.

Now that you are armed with a ton of very effective holistic tips on avoiding tick bites and decreasing your chance of developing Lyme disease (plus a few tips to help speed recovery)

It’s time to wish you a very happy upcoming summer!

By Tom Kelly (with a little help from my friend, Laura Koniver MD)

Being In Flow

Posted on by Tom Kelly

There will always be something to hold you back if you allow it. It is easy to get caught playing this game, as so many of us do.

However, what happens when we open ourselves to what is possible, saying no to all restrictions?

Here is how I sometimes see flow and use it to inspire me!

I will use musicians, as I feel a connection to the path they are on, but all truly creative souls flux in the same way.

Bob Dylan and Neil Young come to mind as they full honored their gifts and put that “gift” ahead of everything else. They openly nurture what seems right in the moment regardless of the waves they might create by doing so.

Dylan talks about not knowing who wrote: “Like a Rolling Stone.” Of course, he wrote this song, but he never stopped long enough to evaluate its evolution or admire it. Dylan was already connecting to a new moment, holding space for something to play into this openness.

After Young released the album “Harvest” in 1972 everyone looked to him, even expected him to write another Harvest record. Young immediately stepped away from his association with Harvest knowing he could not revisit it. He broke away from tours and commitments allowing space for what would come next.

Both Young and Dylan have been writing and playing their music for decades and what brought them success was letting go of a need to stay the same or repeat themselves. It is clear both artists consider “success” more about being open to what would appear to them next not sales or recognition.

Honoring their gift both artists would both transmute all distractions and create freely. Young has said, “if something doesn’t feel right, it isn’t right” and would stop a project or tour midstream. It was not his intention to piss people off but rather fully engage the truth of each moment.

Both artists consider the first cuts of a recording the best and do not work at polishing their work, knowing what came to them quickly and freely was best.

Their mission was to hold space for something unknown. To have the guts to back away from what was forced and not flowing freely. Being passionate and open to all that came to them was what mattered.

This is how all magnificent things in life come to be.

Stevie Ray Vaughan played lead guitar on David Bowie’s 1983 hit record “Lets Dance” but then refused to tour. It bothered Bowie but deep down he understood the decision. Vaughan had his own thing to do and in making that decision honored his “gift.” In sharing his gift, Vaughan brought blues music to new heights in the eighties leaving a creative tattoo on music rarely seen.

One might think, “I am not creative like Dylan or Young,” so why pretend this is me.

The honest answer is that Dylan and Young did not know their creative potential at some point in time either. It was something they grew to understand by daring to say no to the easy answer, and in turn, found something much greater.

Being in flow is not easy. It means stepping away from what is familiar, daring to let the breeze blow and the dust fly.

We all need to look closely at what motivates us, what calls us to act. The idea of holding space for the magnificent far outweighs settling for the mundane.

This is being in flow.

By Tom Kelly

Falling into Grace

Posted on by Tom Kelly

Sometimes we set out to do something and slowly but very surely realize that the universe has another plan. When this happens “we” need to be able to let an expectation go. It would be nice if everything we “expected” of ourselves was possible, but the human mind often traps a reasonable goal within an unreasonable wall of expectation. The result is a lack of supporting energy which takes us out of flow. If we step back and realign there is an immediate strengthening. We then have the power to accomplished more with much less energy and struggle.

Some might call this a fall from grace, but I like to know it as “falling into grace.”

Being at Peace

Posted on by Tom Kelly

When we use the term “Being at Peace,” we acknowledge peace as something we are or feel is within us. We sense a lightness of our soul and are in a place we can relax.

This quote “There is no way to Peace. Peace is the way,” shows us that peace comes first not last. Our truest self is perfect Peace.

Rather than striving for things all our lives hoping to find peace, reverse this and be in a state of peace letting lofty goals shift into a way of being.

In a state of peace, we need less and often find more. As we practice a life of peace, we uplift ourselves, and those around us. We create a new lighter self, releasing that which burdens us.

The key to healing is to find this lightness, just being yourself.

Oprah & Deepak offer 21 day Meditation “Shedding the Weight”

Posted on by Tom Kelly

, and spare great messages in their 21 Day to inspire and help open the door for change.

“Shedding the Weight” is their theme and with spring upon us, what better way to energize. Click on the image below to start Day One today!

 

The Breeze

Posted on by Tom Kelly

I was in meditation this weekend and through stillness and deep awareness, I noticed my physical body different or removed from where my consciousness was. This was not an out of body experience and is a very common state for someone who meditates regularly. What this can offer us (me in this case) is a sense of the density or heaviness we might feel or carry in our body. Take away gravity, which is something, everyone on earth encounters and we experience how our body feels to us. This will often reveal patterns of tension and heaviness in our bodies due to limiting or reducing the flow of energy.

Let me roll the clock back just a bit to a warm day last summer. I was walking in a busy area of Ottawa and ahead of me was a young woman possibly in her early twenties. What I notice about her and has stayed with me since was the way her body moved. Every cell in her body from her head to toe was living an individual expression and supporting each other. There were no “needy” cells or groups of cells looking for attention by holding or gripping. Her body floated gracefully, shoulders, arms, and fingers swishing as if completely free. Her torso, hips, legs, and feet moved toward each new step without any regret as if everything was new and exciting. I remember her as “The Breeze” because she moved effortlessly as a physical being.

We have all encountered people like this woman and many of us feel the same way at times. Maybe we have been on holiday and have unwound, stepped back from our daily routine long enough to release our tension and heaviness.

Unwinding the spring and letting every cell in our body dance freely can be a challenge. Becoming “aware” of our distractors and overwhelm is key to stabilize and uplift us in the “now” (our current moment) but also has a cumulative effect on feeling better long-term.

We have all heard the term “go to the breath” or “let the breath be your guide,” and the breath really is a remarkable tool. Once a person masters a few simple breathing exercises they quickly find themselves much more in charge of challenges brought forth in daily life. It becomes easier for us to shift our focus to a state of calm of lightness.

Here is an example you can try on your own. Next time you are waiting in traffic or in a line and your mind focuses on the delay and you start to become impatient, shift your focus to your breath. Breathe in and out mindfully, lengthening your inhale and exhale to allow any tension dissipate. In just a few breath cycles, you should feel more at ease and clear minded. This is a perfect way to flip the switch and step forward to create your life rather than feeling stuck and helpless.

Taking clearly defined and purposeful breaths will lead to awareness, and through awareness, one is able to discover and release tension. Daily life can plant many little-unwanted seeds to clutter our energy. The breath is an opportunity to pull the weeds and allow our physical and energetic garden to flourish!

Look for future posts on how to engage and expand your breath, something vital to living life.

Here is a link to get you started on what is called “equal” or “square” breath.

“sama vritti pranayama”

by Tom Kelly

Blue Kyanite – The Lightworker’s Helper

Posted on by Tom Kelly

Blue Kyanite is a beautiful shimmery blue stone that grows in vertically oriented blade-like formations.  It is ‘the’ stone of connection and bridge building but is perhaps best known for its ability to rapidly clear energetic blockages and bring one’s chakras into alignment.

Kyanite carries a high vibration and an enormous capacity to draw down light from higher dimensions.  It enhances psychic abilities of all kinds, especially those involving communication with higher beings, such as one’s higher self, spirit guides, extraterrestrials, angels and ascended masters.  It creates bridges of communication for healing, channeling, mediumship and one’s own inner work.

Kyanite’s powerful receiver-transmitter capacity brings through clear guidance that one can trust and act upon.  It keeps us oriented in the direction of our soul purpose by helping us to recognize and gather together gifts, abilities and interests needed to move forward on our soul path in this life.  Kyanite helps to clear blocks to spiritual attainment and draw those with whom you have spiritual contracts to you.

Kyanite also works to bridge gaps of human understanding between individuals and groups.  It opens the throat chakra, assisting self-expression and the speaking one’s truth.  It encourages the release of old, limiting beliefs and brings one into alignment with unknown, untapped potential.  It frees people to consider new ideas and come to new understandings and ways to collaborate toward common goals.

Kyanite is a great stone for healers to wear and to place on the body during Crystal healing sessions.  It rapidly clears the human energy field and creates a protective shield in which to do energy work.  It also increases energy transmission from healer to client and can help to open the third eye of both healer and client during healing sessions.  It is absolutely wonderful for restoring energetic flow in the human energetic system, especially along energetic meridians and between chakras.  I especially like to use it to bridge energy from the high heart to the throat chakra.

Kyanite is also a great physical healer.  It helps to heal bone breaks, surgical incisions and other traumas to the body.  It can even create new neural pathways for those who have suffered strokes or other forms of brain damage.

Put simply, Kyanite can be like your own personal bolt of lightning.  It is such a powerful channeler of Light that it never requires cleansing.  It greatly enhances all forms of energy work and meditation practices.  You can even place Kyanite under your pillow to clear blocks in your subconscious mind while you sleep and enhance your ability to dream lucidly.

Kyanite just keeps channeling Light to the one who uses it.  It keeps us aligned with our personal truth and clears the decks so we can get on with it.

by  Karen Osborne

“Time” an ever changing concept we measure our lives with.

Posted on by Tom Kelly

Have you ever wondered about time, asking yourself why we perceive hours and minutes as we do? Have you thought about how time affects us and how might we in turn affect time?

Are there ways to expand our life experience within the limits of time and space?

Can we look at each new moment for its unique footprint, being fully aware of the presence we hold within it, seeing it for what it is?

Is it possible to step from one moment to the next never seeing two moments the same, and be bored, less than excited with its newness?

Another question we might ask is, how “should we” define a unique moment in time? Personally, I do not think a measurement of time matters as much as knowing how to experience each moment as the breath of fresh air it is.

If we sense time passing without honoring it fully, we might say “we have lost track of time” or “that time has forgotten us.” Does this mean we have missed something, given time away or stopped living in these moments? Our hearts will have pumped and our breath continued, but did we fully participate in the act of living?

We can also spend every moment doing something, fill our day with tasks that leave us exhausted. Were these actions any closer to living life fully?

Can we control time or manage our experience by placing ourselves inside the framework we consider “time” to be?

If we look carefully, our experience of time seems connected to our perception of how each moment unfolds.

Knowing as we all do, a moment when “time seems to have stood still.” What is really going on? Are we able to alter time, do our thoughts or actions slow or increase our perception of time?

Have you ever done something and thought, “that is impossible” I just drove 20 miles in 10 minutes! Maybe afterward you noticed how relaxed and intended you were toward achieving the result you just saw happen. I have noticed that we can seemingly affect time if we choose to, and its fun to experiment with this concept.

Next time you are running late or your perception suggests there is not enough time, play with the idea or thought that you have more than enough time and relax with this idea and see what happens. Try it again in a similar situation and notice how stress or the lack of stress along with the thought(s) used, affect your result. Keeping in mind this will be “your” result which others may not see with the same perspective.

In the end, “free will” allows each of us the opportunity to structure our own path as we see fit. To know we have a choice is very important.

To let go and admire “each moment” without needing to change it or understand the totality of what it might or might not be, can offer great insight.

This is where the art of living can become an unstoppable and magnificent treasure. Not looking “at the time” but “through it” to envision a very different life experience.

By Tom Kelly