Always trust your gut. It knows what your head hasn’t figured out yet. ~Unknown

We are programmed, here in the West, to run to our physician whenever we aren’t feeling well. Of course, there are times this is warranted. But many times our gut is trying to tell us something.

By gut I mean our intuition. You’ve heard the term trust your gut? Listening to our bodies and inner wisdom can go a long way toward maintaining balance and good health.

What is Intuition?

So how do we tap into this inner wisdom? What if ours isn’t speaking very loudly? What if we can’t hear it at all?

You know how you just knew that your aunt was going to call, or were thinking about an acquaintance only to run into them later the same day? That’s not a coincidence, it’s your intuition. Sure, some are more open to their inner wisdom than others. But the good news is we all have to ability to get in touch with our intuition.

How to Tap Into Your Intuition

You likely won’t be surprised to learn that meditation is one very effective way to get in touch with your inner wisdom. Remember, this does not have to be a rigorous practice. There are many ways to meditate. The idea is to get quiet and listen to your inner voice.

Another way to get in touch with your body and intuition is by balancing your chakras. Intuitive, Jill Willard, offers a great chakra balancing breakdown on GOOP. Read it to find out how to open your third eye.

And finally, just do it. Stop writing it off as a coincidence or imagination. If you feel strongly about something it is likely for good reason. That stomach keep nagging you or just feeling off? Pay attention, dig into it, see if you can put your finger on what’s happening in your body or if your aches and pains are physical signs of stress.

Change Your Mind, Change Your Health

Did you know that our emotions can play out in physical ways? Louise Hay’s book “You Can Heal Your Life” has a super useful and comprehensive list of physical ailments and their emotional counterparts, along with healing mantras for each. I refer to this list regularly and it is amazing how often it is spot on. For instance, say you have lower back pain. The probable emotional cause is fear of money or lack of security. Have an earache? This represents anger and not wanting to hear what is going on around you.

Our emotions are ruled not so much by what is actually going in our lives as our perception of what’s going on. Our thoughts. This quote by my favorite Ayurvedic, Monica Bloom, tells the whole story — If you want to change your body, you must first change your mind.

Whoa! That’s deep. But what, exactly, does it mean?

Monica explains that our health is largely due to the decisions we make. What we eat, how much we exercise, our stress patterns, are all governed by our thoughts. Which, though it sometimes seems otherwise, we have control over.

Reigning in our thoughts and making good choices leads to better health. Sure, none of us are perfect and we all go overboard in one area or another. That’s where balance comes in. Have a margarita and three cupcakes on Saturday? Clean up your act on Sunday. This is life after all, and if cupcakes make you happy, then have one once in a while. Just remember, cupcakes everyday won’t make you so happy.

Go deep, get in touch with your intuition and what it is telling you, stop ignoring your own inner voice. What it has to say is important to your health, wellbeing, and happiness.

Related on EcoSalon

Multiple Personality Order – Embracing Your Inner Yous

Are Meditation Studios the Soul Cycle of Om?

7 Guided Meditations to Bookmark for When You Just Can’t Even

Image of woman meditating on a rock via Shutterstock

The post Trust Your Gut: Using Intuition for Good Health appeared first on EcoSalon.

Looking to relocate? Start here.

Each year, the healthiest and happiest cities in America are named by public agencies, private consultancies, magazines, blogs and now even Foursquare. These lists consider key indicators like fitness, diet and emotional well-being, as well as more concrete factors like number of farmer’s markets and ratio of sunny days. In honor of National Nutrition Month, here’s a rundown of the best of the best.

San Francisco, California (Top Image)

Early adventurers seeking the Fountain of Youth should have stuck flowers in their hair and headed for San Francisco, which was recently named the best city for staying young by the RealAge 2012 Youngest and Oldest Cities report. Certainly San Francisco’s top billing on Prevention Magazine‘s list of America’s best walking cities helps. Add a strong emphasis on local and organic food and a low incidence of smoking, and you have the best anti-aging recipe in the country.

Honolulu, Hawaii

Honolulu residents are among the country’s slimmest people, according to Self magazine. One contributor is diet; Honolulu reports the highest number of Foursquare check-ins to healthy eating establishments, like farmers markets, fish markets, salad shops and juice bars, as a percentage of total check-ins to restaurants and shops. It’s a winning combination for mental health too: Honolulu leads the nation in Emotional Health according to last year’s Gallup Well-Being Index.

Raleigh, North Carolina

A focus on preventative medicine earned Raleigh the title of Healthiest City for Women in Men’s and Women’s Health‘s annual survey, which ranks metropolitan cities in 30 areas ranging from fitness to diet to disease. Life expectancy is high, especially since the vast majority of women stay on top of regular health examinations like mammograms and pap smears.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

The American Fitness Index from the American College of Sports Medicine ranked Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington the best metropolitan area for healthy, fit and active lifestyles. The Twin Cities boast high numbers of public recreation areas, which likely contributes to their low levels of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Low poverty and unemployment levels are just the cherry on top.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Lancaster residents certainly have something to smile about. The city scored highest in 2011 on the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which examines life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors and access to basic necessities. Lancaster also boasts one of the highest per-capita rates of green roof space in the country.

Phoenix, Arizona

Blue skies are the norm in Phoenix, which made Self magazine’s list of the Healthiest Cities for Women because of its high sunny day ratio. Retirees flock there for the pleasant weather and easy lifestyle.

San Jose, California

Residents of San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara reported the highest well-being among metropolitan areas with a million or more inhabitants, according to the Gallup Well-Being Index. San Jose also leads America in Foursquare check-ins for physical fitness.

Burlington, Vermont

Burlington topped this year’s list of the Healthiest Cities for Men from Men’s and Women’s Health, and it was ranked the healthiest city in America by the Centers for Disease Control in 2008. Burlington also has the most farmer’s markets in the country according to Self magazine’s listing, which confirms our theory that healthy eating can solve all manners of maladies.

Boulder, Colorado

Boulder’s wide array of outdoor pursuits make it the best U.S. city for weight loss, according to Prevention magazine. Not only are its residents active hikers, bikers, and yogis, but the city also offers loads of fresh, local cuisine. The endorphins seem to be having an impact; Boulder made the top of the Gallup Well-Being Index in 2009.

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Residents of Ann Arbor reported the best overall life evaluation in 2011, according to the Gallup Well-Being Index. This may be thanks to an emphasis on education and innovation. In the past year, Ann Arbor has been ranked among America’s Geekiest Cities by Forbes, Most Educated Cities by U.S. News and World Report, and Most Well-Read Cities by Amazon.com. The city certainly proves that enlightenment is a key to health and happiness.

Images: Beto Ruiz Alonso, Gsgeorge, Bob Jagendorf, Church Street Marketplace, messycupcakes, Ludovic Hirlimann, North Carolina National Guard, Victoria Garcia, Tim Wilson, the_tahoe_guy

The post 10 Best Cities in America for Health and Happiness appeared first on EcoSalon.

Have you ever been in the middle of a conversation – and forgot what you were going to say seconds after you thought of saying it? Or you get up, walk into another room, and can’t remember for the life of you what you were looking for? (If it were me, I would have been looking for my cell phone/shoes/organic bits of white chocolate I all too successfully hide from myself. Cuz that’s how I roll.)

Luckily, our sometimes lack of memory does not mean we are 1) going crazy, 2) have a terrible disease, or 3) going crazy with a terrible disease. Memory gaps are extremely common and are usually the result of stress and fatigue. But there are ways we can sharpen up our brains that don’t require brain surgery!

Chillax. Remember the year 2005 and do some chillax-ing. Elizabeth Lombardo is a psychologist and the author of A Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription for Happiness. As told to Yahoo Health, she says, “The best tip to improve your memory is: Reduce your stress. Research shows that when people experience chronic stress, their hippocampus – the part of your brain that is responsible for some memories – literally shrinks in size.” Think of that next time you’re cursing out someone who just cut you off in traffic.

Pay attention. I know, duh. But you can’t remember something if you never learned it. We need to encode things on our brains, and that’s not going to happen by reading articles while simultaneously skimming gossip blogs for the latest dirt. (Ohh Tim Gunn is telling off more people – LOVE IT!)

Keep a positive attitude. If you tell yourself you have a bad memory, you will have a bad memory. If you tell yourself you want to learn something, you will make it easier to learn.

Write things down. This will help you imprint the information. Did you write that down?

Organize the things you wrote down. I used to do this a lot in school, because I was a nerd obsessed with getting good grades. It worked (with the grades, also with being a nerd). Organizing your notes into categories will help you remember it later.
a

“Here’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.” Ophelia had it right – even though she was totally insane from her ex-boyfriend. (High fives with the “We’ve all been there!”) Researchers have found that rosemary supports memory better than any other scents.

Make a joke about what you want to remember. Funny and weird things are easier to remember than bland facts.

Say it in song. Cynthia Green, PhD, is an expert on brain health and memory. As told Yahoo Health, she says, “research suggests that constantly challenging our brains with intellectual pursuits may boost our “˜cognitive reserve’ and can have the associated benefit of reducing our dementia risk over the long-term.” If you sing something, you’re challenging your brain. When I was little, I was taught the 50 U.S. states in alphabetical order by song. Today, I can say all 50 in under a minute. Now it’s just a party trick that makes people feel vaguely sorry for me”¦but still, I can do it.

Chunk it out. Say you need to call Susie, Sam, Jason and Felicia. Remember it as “the 2 S’s and the J and the F.”

Use the method of Loci. This means associating location with something you have to memorize. Or when you piggyback the information you need onto something that is impossible to forget. Read more about it here.

DO. NOT. SMOKE. And not just because most of the population hates it. According to docs, “smoking heightens the risk of vascular disorders that can cause stroke and constrict arteries that deliver oxygen to the brain.” Mess with your brain, mess with your memory.

Teach and you shall see. Want to make sure you know something? Teach it. I taught grammar at a community college the first semester after I got my Masters degree. You know when I truly learned grammar for the first time because I felt like my life depended on it? The first semester after I got my Masters degree.

Get plenty of sleep. Sleep is when your brain consolidates all the memory it’s accumulated throughout the day.

Think in pictures. Associate positive pictures with things you need to remember. Think of a daisy for your friend Daisy and so on.

Speak with your hands. Gesturing while you are trying to learn a concept helps your brain process the information. If you want to remember someone’s name, write it in the palm of your hand.

Talk it out. Like what you’re reading? Join a book club. Studies show that if you talk about a concept, you are much more likely to remember it. Remember when your teachers tried to get you to talk in class? If yes, then you were probably the one talking.

Draw it out. Doodling in the margins can actually help your brain process information. Who knew daring flowers, boxes and stars could help you think?

Exercise. Keep the blood moving to the brain and your brain will thank you.

Eat your fruits and veggies. Studies show that the healthier a person eats, the slower their brain declines in older age. Other studies show that eating things like brussels sprouts and broccoli can help reverse memory loss, and berries high in antioxidants can boost brain power.

Drink in moderation. Some research suggests that light to moderate alcohol consumption can improve memory. But don’t overdo it. All research suggests that too much alcohol is bad for the brain.

Images: helga, iloveblue, saneboy, geishaboy, mikebaird

The post 20 Most Effective Tips to Improve Memory appeared first on EcoSalon.