Chakras for Healthy Living

     Everyone of us is affected by the five elements, earth, air, water, fire, and space.The chakras are vibrational zones in our bodies that carry information about all our organs and our emotions as they affect our physiology.

     The chakra system is a way of understanding how we tap into that energy pool and the biological aspect of it in our bodies.

     At Pure Essence the chakra experience is offered to you with a sensory journey to help you better understand how you personally may be affected and learn how one can better bring themselves back into balance.

Call and make your appointment today! Ask for Ann! 715-524-2726

Calm Yourself With Technology!

We're surrounded by the rich colors of autumn. Stores are full of people shopping for costumes and treats for the trick-or-treaters. Everyone is dusting off their favorite pumpkin recipe and decorating for Halloween.

Are you finding time to breathe in all the signs of fall's arrival?  

Leaves are changing, and so are the lives of people everyday.

Want to reduce stress and boost your mood? There's an app for that!

As we become more dependent on technology, developers and businesses are focusing on mobile technology to make our lives easier.

You probably already know about banking apps and mobile games, Facebook for mobile (who doesn't, right?!), and maybe even coupon apps that help you save money when you go to the store.

But did you know there are meditation apps available, too? These easy-to-download apps are available for both Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.

Calm.com offers a FREE app you can download to your phone or tablet. There are several guided meditation exercises with gorgeous, calming backdrops and high-quality soothing sounds, including rain, ocean waves, and much more. For a small fee, you can subscribe to even more features, such as specific meditations for anxiety, sleep issues, concentration, and more.

Meditation is an extremely useful tool to combat stress, anxiety, and even reduce pain and improve sleep quality. 

October is Breast Cancer Awareness

Pure Essence is once again having its 3rd Annual “Bras for a Cause” fundraiser. Stop in anytime during the month of October and enter our exciting raffles!!

50/50 Raffle

1 ticket- $2

3 tickets- $5

8 tickets-$10

Relaxation Basket- $10 per ticket

Basket includes:  *Dove chocolates *Pink Moscato *Women’s Pajamas *Slipper socks *Aveda Caribbean Therapy Body Care Collection & Candle *Homemade Lap Quilt * Cabin Rental

Campers Dream Basket- $10 per ticket

Basket includes:  *Camping Chairs *Cooler *Blanket *Lantern *Mosquito Repellant *Aveda Sun Care Collection *Roasting Tongs *1hour Massage *12pk Sundrop *Cabin Rental

All drawings will be held Tues Nov 4th 

NEED NOT BE PRESENT TO WIN

All proceeds benefit the Martha Siekman Cancer Center. These donations are used to provide better care to patients and their families. Your generosity provides our community with quality care close to home.

To learn more, please visit www.thedacare.org/foundations

Thank you and hope to see you soon!!!!!!

Hillary

     Hi, my name is Hillary.  My friends and family call me Hill or Hills.  I am from Pulaski and have lived there for most of my life.  I love to hang out with my friends and family, shop and explore Pinterest. 

From little on, I have loved doing hair.  I used to cut my Barbie’s hair and style my other doll’s hair.  I think by doing that it gave me a passion for what I love.  I also grew my passion for hair while watching my aunt and cousin who are also stylists.  Every time we would go and visit them at their salons it was so fascinating to me.  Seeing people try a new color or a new cut intrigued me a lot.  As I grew older I loved trying new things with my hair.  I’ve experimented with different colors and cuts and even love to style it in different ways.  Once I got into high school, and my friends and I started going to dances, I became their go to girl for hair.  Everyone would always want me to do his or her hair and I loved it!  It gave me hands on experience with experimenting with different textures and lengths of hair. 

     You would think all these things would have made me choose to go to school for hair right after I graduated, however, I took a different path for about a year and a half.  I moved to Milwaukee and went to school to become a dental hygienist.  After about a year had gone by I started to think about hair again.  I just kept thinking that I should really go to school for hair because I had such a love for it.  So I finally made my decision and moved home to start cosmetology school.

     Since making that choice I have never been so happy.  I feel like I am finally fulfilling the dream I had since I was a little girl.  Today I have been a cosmetologist for over a year and I couldn’t be happier.  I love life and the career that I chose!

10 SIMPLE THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY THAT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPIER

     Defining happiness is difficult, as happiness is actually a state of mind. What brings on happiness is therefore unique to the individual person; what makes you happy may be quite different from what makes your neighbor or your officemate happy.  Still, despite being hard to define, there’s something about happiness that has universal appeal. Virtually everyone strives for it, but not everyone will reach it.  One recent Harris Poll found that, despite an ostensibly recovering economy, only one in three Americans said they’re very happy, which means, of course, that two out of three are not.  Yet, as abstract, and at times as elusive, as happiness may be, there are proven ways to make yourself happier, and you can do many of these things starting today.

1. Exercise More Often

Exercise is one of the best strategies for overcoming depression. Indeed, it can have a dramatic impact on your mental health. For example, a Duke University team studied three groups that tried exercise only, exercise plus drugs, and drugs only, 

to see what treatment best treated depression. 

They found that 10 months later, it was the exercise-only group that was most successful in maintaining wellness and avoiding a depression relapse!

Yet, exercise may still make you happier even if you’re not depressed. It can help you to feel better about your body, for starters, while also boosting levels of health-promoting brain chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which may help buffer some of the effects of stress.

Rather than viewing exercise as a medical tool to lose weight, prevent disease, and live longer – all benefits that occur in the future – try viewing exercise as a daily tool to immediately enhance your frame of mind, reduce stress and feel happier.

2. Get Proper Sleep

A lack of sleep makes it more difficult to recall pleasant memories (but gloomy memories are recalled just fine). Lack of sleep may also make you more susceptible to negative emotions like fear and anger, while taking a nap in the afternoon may enhance positive emotions.

Not to mention, sleep deprivation is linked to psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety and bipolar depression, while getting the right amount of sleep has been linked to positive personality characteristics such as optimism and greater self-esteem, as well as a greater ability to solve difficult problems.

3. Shorten Your Commute

If you can move closer to where you work, or work closer to where you live, do it. A long commute is stressful and draining, even if it allows you to buy a bigger house or have a better job. Such factors do not make up for the unhappiness created by a longer commute, according to research by two Swiss economists. Generally speaking, it would take a 40 percent increase in pay to make up for a job with a longer commute.

4. Nourish Your Relationships

Friends and family mean everything in life, and research shows spending social time with your friends and loved ones generally makes people much happier. One study even found that relationships are worth more than $100,000 in terms of life satisfaction, while actual changes in income buy very little happiness.

5. Spend Time Outdoors

Simply going outside to get some fresh air and sunshine boosts mood, broadens thinking and improves working memory. One study found that it takes just 20 minutes outdoors to make most people happier, while other research showed that happiness is maximized when it’s 57 degrees F outside – so keep an eye on the thermometer!

6. Help Others

Volunteering can lower your risk of depression and anxiety, and significantly boost your psychological well-being. Not only does it keep you active and on your feet, but there’s a definite social aspect as well, both of which contribute to happiness. Volunteering to help others also gives you a greater sense of purpose and can even lead to a so-called “helper’s high,” which may occur because doing good things releases feel-good hormones like oxytocin in your body while lowering levels of stress hormones like cortisol.

7. Smile

Putting on a fake smile can worsen your mood, but thinking positive thoughts and then smiling as a result can make you happier. When you smile at others, they’re also more likely to smile back in return, creating an ongoing feedback loop that may lead to more positivity in your life and the lives of others.

8. Plan a Vacation

It might be that the simple act of planning a vacation can make you happier, even if you don’t actually go on one. Research showed that people were happiest during the planning stage of their vacation, when their sense of anticipation was peaked. After the vacation was over, levels of happiness quickly returned to baseline.

9. Meditate

Meditation helps you keep your mind focused, calms your nerves and supports inner peace. Research shows it can even lead to physical changes in your brain that make you happier, including an increase in areas associated with compassion and self-awareness and a shrinking in areas associated with stress.

10. Practice Gratitude

People who are thankful for what they have are better able to cope with stress, have more positive emotions, and are better able to reach their goals. The best way to harness the positive power of gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal or list, where you actively write down exactly what you’re grateful for each day. Doing so has been linked to happier moods, greater optimism and even better physical health.

True Happiness Comes From Within

If there is one common thread to the tips above, it is that the factors that increase happiness tend to do so from the inside, as lasting happiness is not something that can be achieved from external sources. It may be helpful to remember that happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think.

This is part of the power of affirmations, which can also help you to boost your happiness.
For example, starting each day by thinking of all the things you have to be thankful for is one way to put your mind on the right track. Also, remember that your future depends largely on the thoughts you think today. So each moment of every day is an opportunity to turn your thinking around, thereby helping or hindering your ability to think and feel more positively in the very next moment.

Most experts agree that there are no shortcuts to happiness. Even generally happy people do not experience joy 24 hours a day. But a happy person can have a bad day and still find pleasure in the small things in life.

Postponing your happiness until you reach a certain goal, like getting a promotion or pay raise to go on vacation, is a sure-fire way to stay stuck in misery. Instead, consciously spend a few minutes every day thinking about the good things in your life, such as eating a balanced meal or getting enough rest. Practice this every day and each day try to extend the time you spend on positive thoughts.

Additionally, while there is no rule or special formula that can make a person constantly happy, happiness tends to come more easily when you focus on developing positive social relationships and enjoyable work, and have a sense that life has meaning. Overall, having a spiritual dimension tends to be an essential component of happiness for most people as well.

Industry Loses Visionary Horst Rechelbacher

     On February 15, industry pioneer, hairdresser, salon owner and AVEDA founder Horst Rechelbacher passed away.  Rechelbacher's vision shaped the way many in the world viewed the planet, the industry and even themselves.  He was 72.
     Rechelbacher was born on November 11, 1941 in Klagenfurt, Austria, to an herbalist and a shoemaker.  His family's apartment overlooked a small salon, and at the age of 14, Rechelbacher embarked on a salon apprenticeship, and immediately began winning the Austrian Junior Championships. At 17, he moved to Rome, where he worked in an exclusive Italian salon and throughout the early '60s he traveled Europe as part of the European hairstyling competition circuit, capturing many awards. As part of this recognition, Rechelbacher had the opportunity to work the show circuit in the United States. On his second American trip he was teaching seminars in the Midwest when his car was struck by an intoxicated driver and he was hospitalized in Minneapolis. The serious accident left him physically incapacitated for six months and in financial debt. In an effort to pay his hospital bills, he began working in an Minneapolis salon, then opened his own - Horst of Austrian in 1965. As a salon owner, Rechelbacher created a unique model of economic sustainability for salons and spas.
     In the 1970s, Rechelbacher traveled to India to study yoga and meditation, immersing himself in rich cultural traditions.  One the trip he became inspired by the spiritual and medical teacher Swami Rama, and gained knowledge of the ancestral Ayurvedic therapies, herbal remedies and a more comprehensive approach to health and well-being.  Drawing on Ayurvedic principles, Rechelbacher launched AVEDA in 1978 with the ambition of developing beauty products that would care for professionals, their guest and the planet through the power o pure flower and plant essences.  AVEDA became a lifestyle and global movement encouraging many to I've more balanced lives by achieving a sense of harmony in the body, mind and spirit.  Rechelbacher pioneered environmental responsibility and under his leadership, AVEDA became the first business to endorse the Valdez/Ceres principles in 1989.
Two decades after founding AVEDA, Rechelbacher sold it to Estee Lauder and shifted his focus to Intelligent Nutrients, a health and beauty company the establishes the highest standards of food-based, safe, non-toxic and USDA certified-organic ingredients.  Following Rechelbacher's passing, the company's website posted: "To know Horst was to wake up to the world around you, to own potential, to a new way of thinking.  His impact truly does live on in saki's, shops, fields and minds worldwide.  And his mission continues."
     Rechelbacher passed away from pancreatic cancer on his 570-acre farm and retreat in Osceola, Minnesota, where he continued to grow many of his ingredients.  He is survived by second wife, Kiran Stordalen; his daughter, Nicole Thomas, and his son, Peter.

Chakra Balancing

"The Chakra system is the symbolic presentation of energies which exist in the body influenced by the subconscious mind.  Yoga and meditation help you awaken those energies for the most balanced state of the body, mind and soul"

- The Drs Upadhyay, Maharshi Bhardwaj Clinic & Research Center , India

Consultants to AVEDA since 1976

At AVEDA, we draw on Ayurveda, a 5,000 year-old tradition from India, that helps us balance our chakras - 7 spinning wheels of energy that affect our heath, well-being and beauty.  The word 'chakra' is derived from the sanskrit word meaning 'wheel'.  Literally translated from the Hindi it means 'Wheel of spinning Energy'.  A chakra is like a whirling, vortex like, powerhouse of energy.  Within our bodies we have seven of these major energy centers and many more minor ones.  You can think of chakras as invisible, rechargeable batteries.
Sometimes chakras become blocked because of stress, emotional or physical problems.  If the body's 'energy system' can not flow freely it is likely that problems will occur.  The consequence of irregular energy flow may result in physical illness and discomfort or a sense of being mentally and emotionally out of balance.



Chakra #7 - Wisdom
The center of connecting to something greater than oneself, and expressing wisdom and enlightenment.  When the crown chakra is balanced, one feels strong, unclouded and joy for life.  When the crown chakra is imbalanced, one feels loss of self, spiritual abandonment and lack of connection to the universe.

Chakra #6 - Insight
The center of intuition, imagination and perception.  When the third eye chakra is balanced, one feels strong intuition, a connection to oneself and mentally fit.  When the third eye chakra is imbalanced, one has mental hocks, over-thinks things and lacks depth.

Chakra #5 - Expressive
Located in the throat and relates to creativity, self-expression and communication.  When the throat chakra is balanced, one has inner reliance, self-reliance and easily expresses ideas and thoughts.  Then the throat chakra is imbalanced, one feels selfish, has feelings of rejection and has difficulty expressing oneself.

Chakra #4 - Harmony
The center of sympathy, empathy and love.  The the heart chakra is balanced, one feels love and connection to self and others.  When the heart chakra is imbalanced, one feels derision, loss of connection and lack of caring.

Chakra #3 - Intention
The center of motivation where we set our intentions and desires.  When the solar plexus is balanced, one achieves goals, is self-confident and has strong motivation and direction.  When the solar plexus is imbalanced, one feels mental blocks, nervousness and impatience.

Chakra #2 - Nourished
The center of vitality and sensation where we move beyond our basic needs into relationships with others.  When the sacral chakra is balanced, one has stable energy, alertness, unblocked emotions and is connected to all five senses.  When the sacral chakra is imbalanced, one feels repression and feels disconnected to the senses.

Chakra #1 - Grounded
The center where we ground ourselves and take care of our basic needs.  When the root chakra is balanced, one has good energy, a feeling of security and a healthy body awareness.  When the root chakra is imbalanced, one feel lethargy, resistance to change and the need to slow down.