3 Amazing Facts About Your Heart You Didn’t Know That Can Positively Impact Your Day

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Today I want to share 3 facts about your heart that you probably don’t know that could make a positive difference in your life.

Since becoming a HeartMath Resilience Coach, I’ve learned some amazing things about the human heart that you’ll be interested to know.

  1. Negative emotions like anger and frustration can create nervous system chaos, but positive emotions do the opposite. This is known as cortical inhibition.
  2. Positive emotions like gratitude, ease, and joy can increase your brain’s ability to make good decisions. 
  3. The heart communicates more information to the brain, than the brain does to the heart. Through learning to manage your stress differently, you can actually change how your nervous system reacts to stress–translation–>you can change your baseline so that your normal day-to-day stress doesn’t take such a toll on your ability to focus and be creative, sustain your energy levels throughout the day, and feel more emotionally balanced.

Isn’t your heart awesome?! Now that you know what a key player your feelings play on your physical health and quality of life, here’s some action steps you can make to give yourself the advantage.

  1. Start your day appreciating something–pick whatever comes to mind and let yourself feel gratitude for a few seconds or as long as you like. This is part of Pleasure Meditation and you’ll notice how much better your day starts when you do this.
  2. When you take bathroom breaks, take a couple of deep breaths and reflect on what’s going right with your day so far.
  3. Find an excuse to laugh. A cascade of biochemical benefits occur when we laugh, so try to find some humor each day and get in a good belly laugh as often as possible.

Thanks for joining me and I’m wishing you a day filled with gratitude and playfulness!

In health & happiness,

~Rebecca

Bec’s Spaghetti Bolognese

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Do you love spaghetti? Spaghetti was a staple food for me growing up and I could eat it 3 times a day and be happy as a clam.

My Dad, who was Italian, made amazing homemade sauce. Unfortunately, the spaghetti sauce was put onto processed, white pasta (full of gluten, very high in starch, low in nutrients). To support my and my family’s health as well as everyone like you who is looking for ways to incorporate healthy, delicious meals, the noodles in this recipe are spaghetti squash (nature’s spaghetti!).

Ingredients:

  • 2 large 24 oz. can (or glass bottle) of tomato sauce or strained tomatoes~either texture is yummy. If you are using canned tomato sauce, I really like Muir Glen Organic sauce.
  • 2 pounds grass-fed ground beef (or 1 lb ground beef and 1 lb Italian sausages, pastured pork OR grass-fed beef, sliced into bite sizes)
  • 1/2-1 lb ground beef and ground organ meats. This ingredient is optional, but I kid you not, it makes the sauce AWESOME and you can’t tell there’s organ meats in there but you get all the benefit (huge dose of iron and fat soluble vitamins). More stores are selling this or you can ask your butcher if they’ll grind up some organ meat for you. If you can’t find it locally, you can order it from U.S. Wellness Meats and keep it in the freezer to add to meatloaves, hamburgers and any meat sauces.
  • 1 can large black olives (preferably without ferrous sulfate in the ingredients)
  • 2 tsps. ea rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, sea salt, black pepper
  • 1 cup cubed Shiitake mushrooms
  • 1/4 tsp. fennel seed (optional)
  • Garlic (3-4 cloves finely chopped), onion (1 yellow, finely chopped), and green bell pepper are optional
  • 1 large spaghetti squash

How To:

  1. Brown ground meat and sliced Italian sausage in a large pot on medium heat with a couple tablespoons of olive oil. If you are using garlic, onion, and bell pepper, add to the mix when about halfway cooked, approx. 5 mins.
  2. Add tomato sauce and spices, put lid on and cook on low-med heat.
  3. Wash outside of spaghetti squash. Use a sharp knife to poke a couple of holes in the skin and then put into a glass dish and into the oven for 1 hr at 375 degrees.
  4. Remove squash from oven and cut in half (horizontally). Allow to cool for about 10 minutes and then use a spoon to remove the seeds from the center (easy). Use a fork to scrape out the strands of noodles and add them to the pot of sauce.  Stir so that noodles are covered with meaty sauce.
  5. Chop up Shiitake mushrooms into bite-sized pieces and add. Drain and add olives and continue cooking for at least 30 minutes so the flavors blend (this meal is even better the next day after refrigerating overnight and re-heating!)
  6. Serve in a bowl, optionally with Parmesan cheese  and/or over a bed of spinach. Enjoy!

My daughter has requested this meal for her birthday dinner since she was 4 yrs old. 🙂

Healthy Chocolate Milkshake

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Who says that cravings have to be unhealthy? Years ago when I was pregnant, I had serious chocolate milkshake cravings for about a week. Luckily, this recipe did the trick without any nutritional backlash like crashing energy, skin breakouts, or sugar cravings.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup whole raw cow’s milk (or milk alternative of choice such as coconut or almond)
  • 1/4-1/2 cup heavy cream (or coconut cream)
  • 2 T grass-fed collagen hydrolysate (to support blood sugar balance, healthy hair/skin/nails/connective tissue/bones)
  • 1.5 T raw cacao powder
  • 6 drops liquid chocolate stevia (plain or vanilla stevia is also delicious!)
  • Ice (3/4 cup)
  • A delicious option is to add a small, barely ripe banana to this mixture. If you don’t tolerate carbs well, leave it out.

Mix in a blender and enjoy!