Sonya® is the essence of more than just beauty: it is an expression of rejuvenation, admiration and love. Our collection’s formulation of ingredients including aloe vera, fruit extracts, white tea and superior moisturizers give back to your skin. They help to rejuvenate and moisturize your skin like never before.

To make a homemade heating pad, fill a tube sock with uncooked rice, knot the top and microwave on high for three minutes. This creates a heating pad that easily molds around your painful joints and will hold heat for up to one hour without burning the skin.
Placing in the freezer for cold rice sock is perfect for soothing a headache.
Another option is to add essential oils or dried plants like lavender.

Health begins in the gut has been a central theme of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Ayurvedic health principles. This includes the complete digestive system, with special emphasis on the spleen and liver in both ancient traditions.  The whole cycle of digestion and nutrient absorption, from chewing to bowel elimination, should take 24 hours more or less depending on what's been eaten.  More time indicates a sluggish metabolism with foods, especially meats, putrefying in the gut and/or constipation; while less time indicates not enough nutrients are being absorbed.

A simple test with beets can reveal how long your digestive cycle is. Eliminating beets' creates a red stool. Eat beets and see how long it takes for you to produce a red stool. Of course, there are other phases and contributing organs involved with digestion.

From mouth to stomach. As you become aware of the food visually or by smell, the brain signals glands to begin secreting juices into saliva. The saliva and juices are intensified as you chew, and the saliva contains enzymes that begin working on removing nutrients from the food. This is why many recommend chewing slowly and more often than usual.  As the saliva moistened food slides down the throat, it comes to a fork in the road. One fork is the trachea, which connects to the bronchial and lung area. The other is the esophagus leading into the stomach.  The act of swallowing closes a flap over the trachea and opens the upper esophageal sphincter allowing the food to bypass the airway and enter the esophagus to the stomach.  The esophagus undergoes contractions to push food down to the lower esophageal sphincter, which opens to let the food into the stomach and shuts to prevent stomach acids from coming up that creates acid reflux (heartburn). The stomach secrets acid enzymes while mucous protects the inner walls. The walls churn to mix the acid and food, creating a liquid or pasty solution, depending on the food type, which the small intestine can handle.

Through the small intestine and beyond.  The small intestine is small in circumference only. It's estimated that the surface area of the small intestine could cover a tennis court. It fits in the body because there are many folds containing villi. Villi are tiny projections containing smaller micro-villi that pull nutrients into our blood streams with the help of liver and spleen activity.

The liver and gall bladder contribute fat emulsifying bile into the small intestines and the spleen contributes more enzymes to support the absence of food enzymes. Enzymes are active proteins that break down food into absorbable nutrients.  The first part of the small intestine, the duodenum, receives the enzyme and bile mixture. Intestinal contractions ensure this mix is exposed to the various villi to absorb the nutrients. The remaining mixture arrives into the large intestine, which is shorter with more circumference.

The large intestine has three phases for creating waste, which arrives into the colon where a bacteria colony awaits to finalize fermentation and fiber extraction.  Mucous is created within this process to help slide the stuff along, then the waste is ready for eliminating with a bowel movement.

Keeping your digestive system working well.  Consume fermented foods or beverages or add probioitic supplements. Avoid pasteurized foods and beverages that destroy enzymes. Eat raw veggies and fruits or juice often to take in more digestive enzymes. Add full spectrum enzyme supplements to your diet. Avoid processed and junk foods, especially HFCS spiked foods and beverages and processed cooking or salad oils. Consume organic whole foods.

Courtesy of NaturalNew;
Sources for this article include:
http://www.netplaces.com
http://altmedicine.about.com
http://science.howstuffworks.com
http://www.drnatura.co.uk/probiotics.php
http://www.jonbarron.org

Ice cubes infused with fresh herbs or edible flowers make an elegant addition to a glass of fresh water. Simply sprinkle an ice-cube tray with fresh herbs or flowers (such as fennel, chamomile, rose, lavender, whole cloves or allspice, or mint), fill with pure water and freeze.

To make water more enjoyable to drink consider adding 1 tablespoon of fresh squeezed juice to color and flavor the water.

Life is full of them and to the people that have a sensitive nature and or are in touch with themselves, adversity is a real drain of energy! How to rise above and stay focused, or at least how I rise above, is to keep the big picture in view and to remind myself it’s just temporary! This too shall pass! And the optimist that I try to be is to look for the good in the bad. Must not let an adversity stay a negative, I believe! Ofcourse all of that is easier said than done but the efforts and practice do come through eventually!

People become really quite remarkable when they start
thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves, they have the first secret of success.
Norman Vincent Peale

MOST important of all is to not lose sight of your goals!
As you set health and wellness goals, write down specifically what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve these goals. Read your goals daily so they become part of you.

Exercise is essential to becoming healthy. If you have not exercised much, build your activity level slow and steady until it becomes a habit.
Same goes with eating better! Apply an additional fruit or vegtable or even both to your daily intake. Consider the fact that what you eat has a direct effect on your health. It will serve you to think about eating to live instead of living to eat!

If every week you add one small healthy habit to your routine, you will have 52 new health habits by the end of the year!

A natural way to repair your skin from acne, rashes, and sagging skin is to juice 2 cucumbers, ½ red bell pepper, 1 carrot and ½ apple, ounce of aloegel. Enjoy this refreshing, rejuvenating drink.
Let us not forget our wonderful Skin Care collection...
Vitality Forever!