Have a tear in your favourite jacket? That new backpack has a small cut? Then get the awesome Noso Patch which fixes your kit in seconds, all without ironing or sewing!
Nom nom, that’s tasty: The new Wild Lummi Island Pink Salmon from Patagonia Provisions is wild pink salmon, sourced only from abundant, thriving runs. Sustainable backpacking food at its best!
Disclaimer: There are affiliate links in this article to help finance the website. You either can avoid them like hell or click them and buy gear and apparel via them to support me. Read the Transparency Disclaimer for more information on affiliate links & blogger transparency.
Skip the lines at Open House on Friday, August 5 for uniforms, SASCards, vehicle passes, and bus registration! By taking care of all three things on your to-do list before Friday, August 5, you will be able to spend your time at Open House meeting with your child's teachers, exploring the school, and enjoying complimentary ice cream from the PTA.
from Singapore American School http://ift.tt/2ah5fdO
Global Perspectives: Professional Learning Communities At Work™ in International Schools has just been released on July 22, 2016 from Solution Tree Press. This book for schools about building professional learning communities (PLCs) is edited by Singapore American School executive director of strategic programs Dr. Timothy S. Stuart.
from Singapore American School http://ift.tt/2aeZoRF
Have you noticed?Women are waking up.What worked before is no longer working and there just isn’t a way around that for an increasing number of us. But not all of us.No, not everyone will be waking up this time around.Few of our parents are awake, many of our siblings are just toeing the line, and odds are the friends around us when we first begin this journey, may not be the friends around us several years into it. This is why waking up is hard to do. We feel displaced, alone, disoriented, afraid, and yet, unable to go back to what was. It is a rebirth process that can feel like it’s happening in the back of a car without a midwife.
When it all falls apart
How do you know if you’re waking up?
Odds are, you wouldn’t be reading this if shifts weren’t already underway. If you didn’t feel like you were unraveling- at home, in your work or relationships, or in all of the above. You may feel like you’re looking around and suddenly, you are infused with the sense that everything feels different. Like you are looking at the world through new eyes.
You feel an invitation, sometimes a hard one to accept, to just get real and figure out what it is that you’re really here for, because I’m pretty sure that it’s not to just punch the clock, do laundry, dishes, and count the days until that vacation that never even feels the way we thought it would. There’s something that’s possible and you need to know how to get to it.
Walking alone in the dark
Transformationcanand does have a roadmap.
This path to yourself will have seeming dead ends, perilous passes, and moments when you feel like you need to turn around and head back. In these passages, you’ll need a guide and you can consult this map to remind you that awesomeness, stability, and a whole new experience of yourself still await you if you continue to commit to your own path.
If you are wondering why I should have any special say on this largely metaphysical issue, I’ll have you know that I’ve undergone quite a tectonic plate shift in the past several years, and this has allowed me to hold space for the metamorphoses that happen in my office as my patients come off of psychiatric medication that has been holding them hostage in arrested development for sometimes up to 15 years. I also happen to be, by profession, a “doctor of the soul” – because yes, amazingly, that is what psychiatrist actually means!
I meet with women every day who are somewhere in this process. As they come off of psychiatric medication or they move through an experience that would otherwise be labeled “mental illness”, they get rebuilt from the inside out. I’ve held space enough times to be able to tell these women what the signposts up ahead might read. I tell my patients and I’ll tell you – buckle up for the ride and let’s go!
My enthusiasm comes from my own experience, as any awakened physician will tell you. I spent 30 years of my life asleep. Righteously asleep. I believed that effort and force of will were the only way to a successful life, and that preparedness kept you safe. Science was my religion because I thought God was for the feeble and I applied myself to the mastery and quantification of human biology. I had a big mouth, lots of certainty about my opinions, and believed that perfect health was just one prescription away. Well, for everyone else. When I was diagnosed with my first health problem –Hashimoto’s thyroiditis– I felt cornered and resistant to signing up for a life of prescription dependency. I consulted a naturopath because I knew that conventional medicine couldn’t offer me an out. I put this chronic condition into remission and knew that there was more to the story about human health and physiology than I had been taught. I began my research and the process of unlearning everything I had learned about what makes us sick and how to proceed when symptoms arise. I began to experience awe and wonder at this human organism, at the power offood as information, and at how little was necessary to heal. I washumbled again and again, learned to surrender, and developed aspiritual practice.I shed skin after skin after skin until I learned that I could still be myself, even if I wasn’t anything I always thought I was.
Here is what I’ve observed:
Transformation feels like a stirring within you, like a magnetic pull you are simultaneously fascinated and terrified by.
Transformation yields new levels of empowerment and fulfillment.
Transformation allows you to shed who you thought you were in order to become more fully who you are.
Transformation gives you the opportunity to really ask, “what story do I believe in? What is it that I really want?”
Transformation brings you into alignment so that what you say, think, and do are all the same thing.
But it requires audacity. It requires meeting massive resistance within yourself and all around you. It is not for the faint of heart, but the experience of beauty and gratitude that await are the very point of living.
And there is nothing more subversive for a woman to do than believe she deserves to get what she wants and to recognize in herself the willingness to fight to get it.– Rufi Thorpe
In my own experience, and with my patients, the roadmap of transformation has 5 stages that I’m going to refer to as:
Sleeping
Seeing
Shedding
Synthesizing
Surrender
You can enter at any stage, linger, or even go backwards, but self-empowerment and liberation, joy and fulfillment increase as you move forward through them.
1. Sleeping: Before we wake up to the truth in ourselves, we rely on authorities to tell us what our truth is.
This stage is euphemistically called sleeping, but in most ways, it’s the hardest stage of all. This is when you move through your life in fear. You struggle to keep up with everything there is to worry about, from terrorists to disease outbreaks, and your sense of reality comes from the news, doctors, and trusted authorities such as the CDC, FDA, and Wikipedia. You accept the logical party lines:
Medications save lives.
Technology is solving major global problems like hunger.
Chemicals and processed food aren’t great but they’re really not that big a deal. We all seem to still be doing fine!
Making money is a priority because pleasure and business don’t have a natural relationship.
Marriage and children are benchmarks for life success.
You’re expected to do it all and do it well.
This is where women have landed after 5,000 years of patriarchal living.
We don’t know who we are, what we are really here for, who’s in charge of our experience, and how to get where we want to go. Women feel isolated, disconnected, and apart from themselves, from others, from any sense of real community.
For many women in this frame, life is toiling in a man’s world. When challenges befall, solutions are immediately and reflexively sought and a sense of random victimization shrouds the experience. “Secondary satisfactions” like alcohol, sex, workaholism, and shopping ease the pain and discomfort but they never get to the core of the hurts that need to be looked at, sat with, and transformed.
When you hit a bump in life – a breakup, loss, divorce, or several months of just feeling like you want to check out – you feel betrayed by your mind, your heart, and maybe your tired body, and you are encouraged to force it into submission. This is where antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and a variety of symptom-managing chemicals come in with the promise of a safer, more stable, more controlled you. There is no model for enduring or moving through this experience with curiosity and an investigative sense that there might be something for you to learn – anything from the fact that your thyroid dysfunction might be at the root of your chronic fatigue diagnosis, to the fact that your job is crushing your soul.
Meet Sarah.
Sarah is married with two children. She works in advertising and feels she is doing ok. She takes Zoloft, Synthroid, and birth control every morning, and occasionally takes Xanax if she can’t sleep. She feels like there is a white noise of worry and to do lists; the general feeling of her day to day is a race to a finish line while trying to avoid any major collisions or catastrophes along the way. She feels tired, irritable, overweight, achy, and cloudy. Some days, she spends the whole day fantasizing about the glass of wine she’ll pour when she gets home. She watches the news and worries about terrorism, outbreaks, public shootings, and political elections. This is a lot of what her friends talk to each other about, in a sea of general complaints. She loves her doctor and trusts him. In fact, she’s been a patient since she was 25. Her children are also on medications – her daughter is on Vyvanse and her son on inhalers and oral medications for severe asthma. He carries an epi-pen wherever he goes. She spends a lot of time at the pediatrician’s office and has to go to the emergency room for various illnesses from cough to fever about 3-4 times per year.
She and her husband are not religious, in fact, she can’t even really understand how and where people have time to be religious. They shop at the local chain supermarket, and often eat pre-made food out of convenience.
It would be accurate to say that Sarah is just surviving until she dies. She feels a profound sense that this is not how life is meant to be lived. That something is missing. That she is outside looking in, disconnected, and disoriented, but she doesn’t feel like she has any idea how to change.
2. Seeing: Something or someone forces us to look behind the veil. We are still in Oz, but now know there is more to the story than we had previously thought.
This is waking up. Suddenly there is a before and an after. Truth and lies. A feeling of being divided and lost. Often there is anger and pain. But, this is our first contact withknowing.Knowingis different than the knowing we have done up until this point which was really more mind and intellect based opinion. This knowing is a small voice deep inside that tells us hard things about ourselves and our decisions.One can awaken to a sense of greater possible connection, a sense of missing love, a feeling of having been mislead/abused/duped, or maybe that things are simpler than they are made out to be. But all are characterized by a knowing that isinternalthat fundamentally challenges a heretofore unconscious/automated engagement with life.
In my practice, some women wake up during their medication taper. It’s like a slow boil, they feel the dissonance mounting and the unexamined areas of their lives are more and more difficult to ignore. Many arrive having learned thetruth about antidepressants, awake and ready to begin their next chapter. Either way, this phase is one in which you have a leg in the new story and a leg in the old story. You’re all over the place trying to convince yourself and those around you why you are “disrupting” your life this way when everything was humming along.
To choose to live life against the status quo expectation that your physical, emotional, and spiritual experience be managed with medication is an act of extreme bravery. In today’s culture, it may even be characterized as a self-initiation ritual. Because it is through sitting with ourselves – all of the gross, scary, and ugly parts – that we come to integrate and transcend the limitations that exist when we stuff them into a psychic box.
Sarah brings her son for his flu shot one autumn. He’s 18 months old. She’s rushing to get this appointment behind them because she still has to go food shopping and has an inbox full of work emails glaring at her. But there isn’t ever a “putting the appointment behind them” because everything changed that day. Her son had a seizure in the office within minutes of the shot and was never himself again. Sarah spent months with him screaming, largely unresponsive, in a spiral of fear and disorientation.
The pediatrician reassured her that this was not an uncommon reaction and that everything was normal. Sarah soon learned that everything, in fact, was different now. Her son was formally diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and associated delays, and Sarah knows, in her heart, what happened to her son. Sarah began researching, reading, and talking about what could have happened to her son. She unlocked, within her, a geyser of grief and anger. She no longer believes that the medical system is set up to keep her and her family healthy and well.
She has been brought to her knees in disbelief, anguish, and agony of the experience. She has lost friends, been alienated from her husband, and is guilt-ridden about her neglect of her daughter. But she is awakening to something inside her. A force she did not know was there. It begins to tell her what is true. She begins to research the nature of pharmaceutical product licensure, efficacy and safety testing. She begins to see her doctors as human beings but also as cogs in the wheel of a larger machine. She becomes skeptical, angry, even ferocious in her efforts to recover her child and to channel her energy into further awakening.
3. Shedding: We roll up our sleeves and begin the work of personalizing the experience of awakening. We experience our own healing.
There is deliberate, mindful engagement with texts, resources, and individuals including teachers and healers who embody the truth that is now apparent. There isopenness. This stage is characterized by uncomfortable growth/shedding/self-reflection and an ambivalence about proceeding forward, almost a longing for the comfort that was, and a new kind of relationship to uncertainty. Marriage, job security, homeownership are all revealed to be investments in the illusion of things staying the same. The work entailed here involves identifying core beliefs and looking at where and with whom they seem to be suppressed – with family, friends, in different roles and environments – where are younotyourself? If you have come to believe that the body can heal itself because you haveengaged self-healingand witnessed results, then why is it that you let your mother-in-law bully you into giving your son antibiotics for an ear infection?
As you grow, you shed – shed relationships, identities, dependencies on other’s opinions and reactions. In this stage, however, because you are incompletely aligned and integrated, a “projective identification” may occur wherein others reflect this ambivalence back and challenge/provoke/judge/criticize. People can sense the ambivalent places within you-the insecurities- and they show you that they are there.
Commit to love yourself even if you don’t
To move through this stage, you mustcommit to a higher standard of self-care. You must walk the walk of potential even if it feels uncomfortable and like an uneasy stretch. This commitment allows us to drain our buckets of accumulated stress to make room for growth. This commitment is a way of loving yourself until you do. It is natural to encounter ambivalence about proceeding through this birth canal of sorts.
This is when I ask patients to commit toa daily practiceand todietary integrityso that they can create space for a new life experience.
Some people in this stage begin to experience impatience and frustration, generating a form of self-punishment and criticism – “why can’t I be happy?!” I say, forget about happiness. It’s not the goal, and it makes sense not to feel access to it at this stage. The goal for this stage is contact withgratitude.Gratitudeis the opposite of hopelessness, despair, and anger. It can only exist when you connect to a sense of wonder and trust and a reframing of consciousness to focus on what is rather than what could or should be.
Several years into grassroots activism around vaccination awareness, Sarah had begun to question many of the illusions she had comfortably accepted as real. She explored connections between the agricultural, chemical, and medical system, understanding governmental authorities and regulatory agencies to be operative within a profit-driven system. This system does not acknowledge the sanctity of the environment, the natural world, and very much seeks to commandeer, manage, suppress, and control through force anything that seems to stand in the way of the forward march of science and technology.
She changed the food that she ate and her family ate, she began to buy different products, to filter their water, and to see different types of providers.
She struggles through arguments with school administrators, neighbors, and family who feel that she is “a quack” and that she is making irresponsible decisions going against the grain of what is recommended by the FDA, doctors, and associated media. She feels isolated and like she is always arguing. She has been trying to heal an autoimmune disease but her efforts seem to be yielding limiting results.
Sarah has blindspots. These are areas of her life that do not fully reflect her belief. A belief, itself, that is in evolution. She is steeped in the negativity of the world and makes decisions from this place, reacting to a world that still dangerous, it’s just that she has shifted the enemy target…she is still warring with the world, it’s just that she’s on another team.
She’s not there yet. This is the hardest stage of all.
To move through it, she has to look at relationships, beliefs, and commitments in her life that do not reflect her authentic self. Sarah’s job is a source of intense anguish and tension. Her marriage has begun to feel like an impersonal business contract. And she, herself, is still taking psychiatric medication. Medications she’s been told that she needs.
4. Synthesis: Leave no stone unturned. This is when you use your newfound self-trust to examine all blind-spots, and integrate to radiate a power that bends the universe to your divine path.
Bodily healing and an understanding of body ecology (that the body is a web of interconnections that extends to the natural world) are often a portal to this stage wherein ownership, autonomy, self-initiation, and ultimately, mastery are made available. This stage is marked bytrust. As you integrate and shed more and more of your false selves, you will be more and more connected to a sense that life unfolds and we are just along for the ride. There will be less conflict, less tension, less adversarial energy bringing forth a bubble of protection that Gandhi called Satyagraha or truth force.Radical responsibilityfor one’s co-creation in all experiences of struggle and suffering is assumed – there is no one to blame, no bad guys, no victims. If you hate something about what is, understand that you co-created it and can shift to change it. Deep empowerment arises. Activism and service are a common outgrowth of this stage.
Synthesis means owning the darkness and embracing challenges
On a Thursday morning, I paid 23 dollars to take a kundalini class with my teacher, Swaranpal. She joked that she likes to do “rebirthing kriyas” when it rains. After some brief warmups, we began the set which started with our arms out in front, hands clasped and index fingers extended, rotating from the shoulders in a circular motion. “We are carving a hole in our subconscious,” she said, “and Yogi Bhajan knew that our subconscious is 8 minutes thick,” she laughed.
Two years and a teacher training certification into kundalini yoga, I knew how to relate to the discomfort that was fast arising in my shoulders, probably only one minute into the exercise. I knew that pain reaches a ceiling and then it lingers there for a while even though your mind tells you it could get worse forever. I knew that the pain, at some point, would transform into a tingling sensation, and if I committed, if I just pushed through, then something interesting might happen.
In this case, the something interesting is an emotional release. As my body shook and my mind screamed, I persisted. The pain turned into a sensation and it happened, tears started flowing down my face. Not of joy, not of sorrow, just of aliveness. Of beingness. Of release of what is no longer needed. And then there was the integration and bliss of putting my arms down and letting it all swirl inside. This is a metaphor for the wave of life experience and for encounters with struggle and suffering. It shifts and changes with time, moving through experience like water.
My patients enter this phase typically after they have completed their medication tapers, shifted elements of their lives that were formerly unexamined – relationships, work, self-care – and they look back on the time they were wriggling through the little hole in the chrysalis like a parent smiling with wisdom at their child.
Through the process of physical healing resulting from her commitment to clean living and meditation, Sarah begins to have the experiential knowing that her body has the capacity to self-regulate. Long-standing symptoms like fatigue, constipation, hair loss, cloudy thinking, and irregular periods resolve. She is sleeping well, feeling clearer, more hopeful, more connected. In this process, she tapers her medications. About halfway through the process, she begins to develop an uncomfortable awareness. She begins to feel that she needs to change her job, and to engage her husband in a more conscious connection. She feels the plates moving beneath her feet, and the fear of change is powerful but she has developed a deep sense of trust in what the universe has in store for her. The emergent symptoms and withdrawal effects of her antidepressant taper have forced her to examine what it is that she is committed to and why.
She believes that she is ready for a new chapter in her life. One in whichshe is the ultimate authority on her experience. One of curiosity and investigation instead of reactivity. Her mantra is,when you don’t know what to do, wait until you do.She deepens her meditation practice over time because she finds that the more committed she is to it, the more access she has to a feeling of love.
What is love anyway? It’s a concept that has been stripped of its true meaning, such that we have to use the phrase “real love” or “true love”. It’s a hallmark gesture of benevolence, but the meaning beyond that is illusive. To Sarah, love was something she thought about but rarely felt. Now, love feels like it’s more accurately represented by feelings associated with gratitude. It’s expansive and inclusive. It’s patient and egoless. It doesn’t have names or stories attached to it. It has a feeling of abundance and wonder. It’s oceanic and simply present. She feels moments of this now.
Sarah starts a nonprofit and begins to work in the activism realm around health freedom. She holds monthly meetings for like-minded parents, and develops new and meaningful relationships. She allows some other friendships, ones that begin to feel like clothes that are too tight, to fall away with grace.
As the lenses come together, she notes that she hasn’t experienced criticism, judgement, or scrutiny from anyone in some time. As she heals, her son’s journey back seems to also be accelerated. She decides to homeschool both of her children and to run her nonprofit. She leaves her job. She recognizes that seeing doctors who do not believe what she believes about her body is an act of non-integration, even if they are nice!
Despite efforts to share this experience with her husband, he isn’t ready to engage on the levels that she has. They decide to uncouple, and she finds this liberating on so many levels while also feeling access to an affection and appreciation for him that was more obscured in the construct of their institutional configuration.
5. Surrender: This is when you let it all go for the holy grail of freedom.
This final stage is an ongoing self-contract that involves working always to relinquish the mind and the ego to the heart. To the knowing. To intuition. At this stage, the heart has been rediscovered and intuition is discernible from impulse. An understanding of sense emerges through the lens of the collective. A self that contributes uniquely to a whole that is impossibly greater than the individual. We ask, constantly – what are my blind-spots, where am I still asleep? Disagreements, seeming polarities, and conflict are held gently, accepted. The mantra is always,“Do I want to be right or do I want to heal”. It dissolves any perceived problem. Vulnerability, self-reflection, curiosity, core strength, and discipline characterize this phase as does community and connection. Community in this phase is both tribal in deep soul connections but also universal in that there is an “allowing and including” of all and a deep desire to enter another’s experience and to understand the totality that leads them to behave as they do.
The only commitment necessary is to self-care and the creation of space for self-awareness and quiet. From this space, decisions get made without force or intellect. Opportunities become apparent, and experiences unfold effortlessly.
As Sarah enters her life as a spiritual being, she smiles, like a wizened parent to her childlike self, at the perspectives, opinions, and beliefs that used to drive her life experience. Now she is simply along for the ride. When she encounters struggle and suffering, she asks, “what is it here to show me? What part of my soul needs to grow?” Whenever she believes she has figured out the “true story” on something, she holds that narrative lightly. She is open and peaceful. She no longer takes medications or even supplements, but instead engages energy medicine as a complement to her meditation practice, and conscious lifestyle. She sees a shamanic healer, an acupuncturist, and a medical intuitive when she needs support. She hasn’t been to a doctor or a hospital in years. She feels a type of power that draws from stability, being grounded and at ease. She knows that she creates her own experience.
Micro and Macro
As you move through this process, you see reflected societally and globally, the same potential for change. You see that just as you once viewed life as something to architect, apply force to, and control for success and achievement, this is how we have treated our bodies, our environment, and our relationship to each other. You witness that science and technology have reflected a deep desire to create, but that they have been applied through a lens that has relegated the natural world to some inanimate object to be manipulated for gain. As the world within you and the world around you is infused with meaning and sacredness, you will enjoy the growing science that shows us a more collaborative model of understanding. Science that explores the microbiome – our inner ecology, the role of nutrition and thought in health outcomes, and how we are not our genes.
Heal the Artists
One of the reasons that you might be waking up is because you are called to use yourcreative energy to heal the planet and people. To do this, you have to first heal yourself and the fractured parts of your psyche. The parts of your mind that you gave away and the body that you trusted to corporations and government. As you heal, your inner fire will ignite and awaken and illuminate the path for your mostincredible femininity.
We are suffering from a lack of guidance, support, and consciousness, leaving us to feel like we have to navigate these choppy waters by ourselves. Modern society resists our coming to life the way it straps birthing women to a metal table- prone, afraid, and dependent. Know that we are doing this together. We are having our babies at home, schooling them there, growing our own food, talking to one another, uniting in a new consciousness. We deserve this!
A new approach to OutDoor News posts this year, with a look at different categories instead of brands. Starting of with everyone’s favourite: Stoves!
I didn’t find too many new stoves this year, which I blame on my severely limited time at the show to walk around and visit the different booths. But at least I managed to see and play with two stoves on the fair, of which I found the Jetboil MightyMo the more interesting one. At 95 g it certainly isn’t the lightest stove around, especially if you factor in an additional windscreen and pot, but if we look at the stove only we see it is actually a pretty powerful little thing. It packs 10.000 BTU which is around 3.000 Watt in case these matters to you, in practice it means you can boil water & melt snow at high altitude - although the reliable regulator is more responsible for that. It has a Piezo ignition which is comfortable and nice in use, and the output can be finely adjusted allowing you to simmer, cook or just boil. It is compatible with the Jetboil FluxRing pans and pots which have heat exchangers and works well with them. The MightyMo should retail in Europe for 59€ next year, while US Americans already will be able to buy it in the autumn.
The MSR PocketRocket 2 combines the MicroRocket’s light weight with the durability and quick boil time of the PocketRocket and also is more compact and stable as its predecessor. It is now 73 g light, 20% smaller as the original and boils one litre of water in 3,5 minutes. The new pot supports accommodate a wider range of pot sizes. No info on output, price and how reliable it would work at high altitude.
So much on stoves, lets stay with MSR and look at the new TrailShot Microfilter. Made for trailrunners & hikers who do not want to carry much water on their runs & hikes, this filter is a combination of a hose and filter. It’s pretty easy to use: Drop the hose into the water source - a stream in the mountains, a lake in the woods or even a puddle - and then squeeze the filter. The squeezing sucks water into the filter, and at the front, mouth piece clean & filtered water comes out. The filter takes out Protozoa and bacteria, and weighs 142 g for the Filter & Hose. The flow rate of 1 litre per minute is reasonably fast and you can treat up to 2.000 l of water with it.
In my teaser post I already looked at the Katadyn BeFree and it was cool to see one in action at the fair. It’s a nifty setup that weighs only 55 g including the 0,5 l Hydrapak Softflask. The filter is easy to clean and has a high output rate. The filter itself is good for 1.000 l of dirty water, then you can replace the filter unit for 35€ - given that the whole package is 45€ it’s a bit expensive for just the filter me thinks, but if your Softflask is still OK why replace it? Rumours on the show floor have it that there will be bigger flasks coming in 2017 as well as a possible system, but as the filter does already fit on bigger Hydrapak softflasks you could just use on of these already.
Do you like to make pretty night time photos of your illuminated tent under the Milky Way? Read a book before you turn it? Need some light to search something in your tent at night? Then the Petzl Noctilight might be something for you. Put your Petzl Headlamp in there during transport or at camp, put it on and it will diffuse the light beautifully for reading, searching and taking photos. It’s 85 g heavy, so if you’re an ultralight backpacker you need to ponder hard if it comes along, but for glamping it will be a great little accessory.
The HYBRID design allows Petzl’s new compact headlamps to run off both the CORE rechargeable battery or three AAA/LR03 batteries, without an adapter. A practical and flexible solution that allows the user to take advantage of each of these energy sources, depending on use. Compatible with all TIKKINA, TIKKA, ZIPKA, ACTIK, ACTIK CORE, TACTIKKA, TACTIKKA+ and TACTIKKA +RGB headlamps. The CORE rechargeable battery weighs 23 g and can be recharged via the USB port of your headlamp or directly, as the CORE also has a mini USB port.
The Petzl eLite comes back, this time around with 50 Lumen at 27 g of weight. It keeps the red light, strobes, the whistle in the back and is still powered by two Lithium CR032 batteries. It now also has the red carrying case included again, and has a recommended retail price of 25€.
Other Petzl headlamps have got minor updates - you know the drill: More lumen, new colours. But the Actik and Actik Core Headlamps are actually new and aimed at active people, or to be more precise as everyone that walks around outside in the dark is active: Active people who need lots of light and go fast. The Actik packs 300 Lumen and is designed for mountaineering, running, hiking and backpacking at night. It has red light for keeping your night vision, and reflective details on the headband make you visible to others outside in the dark. It works with the CORE rechargeable battery, weighs 90 g and should cost only 40€! The big brother Actik Core packs 350 Lumen, weighs only 80 g and costs only 55€. The CORE battery is included, hence the Core in the name.
Another light and rechargeable headlamp is the Black Diamond Iota. The 56 g light (and that’s including batteries) headlamp packs 150 Lumen and is powered by an lithium ion rechargeable battery which is loaded in three hours via USB. The Iota also has the PowerTap Technology which allows you to fast and simply transition between full and dimmed power, and a 3-level power meter shows the remaining battery life for three seconds after you switch on the headlamp.
And finally a look at a new knife. The Morakniv Eldris is 76 g light for knife & sheath (the knife itself is 60 g light) and lays beautifully in the hand. It’s gonna be available later in the autumn of this year, in five colours which show the general trend of colours for the next few years: More toned down & earthy. This fixed blade does actually fit into your pocket and super versatile in use: Take it along hiking & camping, use it as a safety knife when climbing or even take it hunting. The thermoplastic rubber on the handle ensures a safe grip of the little knife, which is 143 mm long in total. The blade is 56 mm long, which theoretically would even make it carry-on compliant, but I wouldn’t try that personally. You can use the back of the blade to strike a firesteel, and indeed the Eldris is available in a set with a lanyard and firesteel. I might do a more detailed review on this little friend in the future, as I already have one!
Disclaimer: There are affiliate links in this article to help finance the website. You either can avoid them like hell or click them and buy gear and apparel via them to support me. Read the Transparency Disclaimer for more information on affiliate links & blogger transparency.
Putting up a curtain can be an easy way to upgrade any window in your home. In this article we will cover 3 guide tips for installing curtains, including: planning out your installation, installing rod brackets and hanging your curtains.
Planning Out Your Installation
Before you buy your curtains, snap a photo of your windows. Measure the width at the top, center and bottom of the window frame. Make a sketch marking the largest measurement. Also mark nearby vents, light switches and electrical outlets so that you don’t cover them. Curtains: The size of your curtains makes a difference in the room’s decor:
63-inch curtains usually sit at or just below the sill.
84-inch curtains sit at or just above the floor.
95-inch curtains can be pooled on the floor for a more dramatic appearance.
You may need longer curtains if you’re mounting the rod near the ceiling. For width, both curtains combined should be at least twice the width of the window and trim. Rods: Along with curtain size, the rod size and placement can make a difference too. Rods that extend 2-3 inches beyond the frame give a traditional look allowing the curtains to partially cover the window when open. Extending the rod 10-15 inches beyond the trim reveals the entire window, making it look wider. Source:Lowes
Installing Rod Brackets Determine Bracket Placement: We decided to place our curtain rod 1-1/2” outside of the window on each side. This placement will ensure there will be no gap between the curtain and the window.
Also, determine the vertical placement of the brackets. This will likely depend on length of your curtains. Hanging the brackets above the window can make the window appear larger than it is. Place Bracket Screw Holes: Place the bracket on the right side over the center of the mark. Using a level and a pencil, mark the holes where the screws will go. Drill and Secure Brackets: Pre-drill holes for the screws using a 1/8” bit. Insert the screws into the pre-drilled holes, stopping about 1/4” away from the surface of the window frame. Slide the bracket onto the screws. Tighten the screws to secure the bracket to the window frame. Level and Secure Other Bracket: Place the rod into the right-side bracket and use a level to determine the placement of the left side bracket. Align the bracket over the center of the 1-1/2” mark you made earlier. Use a pencil to mark the holes where the screws will go. Remove the rod, and repeat steps 4 to secure the left-side bracket to the frame. Source:DIYNetwork
Hanging Your Curtains
Thread the rod through the curtains. Attach your curtains to the rod before hanging the rod from its brackets. This will make things easier for you. Clip the straight tops of tab-less and pocket-less curtains with curtain clips. Start at the outer edge of each panel and space each clip evenly.
Thread the rod through the top pocket opening of the rod pocket curtain panels. Pull each tab loop of both curtains over the rod.
Secure the rod to the brackets. For most bracket and rods systems, you’ll either thread each end of the rod through the bracket holes or place the rod on top of a crescent-shaped depression in the brackets.
Finalize the installation. Press the two finials into each end of the rod, or screw them in place, depending on their construction. Once the curtains are hanging from the rods in the desired spot, test the curtains. Make sure you can move the curtains as they’re designed to move. Source:wikiHow
The inaugural Asian Schools Institute for Safety and Security (ASISS) conference will bring together school security professionals to focus on key aspects of school safety and security.
from Singapore American School http://ift.tt/2aqnywD
“Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing.” ― Barry Finlay
News
I joined Helsport as an Ambassador and will be testing their tents and backpacks in the next years, and I am looking forward to try their packs which can carry a lot of kit and sleep with the family in their tents!
Did this article make you want to go outside? Great! Be even more inspired more and subscribe to the Newsletter and follow along on Instagram and Youtube for more outdoorsy updates!
Disclaimer: There are affiliate links in this article to help finance the website. Read the Transparency Disclaimer for more information on affiliate links & blogger transparency.
Regardless of the season, every home can benefit from adding a little cozy comfort. Here are 3 tips to make your bedroom look cozy, including: adding different sources of light, trying the dark hues and changing your window treatments.
Adding Different Sources of Light
Add some fairy lights. I love doing this. It makes your bedroom feel like your own private party. And isn’t that what a bedroom SHOULD feel like? Also, as an added bonus, you will look amazing under the soft glow.
And while we are at it, lighting is seriously important. Lamps are boring and so your mom’s bedroom. Add a super cool statement light next to your bed. You can make your own. Source:TotallyTheBomb
Trying the Dark Hues
While light colors are great for making a room feel larger, a darker hue envelops the bedroom, creating the perfect space to relax and slumber. The plush bed linens in this ultra-dark space add a nice contrast and look like the ideal spot to cuddle up in this cozy black bedroom. Source:HGTV
Changing Your Window Treatments Experiment with window treatments. Changing the type of covering you have on your windows can improve the feel of your room. Many of the newer types of window treatments are designed to conserve energy and keep the cold or heat out without sacrificing on style. Consider cellular shades, which look similar to pleated blinds but contain cells that conserve heat in your home. They come in a variety of colors and styles, and look softer and better made than vinyl blinds. Explore blackout or energy saving curtains. These are made with a heavy-duty material that keeps the temperature in your room steady. Although the backing (the part facing outside) tends to be a rather dull color, the front of the curtains come in a huge range of color and textures. Try soft, flowing textures. Look at drapes and window valances made out of soft, natural fibers like cotton, silk or wool. You can use energy efficient shades to block the light out, and then frame them with soft valances and drapes to add a bit more style to your room. Try eco-friendly blinds and shades made out of bamboo or linen weaves for an earthy look. These options may be a little more expensive than some of the choices above but are long lasting and beautiful – as well as green! Explore colored curtains. You can get colored curtains, as long as they aren’t hot pink or any bright color. Getting a light color for curtains will make your room feel more open because you can see through the window with a sheer one. If they are opened or closed they will not make a difference. Source:wikiHow
With regular treatments 2 times a week, body scrubs help us to rejuvenate and nourish our skin. Body scrubs offer a variety of benefits … Continue reading →
Have you ever worried about “getting” breast cancer because your mom and aunt both had it? What about Bipolar Disorder (yes, psychiatry capitalizes it’s diagnoses for extra emphasis!) or Lupus? It has probably felt like you have a ticking time bomb inside you and you just want to know when it’s going to go off. When that diagnosis is going to be delivered. Women like Angelina Jolie have engaged willful mutilation in the name of the persistent belief that genes are destiny.
This is simply not true.
“It runs in my family” no longer means what we once believed it to.
You may not know this yet, but the whole game has changed and we are several decades into the most powerful shift in scientific thinking in the past 300 years. Science, when handled with care, is a process, not a destination.
Science fundamentally reflects our native curiosity, our creative impulse, and our sense of wonder. Along the line, however, it began to take on a different flavor. With men like Newton, Darwin, and Descarte at the microphone, a culture of reductionism, force-based perceptions around the nature of reality, and separation of spirit and matter all predicated the culture of ruthless medicine we are steeped in today. We war against nature, our bodies, and each other. There’s good and bad. There’s the illusion of the objective. We pray at the altar of facts and data.
I used to believe that science meant answers and solutions. And now I don’t. Here’s why.
Anyone who has plumbed the depths of science, either through study, primary research, or experimentation, will reach the limitations of belief in science as the be all end all. Beyond this glass ceiling is the sense of wonder that is stripped from the soulless realm of modern biology. The amazing thing is that, the past several decades have furnished a new kind of science.It’s a science of inquiry rather than utility.The conclusions of today’s abstracts seem to read, “isn’t this amazing?” rather than “here is confirmation that this drug is necessary to manage our wayward biology”. In essence, it reflects a new story about our role in the holobiont, or the more purposeful station we occupy in the web of nature.
In this new story, we are not the result of several billion years of random mutations and survival of the fittest. Instead, we are adapting, as Lamarck once suggested (and even Darwin acquiesced),purposefully. This purposeful adaptation means that we are interacting with our environment in a co-creative dance with balances and micro/macro feedback loops to keep a certain meta-order intact.
How a focus on genes made lifestyle irrelevant
When I was in training, I had one hour of nutrition education that essentially positioned food as caloric currency. Why would it matter if we were born with the diseases we would ultimately struggle with? In gene-based science, toxicant exposure, rest, nutrition, and relationships are clearly window dressing considerations. (Jonathan Latham’s work on identifying the historical influence of the Tobacco industry on the push towards the hume genome project and gene-centricism in medical science is amazing. http://ift.tt/2a85ZBJ)
With the completion of the human genome, however, we learned that we have fewer protein-coding genes than an earthworm. This means that the genes we thought made us who we are, don’t.
What?!
We had to go back to the drawing board. Where on earth does our seemingly infinite uniqueness come from? How are diseases manifesting if not genetically?
And a new science was born. It was named epigenetics.
Epigenetics encompasses all that is beyond the genes (it actually means “above”) and includes modulators, modifiers, and any influence on the expression of genes and even the possibility that nonhuman genes may play an expressive role in human physiology. It also refers to the the almost 99% of our genome that was once pejoratively called “junk DNA” and now is more mystically referred to as Dark Matter, as Dr. Jeff Bland describeshere.
One of the most powerful examples of the relevance of epigenetics is the lore of the ‘breast cancer gene’. Jolie, and many other women have succumbed to the hex or the belief that they are cursed by their genes, doomed to develop diseased breasts, ovaries, and uteruses if they just go on living with them in their bodies.
The literature, itself claims that gene mutations such as the “breast cancer gene” or BRCA seems to be doing different thingsover time. Doesn’t that mean, by definition, that we are talking about epigenetics? Because the risk of a gene itself should not change over time. An oft-cited study concludes:
Risks appear to be increasing with time: Breast cancer risk by age 50 among mutation carriers born before 1940 was 24%, but among those born after 1940 it was 67%.
Our review shows that, in contrast to currently held beliefs of many oncologists and despite 66 published studies, it is not yet possible to draw evidence-based conclusions about the association between BRCA1 and/or BRCA2 mutation carriership and breast cancer prognosis. We only found sufficient evidence for a 10% worse unadjusted recurrence-free survival for BRCA1 mutation carriers. For all the other outcomes the evidence was judged to be indecisive.
This reflects a more modern understanding that only about 1% of diseases are truly genetic in nature (i.e. due to a congenitally inherited and irreversible gene defect), and that we may very well have misunderstood our interpretation of these gene’s functions. The rest is lifestyle. In other words, we create our experience and determine our destiny.
As we embrace our agency in our own bodily experience, we must embrace complexity and take off the blinders of our one gene – one ill – one pill model of thinking. As you open your mind to this shift underfoot, a shift into a more ecological type of medicine, a more collaborative, communal, and connected type of medicine, revel in what the more beautiful science is showing us about our need to let go of what we once believed. It served us, but it’s time has passed.
Here are the 3 most powerful game changers in recent literature:
Gamechanger # 1: The Microbiome
An extension of the one cause – one problem dialectical thinking, is the rush to characterize microbes as pathogens, as bad guys. We have done so for as long as we have been seeking to control and dominate nature. Pestilence and contagion have fit neatly into the lighthouse beam of fear that we sweep across our psychic terrain. But even Pasteur, arguably the father of germ theory, on his deathbed, was reported to say:” I was wrong. The microbe (germ) is nothing. The terrain (milieu) is everything.”
What is the terrain though? The implication is that we are, in fact, an ecosystem, positioned within an ecosystem. There is no linearity, so thatwhen we pull one thread of the spider web, the entire thing moves.
With the dawning of our awareness that microbes including fungi, bacteria, viruses, and others, live in and around us, we ceased to be human in the ways we had come to believe. We are not, in fact, humans trying to uphold and protect our humanity in a sea of invaders. We are a meta-organism, a holobiont, interfacing with a greater whole, like a fractal repetition of a pattern.
Through this lens, our tonsils and appendix are no longer vestigial, and the special role of a woman’s physiology is recentered as theconduit through which this microbiome passes from mother to fetus,and even through the inheritance of our primary cellular energy production sites – the mitochondria – themselves, ancient bacteria that were assimilated into the human organism over a billion years ago.
The term dysbiosis, used by holistic and integrative practitioners to refer to gut imbalance, of course, actually means “wrong living”. No doubt, our struggles today, stem from a lack of connection to the natural world. It is, in this way, poetic justice that we would only be able to heal our guts, right our relationship to the microbial world through food – nature’s gift, bounty, and language.
Gamechanger #2: Exosomes
The nail in the coffin of protein-coding-gene-determined-health is a group of tiny bubble-like blobs that influence gene expression. Amazingly similar to viruses in nature, structure, and possibly even function, exosomes are created and received by our bodily cells in order to direct, determine, and react to states of being.
40-100nm in diameter, exosomes typically carry something calledmicro RNA or miRNAwhich are key regulators of gene expression, naturally impacted by environmental factors, from toxicants, nutrition, and lifestyle patterns.
In fact, seminal research has demonstrated that stable miRNAs are transferred from plants includingriceandginger, into mammalian physiology where they then serve to regulate gene expression. Once again, food is reframes as so much more than calories and nutrients…it is information.
Researchers are suggestingthat infant assessments of miRNA patterns may help to identify fetal brain injury from toxic exposures including mercury, aluminum, and medications, at birth, so that healing protocols can be prioritized and initiated. Powerfully, however, in order to understand the “signatures” of different disease states, we would have to study them in their natural unfoldment, without pharmaceutical interventions, before we could ascertain what is evidence of illness and what is evidence of medication effect. The authors state clearly:
“In addition, one must control for the influence of psychotropic drugs on miRNA expression since several studies showed that lithium, haloperidol, or valproate induced changes of the miRNA profiles in brain.”
This, of course, is why preventive medicine involves interfacing with the environment in a language that the body understands based on millions of years of co-evolution.
Gamechanger #3: Belief
When I was in training, the placebo effect was framed as a nuisance factor that needed to be controlled for.I now understand that the placebo effect doesn’t mean that you were fooled or tricked. It doesn’t mean you’re making it up or that you’re gullible. It means that a complex physiologic cascade of events was kicked off by your experience of taking a pill with the promise of relief.
It is rapidly being characterized as the most important driver of outcomes in everything frompsychiatrytosurgery.
Myresearch on the placebo effecthas helped me to understand that psychiatric medications, and specifically antidepressants, are more risk than benefit, and that I cannot achieve meaningful outcomes with patients who do not fundamentally believe that their bodies can heal.
How could it be that belief is this important?
Dr. Candace Pert, the pioneering researcher credited with the discovery of the opiate receptor, has debunked the Cartesian dualism that for hundreds of years has put the mind out of the realm of the body. She also challenged the notion that the mind is something that merely relates to the body. The mind, per her conclusions,isthe body.
In fact, she used the language of the bodymind and elucidated how neuropeptides travel around the body encoding emotion in different tissues and organs. The shape of these peptides, or their conformation, further transmitted information to receipient cells. All of the sudden, informational transfer takes on another dimension – vibration.
Another pioneer of the role of belief in cellular physiology, Dr. Bruce Lipton was several decades ahead of his time in establishing the role of environment and belief in the body’s physiology. His work has decentralized the nucleus (where the genes are housed), and focused on the cell membrane as an information-processing interface with the environment.
Taken together, this research all seems to suggest that we are a product of our energetic experience in the context of a greater whole. Even physics is mirroring this with the emergence of theories like Rupert Sheldrake’smorphic resonance, which suggests that collective experiences set a potential template for individual experiences in a type of memory transfer that has little to do with genes.
We are not random genes driving a purposeless life until we die.
It appears that human experience is not as it has been previously framed and echoed by philosopher Alan Watts – flesh robots on a dead rock in the middle of nowhere. When the human experience is reduced in this way, it’s most essential elements are denied – beauty, spirit, meaning.
In fact, human experience is the universe manifested at one point. It is the emergent properties of many, infinitely complex and interfacing systems. It is fundamentally sacred, larger than our will, and gently demanding of our humility.
This is theteleologicperspective – one in which the purpose rather than the cause is the explanation of phenomena. I reflect on this when I consider how adaptable our bodies are – in real time, within hours – and how we have not adapted fully to the lifestyles we have felt entitled to over the past 100 years. We live from our egos with total disregard for nature, each other, and our own bodily vessels. And we are sicker than we have ever been, from cradle to grave. It seems that we are not “meant” to adapt to this way of living and we are reminded of this through the signals of illness. We are called back to theContinuumthrough our anxiety, depression, and illness. We are reminded that we haven’t figured it out, that science is not and cannot be used merely as a tool for control, and that consciousness as an emergent property of our physiologic web, is a gift.
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science…the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature. – Einstein
Located in the ever growing and popular Brentwood Town Centre neighbourhood, Ledmac Developments is building a small collection of contemporary condos and townhomes.
Seasons will be a limited collection of 88 condos (1 + dens and 2 bedrooms) and 13 two bedroom townhomes, each will showcases the best in West Coast contemporary styling which features efficient, livable, open-spaces which is ideal for both comfortable living entertaining, complete with full-sized, stainless-steel appliances and beautiful fixtures by superior brands.
Seasons located just East of Brentwood Town Centre in Burnaby is conveniently located within a short stroll of world class shopping, dining and connected to a vast network of bike trails to enjoy leisurely evening rides or everyday commuting.
Sales expected to start in the Fall of 2016. Contact us today to be kept up to date.
Promenade at the Quay – North Vancouver Residences at Lonsdale Quay
Promenade at The Quay is North Vancouver newest mid rise building. Located at the bottom of Lonsdale ave in vibrant Lower Lonsdale, Promenade at the Quay will consist 117 contemporary deigned apartments with gourmet kitchen, large open floor plans perfect for entertaining, spa inspired Bathrooms, large balconies, breathtaking views, and lively retail on the ground level
Sales are expected to commence in September, register with us today to be kept up to date with this project and others
Coming soon to the Brentwood Town Centre area, Gilmore station by Onni Developments.
Gilmore Station will be a mixed-use, multi-residential tower located at the Gilmore Station skytrain station on the corner of Lougheed highway and Gilmore. Gilmore Station has over 12 acres of land and it is expected to have over 500,000 square feet of retail space as well as over 2000 new homes in towers ranging from 45 to 65 storeys.
Located just a 10 minute walk (or 1 skytrain station away) from the new Brentwood town centre and a 20 minute sky train ride downtown. Gilmore offers easy access to some of the regions best shopping, dining and entertainment options without the need for a car. With Gilmore station being located to the West of Brentwood town centre and its massive redevelopment, Gilmore Station is facing away from the tall buildings of the Amazing Brentwood, Solo District etc, therefore the views to the North Shore mountains to the north and downtown Vancouver to the west will be unobstructed.
Pre-sells are expected to start in the coming months, register with us today get priority access.
Nektar De Stagni is an American designer whose designs use a playful balance of contrasting materials and ideas, resulting in objects that are both elegant and relaxed, classic and contemporary. Centered around the recontextualization of pure and traditional materials such as pearls and gold through modern forms and applications.
