Tuesday 17 December 2013

Top Three Relaxation Tips To Help You Cope With The Festive Season


This time of year can be stressful for many of us for many reasons – from keeping on track with hectic plans and preparations at home for family and friends, to trying to get all your work up to date before the Christmas break, through to the financial or social pressures we can succumb to during the festive season.

If you’re feeling stressed then there are some great, natural and inexpensive ways to help yourself switch off and enjoy some much deserved relaxation. Back in the 1990s I qualified as a clinical aromatherapist and since then I have also gained professional level qualifications in anatomy and physiology, chemistry of essential oils, naturopathic nutrition, herbalism and crystal therapies. I’m no longer a practicing therapist but I do still use all of these disciplines on myself and my family to help with everyday ailments such stress, bad moods and irritability.


So, if you feel in need of some R&R, here are my top three ways to de-stress naturally for the holidays:

  • ·         Flower remedies – probably the most famous of which are the range of Bach Remedies. These are easily available from health food stores, chemists and even some supermarkets. There’s usually an explanation leaflet in store where you can check for the best remedy for your circumstances or you can do a search on the internet before you head out to the shops. Probably one of the best to choose is the Rescue Remedy which combines several of the remedies in one to help with things such as feeling overwhelmed, anxious, panicky, stressed, fearful and uptight. If all the responsibility for providing a happy Christmas for your family falls on your shoulders and you feel overwhelmed, stressed and exhausted then Elm remedy would be a good choice. If you feel exhausted in body and mind from all the shopping and planning and partying for the festivities, then try Olive remedy.


  • ·       Essential oils used in aromatherapy are a wonderful way to relax – use them in the bath, an aromatherapy room burner or add them to an unfragranced base lotion or oil (such as sweet almond) and give yourself a blissful foot massage- or, even better, get someone else to do it for you! There are cautions regarding the use of some oils but ones generally considered safe to use by most people are lavender, ylang ylang and geranium - and they smell gorgeous too!


  • ·        The herb avena sativa is sourced from oats and is widely regarded to be a great help when it comes to soothing stress. You can get the herb in tablet or tincture form from health food stores – you can even get tea bags!

I still love using herbs, oils and crystals and recently  ‘worked’ with them in an entirely different way when I incorporated them into my novel How Do You Spell Love? In the book one of the characters Summer is a practicing white witch who uses herbs, oils and crystals in the spells she creates to help people with everything from love to protection. Summer follows the Number One Witchcraft Rule –  never use spells to help yourself. Usually. But then she finds herself, in a desperate moment, performing a lunar love spell to try to get her relationship with boyfriend Rob back on track – with chaotic results!

You can find out what happens next with Summer and her spells in How Do You Spell Love? available in ebook and paperback on Amazon.




How Do You Spell Love?

Kat can’t help wishing there was more to life than this. What happened to her dream job? What happened with Nathan?

Summer is wondering where her life is going too… battling the developers of a controversial housing estate and working out why boyfriend Rob is increasingly distant.

When the developers win the battle and move into town everyone’s life is turned upside down.

Kat meets building site project manager Alex. She enjoys his company far too much, even though he’s on the town’s most hated list.

Summer meets Tom who has plenty of relationship troubles of his own, so things could get really complicated.


Soon everyone is keeping secrets, lives change and hearts are broken. Is everything falling apart, or does life just work in mysterious ways…


Find the book on Amazon:


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