So many people don’t appreciate herbal tea because they haven’t yet experienced the true deliciousness that herbal tea be. Good herbal tea is not only delicious, it is also a wonderful way to detoxify our digestive track and keep it healthy.

Fruit flavoured teas are not herbal teas, they are usually made with synthetic ingredients and therefore not good for our general health at all. Also watch out for so called herbal teas that come in teabags, always read the ingredients, the only ingredients listed should be the herbs the tea is supposed to have, for example, Fennel & Peppermint Tea should only have fennel and peppermint on the ingredient list, absolutely nothing else.

Herbal tea should always be organic. We are drinking the tea to be healthier not to contaminate ourselves with pesticides. Herbs are picked, dried and packed, whatever pesticides and other nasty chemicals the herbs were sprayed with throughout their life cycle stays on the herb, so when drinking a cup of supposedly healthy tea we are in fact also drinking the chemicals that the herb had been sprayed with.

Good organic herbal teas are full of good things such as antioxidants, vitamins and vital minerals. They are a great way to give your digestive track a daily gentle cleanse.

My family are great tea lovers, my mum can name a tea for every ailment and so I grew up drinking all kinds of tea that my mum would lovingly prepare. Peppermint for digestion, Olive leaf for stress, Lemon balm for anxiety… I could go on and on for a very long time!

My brother who since becoming a father decided to also become an organic farmer in order to provide his family with the best possible organic produce, has now become my herbal tea grower. He has a little land in Portugal with amazing soil, he then irrigates the small crops with water out of a well that brings water from deep into the earth that is full of minerals. Needless to say that this precious tea is possibly amongst the most delicious and nutritious tea in the world. Jorj and I have been drinking this tea at home and sharing it with our clients at the Soveral Clinic and are excited to now be selling it.

Our tea is a blend of Lemon Balm, Melissa and Peppermint. It’s refreshing; it cleanses the breath and the digestive track and can be drunk hot or as iced tea. It also has a wonderful calming effect that allows for a clearer head and a healthier body.

You will be shocked to learn that refined table salt is a poison for the body. Its processed just like industrial sodium chloride. It starts as sea salt that is then processed to separate the magnesium, this is done because the magnesium is then sold for more money. This process not only depletes the salt of life enhancing magnesium but also bleaches out the salt with the use of caustic soda, other nasty stuff is then added. We end up with salt that has harmful ingredients such as various bleaches and aluminium silicate.

Refined table salt has very little to do with sea or mineral salt. Refined salt is linked to water retention and many other health issues such as blood pressure and kidney problems.

Natural and unrefined sea salt and natural mineral salt are full of essential minerals and a very good way for us to access them. We need about 1.5 grams of salt a day to get enough of those essential minerals. Natural salt is mainly composed of sodium chloride and magnesium, it also contains many other elements and compounds such as chromium, selenium and zinc.

Avoiding refined table salt should become a priority in our detoxification process. Unfortunately refined salt is found in every processed food, bread and in any food that has added salt. Ketchup and baked beans are full of it and so is most things that are not fresh. It may be difficult to completely eliminate refined salt but we can certainly avoid it.

The first and most important step is to get some lovely unrefined sea salt for your home, here’s one of my favourites, Maldon Sea Salt

http://www.igourmet.com/sea-salt.asp

The next step is to find a little travel salt container that we can take anywhere. I just have a little glass jar at the bottom of my bag.

Thoughts can be toxic. Negative, dark and self pitying thoughts make us feel anxious, insecure, nervous and stressed. Stress lowers the immune system, leaving us open to disease. Since stress is mainly provoked by thoughts, we need to constantly check that our thoughts haven’t run away with negative feelings. Negative thoughts provoke negative feelings that in turn provoke negative thoughts, before we know it we are feeling low and anxious.

Sometimes we find ourselves in stressful situations and we can’t help feeling stress, but it’s our decision of how to allow our thoughts to flow throughout that time, which is going to determine how affected we really are by the situation. By creating awareness we can spot the very moment we are giving into negative destructive thoughts.

We are responsible for our own state of mind and therefore responsible for keeping our thoughts ‘clean’. Happiness is but a state of mind, doing a Daily Thought Detox is the best way to keep happy.

Evening Thought Detox:

Following from the breathing exercises on yesterday’s blog, a daily mini meditation is a great way to detox the mind before going to sleep.

When finished with the 9 cleansing breaths, allow yourself to just relax and breathe without counting. Continue to take the breath deep into your diaphragm and exhale fully.

Allow the body to sink into the mattress, feel the heaviness of its mass. Remain with the eyes closed and take your awareness to your feet and slowly bring it up all the way through the body. Relax each area with a full exhale. When you get to the head take time to relax the mouth, the eyes, the forehead and eventually the whole head.

Remain with the eyes closed and just be. Any thoughts that come into your mind just brush them away, don’t judge them or allow a thought process to start, allow thoughts and images to come and go, be a spectator. At first this will be difficult as we are so used to fixate and analyse whatever thoughts come to us. Don’t be hard on yourself, each day it will be a bit easier. With time and patience you will soon be meditating and able to truly relax.

If you find it hard to meditate why don’t you do a guided meditation? There are many free guided meditations online, its just a matter of finding what you feel most comfortable with. At times of stress I find it hard to focus on meditation and my mind wonders with thought, before I know it I’m worrying about something instead of meditating. At these times I plug in my headphones and do a guided meditation online, it always helps me to relax and detox my mind. The Chopra free guided meditations are very good for beginners:

http://www.chopra.com/ccl/guided-meditations