BalAnce Blog – BalAnce Well-Being Centre Inc.

SPOTLIGHT – Julie Morgan by Tom Kernaghan

Image

If every long journey begins with the first step, imagine how far you could go if you turned your steps into strides. For Julie Morgan, a registered social worker and the owner of Making Strides Counselling, it begins by pushing aside the stigmas of mental health, reaching out for support, and confronting your fears. Julie is here to guide you along that path which most of us find confusing and overwhelming — the walk toward our healthiest, happiest self.

With 15 years of counselling experience and a bachelor’s degree in social work from UBCO, Julie helps you to navigate tumultuous emotions and overcome the insecurity, depression, anxiety, and anger keeping you up at night, impeding your progress, and affecting your ability to create a better, more fulfilling life — the one you deserve. It’s about discovering what is in your way, what is immobilizing you, what is keeping you from moving forward. The foundation of this mutual exploration is a solid therapeutic relationship.

You are not alone. Julie passionately believes in the importance of building her clients’ trust, so that they can feel safe in being open and honest about whatever it is they are going through. And her services cover the vast and varied nature of life’s challenges. Whether you’re seeking counselling for family and relationship issues, grief and loss, chronic illness and disease, career conundrums, youth struggles, caregiver strain, and more, Julie is ready to take that first step with you, no matter how small.

Stay Positive, Stay Asleep By Bonita Kay Summers

Image

As you’re scrolling through your social media, how often do you come across profiles full of quotes on staying positive? There can be the temptation to “keep our head above water and paddle like mad” rather than allowing ourselves to feel the full extent of our emotional range. Thinking that being positive is a better choice can give us the idea that it’s somehow a failing if we don’t eschew the uncomfortable emotions for staying in our “happy place”. Happiness and optimism have their place in our lives, but we lose a great deal of our self-awareness if we exercise too much control over our emotions, preferring one feeling over another.

I often think about my 10-day stay at a Vipassana retreat in 2014, where we were encouraged to feel everything with “equanimity”. That meant accepting ALL the feelings, including rage, grief, fear, boredom, and every little spinal ache and muscle pain from sitting for prolonged periods while practicing Adhiṭṭhāna (determined sitting). This involved not moving a muscle while I observed the intense emotions that such stillness was bound to bring to the surface.

When movement does not disperse the energy, all kinds of feelings and sensations arise. The point is to not attach to the pleasant feelings or fight against the unpleasant ones, with the understanding that all suffering occurs as a result of attachment and aversion. When you can feel all your feelings with equanimity, you are free from the addiction to any particular feeling and the adverse reactions to uncomfortable ones.

According to vipassana, one cannot be addicted to a substance or behaviour, but the feeling that it gives us. In other words, if we cannot accept uncomfortable feelings, we will do whatever it takes to generate and cling to the feelings we want to have.

This is why I see “positive thinking” as merely another way of attaching to a particular type of feeling and suppressing the ones we’ve been conditioned not to tolerate. Eventually, we have to pull up the rug and look at what we’ve hidden underneath it due to whatever conditioning we received from early childhood (example, the grief suppressed from being shamed for crying).

The Hidden Price of Forcing Family Time with Your Teen by Aly Pain

Image

This is a critical issue and fine line to walk.

You know you have a limited number of days before your teen leaves home so you’re trying to maintain some family structure and quality time while you have it. You’ve read the studies showing the more connected teens are the less likely they are to participate in risky behaviours so family time is happening no matter how much huffing, puffing, and eye-rolling your teen does.

You’re lucky if you get ‘Hello’.

Your teen’s brain is growing new hardware and developing new software all the same time, necessary to become a successful, independent adult. This starts 2 key processes:

SPOTLIGHT – Karly Fiddes by Tom Kernaghan

Image

When you first meet Karly Fiddes you feel as though you went to high school with her, worked together on a fundraising project, or met at summer camp. Okay, you may say fostering familiarity is a core skill of any successful radio host, but it’s more than that. Karly’s uncommon mix of verve, vulnerability, and verbal vivacity can connect and wake you up faster than a large cup of extra dark roast. Yet within her strong voice whispers a deeper quality that makes the morning easier: a kind and unpretentious heart that feels the strain along with us … and then magically makes it fun.

That’s certainly the feeling I had when I first met Karly and during the two times I shared the stage with her — first as one of the storytellers at BWB’s Storytelling Tuesday five years ago, and then as a one-time co-host of that same event, a role she performed with electric energy for a couple of years. Not surprisingly, Karly was way better at speaking off the cuff to a crowd than I was. She is a pro, after all. But I digress.

As for Karly’s quips and digressions, they are hilarious. Those who have met her or who have listened to B Mack and Karly on Virgin Radio will already know this. Together they create a sonic space popping with possibility. And what makes Karly so engaging is her saucy candour, her ability to laugh at herself, and her willingness to share her foibles and struggles. What makes her inspiring is how she has turned her challenges into advantages and landed her dream job.

Aren’t you tired of waiting for work to get better? By Barri Harris

Image

Belittlement and beratement are not forms of motivation

When do we hit the tipping point that makes toxic workplaces obsolete?

For a while, it has felt like toxic cultures and toxic leadership would never improve. Until now. In the last few years, I’ve been
starting to feel a shift. People all over the globe are saying, “I won’t work like this anymore”. “I deserve better.” Workers everywhere
are taking positive action for better work and workplace environments.

When you fall sick, you are told that getting better takes time, but you have a role to play in your healing. You can’t just sit around
and wait to heal; sometimes, you need to take positive action to support your healing and hasten your recovery.

So, being miserable is going out of style by Tara Pilling

Image

Healing is a space that more people are entering because they are tired of carrying the weight of the past and are ready to unbind old conditioning that places limits on their happiness.  

People all over the world are actively finding ways to heal themselves in much greater numbers than in past generations.

  The work of letting go does not feel as mysterious as it used to, because therapists and meditation techniques can now clearly walk you through the process.  

We have much further to go in regard to accessibility, but it is undeniable that healing tools are now available to greater numbers of people.  

Why Do I Feel Like Crap? By Courtney Kafka

Image

As a Bowen Therapist I hear this a lot. Why do I feel like crap? Why am I in such pain? Why do I hurt so much
I can’t give you a definitive answer, but I can point you in the right direction.

There are several reasons for you feeling like crap.

Your nervous system is overwhelmed with stress! We are tied to our phones, computers, the radio, the news, work and life. If you aren’t turning these stimulus off and finding a calming, grounding activity to do the stress will just cause the same issues.
You don’t really sleep, and when you do its not very restful.
Your gut health isn’t very good which means you crave sugar and carbs, which in turn makes you feel worse.
Your inflamed which means puffiness, bloat and feeling like your clothes are too tight.
You have headaches everyday, feel like yuck and you just can’t seem to really breath. When you do try to breath deeply, things feel sticky. And why can’t you get rid of that darn cough?

Why Exercise can Slow Aging? by John Schlapbach

Image

Commitment to exercise requires an attitude, and behavioral change. Only then will it replace poor lifestyle habits.You may have good intentions, and then you relapse due to other factors in your life According to psychologist Shelly E Taylor, “changing a health habit isn’t easy, and may occur in stages.” Planning an exercise program and keeping a journal will help your motivation to continue. Group participation adds a social element to your chosen activity. Some people need more social support than others.

Exercise is the easy part, the habit is not. Sticking to a routine must become a new habit. Try replacing a bad habit with exercise. Some people have done it with smoking.

SPOTLIGHT – Matt Stewart by Tom Kernaghan

Image

“It’s not about being perfect, it’s about being one percent better than yesterday.”

When Matt Stewart delivers this line in a recent LinkedIn video promoting careers at the Staples Studio, where he is the Community Manager, I am reminded of the warm and encouraging impression of the man when I first saw him as a co-host for Balance Well-Being’s Storytelling Tuesday a few years ago.

Matt, an executive coach with over twenty years of experience, exudes acceptance, inclusiveness, and positivity. His sense of hope and compassion is a salve in these stressful days of division and our demands for perfection. But that doesn’t mean he suffers excuses or bad behaviour. While he can parry ignorance and small-mindedness with class and poise, he is equally capable of blunt and salty language, as he boldly demonstrates in another video: “The right shit, for the right why, for the biggest impact.” And he’s not afraid to employ a well-placed F-bomb, too. After all, activating potential is not for lightweights, and he activates a lot.

Matt — a.k.a. “Community Cultivator,” “Connectorpreneur,” “Den Mother,” and “The Bearded Leader”— has lived all over the world and advised senior leaders across North America, in the worlds of finance, film, healthcare, and major sporting events such as the Olympics, Paralympics, and the Pan Am Games. He is also a TEDx speaker who has also shouldered profound personal battles, living with leukemia and the long-term effects of Covid-19, while actively supporting many communities, including the LGBTQ community, of which he is a member. I also call him an inspiring survivor.

9 Questions to Ask Before Hiring A Home Cleaning Service by Daleen Qazilbash

Image

For most people, the questions that immediately come to mind are:

What are standard house cleaning rates?
Is it safe to have cleaners in my home?
What do residential house cleaners do?

These are excellent questions, and it is advisable to know the answers before hiring any residential cleaning service. Yet people often overlook the other important questions. You don’t want any surprises! What if your pets are suddenly getting sick from exposure to toxic cleaning products? What if a new cleaner shows up and you don’t have the time to go over everything? Here are nine questions that may help you avoid some common pitfalls when hiring your cleaning company.