Medicinal mushrooms have long been used in Eastern medicine for their many healing properties.  They were often turned to as the first form of medicine because they have an uncanny ability to absorb and then safely eliminate toxins.  Eating them allows the same thing to happen in your very own body!  Shiitake mushrooms in particular, have a huge amount of natural antimicrobial and antiviral properties, meaning they’ll keep you healthy, and combat any first signs of cold or flu.

In addition to their many medicinal benefits, mushrooms are absolutely delicious! They provide a yummy, meaty texture and flavor to a huge variety of dishes.  Personally, I love hearing that not only is something good for me, but it’s just plain right delicious, I would eat them no matter what the benefits were!

In my Robyn’s Cooking Club I am often surprised to hear that many of my members are afraid of tackling mushrooms. They are unsure how to wash them and how to properly use them in recipes.

So, for the food of the month I’ll take you through the simple process of easily adding mushrooms to your diet:

Purchasing:

There’s a whole land of mushrooms out there beyond the most common white button mushrooms.  All mushrooms have their own unique texture and flavor. White button mushrooms are often the most commonly seen as they have a nice neutral flavor and are readily available.  I encourage you to try a mushroom you’ve never had before, Portobello mushrooms make for a great main dish, oyster mushrooms add a lively flavor to stir fries, maitakes stimulate your immune system, and shiitakes, my personal favorite, really have a unique and rich flavor in addition to their list of essential amino acids.

Storage:

You’ll often see a brown paper bag in the mushrooms section at popular health food stores like Whole Foods.  This is for a good reason, mushrooms need to breathe!  If you put them in plastic they will quickly go bad.  If the store doesn’t provide brown paper bags take them out as soon as you get home and keep them in an open container in the refrigerator.

Washing:

You have two methods of washing your mushrooms. Ideally, you don’t want to run them under water. This is because mushrooms are quite porous and will soak up most of the liquid (which will later end up in your food and take away some of their flavor). It’s best to take a paper towel, dampen in under running water and then gently rub away the dirt on top of the mushrooms.  If they seem extra dirty you can wash them under running water but often mushrooms are super clean and only need a gentle rub.

Preparing:

There really is no recipe needed when it comes to mushrooms.  Chop them up and sauté them in any kind of high quality fat such as coconut oil, olive oil, or butter. Once you have sautéed your mushrooms, you can add them to anything!  Mushrooms marry especially well with sautéed onions and I recently discovered how delicious onions and mushrooms where on top of my massage kale salad.

I hope next time you go to the market you’ll be encouraged to bring home a new mushroom with you.  Not only will you get to enjoy their unique and rich flavor, but you’ll feel like your very own medicine woman in your kitchen!

Robyn Youkilis is a featured Healthy Living contributor and a passionate “foodie” who thrives at matching pantry staples with fresh, seasonal ingredients. For more about her click here for her full bio and all of her articles!

Tweenage girls are a growing market for the cosmetic and skincare industry.

We spoke with Kim Grustas, one-half of the Mompreneur team behind the affordable skin care line, Good For You Girls, about the importance of helping your tweens invest in their beauty education.

Kim’s journey began with a trip to the whole foods market unable to find a natural skin care line for her daughter. Here’s what’s she’s learned:

Age Appropriate: The skin care market generally serves babies then jumps to adults. There’s a gap for girls ages 8-15, a critical developmental age. Tweenage girls undergo puberty and start experimenting independently with skincare and cosmetics. The skin is the largest organ on our bodies and we are learning that a percentage of what we slather on is absorbed by the skin and can seep into the bloodstream. Artificial chemicals from skin care products can be harmful and can affect the body’s natural hormones by mimicking estrogen to trigger puberty. Puberty is a pinnacle time to keep potentially harmful chemicals clear of your body. (http://www.ewg.org/reports/teens)

Self Regulators: The FDA does not regulate personal or hair care products – lotions, cosmetics, toiletries, shampoos or fragrances – and there’s simply so much we don’t know about the short and long term effects of product use and more information is surfacing. Self-education and trusting your gut is key. (http://safecosmetics.org/section.php?id=75)

Talk Truth, Minimize Fear: Help your daughter do what’s good for them in a loving way. Life is scary enough and death by lipstick may seem extreme so help them make informed healthy decisions. It’s like explaining smoking, one cigarette may not hurt you now but after years of smoking it may have adverse effects. Speak to your girls in an intelligent manner and empower then to value their health. A possible side effect is they may hate you now, but they’ll love you later!

Purse Power: We hold the power. Mothers demanding healthy products will change the industry just like the response to removing BPA from baby bottles. Your girls vote with their purses and are being sold to by glossy advertisements and eco-friendly sounding lingo. We tend to trust manufactures and girls love anything in a cute bottle with their favorite celebrity or character on it. Teach her to see past the surface and purchase on substance. Learn how with Nicole Clark’s  “Seeing Through the Media Matrix” www.CoverGirlCulture.com.

Beyond the Gloss: Teach her to read the product’s ingredient list before purchasing. Make it a shared research project and track and discuss updates. Welcome ingredients that you can pronounce with anti-oxidants, essential fatty acids, vitamins, plant based botanicals that target bacteria naturally and essential oils. Watch for “natural” claims that still contain ingredients currently on Kim’s naughty list like parabens, dyes, petroleum, aluminum.

Know Where to Go: Drug stores are not your only option as holistic products are cropping up in places nationwide, including, Whole Foods and another product line is www.holecolife.com

Have Her Back: Be the cool mom who supports her daughter. Make finding the right product line a joint effort. It’s the little words of encouragement that plants a seed that you value and respect her so she should respect herself. They will be grateful that you are in this together.  If your girl needs more backup there’s plenty of NYC girl power, check out the Reveal Conference and spiritual guru Gabrielle Bernstein.

Creating Values: Developing healthy habits and taking a stance to be green with your body helps instill core values of self-care to last them a lifetime. This is something they have control over so empower them to take pride in themselves!

ABOUT Kim Grustas:
For more than 15 years, Kim has lived and breathed the natural products industry. She’s been instrumental in the growth of some of the country’s largest nutrition and supplement companies as a graphic designer, creative consultant and marketing adviser. Most recently, she’s owned and operated an advertising and design agency in Connecticut, working exclusively with companies which have made a commitment to natural products and services.

Kim possesses a unique and impressive body of knowledge on the inner workings and emerging trends of the natural products industry – from brand development and manufacturing, to packaging and distribution, to marketing and promotion. This extensive experience is core to the operation and continued growth of Good For You Girls, while her creative energy paints the company’s beautiful vision and evolving story.

Kim’s passion for Good For You Girls comes from her love for her two daughters. They remind her every day of the greater mission of Good For You Girls – inspiring moms to protect what’s most precious and teaching girls at a crucial age to respect their bodies and make safer choices for a beautiful, healthy future.

ABOUT Good For You Girls®! Good For You Girls is the leader in all natural and organic skin care specifically formulated for the special needs of young skin. Girls today are bombarded with beauty products that are loaded with chemicals and synthetic ingredients. These chemicals should not be on any ones skin, let alone girls who are going through delicate hormonal changes. At Good For You Girls we believe beautiful skin is achieved the way mother-nature intended, with formulas created from the finest blends of organic extracts and natural botanicals.

We don’t play dress up: The problem with many products aimed at this demographic is that companies think they can put anything in a cute little bottle and it will sell. Wrong! Moms today are way too educated and girls are far to savvy to fall for this. Good For You Girls products are real skincare, made without chemicals but even more importantly beautifully formulated and balanced with beneficial botanicals and organic extracts specially designed to nourish and feed young skin. Our products are created out of respect and set the bar to which all others will me measured.

Related Post: Top Pick: Woman To Watch Erika Katz Of Bonding Over Beauty (http://yourbellalife.com/featured/top-pick-woman-to-watch-erika-katz-of-bonding-over-beauty/ )

Cynthia Litman is a featured Healthy Living Contributor and is an entertainment lawyer, social entrepreneur, business adviser, working mom, creator, author & hostess of the blog & talk radio show Mommas Pearls. For more about her click here for her full bio and all of her articles!

As a Bella momma, we often lose ourselves in our family lives.

Holding a space of love and compassion for yourself in every moment helps ward off I forgot to fasten my oxygen mask first type of emergencies. Love is a gateway to effortlessness. You hold the key to go beyond just saying ““I love you” and instilling self-love as a core value with your children.

Luckily it’s easy to love yourself, exactly as you are, as you are fabulous, and February is the perfect time to fall madly and deeply back in love with yourself.

Some love notes:

Ego Check: Loving yourself is not an ego thing, it’s a love thing and no modesty is required. Being full of yourself and boasting is an ego trip. You are supposed to love, accept and be proud of who you are. You are entitled to fully honor the positive parts of yourself. It’s just being honest! The positive side of your ego will share all that’s fabulous when you’ve forgotten. Keep your negative ego in check when she starts on her ugly track with “you don’t deserve” “you suck” “you’re fat” “you’re too big for your bridges”. Then thank her as she can teach you what insecurities or issues are blocking your mojo.

Date Yourself: Devote time to yourself. My best friend Melissa Goldberg says, “stash time away for yourself like you would save money in your savings account.” Take that time and invest it doing something you love and find inspiring.  Go for a walk in the cool air, stroll through a museum, enjoy nature therapy by arranging some flowers, indulge with some super thick Parisian style hot chocolate at the newly opened Laduree or mainstay City Bakery, do a guided meditation from any of Gabrielle Bernstein’s offerings or from Meditations For Moms, read a book, journal, bust out your stencils and draw, turn on some music and get jiggy with it. Enjoy your own company.

Self-Care: Care for yourself. Commit to your own wellbeing and release what no longer serves you. Scan your emotional, physical and spiritual self and each area of your life – health, relationships, career. Acknowledge your unhealthy beliefs, thoughts, practices, habits, addictions, vices or energy suckers in your life. Get professional help where required. One at a time, accept and thank each for the lessons and then actively release it. Forgive your past judgmental unhealthy chain smoking cake batter gorging self.  Supplement new healthy ways to care for yourself and be gentle if you fall off the love wagon. I love these 50 simple self-care tips by life coach, Corrie Woods.

Core: Re-connect with the core of who you are, that part of you that is pure spirit and is so open, clear, divine and peaceful. You may have to dig through and clear some layers but she’s there, ever waiting to be acknowledged and to integrate fully with your daily experiences.

Live Your Truth: Pauline Esposito, an intuitive metaphysical healer and teacher says, “living your truth is your greatest act of self-love, to love yourself is to know your soul and accept it fully. To know yourself and love yourself well enough not to do something that is out of authenticity for your soul. “ When you start doing what everyone else wants you to do you start losing touch with what you feel is right for you to do. Do what is in your truth, is honest to who you are and take actions that expresses and advances your truth.

Be Your Best Cheerleader: Accept a compliment. While in law school, a close friend said without a shadow of sarcasm “you are so smart, beautiful and amazing.” She’d go on and on listing my positive traits and by the end of my third year, I was finally able to accept and fully embrace those beliefs.  Take a cue from Stuart Smalley, grab a mirror, smile big, blow yourself a kiss and say “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggonit, I LOVE ME!” Then go be a cheerleader for your friends and family, shower them with Arielle Fierman’s I LOVE ME rings, and bask in the love.

Listen to your heart to show you your pathway to being your own best lover.

Join Cynthia in an insightful and empowering 4 Week Intensive Tele-Call Series we will take a journey of Self-Love and build a space of unconditional love for yourself!! Mommas Pearls 4 Week Intensive Tele-Call Series: i-5 Live!!

Cynthia Litman is a featured Healthy Living Contributor and is an entertainment lawyer, social entrepreneur, business adviser, working mom, creator, author & hostess of the blog & talk radio show Mommas Pearls. For more about her click here for her full bio and all of her articles!

January, by nature, is a time we reflect on the past year, and plan for the one ahead.

Yoga sutra 2.41: When the body is cleansed, the mind purified, and the senses controlled, then joyful awareness needed to realize the inner self, also comes. (I know, those sutras can be a bit “heady” so read on for a more straight-forward explanation)

Saucha refers to a purity that operates on many levels. It can be as simple as cleaning your house, or as deep as purifying your spirit. Daily, we aspire to cleanliness for our bodies by practicing good hygiene, nourishing ourselves with healthy food, and sweating through exercise. In yoga, we use twists to purify and detox the body during practice. Indian yoga master B.K.S. Iyengar describes twisting as a “squeeze-and-soak” action, “the organs are compressed during a twist, pushing out blood filled with metabolic by-products and toxins. When we release the twist, fresh blood flows in, carrying oxygen and the building blocks for tissue healing.” This is where my Xen Strength Yoga twisting poses can come in handy; click here to physically wring out 2011!

Click the video for some Xen Strength Yoga Detox Poses

As wonderful as physically detoxing the body can feel, those wise, old, yogis tell us, “if we are going to find true happiness, we need to clean up our thoughts as well.” Personally I also believe this is where the real “work” is.

Off the mat, we can cultivate consciousness and cleanliness in our thoughts and speech by not polluting them with negativity or obsessing over the past and the future. The simplest way to clean the mind is to watch what we expose it to. The mind is like a crystal- it takes on the color of whatever is near to it. In the same way, the mind is influenced by what you expose it to. If you surround yourself with negative people- you will become negative. If you surround yourself with positive people who are content and grateful, so you will become.
As soon as we focus our thoughts on what we are lacking, we stop the flow of life. It is our natural state to live a life of ease. When we obsess over wanting something or worrying about not getting it, we are resisting. In other words, when we are not accepting life exactly as it is in the moment, we are resisting. Any resistance to life stops the flow and causes dis-ease- and that is where a physical and mental detox can help.

Yoga teaches us to let go. We let go of our thoughts, our past, our future, and our skeletons. If we let go of everything and hold on to nothing we create space- emptiness even. And in this space health and happiness can prevail. Suddenly we are able to live with a joyful awareness of just how good the present moment is.

When we let go of our attachment to how things should look, we create space for the life we are meant to lead. When we let go of people and things that no longer serve us, we begin to attract true abundance into our life. The more you practice letting go, the easier it gets; and the sooner you recognize you are resisting, and are able to let go and fully accept in that moment, the sooner you choose ease instead of dis-ease.

To aid in dropping what doesn’t mentally serve you, practice the meditation below, which is one of my favorites on “letting go.”

Meditation on Letting Go

Find a comfortable seat: in a chair, at your altar, even in your parked car while waiting to pick your kids up from school; slow down your breath and make the inhale and exhale even.

Choose something in your life that you feel is holding you back from being happy- an attachment you may need to detox from your mind. It could be the search for the perfect job or soul-mate, a number on the scale; whatever it is, envision it just on the horizon.

How does it feel to constantly chase after this?
Would it serve you to let go of the attachment?
Are you willing to accept that you can be happy without this thing? Can you accept your life as it is now and know that you are exactly where you are meant to be?
What would it feel like to fully let go of this once and for all?

Now keep that “thing” in your mind as you take a deep inhale and silently repeat LET, then slowly exhale all your breath out as you repeat GO… as you continue to repeat let and go with a steady breath, imagine yourself being happy without this thing; completely letting go to any attachment you had to it.

Then after a few more breaths, open your eyes and feel a sense of purity, of cleansing your mind from old thoughts and expectations- making room for what’s to come.

Without purity in body and mind, clarity eludes us. It’s worth the effort to find time each day to practice the observance of saucha and express gratitude for our ability to do so- both on and off the mat. Over time, as you apply the principles of saucha to your life, you willl find that a peace settles over you- and you are happy for now apparent reason. And that is the one common goal each and every one of us has- to be happy.

To YOUR happiness in 2012! Xooxox Danielle

** This article was written by guest contributor Danielle Diamond, for her bio and contact information please visit
http://yourbellalife.com/guest-contributors/

Hello Beautiful Bella Readers.

You see, believe it or not,  a man, by nature, has a strong desire to serve and protect us.  If there is no need to serve and protect us, that their existence serves no purpose…and listen to me, they WILL gravitate towards one of those helpless chicks that you can’t stand.  You will be left there scratching your ass wondering what went wrong.  I hate to say it, but you weren’t helpless enough.  I have noticed this phenomenon plenty of times.  Trust me, I was in a 5 year dry spell.  I was so freakin’ independent that I didn’t have the space/trust/insight/feminine energy to let men do things for me.  During this 5 years of single-hood, I had to be in my masculine and feminine in order to survive.  Who else was going to lug the laundry to the laundry mat, take out the garbage, change the light bulbs, change my flat tire, and build the IKEA furniture? I got so used to depending on myself that it felt foreign, and even rude, to depend on others.  Why would I want to burden someone else if I can do it myself? What I didn’t realize is that I was burdening the man by NOT letting him do things for me.  They all lost interest and I would come to find out, time and time again, that they ended up with the very chicks they said they didn’t want (needy, co-dependant, helpless gold-diggers who are high maintennance and wouldn’t be caught dead without heals and makeup and thought dogs and nature were gross).  It seemed very confusing, but now it makes perfect sense.  I remember having a light-bulb moment regarding this.  I was dating a man who was visiting from Canada and he was such a gentleman.  I was so used to being a bag lady (you know how it is in NYC..you carry some gym clothes, books, calendars, lunch, shower stuff for after the gym, laptop, etc on your 16 hour day) and thought nothing of it.  Everywhere we went, this gentleman insisted on carrying my bags (I put up a fight, but he put up a bigger fight).  I remember giving in and handing him over some of my crap.  Instantaneously, it was like a load was lifted off my shoulders…literally and figuratively.  It was right then that I realized that we were not meant to live alone.  We are meant to live in teams or packs and share the load.  Once I got passed my fear and guilt, it was so easy to let him help me out, and furthermore, I looked over at him grinning from ear to ear.  He loved helping me and I loved letting him–what a cool concept!  In speaking with many clients, I have since encouraged them to give in a little to receiving help from their men and they too have had light bulb moments.  One girl remembers, “hmmm, the time when Colin was the best boyfriend ever, is the time I lost my purse and I was upset and crying.  He rallied and did whatever it took to get it back to me.” I hear similar stories all the time…Men need to feel useful, or else they will seek it out somewhere else.  I am not advocating that you become a helpless, hopeless nymph incapable of the smallest task, but I am suggesting you pull out your inner damsel.

How to tap into your Inner Damsel in Distress:

1) Make a list of all the tasks that you do that could be traditionally seen as masculine (ie. take out the garbage,   solve all of your problems, beat people up (hopefully not), pay the bills, move and build furniture, hang pictures, change light bulbs, fix the computer, etc.

2) Acknowledge that you are more than capable of doing all of these things and damn well (quite possibly better than the men), and that this is not an activity on sexism or abilities. Tell yourself, this is an activity on teamwork, relationship building, and receiving help (being in your feminine energy).

3) Pick out a couple of things you could stand to not do…even if it is to stop opening jars.

4) Hand those things over to your man.  They respond to short quick requests (it takes them a while to filter through the fluffy bullshit) using words like ‘please’, ‘need’, ‘help’ ‘sexy’, ‘hot’ and ‘hero’.
For example- “Justin, I need your help.  Can you please pull down that heavy suitcase for me?”.  Then, while they are doing it, you say, “oh, you are so hot/sexy/strong/manly when you do that”.  Then, an action is nice too such as pinching/spanking the butt and/or feeling his biceps.  Follow up with a “thank you, you are my hero”.

5) Feel good, watch your man feel good.

6) repeat and reap the benefits of having a more balanced relationship!

I also strongly suggest this for women who aren’t in relationships and want to manifest one.  Remember, if you are too in your masculine, there is no room to attract a guy…unless he is a pussy and wants to be manhandled (yuck!).  So, when I lived with 6 strong-minded, independent girls, we all got used to being in this space.  We began to hire a “rent a hubby” which is a handyman that comes by and does stuff for you.  We also started asking our landlord and doormen to do more things for us.  Let me tell you, at first I thought we would burden them, but those dudes LOVED coming by to help six ladies!  Trust me…it was a win-win situation where we made each others’ days.  Shortly thereafter, after I begin to receive help from a man, I met the man I am currently and happily involved with…and I let him help me everyday!  I still struggle with wanting to do everything on my own, but the benefits of giving in far outweigh the inclination to be a task hog.  Start today with pulling out the inner damsel and letting the men in your life rise up to be the hero–everyone will be happier!

Natalie Berthold is a featured Healthy Living contributor and is an intuitive healer who uses her gift of insight to help others.  For more about her click here for her full bio and all of her articles!