‘Tis the season to be jolly … and we’re getting into the spirit here at Positive Life Magazine with this roundup of amazing events, products, services and news to celebrate during this festive month of December! Read on, enjoy, and most importantly, have a very merry Christmas.
We are excited to announce that our first Positive Nights event of the year will take place on Thursday January 17th, when we will be visited by the spiritual teacher and healer Mark Cleary. This event will be held in Bewley’s Café, 78/79 Grafton Street, Dublin 2, from 7.30 to 9.30 p.m. Read on to learn more!
On Thursday December 13th, the bestselling author and motivational speaker Andrea Hayes will be joining us at Positive Nights to talk about her incredible journey, the inspirations that drive her, and much, much more. This event will take place from 7.30 to 9.30 p.m. in the Bewley’s Café, 78/79 Grafton Street, Dublin 2.
From your hosts with the most, Orla Bass and Paul Congdon, we present to you an evening of speed dating with a special Tantric twist on Thursday the 22nd of November, from 7.15 to 10.00 p.m. in Bewley’s Café, 78/79 Grafton Street, Dublin 2. Doors open at 6.45 p.m.
Following our successful speed dating events last November and April, we are ready to bring it to another level and help singles to connect once again.
Speed dating is a fun, action-packed way to meet a large number of new people in a short period of time. Singles will spend three to five minutes chatting to see if any spark of romance arises. When both people tick the box indicating that they would be interested in meeting again, we will put you in touch with each other. The possibilities are endless! This is an opportunity to meet your soul mate or just have a great evening’s entertainment.
While it would be lovely to secure a date after the event, please be aware that we are coming together to practice the Tantric principle of loving human connection. We will get together, chat, and mingle, all while fully connecting with each human being in front of us with an attitude of deep respect, compassion and integrity. The mind may go into judgement mode – as it so often does – but simply let it drift off and move into your heart space. Aim to see everyone you meet from this compassionate perspective.
Speed Dating from the Heart will take place on Thursday November 22nd from from 7.15 to 10.00 p.m. in Bewley’s Café, 78/79 Grafton Street, Dublin 2. Doors open at 6.45 p.m. Click here to book your tickets.
In this extract from our Autumn 2018 issue, we spoke to Sinead Mitchell of the renowned nutritional supplement and research company Pharma Nord. She had some exciting news to share about heart health, based on a revolutionary Swedish study! If you haven’t had a chance to pick up our Autumn 2018 issue yet, click here to find your local stockist, or here to subscribe to the magazine.
by Aisling Cronin
Pharma Nord is a Nutritional Supplement Brand renowned for its revolutionary approach to nutritional support. Its high grade supplements are backed by rigorous scientific research, which documents their products’ safety and superior bio-availability (which, in laymen’s terms, refers to how easily absorbed they are). Pharma Nord’s research database contains over 9,000 scientific studies which serve to inform their impressive product development program. To date, more than 300 scientific studies involving Pharma Nord products have been published, one of the most striking being the KiSel-10 study, carried out in Sweden.
I spoke to Sinead Mitchell, Product Trainer for Healthcare Professionals at Pharma Nord to learn more.
‘The KiSel-10 study was a five-year, placebo-controlled, randomised double-blind study,’ Sinéad explained. ‘Two Pharma Nord products were used in the study: Q10 and Selenium. While there has been a lot of research done about the benefits of selenium for heart health, and the benefits of Q10 for heart health – when taken separately – there wasn’t a lot of research out there investigating the relationship between them, or the potential impact of their combination, which was the primary focus of the KiSel-10 research. The KiSel-10 trial was carried out in a small town in Sweden, with Swedish citizens who were aged 70 to 88. 443 participants took part, making it a very rigorous trial.’
The aim of the study was to observe how Selenium and Q10, when taken together, would affect participants’ heart health. Participants were divided into two groups. One group were administered 200 milligrams of BioActive Q10 Gold every morning, combined with 200 micrograms of BioActive Selenium, while another placebo group did not receive either supplement. Once the five-year study was complete, the results amazed researchers: those receiving the Q10 and Selenium combination were shown to have a 54% reduced risk of mortality through cardiovascular disease.
‘In addition to the reduced risk of mortality measured by the KiSel-10 study over the five years, positive effects could also be seen in all of the inflammatory markers, which are used to measure heart health,’ Sinéad revealed. ‘In fact, in many cases, the supplementation eased the inflammatory markers to a point lower than would be considered ‘normal’ for the participants’ age group, which is fantastically encouraging.’
The KiSel-10 study is now referenced extensively in a number of leading health and scientific journals, including the European Journal For Clinical Nutrition. An additional fourteen further studies have since been pulled from the original KiSel-10 data, as health professionals seek to gather even more insight into the heart-protecting effects of long-term Selenium and Q10 supplementation.
It has been known for decades that Q10 – particularly when consumed in the high grade form, ubiquinol – is a very powerful nutrient, so the KiSel-10 study results, demonstrating the immense impact of both Q10 and Selenium on heart health, are not all that surprising.
Coenzyme Q10 (as it is formally known) is a natural, vitamin-like compound that all cells require in order to produce energy. Levels of this nutrient peak in our twenties and decline from that point onward. However, the discovery of coenzyme Q10 by American scientists in 1957, and the array of scientific studies done in the interim, has empowered us with a tool to potentially prevent this ‘energy drop’ from taking place. Selenium, too, has long been known for its incredible immune-boosting qualities. However it appears that these two nutrients have an even more powerful potential when used in combination.
Based on the promising results of the KiSel-10 study, it seems that long-term consumption of these vital nutrients could have the power to unlock new potential for longevity and improved health.
Ahead of Anna Cole and Tosha Schore’s upcoming appearance at Positive Nights on Thursday November 7th, we are pleased to share Anna’s article from our Autumn 2018 issue. Consider it a brief taster of what she and Tosha will have to say on the night!
By Anna Cole
Parenting isn’t easy! Some days start with one child sitting defiantly on the floor, refusing to put on their shoes, with another grumpy, prickly and ignoring the dishwasher she’s been asked to empty. We’re bristling before breakfast is over, and things go downhill from here. When we’re upset and stressed, the fun drains out of parenting, to say the least. Even our sense that our children are dear to us disappears. Every single one of us grapples with tough days as we do our best to be good parents.
Why do we struggle so hard in parenting? Because, let’s face it, despite reading about peaceful and positive parenting, we do struggle hard some days. In the heat of the moment, we act in ways that we are less than proud of. Unconsciously, our own memories of past hurts are wrenched back into the here and now.
This kind of triggering is ubiquitous for parents and stems from events or bad times at different ages and stages of our own childhoods which left us hurt. When we act in ways we wished we hadn’t, the quiet, and not so quiet, whispers of times gone by which have left a mark, a wound, and a rigidity in us, have an effect on the day-to-day of parenting. We plaster them over to get by, as likely no one could listen to them when we were young. We learn to ignore them and attempt to stride, positively, into each parenting day. But here’s the rub: the wonder and the intensity of parenting is that, as much as we’d like to avoid it, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ parenting has an uncanny, almost precision ability to bring up these hidden triggers – often and many times! After some years of working on my own hidden triggers around parenting I have learnt to think of them as mirrors of opportunity. They invite healing and growth, if we can get the support we need.
As the autumn nights draw in and we head towards the ‘dark half of the year’ as the ancient Celts called it, we’re offering you a remarkable and rare opportunity to come learn a practice for releasing your parenting triggers with a couple of ‘masters’ – well, ‘mistresses’ – of the art of healing our parenting triggers. For one night only, Anna Cole – that’s me – certified Hand in Hand Parenting Instructor, and Tosha Schore, parent educator extraordinaire and co-author of the successful book, Listen. Five Simple Tools to Meet your Everyday Parenting Challenges, will be in Dublin talking at Positive Nights.
Join us for a welcoming and intimate evening and take home practical tools which will transform your parenting days – and nights – and help make your peaceful parenting dreams a reality. Come ready to practice. We’ll share perspective and practical ideas based on more than a combined couple of decades of our own experience, along with our training in Hand in Hand Parenting. We guarantee that this will make things go more easily in your parenting journey.
You’ve read the books, you know the theory, right? You know how you want it to look but you just keep losing it with your kids when they wake at 5am every morning, or refuse to go to sleep overnight, or (insert here!)…
You know the what! Let us show you the how! Come ready to laugh, talk and have some fun on this often bumpy, and less than perfect, journey of parenting.
Anna and Tosha will be appearing at Positive Nights on Thursday November 7th, with a mini parenting workshop which – if you’re a parent or hope to be – you don’t want to miss. This special evening will take place in the Bewley’s Café Theatre, 78/79 Grafton Street, Dublin 2, from 7.30 to 9.30 p.m. Click here to learn more and book your tickets.
For more, see: positivelife.ie/positivenights
Anna Cole, Ph.D., is a parent educator, researcher, writer and a certified instructor with Hand in Hand Parenting. She can be found on Facebook at:
Hand in Hand Parenting with Anna Cole
These heartwarming stories from our Autumn 2018 edition of Positively Newsworthy are sure to lift your spirits! If you have not yet picked up your copy of our Autumn 2018 issue, check your local stockist or subscribe to receive the magazine direct to your door!
Local solutions to global problems
By Alison McEvoy
There are so many ways to interact with the ‘challenges’ the world is encountering. What I love most about the ‘zero heroes’ which are emerging in response to pollution and excess waste production, is their ingenious creativity.
These people, who wish to create a world in which there is zero wastage, have come up with some of the most pioneering and novel ideas around. Take the Recycled Island Foundation for example. They have recently launched the world’s first floating, recycled park on the Maas River in Rotterdam.
The students of Rotterdam University joined in and pioneered the idea of the floating hexagonal building blocks which form the basis of the floating landscape. On top of these is packed all the plastics which the foundation has retrieved using litter traps from the river and, similar to a roof garden, upon these is planted all kinds of greenery, from moss to small trees, and plenty of native plant species.
Not only does the park soften the river’s edge through creating a buffer of green, it also provides a nesting and breeding place for marine life below the water’s surface and bird and insect life above.
These kinds of initiatives clearly show us that ‘waste’ need not be wasted, that there is value in every material that exists, in whatever form it exists, and, if we engage our creativity and problem solving, we can discover new value in what was previously discarded.
The foundation are now looking for new cities and locations to continue their mission!
Brave pup saves the day
by Aisling Cronin
Dogs are true heroes in so many ways – bringing comfort, love and solace to grateful humans all over the globe – but their heroism is never more evident on those astounding occasions when they save their humans from serious injury or even death. This summer, Paula Godwin – a resident of Arizona in the U.S. – was spared a shocking ordeal thanks to the courage of her own dog, a sweet golden retriever named Todd. She, Todd, and the other canines of the household were out on a walk one day in June, when their stroll was interrupted by a not-so-welcome visitor: a rattlesnake.
‘It was a carefree, beautiful morning,’ Paula recalled, ‘but as we were walking down the hill, I literally almost stepped on a rattlesnake. My hero of a puppy, Todd, saved me. He jumped right in front of my leg, where I surely would have been bitten.’
Todd was left with a number of injuries as a result of the snake bite, but he made a speedy recovery thanks to the veterinary care he received. He was later honoured in style at a Diamondbacks American football game, where the crowd were thrilled to see him. Paula is deeply grateful to him for saving her from what could have been a deeply painful or even lethal experience. ‘This is what a hero looks like,’ she declared. ‘Please say a prayer for my sweet hero.’
Bin man builds free library
by Aisling Cronin
Twenty years ago, Jose Alberto Gutierrez – a waste collector living in Bogotá, Colombia – found a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina that had been thrown out in one of the wealthier areas of Bogotá. He decided to rescue the book from the rubbish, and thus began his passion for salvaging high-quality books from the waste system and offering them for free to Colombians in need.
Gutierrez has now collected over 20,000 books, spanning a wide range of genres. These books form his free library service, Fundación La Fuerza de las Palabras (Strength of Words Foundation), located in his home in South Bogóta. Gutierrez keeps childrens’ books, classic novels by authors like Margaret Mitchell, Mario Vargas Llosa, and fellow Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, as well as textbooks covering subjects such as science, business and medicine, to name just a few.
The library is open to community children at weekends, and Gutierrez and his wife ship books to other communities in need all over Colombia. Their books have reached over 450 territories in the country. Gutierrez has become affectionately known as ‘the lord of the books’ in his neighbourhood. As he puts it: ‘In an area that lacks access to many resources, a book becomes a symbol of hope. Listen, if humans treated each other as they do in many of the books that I’ve read, this planet would be governed only by love.’
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