Love your Liver
Love your Liver

When our food passes from the stomach to the small intestine, it is absorbed into the blood stream complete with all the vitamins and minerals and other nutrients that we ingest.  But, before the nutrient rich blood can move around the body is has to make a stop at the liver.

The liver kicks into recycling mode, processing the good stuff into forms that the body can use and gets rid of garbage or anything unneeded.  The solid waste is carried by the bile back into the intestines and out of the body.  Some waste from the liver goes through the blood to the kidneys and is expelled through urine.

The liver has about 300 functions, but two other primary ones are producing bile and storing energy (glycogen).  Bile helps digest fat and absorb fat soluble vitamins.  Produced in liver and stored in the gallbladder, is an essential part of the digestive process.  If it gets too thick it can clog the gallbladder creating stones or rendering it ineffective.

Read More
Karen QuinnComment
Mucous the Body's Glue and Glide
Mucous the Body's Glue and Glide

Fascia in mostly mucosal.  Like egg whites, its gooey, slimy properties help muscles and organs glide easily as we move.   We see this in the fluid movements of youth when the body is hydrated and likely (hopefully) in movement most of the time.

With age, injury, and inflammation, the fascia dries out, becoming brittle, sticky, and clumpy.   It becomes more and more difficult to move moisture into the fascial cells.  The nerves that move around and through the fascia have more difficulty firing and the body loses the memory of movement.  If you can’t feel it, you can’t move it, if you can’t move it you can’t feel it. This is called sensory motor amnesia where the body forgets how to move in an easy, fluid way and maybe can’t move that part of the body at all.

Read More
Karen Quinn
Remember everyone who loved you into being
Remember everyone who loved you into being

Sometimes, we have people in our lives who are themselves so wounded that they’ve forgotten or perhaps never learned how to love themselves. Maybe all we can do is to love them into being and hope that someday they will remember that feeling and reflect it inward.

Read More
Karen Quinn
Diary of a Bush Fire
Diary of a Bush Fire

A sense of calm descends as I pass through the blue green canopy of gum trees lining the road on my way to Inglewood, a farm on the far side of the Blue Mountains in Australia. I’m coming home. Wallabies look up from their grazing as the car passes.

Read More
Karen Quinnaustralia, bushfire
Ayurveda-Changing with the Seasons+Weight Loss
Ayurveda-Changing with the Seasons+Weight Loss

In Autumn, leaves fall from the trees as they dry and wither, cool mornings and nights begin and end each day. These elements of vata--cold, dry, light--begin to dominate the earth and our bodies. Noticing and adjusting our diet and habits to be in sync with the season keeps winter colds at bay.

Read More
Karen Quinn