As I look around at the faces relieved of holiday stress, I find that nearly everyone suffers from a sniffle or a cough.  When the work place, school, or your home world is swirling with potential yuckies, it is time to boost your immune system to ensure your body stays protected.  If you've already caught a bit of a bug, many of the protocols below will support you to a speedy recovery.  A few weeks ago I felt something in my throat and began following my own advice.  In two days I felt much better!  Foods have an amazing potential to heal us.

Simple:  Let your body use it's energy in healing, not digestion.  Get back to basics, avoid sugar, coffee, and processed food.  Add in cooked veggies, soups, garlic, onions, and whole grains.

Hydrate:  Liquids help the body cleanse so stay hydrated with herbal teas, (nettle boosts immunity) clean water, and coconut water.

Super Tea:  Drink a tea made from ginger (for throat), turmeric (to liquefy mucus), lemon (to alkalize), cayenne pepper (to burn infection and lower high fever), and raw honey (to support coughs and boost the immune system) - click for recipe.

Elderberry:  Conventional cough syrups are loaded with sweeteners, and foreign ingredients.  Use elderberry syrups which inhibit the flu virus from spreading to host cells and aid in respiratory distress.

Vitamin C:  Why use powders when you can get Vitamin C from the real thing???  Add a red bell pepper, parsley, papaya, lemon or broccoli to your meals and you will get more available C then any processed powder or pill.  This year's tangerines are amazing!  Vitamin C helps increase white blood cell production.

Zinc:  Zinc is another mineral that is vital in immune system defense. Many animal products contain zinc in abundance, but you can also get it from steamed spinach and pumpkin seeds. 

Cough Support:  If you struggle with dry coughs soak almonds overnight, remove their skin and snack.

Sleep:  Sleep is vital when the body is trying to heal. Give yourself a rest and end your day early.

Invert:  Put your legs up the wall to activate your lymphatic system and help the body cleanse.  Mild inversions also help the nervous system relax.

As a child, I would sit for hours reading glossy magazines with lots of pictures, including the hundreds of National Geographic magazines that my uncle saved.  I fantasized about one day creating something as beautiful.   It was a life dream, manifested as a vision, that seared in my mind altering my life path, inspiring me to feel more aligned and attuned with my destiny path than ever before.  The mission: publishing a dynamic, multi-dimensional, multi-media online magazine that (one magnificent day) will also be in print. 

Life Coaching Magazine is all about people supporting people in human interest matters.  It is a medium for many cross-cultural coaching skills to be easily shared, for the benefit of people all over the world.  I believe people do better when they know better.  This online magazine supports this knowing.

The best way I can describe the feeling I get when I think about the vision of the magazine is "Life Living."  It's alive.  Like life, it is a work in progress.  It can be two weeks, two months, or two minutes between entries on the site!  Articles like, "Can I Talk To You?" address the questions of children and adolescents, while "Top Ten Video Picks" (carefully selected from the millions on YouTube) or Dawn Lipinski's contribution "Holistic Body Peace," raise our consciousness in ways we otherwise may never have experienced. 

A perfect example is the cover feature article from the first issue "Sherpa as Life Coach."  A fascinating, humbling, true story about Susan Harper Todd (the first British woman to lead an Everest expedition and the fifth to reach the summit herself) featuring awesome pictures from the highest place on earth that a human being can stand with their head in the clouds, and their feet on the earth.

As the magazine evolves, I find exciting opportunities opening before me.  For example, Sue Todd and I have formed a partnership for her next expedition to the Everest base camp.  She will lead trekkers in mountaineering and at agreed times I will coach them in mindfulness, and moving through their inner fear, via satellite phone!

This is my dream, coming true.  How am I making this happen?  By making it happen day by day.  Step by step.  Moment by moment.  With lots of people contributing generously along the way.

I invite you to share my inspired passion, and the knowing and inspiration that Life Coaching Magazine may offer to you.  Join me in living my destiny by signing up and sharing this free-to-the-world magazine where we may experience part of our journey together.   Visit often - you just never know what lightening bolt might be waiting to strike and ignite your own destiny!

- Contributed by Anya Sophia Mann of Conscious Journey

For information on Himalayan trek to Everest basecamp, and/or considerations for LCM publication email: Anya@LifeCoachingMagazine.net.