Today’s solocast topic is: Natural Ways to Protect Against Coronavirus and Practice Self-Care
Beauties, we’re all feeling it right now: the stress and confusion around the coronavirus. It’s hard to escape – we’re stuck inside our homes, our normal routines are thrown off, our travel plans are cancelled, we’re panic-buying toilet paper and hand sanitizer…
There are many things out of our control right now, so it’s easy to fall into a mindset of stress, panic or worry. In today’s podcast, I’m encouraging you to take a look at the natural guidelines from the CDC as well as sharing what we CAN control during this time. This includes our mindset, our actions to boost our immunity, and our self-care practices.
As you listen to this podcast, I encourage you to take this moment to slow down, maybe take some mental notes on these tips, and carry on with your day with a positive mindset!
Topics Covered In Natural Ways to Protect Against Coronavirus and Practice Self-Care
#1. Mindset & shifting perspective on the coronavirus
#2. Plant-based foods to boost your immunity
#3. Lifestyle practices to protect your immune system
#4. How to practice self-care during this stressful time
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Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:
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Additional Research Resources:
- “Spicing up” of the immune system by curcumin
- 20 Foods Rich in Selenium
- Effects of Adaptogens on the Central Nervous System and the Molecular Mechanisms Associated with Their Stress—Protective Activity
- Sleep and immune function
- How power of positive thinking works
Transcript:
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Hey Beauties, and welcome back to our Monday solocast episode where our topic today is Natural Ways to Protect Against Coronavirus and Practice Self-Care. And I know I don’t need to tell you how much Corona is on the mind of all of us. It’s affected our everyday lives. It has turned the world upside down and there’s just a lot of confusion right now and uncertainty.
And unfortunately, that often leads to more anxiety and more panic and more fear. And of course, some of these are natural feelings. But today I want to get into really honing in on perspective and mindset and what we can control and how we can stay positive right now, as positive as possible and do our best to protect ourselves and our families and not get into a deep, deep fear mindset.
I know all the great teachers and masters and yogis have always said that times of adversity is times when we can really go deeper and to know our own strength and our own resiliency. And I think that’s what we’re being called on right now is to go deeper and to realize that our strength is anchored in something much, much deeper, much, much further down than the surface.
And as the outside world continues to shift, we have an anchor within us, each and every single one of us, that we can start to rely on and connect with in a stronger way. So today, we’re going to be going through some practical tips and tools and strategies.
And again, some mindset and perspective information. And my hope is with this solocast to really fortify you with solid information, solid steps that you can take, and also to remind you, to reassure you that you’re so strong that you’re much stronger than you realize. And again, that our security and strength comes from a much deeper place than all this outside stuff.
Fan Of The Week
And while a lot of it is not in our control, on the outside, we’ve a lot that we can do and tap into from within. Before we get into everything, I want to give a shout out to our fan of the week. Her name is lealynn23. She writes, “This podcast is authentic, informative, and inspiring. The information provided by Kimberly, Katelyn, and the variety of guests on this podcast each week is useful in all areas of my life. It encourages a holistic way of life that incorporates balance in areas of food, body, including exercise and sleep, emotional wellbeing and spirituality. I love how interactive the Thursday Q&A sessions are, where listeners can submit a question for Kimberly to answer. I cannot recommend this podcast enough and I’m so grateful for finding it. Maureen.” Maureen, AKA leahlynn23, thank you so much for your review. Thank you for being part of our community.
Share The Podcast and Leave a Review on Itunes
Thank you for tuning in. I send you a huge virtual hug no matter where you are right now. Hopefully, home safe and cozy somewhere and sending you so much love. For your chance to also be shouted out as the fan of the week and for me to read your beautiful words, please take a moment or two out of your day and leave us a review on iTunes. It’s free, it’s easy, it could be literally a sentence or so. And it’s just a great way to be part of the community, to be part of this energy to support the podcast.
And so, I thank you so much in advance. And while you’re at it, I will also remind you that it’s a wonderful practice to also subscribe to our show, that way you don’t miss out on any of the podcasts. If there was ever a time to really tune into self care, to tune in to inspiration, which is what we really need right now is to stay connected to positivity.
Now, it’d be a really, really wonderful time to subscribe. We have our show twice a week and that way you never miss out on any of the solocasts or interviews or Q&As. And it’s just a great way, especially if you’re hunkered down at home or no matter where you may be to keep you going. All right. So all of that being said, let’s dive into our topic now, which is so timely obviously, and it’s on everybody’s mind and you may be hearing different snippets here and there and maybe you’ve been tuning into the news a bit more than usual. And there’s a lot swirling around in the media. There’s a lot going on. And I think we’re all a little bit susceptible right now. I do have a cough drop in because my throat does feel a little bit raw. So if it sounds a little bit more garbled than usual, I apologize.
But thank you for understanding. I have been talking a lot. It’s been rainy and gray and the weather’s been a little bit funny out here in LA, so I do feel like I have a little tickle in my throat, but it’s not a big deal. But in case I sound a little funny, I just wanted to acknowledge that I do have a cough drop in and I’ll try to minimize the noise of that, but just wanted to acknowledge that.
I also will say that I am almost eight months pregnant and it’s a little bit of a funny time to be pregnant. A lot of people have been saying to me, oh, how do you feel? Are you especially scared for you and baby? Just as we’ll get into today, I think that there’s reasonable action and it’s a time to be alert, but it’s not necessarily a time for panic and anxiety and I think we can still tune into the beauty of life and the things that we’re grateful for and the time that we can connect even deeper with loved ones if we are quarantining with them.
Solocast
I do not understand this mentality of hoarding resources. I know people are buying in bulk toilet paper and hand sanitizer and wipes, making it very hard for other people to find them and we’re all in this together. And I think that panic just adds to this energy of fear doesn’t help anything. So we don’t want to feel that we’re in this impenetrable bubble or we have no clue what’s going on.
But I will say there is something to be said for keeping a discerning space around us, what we’re watching on the news, how much we’re watching. If there’s freaked out friends and family members, maybe not talking to them every moment of every day, maybe keeping some distance from negativity that doesn’t feel helpful. Right now, we have a friend and he is a friend of my husband’s and it really impacted his business.
And of course, to an extent I understand. He’s had to lay off a lot of people, he’s in the fashion business, but every time we talk to him it’s so negative and so draining that I said to John, I said to my husband, maybe we just not talk to him as often right now because it doesn’t feel great. Everybody’s coping, everybody’s doing their best. But I think that mentality and the way that we handle stress does impact our immunity.
Coronavirus vs. Other Viruses
It does impact our resiliency in our bodies. So it’s just something to pay attention to is how discerning we can be at this time. Now shifting to perspective for a minute, this Corona is considered a pandemic. It is hitting us across many different countries in the world. And according to the World Health Organization, as of March 23rd, there have been over 350,000 cases worldwide and roughly 15,000 deaths, mostly in immunocompromised people and elderly people.
In comparison, influenza has infected over 40 million and killed over 40,000 people in the USA alone, this flu season according to the CDC. So you may be tired of hearing that stat, but here’s yet another one. Respiratory Syncytial Virus or RSV is a common virus that has an average of 57,000 hospital visits a year for children and 14,000 deaths per year in adults over 65.
So this is something that’s playing out in real time. There’s a lot of media attention on it. There’s a lot of calls for us to help flatten the curve, which is completely necessary and wonderful for taking the measures, like social distancing and staying at home as much as possible. But I just wanted to shed a bit of light that there are other illnesses and diseases out there that have historically been in much higher numbers and have higher death rates or comparable death rates per year.
Now of course, this is a different situation because it’s new, it seems new to us and it’s growing but is not a time for just giving into full panic and full fear. I think it’s important that we keep our immunity up. I think we need to be extra vigilant. Obviously, if we are elderly or if we have elderly family members, but just to remember that we’ve always lived in a time where there are diseases and conditions that have circulated around.
What we do have control of from our mental, emotional, spiritual perspective comes from within and also strengthening our own immunity from within. Now this is something I talked about from the Beauty Detox Solution to now. Dr. Ann Wigmore would say, if you throw seeds on the sidewalk, they will not grow. But if you throw seeds into a fertile soil, they will start to grow and take hold.
It’s this idea that if we don’t have an environment within ourselves where we’re more weak, where we can be more susceptible to pathogens taking hold, we’re in as strong a position as we can be in to really keep ourselves and our families resilient and we’re going to be taking… I’m going to be talking about tips to keep our bodies strong in just a moment, vitamin C, probiotics, so on and so forth. And we do need to take precautions, but I just want you to remember that it may seem like a very scary out of control time, but there is still a lot that you can do within your control.
Natural Guidelines from the CDC
There are some natural guidelines from the CDC that I have linked above in the show notes. I’m sure that you have heard of them by now, but if not, make sure that you are frequently sanitizing, washing your hands for at least 20 seconds in hot water. If you go out, really most grocery stores now, which is probably the only place where we have to go from time to time, that there are sprays or ways to disinfect the carts. If not, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to bring your own wipes.
Mindset and shifting perspective on the coronavirus
I think it’s important to be home as much as possible. I think the way that we can flatten this curve is for people to just stay home and rest and connect at home. We may feel like we’re giving up some time and activities and freedom, but in a way we’re also gaining. We’re gaining that sacred time to connect with ourselves and to our loved ones and to our family and to have time where we’re not rushing around.
I think we should not look at it as like, oh, we’re losing out on everything, but rather that it can be a very potent opportunity to go within and to have this really special time which may not have ever really been available to us before.
Plant-based foods to boost your immunity
Now let’s talk about natural ways to protect and boost immunity, self care practices. I think that this is a really great time for us to focus on self care. I think this is a beautiful time to really deepen your practices. Besides of course, the precautions and alerts and things that we’re doing. As I mentioned, you can check the CDC for those, but these are ways beyond that.
These are ways that have to do with nurturing your body and back to our Solluna Cornerstones of food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth. These are the cornerstones to anchor into right now to keep your mindset positive, to keep your body healthy, your immunity up, your system cleansed and digestion up, which is so important because the cleaner your body, the less hold toxins and pathogens and viruses have an ability to take hold of your system.
This is a wonderful time, especially because we just passed the spring Equinox. We’re shifting energies right now. As we go into spring, we go into greater light. It’s a really important time to keep up with and drinking more GGS and raw vegetables and enzymes. So let’s go into it now. I’m already starting to segue into food. Food is the first cornerstone of Solluna.
It is a very powerful building block because it influences the way that… there’s an energy in food and it influences the way that we function and we live and how we look and how we feel. And food has the ability to really keep our bodies resilient and strong from the inside out.
Vitamin C
Now vitamin C is the first nutrient I want to get into and we have all heard that vitamin C is important to stay healthy. And I just want to point out that it is water soluble, meaning that it degrades rather quickly compared to other vitamins, that it is sensitive to heat, and it’s something that we want to regularly ingest.
Along those lines, I think some of the best ways to make sure you’re getting vitamin C is in your Glowing Green Smoothie®, which I have been upping the ante for all the last few weeks. More than usual, I have been drinking it. I highly recommend making it, making it in batches, freezing it so you always have access to it. A lot of people are hoarding the frozen food, but you can definitely get more fresh produce right now and store it. And like I said, blend it and freeze it. And that can be a really potent way to use resources.
Lemon water, salads, berries and acai
If you heat up the water, make sure you don’t heat up the lemon juice, you squeeze it in when it’s cooled down a little bit. And that way you’re not destroying the vitamin C and the enzymes. I think salads are really great, important component of our meals right now, getting in those raw greens as well as lightly cooked greens and stir fries. These are all wonderful ways to get vitamin C as well as fruit.
It’s great time to eat berries. I’ve been loading up on raspberries and blackberries and blueberries and strawberries. Me and Bubby love them so much and they are delicious and they’re full of antioxidants and tons of vitamin C. You can also get frozen acai packets and keep them in your freezer, which have a lot of vitamin C. they’re flash frozen at the peak of ripeness. So that’s a great idea as well.
Turmeric
Now, turmeric is a great herb right now, great spice that is really wonderful for bolstering immunity. There was some research connected to turmeric from the journal of clinical immunology showing that turmeric is a really potent food item that you can use right now. I like to make golden milk out of it by adding it into my hemp milk or my almond milk, stirring it in.
I also have been using it in my Kitcheree and some of my soups and stews. I made a tofu scramble the other day with organic non GMO tofu, kale, and I put the turmeric and the sea salt, coconut oil. And the turmeric made the tofu this beautiful, brilliant yellow color and that’s a great way to get turmeric in.
Selenium
Now selenium is another key essential nutrient for our bodies that has a great impact on the strength of our immune system and Brazil nuts are something that I’ve always loved. And sometimes you get a few of them in a nut mix, but you can also buy a bag of Brazil nuts. You can blend it. You can make a Patty out of it, you can chop them. They’re very huge nuts. Add them on top of your salad. They’re also in brown rice and sunflower seeds and mushrooms, so be sure to check out these foods as well.
Probiotics
Next is probiotics. I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep your gut health on point right now. Every day we need to be nurturing and rebalancing our guts because this is the key to immunity guys. This is where so much of our immunity resides. And a weakened gut can make you very susceptible for a host of health issues. If there was ever a time to really strengthen our guts, it is right here, right now.
I highly recommend taking SBO probiotics every day. While you may be eating things like raw sauerkraut and coconut yogurt, it’s not the same as having resident forming strains that are very powerful. And we have a formula that I love. Obviously I’ve formulated it and stand by a million, billion percent. I’ve been sending it to family members and giving it to loved ones, people that I really want to help protect right now especially. And it has prebiotics and postbiotics to help it really take hold in your system and colonize.
You can check them out on our site, mysolluna.com. They don’t need to be refrigerated. So it’s a great time to take two a day, every day. It is an essential practice. I say this from the bottom of my heart, if you want to keep yourself and your loved ones safe and healthy as much as possible, one of the top things to do is to take your probiotics now.
I give them to Bubby, I take them. Even though I’m this pregnant, I don’t worry so much because I know that I’m healthy and strong. I know that I’m taking my SBO probiotics every day. I know that my gut is as balanced as possible and it’s a great insurance right now. It’s a great assurance and insurance, so I can’t stress that enough.
Zinc
Now, zinc is another mineral that will give your immune system a boost, so you can try pumpkin seeds, Sesame seeds, lentils, and dark chocolate as various great sources of zinc. And now adaptogenic herbs. A study show that adaptogenic herbs protect the immune system and even reduce stress, which is really important right now.
Gensing and Tulsi are great examples. I love Holy basil, which is AKA Tulsi. I love Tulsi tea. I drink it quite a bit. It’s herbal, it’s got a like… Sometimes they pair it in teas with other flavors, but I like the taste of Tulsi. I think it’s quite soothing and a little bit earthy.
Check it out. It’s great for your, as I mentioned, immune system, but it’s also great for your nervous system and of course the two are connected.
Lifestyle practices to protect your immune system
Moving from food, let’s talk about body practices. From a body perspective, I will say that it is so important right now to focus on sleep. Scientific research has studied the sleep immune connection for decades and more and more research comes out showing that when we are deprived of sleep, our immunity goes down, our immune system gets weaker.
It’s more difficult for our body to fight off viruses and other illnesses. So whatever it takes to sleep better right now, the three things that I say really do make a difference is blacking out your room as much as possible. Get blackout curtains if you need to. Keep your room cooler, so turn off the heat or make it a much lower temperature at night.
And number three, wear blue light blocking glasses in the evening. I used to say stay off devices. I think that’s important, but how many of us never check our phones or do anything on any device at night? Pretty much nobody.
I think if we’re being really honest, so get yourself a pair of blue light blocking glasses, it can just help improve the quality of your sleep. I keep them in my desk side table or my bedside table and I just pop them on in the evening. It’s really not that big a deal. Maybe they look a little nerdy, but my husband loves me anyway. There’s a company that we use, I like, it’s called Defender Shield and there’s other companies as well that make these glasses.
Now moving your body. Your gym is probably closed right now. Your yoga studio’s probably closed, so I think that this is a great time for walking, which is my primary form of exercise anyway at this point and yoga, so you can do both.
You can walk around your neighborhood, bundle up if it’s still cold where you live, keep a safe distance from other walkers depending on your neighborhood. Maybe there aren’t too many people out right now, certainly not where I live in the mountains here. And then roll out your mat and we have our Beauty Detox Power Yoga Series, if you want to check it out.
There’s lots of other series that you can do on YouTube and other places. This is a great time to tune into your body and see what poses may feel really good to you and how you want to move. It’s a great opportunity to connect back in. So take advantage.
And I do you want to mention about walking outside, vitamin D is really important for your immune system and there have been some researchers talking about making sure you’re getting enough vitamin D to ward off Corona. So just getting a little bit of natural sunlight on your skin, on your limbs especially. It’s a really wonderful practice right now. It feels great. It’s great for your mindset and it’s great for your health and immunity.
Next, and this does cross from body to food, is water and this is where it’s so important to stay hydrated, to keep toxins flushing out of our system and to keep our mucus membranes moist, which prevents germs from adhering inside your nose or lungs. So to spice up the water to make it feel a little bit more exciting, it’s a great time to put in cucumbers, lemon, basil herbs, different sorts of flavors. Even cut up strawberries, just to make your water feel really fresh and yummy, but it’s a really important time to hydrate. Make sure you are peeing often and make sure that when you urinate, your urine is clear and just keep it going. Knowing that that’s a really important practice for your body health right now.
How to practice self-care during this stressful time
Now going into our third and fourth Solluna cornerstones, which are emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth. This is a time, as I mentioned earlier, for getting to know ourselves and our strength and diving deeper. We need to find ways to connect, in ways that we haven’t maybe relied on before. We need to know ourselves, we need to spend time really feeling our feelings so they don’t build up.
Right now, fear is a very natural feeling to have. And when it rises up for me, I feel it in my body. I can feel it… I don’t pretend it’s not there. I don’t try to push it down. I don’t distract from it. I let myself feel it and then I let it pass through me. And I think that’s really important because if we don’t acknowledge our feelings and emotions, they do start to become lodged in our body.
They do start to accumulate and build and I think this gives birth to panic episodes and major anxiety and insomnia and bigger issues. So just acknowledge what’s going on. It’s a great time for… We’re body distancing as I say, but we’re not social distancing. Text, connect with loved ones. Face time, you’re not isolated. You don’t have to feel alone. There’s a lot of resources out there for you.
We also have our Solluna Circle Community here that you can connect with more and this is just a great time to tune in. Along those lines, it’s a great time to tune in with yourself spiritually. I think this is a time of introspection when we can look at all this crumbling outside of us. Governments are shifting, the world as we know it, our daily lives, and just start really introspecting on where our strength and security truly does come from.
To start introspecting on how we can connect to the strength and the light inside of us and meditating and breathwork practices. We have monthly meditations for you in the Solluna circle. We have free guided meditations for you over on the website, so please check them out and take advantage if that’s helpful to you. I think it’s a really wonderful time if we can look at it in a positive way to have more time to meditate, to have more time to be with ourselves.
For a lot of us, we live in such a busy life that we’re up, we hit the ground running, we’re running to work, activities, running after our kids is extra curricular activities and balancing work and social lives. So now that a lot of that is on pause, it’s a great time to listen to your body and to listen to yourself and to listen to your breath and tune in.
There’s time for more self-care practices. We’re going to be releasing some free daily programs about self-care and little tips and practices that you can start to do every day because it’s such a great time to do that and to focus on yourself. So be sure to stay tuned into that which you can get information on, on our site and our social channels at @_kimberlysnyder. And remember that we’re all in this together.
Remember that we are connected and remember that you’re not alone. Remember that ultimately everything’s going to be okay. That it’s not going to be like this forever. We’re all going to get through this and together as a community, as a collective. And what can we use this time for? We’re home more. There’s not the time to commute. There’s less activities. So besides your work and besides caring for your children, what can you do with this time spiritually, emotionally, self-care wise?
And I think we can look at it in that positive mindset and use this time to also connect deeper with each other. So I am going to be doing a lot more lives. I’m doing Instagram lives. I’m doing Solluna circles online on Instagram. Please check out for all these resources. I would love to connect with you more, live and online. Now that we’re all here connected through cyberspace, it’s a great time to tap into that.
If you have questions, please go to mysolluna.com/askkimberly. You can submit them for the podcasts on Thursdays and I’m here for you guys. I send you so much love and strength. I know that it’s a confusing time, it’s an uncertain time, but as I’ve been saying throughout this podcast, remember how strong you are and that you have something inside of yourself that you can anchor into that can’t be taken away from you.
In Closing
I will see you back here next week for our next interview podcast. We’ll be here on Thursday for our Q&A podcast. As always, and as I mentioned, there’s tons of resources for you on the site. Check out the meditations, check out the show notes to more resources, some more studies. Check out our SBO probiotics. There’s ever a time to take them, it is now.
Check out some of our yoga series on YouTube, so on and so forth. And there’s a lot for you guys, our recipes over in the site. It’s a great time to cook at home, to nurture yourself.
Sending you so much love Beauty, and I will see you back here very soon. Until then, take care and stay cozy at home.
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