Author: Dara Dietz

Dara D Dietz is co-founder with her Husband of H.E.A.L. Marketplace, a private Natural Healing Association. As a teacher and counselor she has been supporting the members of H.E.A.L. with Natural Healing information and herbal supports since 1998. She continues to maintain strong ties to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Since healing her own kidney ailments she has assisted thousands of people in discovering and using natural herbal remedies. Dara has written and compiled numerous articles on a wide variety of natural healing topics. Drawing from her own healing experiences and borrowing from the vast wisdom of natural healers long departed, she continues to provide H.E.A.L.’s international membership with down to earth natural healing wisdom in H.E.A.L.’s bi-weekly newsletters. Dara and her husband currently reside in Rutherfordton, North Carolina.
Emotional Healing, Spiritual Healing

Empowering Your Life

Dara Dietz

How do we continue to do the good we would?  Sometimes life can drain every drop of flavor from my day, leaving me feeling uncared for and empty.  What is the secret to consistently being available to those in our sphere of influence?  There are question that we must each answer for ourselves.  Often the reason we do not discover our answers is because the question continue to go unasked.

What does it mean to give my personal power away?

This is done when you allow anything or anyone the personal power to mistreat you either emotionally or physically.  The key in the statement above is: “you allow”.  Obviously it is impossible to prevent unscrupulous people from doing bad.  What makes the difference is, did you make it possible for them to affect your life in a negative way.

Did you invest too much of yourself in someone who did not deserve your trust?  Finding out too late the privileged information they were holding has been used against you.

Going places or participating in activities that are not a blessing to yourself or others.  Were you careless in the way you handled a situation?

Allowing myself to remain in an uncomfortable situation or around crass people can quickly return me emotionally to the little girl I was who had no power to make the bad stop.  In my life I am empowered when I can exit an uncomfortable situation.  I am free to choose who I will be with and where I will spend my time.  If I allow someone access to my life who is hurtful or unkind then I have given my power away to that person.

Healing the Heart

Healing the emotional heart is as important as removing disease from the physical body.  Every day I am reminded of this fact as I share with our members.  Until the physically sick person will deal with the emotional fallout responsible for creating the diseased condition in their body there is little hope they can be well.

Dealing with ourselves is the hardest work we will ever do.  Getting to know yourself, accepting your failings as well as  the achievements is to find a balance which leads to an inner peace only the Lord can give.

Getting Started, Herbal Healing

Natural Healing, what is it?

Dara Dietz

It is a way of living. It is a conscious decision to stop doing the things that have been hurting you and begin to do things that make you happy. For each person this will be different because we are all different. Natural Healing is getting the toxins out of your Body, Mind and Soul. It is accepting all parts of who you are, accepting every experience that has made you who you are today. Natural Healing is learning to embrace your WHOLE story, every part of you; Learning to love every part of you, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Yes, the Mind and Soul are as important as the physical body.  You Cannot Be Any Healthier Physically than You Are Emotionally. If you are emotionally holding onto old traumas they will manifest in your body as allergies, skin problems, liver disease, tumors, cancers etc.. You can hide from everyone except yourself. You are you. Even if you do not consciously acknowledge your issues they will still affect your physical body. We will get more into this later.

Natural Healing does not offer a magic herb or pill that can be taken to cleanse and purify the body. I’m sorry to be the one to inform you, there is no such thing. I do not personally believe God would ever provide such a substance to His children. Knowing what I know now I would not want to take such a pill either.

Natural Healing, What is it?

Why? Because the Gift Is in the Journey.

Your journey to health begins the day you start to make positive changes in your lifestyle. Each change impacts those around you and your emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing. With each positive change you make you will begin to realize your gift. Sometimes this will happen within minutes of a change, sometimes months will go by before you realize the gift.

Without the experiences your healing journey will bring there would be no growth, no understanding that what you put in your mouth, think in your heart, believe in your mind, has anything to do with your overall health. Until you change the things you are doing that made you sick you will not be able to maintain health even if you were given a “miracle pill”.

Herbs Are Not Drugs…

When speaking of herbs & Drugs most people tend to use the same terminology. To set the record straight we need to understand what herbs are and what they do.

Herbs are not Drugs, they are Super-Nutrition packed food. Some herbs contain properties that will target specific areas of the body. For example, the herbs found in the prostate formula target the prostate to increase circulation and healing to the prostate gland. Your garlic, goldenseal, dandelion root, etc.. Work to destroy viruses, germs, bacteria, etc.. from the tissues, organs, and blood stream. There are several herbs such as Red Clover that specifically clean up the blood stream. Herbs are like Master Builders with blueprints. They know what to do and have the ability to do a momentous amount of restorative work in the body when used in conjunction with a complete Natural Healing Program.

Following are a few Natural Healing Aids you can include in your healing programs:

Hydro-therapy: Creating a forced circulation through the sick or damaged area by alternating Hot and Cold water. The Hot water brings fresh blood to the affected area. The cold drives the blood in deep through the sick area providing a forced circulation through the blockage that occurs when injury or illness is present in the body.

Juicing & Superfood Drinks: This is where your Herbal Master Builders look for the “wood” [nutrition] to Rebuild & Restore your body. The Herbals provide the special nutrition for the specific work being done. The thing to remember is that the herbals do not contain all the nutrition needed to do all the work they are capable of doing.

By using these highly nutritious foods you are making sure they have all the substances needed to do all the work they are capable of doing.

Exercise and Movement: Circulation is the key to good health. This is best done by a daily routine of exercise and movement. Just do it. Everyday do something more than you did yesterday. This will break lose the old emotional stuff also. Remember you cannot be any healthier physically than you are emotionally. Let the old stuff flow out and the new in.

Herbal Healing, Herbs & How to Use Them

Milk Thistle Q&A

Dara Dietz

I was wondering something. I know that the liver formula contains milk thistle extracts, and I had read on a website about someone who takes milk thistle seed powder on a daily basis. They just put a tablespoon or 2 in their Superfood drink.

  • Is milk thistle ok to take daily or should it only be used periodically for cleansing?

I’ve never read or heard of any caution for using the Milk Thistle.  You can read more about it at the website.  It has been used extensively on a daily basis by those clearing liver issues with no ill side effects.

  • Is the powder version effective or should a person only use the liquid extract?

I do not believe the powder has the same strength as the extract. Powdered herbs continue to loosing potency as they oxidize.  The herbal extract maintains its strength for years.  Dr. Christopher opened a 100 year old bottle of herbal extract only to discover it to be strong and good.

Your question on the effectiveness of the liquid over the powdered is easiest to understand when you have knowledge of the value of juicing.  The liquid is absorbed directly into the system, while the powder must be broken down and absorbed through the digestive process.

A good suggested use would be 1 tsp. in cup of hot water 3 to 5 times a day.  (5 times a day is ever 3 hours.)  The more serious the condition the more you would want to use each day.

Emotional Healing, Spiritual Healing

Inspired

Dara Dietz

office looking toward libary 05.19.13It is Sunday evening and I’m sitting here listening to the sounds of my husband working on our new offices.   He has completely amazed me.  Last year when he started this project I never doubted he could do the work.  I have watched the space go up one board at a time.  The frame & roof, then the electrical & plumbing and central air ducts, followed by the hanging of drywall and endless days of sanding.  A lesser man would have left the drywall work to someone else.  He then installed the ceiling fans and lighting fixtures, primed and painted the walls and laid the carpet.    Today he has been working on the molding around all the doors and windows.

Yes, I’m bragging a bit, but it is much more.  This project has developed a side of my husband I have not had the opportunity to know before.  His ability to see a project of this size through from beginning to end has greatly impressed me.    He has always had a love for puzzles, I think in many ways this was a huge puzzle he got to work on.  Our local home depot was the puzzle box where he selected all his pieces.

He has always been a man of few words.  His quiet patience when the project did not come together as he expected.  I hardly knew there was a problem.  He would be on line reading up on this or that subject until he found his answer and then proceeded to implement what he had learned.  We all take on projects from time to time that could potentially have a huge impact on our lives.  What is my point, I guess it would be realizing I’ve been privileged to watch the unfolding of another person.  We all have such potential inside us.  Watching him has inspired me.

Emotional Healing, Mental

Making the Hard Choices

Dara Dietz

Today is Monday and the start of our second week of Kidney flushing.  Tanner and I are eating raw this week.  A lot of sharing has been going on in my household.  Someone shared their cold with my husband who has now shared it with me.  This type of sharing I can live without.  Tanner is drinking the Flu-Buster today while I opted to do the Herbal Antibiotic.

Doing a strong Incurables program with Tanner has given me the opportunity to reflect on the excuses I’ve heard over the years from members who opted not to do the hard work.   The story has been repeated way too many times.

The Excuses:

  • I’m too busy to do the program right now. When things slow down a bit I’ll set some time aside.
  • My family is so concerned for me. I don’t want to let them down so I will do what they and my doctor thinks is best. (Drugs, Cutting . . .)  

The end of these stories is never good.  Sometimes when the doctor has finally given up I will hear from the member again but sadly there is seldom enough time or strength to heal before the body is overcome by disease and dies.

A Better Story:

The tests have all been done. The doctor has given his best prognosis and the outcome is not an acceptable one.  The time is here, the motivation could not be higher for doing the hard program.

Staying focused while doing a strong program can be difficult. The work you are doing will benefit your entire life.  The health created while following a strict program ensures a quality of life impossible to achieve any other way.

Putting off the program until a more convenient time could cost more than you are willing to pay.  Today is the day now is the time; the opportunity is proffered for you to make a life changing decision.

To begin well and continue well is building strength of character as you travel the road laid out before you.  Each decision you make is defining who you are, building a stronger you from the inside out.  The opportunity to grow beyond your current circumstances has presented itself.  Grab it with both hands; this is your time.  It’s all good.

Brain, Nerves & Sleep, Emotional Healing, Herbal Healing

Emotional Flushing

Dara Dietz

Healing hurts also heals the body.

Emotional clearing can be as important to the healing of the body as the clearing of physical toxins.  Learning to let go of the past is the first step in the healing journey only you can take.  Letting go takes many forms.  Learning to truly forgiving yourself and those who have wronged you is one way to begin.  Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.  Holding onto old hurts will eat you up from the inside out, destroying your capacity to receive or give love.

Finishing what you began, freedom from past obligations is also an excellent way to release the past.  Deciding to choose something new and better for ourselves requires we make room in our lives for the new.  When closing a chapter of your life it must be finished or it will continue to call you back.

How is this done?  What does it look like?  Stop for a moment and take a walk with your mind and heart through the chapter of your life you want to finish.  What memories or people still call out to you?  What promises have been left undone or projects unfinished?  With pen and paper make your chapter closing list.  Finish what was begun and move on.

Life’s Dirty Trick

Several years ago I discovered Life had played a dirty trick on me.  In the process of writing my story I finally found my voice and the emotional strength to confront my violators. Yeah for me!  Will not so great, they were all dead.  So what does one do with all the words that must go unsaid, and all the questions that will go unanswered in this life?

Maturity has brought with it a wisdom and understanding of the soul capable of the atrocities I endured in my younger years.  The bits of wisdom providence saw fit to share with me I have been privileged to pass on.  Sharing through the written word and one on one as the opportunity arises has turned the hurts I endured into a healing balm for shattered hearts.  The painful past is over, that chapter is closed, and today I stand here, where the Lord has placed me, strong in His strength.  The broken girl I was is now a capable woman.

Emotional Healing

Making Choices

Dara Dietz

 

Do Something New  

Today decide to do something new and better. For most it is an uphill struggle to begin something new. We know we should change and have decided the time is now for us to do our new thing. The first step has been taken, the decision has been made. You must now make a place in your life for the new thing or change you have decided on. Normally creating space for something new requires the removal of something. Continuing to crowd all your new good intentions on top your already full life is setting yourself up to fail.

Take the time to make the hard choices. Drifting along hoping everything will turn out well is not living your life. Drifting is a passive way of avoiding personal accountability. Dumping your responsibility on those closest who will, at some point, be forced to make the choices you have failed to make, or worse, be forced to clean up the mess your lack of choosing has created. Choosing not to choose is a choice.

Herbal Healing, Weight Loss

How to Overcome a Weight Loss Plateau

Dara Dietz

The weight loss plateau occurs because your body thinks there is a famine and has slowed down your metabolism in order to conserve calories.

This usually occurs within about a month of starting a weight loss diet, and may reoccur periodically thereafter.

What’s the solution to the weight loss plateau?

SPEED UP your metabolism.

How?

By increasing your activity level.

Boosting your activity level will boost your metabolism and re-start weight loss.

For example, if you exercise for 20 minutes each day, increase this to 25-30 minutes each day, and weight loss should return to normal.

Calorie Intake & Eating Habits

As well as increasing your activity, please check your calorie intake is adequate. Many dieters fail to eat enough. This alone can trigger the weight loss plateau effect. Also, do not go too long without eating. This is not good for your metabolism/metabolic rate. For a woman, 3 hours without food is a reasonable maximum. And always eat breakfast!

Avoid going too long without food. Going without food for long periods can also trigger a weight loss plateau. Ideally eat something (e.g. piece of fruit) every 3 hours (women) or about every 5 hours (men). This reassures your body that food is plentiful and facilitates calorie burning.

Try to be patient. Your weight loss plateau will disappear, I promise. But it typically takes anything between 1-4 weeks.

If you join a healthy weight reduction program, you’ll get tons of support and motivation to overcome your weight loss plateau.

Starting your weight loss program with gusto, losing a few pounds and then finding that your progress has come to a dead stop is a natural and common occurrence for many dieters. This plateau is a result of the body’s constant need to maintain equilibrium.

When you start a new diet or fitness plan, you usually consume fewer calories but also burn more through exercise. ‘Because you’re expending more energy than you take in, your body burns those few calories for energy first, then you begin to burn stored fat quicker than before, when your calorie intake was higher.

However, like a finely tuned machine, your body settles into this new pattern of outgoing and incoming calories and gradually adjusts by burning fewer calories in order to safeguard its reserves. The result? Weight loss slows down as your body tries to retain fat stores so it can use its reserves as sparingly as possible.

It’s at this point that you’ll notice your eating and exercise efforts aren’t producing results and that you can’t seem to shift the weight any more. In order to break through the plateau, you have to do two things: alter your eating habits and change your exercise program in a way that challenges your body.

Start first with your diet. Review the following tips and try to make the changes today.

  1. Keep a food diary: If you’ve been following a diet plan for some time, you may be bored and your motivation for staying with it may be fading (after all, what’s an extra Hob Knob now and then?). Keeping a food diary, or a record of what you eat each day, will help you pinpoint situations where you might be indulging more than you realize and help you get back on track.
  1. Try again: Many people get trapped in cycles where, amidst their efforts to follow a healthy diet, they stray and can’t seem to get back to a healthy pattern of eating. This is often due to an ‘all or nothing’ way of thinking, whereby dieters feel guilty or angry with themselves for the lapse and then continue eating poorly because of these negative feelings. The first step is to forgive yourself. Look at past patterns and see how unhelpful these emotions are. What you’ve eaten isn’t the problem, but how you’ve reacted to it is. If you’ve fallen off the wagon, remind yourself that no one’s perfect and focus on getting back to your eating plan.
Emotional Healing, Herbal Healing, Weight Loss

Weight Loss Testimony

Dara Dietz

Dara for NLSide note: I wrote this testimony in 2006 just before the death of my mother.  As I re-read it today I realized the truths I had learned and looking back nearly ten years,  how much I would still learn.  Growth must be continual and on-going.  –Be Blessed, Dara Dietz

In August 2005 I realized I had never acknowledged my weight as a gift from the Father.  I had never thanked Him for it, for whatever blessing it had been or would be in my life.  This was significant.  I realized I had never thanked him because I felt the responsibility for my weight was all mine.  I believed my uncontrolled emotional eating was hindering the Father’s plan for my life.  How could I thank him for something I had done to myself, something completely out of his will?

I decided to follow my own advice to thank the Lord for everything in my life.  To surrender my over weight to him in a prayer of thanksgiving and praise.  As I sat there with my head bowed the words pouring from my heart the Father pulled the curtain aside to show me the huge gift my weight had been.  It was so instant so linked to my moment of surrender; I knew this was a direct result of my prayer.  He showed me how the weight had been a layer of protection keeping me safe from myself and the men who had preyed on me during my years of confusion and pain.  In that brief moment I realized I no longer needed these layers of protection.  I am no longer that confused girl looking for love in all the wrong places.  I am a strong, confident, secure woman of forty “something”.

By the first week of September I had decided it was time to deal with what will hopefully be one of the last serious health issues in my life.  Since the late 1990’s the health related conditions I had successfully treated with the use of Herbal Remedies had been kidney disease, gallbladder attacks, and uterine fibroids, among numerous smaller discomforts.    Since beginning work on my book in 2001 I had struggled through many of the emotional issues that had contributed to my weight problem.  Now the time had come to face myself.  I was impressed to check out the Weight Watchers program.  I looked them up on the net and found they held meeting right up the road from my house.  To make a long story much shorter I joined and have been using their points program since September.  At the writing of this article I have lost 80 lbs.  The true blessing is not so much in the weight loss as it is in learning how my body needs to be fed.  For the first time in my life I am learning how to eat for me.  I have discovered that I do best with a large glass of Superfood & Flax oil early in the day, a large meal around noon and a small snack of fresh veggies or fruit around dinnertime.

I have also found three herbal aids that have greatly reduced my cravings and increased my weight loss.  The first is Alfalfa grass powder.  This is so high in nutrition that my body will not have cravings because it is nutritionally satisfied.  Super Kelp Powder has been an excellent source of energy for me.  My thyroid has always been low functioning.  Kelp is the master herb for the thyroid.  It feeds and heals this very important Gland.  #1 Bowel Cleansing Formula.  Keeping the waste moving out is what weight loss is all about.  I learned a few years ago that Artichoke Extract would increase bile flow, which of course, will increase weight loss.

I have noticed an increased need for calcium since beginning my weight loss program.  Right away my fingernails grew weak and began breaking easily.  I have increased my Calcium and BF&C Formulas to 1 teaspoon, three times a day.  This seems to be a step in the right direction.   On the positive side my blood pressure is down, my energy level is up and I feel very happy in my life, (something I am learning to accept as a good thing.)  I am learning to accept all the good things the Father has placed in my life, allowing him to move them around as he sees fit.  I have learned not to hold onto anything too tightly but to allow him access to all parts of my life.  This leaves me free to do the work he puts in my hands to do each day as I leave the worries and cares of tomorrow in his capable hands.