excerpt from The Holistic Baby Guide

Treating your baby’s fever and acute symptoms at home is easy enough. The goal of treatment is to encourage healing and stimu¬late a strong immune response. Reducing the fever is not the goal, as the fever will do what is necessary to fight the illness. Natural remedies will encourage the fight.

The first and easiest remedy to try is homeopathic Belladonna. The classical indications for Belladonna are fever with sudden onset, radiating heat, and flushing and redness of the skin. There may be redness (indicating inflammation) at some specific location in the body: in the throat, the ears, the eyes, the skin—pretty much anywhere. Older children will complain of a headache. Babies who need Belladonna are often quiet and subdued, moaning and very hot to touch. Or they may be crying with discomfort. Belladonna is indicated before significant discharge develops with a cold or other symptoms appear later in an illness that would point the way to another remedy.

If babies are very uncomfortable and screaming in apparent pain, then you may want to try giving homeopathic Chamomilla. Often one dose will calm your baby and allow her to get back to sleep.

excerpt from The Joy of Parenting

Take a moment to think about the relationships in your life that are most important to you – those in which you feel closest to someone else. What is it about those relationships that you most value? Take a few moments and jot down your thoughts about this in your parenting journal.

If you’re like many parents, one of the valued characteristics you listed may have been “feeling heard.” When we’re very lucky, we find ourselves in relationships in which people “get” us – they have a solid understanding of our wants, desires, and dreams. They communicate that understanding in how they behave around us – by calling our attention to things we care about or being thoughtful without being asked and without expecting anything in return. Because these things are important to you, you won’t be surprised that these same attributes are probably what your child most values and trusts about her relationship with you.

Taking time to nurture a relationship like this with your child is important. After all, you’re the “base” from which your child ventures out into the world. You ensure his safety and offer a lens through which he will views other important relationships throughout his life. You show your young child how to be in the world by the way you relate to and behave with him. And that is an enormous responsibility – as well as an exquisite gift.

Excerpt from The Balanced Mom

excerpt from Mindful Motherhood

First, I want you to know that being mindful is not yet another goal you must achieve to be a good mom. It’s not about becoming a perfect Zen mama who stays calm, cool, and collected in the face of anything that comes; uses only organic baby foods, clothing, and linens; stays on a career path while also being available to her family; and stays fit and trim all the while. The last thing I want to do with this book is put another giant task on your list of “things I must do to be a good mom.” Mindful motherhood is not about becoming someone other than who you already are.

Mindful motherhood, simply put, is being present, in your body, and con¬nected with your baby no matter what is happening. It’s being aware of your experi¬ence from moment to moment, as it is happening, without pushing it away, trying to make it stay, or judging it as bad or good. It is meeting each situation as it is, and over time, more and more often, approaching whatever is happening with curiosity and compassion.

excerpt from The Mindful Woman

I vividly remember a time when I completely understood what the Buddha meant about seeing the miracle of single flower being life changing. My husband, Gene, and I had a trans-Pacific-ocean courtship. To help bridge the miles, he once sent me red roses. After my sons were asleep, I took the time to luxuriate in every aspect of the fullest rose, exploring its textures, colors, and the varying shapes of petals, stem, and stamen. To my surprise, tears of joy began to slip from my eyes, and I felt enveloped in love and connected to both the man who sent the roses and their creator as well.

Although my rapt attention to the flower was the act of a young woman wildly in love, the experience of it has become an enduring touchstone reminding me of the power and joy a few mindful moments can bring. Thirty-some years later, I clearly remember that particular rose and can revisit the pro¬found sense of wonder and awe I experienced while focusing on it.

Excerpt from Coping with Erectile Dysfunction

It is easier and healthier to deal with physical and psychological changes together rather than in isolation. This is particularly true of ED, which affects you, your partner, and your relationship. To pretend otherwise is to violate a major tenet of mental health: Do not fool yourself. ED is truly your common foe. The likelihood of overcoming ED increases significantly if you work as a team.

excerpt from When Good Men Behave Badly

The healthy awareness of the need for twinship would allow you to say to your wife or partner, You know, I feel really lost sometimes with out all the special times we used to have together. It just seems like having kids and get ting used to each other and money problems have really taken their toll. I guess you must feel the same way. Here you, as a man, shift from needing your partner to be a mirror reflecting you to recognizing the ways in which the two of you are profoundly alike. She is no longer the enemy, but rather a comrade along the difficult road of life. A comrade who is inevitably flawed, but no more fundamentally flawed than you.

Excerpt from Is He Depressed or What?

To put it very simply, women tend to think and process their feelings when they are depressed, and men tend to act. A man who takes action in the face of depression can either be extremely adaptive (such as going out to look for a job if he is feeling depressed about being unemployed) or extremely maladaptive (such as picking a fight and getting drunk to escape feeling bad about himself). Research studies report that when women describe what they actually do when they are depressed, they say, “I try to find out why I feel the way I do,” or “I try to analyze my mood” (Nolen-Hoeksema 1993). For men, the patterns are typically quite different. Most men report that they turn to an activity they enjoy or simply decide to distract themselves from the bad feelings: “I decide not to concern myself with my mood.” Of course, many people (especially men) are likely to respond with “What do you mean, depressed?”

by guest blogger Dr. C. Peter Bankart, author of Freeing the Angry Mind

The only answer that I have been able to come up with that makes any sense to me anyway is to demand of yourself to pay close attention; to be mindful and respectful of the natural world, to cultivate a wide universe of relationships, and to hold dear to your heart the philosophical and religious truths that sustain you. It is equally hard to let go of the illusion of permanence when things are good, as it is to recognize that the future is full of infinite possibilities, when everything seems stuck in the middle of a black and white winter.

excerpt from Do the Right Thing

Let’s talk about five ethical principles that you can use to guide your behavior and decision making in your personal and professional life (regardless of your line of work and living situation). These five principles can help you with both small and big ethical decisions. Subsequent chapters will look at each of the five principles in more detail.

The five basic ethical principles to live by are

• integrity
• competence
• responsibility
• respect
• concern.

While these five principles are certainly not cast in stone, they’re useful and productive way to think about how to live your everyday life. They can be applied to just above ethical situation.