Heartsong Fit With Vickie Maris | Healthy Ways To Address Stress

Hiking along the trails on the farm is one way that Vickie finds relief from stress after a busy day. She often takes one of the llamas with her for walking on the trails. They both benefit from walking for exercise, and at the same time enjoy each other’s company on the trail.    Vickie teaches you about llamas along the journey and describes the elements of nature that they encounter during the walk. Listen to the llama hum, the creek rushing by, the Sycamore leaves crunching under foot and other sounds from the walk.   Frog Chorus The frog chorus you hear in this episode is the real deal. Vickie and Scott were returning from a Friday evening dinner out when they passed through Prophetstown State Park and heard the frogs singing in the lowlands of the park. They stopped the vehicle on a service road and hiked over to the swampy area with recorder in hand to capture the frog chorus for you. This location is about one mile from the farm, and the frogs can be heard all around the farm during the spring.  

Mary Mitchell shares her wisdom from the time she was working as a health counselor. This conversation was conducted in early 2013, it has been repurposed for this show so that you can benefit from Mary’s insights. She shares several very useful tips and concepts for busy people who are striving to improve their eating habits. Her tips can help you in your weight loss journey as well. She addresses the primary and secondary foods. Before her conversation about secondary foods, Mary describes the importance of finding balance in the primary foods: career or purpose, physical activity, spiritual activity and relationships.   Responding to Cravings In regards to healthy snacks to satisfy a craving, she reminds us about the importance of responding to a craving by drinking a glass of water first, then waiting about about 15 minutes. If you’re still having a craving, then respond with a healthy snack. But more often than not, you were actually dehydrated when you first noticed the craving, and the glass of water

Would You Like to Hear a Farm Story? For this episode, I took the handheld recorder out in the snow and sat near the barn with the llamas. My Connemara pony, Kerrymor Madison, stood next to the fence, and our Jack Russell Terrier, Hope, joined the conversation.   You’ll get to learn about life on the farm as I describe our one-eyed llama, Stunning, whom Madison is so careful with as he moves around her. I also describe the coloring of Primary Colors and how we send the fleeces, sheared in the spring, to the mill for processing into roving and yarn.   I also share a story about the harsh 2014 winter and the day we found Lily, the llama, shivering in the barn. Lily got to live in the old farm house for a few hours as she warmed up and enjoyed watching Let’s Make a Deal on the TV.      Did You Work Out Today? Vickie encourages you in your fitness journey as she talks about her experience following the schedule in Focus T25 to build cardio, strength, and flexibility. She has finished the first five weeks of

My mom, Lucille Maris, shares her secrets to keeping fit and healthy at age 91 ½ years (she is 99 at the time of this edit!). Lucille talks about eating healthy from the time she grew up in the 1920s to her diet of meals she prepares in the kitchen of her condo today which are for a gluten-free diet.    Lucille talks about outdoor activities in the one-room school house she attended to moving on to the large high school, Urbana High, where she played sports from 1936 to 1940. She was a three-sport athlete:  softball, volleyball and basketball (which women played as a half-court game at that time). In her sophomore year, she was captain of the girl’s softball team. She also discusses the PE (physical education) requirements of a high school student during that era of United States history.   In another section, Lucille talks about her switch to a gluten-free diet and what motivated her to start eating gluten-free. As an outstanding cook, she gives you ideas about how to make gluten-free cooking part of your