A type of bathhouse where you sit and sweat your negativity out? Why, yes I do! 

Did you know? 

👆🏼Saunas used to be quite popular all across Europe in the Middle Ages but with the syphilis breakout, most people chose not to attend public sauna houses anymore, restricting the popularity of such a time passing pretty much just to Finland where the infection did not have as much impact. 

👉🏼 saunas as known in the Western world are mainly considered to be of Finnish origin. However, there are various forms of sauna experiences practiced around the world. I personally carried my love for a good sauna experience from my years spent in Ukraine. 👉🏼 ‘sauna’ is also knows as ‘banya’ in Ukraine and Russia, these two words are pretty much synonymous.

☝🏼Saunas have a number of known benefits. Studies show that regular sauna usage helps with muscle aches and pains,  relaxes the body, relieves anxiety and stress, reduced blood pressure and inflammation and overall stabilized the nervous system.

☝🏼The amount of positive and negative ions in your sauna matter! The traditional wood burning sauna tends to have more negative ions than an electric equivalent and its argued that those negative ions are paramount for a human body to have an ultimate sauna experience with all of its benefits. 

👆🏼There is also an infrared sauna but some state that comparing the traditional wood burning sauna to an infrared sauna is like comparing apples to oranges, in other words, not the same thing 🤷🏻‍♀️

So, fo get your sauna on, preferably with the negative ions 😉

Volunteering your time, assistance or knowledge is by far the best gift you can give to yourself. Yes, you read it right, yourself, not others! Do you know why? Because we are wired in a way that allows us to feel the most self-fulfilled when we give kindness to others.

When I was growing up in the tiny village in former Soviet Union, on the territory of what is now known as Ukraine, the only measure of success, that I could imagine, had financial origins. Because we did not have any money and my parents were constantly indebted to others, I felt like having money would fix all the problems in the world for my young self and my family. I was always more optimistic than not and generally had a happy childhood, but it seemed like being able to buy more than one pair of shoes per season was all I was missing to make me absolutely happy. Well, maybe some extra pairs of jeans every now and again wouldn’t hurt either.

As the time went on, the desires started to grow in their prices. Mobile telephones, computers, vacations, but the money, or the lack of thereof, stayed the same. My parents did the best they could and they also had my younger two sisters to worry about. I knew I needed to start making money ASAP if I were to have all the things I so desperately felt I was lacking in my life. This motivation is partially what made me stay in the United States once I arrived and realized how opportune this beautiful country is. However, the years spent in the United States with the ability to buy all kinds of toys and trinkets (barring the RR Phantom, which I am still working on) made me realize that material things do not in themselves hold the power to make a person happy.

As money became more available to me, I started seeing that this ever-elusive desire to have money has been tricking me into thinking that being rich was my life goal, when in reality presence of money is just a small portion of it. You’ve made all the money you ever aspired to make, now what? You’ve seen the world, you bought all the things you wanted, are you happy? Unless, you are the lucky enlightened one, and have been giving to others all along, probably not..

You might argue that having money would make it easier to give, but the truth is that, in the universal set up, no amount of genuinely given help is ever too small. So to say that “I do not help others because I barely scrape by myself” is just another way of saying “I do not yet understand that I am hurting yourself by not helping others.”

The reason why I wanted to write this article is because I am trying to encourage myself to follow my own advice. I just finished reading a book where the topic of volunteering came up with all its benefits highlighted and above I just re-iterated what I read and cross-pollinated it with my own experiences. Honestly, I am still in the process of digesting the information myself but I already know that I cannot wait to see it manifest into real action soon. So, fly my little article into the world, next time I read you, I will know how good of a volunteer I have become!

Does anybody who comes across this self-encouragement letter have any volunteering success stories to share? I would love to hear from you in the comments below!

And finally, to seal this post with a good intention, the most compelling success story will get a “Picture on the Boards” ($99 value) made and delivered within the United States free of charge (international winner will need to cover the shipment costs). Rules of engagement: must follow @queen_of_chi on Instagram, like and share this post with three friends by tagging them in your comment along with your success story, both in WordPress and on Instagram. The results will be announced on July 7th! Good luck – and remember to give!

This is something that I had to correct in myself. Before, even when I understood that most tasks that I was not delegating out right away were weighing on my already pretty full queue, I still had a hard time letting someone else take control. I knew this had to change and here is what I did to achieve it:

First thing I did was ask myself why I behaved that way.

After a bit of self-digging I came to realize it was difficult for me to accept the costs associated with delegation of tasks. In other words, I was trying to save money by not delegating.

So I did a number of exercises that helped me slowly start letting go of the money aspect of it. What I saw was an increase in the cash flow that could easily cover the expenses incurred. Turned out, paying for third party services changed from big hairy monster into profit increasing machine. The tasks that weighed me down for months at a time started dissipating. A sense of accomplishment and fulfillment grew with each completed task, which has got to send a positive wave into everything else in your life.

So here is the summative generic version of the advice that I can give based on my personal experience: work on shifting your perspective towards delegation by working on the mental block that is stopping you from letting go of control (for me it was associated with money), and I promise you, it is going to feel amazing once you get there

Best of luck on your journey, loves!

When I first came to the United States I could have never imagined that I would never go back home to stay. I brought a calendar with me where I circled and bedazzled the date of my return ticket home. I never took that flight.. Somewhere between my arrival to the U.S. and before that scheduled return flight I found a dream that I had since I was a little girl. Growing up in harsh conditions of a tiny village even on the gloomiest of days I knew somewhere deep down that I would live abroad and that my future husband would have an exotic name, one that people did not really give to their newborn sons in formerly Soviet Ukraine. Sure, I understand that Carl is nothing special for a name here, but my family still gets a kick out of ‘Karlusik’ every now and again. So, exotically named husband – check ✔️!

Where am I going with this? Oh yeah – Power of Vision!

Every time I go back to visit that tiny village I am astounded at how content its people are living out their days in such an unwelcoming and poor environment. For as long as I remember myself I kinda knew that I was different in that without any doubt in my mind I believed that I belonged someplace important, someplace where the urban kids would not make fun of me because I was from a village, someplace like Washington, DC. Yesssss, this is it! Important? – you bettcha! No urban kids are making fun of me, thank goodness *laugh out loud* .. I could not have planned it any better, the only thing is that I didn’t. I didn’t plan to live in DC, in fact I did not know where that place would be from my childhood dreams. But I did have a Vision and it led me to where I am today, which is astoundingly further than most of my peers and co-villagers even can think to dream of.

“Because I like to do it this way!” – snarled my pimple-ridden 13 year old self in response to a group of middle-aged women making comments about how I was washing the dishes. They were congregating in our kitchen trying to split up the costs of divvied up pig that my parents had bought along with other 3 families to share for the winter. I hated doing dishes. No running water, let alone hot. Dirty pots were used as vessels for water transfer and heating, then served as a washing basins for the smaller dishes. Heating water again for the rinsing cycle, repeat the process.. The rags were always torn, dish soap never soapy enough, that is until we started splurging on Fairy – the dish soap sent from heaven for Ukrainian dishwashing practices.

“And just so that all of you know, I will own my own dishwasher when I have my home!” – I continued. Right as I said it, the ridiculousness of the statement surprised me. Who was I kidding? I had never been to a place that had a dishwasher, I only knew about it in theory, where was I gonna get a dishwasher from even if I did manage to somehow move out of my parents’ apartment one day. But there is was, I said it, no going back now. The laughter that erupted from the ladies further convinced me that I could not retract my statement and the only option was to stay true to that Vision.

And I did. Today I own a beautiful home and of course you guessed it – a dishwasher! For the reference, none of those ladies that were gathered that day in our khrushchovka style kitchenette own a dishwasher to this day, nearly 2 decades later. Nor do their children..

The dishwasher example is another one of those looking-back-and-realizing-something type of moments. I have plenty more of stories like that. I was blessed to be able to achieve pretty much anything I set forth to achieve and I gotta tell you it feels pretty darn incredible!! But all of the accomplishments, mine or someone else’s, always without exception start with a dream, a Vision!

Once you arrive at the same conclusion:

Vision has a tendency to materialize. 
If you can think it, the Universe knows a way to manifest it.

it is only a matter of time that you also understand that taking a moment and setting your Vision purposefully as opposed to waiting for it to emerge creates a faster path for its manifestation.

Enter Vision Board:

Creating a Vision Board is fun because at the minimum it has you thinking in the what-is-my-purpose-in-life trajectory, which is a great start, if you haven’t already done so. Setting your goals on a board in a place where you will constantly see it will serve as a visual reminder of where you want to be in life. However, it is equally as important to ‘work’ with the Vision Board, which will amplify the signal that your being sends out into the Universe and will deliver your goals without fail if you put your trust into it.

Working with the Vision Board

The more time you spend looking at the Board and actually seeing and feeling yourself as if all of the things on the board have already been achieved, the more effective it will be in helping you reach your Vision~

Thinking happy and positive thoughts while visualizing your goals will boost your journey to success~

Spend several minutes in the morning and evening going through your desired goals on the board and feel the awesomeness that achieving all of them will undoubtedly bring~

Take this dreamy board image with you in mind and keep it throughout the day until you look at it again at night~

Believe~

How to make a Vision Board

Easy, start plastering your desired goal printouts with as much detail as possible all over the walls! Photoshop your face into the body building competition line-up, write a fake article singing accolades to your newly published book, write yourself a check for $1 million and put it up on the board. Anything goes, anything that you truly desire is just a Vision Board away. To purchase the Kit that I used for my Vision Board, visit the QOC Shop.

And don’t forget to send me a thank you card and a check when your dreams are achieved through the help of using Vision Board. Or just drop me a note, hearing success stories is my favorite thing to do *bear hugging*

Have you ever heard an expression that goes something like this: ‘Careful with your thoughts because they have a tendency to materialize into reality..’ ? One rendition or another of this concept is observed cross-culturally through layers and layers of history, age groups and social status. This article will talk about a very personal experience that I think has the potential to change EVERY- and ANY- thing around you that leaves for more to be desired in your life currently.. So here it goes..

PREFACE

I grew up knowing that, compared to my peers, I was viewed by many (including myself) as a bit of a hopeless optimist. I always saw the better side of things, bad people had to prove me wrong before I would start disliking them, every shut in my face door always meant bigger and greater opportunities would come my way, etc… It was not until about 4 years ago that I was able to link a lot of my successes in life to the way I was organizing my thoughts internally. I was doing it naturally without thinking twice about why I am the way I am, but since a monumental moment in my life when I accepted the idea of thoughts’ ability to turn into reality, my life has shot up with an unprecedented speed and an upward trajectory. I can go on and on about how important it is to ‘supervise’ your inner self to make sure that you always stay positive and what event caused me to ‘open my eyes’ so to speak, but that is topic for another time.

For this article’s purposes I will just say that keeping thoughts in a positive direction on a constant basis is VERY difficult even for the most optimistic optimists out there (anybody saying otherwise is not being completely honest 😜). But, assuming you buy into this whole keep-your-emotions-postive thing, and assuming that you have at least one positive thought that you would like to see become reality, here is a quick trick to intensify it- write about it, paint it, make it.. whatever it is that would help you further channel your positivity- do it!!

This brings us to this personal story that I allude to above:

STORY

My husband just recently got a promotion. He had to work really hard for it, and, once promoted, faced many challenges in order to keep the position. A couple of months ago he had a bit of work over the weekend, and, for the lack of anything better to do, I joined him in his guest chair and was trying to combat my boredom by looking around his office, wall art, and whatever else there was to entertain myself with. 

I shook my head at the sight of an overflowing trashcan, that magically gets filled every day with scrapped paper, empty seltzer water cans, and other random things. My gaze shifted to the side chair standing by his desk holding all of his workout gear, including his shoes!!. Another silent head shake. He, typing something vigorously on his keyboard, was completely oblivious to the fact that his office was a bit of a mess. 

I shifted my gaze at his college diploma that prominently hung on the wall directly in front of his desk. His grandparents were really nice and framed it in lamb skin for him when he first graduated from The Citadel. Even though, getting his BS was over 10 years ago and he had already finished his MS since then, this Citadel diploma was hanging on the wall by itself (mainly because it was the only one that was framed while his Graduate degree diploma was sitting somewhere still in the envelope that it had arrived in for almost 2 year now). To top things off, he used this lamb skin frame as a temporary-turned-into-permanent place holder for company photos with his previous teams and other random keepsakes from previous roles. 

Something clicked right then, “Honey, have you ever thought about the fact that day in and day out all you see in front of you is your past?”- I asked casually. The typing stopped. He looked up at the diploma in front of him and mumbled, “I guess..” Sometime after that completely out of the blue my husband approached me and said that he really thought about what I had said that time and that he was going to paint his future (!!!!) to hang in place of the Citadel diploma currently hanging on the wall. 

Another couple of weeks went by before he was able to zero in on the theme of the painting that he wanted to do and enter Ganesha. Here is a brief visual chart to track all the things that Ganesha represents and all of these are exactly what my husband and I are gunning for in our future

And below is what he has gotten so far. Now granted, this is not a finished version yet, but ever since he started working on the painting, things at work exploded in a very good way.  To a point where it is almost scary how we control what actually happens in our daily lives.. 

The reason why I wanted to share this article is because in the little time that he invested into thoughts about what it is that he wants for the future a looooot of things have changed for the better and the atmosphere in and around his office is indescribable. I wish the same for all of you and simply want to remind you that you control your life. So go on, dream big, paint colorful, sing loudly, and be happy!

There has been some rumoring around the internet in the last couple of months that somewhere in the land of far far away there exists this magical mushroom that makes a woman “spontaneously orgasm” just by smelling it. Naturally, I had to investigate further! A possibility of never needing a man in your life was just too exiting not to!

The results that I found were all pointing in the direction of Phallus Indusiatus, a fungus belonging to the family of Phallaceae. It is a mushroom that looks as if it is wearing a crocheted skirt over its stem. It is considered to be edible and is widely used in Chinese cuisine as an ingredient in stir-fries and chicken soups. It is also known for its medicinal properties due to its richness in bioactive compounds, dietary fiber, carbohydrates, and protein which give it antioxidant and antimicrobial properties.

All medicinal purposes aside, is it really as magical as the internet might have suggested? There definitely has been enough coverage on this on sites like Daily Mail, Reddit, Slant, and Maxim, just to name a few..

Turns out, this claim came as a result from a study that is not very well backed with data from a scientific perspective, making an orgasm inducing mushroom more of a folk tale than reality, according to Bec Crew from Science Alert. Looking deeper into the study itself, it was discovered that it was not well put together, with sample size being too small to realistically represent any scientific finding and not very well recorded findings. For example, out of the 16 women that were studied, 6 reported experiencing an orgasm, but nothing was done to actually verify the said orgasms other than simply relying on women’s accounts. The remaining 10 reported increased heart rate.. But to call it orgasmic, hmmm, I don’t think so. A woman needs waaaaay more than just an fast beating heart to experience an orgasm, if you know what I mean.

So, ladies, no miracles as of yet, but science is definitely trying ☺️.

Autumn is in full swing. The leaves are turning colors, the air is starting to smell like ‘that time of the year,’ the children are starting to count the days (more like weeks) until Christmas and all you can think about is freezing the morning time for at least a little bit as leaving your bed is becoming increasingly more difficult with one colder day after another. But you still get up, get ready for the day (while still fantasizing about your bed..) get the kids to school, get your daily coffee, and go about your day as usual, or at least try to.. Then you face the day with everything it might have in store for you, and, finally, you are home for the evening again. All day you have been surrounded by the people who either seem to be coughing, sneezing, or just simply look sick. Your shoulders are achy at the end of the day from having to carry around that extra weight of your wool sweater, fall jacket or blazer. Nothing is bringing you joy, you feel heavy and *sniffle* “What was that?!? I can’t get sick! Not now! I am in the middle of the biggest project of the year and it needs to turned in first thing Monday morning!!!”

Sound all too familiar? If so, read on to find out about the 5 best ingredients the nature has gifted us with that will help you stay energized, boost your immune system and help you avoid the trip to the doctor’s all while enjoying the best this season has to offer.

1. 1. Olive leaf extract: the magical component of a Mediterranean diet is now available in capsules. My personal favorite brand is available here. With modern advances in technology scientists were able to zero in on the ingredient found in olive tree leaves that makes it extremely beneficial for human health from an array of perspectives – oleuropein. Some of the valuable characteristics of the olive leaf extract are: lowering blood pressure, improving arterial health, controlling diabetes, reducing the risk of cancer, neuroprotection, elevating the pains of arthritis. Life Extension magazine published a great article on this which contains a lot of useful info along with cited sources to back up the information provided. For those of us who literally feeeeeel the cold in our bones, the arthritis-tackling characteristics of the olive leaf extract can really come in handy during this chilly season.
   2. Ginger – another ingredient that nature has gifted us with that has an array of healing characteristics. Traditionally, ginger was widely used as an aid in fighting  gastrointestinal discomfort. It was not until relatively recently that some other medicinal attributes of ginger have been discovered, such as its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties as well as ginger’s certain types of cancer-fighting abilities. With its distinctive taste, ginger is perfect in tea on a cold rainy day, salad dressing for dinner or simply as a refreshing beverage a.k.a. ginger lemonade.
   3. Cinnamon is known for its savory taste & aroma combination equally as much as it is known for its healing properties. Not only will cinnamon help you get over the fall blues but it will also make it taste delicious. Cinnamon is full of antioxidants, bacteria-fighting compounds, and is also known as an excellent diabetes-preventing measure. My personal favorite way to digest cinnamon is in a cocktail 😉 But there are a number of other ways to integrate it with your fall diet, some of the possibilities can be found here.
   4. Now I am going to list an item that most of you are probably wondering why I haven’t included in this list yet – Garlic. Its potent medicinal properties make it a perfect natural antibiotic. Garlic is known for being effective in ridding an organism of bacteria, strengthening the bones, boosting immune system and stabilizing the blood pressure, to name just a few of its magical wholesome properties. A study conducted in 2011 on 146 individuals found that a daily garlic supplement over the course of 12 weeks reduced the number of colds by 63% compared with people who were taking placebo supplements and reduced the duration of the sickness by 70% in those who did fall ill. So go on, include that extra garlic in your spaghetti sauce, soup stock or salad, just remember to make sure that your partner eats some of it, if you know what I mean 🙂
   5. Last but DEFINITELY not least – Fruits and vegetables high in Vitamin C and antioxidants! To be  quite frank, ‘knowing your fruits and veggies’ is probably the best piece of knowledge you can put inside your head that will keep on giving for years to come. Below is a visual representation that lists some of the best fruits and veggies, so if you ever catch yourself in a supermarket this fall wondering which vegetable to get for dinner, keeping these in mind can really come in handy to help you and your family stay away from the doctor’s office. Please click on the image below to find detailed information in an item-by-item fashion done for BodyBuilding.com. 

I would love to hear some of your favorite recipes using one (or all) ingredients above and the stories about how you could see the improvements in your overall well-being and the ability to cope with the fall depression-anxiety-sniffles combination that most of us experience annually right about this time of the year!

Thanks for reading and Stay H-ealthy/appy!!