feelwellnaturally.com Humans & Animals Reiki Massage Readings

01/02/2026

Happy Lughnasa 🙌✨️☀️

"The Wheel of the Year is an annual cycle of seasonal festivals, observed by a range of modern pagans, marking the year's chief solar events (solstices and equinoxes) and the midpoints between them. Modern pagan observances are based to varying degrees on folk traditions, regardless of the historical practices of world civilizations.[1] British neopagans popularized the Wheel of the Year in the mid-20th century, combining the four solar events ("quarter days") marked by many European peoples, with the four midpoint festivals ("cross-quarter days") celebrated by Insular Celtic peoples"...From Wikipedia

08/01/2026

04/01/2026

17/12/2025

Fasting-style diets rewire your brain–gut connection — and help you shed serious weight.

Intermittent energy restriction (IER), a fasting-style diet involving carefully controlled calorie intake and regular low-intake days, appears to trigger dynamic changes in both the gut and the brain of people with obesity.

In a 62-day study of 25 adults with obesity, participants lost an average of 7.6 kilograms (about 7.8 percent of their body weight) while researchers tracked alterations in brain activity and gut microbiome composition.

Using functional MRI, the team observed changes in several regions tied to appetite control and addiction, including the inferior frontal orbital gyrus, an area central to executive function and willpower around eating. At the same time, stool and blood analyses revealed that shifts in specific gut bacteria were tightly linked with activity in these brain regions, suggesting a closely coupled brain–gut–microbiome response to dietary restriction.

The findings point to a two-way communication system in which the gut microbiome produces neurotransmitters and other molecules that can reach the brain via nerves and circulation, while the brain, in turn, shapes eating behavior and thus nutrient supply to gut microbes. Certain bacterial groups, such as Coprococcus comes and Eubacterium hallii, showed negative associations with activity in brain areas governing self-control, hinting that microbial changes may influence how strongly the brain responds to food-related cues.

Although the precise mechanisms remain unclear, this work supports the idea that targeting specific gut microbes or brain circuits could eventually help improve weight-loss outcomes and long-term weight maintenance in the more than one billion people worldwide living with obesity.

References (APA style)
Nield, D. (2025, December 8). *A fasting-style diet seems to result in dynamic changes to human brains*. ScienceAlert.

Wang, X., Wang, L., Zeng, Q., et al. (2023). Weight loss changes gut microbiota and is associated with altered activity in obesity-related brain regions. *Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, 13*, 1269548.

14/12/2025

When Eli Susman arrived at a Buddhist retreat, he expected to spend most of his time there in deep meditation. After all, the Plum Village Monastery to the east of Bordeaux, France, had been established by Thich Nhat Hanh, sometimes known as the “father of mindfulness”. With a newcomer’s enthusiasm, he decided to test how long he could spend in silent contemplation, embarking on a mammoth 3-hour session.

Afterwards, he proudly told one of the monks. “It was almost like I expected a shiny badge for my efforts,” recalls Susman. Instead, the monk simply smiled brightly. “Three hours?” he asked Susman. “How about three breaths? That’s all you need to tune in to the present moment.”

Susman’s curiosity was piqued, and during his psychology PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, he set out to investigate whether such a brief period of contemplation could really reset someone’s thinking and bring about a meaningful change in their mental state.

Read more here: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2502370-too-busy-to-meditate-microdosing-mindfulness-has-big-health-benefits/

Image: Randy Faris/Getty Images

11/12/2025

04/12/2025

New research shows how human cells can be effectively 'recharged' by replacing their internal batteries – microscopic power stations called mitochondria – and the discovery could have wide-ranging benefits across healthcare and medical treatments.

29/11/2025

Here’s what it means 🪐👇🏻

When we say that Saturn "ends retrograde motion," we’re talking about how Saturn appears to change direction in the sky. For several months, it seemed to drift backward (westward) relative to the background stars. Now, it has stopped and begun moving forward (eastward) again. But this isn’t because Saturn is changing direction — it’s all about how we see it from Earth.

Let’s break it down:

🌌 Imagine you're in a car on a highway, passing another car. As you overtake it, the other car might briefly appear to move backward — even though it’s still going forward. This is an illusion caused by your faster motion. The same thing happens with planets like Saturn.

🪐 Saturn orbits the Sun much farther from it and slower than Earth does. As Earth catches up and passes Saturn in its orbit, Saturn appears to move backward in the night sky — a period known as retrograde motion. Once Earth moves far enough ahead, Saturn seems to switch back to moving forward. This marks the end of retrograde.

📏 This apparent change is due to geometry, not any actual reversal. It's all about the changing angle between Earth, Saturn, and the distant background stars.

So when Saturn ends its retrograde, it’s not changing course — we are simply seeing it from a new vantage point.