Holistic-CoachingBC

12/19/2025

12/11/2025

🎄 Merry Christmas and a Wonderful 2026! 🎄

This season, give a gift that heals, inspires, and connects us to nature.

🌿 Christmas Specials for Nature-Based Learning

Wildcraft Forest School is offering major discounts on online and in-person training programs. These experiences are more than courses—they’re journeys into the heart of the forest.

✨ It’s the gift of healing that can also be a gift of meaning.

Whether for yourself or someone you love, we’ll make it special:

💌 We’ll send the first lesson + membership kit by email on Christmas morning with your message!

🎁 Offer runs until Christmas Day—register soon because 2026 camps are filling fast!

👉 Connect with specials:
https://wildcraftforestnewsletter.substack.com/p/christmas-specials-for-nature-based

The Wildcraft Forest School is offering major discounts for online and in-person training

12/01/2025

Exploring the Gut–Brain Connection in Depression Care
Did you know that about one-third of adults living with major depressive disorder (MDD) struggle to find relief with traditional medications? This reality has sparked interest in innovative approaches that go beyond the usual pharmacotherapy—and one promising area is the gut microbiome.

Why the Gut Matters

Your gut isn’t just about digestion—it’s deeply connected to your brain through what scientists call the microbiota–gut–brain axis. Research suggests that the balance of bacteria in your gut may influence mood, stress response, and overall mental health.

What Does the Evidence Say?

The Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) recently reviewed clinical studies on microbiome-targeted interventions for MDD, including:
• Probiotics (beneficial bacteria)
• Prebiotics (nutrients that feed good bacteria)
• Synbiotics (a combination of both)
• F***l Microbiota Transplantation (FMT)
Here’s what they found:
• Probiotics show modest benefits in reducing depressive symptoms, especially when used alongside other treatments.

However, results are mixed, and more research is needed.
• Prebiotics, synbiotics, and FMT currently lack strong evidence for effectiveness.
• Most interventions are well tolerated, with few serious side effects.

What Does This Mean for You?

Probiotics may be considered as a third-line adjunctive option—not a replacement for standard care, but a possible complement. If you’re curious about incorporating probiotics into your wellness plan, speak with a qualified healthcare provider to ensure it’s safe and appropriate for you.

Looking Ahead

The gut–brain connection is an exciting frontier in mental health. While the science is still evolving, holistic approaches that consider both mind and body are gaining traction. At Holistic Coaching BC, we believe in supporting your mental wellness through evidence-informed strategies that honour the whole person.

Resource:
For those interested in the full scientific review, check out the study published by CANMAT:

Background Approximately one-third of adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) experience limited response or intolerable side effects with existing pharmaco...

11/30/2025

11/20/2025

Uplifting minds! Interconnected is the world's only magazine dedicated entirely to digital mental health and addiction, and the official publication of the eMental Health International Collaborative (eMHIC). This is the new pulse of a rapidly evolving global movement.

Interconnected is the official publication of eMHIC

11/19/2025

Some rightwingers fling the clichéd term "virtue signaling" as if it were a bad thing. Personally, I am all in favor of virtue-signaling.

I love to see people making full-bodied expressions of how much they care and what they want to do to make the world a better place. It's even fine with me if a part of their motivation is the desire to be loved by the rest of us do-gooders.

So yes, please feel free to flaunt your virtue-signaling in front of me. I will applaud and appreciate. Maybe you talk the do-good talk 70% of the time and walk the do-good walk 30% of the time. In my eyes, that's WAY preferable to those who walk the do-good walk 0% of the time.

If for some reason anyone doesn't like my virtue-signaling, they have my authorization to go in search of people who who prefer to engage in vice-signaling and selfishness-signaling and I've-got-mine-and-f**k-the-rest-of-you signaling.

And while we’re at it, let’s talk about the other term that some folks spit on: woke. As if caring about other people were a moral pandemic. As if paying attention to injustice required hazmat gear. As if noticing suffering were a character flaw instead of a Bodhisattva trait.

I long ago signed up to be deliriously, flamboyantly, unapologetically woke. I aspire to be so woke I need naps. I want to be so woke I register on seismic instruments. So woke I trigger amber alerts for runaway empathy.

Being woke means I’m committed to dismantling cruelty, listening to marginalized voices, helping refugees find safety, defending q***r joy, and supporting people whose struggles don’t mirror my own.

And if anyone doesn’t like my woke-ness, I happily authorize them to go commune with people who prefer snooze-button consciousness, bigotry-enhanced drowsiness, and the sacred art of never learning any thing about anyone else’s experience. I won’t be offended.

Image: Kurukulla, goddess of magnetization. Artist unknown.