Gaynor Stickels Therapist

06/02/2025

It is ok.

Sometimes life just has other plans for you.

Rest and recuperation is sometimes exactly what is needed to find your peace and build your resilience.

💗🫂💗

01/02/2025

Imbolc Blessings to you all! 🌱🥰🌿

20/12/2024

Winter Solstice/ Alban Arthan Blessings to you all!

We will be spending the next few days, spending time with family and friends, as we celebrate the rebirth of the Sun and the return of the light! 🌞

Have a lovely weekend everyone 😘 🌿💗❄️🎄

12/12/2024

Thankfully, herbal tonic wines and therapeutic herbal cacao chocolate is a thing! 😉🍷🍫🫕

Remember Kids, everything in moderation! 😉😋

11/12/2024

11/12/2024

As Paul is now in his second week, post op, and hospital appointments and travel have been just ridiculous, my study time is practically non-existant!

Waiting around in hospital carparks is the only spare time I seem to be getting to catch up on some reading, and watch some of my seminars and workshops.

Today I will be mostly watching CBD Oil in Practice, Materia Medica for Managing Cancer, and delving deeper into our digestive system for my nutrition case studies!

07/12/2024

Storm Darragh has made sure we are having chilled out Saturday.

It's giving me a good opportunity to catch up on my reading, and also enjoy a herbal coffee, to give you that warming 'hug in a mug'.

Coffee, in moderation, can be a fantastic helper to the body. It will support the liver, nervous, circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems, whilst boosting your mood on a dull and miserable day!

☕️ If you'd like to try it, I made enough filter coffee for two people in a cafetiere.

🌹 I then added ½ tsp of ground Allspice, 2 crushed Cardamon Pods, and a teaspoon of dried Rose petals, and give it a stir.

⏳️ Leave to brew for 5-10 minutes. Drink black, or advice a splosh of cream, or milk of choice.

🧘‍♀️ Sit, sip, and relax and enjoy, preferably snuggled in a blanket, watch you're favourite Saturday morning tv.

We are currently watching Mary Berry making something fabulous, then I'm catching up on my Gardeners World, and may yet settle down with a cheesy Christmas movie later!

Enjoy!

😉🤶🎅🎄

30/11/2024

I've spent a chilled out couple of hours draining and straining my Lavender Flower infused olive oil, fresh Rosehip, and fresh Dandelion Root in Brandy tinctures.

The lavender oil, has been sat on a sunny windowsill for 10 weeks, slowly infusing its properties, and will be used to make a test skin balm and cream.

The milky substance you can see in the Dandelion root tincture, is Inulin, which can act as a powerful prebiotic to help with digestive issues.

It is also a powerful immune booster and anti-inflammatory, and helps the body to rid itself of excess fluid.

I made a Dandelion flower and leaf tincture in the late spring, so I will blend a little of the two tinctures together, to make a complete plant blend, to maximise their benefits.

The Rosehip tincture tastes amazing in the brandy, and it was very hard not to treat it as liqueur!

It has other work to do in my medicine cabinet though, it will be used to help to boost the immune system, and help the body with its anti-oxidant, antinflammatory and pain relieving properties.

🥰🌿💗

30/11/2024

Spending time with herbs is now an everyday occurance 😉🌿

25/11/2024

I'm trying something a little different today, working on different ways of improving my good gut flora.

My Kombucha scoby's have been having a lovely time in their cosy storage hotel recently, as I've been to busy to make any new batches. So today I needed to feed them some sweetened strong tea, to keep them in tip-top condition.

I scooped out my oldest SCOBY, which had only got a couple of brews left in it, and I have sacrificed it to the God's of Herbal Experimentations.

Normally, you flavour a Kombucha after the strong brew and starter liquid, has its first fermentation. You then flavour it for a few days, whilst it does its second fermentation.

It can get extremely lively at this point, as I found out when 2 litres of "Summer Fruits" exploded all over my kitchen at 7am one summer morning!!

Only time will tell if it ferments now, or, if the powerful antimicrobial dried Rosemary will stop the bacteria from growing at all. Or indeed, the whole batch could just go mouldy! 🤔👩‍🔬

As well as the Rosemary, I've added dried nettle and hibiscus flowers, and some of Ma & Pa Stickels honey 🍯🐝to the mix to sweeten the mix, but also to give the scoby something the feed on.

If it works, I will get a lovely probiotic herbal immune boosting tonic.

If it doesn't, the scoby will go to the compost heap and I will go back to trying a few more experiments with second fermentation instead.

This is very much a trial and error process, which would be made a lot easier, if I knew what on earth I was doing! 😉🤣

*No husbands will be harmed in the process of this experiment...probably 😉☣️

24/11/2024

With the last of my soap bases, I used the Argan Oil base, which is translucent, and blended it with green clay, dried nettle, and used Tangerine, Patchouli and Lime essential oils.

Patchouli is always a divisive oil, folk either love it or hate it but I love it, especially when blended with sharp, citrus oils to uplift you.

It is fantastic for the skin, it is antinflammatory and antibacterial, and has soothing, wound healing and skin-regenerative properties.

Whilst it is astringent and helps to tighten pores, it is also very balancing and reduces oily skin.

The dried nettle in this case makes a lovely gentle exfoliant and looks so pretty in the clear soap. It has very similar skincare properties, when infused into oils or extracts, to Patchouli.

🥰💗🌿🌸