Orion Wellness LLC, Manheim, PA (2025)

08/10/2022

Life has been very busy and I apologize for not posting in FB in a long time. I write a column for a local newspaper, including one on how our genes affect us, so I’m going to break it into sections and post the whole thing, one section at a time. I hope you enjoy reading it and will continue to tune in to read it all. -Ellen

Have you ever wondered how much your genes that you inherited from your parents affect you and your health—and even your mental health? If one of them had a disease, does that mean that you’ll probably get it too?

There was a study done at Emory University that showed that we may be quite affected by the genes we got from our parents--and also from our grandparents. This research project was using male mice, where they taught the mice to be afraid of the smell of cherry blossoms. They did this by giving them mild shocks each time they smelled the blossoms. The mice then showed anxiety and fear every time they smelled cherry blossoms, which is pretty predictable.

After that, they bred the mice to have babies. They let the babies grow up to be adults who had never smelled cherry blossoms. Then they had this second generation of mice smell the cherry blossoms, but gave them no shocks. Guess what? They became anxious and scared when they smelled the scent, even though they weren’t given shocks and had never been exposed to cherry blossoms before. That’s amazing! Stay tuned to my FB page to find out more, because it gets more incredible.

www.OrionWellnessLLC.com

03/03/2022

So, still on the subject of "cosmic rescuers" (known to most as guardian angels), I have been one quite a few times, not actually on purpose. This was the most dramatic one.
I took my pre-teen sons out to dinner late one night and we were driving home about 9:30pm. It was snowing and sleeting some, but not too bad. Where I lived, there was a brand new road that opened up that most people in the area didn't know existed yet. It was dark and desolate at night, so I didn't like to go down it at night. Yet I turned onto it by force of habit (or was it cosmic?), so I decided to just continue on rather than turn around.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something moving and something told me to stop and look. I saw a car oddly up on the grass and a young man next to it waving to me to come over. It looked like the car had skidded off the road, so I went over to it. One man who had blood all over his face and head and coat bolted into the woods, seemingly very confused. The driver was unconscious in the front seat. The front doors were jammed shut, but the window was open a little, so I was able to feel that he had a pulse in his neck and tell him to keep still when he roused somewhat.
I had my son get the car phone (no cell phones yet) and I called the police, but had to send the young man to the corner to find out the name of the new road. Then I told it to dispatch but they'd never heard of it, so I gave them directions how to get there. Within a few minutes the rescue people were there and went into immediate action, using the jaws of life to cut off the top of the car. My car was barricaded by their vehicles so my sons and I watched the whole orchestrated operation.
The next day I called all the ERs and scanned the newspaper but couldn't find out what happened with the two young men (the EMTs found the man in the woods when I directed them to him). I was so impressed with the skill of the rescuers, that I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper.
Almost a year later, my doctor's office nurse called me and asked if I'm the person who wrote the letter to the editor, which she just saw on her sister's refrigerator. She said the driver of the car is her son. He had enormous injuries and it took a year of hospitalized rehab, but he was much better now. The other fellow needed 80 sutures. I finally had closure on their outcome! She said she felt that I was her son's guardian angel and if I hadn't been there, he would have died. We both were crying by then. It feels extremely good to be a cosmic rescuer and really, really help someone, which is why I chose to become a nurse in the first place.
Do you have a cosmic rescuer story you want to post in the comments?

02/25/2022

So, continuing on the topic of "cosmic rescuers" (people who come along just when you desperately need them and they help save the day), here is another experience that I had. I was a single mother at the time and I had to drive down the Schuykill Expressway every day to work in Philadelphia. Traffic was always very heavy when I went to work, sometimes moving slowly but other times moving very fast.

One day I was driving to work in very heavy, fast moving traffic when I felt my tire go flat. Normally, there is really nowhere safe to pull off that road, but at that moment there appeared a wide pull-off, so I pulled off and tried to figure out what to do. I had no idea how to change a tire myself and this was long before cell phones were invented.

As I was bending down looking at the very flat tire, a car pulled off the highway and a man in a 3-piece suit got out and came over to me. He pulled out from his trunk all the tools to change a tire and he proceeded to do so, dressed up in his nice clothes. I kept thanking him, but he said it was no problem. While he was in the middle of it, I couldn't believe it, but a AAA truck pulled over to us and offered to continue to change the tire. The man said thanks, but he was fine doing it. I was stunned by their generosity.

When the gentleman was done changing the tire, I offered to pay him something for his help, but he said no, he just hoped that someone would do the same for his wife, if she got in a predicament like this. Another cosmic rescuer in my life.

02/20/2022

For those of you who know me, you know that I am not a woo-woo kind of person. I aim to keep a healthy balance between left brain and right brain, although admittedly, I used to be almost completely left brained. One of the things that helped me evolve was realizing that I have had "guardian angels" at times in my life. But they were real people who were there to help me at just the right time; I don't believe that they were actual angels. So my husband and I have renamed them "Cosmic Rescuers". In the next few blogs, I'll tell you examples of some of ours.

This was a major, life-saving one. When I was in college at State College, I had a boyfriend in Pittsburgh who I planned to drive to see on the weekend. I posted on the ride board that I would take passengers with me. One girl accepted the ride and agreed to pay me something like $4 towards gas (a lot back then). We left on a sunny winter day, but when we got into the mountains, a blizzard began. My car also kept dying and we drifted off to the side of the road several times. Each time, a Cosmic Rescuer came along and got it started again: a couple who let us warm up in their house, a AAA driver, and a man who stopped to put dry gas in my tank.

As it got dark, we were on a sharp curve with a mountain cliff and a tiny shoulder on my right. Lots of tractor trailers were on the narrow road too. The car died again and I pulled it off as much as I could but was still sticking out and vehicles wouldn't see me until they came around the bend. It was dark and all we could see was snowy fields. The girl said that she thought she saw a light a long ways back over the field, so she took off walking that way and I stayed with the car. Very dangerous business for both of us, but we had no choice.

Amazingly, I didn't get hit and she came back in a car with 4 men that she found in a tiny diner. They hot wired my car and drove us to the diner. From the pay phone I called AAA but the only employee was already in bed and wouldn't come help. I called my boyfriend but he said his light little car wouldn't make it there in the heavy snow. The diner was going to close at 9pm and we would have nowhere to go in this little nothing of a town. So the girl called her mother and she drove 3 hours to get us in the storm.

Without this girl with me, I'm sure I would have died that night, either from freezing to death in my car or the car getting hit by a tractor trailer. The men were also cosmic rescuers, as was her mother. I am forever grateful to all of them.

Have you had experiences in your life where cosmic rescuers helped you or you became one yourself?

02/07/2022

Continuing the 5 Second Rule discussion, the first step is to find the positive in every situation within 5 seconds of hearing about it (as written about in the last few blogs). If you have trouble doing that, the second step is to recognize what you're feeling and then look back in your mind at your childhood to see if you had a similar feeling. Then consider whether you're bringing your childhood feelings into adulthood. If you are, do you really want to remain a child emotionally or do you want to become a fully grown adult who handles things very well?

02/01/2022

Napoleon Hill wrote “Think and Grow Rich" in 1937. In it he writes; “Every adversity contains the seeds of an equal or greater benefit.” I’m okay with equal, although that’s like running in place. What I really want are greater benefits than the adversity and so did my husband who came up with the 5 Second Rule that I wrote about in the previous blog. The rule is that you find the positive in everything that feels negative within 5 seconds and you can begin to turn your whole mindset and life around. This very idea is the basis for Orion Wellness and has changed my life.

Here's an example, in fact, one of a multitude of similar experiences that led my husband to discovering the 5 Second Rule. When he was a young man, the whole staff at the country club restaurant where he cooked got drunk and misbehaved in front of customers on New Years Eve, so the manager fired everyone. Marc knew it was unjust because he wasn't there, but he wasn't that upset because he felt like something better would come along.

Indeed he quickly found a new job in another kitchen, but was surprised to get a call the same day from the manager who'd fired everyone. When the manager found out that Marc had gone home early that night, he apologized and offered a nice raise and title (Assistant Chef), since he had no kitchen staff and was desperate. So on the second day of his new job Marc gave notice to his supervisor, but he then began dating her. She eventually became the mother of his two children. So losing that job turned out to be a positive event, because he gained a better title, better salary, and two children!

01/21/2022

More on positivity. My wise husband has created "The Five Second Rule". If a negative thought comes into your head or out of your mouth, you have five seconds to turn it around to a positive, meaning to find the positive aspects of the situation.

For example, if you lose your job and are scared, realize that you'll get another job, probably a better one. If you're getting a divorce, think about the positive aspects of not having that person in your home and life, such as the end of fighting and experiencing a feeling of peace. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997, my husband's first comment was, "This is going to be the best thing that ever happened to us." Because of his positivity, I never worried that I was going to die, I saw how supportive he was through all the treatments, and we got closer.

So five seconds to come up with a positive spin to something you thought was negative.

01/13/2022

I learned something when I worked in psychiatric units with the severely mentally ill. Actually I probably learned it in my nursing training but totally forgot about it. It's to not ask a patient "why" they did something, especially if it's bizarre or strange. They usually don't know why they did it and the question can get them agitated. Or you might get an answer like, "I don't know. I just felt like it, okay?"

So, it could be a better question to ask, "What was going on in your mind when you thought about doing it?" or "What was going on in your mind when you did it?" Even better might be, "If you don't know why you did it, can you take a guess why? Just a guess..."

Then you could move on to, "If you ever feel like doing that again, what would be a better thing to do instead that would make you feel better but not hurt anybody/anything?" Hopefully it would help them gain at least a little insight into themselves. (Sorry for the awkward pronouns!)

01/07/2022

Want an easy way to feel calm most of the time, even in the face of stress? Nose breathe. Breathing through your mouth, rather than your nose, releases cortisol into your bloodstream. Cortisol is one of the stress hormones that is released when you are in a scary or upsetting situation. It makes your heart pound, blood pressure go up, and turns down some other body functions like digestion, immune system, or reproductive activities.

According to Mayo Clinic, if cortisol levels stay high long-term, this is what it can cause:
Anxiety
Depression
Digestive problems
Headaches
Muscle tension and pain
Heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure and stroke
Sleep problems
Weight gain
Memory and concentration impairment

The way to combat this is to slow down the breathing and breathe deeply through your nose so your abdomen rises, not just your upper chest. This is called diaphragmatic breathing, which has a calming effect on the body.

12/21/2021

Hypnosis to help give you a more positive attitude? Absolutely. It probably is the best tool out there for this. During hypnosis it's easier to visualize scenes of a better future and remember and actually feel that good feeling afterwards. Also, the hypnotist can help you release the worry and bad feelings.

Most people who are worried about something are imagining or thinking about the worst case scenario happening. With hypnosis, you can reverse this to imagining and thinking about a really good outcome. According to the Law of Attraction, telling your mind good things and visualizing good outcomes is what helps them to actually happen.

10/28/2021

So we're still on the topic of positive thinking. We know there are times when things seem very rough and it's hard to think positively about what's going on. Well, there's an interesting phenomenon of the mind in that the subconscious mind can change just by hearing something often enough. This is called neuroplasticity, a relatively new field that is getting more and more attention.

So you tell your mind things that are positive, called affirmations, even if you don't really believe them at first. Say them to yourself over and over. In marketing, research has found that people's minds need to hear things between 7 and 20 times before they start thinking about things differently. No one has determined how many times you need to tell yourself affirmations before they have an effect, mostly because everyone is different. Tell them to yourself every day multiple times, out loud or in your head, in order to have the mind start eventually believing the positivity in them.

Another option is hypnosis. More on that in another blog.

10/22/2021

In the last post, I described the benefits of being a positive thinker, but you may wonder how to do that. Let's take a smaller example of changing your thought process: Something delays you from getting on the road for a trip. Once you're on the highway, your GPS tells you to get off it at an upcoming exit because there is an accident ahead. So instead of cursing your bad luck, you think how lucky you were that your start on the trip was delayed or else you might have either been in the accident or stuck right behind it for hours.

For more serious negative things that occur in our lives, we can change our thinking about it. First, look for the positives that can come out of it, for example, motivation to get into better shape, weight loss, improved relationships with family, slowing down your super busy life, taking time to do things you never made time for before, etc.

I will continue to address this in the next blog too.

10/19/2021

Are you a glass half empty or a glass half full kind of person? Being a positive thinker doesn't mean you stick your head in the sand and ignore anything that's difficult in front of you. It means that you approach unpleasant things in a positive and productive way. We can approach it thinking like this: "This is awful. It's going to be very difficult and will have a bad result." Or we can approach it like this: "Okay, let's see what can be done so that we can make this have a good outcome."

Research shows that there are health benefits for those who are positive thinkers. They live longer, have less stress and less depression, get less colds, have better outcomes if they have cardiovascular disease, and have better coping skills. In another post, I'll discuss changing negative thinking to positive thinking.

10/12/2021

Stress is like the movement on the top of a body of water such as a lake or ocean. Sometimes it's small ripples, sometimes it's small waves, and sometimes it's big rough waves. You can't control it because the weather is not controllable, nor are the events that happen to you in life.

But you can control how it affects you, even how you look at it. There are mind-body things you can do to calm down your mind and body, your inner turmoil, things like meditation, hypnosis, self-hypnosis, Reiki, tapping, having a safe catharsis, turning negative thinking into positive thoughts, and plain old doing things that are relaxing or fun.

I am a perfect example. I used to have bad stress symptoms: chronic headaches, jaw clenching, palpitations, and a general feeling of anxiety much of the time. Then I started doing these things and it made a world of difference. I almost never get a headache or jaw tightness or palpitations, and I rarely have generalized anxiety. If I can do it, others can do it too.

09/12/2021

The next holistic technique to discuss is Reiki. I am a practitioner so I'm quite familiar with it. It follows the concept that there is energy flowing through and around us, and the practitioner helps improve that flow and balance to promote healing, reduce anxiety, reduce pain, improve the immune system, and promote relaxation.

A session generally is about 50 minutes and you lie on a massage table fully clothed. The Reiki practitioner places their hands lightly on you or just above your body in various places in order to balance your energy.

It is being offered in Reiki centers, massage centers, hospitals, and hospices. Like other holistic techniques, it is designed to be done in conjunction with traditional medical care, not instead of it.

There are other energy techniques that are similar to Reiki, such as Healing Touch or Therapeutic Touch. All can be quite effective in helping the mind and the body.

09/01/2021

The next technique to discuss is a big favorite of mine. It's called several names:
- Tapping
- Emotional Freedom Technique
- EFT

This is a technique that I use and I teach to every client and many friends. It's useful for reducing pain, anxiety, PTSD, depression, nausea, and many other symptoms. Sound like a miracle? Well, in my mind, it almost is. In fact, I taught it to quite a few people who were currently having quite a lot of pain, and it took the pain away quickly in every single one of them.

It's done by reducing the blockages of energy flows in your body, and it's wonderful that you can do it on yourself. You will tap with your fingers on certain points where the energy flows are closer to the skin surface.

If you or someone you know are interested in learning how to do it, I can teach it over a Zoom call in less than an hour. You can reach me through OrionWellnessLLC.com.

08/28/2021

The next Eastern medicine technique to discuss is acupuncture, which I have had done many times. The belief is that there are meridians throughout the body where energy flows, such as from the fingers to the brain and then to the associated organ. Very thin sterile needles are inserted into special points in the meridians, which are supposed to re-balance the energy.

My skin is very sensitive, so I feel a little twinge when the needle is inserted, but actually more-so if the spot is affiliated with an organ that I'm having an issue with. Some people are less sensitive and don't feel them at all. Once in, they are left in place while you relax to music or meditation for a while. Most people do acupuncture for pain or anxiety, but it has also been known to help allergies, nausea, blood pressure, ulcers, fertility, and other symptoms.

If you are interested in doing it, I can recommend two practitioners I have gone to, one in Lancaster and one in Hershey.

08/24/2021

So this is the first of my giving an overview of various types of holistic techniques. It's REFLEXOLOGY. Personally, I don't do reflexology on people, but I had it done to me. A number of years ago my back was hurting a great deal and my coworker/friend was trained in it. She did it on my feet, and the pain immediately dropped to about half.

Reflexology is based on the ancient Chinese belief that vital energy called qi (pronounced chee) flows through you. But when you're stressed, it's blocked, which can lead to illness. Different pressure points on the feet, hands, and ears relate to other parts of the body. This technique has been used to treat anemia, arthritis, back problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, gout, high blood pressure, motion sickness, and thyroid problems. It also helps relieve pain and anxiety.

If you're interested in trying it out, look for it at massage centers, since some there may be trained in it.

Orion Wellness LLC