Central Florida’s largest and most anticipated natural health and green living expo will host their 6th annual show on March 8th at the Florida Tech Clemente Center in Melbourne. Healthy Living Expo attracts over 2000 visitors interested in products and services for a naturally healthy lifestyle.

The expo boasts hundreds of door prizes, free product samples, free admission, and offers opportunities for massages, free chiropractic screenings, energy treatments and much more. “Each year it is a full day of fun,” explains Kris Urquhart, Natural Awakenings publisher and expo co-producer. “The workshops are intriguing and the exhibit hall is filled with fascinating products to try and services to experience.”

I stumbled onto a site, looking for the lyrics of a Sixpence None the Richer song. Whenever it comes up in my iTunes shuffle, I sing along, whether I know the words or not. Since Puedo Escribir is in Espanol, even my abilities to butcher the real lyrics were hard pressed to make sense of it. What is this haunting melody singing about? An epic story of love lost, words of praise or teen angst amid a storm of grief.

The first website I found indeed gave me the lyrics. The words only alluded to something deeper.

Cartoon Network recently announced a new 2 hour block of programming targeted at 2 to 5 year olds. In response, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CFCC) publicly lambasted the channel for being,

“The latest attempt to get young children in front of screens — which is exactly where marketers want them.”

This raises several important questions on both ethical and parental sides of the issue. Is this another ploy to plop children in front of a tv and endear them to colorful characters and their merchandise? Can television programming actually be beneficial to a child’s development, or more importantly - is it even needed for wholesome development? Read on for the major arguments from both sides, and contribute your own answers to these vital questions.

A visit to Forever Florida and the Crescent J Ranch is like a romp through the terrain that once dominated this State. The unfortunate part is trying to figure out where we will show our children this amount of unspoiled land in the future?

Of all the challenges facing organizational leaders today, the biggest may be engaging and motivating people to embrace the organization’s mission and vision of the future. We all know the difference between staff who are punching the clock and biding their time and those who come prepared to be part of a team that is building something great. How do we get people to see that future and want to be a part of it? It comes down to communication.

With our busy schedules we often lose sight of how often we “work out”. If it is not a late meeting on Monday it is a school play on Wednesday that keeps us from exercising.

Our intentions are always good. We really, really want to exercise but something always seems to interfere. Friday comes and we ask ourselves “how many days did I exercise this week?”

When Exercising Remember: Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
The old saying goes “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. Make this your mantra as you step on the scale or grab your sneakers after a long winter hiatus. There is a very good chance that you did not put on those extra 10 (even 20 pounds, YIKES!) overnight. Rather, a pound at Thanksgiving, one more over the holidays, and now after just finishing the last of the Valentine candy, your favorite Easter treat is on the store aisles calling your name.

Who wins the food fight? You might be right if you said that low fat dieting is outdated and low carb dieting is just a fad. Most of us are waiting for the final answer. Don’t be surprised if your doctor doesn’t even know which direction you should turn for healthy weight loss.

Cutting back on dietary fat has helped millions of people shed unwanted body fat for as long as we can remember. I myself have said no to butter and cheese and reaped the benefits of a slimmer figure. So why have we turned our backs on this proven method in lieu of the new carb controlled craze? I’ll tell you why I did.

Coping with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

Through tears running down his face, Andrew tells his mom, “I can’t think when I’m angry, it is just like a big rocket blasting off!” His mom’s heart breaks for her child as he struggles to make sense of the world around him. Andrew, like an overwhelming number of children today, has Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder sometimes called High Functioning Autism.

Last month you were introduced to Plus-ing up your life with Emotional Intelligence. This article will focus on the ‘me, my’ aspects of the model. The crux of this part of the model is the ability to recognize the “what” and “why” behind our feelings.

Plus-ing Up Your Life With Emotional Intelligence, Part II
How many times do we go through life out of touch with our emotions only to have a sudden rush of emotion? When we have the rushes, it’s usually a generic “mad” or “happy.” To understand the “what” of our emotions we need to start by increasing our emotional vocabulary!

Kris Urquhart is the publisher and editor of Natural Awakenings, a healthy living magazine for Brevard and Indian River Counties. Mother of two energetic boys 8 & 10, wife & manager of their household in charge of miscellaneous life duties. Kris is an amazing person, energetic, focused, and always working to promote health and wellness. We spoke with her about Balance.

How do you keep everything together?
As the editor of a natural health magazine the topic of balance tends to surface with many subjects. We try to keep our diets in balance, our work and home lives, our fitness routine, our relaxation time, even our finances. It seems that just the effort exerted to stay in balance is a full time job waiting to happen.

Taking Great Strides to Cure Cystic Fibrosis

As a child what if your only wish as a child was to run and play like all of your friends. If only your lungs could get enough air. Sounds like easy tasks for most children, but not for a child with cystic fibrosis.

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disease affecting approximately 30,000 children and adults in the United States, 39 of those reside in Brevard County. CF causes the body to produce an abnormally thick, sticky mucus, which clogs the airways and leads to life-threatening lung infections. The thick CF mucus also obstructs the pancreas, preventing enzymes from reaching the intestines to break down and digest food.

Everyone’s meaning of the word organized is different.

Some people are at one end of the spectrum like Monk, the obsessive/compulsive detective, who can’t stand clutter and everything must always be in its place. Others are completely comfortable with leaving their stuff anywhere and everywhere, living in totally chaotic surroundings and can never find anything. And still others are freaks of nature that no matter how much clutter they live in, they can always put their hand on anything at a moment’s notice. Most people fall somewhere in between and usually in the “tolerates clutter but can usually find something within a reasonable amount of time” category. However, the definitions of tolerates and reasonable can vary significantly from household to household.

Plus-ing Up Your Life With Emotional Intelligence: An Introduction

GreenBrevard’s mission is to help individuals, families, businesses and organizations reach their fullest potential and accomplish their evolving goals. Through teamwork and synergy we will better able to achieve the goal. The synergy is enhanced when individuals use emotional intelligence.

The beginnings of an emotional intelligence awareness started over 2000 years ago by Plato when he said all learning has an emotional base. However it wasn’t until 1995 when the term EI was popularized in Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence. Now, an internet search on the topic will come up with over 837,000 hits! Why is it so popular? Because it is the indicator and differentiator of success in all aspects of life.

Easter Seals has been helping individuals with disabilities and special needs, and their families, live better lives for more than 80 years. Whether helping someone improve physical mobility, return to work or simply gain greater independence for everyday living, Easter Seals offers a variety of services to help people with disabilities address life’s challenges and achieve personal goals.

Easter Seals Florida has its headquarters in Orlando, Florida. In business since 1948, Easter Seals Florida has seven regional offices providing developmental preschool and child care services. These regions are located in The Keys, West Palm Beach, Stuart, Tampa, Orlando, and Melbourne.

We all want the best for our children. We want them to be knowledgeable, capable, and self-confident human beings, able to one day make important contributions to both their own lives and the lives of others.

Sometimes, though, we get caught in the frenetic pace of life and find ourselves stuck in the “doing-ness” of life. So we enroll our children in after-school clubs, private lessons, and special activities in the hope of giving them an advantage in life, expecting that they practice and do the things that we may not have had the privilege of doing as kids. And when they don’t do their part, we often find ourselves doing it for them. It’s enough to give us a metaphysical hernia.

Across time, I have come to learn that all of life is a unified story, woven together by the threads of everyone’s individual stories. This patchwork of truths and lessons has much to teach me and much joy to give me-but the key is to train myself to discern the patterns of the fabric and interpret what they are saying.

To that end, I have learned that I must make less space for talking and assuming, and more space for listening and observing. I have learned that a keen eye for detail is an awesome gift, because the tiny stitches have an invaluable nature that enables the full cloth to retain its character.

We recently had the opportunity to talk with Leslie Gaskins, the Development Director of Easter Seals, Florida’s East Coast Regional Office.

Chartered in 1948, Easter Seals Florida provides a wide range of programs for Floridians of all ages with disabilities and special needs, including early intervention and child care; outpatient rehabilitation and therapy; a summer camp for children and adults with disabilities; adult day health care; and vocational services. In addition, Easter Seals Florida plays a critical role as an advocate for people with disabilities and special needs. In Brevard County, Easter Seals Florida provides critical programs for adults with disabilities.

Children’s Home Society of Florida, Brevard Division’s mission is “Embracing Children. Inspiring Lives.” This is accomplished through prevention, intervention and mentoring programs for children and their families.

Founded in 1902 as an orphanage in Jacksonville, Children’s Home Society has grown to 14 divisions throughout Florida and become the state’s premier child welfare agency. Our goal is, and will remain, to build, mend and strengthen Florida’s families. CHS, Brevard Division provides comprehensive services for the entire county. From infant and child services, to teen counseling, abuse prevention and intervention (including a shelter for foster care girls ages 10-18), as well as parental counseling, CHS provides a full continuum of care, empowering individuals to lead productive and meaningful lives.

Writing this in the midst of the nasty and passionate 2004 general election season, I remember my political coming of age of 12 years ago-or perhaps it is better described as a political balancing act.

I was extremely naïve as a young person and a college student, seeing society, politics, government, social needs, and so forth through a narrow prism, colored and shaped by limited exposure to homogeneous reading material and editorialists in the flesh and in the press. To that end, I postured one mainstream political party to be evil, corrupt and snobbish, and the other to have the answers for all of our societal ills, if only we could open our eyes to their logic and good intentions.