Healing Trauma

Conscious Parenting: Optimizing Your Behavoir During Difficult Times

Dianna Bonny Lotus Icon

When I began the process of disciplining my first two children, I encountered a dilemma. Normally patient and kind, I would suddenly become irrational, triggered by incidental things. I couldn’t explain or understand the behavior but it bothered me. One minute I was a calm and happy mother, the next, I was my mother, yelling.

New Year’s Resolutions & Self-Love

beach sunset | Dianna Bonny Photography

As the sun slowly drifted down over the horizon for the final time in 2013, I was walking down the beach reflecting on things and I realized that I have never been very good at the New Year’s resolution thing. Have you? I always have the very best intentions and I love thinking about how I can do better, be…

Holidays and Healing: The Magic of Tender & Fierce Curiosity

xmas pjs | Dianna Bonny Photography

Did you experience magic this holiday season? That was the question I asked myself the day after Christmas and my inner self responded wholeheartedly with a resounding YES. I went looking for it in every corner of the days as they passed and was rewarded at every turn. After the three year void of having not a shred of holiday…

Healing Elixirs for Holiday Stress

turmeric tea

Well, here we go into the final stretch of the season and boy are the holidays are a cauldron of inflammatory elements: stress, sugar and alcohol. With age, these things seem to leave a longer imprint on my body. Is it this the way it is with you?  Even my sheets leave their tracks – in the morning, a trail…

Embracing Balance, Harmony and the Holiday Spirit

Dianna Bonny Lotus Icon

Unfortunately, most of my childhood holidays were steeped in tension. Every year, there were a lot of expectations wrapped up under the flocked Christmas tree that held explosive power when things went even slightly askew. One fateful Christmas Eve, we arrived home from the annual neighborhood party to the unfortunate discovery that my brother had eaten the tub of cottage…

Being Present: One Thousand Healing Moments

The Hug Painting

I heard a statistic that, on average, people look at their cell phones a thousand times a day and I find this fascinating. It makes me wonder what we are looking for on our phones: Validation? Connection? Belonging? A way to look busy or feel important? I’m part of the generation that grew up pre-cell phone, and I’m trying to…

Healing Yoga and ‘The Promise’ by Mark Whitwell

yoga mat

Yoga has been an integral part of my healing, and I’ve found tremendous solace on a mat, in the middle of a room of sweaty people. I prefer heated yoga because I feel like I have wrung myself out. It’s not for everyone, but it has worked for me. Although I have practiced yoga off and on for many years,…

Stress Neutralizing Daily Green Smoothie Recipe

Green Smoothie with Kale | Dianna Bonny Photography

There is a certain pulse to the holiday season that seems to summon stress, and it is very easy to get caught up in the pressure to buy more and put on a happy face. It requires a very concerted effort to protect the precious resources of our mental and physical eco-systems. “We need to mount a stress response in…

Conscious Healing Through Mind Mapping

mind map | Dianna Bonny Photography

Although healing is an organic process, it requires a pro-active mindset. And, making the choice to heal is the only way for it to begin. Let’s face it, being a victim is powerful stuff and you can get a lot of mileage out of it. But, it limits your range because you will be driving the same stretch of highway…

Hybrid Holidays: Finding Peace Amidst the Season

hybrid xmas | Dianna Bonny Photography

I wonder if you are experiencing this hybrid-holiday conundrum. Here it is a few days before Thanksgiving and I have already (I hate to admit this) broken my Christmas décor out of the boxes. This is new for me. I have always been a strict adherer to the one-holiday-at-a-time rule, however, I now have a blended holiday going on in…