Holiday Gift Guide

In the midst of Holiday stress and (sometimes) over-indulgence, giving or receiving a health and wellness inspired gift can become a much appreciated opportunity to start the new year with healthier choices.  I have pulled together a few last minute gift options to help you give your friends and family the gift of health (or add to your own wish list).

Pique Tea Crystals

These Tea crystals come in individual sleeves ready to pour into hot or cold water and they dissolve instantly. Having a perfectly brewed cup of tea has never been quicker! These tea crystals are made by a method called cold brew crystallization which allows the antioxidant potential naturally found in tea leaves to stay at its peak resulting in tea with up to 12x the antioxidants of leading teas. Antioxidants are essential for keeping our body healthy and functioning properly. Antioxidants help fight off free radicals in our body – groups of atoms that cause damage to our cells and can contribute to disease and aging. Antioxidants also help keep our immune system strong and help decrease inflammation – the root cause of many chronic diseases today.  

Oura Ring
Healthy habits are easier to initiate than to maintain. Therefore, daily feedback can help with adherence. Oura tracks you 24/7 so you can build an accurate, insightful baseline of information about yourself from which you can grow and improve. Sleep better. Improve your performance. Be Ready. It’s all possible with the Oura Ring. The device combines data from its various sensors to generate a daily sleep score and a “readiness” score that’s a measure of fatigue versus freshness. Looking at the breakdowns, you can see things like how much deep sleep versus REM sleep you got the night before, how that compares with your weekly or monthly average, and what each means to your overall well-being. (Deep sleep, I learned, is crucial for muscle rejuvenation and repair, while REM sleep is more important for creative thinking.) The Oura also tracks heart rate variability, a measure of how responsive your heart’s rhythms are to stimuli; high HRV indicates a well-rested central nervous system.

Borsari Seasoning
Add flavor to cooking in the New Year! This is a perfect stocking stuffer or hostess gift. The Original is my favorite flavor and I use it on eggs, vegetables, fish, chicken and more. it’s my all time favorite spice blend. 

 

 

 

Insight Timer App + Subscription
Insight Timer has a huge, ever-increasing library of guided meditations and talks from a wide variety of teachers, including ‘big names’ such as Tara Brach, Wim Hof and Judson Brewer. You can search for topics centred around different emotions, benefits, types of practices and traditions. You can listen to thousands of different music tracks and stories to help you sleep. And if you upgrade for about $60 a year, there are also 10-30 day courses you can take, in subjects as diverse as anxiety, grief, Buddhism, Chakras, addiction, fertility, masculinity, tantra, attracting love, Ayurveda and mindfulness for teens. The courses offer short daily lessons and opportunity to interact with fellow participants and teachers.

Gravity Blanket
If you don’t know what a weighted blanket is or why somebody would use one, they’ve become increasingly popular over the years for people who struggle to fall asleep at night. Whether you have PTSD, insomnia, anxiety, or you just suffer from racing thoughts before bed, weighted blankets have been proven to help calm the nerves and provide a comforting environment for you to fall asleep with more ease. And with high quality materials such as premium-grade glass beads and soft, durable duvet covers, The Gravity blanket has become very popular. If you tend to get hot, they also have a cooling weighted blanket.

Manta Sleep Mask
Light is an external factor that can play havoc with our bodies and affect our shut-eye. With black-out curtains a luxury we can’t all carry around with us, we need to look for other solutions.This perfectly constructed sleep mask is the first one I’ve used that I don’t rip off my head while sleeping. And it doesn’t put pressure on your eyes to avoid REM cycle disruption.

 

Srise Insulated Lunch Tote 
No more carrying lunch to the office or airplane in a plastic grocery bag! Upgrade to this stylish, waterproof and spacious lunch tote. The insulation helps keep your food cold or hot. 

 

 

 

Rasa Coffee
For the wellness warrior who doesn’t consume coffee or recognizes the need to cut back on their coffee consumption, this smooth, calming, and balancing adaptogenic herbal coffee alternative makes an excellent choice. Adaptogenic herbs are herbs that help you adapt to situations. They can help normalize body imbalances and counteract the adverse effects of stress, enabling the body cells to access more energy, help cells eliminate toxic byproducts, and help the body utilize oxygen more efficiently.

Dr. Tung’s Tongue Scraper
I’ve been using one of these daily since receiving it in one of my goodie bags at the Institute For Integrative Nutrition. Tongue scraping is one of the most overlooked Ayurvedic practices, but one that can go a long way toward your overall health and well-being. Here’s why. Scraping the tongue daily removes any build-up on the tongue, which, if left untreated, can lead to bad breath and may house a significant number of bacteria. By removing this coating you improve your ability to taste your food, which makes it more satisfying. By increasing your taste reception, not only do you eat less, you also eliminate the need to add more sugar, salt, or excessive spice to the food to make it more flavorful.

1 Comment
  • Eris Norman

    December 18, 2019 at 12:19 pm

    Love all your gift ideas! Happy holidays!