How Not to be The Holistic Lone Ranger in Your Community

Live Holistically is a multi-author site.
This post was written by: Susan Blue

Many communities do not have any idea what a holistic or alternative life style means. Especially if you do not look like a hippie, are not tattooed, pierced, wild haired, or others things to stand out and away from the norm.

Sharing books: I read a lot of Self-Help books. It helped when I was getting a divorce. The kids Dad wanted to do shared custody. We had very different parenting skills and self help books became my point of reference to find what we had in common and what were our priorities with parenting. I also used some business books about negotiation to help with finding common solutions for our family even though it was a split family. I shared my books and others came that were extremely helpful.

Talk About the Books You Read: You can do this easily one to one or invite people over. My favorite book club meets three to four times a year. We talk about the books we read, what attracted us to reading them, and why we liked them or thought they were important to read. If we can pass on or loan our copy, it is brought to the meeting.

Talk about the Blogs You Read: Many of my friends are techies. Some great information and sources have been networked. Most of this comes through email, but I do get the phone call or the good lead in a passing conversation.

Support a Gathering: Many church or community groups look for a speaker or an idea that everyone can share or do something with. “How to eat more veggies and make them interesting,” is a sure topic to get a crowd. Sharing recipes, cook books, magazines and magazine articles from holistic sources can start people knowing where to go and where to look for alternative sources of information.

Have a Tea Party: I have introduced many to good teas, herbal teas, and medicinal teas. Knowing how to brew a cup of tea has become a lost art. Knowing how to properly brew a medicinal tea for a cold, sore throat, stomach ache, gassy stomach, are skills that should not be lost to past generations.

Have a Non-Processed Snack Party or Pot Luck Dinner: See what comes through the door! Let it be an opportunity to educated people on the politics of food. There is a good and bad side to food processing. The good, is we have fresh foods from other countries when our season for those foods have ended. The down side is processing can lower the nutritional value and some additives or preservatives can cause adverse health effects.

Have a Vegetarian Pot Luck: It is good for people to stretch out of their comfort zones. It stimulates intelligence.

Serve Non-Wheat Snacks: Where are we without our staff of life, wheat? You can show that there are other staffs to use. Health food and grocery stores now have gluten free products. You can get brownie, cake, pancake, biscuit and quick bread mixes in a box. Save the box and show it to them. If you baked it yourself, make copies of the recipe for your friends and acquaintances to take home.

Take a First Aid Class: Get your friends to take one too. If you are raising children, take turns caring for the children so each parent can go. Having a little skill will help with knowing when to go to the doctors office or emergency room.

For the older crowd, heart attacks and strokes can come at anytime. I was with friends at a dinner party when the husband had a heart attack. Knowing how to help, support the person or to be able to keep them alive during transport is very helpful.

Share Some Simple Things Learned From First Aid with Kids: How to stop the bleeding is a good one. The kid care co-op group that I belonged too, did well with those instructions. We did a few serious injuries. The kids did all the right things before an adult was on the scene. We planned a kids first aid class every time we got a new member.

I would love to hear from others how they have introduced holistic living to others. Please write in!