relaxation – Traditionally Empowered Healing LLC

Blog, Commitment to self, healing, Healing Environment, Nervous systen, Reset, Self Heal, Self Love

What If You Were a Healer?

December 17, 2025 Anat Shlagman Traditional Naturopath

Thinking about the word “healer”, we might find ourselves living in a misconception, backed up by the Oxford dictionary definition, that a healer is “a person who seeks to cure diseases or heal injuries by means other than conventional medical treatment”. This definition implies that the body is an object that requires a healer to engaged in the mission of actively healing it. Is that so? Does your body have no abilities other than waiting for someone to heal it?

What if your body already knows how to heal itself but lacks the proper environment to do it? What if a healer was the one who creates the environment for your body to heal, while trusting your body’s wisdom to do the work, without actively engaging in healing it? What if you could create that environment for your body? What if you were a healer?

When you accept yourself as a healer, you have one mission only – to nurture the environment for your body to heal itself. You do not need to actively heal your body. All you need to do is to create the environment so your body can reach the wisdom which is embedded in its genes to heal itself.

What would that environment be? Each body is different, thus each one of us will have individual needs. In order to understand your unique needs, best would be to open a line of communication between you and your body.

Pain or discomfort are the most common communications you would receive from your body, signaling you to pay attention to your actions, since something you do is not making your body comfortable. When you tend to the pain by checking what went wrong, your body will know that you are available to listen.

What could go wrong that might bring pain to your body?
Everything you can possibly imagine, in every aspect that you can possibly perceive – physically, emotionally or mentally.

Here are some examples to explore, feel free to venture into any other idea that will pop into your mind:

Starting with the Physical possibilities – can your body thrive with what you supply, or just survive?
1. Nourishment & hydration – what’s on your plate and in your cup?
2. Resting – How deep is your sleep?
3. Movement & touch – Are you tending your body with physical activity and physical touch?

Continue with the Emotional possibilities- can your body thrive with the way you feel, or just survive?
1. Love – Are you in a loving and caring environment – at home, at work, in life?
2. Anxiety/fear/stress – Are your demons controlling you?
3. Social – Do you feel surrounded by like-minded friends or feel lonely with no one to engage in a deep meaningful conversation?

Following with the Mental possibilities – can your body thrive with your perceptions or just survive?
1. Values – Can you protect your values or need to compromise them when conflicted?
2. Space – Are you giving yourself priority space on your to-do list?
3. Believes – Are the believes you hold created by society’s expectations or authentically generated according to your values?

Taking the time to ask yourself if your body thrives or survives is the first step as a healer to understand which environment your body needs in order to heal. Answering honestly without judgment will allow your body to open up and reveal it needs.

But what if you, probably like 99% of the people in the world, find that you have too many issues to address in order to be able to create your healing environment? This might be a bit discouraging, prompting you to face two opposing options:

Making the decision to ignore it all and continue your life as before without any changes.
Making the decision to start a slow process of change. This can be done by writing down a list of your issues, then choosing one issue from your list to address.

The freedom to make choices carries the heavy toll of owning the consequences of your actions: whatever you choose – you are the one who has to live with it. Yet, when your decision is made after you take the time to listen to your body, you might find it more motivating to choose to start a slow process of change, rather than ignoring it all.

Once you made the decision to start a slow process of change, you become a healer. Always remember that your exclusive role as a healer is to create the right environment for your own body to heal itself. You do not need to heal your body, nor your family/neighbors/friends’ bodies! Only focusing on the environment that your own body needs.

Will that be fast? Probably not. Will that be easy? Definitely not. This is a journey. Each one of us is a healer! Each one of us can create the environment for our own body to heal. And by doing so, each one of us can set the example for our families, neighbors and friends to follow our lead, tending to their own personal environments for their bodies to heal.

If you are not sure how to begin your journey, I invite you to come in for a session to reconnect with your own body, understand the environment that your body needs and realign your healing plans.

This holiday season, I am holding the prayers for each one of us to open ourselves to listen to our own body and spread light into the world from our own healing environments.

Wishing you all heart-filling holidays and a healing new year ahead!

Blog, Castor oil, Commitment to self, healing, Nervous systen, Nourishment, Parasympathetic, Reset, Self Heal, Self Love, Workshops

Can We Let All Storms Pass Alongside Us and Not Through Us?

October 3, 2025October 3, 2025 Anat Shlagman Traditional Naturopath

These days, it looks as if our world is filled with storms: Political storms, medical storms, human rights storms, and any other agenda the mind can invent and turn into a storm…

Mysteriously enough, these storms seem to have the tendency to become a whirlpool that uproots and swirls us until we are slowly striped from our own personalities. It feels that in our panic of the storm, we act as if the only way to survive it is to let the storm peel away everything we have, and many times, after it passes, we might regret and re-think our actions.

Could there be a different way to survive a storm? A way in which we trust that our own personalities are worth standing rooted while letting the storm pass alongside us instead of swirling everything within while it passes through us?

Of course there is a way! But this way is not granted! An effort needs to be made to keep us strong facing a storm. I will explain how this can be done, but beforehand, let’s understand why we want to do so.

Remembering the legacy of Hersh Polin Goldberg, RIP, an American-Israeli 23 yrs old, who was kidnapped on October 7th, 2023, and was murdered along with 5 other young Israeli hostages while held captive for 11 months in the tunnels of Gaza. In his page-turner must-read book, “Hostage”, Eli Sharabi tells his own story and reflects how Hersh inspired every hostage he met with his famous sentence: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.’” Eli Sharabi, who was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri, held onto his own ‘why’ – returning to his British-Israeli wife and 2 teenage daughters – for 491 days, then was released from captivity only to discover that they were murdered on Oct 7th, 2023. May they all Rest in Peace.

Back to our storms, looking for our own, much less intense ‘whys’ to let storms pass alongside us without allowing them to pass through us. I will note here my thoughts, examining what is building our character and personality. Feel free to add as many of your thoughts as you need.

WHY?

Our character is made of critical thinking skills, which help us decern what benefits us and what does not. We operate these skills by asking questions. Keeping in mind that every question is relevant, when we are swept off into a stormy swirl, we might feel that our questions are dismissed without a satisfactory answer. Then, we might feel lost or even irrelevant.
Our uniqueness is part of our personality. Every decision we make, about our health, our money, our life, should be made in accordance with our unique needs, regardless to the popular (maybe even engineered) opinions about it. When we are swept off into a stormy swirl, while our unique necessities are mostly lessened, we might experience an unhealthy internal conflict between our physical, emotional and mental states, which can lead us to depression and/or physical illness.
Our own values are the foundational building blocks of our character and personalities. When we are swept off into a stormy swirl, we might feel that our values are compromised, maybe even to the level we feel as our whole self is being diminished. And this as well could lead to a physical or mental illness.

All of these sounds very gloomy, and many times we choose to disregard and continue our lives as if none of them exist. If you choose to do so and you are happy and healthy, then all is great. However, if you are not truly happy and not truly healthy, I would like to invite you to read further unfolding my opinion on how to make a brave decision to stop being swept into a stormy swirl.

How?

First and foremost, we need to tend our nervous system, and it is our window to the world. We act and react to everything that is happening around us through the state of our nervous system. The more our nervous system is on a survival mode, the more automatic and repetitive will be our response. When we succeed to relax our nervous system and take it out of its survival state, we can make time to create new plans of actions, which are more beneficial and upon repeating they can become automatic as well.

As I explain in my article, The Art of Healing Yourself, we have to create the environment for our body to meet its survival needs, in order to relax our nervous system: “What are these survival needs? Think about babies – what do they need? To sleep, to eat, to be touched, to be soothed, to be clean, to move and to learn how to coexist with others in the world. We may have grown out of our baby stage, but our needs have not changed. However, now, we are engaged with so many responsibilities which have become a priority over our basic needs.
Here begins our part as self-healers, by tending to our basic needs and helping our body meet them. How can we do that? Simply by going back to basics – returning to all the actions that we usually skip through our busy life. These actions are also known as the pillars of Traditional Naturopathy: Nourishment, Bodywork, Rest/sleep, Energy work, Herbal medicine, Hydrotherapy, Education, and Movement.”

Could a castor oil pack make a difference here? I have no doubt about it!!!!!

Is it worth all the trouble just to be able to allow the storm pass alongside you? I cannot make this decision for you. I can only advise to look back at your “why” list and decide from there. My journey, learning with great effort how to stand tall alongside storms, helped me understand, that even though my values and beliefs are different than anyone else’s, they are never less valid. And this is what I preach and teach ever since.

If you need my assistance to learn how to shine your wonderful personality and never allow any storm to diminish it, contact me. I am happy help!

And if you are around on November 9th, 2025, you are invited to a special hands-on event, led by Ariana Buksdorf and me, at the Hampton Inn Commerce Novi. All details in the following link: The Art of Caring for Self.

Always remember that a change is never easy, and it will happen only when you feel that you are ready for it. As we open the new Jewish year, may it be filled with blessed changes to lift us up to our best possible lives, and may we always find the strength to allow every storm to pass alongside us without swiping us up into its swirl!!!!!

Blog, Caring for others, Castor oil, healing, Nourishment, Self Heal, Self Love

Don’t Waste Your Money

June 2, 2024 Anat Shlagman Traditional Naturopath

“Don’t waste your money”, said the orthopedic surgeon, coming out of my son’s ACL & meniscus repair surgery, answering my question whether there are any contraindications for massaging his knee or leg. Humbled, I asked, “what if he does it himself?” and was dismissed with the statement that no one does it.

Realizing that he might not be aware of any benefits simply because he believes that nobody does it, I smiled and thanked him for everything he did and granted myself the permission to follow my beliefs.

In 2017, I completed 800 hours of massage classes in order to obtain my license to touch. In the advanced medical massage class, we had to present 2 projects, showing progress with the volunteers’ condition following the massage treatment.

A friend, who suffered of numerous medical issues, many of whom are contraindicated for massage, but in deep need of healing, volunteered to one of these projects. We mutually agreed to follow all the rules, as otherwise it would be a life-threatening situation.

With much fear and anxiety, as it was my first time working with someone experiencing a life-threatening condition, I allowed myself to touch, understanding that while there are some conditions that massage is contraindicated, Touch never is!!!!

Human touch is unreplaceable. Human touch cannot be substituted with any medication or procedure or imaging or a vitamin IV. Human touch is a crucial component in our healing. Human touch does not have to come from an external source – it can be applied to your own tissue by your own self.
Regardless to the popular modern codes that it is unacceptable to touch anyone and definitely our own selves.

Needless to say, the progress of my friend was beyond every expectation, as many issues improved without even addressing them!!

Fast forward to my son’s knee story, I applied my understanding of human touch to his knee every day from the moment we arrived home, until he headed back to his own house 2 months later.

At his first post operation follow up visit, two weeks from surgery, he was the only one among the many patients waiting in the large waiting room (young and old), who was able to quickly hop towards the PA calling his name. She was surprised to see how fast and pain free he moved (no narcotic meds involved along the process!) and asked him what he was doing.

Happy to share all our work at home, I offered to tell her if she’s willing to listen. She politely smiled and left the room.

My son’s progress has been phenomenal. Touch was an imperial component, along with nourishment, physical therapy, and allowing himself the time that was needed for healing, even when we discovered post operation that longer healing time is required due to the severe nature of his injury.

The orthopedic surgeon was very pleased with the recovery, but never once asked what is done at home for it. Indeed, many credits are due to his skills for conducting this complicated surgery meticulously. With that, many of us might not be aware that a lot should be done afterwards at home to progress the healing. The written post operation care instructions cover very important care to eliminate complications, but do not extend to a whole healing experience. There is so much more that can be done to help your body heal.

Yes, “don’t waste your money” is a great advice! Yet, it is our responsibility to decide what brings us value and what is just a waste. Even when an opinion comes from a respected source, we still have the right to take it as an opinion only.

Our thoughts, knowledge and understanding of our own body are as important as anyone’s thoughts and knowledge. If you struggle with allowing your thoughts to count, try a castor pack!! You will be astounded to discover how relaxing your nervous system and getting yourself out of the “war zone” into a peaceful mode can shift your perception of yourself and/or your situation.
I am always here to listen and to teach everyone who wishes to learn how to create the right environment for whole healing.

May we all have the courage to use as many resources as we need to allow our body to heal itself regardless to the thoughts and perceptions of others.

Blog, Caring for others, Nourishment, Self Heal, Self Love

Mica’s Magic Pot – My Mom’s Legendary Recipe of Our Family’s Chicken Soup

September 11, 2023August 24, 2025 Anat Shlagman Traditional Naturopath

My mom owns a Magic Pot. She did not buy it magical at all but turned it that way with her enormous loving intention to nourish everyone around her. If you have been privileged to eat one of my mom’s meals, you know that this soup is just the appetizer of a 1000-course meal. No one leaves my parent’s house hungry! FOR WEEKS AFTER….

And no, my mom’s pot is not the one that may have popped into your mind reading the title of this blog, even though it might be the ultimate answer for your joints….

Beyond the fact that this is probably the best chicken soup you ever ate in your life, my mom can make the soup in this pot last 7 days – regardless to how many people eat it or how many servings they take per day! Just like the Chanukah’s miracle of the little pot of oil that lasted 8 days… Only here we have a nicely sized pot of pure Gold!

I wish I had my mom’s patience to prepare it the way she does, but I don’t. That’s why I will add my altogether-in-the-pot-just-add-water-and-boil version of my mom’s soup.
If you have the pot and the patience – by all means – follow her steps! It will turn out great!! Especially since you will not have the real legend to compare………….

This famous chicken soup has been prepared in my mom’s family for many generations. Living in Romania, the soup survived through wars, famine, communism and many other unimaginable inhumane actions. As kids, in Romania and later in Israel, we ate it every day without having any idea how beneficial it is. Starting my own family, I kept the tradition, again clueless – automatically doing what intuitively felt that I need to do to care for my family.

It took me almost 40 years to appreciate the gift my mom gave me! And for over 10 years now, I have been preaching it in my practice (could there be a better companion to the Castor oil Packs than a chicken soup???). I went through many versions of the soup until I finally reached the one we all love. Truth is that it doesn’t matter how you make it, as long as it contains real ingredients and not artificial flavored powders. Herbs are awesome in any shape. Powdered artificial flavors are not!

There are so many reasons to eat this soup daily! Beginning with its fats which nourish your nervous system – calming down the fight-or-flight response. Continuing with its gelatin which calms digestive disorders, and its collagen which protects your joints (again, the ones that hold you, not the ones you hold), ligaments, skin, and its minerals and its nourishing properties for basically everything you could ever imagine!!

We also cannot ignore our Jewish connection, as Sally Fallon best describes in her book, Nourishing Traditions:

The 12th century physician Moses Maimonides prescribed chicken broth as a treatment for colds and asthma. Modern research has confirmed that broth helps prevent and mitigate infectious diseases. The wise food provider, who uses gelatin-rich broth on a daily or frequent basis, provides continuous protection from many health problems.
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

Whoa! If it was me – I would eat and feed everyone around me every day!!! Oh, wait. I already do it!!! All thanks to my mom’s teachings with her own actions.

You can choose to start your own tradition, or you can choose not to. The choice is yours. I can only give you the tools by diving straight to the secret of preparing this magic gold, as revealed by my mom, Marcela (Mica) Haimberg. Picture credits to my mom as well!!

Ingredients:
1 Chicken – cut (preferably organic, free range)
1 bulb of Garlic – peeled
15-20 Carrots – whole. If organic -no need to peel.
1 onion – whole, peeled
1 bell pepper – cut and deseeded
1 celery root (peeled and sliced) + stalks & leaves (if available)
1-2 parsley roots – peeled and cleaned
2-3 celery stalks
1-2 bunches of parsley
1-2 bunches of dill
Salt, pepper to taste
Water to top the pot

Setting everything in the pot in the following order:

Cutting the chicken and placing the pieces at the bottom of the pot

Now that everything is in the pot:
Add salt & pepper, top with water (my mom adds boiling water) and bring to a boil. Spoon any spume that accumulates at the top, lower the heat and simmer for 4 hours.
strain and enjoy!

My version is much less structured:
I use a bigger pot -16 qt, as I cannot replicate my mom’s 7-day magic in a smaller one.
In order to accommodate this change, I use 2 whole chickens (not cut!!). Many times, I will use one chicken and add feet or knuckle bones (grass-fed beef) or chicken backs & throats.
Also, many times I do not have the vegetables at home when I need to make the soup, so I start it with the meats only and add the veggies the next day, spooning any accumulated spume.
I put all the ingredients above in the pot, add some cayenne, salt and pepper (sometimes also nettle, chaga, turmeric root, burdock root) and simmer for 2-3 days – turning the heat off when I sleep or am out of the house and on again when I am back.
This version creates more of a bone broth, rather than a traditional chicken soup.

Last but never least – these are my lovely parents – a rare species of hard-working caring people, who can make everything possible without anyone noticing the long and exhausting labor behind the scenes – Mica and Solo Haimberg:

My parents love to travel the whole world, but at the moment they arrive home, you can be sure that my mom’s pot is already bobbling with magic!!!

Blog, Castor oil, Self Heal

The Real Reason I Love Castor Oil Packs

September 20, 2017October 10, 2024 Anat Shlagman Traditional Naturopath

When I was 20 years old, I was unstoppable. Nothing could stand in my way. Not even the minor car accident (in which a drunk driver rear-ended my car and I ended up with “just” a whiplash). Not even the excruciating pain in my neck which lasted years.

20 years later, “suddenly”, with no apparent reason, I could not move my arm. Only after visiting a chiropractor, who showed and explained me how big is the damage I have caused to my neck and spine, just from neglecting the injury, I realized what I have done. If I would only stop and do one of the things I know now (even just resting or applying a castor oil pack) the whole picture may have been different.

After few visits, I felt much better and pain was gone. Still unstoppable at that time, I then understood that this was just the beginning of my healing journey. Fixing a damage that has been accumulated in 20 years is not possible in a week. And this was my “Stop sign”. Up to that point, the easiest way for me to handle these “stop signs” was to ignore them. However, opening my eyes to view this sign, made me realize that this is my own responsibility to attend my own health. This is my own responsibility to find the time to give attention to my body or seek professional help to guide me how.

This has become a life journey, and as it keeps unfolding, I am fascinated by all the unstoppable souls who are crossing my way, seeking my friendly or my professional advice, and one thing keeps repeating over and over again:

Applying a castor oil pack has brought many of these souls to a very deep state of realization that a change needs to take place. Witnessing this phenomenon, either in my office or hearing from those who I suggested to apply the packs, brought me to the belief that deep state of relaxation has the amazing power to change lives – physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Castor oil, a very thick oil derived from the castor bean (Ricinus communis) seed, has been praised for many benefits. Among them: Enhancing relaxation, Decreasing inflammation, Increasing circulation of blood and lymph thus enhancing the immune system, Improving elimination of toxic substances, Promoting tissue healing, Decreasing pain, Lubricating ligaments, Improving digestion, Easing many conditions including uterine fibroid, non-malignant ovarian cysts, endometriosis, headaches, migraines, constipation, intestinal disorders, gallbladder/liver conditions, and probably many more.

A castor oil pack can be done in many ways. The way that works best for me is simply applying the oil on the belly, covering with a hand-towel, topping with a hot water bottle and laying down for at least one hour.

When applying the castor oil pack on the belly, the oil lubricates and stimulates all the tissues, organs and systems in this region. Along with that, the heat draws the blood vessels up closer to the skin as they vasodilate, and oil is being absorbed into the blood circulation as well, thus distributed through the whole body.

Lubricating and stimulating organs as the small intestine, bladder, colon, liver, uterus, which are part of systems that are inhibited when body is under stress (when the autonomic nervous system functions at its sympathetic / fight-or-flight state), signals the nervous system to shift to the relaxed state (parasympathetic state). This may cause a confusion for the person experiencing it, since many of us may have not “visited” the parasympathetic system for a very long time. We are trapped in the fight-or-flight loop and do not know how to find the moment to breath and recover.

Shifting to the parasympathetic system creates a space, allowing to view life in a clear and focused perspective. It allows me to be more centered into my own body, realizing that so many things are happening inside, while I keep myself very busy outside. This deep relaxation opens my mind to ask the real questions, which I have been avoiding for a long time:

Am I so busy working for others that I cannot find an hour for myself to walk outdoors or to engage in some movement?
Am I so busy running after everyone’s needs (my spouse, my kids, my cat, my dog, my friends, my neighbors, my, my, my, my, my…. Oh my) that I don’t have an hour to seek a professional guidance resolving my own issues?
Am I so busy being busy that I cannot find an hour to understand what relaxation really means?

In my eyes, a castor oil pack can be a major life changer. Such a simple action with such a powerful result. Even if at this moment, I am not able to answer all these questions, I have planted the seed, so when time is right – I will be ready to take the ownership over my life and start my journey.

And this is the real reason I love castor oil and I would keep telling everyone again and again and again that they should try a castor oil pack….

***Anat Shlagman is a Traditional Naturopath specializing in Relaxation, utilizing a unique tailored session, combined of Reflexology, Castor oil pack, Abdominal massage and Energy work, designed to bring the autonomic nervous system to its parasympathetic state.

Some sources

The Edgar Cayce ARE – https://edgarcayce.org/resources/holistic-health-database/therapies/castor-oil-packs/

The oil that heals – A physician’s successes with castor oil treatments – William A. McGarey, MD

Herbs of grace – Farida Sharan