The Present Day Wise Woman – Healthy Life Hacks
with Jennifer Jefferies

Are you over 50? In Western society, we can often shun ageing, but it’s time we see this second part of our lives for what it really is – the best and most exciting years of our life. With kids grown and a successful career had, you can often find yourself called for another purpose. In this episode, Jen shares how you can lean into this new purpose and add significant value to younger generations and society at large as a wisdom keeper.

Do you find yourself needing a drink every day to unwind? In this episode, Jen shares her own story with alcohol and explains that there’s a big difference between choosing to have a drink and needing to have a drink. To help you come from the point of prevention, Jen shares other rituals to put in place, drinks to savour, and ways to destress to prevent needing a drink at the end of the day.

Every day our self-talk affirms the beliefs we have about ourselves – good or bad. That’s what makes affirmations so powerful; they allow us to take control of our thoughts and become more mindful of the words and stories we tell ourselves. In this episode, Jen shares how to craft powerful affirmations and use your language to serve and not sabotage.

Are you having trouble doing the things you know you should or would like to do? Procrastination is the habit of delaying a task or goal by distracting yourself with something easier, more enjoyable and often less urgent. While it can seem fun, gratifying and even productive in the moment, it ultimately prevents you from getting where you really want to be. In this episode, Jen shares three practical tips to ditch procrastination so you can get on with achieving your goals.

Do you feel like you are drowning daily? Think you’re meant to keep on struggling without help? Think again. In this episode, Jen talks about the importance of asking for help and tells it straight – asking for help isn’t a sign that you are giving up; it’s a sign you are downright refusing to.

Amazing things happen when you walk tall. There is something energising about it. As you put your shoulders back and hold your abdomen in, your body is supported, your lungs fill properly, your digestive and nervous systems work more effectively, and you open your heart to the world. In this episode, Jen shares the importance of walking tall for your physical and emotional health and gets vulnerable to why she didn’t for a long time.

The things that are around us the most are what influences us the most. In this episode, Jen explains the power of proximity and how we need to move the bad (an energy-sucking activity, food we keep craving or a toxic relationship) away from us and the good towards us. If you’ve been struggling with breaking a habit or dependency, then this episode is for you!

Do aches and pains plague you? Not the muscle overuse type of discomfort, but that pulsating, throbbing, hot inflammation pain that can vary in severity throughout your body. In this episode, Jen shares treatment ideas to help you recover from aches and pains as quickly as possible and start living from a place of prevention.

The sad reality is that most people will wait until they hit rock bottom before they look after their health. But career success and cool toys are worth nothing if you aren’t well enough to enjoy them. In this episode, Jen shares how to reorder your values and habits to move yourself up the priority list and invest in your health before getting a life-altering diagnosis or condition.

Did you know that 50% of post-menopausal women experience vaginal dryness, and 17% of women aged 18-50 experience problems with vaginal dryness during sex? In this episode, Jen delves into the causes for vaginal dryness like menopause, insufficient arousal, disconnection with your partner, stress, worry and overwork and what you can do to bring back the juicy life.

Mental health and self-care have become much bigger conversations since the pandemic significantly changed how we live and work. In this episode, Jen explains the concept of a Doona Day, a self-care day to take when those daily stressors are tipping you over the edge, and you need a time out. If you’re finding that you’re not sleeping well, are short and snappy, and dreading Monday it might be time for a Doona Day!

Are you finding yourself losing it over the tiniest things? In this episode, Jen delves into anger and frustration and what is sitting behind these big emotions – unmet expectations. You will learn why the typical reaction of forcing your anger down and beating yourself up will only lead to more anger. She’ll share how you can switch from reacting to responding and why you need to be kinder to yourself, particularly in these stressful times.

Did you know that there are five main types of headaches? In this episode, Jen talks about migraines, tension, sinus, cluster and sexual headaches, why they come, how you can prevent them, the best ways to treat them and when you should get them checked by a doctor.

What are you striving for a reasonable life or an extraordinary life? A reasonable life is good, comfortable and predictable, but an extraordinary life is remarkable, amazing and packed full of juicy experiences. In this episode, Jen shares how you can make your life extraordinary by ditching excuses and stretching your comfort zone.

How many times in life do you give the best to everyone else only to save the burnt leftovers for you? In this episode, Jen gets real about putting yourself last and explains why continual self-sacrificing is not the right thing to do but rather a disservice to the ones you love the most.

Food is essential to our wellbeing, but occasionally our desire for it can go out of balance. Whether you are eating too much, too little or to console your emotions, in this episode, Jen shares what influences your appetite and how to bring it back into balance.

Imagine if you could improve your happiness, lower your stress, boost your resistance to common ailments, enhance your physiological and psychological wellbeing and build your self-esteem, self-confidence and coping skills. In this episode, Jen shares four powerful words that can help you achieve all of it.

Did you know that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to a task once you are distracted? In this episode, Jen talks about how you can minimise distraction, take back control of your time and sharpen your focus to prevent overwhelm.

Is every day feeling like Groundhog Day? You get up you feed, you go to work you feed, you come home you feed and go to sleep, then wake up and do it all over again. In this episode, Jen shares how you can break the cycle and have an epic year regardless of the restrictions on you at the moment.

In traditional Chinese medicine, ginger is used to remedy a wide range of issues, including aches and pains, inflammation, chest congestion, coughs and colds, digestion, and metabolism problems. In this episode, Jen talks about the health benefits of having more ginger in your diet and how daily ginger shots can be beneficial for staying strong, fit and healthy.

Our skin is what protects us from the outside world, making it one of our largest and most important organs. Are you treating it like one? Continuing with the topic of great skin, Jen shares more tips to improve your complexion, including how to get a healthy glow, what essential oils to use, the toxins to reduce and avoid and more.

Want great skin, but nothing seems to work? In this episode, which is part 1 of 2, Jen shares how to have great skin and age well. You will learn how to protect your skin and renew your skin cells, what cleansers and moisturisers to use and why you need more Vitamins A, C and E in your diet.

Think arriving on time is the way to show up in life? Think again. In this episode, Jen explains why being on time is actually late and why arriving early is a sign of deep respect for someone else’s time and a sure way to minimise the stress and pressure in your life.

Did you know that these days most people are low in iron? In this episode, Jen talks about the signs of low iron, what can impact your absorption of it and how you can make sure you get enough iron-rich foods in your diet, including great plant-based options for vegetarians.

Do some people trigger an emotional response in you? In this episode, Jen explains how these triggers act as an emotional mirror and that what shows up in our life (the good, the bad and the ugly) reflects something in us. Jen shares how to use these triggers as opportunities to analyse who we are or have been and turn them into life lessons to learn and grow from.

As 2020 comes to an end, it’s crucial to close out the year properly so you can start the New Year with renewed hope, motivation and strength. In this episode, Jen takes you through her end of year habits and gives us a necessary reminder to think beyond our current restrictions to dream without limitations.

A lot has been said about butter and margarine over the years, so how do you know what the healthiest choice is for you? In this episode, Jen debunks the myths around butter and margarine and shares the pros and cons so that you can make an informed decision for your health. Plus, you’ll also hear what Jen uses and how she keeps it as close to nature as possible.

General Adaptation Syndrome or GAS as it is often called is a term used to determine your body’s reaction to stress. Good stress, that nervous excitement you can get, has been proven to be good for you, but bad stress, that constant day-in-day-out stress isn’t, it taxes your body significantly, particularly your adrenal glands. In this episode, Jen explains the three stages of GAS – the alarm reaction, resistance stage and exhaustion stage, and shares the risks to your health when you stay months or years in the amped-up flight or fright zone.

When you think about how friendships are formed, they start by one person saying “hello” and you both finding common ground. As for best friendships? This happens when you let your guard down, and the other person in and they reciprocate. In this episode, Jen explains how you can create deeper friendships faster – and why life is too short not to let people in.

What you think about you bring about! Your thoughts and language can have a drastic impact on your mindset and what you manifest in life. So, if you are thinking crap thoughts, guess what? You are going to bring about more crap in your life! In this episode, Jen shares how you can shift your mindset to stop living your future out of your past to manifest what you really want.

Are you a driven, go-hard person who loves to learn and achieve constantly? In this episode, Jen talks about how she had to learn to balance her desire to keep doing with simply being to prevent burnout. From listening to fiction books to taking the time to self-care and nurture yourself, Jen will share tips on how you can achieve more by bringing greater balance to your life.

Are you hiding behind the word ‘but’? ‘But’ is a word we often use as an excuse or justification for our actions or lack of actions. If you aren’t careful, it can disempower you from playing the bigger game you want to play. In this episode, Jen discusses the importance of watching your words and shares strategies to help you move your but to start living the life you want to live.

Stress and anxiety from life, trauma and illness can stay locked in our muscle memory and cause energy blockages, imbalances and disease in our bodies. Kinesiology is a therapy that uses muscle monitoring to help bring about balance and awareness. In this episode, Jen speaks to Sal from Flow State Mind Breathe Motion, to find out more about kinesiology and how it can help you to be more in tune with your body.

In the year 2020, the only certainty has been uncertainty. With emotions heightened from a stressful year and the impending holiday season, it’s crucial to get insight into your emotional needs. In this episode, Jen does a surrogate reading of her Aromatherapy Insight Cards to identify three essential oils to help and support you to close out the year strong, fit and healthy.

Have you ever wondered why you can only give blood every 2-3 months? It’s because you need to wait until you complete a full blood cycle. In this episode, Jen talks about how your blood and body regenerates and why you need to think in seasons if you want to make long-term changes to your health and habits.

Do you like waiting to have everything figured out before you take action? In this episode, Jen reveals the power of saying yes to goals and opportunities before you are ready, and how taking more action will lead to less self-doubt.

Ever wondered what the difference is between sugars? In this episode, Jen delves into the facts about Stevia, Xylitol, Sorbitol, Coconut Sugar, Maple Syrup and Agave and reveals the good sugars and some surprisingly bad ones.

Have you ever experienced obstacle after obstacle when trying to achieve a goal? When you push hard for what we want in life that energy can end up pushing away the very thing you want most. In this episode, Jen talks about the role of energy in success and the importance of shifting your energy from push to flow to attract and not repel what you want.

What is holding you back from everything you want to be and do? Chances are the same thing that holds all of us back – fear. In this episode, Jen explains that fear has the same physical response in our body as excitement; the only difference is the way we think about it and breathe through it.

What is holding you back from everything you want to be and do? Chances are the same thing that holds all of us back – fear. In this episode, Jen explains that fear has the same physical response in our body as excitement; the only difference is the way we think about it and breathe through it.

The Keto Diet and Intermittent Fasting have become trendy over the last few years, and while they have their place, they are not ideal for weight loss. In this episode, Jen explains how the Keto Diet and Intermittent Fasting puts enormous pressure on your body systems through deprivation and is not sustainable for the long-term.

Maintaining self-discipline is often the secret to getting the rewards we want and the growth we need – so why do we struggle so much with it? In this episode, Jen shares tips on how to stay focused and motivated when we don’t feel like it, and why it’s vital to run towards the things that appear ‘too hard’.

Your lymphatic system is the vacuum cleaner of your blood. It helps rid your body of toxins, waste and other nasties, making it an essential part of your immune system. But as the laziest system in your body, it doesn’t do its job well without your help. In this episode, Jen shares simple hacks to help you support your lymphatic system to boost your overall health.

The closest feeling we can experience to love is fascination. When you are fascinated with someone, you are present, engaged, listening and connected. The only challenge is, most of us try to be fascinating, the object of attention, instead of being fascinated, giving someone else our attention. In this episode, Jen discusses the importance of being fascinated to give others the attention and connection they need and deserve.

Are the stressors of life affecting your libido? When you are stressed, your adrenal energy, hormone levels, and sexual desire can be impacted in a big way. In this episode, Jen gets real about sex and shares how you can get your body out of survival mode, so it doesn’t turn your libido off as a way to cope with stress.

Ever thought you don’t know what to do to next to move forward in an area of your life? In this episode, Jen will challenge you with her belief that we all do know what to do – we just don’t do it. Demonstrating that there is a big difference between knowing what we need to do and doing what we need to do, Jen sheds light on the big issues that get in our way – procrastination, self-sabotage and not listening to your intuition.

Think you can isolate one body system, take action to support and improve it and have your overall health improve? Think again. There’s not one quick and easy fix. In this episode, Jen explains the importance of looking at your body as a whole, to move beyond symptoms and get to the root cause.

Emotions play a significant role in both our health and illness. In this episode, Jen talks about how to identify emotional stress in your body and choose the right essential oils by using Aromatherapy Insight Cards. Jen is joined by friend, artist and illustrator of her Aromatherapy Insight Cards, Karen Osborn.

For many being skinny is at the top of their health goals, but skinny doesn’t mean healthy. In this episode, Jen explains why body weight isn’t the best indicator of internal wellbeing and provides tips around how you can be and feel your healthiest self.

When things go wrong, do you beat yourself up or build yourself up? If you’re like most people, you criticise yourself and then compare your failure to the perceived success of someone else, but this doesn’t serve you. In this episode, Jen shares why we need to screw up, learn, tweak and try again to grow and the importance of spending most of our time focusing on our strengths and celebrating our progress.

Are you so busy living in the past or the future that you’re not enjoying the present? In this episode, Jen shares how slowing down and focusing on one thing at a time can reignite your passion, bring more excitement into your life, minimise your stress and improve your overall health.

Are you so busy living in the past or the future that you’re not enjoying the present? In this episode, Jen shares how slowing down and focusing on one thing at a time can reignite your passion, bring more excitement into your life, minimise your stress and improve your overall health.

When you’re stressed, your body can start to crave foods for comfort. In this episode, Jen delves into what your stress cravings can mean and how you can give your body and more specifically your brain what it needs without giving in to those sugar, carbs and fatty cravings.

We live in a day and age where everything is expected instantly, and it’s causing us enormous amounts of stress and pressure. In this episode, Jen shares one of her stress minimising strategies; a simple question helps her assess the priority of the tasks and activities in her day and determine whether it needs to be done now, later or by someone else.

If you want to keep your nutrition in balance, it’s not a pyramid that you should be basing your meal choices on, but a square. In this episode, Jen shares why the pyramid isn’t balanced and breaks down the foods and the portions that you should be eating to maintain good health.

Do you love staying in your comfort zone? In this spontaneous episode, Jen shares how she lets herself get comfortably uncomfortable by choosing a life of ‘yes’. You’ll hear about her latest challenge that got her so uncomfortable she had to accept help to get through it.

Think your pimples are due to hormones? Think again. In this episode, Jen explains why your breakouts and where they are on your face can tell you a lot about your nutrition and how well specific body systems are working. You’ll also learn how to guard against pimples by protecting your skin from the inside out.

Love a good cup of tea? These days many people are making the switch to tea for a healthier option, but did you know some teas are worse than coffee? In this episode, Jen takes you through the different types of teas and shares which ones are the best to sip and enjoy.

Are you burning the candle at both ends? Stress, chronic depression and unhappiness can tax your body in ways you don’t even realise. In this episode, Jen looks at what you can do daily to minimise your stress, support your wellbeing and ensure you are lengthening your life – not shortening it.

Your poo can tell you a lot about your health. In this episode, Jen answers all of the secret poo questions you’ve been wondering about but haven’t wanted to ask. You’ll learn what your poo should look like, what deficiencies it can reveal, how frequently you should go and how much it can impact your health if you’re not emptying well.

Life wasn’t meant to be easy if it was, how would we grow? There will come a time where things don’t go to plan; we’ll be thrown out of balance, and events will rock you to your very core. But, as Jen shares in this episode, it’s often these life-changing moments that change you into a better person or lead you to more remarkable outcomes.

Sleepy, sluggish, stressed? Jen shares the three essentials needed to reboot tired adrenal glands – good food, good rest and good play! You’ll learn fun and practical ways to take the stress off your adrenals including a list of the best foods to support your recovery.

We know the importance of nourishing our bodies – but what about our minds? In this episode, Jen talks about the importance of looking after your mental wellbeing through stress and shares tips on how to stay optimistic – even through a pandemic.

Healing oils and herbs have been used as remedies for thousands of years. In this episode, Jen shares how this natural ‘old-time pharmacy’ can help keep those nasty bugs and pathogens away. Plus you’ll hear about Jen’s go-to blend that ensures she’s breathing clean and filtered air to stay well especially in times like now in 2020.

Could bum glue be to blame for your ailments? In this episode, Jen explains how refined and processed grains, aka ‘bum glue’ can get stuck in your body and cause inflammation and illness. Take her quick test to see if ‘bum glue’ is an issue for you and find out how you can get it gone!

Is there any time better to get your health right than in the middle of a global pandemic? In this episode, Jen shares the extra measures she’s taking to boost her immune system, including the foods, herbs and spices she swears by to keep your health in check.

Think good health is just about consuming the right food and exercising? Think again. In this episode, Jen dives into the three areas of health – the attitudinal, emotional and physical – and explains how one area out of balance can derail your whole system if you’re not careful.

Find yourself running out of energy? Getting broken sleep? You might be stuck in adrenal survival mode. In this reality checking episode, Jen shares her story of burnout and why sleep is the key to recharging your adrenal glands and getting your Qi - your energy and...