The Best of Follow Your Bliss

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Follow Your Bliss magazine's fourteen best-loved features, how-tos, and personal narratives of ordinary people propelled to extraordinary versions of themselves through the transformative process of "following one's bliss."

Includes Nina Alvarez's "A Bird in the Hand" and "The Red Notebook," Jessica DeJesus' "22 Things I Learned in the Marines," as well as articles by Sandy Farnan, Raquel Pidal, Rebecca Francione, Al Martinez, Sofio Lo, Nicholas Witkowski, and a foreword by best-selling author and certified Life Design Coach Michele Mattia.

EXCERPT FROM "THE BEST OF FOLLOW YOUR BLISS"

"Part of nurturing yourself is making smart choices so you are healthy and happy. The World Health Organization considers health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. Janine Burnham Ruth achieves this through holistic living, which is living in harmony with nature.

Janine is a neurodevelopmentalist and energy medicine practitioner who founded a Holistic Moms Network in Lower Bucks County, Pennsylvania, four years ago. Her adoption of the all-natural life was a gradual process, not something she was raised to do.

Janine didn’t grow up in a commune. She didn’t even start living holistically until she reached adulthood and had children of her own. But she followed her intuition, stayed in tune with nature, and allowed her professional and personal choices to go hand in hand so she could embark on a journey about which she feels passionate and happy.

Janine was always interested in kids, how people function, and theater. After she earned a master’s degree in educational drama from NYU, she worked on the university’s creative arts team that took educational drama to elementary schools. This experience exposed her to learning and teaching disabilities.

“I started searching. I wondered why kids don’t learn and how we can get to them to learn.”

Her search led her down the path of neurodevelopmental science, which provides natural and noninvasive ways to help children with developmental and behavioral problems. She studied, trained, and was certified at the National Association for Child Development, and started working with children who had learning challenges and behavioral issues. Before long, she became a sound-based therapist and assistant director at The Davis Center, which is a comprehensive sound therapy center in New Jersey.

At the same time her career was blossoming, Janine’s lifestyle was transforming as well. Beyond the sensitivities she had always had to medicine, Janine went through a period when she had bronchitis three times and pneumonia all in one year. The prescribed antibiotics made her feel worse and she began to seek alternative, natural remedies for good health.

She later took an all-natural approach to pregnancy and parenthood and by the time her oldest son started to show his own behavioral issues, she went full force into holistic living.

Through her personal and professional research at the time, she explored nutrition, diet, and energy healing. She was able to help her son by incorporating a more natural diet and addressing the energy within their household, most notably, electromagnetic frequencies like cell phones and WiFi—things that create energy that is incoherent with the body’s energy.

“For me, holistic living is being connected to nature, the source we all come from. I am happiest and most at peace when I’m connected with my kids and the natural world around us. Being connected to the source helps you connect to yourself and your soul, which is where happiness can be found.