Violence is a fact of life and yet there is no reason we can’t defend ourselves against attempts of violence, or better yet avoid trouble all together.  Knowledge is power and with a few common sense techniques you’ll be empowered to move about more freely and with greater confidence.  You may be surprised to learn the first rule of self defense is to avoid trouble, confrontation and dangerous situations.  This simple rule will keep you safe and out of harms way.  It’s amazing what a bit of thought and planning can do.

Self defense is one of the basic facts of life we must address to prevent unwanted attacks.  Let’s move on and explore how to eliminate threats of violence from our daily lives.

In Self Defense Protect Yourself Avoid Trouble

The first step is to avoid threats.

Be Aware;

• The first rule of thumb is to be aware of what’s going on around you.
• Be aware of the potential threat others can pose.
• Be aware of situations violent people look for and respond to.
• Last but not least, be aware of helpful information which provides you with the street smarts to avoid trouble.

Be confident;

• People who appear confident don’t make for easy prey.
• Those who appear nervous or scared attract the wrong sort of attention.
• Keep your head up, be confident, or fake it.
• Be careful not to flinch or jerk when someone approaches you with a question, in a matter of fact fashion keep walking as if on a mission none of which includes trouble.
• Don’t take this too far and act cocky it will only attract trouble.

Be cool;

• Don’t get in confrontations.
• While at a bar any trivial thing like, such as, who’s the better singer etc can fuel a hot head.
• What maybe kidding or light hearted banter could offend a hot headed drunk.
• Stay cool and avoid verbal brawls as drunks tend to get out of hand over such situations and a fight could break out.
• Keep a cool mouth!

Don’t Attract Attention;

• Do not wear a lot of fancy flashy jewelry.
• Do not pull out your high dollar phone, cash or iPad in public.
• Keep your pricey personal items concealed or at home if need be.

Run in Packs;

• Stick with your friends when walking home or hanging outside a club or theatre.
• There is security in numbers so keep with the pack and keep safe.

No Eye to Eye;

• Avoid direct eye contact if you sense someone looking you over or possibly sizing you up.
• Remain confident with your head up all the while ignoring them and moving on.

Avoid large groups;

• Do not walk through the middle of a large group of men.
• Cross the street or sidewalk before they notice you coming, do so casually and with your head up and stay on task!
• Look purposeful and self assured.

In Self Defense Protect Yourself Avoid Trouble

Follow Your Gut;

• When in doubt get out!
• If you feel threatened or smell trouble go the long way around getting away from the situation.
• It’s better to spend more time getting out of a bad place than to take the quick route! Avoid trouble!

At one time or another you will need to put these basic in self defense techniques to work.  Be confident knowing you know what to do and avoid to protect yourself and avoid trouble.

Much Love and Safety, Katie

In Self Defense Protect Yourself Avoid Trouble originally appeared on Freelance Writer Network on February 28, 2012.

One of the stereotypes of artists is that they are “starving artists.”  In truth, that can be true at the beginning of an artist’s career.  When an artist first starts out, they need to learn to market their work.  Marketing is not one of the classes taught in art school.  In my opinion, artists should be given some basic business skills in art school, but I guess that would probably add another year to the program.

New artists can do well by using the free marketing available to them.  There are lots of local and online services that are free or almost free that artists can start out with until they are earning enough income to pay for more expensive marketing.  Learning to market oneself as an artist is critical and will save an artist much disappointment.

What Types of Free Marketing Do You Take Advantage Of?

• Word of mouth
• Email
• Blogging
• Article writing
• Forums
• Home parties (like Tupperware parties)
• Displaying your art in local shops
• Wearing your work (if it is wearable)
• Putting a sign on your car
• Writing an email newsletter (collecting emails)

Start with People Who Know You

Everyone has a personal network of friends, relatives, and acquaintances.  Start with them and let them help you market your work. Here are some suggestions of how you can do this:

1. Give them samples of your work to wear, put in their office, or have in their home.
2. Ask them if you can have a showing or party in their home or office.  They invite people, and you sell your work. This can be a “Meet the Artist” event or a “Girls Night Out” or even a fundraiser.
3. Ask them if they know of any local shops or offices that would be willing to display your work.
4. Ask them for referrals to their friends and acquaintances.

Create a Free Store on Zazzle

I love Zazzle! Zazzle is a print on demand site that allows you to upload any images that belong to you and create items like cards, posters, t-shirts, and much more for absolutely no fee. Any time you sell an item, you get a percentage of the sale that is predetermined by you.

It is a great way to get known globally and only costs you the time to load your images and create products. They even have a global product create button to create a bunch at the same time.

You can add links to your blog or website or how to email you directly for custom products, and you can earn some extra money by selling products on Zazzle.

Blogging is Word of Mouth Online

Blogging is a terrific way to reach a lot of people in a short amount of time, and is also free if you use a blog service or about $10 per year if you host the blog on an outside site. As an artist, you can blog about how you create your pieces, what your creative process is, what you learn along the way, show pictures of your work, and actually sell your pieces right from your blog.

You can advertise your blog for free on forums, via Twitter, and through email. You can also invite guest artists to participate in your blog to bring attention to the blog. Blogs work best if they are related to a niche subject that people are searching for.

With a blog, you can create an RSS feed and send it to Twitter or other sites as soon as you post to the blog. This will create a following on each site that you feed it to. The more interest you create around your work, the more you will sell.  Think of this as “word of mouth” online.  It works just like “word of mouth” does.  One person tells a few others, and the word escalates exponentially instead of one at a time.

Display Your Art in Neighborhood Shops

You would be surprised at how many neighborhood shops are willing to display your art for you for free.  If you are a painter or photographer, try coffee shops and restaurants, possibly bookstores.

If you are a jeweler or fabric artist, try salons and spas.  There are also many galleries that offer consignment programs.  They may or may not have fees for this.  It is worth your time to find out.

I own a gallery here in Cleveland, Lake Erie Artists Gallery, but I don’t have enough room in the gallery for all the flat art I have here, so I asked the coffee shop two doors down if they would allow me to hand art there.  They loved the idea, and it is free advertising for the gallery.  Think of how many people come in and out of a coffee shop every day.  A lot!

Email is a Terrific Tool When Used Correctly

This day and age, just about everyone has an email. Email marketing is very popular, and here’s why. It is totally free. You can create an email mailing list by asking all your customers and potential customers for their emails. You do have to ask. They won’t just give it to you.

When you are first starting out you can just create a brief email newsletter on your own email and give information as to where you will be showing your work or how they can have a party in their home or whatever else you are promoting. You shouldn’t send more than one or two per month because people get tons of email and if you flood their inboxes they will remove you.

It is important to give people the option to remove themselves from your email list. If you spam them, they will never forgive you.

Make your emails positive and colorful. Try to grab their attention in the first few lines. People do read these even if they don’t read every one. This is one of the best marketing techniques out there for free.

Once you are making more money you can get a service like Constant Contact to send more professional emails. I use this service and it provides templates for emails, and is really easy to use. They do offer a free 60-day trial that you can try out for free.

Art Students: Marketing Tips originally appeared on Freelance Writer Network on February 27, 2012.

Is it just another play experience for the child?

Or is it something uniquely different?

And if it is different, why is that so?

What happens to the child as a possible result of the play therapy experience?

What are the dynamics of play therapy?

And what are the implications of it?

Children experiencing play therapy have spontaneously described it in many ways,

A seven-year-old boy, in the middle of a play therapy session, cried out:

“In here I chase my hate into a corner and turn it into a three-inch high toy soldier and beat hell out of it with the hammer. And all of a sudden I see my hate is really my fear. And my fear smothers me. Then I grab my fear and paint it on paper, I can make it big. I can make it small. I can tear it up and throw it in the waste basket and spit on it. There’s nothing to be afraid of if I just know what it is.”

A six-year-old girl who had had a series of operations and who was severely handicapped used the toys to play out her hospital experiences. She reassured the doll patients. And she denied their fears telling them repeatedly “Nothing would happen.” “It’s just a nice nap. You’ll be asleep and when you wake up everything will be wonderful.” But in her play the dolls cried out in protest to the attempt to deny the feelings that were overwhelming to the child. cried out in fear that no one understood how they really felt if they could say it was nothing. Over and over again she played out the agony of one who suffers and who seems to be unable to communicate adequately the deeply felt need to be understood. Outside the playroom at this time she still felt the need to deny her own feelings of fear and anxiety. But eventually she was able to recognize her own fee lings and by the recognition and ownership of them take the first step in gaining control of her feelings, rather than be controlled by them. One day she said to the therapist, “In this room are toys and dolls and water and doctors’ sets and hammers and rubber knives. But it is my operating room. It is a very special room. It has a one-way door on it. And in here what I do stays here with you and with me. And I can keep it here until I want to open the door and say ‘Get out! Go away! You can’t scare me any more. I’m not afraid of you any longer.’ Just a one-way door that only I have the right to open and to close.” This was her way of describing the experience.

There a re many different psychological rationales and methods known as psychotherapy. The overall objective is probably basic to all procedures: namely, to provide a relationship with the child that will enable him to utilize the capacities that are within him for a more constructive and a happier life as an individual and as a member of society. The degree to which this is achieved varies greatly with individual cases. The methods by which we seek to achieve the cooperative effort between the therapist and the client varies.

It seems evident that individuals are learning something a ll the time. It is a cumulative, integrative process. A baby is born into a completely new and different world of experience. With his first breath, he begins his long span of accumulating experiences. The first breath leads to the second breath- and while it is similar in process, it is not identical. The third breath is different from the preceding ones because of the changes in lung capacity, the experience of breathing, the process of adjusting to the outer world. And this begins the individual’s experience in a world of people and things. Life forces interact and the process of learning is underway.

Psychotherapy itself is a learning experience a very complex, cumulative, integrative, personal involvement. The individual’s perceptions of himself and his relationships to his world are as uniquely the individual’s as are his own heartbeats.

Efforts may be made to increase our understanding of how experiences are perceived by the individual and it may be possible to obtain a fairly close approximation of the individual’s perceptions.

However, the individual alone experiences the total impact of any personal involvement because he feels not single, isolated fee lings of the moment, but fee lings that a re created and colored by the affective accompaniment of his total experiences.

In psychotherapy we are dealing with emotionalized attitudes that have developed out of the individual’s past experiencing of himself in relation to others. These emotionalized attitudes influence his perception of himself as either adequate or inadequate, secure or in secure, worthy of respect or not worthy of respect, having personal worth or being deficient in this basic feeling.

His perception then, in turn, determines his behavior.

Photo by Carlos Gustavo Curado

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• foto carlos gustavo curado

What is Play Therapy? originally appeared on Freelance Writer Network on February 27, 2012.

There isn’t any way for any of us to understand exactly why Ohioans have been so hard hit by this particular monetary crisis. Even so, it is clear that Ohio has a prolonged road to go to come out of the impact with the foreclosure and repossession problems affecting the state. Major cities like Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati happen to be some of the most profoundly affected by both the quantity of subprime loans issued by banks and other lenders, and by the quantity of mortgage and foreclosure fraud and error. Sadly, part of becoming a large city also includes having the most financially at risk populations, who had been vulnerable for the subprime lending schemes that are now being uncovered by investigators in the county, state, and federal government.

Nevertheless, compounding that, the recession meant that even households with little or no risk as home owners have had 1 or both adults lose a job or vastly decrease their income or hours, and that has now put these households at danger of losing property by means of foreclosure.

In Ohio, the foreclosure rate is nevertheless quite high and showing no real slowing in the last six months. Even renters are at risk of their landlord going belly up or into foreclosure. And also the reality that you’ll find so many foreclosed homes being sold by means of short sales, or on the sheriff’s auction block drives the property values of surrounding homes down until the majority of the foreclosed houses are sold. One more problem is the neglect that has been found to be common when banks own property for a lengthy time period, because they have not been organized to take care of the property, and a lot of homes degrade in quality because of neglect of appropriate upkeep.

The only real solution to the financial problems facing Ohioans is an increase in jobs, a lot of of which come from sales of homes and new construction, but until enough folks are back to work in excellent paying jobs, and men and women have developed the confidence that their jobs are going to last, the economic system will stay sluggish, retaining these factors.

Ohio Foreclosure Continuing to Cause Problems for Ohio Residents originally appeared on Freelance Writer Network on February 26, 2012.

The memoir genre has undergone many changes over the years. If you have hopes of mainstream publication, you need to utilize all the tools available to writers. Even if you just plan to self-publish and give your memoir to family and close friends, the way you write it should keep respect for the readers’ intelligence and wants in mind.

Today’s readers want a memoir that reads like a fiction novel. Don’t get me wrong, they still want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They just want it written in a way that captures them from the beginning and doesn’t let go until the end.

Today’s reader is smart. They don’t have to be “told” every little thing. They like to think for themselves and draw conclusions based on the descriptions and storytelling style of the author.

It’s not as tall an order as you might think. Using the same tools and tips fiction writers use and the basic elements of a story, you  too can write a captivating story.

There are numerous books, articles and classes available for anyone wishing to write a memoir. The best advice for budding memoirists is to find your story and write it.

What is Memoir? originally appeared on Freelance Writer Network on February 26, 2012.

There is considerable evidence that every thought or emotion has some related physical effect, and that every change within the nervous system should have some psychological effect.

Although the precise nature of these correlations is not always known, the view that body and mind are constantly interacting in some way is now accepted by most psychologists.

The relationship between mind and body is particularly apparent in emotional states, especially those of fear and anger. When a person is in the grip of a powerful emotion his body undergoes changes, just as it does when he is asleep, ill or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Most people are familiar with such sensations as a dry mouth when they are nervous, or a racing heart when they are afraid or excited. Such physical changes can be measured – for instance, by recording pulse rate and breathing, or by measuring the dilation of the pupils of the eyes.

An emerging trend in this area of research is that different individuals have different physiological ways of responding to the same emotional situation.

The fact that these physiological responses are not automatic in the same manner as simple reflexes such as the knee jerk has some intriguing implications and applications. It is possible that these responses may be subject to voluntary control. This is a rather heretical suggestion, since it has long been held that physiological responses such as heart-rate and blood pressure are involuntary reflexes that are beyond the province of learning. But if these responses can be modified by learning, then a whole new range of therapeutic possibilities is opened up. For example, if it is possible to teach people to lower their blood pressure, it is likely that we can dramatically reduce premature death due to heart attacks.

The key concept in whether involuntary responses are subject to learning involves knowledge of the state of a particular system in the body. We do not, for example, generally know whether our blood pressure is high, low or normal. However it is now quite easy to provide an individual with electronic ‘feed-back’ to indicate blood pressure – perhaps in the form of an instrument that sounds a tune when the blood pressure drops below a certain value. This procedure is commonly referred to as biofeedback.

It is by now abundantly clear that a variety of emotional and stressful events can influence the body. These influences can be beneficial and adaptive in the short term; however, prolonged stress can lead to headaches, asthma, ulcers and heart disease. Furthermore, even when obvious stress-induced diseases do not occur , stress can complicate many other disease processes.

This area of the study of the interactions between emotional stress and disease is referred to as psychosomatic medicine. It has been estimated that from 50-80% of medical problems have a significant psychosomatic component.

Emotions and Stress originally appeared on Freelance Writer Network on February 25, 2012.

It is a book that lists the origin of the words of a language and gives their meanings, usually in alphabetical order. Often there is also information regarding the pronunciation, the origin of words, and how they are used.

Strangely enough, it took hundreds of years for even the idea of such a book to develop. The first time the word “dictionary” was used it appeared in its Latin form, dictionarius, which means “a collection of words.” This was about the year 1225, and it was the title of a manuscript containing Latin words to be* memorized. This dictionarius was used only in the classroom in the teaching of Latin.

In the fifteenth century, English words began to appear in diction#aries, but they were used only to help the study of Latin. In one of them, about twelve thousand English words appeared, each with its Latin equivalent.

What is considered to be the first real English dictionary was printed in 1552. This book still had a Latin title, and the study of Latin was part of its purpose, but it also was useful for those who wanted to learn to read English. What makes it the first English dictionary is that at last the English word was first defined in English and then came the Latin translation.

This dictionary was compiled by a man called Richard Huloet, and he had quite a sense of humor! For example, here is something from this first dictionary: “Black (or blewe) spotte in the face or bodye, made with a stroke, as when a wife hath a blewe eye, she sayth she hath stombled on hir good man his fyste.”

Gradually, more and more books of this type appeared. Many of them contained only a few thousand words, especially chosen by the author for some specified purpose. One such dictionary, for instance, didn’t have the words arranged by their initial letters but by the spelling of their final syllables. This was to help poets and it was a sort of rhyming dictionary.

In fact, the compilers of early dictionaries made no attempt to include all words. They were satisfied just to explain the hard words. From these beginnings came our modern dictionaries some of which include all the words in the English language.

History of the Dictionary originally appeared on Freelance Writer Network on February 25, 2012.

When you think about it, vintage clothing items and vintage home decor items are already made.  Any resources that have been used in their making have already been used up.  You can buy vintage items to wear as is, or you can take vintage items, and recycle them into new fashions with your own flair.

The best thing about this type of recycling is that vintage is in style, so you don’t even have to worry about being out of style.  Besides, it is so much more fun to make your own unique style anyway.

If shopping for vintage fashions is new to you, a good place to start is your own closet, then your mother’s closet, and even your grandmother’s.  There are probably years worth of clothing that is no longer being worn that you can wear as is, or repurpose by adding or subtracting elements.  Once you have exhausted this supply of vintage items, then the next step is to visit your neighborhood vintage shops, and second hand shops.  Many of these shops carry clothing, furniture and accessories.

Online, there are many sources of vintage clothing and furniture, but the best place to start is Ebay.  Ebay has numerous sellers from across the globe selling just about every kind of vintage item that you can think of, from collectibles, rare antiques, to day to day items like salt and pepper shakers.  Ebay is a lot of fun to shop, and the more you search, the better you will get in finding what you are looking for.  You can search by manufacturer, time period, location, and type of item.  Just keep putting in search terms until you find the item that you want.

Vintage items are usually less expensive than new items unless you are searching for a very rare item.  So that is another reason to shop vintage.  You can save the planet, look chic, and save money at the same time.

Image credit

Shopping Vintage is Not Only Stylish, But Eco Friendly originally appeared on Freelance Writer Network on February 24, 2012.

The tolerances indicate by how much a dimension can be slightly larger or smaller than the desired value, and are measured in micrometers or thousandths of an inch. A craftsman would be hard-pressed to maintain such accuracy and output would be very low.

Machining metal involves cutting it with a machine tool such as a milling machine (miller), planer, router, or lathe.

Millers hold the work still while rotating cutters pass over it. Planers draw large items past a fixed cutter, whereas a router resembles a drill that mills the surface instead of boring holes.

Grinders use another method of machining, but instead of having cutting tools of very hard metal (or sometimes even diamond) they use wheels with surfaces made up of millions of hard fragments, each of which takes a small cut.

Turret lathes rotate the workpiece while tools are arranged in various positions to cut it.

Since 1950 many completely new ways of working with metal have been brought from the research laboratory to the production plant. The aircraft industry pioneered chemical milling, in which sheets of any size are etched away in baths of acid or other corrosive chemicals. Portions of sheet can be protected by a surface mask that prevents them from being attacked. The rest can be eaten away in a controlled way, with no scratches or machining marks on the surface.

This is important because even the smallest scratch or imperfection can induce metal fatigue.

Electrochemical machining (ECM) is a variation in which the liquid bath is not corrosive but an electrolyte (carrier of electric current). The workpiece is connected in an electric circuit and then eaten away by a shaped electrode, rather like electroplating in reverse.

Another electrical method is spark erosion, in which even the hardest parts are gradually shaped by millions of sparks. Yet another, and totally different, electrical method is electromagnetic forming, when massive currents are suddenly switched through magnetic coils that slam the workpiece against shaped dies.

In contrast there are other new methods of extreme delicacy used for shaping on a microscopic scale.

Ultrasonic machining is a form of grinding, useful for extremely hard material or non-metals that must be finely shaped. Electron-beam machining uses a concentrated beam of electrons to melt away parts not wanted.

Laser machining does the same with an intense beam of light. Such methods can be used to shape electronic circuits that would easily fit on a pin’s head.

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• craftman tools in machining lab

Using Machine Tools originally appeared on Freelance Writer Network on February 20, 2012.

The bed-wetting child, in psychological terms, is expressing a protest, or unconsciously asserting a desire to return to the most protected phase of life: babyhood. It symbolizes a regression due to a lack of security in the child’s relationships with the world of reality. Such a lapse may arise from illness, from over-protection or neglect on the part of parents, or from excessive demands by parents for affection or for grown-up standards. Frequently, bed wetting arises after a period of normal control and in such cases there is generally some immediate or sudden threat to the child’s security.

The arrival of a new baby creating a jealousy situation, the loss of a loved person, the commencement of school-such events may disturb the stable inner world of childhood with resultant bed wetting. Often frustrated aggression, especially if associated with feelings of guilt and inferiority, is the psychological background of enuresis.

Habit training has a place in treatment but, fundamentally, treatment must be directed to eliminating the psychological factors which are adversely affecting the child. Expert investigation at a Child Guidance Clinic is recommended. A careful study must be made of the child’s reactions to the members of the family to discover the underlying insecurities and frustrations.

The causes must be made clear to the parents and their co-operation obtained in rectifying these. Every effort must be made to remove the sense of inferiority and guilt so often associated with bed wetting. The child must be encouraged and given confidence. Fluid-restriction is usually of little value as is also the case with drug treatment. In older children, suggestion through hypnosis may prove helpful if combined with efforts to remove the basic psychological troubles.

Bed wetting is admittedly a difficult disorder to cure, but in view of its social implications every effort should be made in the early stages to effect a cure before the disorder has become a confirmed habit.

Incoming search terms:

• how to remove the habit of bedwetting

How to deal with Bed Wetting originally appeared on Freelance Writer Network on February 19, 2012.