Love To Colour? ~ Colouring with Cats #112 ~ Getting Your OM’s on with Mandalas on Mondays ~ **Your Crystal Questions Answered** Could An Amethyst Crystal Cause Fluid Retention, and What Crystals Might Help With Stress?

Supurr Monday greetings beautiful furiends

Thanks for dropping by today, we love our Mondays with mew guys and last week we had two healing crystal questions, the furst from our epic pal's Memories of Eric and Flynn, and it is:

Could a natural amethyst crystal cause fluid retention within the body?  

This really intrigued the P.A. as she's never read or come across anything in her books, suggesting that amethyst causes fluid build-up within the body.

So she did a little research and apparently on a couple of sites it does say that amethyst can cause fluid retention, stomach bloating, abdomen pain, acne, dizziness, nausea and breast pain, just to name a few 'side-effects'. Also, there was mention of severe allergic reactions, including skin rashes, migraines and possible dermatological issues. 

Ok, now mew've got us scared considering the amount of amethyst we have at BBHQ, and if it's that bad we should all in serious trouble!

However there was no real substance or anything to substantiate those claims on the websites offering this information, and so the P.A. dug a little further, and it would appear, though purrlease don't quote us; that there is actually a pharmaceutical drug called Amethyst (check Web MD) which is a hormonal medication, and some of its side-effects are exactly the same as described on those crystal websites and we mean exactly the same.

So to us, it would appear that some peeps with very little knowledge have searched: side-effects of amethyst and the Web MD page has come up, and they have misread and mistakenly used a real medications interactions and got it seriously confused with the properties of amethyst crystals. 

And we go back to the old saying; a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It really is, especially when posting information online.

Let's head back to the original question; could a natural amethyst crystal cause fluid retention? The P.A.'s purrsonal opinion is, no it does not, though don't quote her on that. Amethyst is one of the best stones to have, a fantastic all-rounder which if mew're new to crystals is probably one of the very furst stones mew will ever get your mittens on and start your collection with.

Amethyst has many pawsitive attributes, too many to mention today, but if there was only one stone we were allowed to have it would be amethyst.  

Fudge highly recommends amethyst crystals too, as demonstrated below; he's purrfectly balanced in his purractice today.

Now, let's move on to our second question this week from our epic pals, The Tabbies of Trout Towne;

What crystals could help with stress? 

Oh guys, stress is horrendous and right now we know it's off the charts with most peeps around the wurld. Managing stress is tough too, so here's our top 5 list of crystals that could help reduce stress:

peridot

apophyllite

morganite

lapis lazuli

black tourmaline

These crystals could help transmute the negative effects of stress. When the P.A. is suffering from acute stress she tries as much as pawsible to use a multi-pronged approach to stress-management, here's her purrsonal stress buster regime; gentle daily exercise such as walking or yoga, breathing exercises - see Smooch below, eating more leafy greens, upping vitamins for a short time only and using diluted lavender or orange essential oils, these scents are very soothing. 

The P.A. also finds that making/sewing stuff helps combat the negative effects of stress and supports restoring balance. And most impawtantly, when she's acutely stressed taking extra rest when needed seems to help, sometimes doing nothing and taking a break is the way to go; literally stopping to smell the roses from time to time is an excellent tonic, especially in this digital age.

Guys, we hope we've been able to help today, and if mew have any more crystal related queries, such as: how to cleanse crystals, I'm a libra what's my birthstone or I really like Herkimer diamonds, are they good for crystal healing...etc, let us know in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer them next week.

(disclaimer; we are not health or medical practitioners, these are our own views only.) 

Anyhoo, we do hope mew've all have a totally pawesome weekend, and that mew're ready fur the week ahead, so let's jump right in and start as always with our little breathing exercise, which we're sure mew all have down paw by now...  but if mew've furgotten, stop what mew're doing fur a moment and take deep fulfilling breaths; counting to five on the inhale and five on the exhale:

Breathe in

Breathe out

Breathe in

Breathe out

Breathe in

Breathe out

Smooch is here again to offur mew assistance in getting your OM's on and Zen Harmonies happening, so just press play, close your eyes and follow his instructions.



Don't mew feel better already?  I know we do!

All the mandala's featured are created & designed by us, aka The B Team.

Here's this weeks mandala.

Right-click image to save and/or print the mandala.

And here's our finished version... this week we used shades of purple with a splash of green and blue. Plus a tiny bit of pale orange.

Coloured on the iPad and then transformed in Prisma, this time we chose the effect - pomegranate. 

Don't furget mew can download** our free Colouring with Cats here:- Books One, Two, Three and Four.

Colouring with Cats Book One

Colouring With Cats Book Two ~ Easy Mandala's 

Colouring With Cats Book III

Colouring With Cats Book IV

[**see our download policy here]

*    *    * 

So on that note, we'll say bye fur now and hope to see mew on Wednesday when we're back with the Pet Parade Blog Hop and if mew haven't joined in yet, click here to add your blog link!

Until then

Keep Calm and Colour OM!

Oodles of purrs

Wing Commander Basil & The B Team xox

Free Lockdown Activities

And don't furget while we're all on lockdown, we The B Team have got your six and can entertain mew fur weeks; there are oodles of colouring pages to download and not furgetting the colouring books too.  There's a page full of crafting projects to keep your mittens making stuff, and if books are your thing, check our Amber's Book Reviews fur your next pawesome read! 

There are some epically exciting adventure stories too, so read our thrilling tales episode by epic episode.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Capt'n Basil & His Motley Crew 

Fast, Furry and Dangerous

The Clockwurk Labyrinth 

We've also added some new BrainTraining posts, just to keep your little grey cells in tip-top condition. And we’ll be adding extra jigsaw puzzles to the puzzle page.

If mew want to see more of what's been happening at BBHQ since the lockdown began, check out our Instagram feed where mew can see our daily diary and exclusive videos that we don't put here on the blog.

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Graphics created with paid licence www.canva.com