A new bilingual La Leche League group has been launched in the Pays de Gex, offering support to breastfeeding and pregnant moms.
The new group is especially useful for expat women who are potentially far removed from their original support networks of family and friends, and who might find breastfeeding challenging in the early days. La Leche League fills this void by connecting mothers with one another to share their experiences and encourage each other to become confident in their mothering skills, while also providing up-to-date information and breastfeeding research.
La Leche League (LLL) is an international, non-profit organization with the mission to give information and encouragement to mothers wishing to breastfeed their babies, and is run by volunteer leaders. Accredited leaders are moms who have breastfed themselves, been trained and are keeping up-to-date on current breastfeeding research.
© Samonot Photography
When it comes to celebrating secular weddings, Marylin Rebelo, founder of A Lovely Day, knows just how important it can be for couples to create the perfect ceremony.
When she married her own husband in 2013, she dreamed of having a personalized ceremony outdoors, reflecting their own lifestyle and representing their own vision of their commitment as a couple. While they had a fairly clear idea of what they wanted, it was nevertheless very difficult to find help preparing for a non-religious celebration, as secular weddings were still relatively unknown at that time.
However, not to be deterred, she set about organizing her own wedding ceremony and what a revelation it was! Not only did she succeed in creating her own authentic and original wedding, but she felt compelled to help others organize their own bespoke wedding ceremonies as well.
Jennie Chen Volet is a highly qualified and experienced hypnotherapist, who has recently opened an office in the Geneva Plainpalais area. Keen to spread the word about her new business, she offered a session to Lisa Cirieco-Ohlman last November. Lisa was suffering from unrestful sleep due to clenching and grinding her teeth. Would hypnotherapy help?
Before she went, Lisa asked those around her if they had ever tried hypnotherapy and what impression they had of it. Most had preconceptions involving losing control and being under the power of someone else... how wrong they were!
Jennie's smile, welcome, and calm disposition were a welcome sight at the rendez-vous. “Sit down, take off your shoes, put your feet up, and let's talk. I'll explain what I am going to do, that you will be conscious all the time, that at any moment you can scratch your nose if you like! Your mind has layers of conscious, preconscious, and subconscious. All I am going to do is lead you there. Once we are at the subconscious we will try to unlock the reasons for clenching and grinding your teeth. Once we have discovered the basis we can find alternatives. Understanding is the key.”
Wikipedia’s definition of “understanding” is “a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to think about it and use concepts to deal adequately with that object.”
Hiba Giacoletto, an experienced psychologist and coach - and long-time knowitall.ch guest blogger – has just launched a new business in Geneva and Lausanne aimed at teaching clients “skills for living”.
Called Wiser Humans, Hiba’s new business is targeted at all those people who sometimes find that life seems a little too crazy, either because they are feeling out of control, or stuck, or lost … or any number of other adjectives that describe that hopeless feeling you get when things are just not going right!
With a Masters Degree in Psychology from the University of Lausanne, and qualified as a certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN), Hiba has, for the last few years, been running her own food-oriented coaching business called Healthwise. However, as her individual and group session work has increasingly taken her in the direction of more general issues to do with psychology, she has now decided to set up “Wiser Humans” because, as she puts it, “being human is hard” and we could all benefit from being a little bit wiser!
Hiba told us, “I created Wiser Humans because I noticed there is so much unhelpful information out there like ‘just choose happiness’ or ‘just think positive!’. And then we are told there is something wrong with us if we can’t do this.”
We have now updated our list of Christmas church services for 2016. If you would like to attend one of the many services happening in Geneva, Vaud and neighboring France this year, please take a look at the following list, which we have compiled from the websites of local churches. Some of them are French-speaking but most are English-speaking churches. Please check the websites before setting out, in case any of the times or locations have changed.
If your local church has not yet posted details of their services, please come back and check the article again later, as we will update the list when details become available.
If you know about other services in your area, please let us know.
