Courage and Change

We all go through change. Every new moment in time there is change.

With every new moment the wind changes, the sun moves closer to sunset, our minds think a new thought and a new feeling engulfs our body. Change is the one thing in life that is guaranteed. Change is inevitable. So why do we freak out when things change in our world?

During a week of many great changes for myself I freaked out, I cried, I laughed and ran around in circles flailing my arms in panic, then I stopped.

Change is inevitable and is always, but we can change how we respond. I STOPPED. I thought what do I need to do to accept and flow with change? COURAGE.

So, I stopped and I asked what does courage mean to me? This is what I found...

Continue to walk towards your destiny Outshine yourself from within Unify all parts of who you are Reach for your highest potential Actions speak louder than words Give to yourself and others (and be kind) Expect great things What does courage mean to you? Miss Creative gave me a lovely pendant a while back to remind me of this.

Creating harmony and balance...

Following a week of many extremes, I am in the midst of create some balance in my world.

Last week was my final day of 'having' to go to work. I took back some power and gave myself the freedom to be independent. So I chose a weekend of music, dancing and sunshine at the wonderful Jazz Fest in New Orleans. Full of colour, light and high spirits.

Now it is time to create some balance.

To help re-create my balance after a week of extremes I have began a detox. Day 1 is almost complete. Which in itself has created extremes of feeling great, to also feeling less than great as my body asks where it's morning coffee is. It has been over 10 years that I have not had my morning cup of coffee.

Creating balance to maintain harmony is a task, it takes courage, respect and clarity.

I am excited to see how this detox experience will offer harmony within my world. If all we do is work (or play) our family, friends, plants and animals suffer. We create the suffering by choosing extremes. This dis-harmony we create by living in extremes trickles into our relationships, emotions and well-being. To witness the trickle effect, that when you nurture one part of your soul, the other parts quickly flow as well. Nurturing your body and allowing it the space to cleanse, rejuvenate also creates space in your world. As old habits dissolve, it offers room for new experiences intended towards creating harmony and balance.

With juice in hand, here is a cheers to creating harmony and balance within our worlds.

In mid-air

I feel like I am flying.

There is space, there is chaos, there are possibilities

Work is coming to a close, with many possibilities ahead.

I finished my Energy Kinesiology program, which is only just the beginning.

I have that moment when you stop and you contemplate where you are at.

In one mind, I feel as though I have thrown all my cards in the air and have a sense of complete freedom. Like when you go skydiving. You take a leap of faith. As you plummet towards the earth, you have a sense of stillness, complete freedom.

Yet, at the same time another part of the mind is in complete chaos. Trying to control and figure out the next steps. It worries about the future and the past. It blindly tries to grasp to something tangible.

I am finding myself between these two minds lately. One of stillness, one of chaos.

All I know is it feels right. There is a sense of clearness and clarity. Every fiber of my muscles, every nucleus of my community of cells that work together to be me, knows that all is good.

As the talented (and very insightful) Miss Creative always says, everything is ALWAYS OK!

So as I head into the stillness and chaos of life and experience what transpires my aim is to keep an open heart and clarity of mind to follow my intuition.

Making room for the garden to grow!

It has been a BIG week…

After a trip to the beautiful city of Portland (City of Roses) I decided to clear some space and resigned from my position as a Staff Nurse after 5 years of service. At the same time I am graduating from my Kinesiology course from ICOHA after having completed my final case studies (yippee)!

The time had come to create some space for my passion of wellness in healthcare rather than the focus being on ‘dis-ease’. Also, to create room for me to practice kinesiology and help facilitate some positive energy out there in the world.

So now...

I embark on a new journey of the unknown. I feel a little bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz (an all time fave). I know this is a path I must walk, not really knowing what may come or where it might lead, but that is OK. It is invigorating to have that feeling of endless possibilities and the world at your feet.

I feel as though the seeds have been planted in my garden.

I am ready to nurture my garden, as the roses bloom and flourish and maybe even a few surprises, a tulip or gardenia…

So now I venture down my path as my garden sprouts with a sense of excitement, anticipation and hope…knowing that the best is yet to come!

So how does one at consciously?

You are most probably thinking how does one eat consciously.

Maybe you are thinking ‘of course I am conscious when I eat, other wise I would be sleeping right’.

Well, there is another way to look at it, some people may call it intuitive eating. But what it really means is to pay attention to your body and mind in regards to how you nourish your body.

By paying attention to our mind and body we can reconnect and learn what our body REALLY needs, not what we want to satisfy our mind. We can learn what our body is trying to connect with. Is the chocolate bar at 4 pm a replacement for a nourishing hug? Or the Thai dinner an attempt to create some spice in your life?

Learning about our instincts can help us reconnect with our inner selves, which enables us to come from our true nature. Which instinctually nourishes us for our needs.

So how can you eat consciously? I hear you ask.

Well the following are a few simple things you can do every day (you most probably do them already, but we often ignore what we know is best)

Pay attention to when you are hungry, and if you are EAT. Who cares what time it is, your body is saying it is hungry. LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. Meal times serve a great purpose for bringing people together, creating social interaction and give structure but they do not need to rule your life and dictate to you when you are hungry.

Secondly, SLOW DOWN. How often do you ignore your hunger because you are to busy or it’s not lunchtime (yet). Then, when you do have time or it is ‘time to eat’, you are sooooo hungry that you eat so fast it is as though you are possessed. And then inevitably you eat too much and feel ‘stuffed’ (the feeling of being over full is a whole other story). Do you know that is takes 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that is has been fed and it is satisfied? The moral of the story is slow down.

And remember to ENJOY your food. Food is one of the few things that is necessary for life, just like water and air. It was of the greatest pleasures life offers us on so many levels. Respect the process.

CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT. An environment that enables to enjoy the food, take it slow and respect the concept that you are taking time to nourish your body. Respect yourself and reconnect the mind with the body. When you nourish yourself you are in a much better place physical, emotionally and spiritually to nourish others in your world.

Lastly, REMEMBER your experiences. Pay attention to what foods, environments, people felt good, made you feel good and nourished. Opposingly, pay attention to what made you feel bad, gave you that sinking, heavy feeling or made you wake up the next day feeling groggy and with no energy.

Just ONE WEEK of paying attention and offering yourself the respect to pay attention and reconnect can have a profound impact on your awareness. (Why not try it, just for one week)

Nourish yourself wisely!

My Year to Flourishing

Energy flows were attention goes. Wayne Dyer often talks about being careful what you contemplate, as that is what you will create. He makes a great point "The Wright brothers didn’t contemplate the staying on the ground of things. Alexander Graham Bell didn’t contemplate the noncommunication of things. Thomas Edison didn’t contemplate the darkness of things" So, what you focus on, talk about each day, put your time and energy into everyday is what you will create.That can either be a good thing or a less than ideal thing. The choice is always our at every given moment. Hence, I decided to direct my attention to create, sustain and flourish this year!Which is were this little video sprouted from. Way back in November 2008, when my dear twin sister was reading 'The Secret' and was all into creating a mind-mapping video she decided that I should make one too. Not much happened there. And the little video was forgotten about. Until recently, I stumbled upon that little video once again from way back then. And had a moment of WOW, I forgot all about this. I think it may be time to finish this thing off. Hence, here I am with my little video that I decided to direct some focused energy into putting my mind-map into a pictorial format. So my energy can flow where my attention is going. I am a rather excited.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Conscious Eating – What do you think about when you are eating?

To continue on with the theme of you are what you eat. Have you ever paid attention to what you are thinking when you eating? - Why you chose to eat that double cheeseburger, cookie or even a salad? - What drove you to eat your lunch today (besides hunger)? - Have you ever stopped to pay attention to what your body is telling you? We are the experts of our own bodies, we know what it needs to be it’s best. Although often we do not treat our bodies with the respect and acknowledge that it has a great deal to tell us to help us make the better choices. Sometimes we forget that our bodies (not our minds) knows what fuel it needs. (food is fuel for the body) We have the responsibility of taking care of our bodies, to pay attention to what fuel it needs to get you through your day, to go to the gym, thrive during that meeting and dance till dawn! Often though, we make our nutritional choices based on what our brain wants, not what our bodies need. These choices are usually driven by our emotions, based on our beliefs, values and desires. For example, mum’s roast dinner conjures up all those warm feelings of Sunday evenings sitting around the table with the family. Or that ice-cream cone you had every summer day at the beach when you were a kid, or the chocolate to mend a lonely heart. How much to these feelings and emotions drive your nutritional choices? Even sometimes, we are so disconnected that despite having the best intentions of being healthy and nourishing our bodies, we have the mac’n’cheese (with extra sauce) or the chocolate (with whipped cream) to fuel our emotions, instead of fueling our bodies. How often do we stop and pay attention to what is driving our nutritional choices, is it our bodies or our emotions that we are fueling? Paying attention to the answers to this question can offer us invaluable insight into what is driving our nutritional choices and help us to increase our awareness and be more connected and in-line with who we truly are and can become? Tom Venuto of Burn the Fat talks about four stages of nutritional awareness to help you understand where your Conscious Eating level is at. Stage 1: Unconscious incompetence - you are eating the wrong foods in the wrong amounts and you’re not even aware of it. (You don’t know what you’re doing and you don’t know that you don’t know what you’re doing) Stage 2: Conscious incompetence - you are eating the wrong foods in the wrong amounts, but for some reason, you now become aware of it. This is often because of a “hitting bottom” experience or an “I’m not gonna live like this anymore” epiphany. (You don’t know what you’re doing and now you know that you don’t know what you’re doing!) Stage 3: Conscious competence - you educate yourself and begin to eat the right foods, but it takes a lot of thought and effort to eat the right things in the right amounts. (You know what you’re doing, but you have to think about it and work very hard to make it happen because you’re using willpower and still learning)

Stage 4: Unconscious competence - you’ve made the conscious effort to eat the right foods in the right amounts and you’ve counted calories and kept a nutrition journal for long enough and with enough repetition that these behaviors become habits and a part of your lifestyle. (You know what you’re doing and you do it easily and automatically without having to think about it).

Where would you say your awareness is at? Why not tomorrow or you next meal, take a moment and pay attention to how your body feels, what your mind is thinking, what is going on around you that is making you make the choice you are making? Increasing our awareness about what we are putting in our bodies, help us nourish our-selves on so many levels - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Once we start to raise our awareness and connect with our bodies, not only do we instinctively make healthier choices, but out bodies flourish and our minds become clearer. You are helping to create healthier, more vibrant you just by paying attention to the fuel you choice to nourish your body with. Next time, I will share some tips on HOW to eat consciously and improve your fuel.