Tag: Challenge

21 Day Challenge – Day 1 – Just Weight

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Dumbbells with towel isolated on white

A little over 8 years ago I embarked on this holistic health odyssey. I wanted to make food my friend, understand it and use it properly. I became a Certified Holistic Health Coach. I gave advice to others as I continued to play with strategies for myself. Everything I did worked. My energy was high, my weight was low (enough) and I felt great!

Then somehow all those things I’d let go of crept back in; foods, habits, stop me if you’ve heard this one.

As I continued to see clients as a health coach and then as a yoga instructor I felt like a complete charlatan. I was a fraud. Am. Oh, I still give great advice. It’s intuitive, tailored to the person in front of me seeking my knowlege and always done with love. I can see exactly what they need to do or not do, add or subtract.

Why can’t I do that for myself? Why do I not take my own gilded advice? Why is it so easy to keep promises we don’t even want to make to other people, but even easier to break the promises we felt so strongly about when we made them, to ourselves?

This past week I attended a five-day yoga retreat. We ate vegetarian food, mostly organic, did yoga daily and yoga nidra twice a day. I was feeling lighter physically and energetically and then…

On the way home a friend and I stopped at Five Guys. I ingested a WHOLE double hamburger. With. The. Bun. A shared “little” fries and a healthy helping of sweetea. Then later I waddled across the street to a friend’s barbeque where I drank more than my share of wine, ate potato chips with dip, then a baked potato – you know with toppings, of course – and more wine.

Disclaimer: I am a full quarter Irish and that 25% would like potatoes 100% of the time please.

I have no such ancestry to explain the wine.

Anyway.

I had an appointment with a trainer today to get weighed and measured like a 4H heifer. But it was good – not the numbers, but the experience and now the knowledge.

I worked out. I tried to explain to the 20 something ex-Air Force soldier that I was not in a hurry. I want to be pushed, yes, but not immobilized. I want to have goals but none of them include a bikini. I also retained my right to say no and stop when I felt my body was physically defeated. But I only pulled that card once, I wanted to push a little. I need to push.

After the workout with weights I did 30 minutes on the treadmill.  And I felt great.

Tomorrow is yoga.

For me, it’s about closing the gap on that feeling of incongruence between the wise health coach and yoga teacher inside and the squishy, tired woman on the outside.

It’s time to walk the talk. One step at a time.

 

21 Day Challenge – Taking it to the Body

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bigstock-Beautiful-young-woman-jumping--15095405

It’s Challenge Time again! If you’ve been playing along, you’ll remember we added the good stuff in on our first challenge. Then we fell in love with our own bodies – right? – on the second challenge. Now it’s time to work with that beautiful beast known as the human form. This is more about uncovering your best, most healthy vehicle. Not about bikini season, that wedding or high school reunion. It’s not about a number on the scale or on a tag.

Think energy. Dr. John Douillard (you’ll hear more about him later) says we should have the same amount of energy all day long. When we get up, in the afternoon, when it’s time for bed. Is that happening for you?

Think radiance. Think joy. Think nourishment. This is not punishment, on the contrary it is the best gift you could give to yourself.

This could be about weight loss or weight gain. Maybe it’s about sleeping well or eating better. All valid goals, but it is also about longevity and sustainability so move into it at a pace that works for you.

At its core, this challenge is about using the body as a gateway to YOU. It is the act of sloughing off and peeling away the dust and detritus of daily living and stress so that the inner light that is YOU can shine through.

So, are you ready?

I will chronicle what I am doing daily and offer potential challenges for you. I am not looking for fellow travelers on this well-worn path. I am looking for your insights about you as you navigate food labels, personal trainers, yoga instructors and the ever present well-meaning friend. I am holding you up. I know you’ve got this. I know that even if you are at your peak, there is something you can change. Maybe the challenge for you is doing less physical activity.

The first week will be dedicated to movement. You know, exercise. It is your task to bring movement into your life everyday. Over and above walking from your car to your office or around the grocery store. Go to the gym, do yoga, swim, dance, ride a bike. If you’re already pretty active this week should be a breeze. If not, get out there and go for a walk. Your body will thank you.

I look forward to seeing you along the way these next 21 days.

Sniff, Swoon, Repeat

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bee IMG_5944

The sense of smell is our most powerful memory sense.

Coconut suntan oil transports me to hot, lazy summers in Myrtle Beach, SC. Boy crazy, junior high, not a care in the world. I can hear ELO fade as the DJ announces ‘WKZQ, Myrtle Beach,’ followed by the summer ditty, “Time to turn, so you won’t burn.” I can feel my skin, tight with dried salt water and my hair stiff with sand, my lips pregnant with the brine of the ocean.

The smell of burning wood evokes chilly autumn nights in northern Virginia. I can see the curl of smoke coming out of the townhouse chimneys. I am cozy, safe, and warm as I watch the blustery air outside kick up the last of the season’s fallen leaves. Soon, night would fall long before an acceptable hour, causing me to burrow into the warmth of grandma’s crocheted blankets and warm woolen socks. Wool. I love the smell of wool.

If winter were defined by one scent, it would have to be soup. Soups, stews, and pot roasts, all seem to tickle the same memory; walking into the warm house from the cold, shedding my winter coat and gloves and holding my hands over the steam of the simmering pot on the stove; the windows in the kitchen sweating with condensation while the tile floors stayed cold.

But perhaps the fragrance that causes me to swoon the most is honeysuckle in Maryland in the spring. Sitting high on a hill, climbing a fence that separates me from a busy street, vines wrap and tangle in on themselves, full of white flowers. I would pluck one flower at a time, pinch the end and suck the nectar from its center.

Here, in Florida, honeysuckle struggles in the sun, unable to grow. Instead, we have the gift of orange blossoms. In the spring I drive with my windows down, slowing down as I pass by groves, and inhale as deeply as I can hoping to store some of the sweet, light essence. On a windy day this perfume can be carried for miles, and like the tiniest present, it slips just beneath my nose, stopping me in my tracks. Closing my eyes, I inhale gratefully, intoxicated.

It’s hard for me to imagine a world without aromas, so much memory is wrapped up in them. A single sniff of diesel fuel takes me to the Princess couch of my grandparent’s sailboat, just behind the helm, as we motor out to sea. From that unlikely smell, a million pleasant memories flood my awareness.

Without scent, would it all be lost?

Not lost, perhaps, but certainly without that instant, surprise trip down memory lane. Scent is the key that unlocks the door to faded memories, infusing them with fresh color, enchanting us anew.

Daily Prompt:  Nosey Delights. From the yeasty warmth of freshly baked bread to the clean, summery haze of lavender flowers, we all have favorite smells we find particularly comforting. What’s yours?

Shiny Thing Syndrome

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birdy IMG_1893

I am a master procrastinator. Not proud, just practical. I don’t know that it’s that I really want to put things off, it’s just that I have so many things I could or should be working on that I shut down. I stare into space, usually my magical backyard, and wait for the priority to float to the top. Often it’s a nap, so I work on that first.

But, yesterday I took a little road trip from Procrastination to Distraction. Having spent the entire morning in Completion I felt no guilt about this. Especially since I was beckoned to move farther along the path of avoidance by the delicate warbling of a feathered friend.

Having accepted his invitation to the concert, I slipped out my back door and stealthily sought him out with my camera. He sat on a lower branch and was so into his own story, beak aloft, eyes closed, that I was able to get right under him to take his photo. Perhaps that was his plan all along.

I watched him for some time, his throat vibrating as he pontificated on the state of the weather and pesticides; lack of worms and suitable mates. On occasion his tone would change, becoming more conversational, understanding, softer. His passion was clear.

In order to reach a broader audience he would hop to the next higher branch, then the next higher tree.  Satisfied he had conveyed his feelings appropriately or dismayed his calls had gone into the ether unheard, he flew away.

I thanked him, hopped back into my mental convertible and headed back to Procrastination. A little sad to leave Distraction, the land of shiny things and birdsong, I lingered for just a moment to see if something else would catch my eye, extending my stay. Not today. My mission complete, I turned the old rag top around glancing back only once  at the sparkling raindrops on the honeysuckle. A mirage, I told myself as I pressed the accelerator in the direction of home.

Today’s writing prompt: Now? Later! prompted me to dust off an older blog, shine it up a bit and repurpose it for this challenge.

Now? Later? We all procrastinate. Website, magazine, knitting project, TV show, something else — what’s your favorite procrastination destination?

21 Day Body Love Challenge – The Whole Enchilada

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Free Happy Woman Enjoying Nature. Beauty Girl Outdoor. Freedom c

“Know then that the body is merely a garment. Go seek the wearer, not the cloak.” – Rumi

It’s time to put it all together. The whole body. It’s all connected. Loving your feet and eyes but not the rest of you is like taking only your feet and eyes on vacation, leaving the rest behind, to what? Fend for itself? Rot? No, it’s a package and not absolutely loving every internal and external inch is no longer acceptable. You can still improve on areas, eat healthy, exercise, but without attaching to the outcome.

Without attaching to the outcome. A healthy lifestyle has more to do with how you FEEL than how you look. How you look is a by-product of the lifestyle.

I was at a farmers’ market recently. I waited at a local honey booth for the person manning it to return. She was a woman about my age – somewhere north of 30, okay 40, whatever – she had no make-up on, her hair was a wild mass of various shades of gray and her skin was glowing. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled. She exuded health. In that moment I thought, I want that. None of the packaging, but what was radiating out from the inside. Life force.

Your body is your vehicle for this journey and it was assigned specifically to you. It is yours to use and maintain. How well you do that will most likely determine the length of its service.

I like to think about new parents and how they are so careful and loving with the new life now entrusted to them. How they attend to her every need, caress her skin, feed her only the best food, use just the safest, most gentle products.  They wouldn’t dream of every harming her or uttering a harsh word in her direction.

Then I like to think about the Buddhist monks who help people die. There are homes staffed by renunciates whose sole (soul?) purpose is to care for those transitioning, who have no one else to care for them. They bathe and feed these patients, listen to them compassionately, rub their backs and tuck them in at night.

What of the intervening years? Scolding, belittling, berating, abusive. To ourselves. We treat ourselves and our bodies worse than we would ever treat another. Maybe it’s because we know they’re scolding, belittling, berating and abusing themselves. So we each act as the other’s support.

It has to stop. You’ve probably seen or heard of Dr. Emoto by now. If not, he is the Japanese doctor who conducted experiments on water. He yelled at it, called it names. He spoke lovingly and positively to it. The results were phenomenal. Mean = disorganized, sharp, ugly water. Love = soft, beautiful, clear water that looked like various snowflakes. His energy directly affected the response of the water. We are mostly water.

Be a snowflake. Speak kindly to yourself. Caress your skin with nourishing lotions and oils. Feed your body with food that’s alive and water that you have spoken sweet nothings to. Tell yourself how worthy and beautiful you are. How unique.

A friend of mine likes to say, “Two the same, one is not necessary.” Why would you want to be like anyone else? Better than and less than only exists in math, not in people. You are perfect. Every single cell is a divine gift. Accept it.

“The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him – that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free. – Swami Vivekananda

 

21 Day Body Love Challenge – Heart of the Brain Matter

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Grey zen stone in shape of heart, on sand background

If you are reading this you have a heart. And thank you. Even if someone is reading this to you, you have a heart. It is one tangled mess of a muscle that we cannot live without.

But when you think heart, do you think of that dark red pulsing thing with its aorta and valves and ventricles? Or do you think of the simplified Valentine? Perhaps something in between. Or maybe you think more of energy and emotion. There are no wrong answers.

When I think of my own heart I first listen carefully, trying to notice my heart beat. Sometimes it’s making its presence known, at other times it’s quietly doing its job. But then I begin to attach stories and emotion to it. How many times I’ve had it broken, or put it out there. How it likes to love. Or doesn’t.

The heart knows stuff, but it’s the connection to the brain that helps us understand that stuff.

People who have undergone heart transplant surgery often report liking or disliking something they never did before. They have flashes, like someone else’s memories. There are brain cells in the heart. At the very least there is a connection.

Much research has been done in recent years on the heart-brain connection.  The heart sends more information to the brain than the other way around. According to the Institute of HeartMath, the heart sends signals to the brain that can influence perception, emotional experience and higher mental processes.

They are in cahoots. To fall in love with your own heart would be to also fall in love with your brain and ultimately your mind. This is the mind-body connection. When we are able to fully connect to both in harmony, we begin to find synchronicity in life and are treated to serendipitous moments and magic we like to think of as coincidence. We’re aware and present.  In love with life.

When our heart gets broken we disconnect. We don’t want to feel the icky feelings. Not right now. If we don’t think about it, it doesn’t exist. We’ll come back to it later when we’re feeling better, which is a lot like saying you’ll join the gym as soon as you lose some weight. The disconnect only stalls things, it doesn’t fix them.

Staying connected, even through the pain, maybe especially through the pain, allows us to live more fully. If we begin to disconnect during strong emotional times, we’ll also miss the absolute joy that is available to us.

Feel the feelings. Think the thoughts. Let them find their way to each other, then let them work it out. It’s integration and it brings with it a tremendous feeling of grounded joy.

“Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.” – Paramahansa Yogananda

21 Day Body Love Challenge – She’s a Brainiac, Brainiac

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Brain Cells and Deep Space

My brain is in love with itself. Yours probably is too. We can have a grand old time making up things to think about. Boredom? Never, we keep each other entertained, but we can also get into trouble.

My brain is brilliant; it tells me so all the time. My elementary school teachers told my parents so too, but they used phrases like, “so much potential,” “if only she’d focus,” “if she applied herself,” “if she’d just stop talking.” They were thinking Mensa, probably.

I am fascinated with the inner workings of the brain. Not enough to become a neurobiologist or some high falutin doctor, but enough to pay attention to how people are. It’s so interesting to me that people make the same decisions over and over again even though they know those choices are harmful to them. Smoking, drugs, over-eating, playing in traffic, watching the news.  Me too. Why do we do it?

What makes some people more successful than others? It’s in the brain, I’m sure of it, I just don’t know where or what it looks like. Maybe it looks like a stern father or a disappointed mother. Maybe it’s just wide open space that the brain can roll around in like a child rolling down a hill on a spring day.

How different must Hitler’s brain look from Einstein’s? Does it even?

There is a place where science and yoga intersect on the topic of the brain. Quantum physics tells us nerves that wire together fire together. Meaning if we repeat the same behavior often enough, we will continue to repeat it. We have created a neuro-pathway that is wired to do that same thing again and again. We’ve taught it.

In yoga they are called samskaras. Deep grooves held in the sub-conscious that prompt us to keep repeating the same behavior. Good or bad. Sometimes we don’t even know why we’re doing that silly thing we always do. This is why.

The good news is we can fix it. We simply have to create new grooves, new pathways with the good habits we’d like to foster. Simple, right? Simple, yes. Easy, no.

My brain has had full arguments with itself over whether or not I should have the oh-so-tiny piece of chocolate. I’m not sure which one is in charge of the mouth, but that’s the one that usually wins. If I want to change that, I need to train my brain to go for water, over and over again. The mouth controlling part of my brain is on the floor snorting with laughter right now. See what I’m up against?!

When I try to meditate, the bratty part of my brain – the one with all that potential – sits behind a table and holds up score cards. Usually they are failing marks. When I try to concentrate on one task, focus, really focus, the other part can be found semi-crumpled whining, “Come ooooonnn.” I usually go.

Full disclosure: As soon as I typed the word ‘go’ in that last paragraph, my head snapped to look outside to see what was going on. Nothing, by the way. Nothing was going on.

Creating a good habit seems more difficult than the bad ones because we usually view it as a corrective behavior. If we reframe it as just something new, the brain is likely to be pleased and pick up the new habit more easily.

So, I think I’ll go grab a big glass of water. Still laughing.  Oh, big beautiful brain, how I love thee.

“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.” – Robert Frost

 

21 Day Body Love Challenge – Breathe Easy

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Breathe

I wanted to talk about the systems of the body, but trying to get people excited about their periods and bowel movements had my own nose wrinkled. So instead, we’ll talk about a few key organs in these last days of the challenge.

Today we’ll breathe a little life into the lungs.

Most people, especially in this fast-paced society, do not breathe enough and do not breathe well. We hold our breath when we think, when what we really need is oxygen in the brain to fire up the neurons. We breathe in the upper lobes of our lungs most of the time which keeps us in stress response making it harder to relax. If not impossible.

On the contrary, when we breathe deeply into the belly we are compressing our internal organs and as we exhale, freshly oxygenated blood rushes back into the organs. Refreshing them if you will.

The quickest way to change your emotional, mental, or physical state is to change the breath. Did you read that? If you’re freaking out, change your breath. If you’re upset or sad, change your breath. If you’re tired, change your breath. It’s that simple.

The breath and the lungs are also closely connected to the heart chakra so breathing fully and deeply can help dislodge some of that energetic detritus, moving it up and out. Perhaps that’s why when we engage in pranayama or breathing practices we feel lighter and calmer.

I have made my own breath my friend. Not that it wasn’t before, it was just more of a boarder. Now it works for me. It soothes me in traffic, entertains me when someone is telling me the same story for the tenth time, helps me fall asleep and lets me dance longer.

The next time someone says, “Take a deep breath,” just do it. It will change everything.

“What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life.” – Emil Brunner

21 Day Body Love Challenge – Skin Deep

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Third grade

What color is your skin? It’s not white or black or yellow or red. It is on the spectrum of brown, everyone, everywhere. Some darker, some lighter, but all part of the brown family. Family. I’m a peachy ecru I think. My husband is a sagey tan. My yoga teacher is a light mocha and my date to the sixth grade banquet was 72% cacao dark chocolate.

If you thought this was going to be about sagging skin, smooth skin, wrinkled skin or freckled skin, you are mistaken. We have much bigger issues to address than the natural process of aging. We have a world to change.

So much ado over something that can’t be changed, but oh, how we try. If you’re pale you want to be tan. If you’re dark you want to be lighter. If you’re somewhere in the middle you want to be different or just like…someone else.

It’s very difficult to hide the color of your skin. I had an epiphanous experience in India a couple of years ago. Our little group of 20 white Americans was walking through the streets of a very small town of Indians. Everyone came out onto their stoops and balconies, got out of their cars and rickshaws, stopped what they were doing, lined the streets and stared at us. They were smiling and excited to see us, but it was still unnerving and, for the first time, I got it. What it’s like to truly be a minority. It changes your behavior.

I can only imagine what it would have felt like if we had been greeted with hate and ignorance instead of joy.

From fourth grade on, I grew up as a middle class white girl with blond hair in a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC. I was surrounded by people who looked a lot like me, different hair colors and slight variations on skin tone, except in the winter, we were all pasty.

Before fourth grade we lived in Maryland also in a suburb of Washington. Here, I was bussed to a “black school” so that we could integrate. It was the 70s. I was 7 and so I just got on whatever bus they told me to and went to school. Half of each of my classes from kindergarten through third grade was on the pale end of the spectrum, the other half the darker end. But to each other we were just kids. I don’t recall really knowing the difference.

My best friend was Monica, she was dark. She came to my birthday parties and was the darkest girl there. I went to hers and was the lightest girl there. We played with each other’s hair, roller skated together and played Barbie’s – white Barbie’s – together. She lived in a neighborhood with people who looked more like her and I, the same. We wished we lived closer together. I did not realize what an anomaly each of us was in the other’s lives until I looked back at photos from my birthday parties.

When we moved to Fairfax County I could count on one hand how many people in my class looked like Monica. Still I didn’t really notice. When do you suppose the prejudice gene develops?

As I was considering what to write about for skin it occurred to me that we are all just a shade of earth. Dirt. From pale sand to rich loamy soil, we are born of the earth, and back into the earth we will go. Dust to dust. To say I am white is to conjure an opposite of me. There is no opposite of me. There is only different from me. But our human brains struggle to categorize and parse, it helps us to understand. Somehow, somewhere in endeavoring to understand we picked favorites. And in so doing, we created prejudices.

Judging a person by the shade of their skin is like judging flowers based on their height. It just doesn’t make sense.

Go out, find the soil that matches your skin color and plunge your hands and heart deep into it. Become grounded in your own skin. Then go find soil that is far from your color and do the same. Blend them together, marvel at the beauty in the combination, plant new seeds and grow great magic.

“It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.” – John Lennon

[Photo: My third grade class. Hint: Monica and I are both in the middle row. She is on the left, I am on the right. I look pissed or mysterious, probably has something to do with what I’m wearing.]

21 Day Body Love Challenge – Hairs the Difference

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hair

I always wanted great hair. In high school there was a whole subset of girls who had this thick, luscious hair. Every time they’d tilt their heads or turn around, it was in slow motion. Boys would stop whatever they were doing, drop their jaws, then drop their algebra book down in front of their jeans.

I was not one of this subset. Oh, how I longed to be.

I tried. I had a shag in fourth grade, the Dorothy Hamill wedge in 7th, a perm in 11th so that I could look just like Julie Christie in Heaven Can Wait. I spent entire summers marinating in Sun-In to lighten the mousey blondish brown my hair had become. I frosted it – remember that? – pulling strands through little holes in an attractive plastic cap. If there was a way to process my hair, I did it.

In my late 20s my hair began to turn gray – I was expecting it, DNA being what it is, but I wasn’t ready for it. I dyed my hair red, brown, almost black, blond, platinum blond, golden blond. Keeping up with it was messy and expensive. But it felt necessary.

Then one day, in my late thirties, I stopped. My mother, who had held onto her youth with various shades of red from Miss Clairol, had decided to stop dying her hair. What came in what pure white. It was beautiful. So naturally I was curious what my hair was up to under the layers of golden blond.

I decided to let it go, see what nature had in store for me. My hair was shoulder length. I could see the new color coming in at the roots if I pressed my hair down, separating my part. I did this periodically over the next two years and several haircuts until I realized what I was looking at was my hair, just the way it was supposed to be. Somehow I missed the whole growing out thing, the dye that was in my hair simply had nothing left to hang onto and so it all faded seamlessly.

The number one question new acquaintances sheepishly ask me? Is that your natural hair color? My own hairdresser told me to tell everyone she did it. It’s this great color of white that works well with my fair skin and blue eyes.

But it was more than a great color, an easy transition; it was a release.

I remember when I decided to stop painting my nails. It was equal parts laziness and wanting to be more natural. Not too long after that I let go of eye shadow, then came the hair, then I stopped wearing so much jewelry. I have been slowly stripping away adornment and camouflage over the past decade or so. I’ve come out. As myself. I feel clear and seen and understood.

I remember a friend in college who swore no one would ever see her without her make-up and hair done. NO ONE. And I just thought, “How exhausting.”

The realization that I could just be who I was came slowly and I’m still working on it. This challenge has shown me where I still have some work to do. And by work I mean letting go. There’s no need to add anything, I’ve been doing that my whole life. This is about revealing, allowing bits of light to break through. Taking it back to basics. We all start out pretty perfect, the rest is just window dressing.

“I used to have straw-colored hair. Horses loved it.” – Jarod Kintz