Breathing: Continue to breathe for 5 minutes but now do it standing up. The movements are the same except for your arms. The belly expands and contracts as you rock your pelvis. You look up on the inspiration and down on the expiration. When you breathe in, open you arms wide like a bird spreads its wings. As you breathe out, close your arms across your chest and hug yourself.
Appreciation: Continue your appreciation list. This week, get some postcards or blank greeting cards, and write three notes of appreciation to people who have done something particularly nice for you in the past 6 months.
Journalling: Increase your journalling to 3 pages (6, if they are half sheet size.). This week explore beliefs you had as a child and see if they are still valid for you as an adult. In my life, I believed I was the one responsible for making my mother happy. If she was upset, I thought I caused it. If she was overjoyed, I got to feel like I had created that. Now, I realize my mother is responsible for how she saw the world and my responsibility was to be the best I could be for me.
Walking: Walk for 20 minutes daily. As you walk find something new to appreciate each day. This is especially important if you always walk the same route. Pay attention to your surroundings and notice changes—Mrs. Jones painted her fence, the daffodils are up, the leaves have stared to turn yellow.
Self Nurturing: Cook a meal or go out for dinner and have exactly what you want without regard to the cost or what others want. Make this a meal that just for you.
Also, congratulate yourself for taking such good care of your self by doing this program. No matter how perfect you’ve been, every effort you’ve made has been something for you, something to nurture you! After all, if you don’t do it, no one else can.
I don’t know what’s come over me. I have never been very interested in computer games, be it Solitaire, Myst, online Scrabble, or even Bejeweled, which I have played more than several times, but not for months, or maybe even years. However, last week a friend told me about Farm Town on Facebook and I’ve been captivated – maybe even addicted.
I found myself dashing to my computer after an evening out and harvesting a few crops. Then I thought, “If I plow and plant now, I’ll have a head start on the next crop.” So I did. Then I went to bed and noticed that I felt happy – even tickled. What has come over me?
You know, usually when I write one of these blog entries, I don’t know where it will go. I just know the topic and start writing. This is no exception…even now, I don’t know what I’m going to say next. What has come over me?
I think it has something to do with having more fun. That’s something that’s been problematic for me. Fun. What’s that? I know enjoyable and satisfying but fun? I’ve always been a little embarrassed when I’m having fun—especially if I laugh a lot. It seems like I’ve always gotten in trouble when I laugh, and it’s so fun to laugh. Maybe that’s why I was so taken with that Bodhisattva in the Metro video – the laughter was infectious. And truth be told, I really do love to laugh.
But Farm Town doesn’t make me laugh – it’s a deeper sense of joy I experience. And I can’t believe I am writing this about a computer game, but I also can’t deny how I feel. And so, I’m going to continue to feel this and see if my life expands in some way. Surely that’s what feeling joy is all about – life is good.
OK that feels like what I’ve been moving toward. Life is good and I get to move things around on the computer screen in a way that feels engaging, purposeless, and interesting and I get to feel clever, creative, and … happy.
Breathing: Continue breathing for 5 minutes a day. As you breathe and rock and allow your shoulders to open and close, add one last movement (which you may already be doing naturally) As you breathe in, look up or at least tilt you head back (you may have your eyes closed). As you breathe out, tilt your head forward, bringing your chin to your chest.
The spine has two natural curves, one at your waist and one at your neck. (Do I need to mention this curve is front to back as opposed to the side to side curve of scoliosis?) This breathing exercise enhances the flexibility of these curves which greatly improves the function of your nervous system. Every cell in your body is affected by the health of your spine because all the nerves begin with the spinal cord which is housed and protected by your spine.
Appreciation: Continue creating your appreciation list each day. If you are in a relationship, post a list on the refrigerator and each day write one thing you appreciate about your partner. I could be, “I love her blue eyes” or “He always calls when he’s going to be late coming home.” This
Journalling: Write two pages daily. Be sure to explore the underlying reasons and feelings for reactions you have. For example, today I noticed I was complaining to myself about an acquaintance and I asked myself in my journal what was really going on. I got really clear about what was bothering me and then I asked myself what this had to do with me. For a technique for doing this, see Stop Nagging and Complaining in the Coaching section.
Walking: Walk briskly for 15 minutes each day. If it’s possible to walk up hill in your area, you might start adding an uphill circuit a 2 or 3 times this week. Don’t forget, you can take your dog or find a walking buddy for this activity.
Self Nurturing: Make a special date for yourself. You might choose to go to a movie that you’ve wanted to see but your honey has resisted. Go by yourself. Or you could set aside a whole evening to do nothing but read a great mystery. Make a special occasion that’s just for you and then do what it takes to make it happen. You might have to hire a babysitter so you can go to a café or you may need to say you want to have 2 hours alone in the house and request that everyone else find another activity. (Watch out here, when I’ve done this, the others decided to go ice skating and I wanted to do that instead of what I had planned—I went ice skating!)
Breathing: Breathe deeply for 5 minutes. Continue to expand and contract your belly as you breathe deeply. As you breathe in, rock forward and as you breathe out, rock back.
Breathe in Breathe out
Rock forward Rock back
Expand belly Contract belly
Notice as your breathe and rock if your hands are resting on your thighs. If they are, you are opening and hunching your shoulders as you rock. This has the added benefit of opening you chest to allow more room for lung expansion and it gives your heart more expansive space to beat in!
Appreciation: Make a daily appreciation list. You can keep this in your journal or you can have a separate place you keep it. Each day, review what happened the previous day and write what you really appreciate. This adds to your positive outlook, helps you live consciously, and allows you to celebrate the really fine times more than once. You get to have your cake one day and then you get to remember how great it was the next!
Journalling: Write two pages. Begin with something you appreciate from the previous day. You might write something like, “I was really happy that Susie called,” and then go on to write about why you like talking to Susie. The point of this journal is to tap into thoughts you may not be expressing.
Keep your journal in a place where you are certain no one will read it. This allows you to express exactly what you feel without worrying about offending someone or engaging in a situation before you are sure what you are feeling. Journalling is a great way to figure things out.
Walking: Walk briskly for 15 minutes every day. Be sure to have your arms free to swing. A natural gait is for opposite arm and leg to move forward at the same times. This gives your spine a nice little twist to help keep it flexible and healthy.
Self Nurturing: Buy yourself flowers. Treat yourself as though you are being courted. You are—by your self. Think of yourself in the gentlest and most loving way.
Begin by assessing what you have to do to have 17 minutes each day—seven minutes in the morning and 10 later on in the day. In first seven minutes, you will do a short breathing exercise and write for a few minutes.
I, __________________________ commit to have an additional 10 minutes in the morning. You aren’t required to do this in the morning, but most people find it sets the tone for their day and they also find that nothing crowds it out as might happen later in the day. If you have a family who are getting ready for their day at the same time, you may have to get up earlier or go into a separate room to have the quiet and privacy you’ll need.
It’s best to do the breathing first and then the journalling. Deep breathing centers you and enables you to turn your attention inward so that your journalling is more an exploration of you inner self and not a chronicle of your activities.
Week 1 Activities
Breathing: Breathe deeply for 3 minutes. Sit comfortable with you feet on the floor. As you breathe in, expand your belly. As you breathe out, contract your belly. Breathe like this for 3 minutes. Set a timer so that you don’t have to think about when the three minutes are up.
If you get a little light headed, it’s because your body isn’t accustomed to getting this much oxygen. Slow your breathing rate or breathe a little less deeply. As you continue with this practice, your body will adjust.
Appreciation: Think of one thing you appreciate every day.
Journalling: Write one page. (One 8 1/2 x 11 page or two pages of a smaller size.) Don’t think about what you should write but use this medium as a means of getting to your inner most thoughts. When you sit down to write, if nothing comes, just write what you are doing. “I’m sitting here with this blank page and writing about nothing.” You may fill up the whole page with nothing or you may prime the pump to write about something important.
Walking: Walk briskly for 10 minutes. Don’t carry anything so that your arms and swing freely. It is my belief that walking is the very best exercise you can do. Even if you go to the gym regularly, or do some other more strenuous exercise, add walking to your daily routine for duration of this program.
Self Nurturing: Buy yourself a journal—get one you really like. Make sure its something you will like to write on. For example I love the looks of journals with blank, unlined pages but I prefer to write on lined pages. I like spiral bound books because they lay flat. Since I loved school and homework, I actually like writing on notebook paper and sometimes that’s what I use for a journal.
I read this entry yesterday in Gay Hendrick’s A Year of Living Consciously and I’d like to share it with others.
When you swallow your feelings, your body begins digesting itself. Ulcers, heart disease, cancer — all have been shown to have a relationship with stress. While stress may or may not create bacteria and cause renegade genes to mutate, it undeniably creates an environment that is welcoming and supportive of physiological processes that can — that will — ultimately kill you.
If you visualize the process, you can see what repression does to the lightness and magic of the human body; imagine the sharpness of your strongest feelings, whether feelings of joy or anger or sadness. When strong, sharp feelings are hidden deep inside like shameful secrets, the feeling tear at your organs and block the path that your blood wants to travel as it gives you life.
Expression keeps you open and strong, able and ready to easily defend your physical health and emotional well-being. Instead of concentration on fighting or fleeing or owtherwise denying felings, you body is doing what it was intended for all along; living in a state of peaceful acceptance and essence.
A few weeks ago, swine flu hit the headlines. Big time. It seemed that everyone but the pork industry wanted a piece of the action. The journalists created havoc with their dire and often outrageous reporting that kept the 24-hour news cycles churning. Pharmaceutical companies wanted to sell their products. The medical profession wanted to drum up business. The natural health advocates wanted to remind people to do or take certain things to boost their immune system. What a reasonable, responsible person to do?
One thing I learned as I did a little research was that when the avian “pandemic” hit of a few years ago, a certain number of people died. The interesting statistic for comparison was that 20 times that number died from being struck by lightning. I don’t know about you, but I hardly ever worry about being struck by lightning. I have at least thought about the spread of the flu virus and I know people who have panicked. Did you know that “swine” flu probably doesn’t have anything to do with pigs? Tell that to the farmers of the 300,000 pigs that were slaughtered in Egypt!
What am I getting at here – other than pointing out the craziness and conflicts we encounter every day? Last night I had a rather complicated dream that prompted my writing this article. The gist of that dream was a call for people to work together – to find out what really works for the whole group and not just the individual interest or factions.
Isn’t it astounding that our president, who seems to have a zillion things on his plate, went on television to say the one thing that helped us work together: Wash your hands!
The pandemic doesn’t seem to have materialized but if we look at what happened, we can learn a lot about self interests and common sense. It’s sad that some people have died from this new flu strain. That’s a fact, some people have died and some people have gotten sick – many of them were not very sick, but with all the hoopla, anyone with a sore throat or a fever worried. I suspect the worry has been more devastating world-wide than the flu itself! Of course, if this had been a pandemic or becomes one, I’ll have to retract my skepticism of the efficacy of crying wolf, but for now, I am comforted by the wisdom of these simple guidelines:
· Wash your hands.
· Stay home if you are sick.
· Cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze or cough.
· Wash your hands even more.
If along the way you eat more blueberries and less sugar – good for you!
I’m reading Gay Hendricks’ latest book, The Big Leap, and rediscovered something I learned from him years ago when he was my mentor. We can only handle so much joy and happiness. That seems odd, but I have seen it and experienced it over and over. We humans can only stand a limited amount of happiness, then we do something to make us more comfortable.
Maybe it’s because we don’t think we deserve such pleasure or possibly we are afraid that something bad will happen if we feel so good. Whatever the reason, when we reach our Upper Limit, we get uncomfortable and we do something to bring us down into our comfort zone. The things we do is quite individual and might be one or more of the following:
· Starting an argument
· Having an accident
· Getting sick
· Worry obsessively
· Being critical
· Breaking agreements
· Avoiding telling the truth
In my case, I reached an Upper Limit last summer when I went to a convention. I was so happy with myself – I had lost 40 pounds, rather effortlessly and I was starting to build my business because friends and acquaintances noticed my success and wanted some of that for themselves. I loved the convention and the great stories people told about how their health improved. I felt I had finally arrived because I could see that in addition to getting healthy myself, I had a lot to give the people I would meet as I coached others to discover the health benefits of the products I have come to trust.
Then whammo. Well, it wasn’t exactly a 2×4 over the head but suddenly I was at a weight plateau, I was having trouble following the same program that I had been following for the previous three months. I wasn’t able to make it through one cleanse day, even though for months I had stuck with two weekly cleanse days while feeling good on the juice fast and not driving myself crazy thinking about food. Suddenly I was having a problem with cleansing. I might make it through the first day, but the second day – no way! Eventually I wasn’t even making it through the entire first day.
While this decrease in cleansing is a partial cause for my plateau, I think there’s more to it than that. It seemed my metabolism had changed. I even started working out daily which is supposed to increase metabolism, but five months later, I don’t notice a difference.
Also, I started thinking that since I was stuck, maybe I shouldn’t be telling other people about these products that I liked so much. I also started finding fault with people who were trying to help me build my business. All these things are examples of what people do when they reach their upper limits. Doubting, complaining, being critical, and having some physical response.
While Gay and Katie Hendricks have never used weight maintenance as an example of what people do when they reach their upper limits, I have no doubt that if I can reduce my immunity and catch a cold to keep myself from being too happy, then I could change my metabolism so that my weight loss stagnates. I’m only in the discovery stage of this right now, but I wanted to share the idea as part of my process and to plant a seed or two with my readers who may recognize an Upper Limits problem in their own lives.
If you want to know more about the nutritional cleansing program or the Upper Limits program, don’t hesitate to call me at 510-548-2585 or send me email.
I’ve been walking daily for 30 years. It’s part of my health routine and probably part of my sanity. One thing became apparent early on – there are only so many half hour walks I can take that originate at my house. Let’s see, thirty years daily, that’s about 10,000 itineraries. How do I keep that fresh and interesting?
As I was developing my Six Weeks to Balance program, I suggested that people find something new on every walk – something they never noticed before. Some days, that’s a challenge but I have found that it keeps me engaged. Lately I’ve added another appealing exercise – find flowers of each color of the rainbow. Lucky for me that such flowers are available in April in the San Francisco Bay area. Two weeks ago, when I was in Chicago, the land was still winter barren. The daffodils and crocus were just peeking out of the thawing earth. But here in Berkeley, flowers abound. Finding Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet (roy g biv) flowers can happen in as little space as on yard – but often it takes walking a whole block before I find flowers of all seven colors and many shades thereof. The interesting thing is how hard it is to find green flowers. So when I give up I cheat by including all the green leaves.
I do encourage all you walkers of dogs and walkers of children and walkers for movement – find something you’ve never noticed every day! It’s pretty exciting.
I’ve been walking daily for 30 years. It’s part of my health routine and probably part of my sanity. One thing became apparent early on – there are only so many half hour walks I can take that originate at my house. Let’s see, thirty years daily, that’s about 10,000 itineraries. How do I keep that fresh and interesting?