 Last week I announced that starting May 1, I would be part of a study, directed by internationally known KP Khalsa. I will be living an Ayurvedic-Yogic lifestyle for a year at the Sivananda Yoga Retreat and Ashram in the Bahamas. I shared the definition of Ayurveda and gave a bit of background (www.bestyouconsulting.com/blog/a-huge-leap). Everything on our planet is comprised of the 5 elements Air, Ether, Water, Fire and Earth. In Ayurveda, there are three primary forces that are responsible for the characteristics of our mind and our body. I mentioned Sanskrit words for the three fundamental energies - Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Strange words to us, but they are very interesting. These energies govern our movement (Vata), transformation (Pitta) and structure (Kapha). Each of us has a unique proportion of these three forces that shapes our overall nature. What I’ve learned thus far, in my still novice level of understanding, is that if Vata is dominant, we would tend to have a thin framed body, with light, enthusiastic, energetic and changeable tendencies. If Pitta predominates in our nature, we would tend to be intense, intelligent, goal-oriented and have a strong appetite for life. When Kapha is dominant, we generally are easy-going, methodical and nurturing. Each of us has all three forces in our nature, yet most people have one or two energies that predominate. I am Pitta-Vata for example. In Ayurveda, this is called my Constitution. Besides my finding it all fascinating, Why does any of this matter? For each of the three elements or energies, there is a balanced and imbalanced expression. When Vata is balanced, a person is lively and creative, but when there is too much movement in the system, a person tends to experience anxiety, insomnia, dry skin, constipation, and difficulty focusing. When Pitta is functioning in a balanced state, a person is warm, friendly, disciplined, a good leader and good speaker. When Pitta is out of balance, a person tends to be compulsive and irritable, getting annoyed easily and may suffer from indigestion or inflammatory conditions. When Kapha is balanced, a person is sweet, supportive and stable, but when Kapha is out of balance, a person may experience sluggishness, weight gain and sinus congestion. Some of the key goals of Ayurveda is to identify a person’s ideal state of balance, determine where they are out of balance, and then offer natural interventions using diet, herbs, aromatherapy, massage treatments, music and meditation to reestablish balance. Ayurveda considers the imbalanced states to be the body giving us ‘signs’ of something wrong. If those signs are ignored and the imbalances worsen over time, then at a point of extreme high stress or a major tragedy or sometimes with no bigger warning, a major episode, disease or condition shows up. These are not ‘sudden’ and have been developing over time, completely undiagnosed in western medicine. Often we don’t even mention the symptoms to our doctors at our check ups. I know I didn’t mention that I haven’t slept well all my adult life. Interrupted sleep and waking every 2-3 hrs, with temperature swings of cold, hot and then cold again every night. I easily fell back asleep after going to the bathroom each time. So, I never questioned that I didn’t sleep solidly through the night, and I figured everyone struggled with getting up in the morning. Right? I’ve been a coffee drinker since I was about 12 years old when my favorite Aunty Tina let me drink coffee when I stayed over and babysat for my cousins. Coffee has been a daily necessary jolt for me to ‘wake up’ and be able to function energetically, just as it is for billions of people around the world. To look at me, I look perfectly healthy and I have plenty of energy - at least when I am around people I always have energy:) You don’t know, and even my doctor didn’t know, that I rarely got a good night’s sleep - and we are talking about decades of this. I have plenty more signs of imbalances. Most of them are readily covered up and certainly, we don’t tend to share our less than attractive traits or conditions. I will share them with you! And no, most of them are not pretty:( Why Share? In order to find out "What is Possible?" in the Ayurvedic-Yogic lifestyle adventure, it is important to know where I am starting from. So, I plan on sharing openly and freely! My Ayurveda consultations have established that my imbalances are mostly Vata imbalances, but I also have Pitta imbalances too. I will be sharing about my various health imbalances in the coming weeks. STAY TUNED!!! If you are interested in finding out your Constitution: Banyan Botanicals has a basic quiz to determine your predominant nature or Constitution. - Check it out! Consultations with Ayurvedic Practitioners, such as KP Khalsa, can provide a more in depth look at both your Constitution and your Imbalances, plus be able to prescribe treatments. An Ayurvedic Practitioner will use a variety of tools besides the general quiz, including pulse readings and data they can attain from your eyes, tongue and overall demeanor as they meet with you or speak to you on the phone. I am counting down the time and have exactly one month until I leave for this exciting adventure! Now if I can manage to get everything done here that needs completion before I leave, all will be right with life:) I am very grateful for the support of KP Khalsa, Sivananda Yoga Retreat and Banyan Botanicals. I will continue with writing weekly blogs, in the form of updates. I hope that you will want to follow the journey. I am so excited for the adventure to begin! I encourage you to leave a comment below or post one on my BestYOU facebook page. Sharing your thoughts is a gift to all of us! If you know someone who may like to sign up for my blog posts, please share this link with them. Thanks!  As I prepare for the unlikely adventure of living an Ayurvedic lifestyle for one year at the Sivananda Yoga Retreat and Ashram in the Bahamas, guided by an Ayurveda expert and internationally known Herbalist, I am excited - nervous - open - fearful and a host of other emotions - bouncing in and out of my psyche and sometimes, seemingly there all at the same time! Why is the adventure unlikely? For a Midwestern American woman, with Eastern European roots - a Mom and proud new Grammy that has lived in the same state her entire life - it is a HUGE leap! The longest I lived anywhere other than Illinois was as an exchange student in college. At 19 years of age, I lived for close to 6 months in England. As a mainstream American, I’ve been raised with an abundance of fast, processed and convenience foods; have lived a fast paced, high stress work life; have experienced the trauma of divorce; have been a yo-yo dieter since my teen years; and generally have lived the work hard and play equally hard lifestyle most of my adult life. I’ve loved eating ice cream and candy and pizza and chill cheese fries, nachos, plenty of meat and seafood, and wine, margaritas, and chocolate martinis. My daily eating habits included skipping meals regularly and eating all the day’s calories in one meal. Typically, my lifestyle has been staying up late, struggling to fall asleep and very fitful/poor sleep, waking tired and requiring coffee to get me moving each and every day for the past 4 decades of life. It’s also an unlikely choice as my current life, living in Chicago for the past few years has been a lifestyle I’ve enjoyed immensely. I live in a beautiful apartment, have family in the suburbs of Chicago and have great friends in the area. I’m plugged into an amazing yoga community at Tejas Yoga and great organizations like Landmark, Rotary One Cosmopolitan, the United Nations Association and Seagull Institute to name a few. I am not escaping anything. In fact, my leap feels like I felt as a young girl, all smiles inside and heart completely open to whatever this new journey brings my way. Any of my fears and nervousness have to do with being able to juggle all the balls of a move out of the country - lots of loose ends to deal with and many logistics with current housing situation and my belongings and selling furniture and address changes etc. The actual leaping to Sivananda Yoga Retreat and Ashram and a year of living Ayurvedically - my heart is wide open and joyous about the discoveries that lie ahead. What is living an Ayurvedic lifestyle? For me, it all began about a year ago, in a workshop that James Tennant led at the Tejas Yoga Studio. I had never heard the word Ayurveda before this workshop. I was intrigued and still am intrigued. He started by defining Ayurveda, and since I am a beginner in the study of Ayurveda, I will share what the experts say. Ayurveda means the ‘Science of Life’. (Ayur=life, Veda=science or knowledge) It is the traditional medicine of India and the oldest system of Health Care in the world. Ayurveda is concerned with both preventative and curative medicine. According to the College of Ayurveda in California, it is at least a 5,000 year old system of Natural Healing, and perhaps as long as 10,000 years. During India’s time of foreign occupation, Ayurveda was suppressed. According to Deepak Chopra and the Chopra Center for Health, more recently, both in native India and throughout the world, Ayurveda has been enjoying a major resurgence. Tibetan medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine have their roots in Ayurveda. Also early Greek medicine embraced many concepts originally described in the classical Ayurvedic medical texts dating back thousands of years. Ayurveda is one of the most advanced herbal sciences in the world and a system that provides guidelines on ideal daily and seasonal routines, diet, behavior and the proper use of our senses. Everything from types of food, colors, aromas, sounds, meditation and even touch will create a state of balance and harmony in the body and mind. Something I personally like about Ayurveda is the focus on the individual, noting that each person is unique, with a unique path for optimal health. It is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution, nor is it a ‘take a pill - quick fix’ lifestyle. The ‘one pill’ for all headaches or ‘take this drug’ for depression - the Western medicine approach specifies the treatment based on the specific ailment not based on the specific individual. Drug makers create meds that are for the mass population. In Ayurveda, nature creates the meds, as all naturally grown food has medicinal qualities. Any treatments that are prescribed, focus on bringing balance to an individual person. In Ayurveda, when the body and mind are in harmony, normal physiology is restored and healing takes place. The goal of Ayurveda is a balance and integration between the environment, body, mind and spirit. As the Ayurveda experts at the conference I attended in January noted, if you get into an accident or break your arm, Western medicine and surgical procedures are absolutely the way to go. For the healing process, once you’ve been stitched up, an Ayurvedic approach to restoring balance and harmony in the body, mind and spirit will be the most powerful aid to healing. In the next few blogs, I will provide more background about Ayurveda and the fundamental energies that are known in Sanskrit as Vata (wind), Pitta (fire) and Kapha (earth). Understanding these three primary forces of nature is at the core of Ayurveda. I'll also share some amazing personal experiences from gradually incorporating some of the Ayurvedic lifestyle changes in my own life. Stay Tuned! I am excited to find out What is Possible? for me, as this “guinea pig” for the year long study of Ayurvedic living. I am honored and blessed to be guided by internationally recognized KP Khalsa, who is one of the foremost natural healing experts in North America. I am also blessed to be doing this study at the beautiful Sivananda Yoga Retreat and Ashram in the Bahamas. The supportive environment will provide an ideal, controlled setting to discover What is Possible? Banyan Botanicals, the industry leader in certified organic Ayurvedic herbs, offering the largest selection available has agreed to provide herbs and supplements that are prescribed by KP Khalsa, to start me off on my journey. I am very grateful for the support of KP Khalsa, Sivananda Yoga Retreat and Banyan Botanicals. My entire year will be devoted to this study and to training to become an Ayurvedic practitioner and yoga teacher. I will continue with writing weekly blogs, in the form of updates. I hope that you will want to follow the journey. I am so excited for the adventure to begin! I encourage you to leave a comment below or post one on my BestYOU facebook page. Sharing your thoughts is a gift to all of us! If you know someone who may like to sign up for my blog posts, please share this link with them. Thanks!  Little did I know that I would be leaping into an adventure for a year long study of living Ayurvedically when I started decluttering my closets and environment. I will share much more about my upcoming journey in future blog posts.
For now, whether it is your office space, your closet, your car or your overall life - Spring is a great time to Get Rid of the Clutter. You will feel a sense of openness and freedom, renewal and power. I mentioned in an earlier blog that I had massively purged the contents of my closets. I am so happy that I did it. Every day, life is a little easier because of it. Danielle LaPorte described a method that really hit home with me, in her book The Desire Map. She contends that we all should pay more attention to how we want to feel everyday, and I agree. Whether our health, our bodies, our clothes or the environment we live or work in, how we feel is as important as what we want to accomplish or what image we want to present. For the closet purge in particular, I spent about 1/2 hour thinking about how I would like to feel each morning when I got dressed. I wrote down a list of more than 20 words, as Danielle suggests - writing everything down that pops into your head at first. I then looked over the words a bit to see where there were similarities or where I could be more descriptive. For example, saying you want to feel ‘successful’ when you get dressed - what does that really mean to you? Do you like the “powerful” aspect of success or the “freedom” aspect of success or the “confidence” aspect of success or the “leadership” aspect? She advises to think about more clearly stating the feeling we are really going after to make you feel good in the morning. I then put aside the list and the next day looked at the list again, seeing which words really seemed to speak to me and feel right. I circled those words. I had the list narrowed to 8 words. The goal is to get 3-4 words that describe just how you want to feel. With my 8 words, I started looking them up in the dictionary to see exactly what they meant. For me the definitions were enlightening, because I could choose a more obscure meaning of the word that really fit me. Once I had my three words, the fun really began. I examined every single item in my closet and had a Give Away pile, a pile on my bed of things to try on and then a save and keep section of the closet. I literally tossed as fast as I could anything that didn’t match at least two of my three words. I later neatly organized the Give Away piles - and there were overflowing mounds of clothes and shoes - some in the back of the closet that I hadn’t worn in years but kept saving ‘in case’ or for ‘someday’ - I had ‘fat clothes’ and ‘skinny’ clothes and ‘power suits’ and clothes with tags still on that had not been worn in more than a year of owning them. Can you relate? I realized that most of my clothes were not making me feel the way I wanted to feel when I got dressed. I had jam packed closets and yet I often struggled with ‘what to wear?’ issues. Ever have the same issue? Affluence is one of my words. For my way of looking at it, affluence is about quality, abundantly free flowing ideas, generosity and creative outpouring. I felt extremely affluent in the form of generosity, as I donated hundreds of items from my closet that were not being used by me and could be daily used by someone else. I also felt affluent in the form of quality, when I finally got rid of clothes with spots, tears and in general disrepair. The best benefit of this exercise was the elimination of my daily ritual of disliking how I looked over and over, while trying on numerous outfits that didn’t really look great on me or that didn't fit me very well. Getting dressed in the morning was filled with more angst than pleasure and in the end my choice felt like one of resignation, rather than joy. Giving away anything that did not make me feel Fit, Feminine and Affluent (my words) really cleared out space in my closet AND I have no clothes left that are not in good repair, fit me well and that I truly like and feel good in. I can’t feel bad about any choice I make, because my closet now only has good choices. It’s empowering to make good choices. I save a substantial amount of time getting dressed too. My clothes are easy to see with space between each item, and I know whatever I choose will make me feel how I want to feel. The space and the time saving are very freeing to me. So whether it’s your closet, your home, your car or if you want an office that makes you feel like a Leader or Powerful or maybe Welcoming or Friendly - spend the time to get rid of things that don’t add to how you want to feel. It may take you a few days, but every day for the rest of the year you will feel good about your decluttering effort. Along with feeling good will come empowerment, freedom and a sense of renewal. I wanted to feel good about the start of my day when I got dressed in the morning. Looking a little deeper, I realized that feeling affluence, fitness and femininity were in synch with me feeling loving, healthy and happy - a Great Start to my day:) I’d love to hear about your DeCluttering experience. Please share. Please let me know if you have comments or an issue you'd like me to write about. I encourage you to Leave a comment below or post one on my BestYOU facebook page. Sharing your thoughts is a gift to all of us! If you know someone who may like to sign up for my blog posts, please share this link with them. Thanks!  I had an interesting call from a dear friend and Landmark graduate today. Besides wanting to catch up, my friend called to restore her integrity with me. I admire her very much for doing so. She made a promise to me that she didn’t keep, and she acknowledged that fact, apologized and shared with me what she will do differently the next time. Integrity restored. Our relationship is rock solid and no bad feelings. Most of us make excuses and fabricate stories to justify not fulfilling a promise. Our society is acceptant of ‘white lies’, and we learn to accept our own enhanced stories as truth. Each time we weave an embellished story, we know it is not truth. We feel a little smaller inside as we do it. An example might be that I’ve promised to help a friend who is moving. The night before the move, I am invited to hang out with some friends. I know I have to get up early, and that I’ve promised to help with a move, but I choose to go out anyway. Somehow the night extends to 2am, without even realizing it. A little too much food and drink results in a rough wake up and a decision to stay in bed longer. I shut the alarm off and roll over for just a few more zzzz’s. I feel absolutely miserable when I get up and hope that coffee will help. I am not in the mood or in much shape for helping with a move, but I promised. So I grudgingly drag myself along. As I drive to my friend’s place, I grumble that she is lucky I am helping at all. Inside I cringe a bit, as I know this is a really good friend, and I shouldn’t be so annoyed. She’s always been there to help me out. Instead of arriving at 9am for the start of the move, I manage to show up at 10 or 10:30am and the falsehoods begin. I mention that I must be coming down with something - as I don’t feel very well, and the traffic was awful, and that I forgot to set the alarm and the dogs were being a pain, or the neighbors noise kept me up all night or some other excuses about why I had to show up late. Even if I do mention that I had a rough night and was out late, I make some excuse about how tough it is to get friends together, and that I couldn’t help it that this was the one night we could all hang out, so I had to go. We tend to build stories that make our mishaps seem less like our own fault. It’s everyone’s and everything’s fault other than mine. That is the opposite of integrity, and pretty much all of us have learned this way of dealing with each other - in business, in our families, in our friendships - At Landmark, we discussed integrity as ‘doing what we say we will do’. Integrity is not viewed through a moral lens, but rather through the lens of workability. Rather than judging what I could have done or should have done from a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ perspective, looking at the effect of my lack of integrity is helpful. My moving friend was likely anxious about my not showing up and even perhaps worried about me. She also probably was panicky about not having enough people to help with her move. Whereas, she might have asked more, or other people to help with the move, if she had known that I was not going to honor my word by reliably showing up on time and in good physical condition to actually be helpful. My actions led to unworkability. There were a number of possible places to say ‘no’ along the way, and sometimes saying ‘no’ is the answer to act with integrity. Since I didn’t choose to say ‘no’, and I didn’t honor my word, I was out of integrity. I could have restored integrity by acknowledging my late night party choice and choice of staying in bed longer, apologizing for not honoring my promise, and then either offering to call another healthy friend to help or providing another alternative solution to help the situation. Something to consider for the future - might saying ‘no’ sometimes, be your choice for integrity? Please let me know if you have comments or an issue you'd like me to write about. I encourage you to Leave a comment below or post one on my BestYOU facebook page. Sharing your thoughts is a gift to all of us! If you know someone who may like to sign up for my blog posts, please share this link with them. Thanks!  WE EAT WHEN WE CELEBRATE; WE EAT WHEN WE GATHER; WE EAT WHEN WE WORK; WE EAT AT SPORTING EVENTS; WE EAT AT MOVIES; WE EAT DURING INTERMISSION OF PLAYS AND CONCERTS; WE EAT WHEN WE PLAY CARDS; WE EAT WHEN WE WATCH TV; WE EAT AT MANY OF OUR MEETINGS, AND ON AND ON. Today’s writing is a continuation from last week’s topic of Balance and Food Obsession, thanks to another blog follower’s feedback. ... I've been reading about, and struggling with, trying to not become obsessed with food as a consequence of trying to change habits and clean up our menu. For instance, I've learned that I can't track calories or the like because it consumes my attention. I truly couldn't focus on anything. It's an interesting study in balance between not thinking about food choices at all and thinking about nothing else. Think about how we are inundated with advertisements about cookies, candy, sweetened drinks, pizza and every other kind of “fun food” that is generally made. These foods are appealing in taste, but they become even more appealing to us, with a marketer’s magic wand. The ads imply we will be hip, more ‘in’, more popular, and even more attractive, when we are consuming the particular products being promoted. Who doesn’t want to be hip and attractive? So, we believe the hype and feel good while we are consuming the ‘fun foods and drinks’. The ‘fun foods’ are a staple at most of our events and activities - think M&M’s, soda, chips and dip, nacho’s, pizza. We often have the token veggie tray with dip - but at the end of the evening, veggies often still remain. Usually, it doesn’t take long for remorse to settle in. Food comas, hangovers, bloated and lazy feelings pretty much always follow the ‘fun food’ binges. “…balance between not thinking about food choices at all and thinking about nothing else…” POSSIBLE LIFESTYLE CHANGES: To help with replacing food as the main source of your pleasure and focus in your day - Is there some activity, interest or project you like that does not involve eating?
Want more physical activity?
Who’s got the time? One possible life adjustment - LESS TV? - besides freeing up some time, it can also help curb some of the temptations from the many food commercials we all are exposed to on television. Just a thought - AT WORK:
As I like to say, Take a BestYOU Break:) WHY HAS OBESITY CLIMBED AND OUR STRUGGLES WITH HEALTH AND FOOD INCREASED, ESPECIALLY IN AMERICA? Affluence in America has provided access to so much, and somehow we didn’t notice as the constant eating crept up on us and consumed our lives. Along with our increased incomes, we changed our entire way of looking at food preparation and food consumption. My parents, who experienced the depression and actually knew what real hunger was like, quickly and happily accepted plentiful food portions and taught us to enjoy and cherish food. Many times at our kitchen table, my brothers and I were scolded if we did not eat every bite of food on our plates. “There are starving children in Biafra,” my mom would say. We had no idea where Biafra was and pretty much, we wished we could send them our food so we didn’t have to eat what we didn’t like or as much as my mother thought we should eat:) My parents, of course, were providing the best they could for their children, and they wanted to teach us appreciation of food and not wasting. As my parents and millions of Americans were able to raise their standard of living, the whole prepared food market was embraced. Spending less time cooking in the kitchen, as our grandparents did, was seen as more modern and a sign of women having other interests besides cooking. Increased consumption of meats, plus large portions were ‘signs of success and affluence’. Parents were admired for providing food abundantly for their families. We seemed to forget that food producers, processors and yes, farmers; all are in business to sell foods. While they are providing a life sustaining service, they do sell products, just the same as a car salesman sells cars. They seek to make profits and also employ many people. They aren’t the villains. There are no villains from my perspective. In reflection, our society over the past 50 years trusted producers and focused on the instant gratifications of our affluence and our tasty foods. As a society, we put pressures on the food industry to produce more, tastier, faster, cheaper and with greater consistency. Our demands often pushed producers toward the paths they took. We preferred bright, colorful and ‘fresh looking’ meats and produce. Little did I know or did we think about, what enhancements were needed for producers to provide such consistently plentiful and attractive looking food. Marketers also cleverly increased portions - Biggie Sizing everything - and as Americans stomachs and appetites grew, repeat customers and ‘quantity consumers’ were the result. The cost-benefit analysis of losing money on the huge portions showed the loss was more than offset by the repeat customers that increasingly ate and ordered more food. Adding sugars and flavorings that caused our appetites to ignite helped to keep customers coming back for more. More recently, the food industry “answered” the cry of the American public’s relatively newfound interest in health and ingredients, by providing smaller portion size, and actually increasing their profits. The additives and sweeteners are still there, so while some people now eat smaller portions - many now order two or three of the smaller size portions to satisfy their hunger cravings! Add to this, the hip, popular aura surrounding gatherings with plentiful and ‘fun foods’, and our consumption has gone way up. Raising my own kids, I made sure to NOT insist on cleaning their plates, but packaged foods, fast foods, convenience foods were everywhere in our home. The marketers told us the foods were tasty and healthy, and we believed them. Few ingredients were listed on labels, as it wasn’t required. Besides, Who had time to worry about what was in our foods? We were busy people and getting busier each and every year. I recall well the introduction of Market Day products - all processed foods, all pre-packaged and all very tasty PLUS for every product sold, a portion of the cost went to support our local schools and sometimes churches. Selling foods was a fund raiser that I bought into Big Time. I even volunteered to help with the distribution of the foods at the school. I would never give anything unhealthy to my family, right? And I was a modern day woman who was very busy. I thought I was right up there with Martha Stewart in the homemaking and food preparation category. I could whip up a great tasting meal with the help of Market Day in no time. I mentioned high fructose corn syrup in last weeks blog and found this statement from an expert in nutrition. “…....These two ingredients (high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil), either alone or in combination, can be found in virtually all processed foods, and one can make a compelling argument that the reliance on these two foods is a primary contributing factor for most of the degenerative diseases attacking Americans today." Corn and Soybeans are two of America’s largest crops and Food Industry staples. They are also two of the most genetically modified food crops. I and my family have been eating these ingredients our entire lives and not thinking twice about it, until recently. HERE’S A RECAP -
Stop calorie counting Stop weighing yourself Stop saving “in case I get fat clothes”
For me, this food and balance issue is crucial. What has all that processed food done to my body over time? It's something, I'm still trying to figure out? Please let me know if you have comments or an issue you'd like me to write about. I am grateful to the follower who sent in the idea for this and last week's posts. I encourage you to Leave a comment below or post one on my BestYOU facebook page. Sharing your thoughts is a gift to all of us! If you know someone who may like to sign up for my blog posts, please share this link with them. Thanks! |
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