Home Made Sock Hot Packs and Rollers

Interested in a little self-help for your aches and pains?

The Home Made Microwave Hot Pack or Cold Pack

Ingredients:
Feed Corn
Clean Socks

Really! This is so simple, except for shucking the corn if you buy it whole. All you need is feed corn and a sock (I used some clean but slightly worn hiking socks). If your sock is short, you will need to sew it shut. If your sock is long, you can just tie it up. Of course if you are really into this, you can sew beautiful bags... but my "hot sock" was made to be used at home and for my labor - not a public item.


The microwave time does vary based on the size of the sock, so experiment - 1 minute at a time until desired heat is achieved. It takes my sock about 5 minutes. This smells so wonderful too!

 The Sock Roller

Come get some myofascial work with me and I will teach you more about using this fine little device!

Ingredients:
A long sock
2 tennis balls

You must think I have a thing for socks, but really I just love reusing and recycling - and making things cheap! This is what you do: put 2 tennis balls in a sock and tie the sock shut. You can adjust the balls by doing a retie. Lay on the roller on the floor with the balls on either side of your spine and roll up and down - find a spot that is tender and breath deeply while sinking into the balls. You should feel that "good" pain/pressure - not the "can't stand it" pain. You can use the balls all over your body to work trigger points, but also try purchasing a 4 inch ball and doing myofascial stretching. Just ask me how!

Check out this great local link for balls and a great myofascial stretching book. You can also find out more about myofascial release technique on this site. Enjoy a session with me today - Live Pain Free!
http://www.denvermyofascialrelease.com/estore.htm

Weight Loss - Habits of a Grazer

As promised, here is my blog entry about my "weight loss secrets". Part of the secret is that I never diet and that my eating habits are a lifestyle choice and, as stated, a habit. I am a grazer, my husband is a grazer and I suspect our children will be grazers. I had to think about how to define my habits in order to write this piece. This is important: I didn't seek out grazing as a diet/lifestyle choice... but that is how things have evolved for me over time. I was, in fact, surprised to find that it is a type of "diet" if you google it.

The following is my take on Grazing:

A long time ago, during my life time - specifically my life line, I started eating less during "meals" and took up snacking in order to appease my body's nasty little crashes, which I assumed were hypoglycemic fits. Snacks between meals satisfied my cravings and kept my body stable - reducing the roller coaster ride of ups and downs throughout the day. I also stopped drinking caffeine about 3.5 years ago during my first pregnancy. After stopping my caffeine habit, I realized how much better I felt every day, all day - day after day after day. I never get that EXHAUSTED feeling anymore at different points during the day - and there is no extreme swinging from alert to drowsy to get me a bed.

Redefining Food Intake: Meals???? vs. Eating Food
Grazing also fits my overall lifestyle: I rarely have time to cook a "traditional meal". It just is not a priority during the week day - coming home from work and spending time with my kids playing and going to the park overtakes the desire to be in the kitchen. Our kids get plenty of kitchen time on the weekend: we always make our own bread, desserts, food for the week with full kiddo participation. My daughter loves helping in the kitchen. She has the chance to eat food straight from our garden. And of course there are times that we have a large festive meal with friends and family. Most of the time, however, we eat to live, not live to eat. When you get away from a meal mentality you do run down that slippery slope of how well you eat. How do I deal with that? Do I eat well?

Here are a couple of things that I believe help us in our house. First of all, we strive to keep processed foods out of the house - of major importance when you don't cook much. Keep the junk out and enter the "100 healthy foods". It all works together with my goal of reducing waste and working towards zero waste. Real, whole foods with minimal damage! I'll grab a handful of almonds, an apple, some pre-cooked chicken, make up some broccoli, whip up some oatmeal, eggs, and so on. We make our own bread, banana bread, soups,  and snacks (popcorn, carrots). When we shop, nothing with high fructose corn syrup enters our basket. We try to buy items with itsy bitsy ingredient labels - things we recognize. Yes, we eat chocolate - dark chocolate. Yes, we drink a beer here and there. Yes, there are days when we eat anything we want and a lot of it. I believe in Joyous Living! Someone saw me eating a cupcake or something like that at work one day and said... "aren't you supposed to be a Life Coach?" To which I replied, yes, and I believe in being happy. I don't struggle with calories and worries about what I am eating, because I live a lifestyle that allows for occasional "crap" in my diet.

My lifestyle does include a lot of movement! If you want to lose weight, or stay at a healthy weight as you age, you need less calories - less going in and more output - burning calories, a less sedentary way of life. Reduce your intake! One problem with 3 meals, I believe, is that people overeat at each meal. You are really hungry by the time it is time to eat, you eat quickly, and don't listen to the full signals (or don't get the signals until you've already eaten too much). Then people will also snack between these large meals too. I eat small all the time (except when you see me eat out). Research is proving that restricting food intake is lengthening lifespans, and leading (not surprisingly) to weight loss. Time Magazine Special: Eat Less, Live Longer

Google Top 10 Healthiest Foods, or healthy food lists, or 100 healthiest foods. Here is a link to List of 10 Super Foods. I have kept a list of healthy foods on my fridge to refer to when I need inspiration. I enjoy eating one food at a time - savoring it's unique texture and flavor. I believe we should try to get our vitamins from food rather than supplements.

My Favorite Tips for Weight Loss
1. Slow down when you eat
2. Eat less food, eat more often :)
3. Eat nutrient dense, non-processed foods
4. Get exercise
5. Be Happy and Mindful with your food, your kids, your job, etc...
6. Keep junk food out of your house
7. Make your desserts
8. Eat Anything, once a week
9. Think about what a "meal" is and your relationship to food
10. Totally avoid high fructose corn syrup
11. Eliminate soda
12. Counting calories does work, but it is a lot of work... just eat less & introduce healthier foods
13. Learn about healthy fats
14. If you graze, don't graze on junk

Meditative Hike

Meditative Hike 

Being in nature is healing. Being in natural surroundings aids us in energy sensitivity training/cultivation. Being inside we are automatically cut off from fresh air, the positive aspects of sunlight, natural sounds and smells. This is why energy cultivation in natural settings is so powerful – positive environmental elements are readily accessible and set the stage for deepening our sensitivity to energy. We will need to use our senses to help guide and stretch our awareness, our mind to be at ease – serene and peaceful, and we need to be in a space where we can build trust in our instincts.

Why energy cultivation and sensitivity? Yoga, Tai Chi, Acupuncture, etc… these are healing many people today due to the way in which the energetic work of the mind and body both respond to, are developed and moved in these practices. We have innate abilities to tap into our energetic body and heal ourselves, and live more in tune with our “true” selves.

Beginning 

Quieting the Mind and Working the Breath
Setting intentions and asking for guidance

Working (extending) 
Using the senses to Connect 
- feeling the landscape
- opening our senses

Following your instincts 
- found objects
- being called to a space
- noticing the messages and lessons

Energy sensitivity 
- energy from self, objects, places, trees, spaces, people, animals
- awareness of others energy
- our voice as source of positive energy

Resting (harmonizing and integrating) 
Meditation 
- setting the mind with sound, breathing
- looking at your thoughts and letting them pass

A meditation on Fearlessness

A meditation on Fearlessness

Tonight we will explore the idea of Fearlessness, or moving beyond fear to have the courage to embrace vulnerability and raw emotion, and in the process break down the walls we erect and masks we wear to hide behind.

This meditation comes from a personal insight and plea for guidance which directly led me to a book by my bed, “Shambhala: The sacred path of the warrior” by Chogyam Trungpa. I was guided to page 35.

I have realized in the past few weeks that a huge shift is happening within me – emotionally and mentally, as well as most certainly on a physical level. I am being drawn to deal with my fears about the birth and journey with my child to be, as well as being a mother. I was profoundly impacted by what I read about fearlessness and “working with the softness of the human heart.” My own tears and emerging sadness in working with memories and emotions from my last birth are positive signs of growth and awareness.

I am glad that we can share tonight in not just honoring and supporting the journey into motherhood for Lauren, but for ourselves as well. Lauren’s revelation of fear and anxiety in the last class about her upcoming birth touched my heart and I realized we could help her with a positive transition with this class. Tonight we will focus through art, movement, meditation, and sharing on building a Positive Foundation for birth and motherhood with heartfelt Release, Inspiration and Encouragement.

Release painful or negative emotions and stories we hold in our bodies.

Inspire each other and allow others to journey with us.

Encourage understanding, growth, softness of heart, and peace in our lives.

Our art: Using simple crayons, markers and pencils we can create powerful images of birth and motherhood, blending hopes and dreams, words of affirmation, and personal stories.

Our Movement: Tonight we will perform authentic movement and create a sacred space for our bodies. Allow your movement to be spontaneous and come from within your body, not from choreography or thought.

Our Sharing: The work we will do tonight is transformative and lasting. We become stronger and more authentic through exploration of our stories and emotions through art and movement. Please keep the space sacred by not judging or interpreting others experiences – you will have an amazing impact as a witness and support!

Authentic Movement

The practice of authentic movement allows a mover and a witness to share an experience of creating sacred space for moving deeply into the mind-body connection, thereby gaining insights and awareness through spontaneous expression of the body's wisdom. Practitioners may gain a sense of incredible emotional freedom and release. I can personally recall a number of powerful emotional releases over the years during sessions, from intense happiness to anger, with previously unimagined healing effects lasting in my whole being to this day. These have been small 1:1 sessions with a witness and with larger groups of movers and fewer witnesses. Each time has been a unique opportunity to move inward and discover a new aspect of self previously hidden, I believe, behind an overactive mind masking and numbing intuition and self-awareness. Authentic movement can begin with the simple intention of allowing your body to start a journey from a movement impulse or memory, and following (not leading) the course of action until a closure occurs and the body rests. The voice of the mover that sometimes arises during authentic movement can be startling, even unsettling, for the participant, as the sounds are felt so intensely and the impact of the words may feel more genuine than in daily conversation.

With a beginner to authentic movement, it can take some time to feel comfortable to open up in this way - a way sometimes described as allowing yourself to be raw and vulnerable, unexpected, and going into an unknown place in yourself. My experience is that trusting and not trying too hard to make movement happen allows for an optimal experience, even if you lay on the ground for 10 minutes and merely move a finger, that may be all that is called for that day. Was it an authentic experience? Only you can say. Learning what that is, is part of the experience.

I am eager to experience authentic movement this week in my class, and have to admit I certainly have a bit of an agenda going in - working on dealing with feelings from the birth of my daughter. However, I can not say what will actually surface once I begin, and that is part of the beauty. I also look forward, always, to the experience of being a witness for others, and sharing in the authentic expression of our deeper selves. Witnesses, and witnessing, help create a sacred and safe space. The witness responds to the mover's comments about what he or she experienced, and the witness reports in terms such as, "I felt" or "I saw", careful not to interpret or analyze. A witness receives incoming images and thoughts with mindfulness, that is to say with a certain receptivity to seeing clearly what is happening in the moment. Non-judging, and holding the space for the mover to be seen and heard.

Authentic movement is a creative process of opening and going deeper into the self, healing, and being in a spontaneous moment of self-awareness. See you there!

Be Fit for Baby | Boulder Moms Connect

Be Fit for Baby | Boulder Moms Connect

What happens in a garden?

Some people are drawn to nature, and some people aren't. I was telling a friend today that I grew up feeling closer to nature than to most people, except my family. The lake I spent my summers next to was my friend. I would sit on the dock and look into those waters and connect. I remember giving the lake little gifts of flowers or leaves. And I remember I gave them as "gifts". Many things in nature were my friends over the years and taught me... rocks, valleys, grass, animals. Last year the animals harvested my sunflower seeds. I intended to bake those tasty seeds but seeing the animals enjoy them, and need them for the winter, changed my mind.

Each year I grow a garden, and have done that with a few exceptions since leaving college. What makes me get out there year after year to plant, work the soil, compost, harvest, and weed? What is the attraction? There is a definite attraction - a soul yearning feeling - to working and being in my yard. I wouldn't recognize myself without it. I can honestly say it has very little to do with what actually grows out there, though the "harvest" keeps my passion sound reasonable I guess. I do love to see a full healthy garden. I also love to see my "illegal" water cache fill up with the spring rain. I take pleasure in the spring green, and the summer browning of the grass because I refuse to waste water to keep a lawn green. But I think what it all comes down to is loving the land is in my genes. My mother, my mothers grandmother, my brother all have been gardeners. Family time was full of camping out, hiking, or spending the summer outside in the beautiful Adirondacks.

Beyond that, I just connect with the land. If you do, you get what I am talking about. So, what happens in a garden?

Just a few very beautiful things.

rich dark dirt
worms
mud
seedlings
large leafy plants
flowers
food
a place for wild animals (a refuge in my neighborhood)
weeds and straw piled high to keep them down
survival
watering cans
gifts
growth
life
yearly cycles
a place to sit and be
challenges
dirt under your nails, in your hair
...