A little while ago Charly and I discussed how to control your mind during difficult and stressful times. To get the full benefit of our discussion, please listen to our show:
Connie,
Your Yoga Partner
from
I never even thought for one moment that I might end up in the role of a full time carer, so I was very badly prepared when my life changed a few weeks ago….
My husband was diagnosed with a serious illness and suddenly my life revolves around treatment schedules, doctors’ appointments, specialists’ appointments, picking up scripts from the chemist and personal care. Constantly disrupted sleep and suddenly being responsible for everything is taking its toll. As one woman I spoke to put it: “You lose your identity”.
At first I didn’t think that it was so much about losing my identity – it was more about suddenly being thrown into a role that is not of my choosing and that consumes an enormous amount of time and energy (both physical and emotional). Then it slowly dawned on me that it is a real struggle to do anything that is just for me (whether this is something essential like a doctor’s appointment or something that is just for fun). Maybe my identity is being threatened. All my other roles are still there as well, they have not disappeared just because I suddenly became a full time carer. As time goes by, it is getting more and more difficult to juggle all the roles. This is why my blog posts have become somewhat irregular and it will stay like that way for quite a while.
I am really grateful for my yoga training. Yoga philosphy applies to this situation as well, it is more important now than at any other time in my life. I have the ability to bring myself back to the present moment whenever the mind wanders off into some catastrophic and destructive territory. Right now this is one of my most important skills. I don’t know what the future holds and I have no control over it anyway. I have to deal with things as they happen.
The physcial fitness that yoga has given me is a great asset – without it things would be very difficult.
Yoga is also about simplifying and sorting the essential from the non-essential. At the moment I am concentrating on essential tasks. It is essential to eat well and have healthy and balanced meals but they can be simple. It is not essential to have a clean house or have ironed clothes. I had to become firm and quick at making decisions. No time to waste. Decision was wrong – simply change it and move forward.
I forget things because of overload and lack of sleep. I now make lists for essential things (no more than 3 or 4 per day), tick them off as they are done and I don’t promise to do anything for anybody. I don’t have to remember or apologise later for not getting around to it.
When things get really difficult I practice my yoga breathing - long, slow, deep breaths. It takes practice to be able to do that during difficult situations. Luckily I had lots of practice over many years and it has become second nature for me to resort to my breath when the going gets tough. It also helps to breathe slowly and delibarately around other people who are in distress and encourage them to breathe with you. Sometimes their breath will synchronise with yours and then they automatically calm down. It is not always that simple but it is worth a try.
As time goes on I will try and write more about my insights and experiences. It might be helpful if you ever get into a similar situation (but I sincerely hope you won’t).
Till next time,
Connie
Your Yoga Partner
from
Australia has a “Red Centre”. The middle of our vast continent is a desert and the sand and the rocks (including the famous Ayers Rock) are red. I visited this area on two occasions and find it fascinating. It has a “spirit” and and energy of its own.
This morning when I got up the sky had the strangest colour I had ever seen. The light was eerie, spooky, I could not figure out what was going on. It was similar to what happens when severe bushfires are burning, but this was different. I got my camera and took a few shots around my backyard. Suddenly I realised that there was lots of red dust on my car. 
My first thought was “chemicals, poisons, factory burning somewhere” – so I rushed back inside and turned the radio on. I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard that it was “only” dust. It was covering all of Sydney and gale force winds had brought it from the far west. 
I had never seen anything like it and hope that it was a rare and unusual event. I thought I share a couple of my photos with you.
Connie
Your Yoga Partner
from
Today Charly and I had a talk to Shelagh Jones from the Spiritual Marketing Directory. Shelagh started out by helping small businesses getting their marketing strategy right, then she went on to coaching and helping entrepreneurs in a more wholistic way by identifying blockages that stopped them from moving on.
Over time she found that there was a lot of insincerity around the issue of internet marketing. The problem is that a lot of communities exist on the internet but they do not want any marketing to happen in their forums or other places on the internet where they “hang out” so to speak. Anyone wanting to gain access to potential customers who might be interested in their products had to pretend to be there for different reasons and this way of establishing yourself on the internet gets very frustrating, time consuming and insincere.
So Shelagh decided to create a directory and community that was purely for marketing and showcasing your business.
She also is a firm believer in the Law of Attraction – like is attracted to like.
She found that a common wish was to” find more customers who are just like me.” People who have the same values, who think like me about life, how to run a business, how to have business interactions work out to the best advantage of all involved.
She wanted to create a place where people looking for a company in a particular industry could find out about the values of businesses, about what motivated them, before starting a business relationship with them. I think that this is a great idea. It will also make it easier to ask the right questions before going ahead with a purchase or bigger project.
Shelagh tries to make things simple for members of the directory. Once the entry is in the directory is does not have to be added to or updated all the time (unless you want to). Participation in the forum is completely voluntary but very valuable. Businesses who do not have a website established yet and find that task daunting can get themselves a domain name and point it to their page in the directory till they manage to set up their own web presence.
I am finding that there are very few yoga teachers who have a well established web presence. It seems all to much work, too daunting, too technical and time consuming. I think that those of us that spend a lot of time with people and doing our own practice are not naturally drawn to the online world. It is very different, somehow artificial and not very “yogic”. To establish and maintain your own website is quite a task. The Spiritual Marketing Directory might be a simple solution to take your business out into the world or to find people you want to do business with.
To find out more, listen to our interview here:
Shelagh has also made a very generous offer for our listeners. She will give a 2 month free subscription to the Spiritual Marketing Directory when you join the directory through the link below:
http://stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/spiritus
To find out more about the directory you can go to:
http://www.spiritus-thespiritualmarketingdirectory.com
It is all about creating authenticity in marketing, sharing your values and being able to show who your really are. This philosophy is very much in alignment with the values of yoga.
Connie
from
This week Charly and I had an amazing conversation with Gillian-Hood-Gabrielson whose specialty and passion is to teach women about “Living now, instead of waiting to lose weight” , “Taking back power over food” and to “Re-ignite the relationship with your body”. This is very much in alignment with yoga – living in the present moment, becoming aware of your body and establishing a good, healthy and respectful relationship with it are some of the foundations on which yoga is built.
Gillian comes from a personal training background and her relationship with food was fraught with difficulties from an early age. She finally discovered “intuitive eating” and has been on that journey ever since.
A lot of us have a love-hate relationship with food, we know what we should be doing and eating and yet – somehow it just doesn’t work, we don’t manage to follow through.
Intuitive eating is not a diet, healthy eating or lifestyle. In a nutshell it means “eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are full”. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? For a lot of us it is not simple because we have been conditioned to believe that we have to “Finish everything on our plate”, to “eat because otherwise the cook is unhappy, we don’t love her any more when we don’t eat lots of her food” or similar things. Often food is used to suppress emotions. “You are hurting – go and get an ice cream, it will make you feel better”. These childhood patterns continue to shape our attitude towards food and our behaviour around food all through our adulthood. Often we are not even aware that this is happening.
Intuitive eating means to become consistent – to eat when we are hungry and to stop when we are full. It is that simple. All food is permissible, there is no guilt. We gain gradual freedom.
Gillian also talked about the hunger-scale from 0-10. When we reach 0-1 we are extremely hungry, our blood sugar levels are low and the brain goes into emergency mode. When we are in this state we are most likely to overshoot the mark. We eat too much and instead of getting to a 6-7 which gives us a good feeling of satiety and just enough food for our needs we overeat and end up at number 10, feeling awful. The lesson here is to try and avoid to get to this 0-1 level. It is interesting that yoga should not be practised when we are extremely hungry or after eating a huge meal. The body should be balanced and in good condition when we start our session so we can gain the most benefit and the body and mind do not distract us too much.
We talked about other interesting matters relating to food, eating, tiredness and stress management.
Listen to the full interview to find out.
You can find out more about Gillian by going to her website which is http://www.healthieroutcomes.com
At the moment she is selling her e-book “Four Weeks to a New You” for 50% off. Grab it before the end of September for that price.
Here is to a New You!
Connie,
Your Yoga Partner
from
