Coaching by G

Dear Transformers… HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Guilia new year

Here I am, in my happy place, working on some very special offerings for 2024.  I am out here in New Mexico for a Fire Walk Retreat with my Breathwork teacher and about 40 other folks. 

First of all, no, I have never burned my feet and still every time is another possibility for pain, just like the rest of life.  Sometimes we get burned by life.  Always, we are transformed in it.  Each year I choose a word or phrase to carry me through the year.  The group chants my phrase as I walk the hot coals focusing on the fire in the sky-the stars. I am the conduit between the fires of heaven and earth.  This year 2024, I choose “Running Free”.

What are your words or phrases you would like to carry you this year?

fire walk

Fire is the greatest transmuter of energy.  

What are you willing to release into the fire? 

How would you like to be transformed this year?  

What energies are you hoping to transmute this year?

What are you willing to exchange for your transformations

When I return from the high dessert, I plan to be in Chicago until I head off to Guatemala for a Write By The Lake writing retreat with Joyce Maynard.  I’ve dreamt of the honor of working with this incredible author.  I never thought I would have the chance to do this and now, of course, every kind of writing block is rising up.  

Resistance is relentless.

Resistance, really does not care what you are trying to do or to not do, it is fueled entirely by your desire to change.  

Want to lose some weight? Resistance.

Want to write your book?  Resistance.

Want to change your fitness routine? Resistance.

Want to retire? Resistance.

Resistance is relentless and bottomless.  Unlike your energy to fight it, it never runs out of fuel.

So how do we beat it?????

PRACTICE.

As soon as you are about to break through, resistance will show up.  It might show up in the way of an accident, a cold, an overdraft on your bank account, back pain, or some other “problem”.  But make no mistake, it aims to keep you from getting what you want.  Your psyche is communicating with you at a deep level and in order to know that about yourself you need practices in place that allow you to root out the underlying cause.  

This year is a BIG year. 2024 = 8

Turn 8 sideways and it represents infinity.

Here are some practices I am growing this year as offerings:

Fit From Within my online course is available year round with lifetime access!

 purchase here : 

https://fitfromwithin.teachable.com/p/fit-from-within

Breathwork healing circles live in my studio on Wednesday evenings once or twice a month.  The next one is January 10 at 7pm $35.00

https://coachingbyg.pike13.com/pack_products/760685 

Breathwork is the way to open your heart.  In the pranayama breathwork we increase the oxygen intake by breathing only through the mouth and this quiets the mind.  It is a psychedelic path using your own breath.  Learn to open and allow what is already within you to be revealed. 

Root Cause Practice.  Over the last year I have been interning in Root Cause Practice. 

I am ready to offer sessions for $222.00 over zoom or in person. If on zoom you have the option to have the the recording sent to you as well

https://coachingbyg.pike13.com/appointments/318874

Illness & Pain are NOT Random

Learn to translate the messages of the body through its language of metaphor to discover the emotions that have been held in your cells for so long. 

These sessions are an hour in length.

I look forward to helping you to reach all your goals for 2024 and beyond.

Stay Strong!

From my heart to yours,

Giulia signature

 

The Strength of Gratitude

Happy Thanksgiving

Hi Pumpkin!

It Is Thanksgiving time here in the U.S. and I am reminded that GRATITUDE is possibly the greatest muscle I have. I try to exercise this muscle the most when I feel it the least.

Thank you for reading my post! Thank you for being in my life, because if you are reading this you ARE in my life……because this is my life that I am sharing with you. 

Sometimes, I am grateful for the really hard things that have transpired during the day.  Things rarely go according to plan but that doesn’t mean that making a plan is a bad idea.  It means that adventure begins when plans shift.  Who we are becomes more apparent when plans shift.  The turkey is not actually done! Oh boy—who am I? LOL, but also, it happens.  Can you roll with the punches?

Research has shown us that how we actually FEEL is the key to longevity and enjoyment, not how much we dissociate through the use of sugar, booze, drugs or video games. 

Zero percent of people are happier drunk or high.  

Zero percent of people are happier playing video games.

100 percent of people are dissociated when buzzed, drunk, high, or playing videos games.

Notice this for yourself.  If anyone wants to argue this point I would say, sure, you’re right.  I am just saying which way I have found to be East, and you can find your own way. In fact, you must.

But, I have noticed most people are incapable of really overcoming any kind of turkey snafu whilst under the influence, much less really difficult family relationships.

If you are bored already—skip to the practical part of this blog post below for a bunch of ideas for un-fucking yourself. 

One thing I know for sure is that my daily practices are what allow me to be present in the chaos of holidays.  Who I am is the person I practice being everyday.  I wake up and practice gratitude. Really.  As soon as I am aware of being awake I reach out for Lillie (one of my dogs) and thank her for sleeping with me and keeping me warm and cozy.  I thank my bed for holding me and then I give thanks for everything I can think of; my home, my business, enough food for me and the dogs, my land, my family……simply listing what comes to mind. I do this because it feels good to say thank you.  It feels good to acknowledge that I am held and safe and warm and I have awakened again to a new dawn, ripe with the possibilities I allow.  Giving gratitude is one way I open to the possibility of the miracles of the day.  Another way is to do the things that start my day off with the things I want to experience that day.  I scrape my tongue to remove the toxins that build up on the tongue during sleep.  It is a physical reminder that what comes up is coming up to be cleared.  I get dressed and then I lie on the bed with Lillie and let my head hang off the end while I drop naysa (Ayurvedic sinus oil) into each nostril and let it drip into my sinuses.  I just don’t get colds and this is one reason why this is true. 

These are self care practices—a 1 minute daily practices that pay massive dividends. 

I also have a morning elixir that I make daily.  It keeps me healthy by cleansing my liver, supporting my microbiome and hormone health, and hydrating me with electrolytes.  It’s yummy and easy to make and I drink it while I am playing with the dogs for a few minutes outside in the sun—even in the winter—getting sunlight in my eyes and moving with joy.  

If you want to learn more practices that matter towards living the life you say you want, click HERE 

(https://fitfromwithin.teachable.com/p/fit-from-within)

I created an online course that not only provides endless practice ideas from tongue scraping to mouth taping (Yes!) And, mostly, what my course, Fit From Within, provides is practical methods for determining the most difficult thing: figuring out what you really, really want.  It starts with rhythm, like all of life.

When I ask any person on the planet what they want, the typical response is, hands on hips attitude and “Well, I’ll tell you what I DON’T want.” 

Most of us spend a lot of energy focused on what is not going well.  I notice that energy is what leads people down the path of giving it all up until January.   In October, the light shifts, the weather turns cooler, the candy is omnipresent, the shorts and skimpy tops are put away or covered with sweats.  The very act of leaving home becomes involved.  By the time we reach Thanksgiving time most people have a ready gained weight and lost interest in all the fun things summer had to offer.  Part of that is just the weather. Part of that is not having a plan—part of is not having a winter practice, and,  part of it is just nature.  All of nature says slow down, drop what no longer serves us (trees do it) and start taking in as much food as possible—squirrels and other little creatures do it.  Sleep more.  The light shifted.  There is more darkness even if we dropped the horrible practice of turning the clocks in one direction or the other.  Bears do it! All of the natural world is slowing.  But the human world never slows down.  

Notice how not slowing down when the rest of nature does is working against you.  

So we have artificial ways of slowing.  Humans eat garbage.  As soon as the weather shifts, we eat gobs of packaged candy loaded with high fructose corn syrup and cheap disastrous chemically modified oils. We don’t sleep more, we just shift with the clocks.  We continue working AGAINST time, chasing it, and never catching up.  

By the time the holidays are here we are mostly entrenched in a FUCK IT!, I already gained 5 pounds, I’ll just diet when the new year hits, attitude. 

WHY?

Why do we choose to live in a this or that world?  What about both, and? What about noticing where you fell out of balance and choose one thing to move you in the direction you want to go? 

Here is a practical list of 20 things you can do to bring yourself back into balance when you feel you have fallen out of line with your true desire.

  1. Drink a glass of water! Filtered water is even better.  Filtered water with a touch of sea salt best.  (Ask me about high blood pressure—its not the salt, its sugar—I have a phd in blood—no joke)
  2. Eat protein. Eat grass fed, pastured protein.  Eat real food.  If you cant kill it, don’t eat it.  If it wasn’t breathing 1 week ago or less—don’t eat it.  This is life force—it does not come in squares packaged in plastic.
  3. Try intermittent fasting. Start with 1 hour longer than you usually fast and then add an hour of fasted time until you reach 14.  There are many schools of thought on fasting but you know me—I would say DO YOU! Find a window that works for you and stick to it. 
  4. Meditate.  Any way you can.  Start with one minute.  Sit still. Listen.  Let go. Cant meditate? Ask me how.  I will teach you how and guide you www.coachingbyg.com/consultation.
  5. Move your body!  Need help? Ask me. www.coachingbyg.com/consultation 
  6. Get sunlight. Even in winter. No sunglasses! (Unless you are at risk of killing someone because of the glare).  Your eyes NEED sun.  Your hormones need sun.
  7. Journal.  Research shows that writing is a direct line to better feelings.  Get it out.  Write with a pen versus a computer.  
  8. Create affirmations that feel a little cheesy and uncomfortable. ( https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/freak-flag-with-kathleen-smith/id1604297587?i=1000630564657)
  9. Find your rhythm.  Go to bed and wake up at the same times daily.  
  10. One hour before bed turn off wifi and all electronic devices.  
  11. Read books.
  12. Do something brand new.  Start lifting weights. Take drum lessons.  Start a pottery class.
  13. Do things that are not centered around food and or booze.  Get coffee with friends, join a walking/running group.  Find a book group, a writing group, a fitness class (9AM Saturday mornings at Coaching by G ($25 cash) just show up!
  14. Pet dogs.  Volunteer at an animal shelter.
  15. Volunteer anywhere.  Feed the hungry, clothe the refugees, help someone else.
  16. Practice gratitude.  Write 3 things you are grateful for right this second—even if it is the air you breathe.  
  17. Practice breathwork.  Contact me for a private session (www.coachingbyg.com/consultation).  I hold monthly classes at the studio and will lead more upon request, live or on zoom.
  18. Cook food. Real food. Share it.
  19. Hire a coach.  
  20. Love yourself!  You are so worth it! 

When you feel like you have lost your way is probably not the time to fire your coach or quit your program.  It is time to ask for more support.  

People say, well I am not using it so I should just stop.  Wrong. Start using it. Ask for help. Quitting doesn’t feel good.

Discipline is all we have.  

You can serve your best interests or your worst, but as Bob Dylan reminds us, “you gotta serve somebody”. 

When you feel good about yourself you make good choices, and when you make good choices you feel good about yourself, you offer others support and you just FEEL GOOD.  Is there some other reason to do things? 

I don’t believe there is.  

EAT AT THANKSGiVING.  AND…then get right back to your routine, because it FEELS GOOD to be in your rhythm.

Don’t have a routine that feels good? There is a coach for that:) 

www.coachingbyg.com/consultation

Happy Thanksgiving!


From my heart to yours,

Giulia signature

Patterns, Can You See?

Patterns, can you see?

Several months ago during the first cohort of my digital course, Fit From Within,

https://fitfromwithin.teachable.com/p/fit-from-within 

a client in the course who has been a client of mine in some capacity on and off for over 15 years, reminded me that I used to have a fitness class that everyone loved.  We laughed a lot and worked hard.  I love the format of that class and it was all body weight work.  We had no objects to use, just our bodies.  We sweated and we laughed and we stretched.  We wove our way to the mat to find savasana, finally.  We rested after we worked. We allowed the joy of movement to sink into our minds, our bodies and our spirits, through a very intentional resting pose.

I recently resurrected the class and have been offering a version of it to current members at my gym on Saturdays at 9 AM. (Just show up with $25 cash if you want to join us!)

It is different now because we add weights and because I don’t do the workout with everyone, which, maybe I should? 

I am open to developing a meaningful community experience.

During class last week, someone brought up astrology (could have been me) and I was explaining what little I know about rising signs, how it can help us know our motivations, and another person commented “its all hooey”.

That sort of unsolicited negative energy is not only unwelcome, it is disturbing.

I truly don’t care if a person believes in astrology.  What I know is that astrology offers a mirror in which we can see ourselves and any person who is reluctant to look in the mirror will have a negative approach to not only astrology but to most things. Astrology offers a snapshot of the stars the moment we take our first breath.  When you were born, the stars aligned. Famed Astrologer, Chani Nicholas says:

  • “The First Key: Your Sun (Your Life’s Purpose)
  • The Second Key: Your Moon (Your Physical and Emotional Needs)
  • The Third Key: Your Ascendant and Its Ruler (Your Motivation for Life and the Steersperson of Your Ship)”

You can go to her website to download your birth chart. www.chaninicholas.com

The earth revolves around the sun.  The moon mirrors the sun and reflects its light.  The ocean is pushed and pulled through by gravitational force of the moon.  If you imagine that the ocean is affected by the moon, but you are not, what do you even mean? The menstrual cycle is a moon cycle.  Every single thing in our universe is affected by gravity and the moon and the sun.  Except you?

You needn’t believe in anything.  You can go on assuming that you have no purpose on earth. It seems to me, though,  that each of us is not here by accident.  How is it that you can look up at the stars and see constellations, patterns, year after year, even when stars die or burn up, the constellations go on forever and ever.  How is that sort of order an accident?  Why is it that most people identify with their horoscope in some way?  Most people find solace in feeling understood and in finding ways to understand themselves better in relationship with the universe.  But, clearly, some people do not.

I find human behavior, like astrology, fascinating.  I am curious about people.  I like to understand how everything works, hence I earned my PhD in Biochemistry/Chemistry. I am a student of nature and so I look to the natural world for understanding.  I love to garden and learn my land and the things it grows.  Ever heard of fractals? Repeating patterns in nature.  They are everywhere from ferns to sunflowers to nautilus shells, to lungs.  The lungs are a great example of fractals.  It you look at the pattern of the capillaries in lungs they are just repetitive patterns, like tree branches.  The physical world precisely represents the emotional, mental, and spiritual worlds.  As above so below.  A person can only project their insides outward. 

Thich Nhat Hanh told a story about a monk wishing to meditate away from others.  He takes a boat and goes to the middle of a lake. He closes his eyes and begins to meditate.  After a few hours of uninterrupted silence, he suddenly feels and hears a bumping of another boat hitting his.

He keeps on with his practice, with his eyes still closed, slightly disturbed though by the interruption of silence. He then feels the bump again. Now, his thoughts rise and an irritation stirs within him. His anger rises to the point that he cannot contain it any longer. He is ready to shout at the boatman “who dares to disturb my meditation!”

However, when he opens his eyes, all that he sees is an empty boat, just floating in the middle of the lake…   At that moment, the monk achieves self-realization and understands that anger is within him; it simply needs to hit an external object to provoke it.

After that, whenever the monk met someone or something that irritated or provoked his anger, he remembered: “Its just an empty boat…The anger is inside me.”

Anyway—like I said, I don’t care what you believe in.  When you share your insides, though, consider what you are revealing?  You don’t have to hold on to that pain any longer and you don’t have to walk with that pain alone. And, you do not have to use my space as a hard object to provoke your anger. 

We are all here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness. 

If you want to discover your own patterns, to look at yourself in new ways and to discover your own true nature, join me in my life’s work. I help people make the great journey of no distance from their head to their heart. My digital course Fit From Within is a course I developed through my years of learning and healing myself.  Fit From Within offers practical wisdom and deep compassionate enquiry as a means of self discovery and finding ones own path forward.

I love to help people put down their past pains, open their hearts to healing, and discover the gifts they have to give the world.  

Join me LIVE for 2 hour workshops delving into the material in my course. The workshops are designed as a companion, an enrichment, to the course, not a substitution. 

Saturdays 2-4 pm at 48 Lake Street, Oak Park, IL 60302    

https://coachingbyg.pike13.com/pack_products/855835

To purchase the full course click the link below.  

https://fitfromwithin.teachable.com/p/fit-from-within

Fit From Within is not just about external goals; it’s about shifting your relationship with yourself. 

Throughout our journey, you’ll have access to:

✔️ Four self paced modules containing video lessons, practices, tools and guidance to put into action.

✔️ 2 Seasons a year Giulia leads 4 live group calls to support integration. *Calls will be recorded and available for replaying.

✔️ Lifetime Access so you can revisit the training materials again and again.

✔️ Downloadable Fit Sheets to track your progress and witness your personal growth.

✔️ Bonus Module: The Ease of Preparing Nourishing Food.

As you commit to the process, you will unlock the potential within yourself and witness the profound impact of your dedication and determination. Remember, the true transformation lies in the commitment you make to yourself.

Finding My Way

August is the month that ushers in so much loss for me. It is the month that school starts.  The summer months are full of kids back from college and high school kids lifting and learning in my studio. In August, though, there is an abrupt ending with kids leaving for college.  It is a time of grieving for me, not because I didn’t think they would leave, but because we grow together through deepening connections and I feel the loss of their presence, even though they almost always return for many years.

Looming even larger is the anniversary of my mothers death, August 26, 2019. Four years ago my mother turned 85 and 8 days later lay down for an afternoon nap and never woke up.

In the months after my mothers death, I would awaken each night with alarming precision at 2:14 A.M.  In the glow of the moon, the experiences of the sweetness of my mother came to me. I had spent the better part of a lifetime huddled in the cold, dark cellar of my resentments of her.  Many years ago, I had made peace with her and with myself.  Especially when we are bereaved, we seek comfort.  I find some comfort in the piece I wrote for her memorial one of those early early mornings. 

When I recall these parts, these very real pieces, of my mother, I recall her loving presence. 

She was everything.  She was the fiercest, meanest, kindest, warmest, coolest, loveliest, cruelest, gentlest.  She gave tirelessly of herself to nature, art, children, friends, and to family.

She was my mother, my source.  She was my first heart break. 

The role of mother is the role of everything: the life giver, the channel for the Great Mystery to move through, the Earth, the moist rich soil of nothing and therefore of ALL creation.  It is no mystery that I am not a mother.  I prefer my role of Auntie.

My best friend became a mother at 48.  I was shocked.  She had moved to DC.  I was in grad school and preoccupied with my own existence (which turns out to have been a really poor excuse for letting friendship lag) and she sent me a card with a picture of her at about 8 months pregnant with twins!!!! I mean you have never seen anyone this pregnant. And then she gave birth to these babies and one day she was gracious enough to bring them to me and I fell in love instantly and the rest is history.  

This whole life is about how we survive breaking our own hearts.  How we survive our perceptions of other peoples trespasses, foibles, transgressions, etc……..

I spent my whole life CERTAIN that my mother had been the source of my deepest pain. I wanted her to fix it, make it go away, all the things we imagine are our mothers duties.  And, for sure, I’d known exactly how she had devastated me and so I knew exactly how she should repair that wound….

It doesn’t work that way, I’ve discovered. I was pretty much wrong about it all.

Even had she accepted responsibility for all the pain of my life, which she did not,  there is no way to take away another persons pain.  We each must be willing to let it go, to recycle it all back to Spirit, to leave it to grow something new in the compost of life. 

I spent years grasping for relief. What I was attached to turns out to have been the narrative I created to seemingly assuage my pain.  I was not forgiving her, for sure, and I was not forgiving myself. What I discovered along the way is what Nelson Mandela said: 

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”  

It is common to keep our own healing at bay by blaming something or someone outside of us for our pain.  It helps us feel into the role of victim. “They” is an ephemeral.  They did this to me.  If I am a victim I am surely absolved of responsibility? But the truth is I am not ever absolved of the responsibility for my own life. Whatever happened, whatever I am experiencing in my life, with other people, situations, etc is ALL mine.  Everything that comes up is coming up so that I can clear it.   

When I went to my mother and asked her wtf and learned that she would not be offering me any relief, I understood it was mine alone, and, finally, willingly, undertook the journey toward myself.

I had found the rock bottom, so to speak.  The hard place that I could, at last,  push off from.

And it took me on a wild ride.

It started in movement.  I was fortunate to have always been able to find my way into my heart through physical activity.  Then I began meditation, another practice undertaken on a path to finding inner peace. 

I’d sit in meditation and say “I am willing to forgive you for not being what I needed.”

And that softened into forgiveness and then that softened into forgiving myself.  

Or, at least, a beginning. I began learning Breathwork techniques as a means to open further and followed my own inner guidance to learning about the root causes of pain, illness, and diseases.  

Self forgiveness is really what I was after, all along.  Self love is the journey we are all on, it turns out.

I was a little bitty baby girl and I survived so much.  I survived the things that people aren’t supposed to have to survive, or so we tell ourselves.  In reading books, many of which were given me by my mother, I learned that, in fact, everyone has to survive.  It’s really just biology.  We are all victims or survivors or whatever word we choose to define our relationship and our exchange with this one precious life. Birth is painful.  If you watch any creature being born, the incredible brutality of it will change you forever.  

We are all fighting like hell to get here. 

Why is that? 

Can you imagine yourself being born? What is it you fought so hard to get here to do? Is there a story about your birth? What is it that we are doing here? 

I realized I wasn’t here on earth to blame my mother.  But, the blaming showed up in me as physical dis-ease and pain.  The blaming showed up as dysplasia, eczema, ulcers, irritable bowel, excess body fat, a herniated disc and a tumor in my breast…

Bleeding from my nipple was really the last straw. The way the body speaks to us is a metaphor that only we can untangle for ourselves.  Whatever is coming up in or on my body is showing me my blind spots.

The great thing about me, though, is I have used every physical ailment as a point for change. 

All the things I have held onto in an effort to hurt someone else have only hurt me. And all of those things taught me a lesson in letting go.

So how did forgiveness create the life I want?

It let me release the life I don’t want.

This healing journey started many moons ago. The most current path I have chosen includes Breathwork and working with the root causes of pain, illness, disease, in addition to my lifelong practices of weightlifting and meditation. There is nothing linear about a human’s evolution, either in the macro or in the micro.  We are all on a unique path. As it is with physical development, spiritual development is individual. We all learn on our own time.  The curriculum, while ours alone, is not optional, only the time we take it is ours to choose. The life we have is ours to unfold.  No one can know it for us or explain it to us.  

I learned to be wary of the people who have the answers. Most of them likely did not understand the question.  And none of them can know me as I know myself. 

You are the power.  You are the answer.  You are the light.  You are born complete.  You don’t have any missing pieces.  Your life is your medicine and holds all of your answers and all the questions.  This is all accessible to us. Breathwork and a deeper inquiry in root cause practices can bring us closer to ourselves by quieting the mind in a space of deep compassion. 

“I’ve never felt more grounded and yet I also felt that I was floating!  That is the first time my mind has ever been quiet.”  

J.R. Oak Park Breathwork client.

You cannot smash open an acorn and find an oak tree, or rip open a rosebud to make the flower appear, even though you know the acorn will become a massive oak tree and the rose bud a rose.  

Life is an unfolding, an ebb and flow, a becoming, a birth and a growing and a dying and a rebirth over and over and over again.  The acorn takes the time it takes to grow into an oak.  Your job is to simply allow it.  How can you nurture its growth? Like the seasons floating in upon the breeze, none of us can make them appear faster or slower, none of us is making them come or go or linger longer.  Each of us can put a fence around the oak sapling, water it, and tell it how big and strong it will become, providing homes for many creatures and shade for many more, and food, and fun, like a swing or place to sit high above the earth to read or get a different view.

Everything the oak needs is already baked in the acorn, just as everything that you need is already in you; you were born perfect. Your only job is to allow your own becoming.

I help people find their own way.  My tools are Breathwork, Root Cause Practice, weightlifting, meditation, and nutrition.  I weave these together depending on the needs and desires of each individual.  I help people open to their own unfolding through compassionate inquiry and some physical work, either through breathing or lifting weights or literally, through whatever moves you forward on your own path.

From my heart to yours,

Giulia signature

Sandeep a Testimonial

Sandeep - A testimonal

How I transformed my body and mind with the help of Coach G

I started working with Coach G a little over a year ago after a good friend of mine
suggested that I give it a try. In that time, I’ve learned a great deal about myself,
both physically, and mentally, and with Giulia‘s guidance about the importance of
nutrition, as well as the spiritual journey that we are all on to be the best version
of ourselves. I will admit, when I first started, I expected to get ripped in 4 to 6
weeks and then go on my merry way, indulging in the bad habits that I had
settled into after many years.

Drinking, eating indiscriminately, ignoring sleep, all while competing, started to break me down. I was exhausted, and my body hurt all over– my back, achilles, and shoulders. I had tendinitis seemingly everywhere. I had actually convinced myself that this is the only way forward, the playing my sport requires playing through pain, I just need to tough it out.
My sport wasn’t making me stronger. It was breaking me down along with my list of bad habits. My “warrior“ mentality was leading me down a path of attrition.

Giulia quickly made me understand that my body was screaming at me “I’m hurting for a reason, do something about it or else I’ll just keep hurting.“ She taught me how to observe my pain and be with it versus ignoring pain and prolonging it. Big difference! Step one consisted of understanding nutrition and how that affects performance. Simple things like macros, drinking enough water, salt balance, protein intake, etc. is really the platform from which to build on. I noticed the days that were out of balance on the nutritional side were always harder lifting days. The more I paid attention to what I put in my body, the better I could perform. She helped break nutrition down so it makes sense to me.

Step two for me has been reforming my self image to one based on self-respect. This body is the only possession we have that will carry us through life. Giulia helped me realize there’s no limit to the amount of strength you need to get
through it. It’s all good. She’s helped break down the many myths about lifting weights and is helping me see the simplicity, elegance, and efficiency of Olympic weightlifting and free weights. Only I can be my own protector and I must respect
my own body to do that. I’m starting to form a self image based on self-respect. Step three has been understanding the nexus between spiritual growth and its physical manifestations. Giulia is an ardent believer that our physical selves are
just an extension of our spiritual existence. It’s hard to argue that when you boil it all down. This has caused me to question what is really going on inside that leads to destructive behaviors. I’m actually OK with having some fun, I’m no monk, nor do I really want to be, but it’s been more important for me to see why I take it too far and kind of just sit with it, now.

The last step is the physical one. The actual lifting of weights, the strain and exhaustive process of building muscle. At 46 it takes me longer to build muscle and faster to lose it. I’ve really had to learn about this process from scratch. When she first had me get into a front rack position, I was like “WTF, I can’t do this.“ And I really couldn’t! G has a penchant for quickly understanding where someone is, physically. I’ve never seen anyone with her level of understanding of strength, conditioning, and
performance. It’s not academic but experience.

It sets her apart.

There’s so much for me to learn, and I’m humbled by how much there is to it. Like perfecting my stroke in my sport, the Olympic lifts have their own “strokes“ and I’m having fun learning a new thing. I feel like a student, and that super charges me. All of this is to say, sure my body is stronger, (much more so!), and my kids and my wife feel up my muscles (I make them! :), but in some way, it all feels like a fringe benefit of this journey I am on. Maybe it’s my “midlife crisis“ but if that crisis is simply showing me the importance of taking care of myself, so be it.

Gone are the daily aches and pains and the dread of competing through it. I’m grateful to G for believing in me and grateful to my family for encouraging me.

I’ll be better for it.
❤️Sandeep.

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Reflections About Alcohol and Life

I reflect upon my life choices regularly. I work at acknowledging the many ways I have lived against myself following “stinking thinking” patterns and I am working on acknowledging some of the ways I have lived toward myself. I am enough

“We are all spiritually powerless, however, not just those who are physically addicted to a substance…….Alcoholics just have their powerlessness visible for all to see.  The rest of us disguise it in different ways, and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addiction and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking.”

Richard Rohr

I reflect upon my life choices regularly.  I work at acknowledging the many ways I have lived against myself following “stinking thinking” patterns and I am working on acknowledging some of the ways I have lived toward myself.  

I have tried to right my wrongs and I will continue to do so as long as I live, Goddess willing.

I was reflecting on some choices recently when talking to my very best friend in the world, Susan.  She has somehow been in my life, voluntarily, since 1990, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. 🙂

I have been connected to her daughters almost since they were born and she was relating a story to me recently where she was discussing drinking alcohol** with her now college aged daughters who described little interest in booze partly because of the alcoholism they know of in their lineage.  

One of them was counting the alcoholics in the family and listed me—and while I am not biologically connected—we are kin in a way that is unbreakable. My friend said ”Wait a minute! Aunt Giulia is NOT an alcoholic.”

We talked about it a bit and I sat down and wrote this letter to my “niece.”  

Here is the letter I wrote:

“Dear “Niece”,

I was talking to your mom and she was telling me about a conversation you guys were having about alcohol and that you thought I am an alcoholic. I must admit, I really do not know if I am an alcoholic and I don’t mind the label—it seems like saying—I had a not great relationship with booze. Alcohol did not make my life uncontrollable.  My life started out uncontrollable and I tried to get a grip in all the wrong ways and in some of the right ways…….

 Alcoholism is a self diagnosis—kind of like everything, really.  I never felt like I had a “healthy” relationship to alcohol—but there was never any kind of relationship in my life that felt healthy.  I was not taught anything about health and wellness—except mostly what not to do, which I only learned by paying attention to other people’s pain, and that it would probably never be accessible to me, because I was never going to amount to anything.  I never could imagine living to even 30 years old.

My parents did the very best they could with the information and life experiences they had.  All of us are always doing the best we can—even when it’s not enough for other people.  As a little girl, I was abandoned in many ways.  My parents were unable or unwilling to heal their own wounds and so they perpetuated their wounds in the way I was raised—with no touch and in total chaos.  I have lived most of my life afraid of adults and of authority.  I have had to overcome a great distrust of other people because I grew up in an environment with lots of alcohol, violent rage, constant criticism, sexual assault, and belittlement.  

I certainly tried a lot of things to find a way to feel better—or to feel nothing.  Not unlike an eating disorder—I used alcohol, drugs, sex, binge eating, smoking cigarettes, work, and exercise to change the way I felt.  

Every single thing a human being does is to change the way we feel.

Growing up in a home with chaos leads a person to not trust anything.  I had to learn to make my own ground, I had to find my own center. (Though we all must—I didn’t realize it and was never shown how). No one ever made me feel safe to explore my creativity, my athleticism, my intellect, my body, my sexual orientation.  No matter what I did or said I was told I was too fat, too stupid, too sensitive, too judgmental, too masculine, too muscular, too queer, ……anything but perfect.

Why?

Because it is what I chose, somehow. 

I have used everything that has been given to me—the good and the not so good——

Every scrap of my ragged life was a gift FOR me. 

I spent a lot of years lamenting my childhood, blaming my parents and feeling sorry for myself—I did drink too much sometimes and it fed my shame.  Am I an alcoholic? I don’t think so.  I have been able to give up so many things in my life that even if addiction has played a role—it’s not one thing—it’s everything. I have done a lot of things that were very dangerous and life threatening.

We are all addicted to something.  Giving up drinking was easy for me. Giving up sugar is mostly easy—but sometimes really tough, lol.

The thing in life that I continue to find incredibly difficult and often heartbreaking is letting go of the belief that I am not enough. I just still do not know how to give up believing that I am wrong, that I was born wrong.

We all develop defenses for survival when we are little.  Even if your childhood was idyllic—you had to learn to get what you needed from your caregivers.  We are not born with language and as you know, even when people speak the same language—there is often incredible difficulty understanding what each others words really mean.  This all goes back to our experiences and our perceptions of our feelings. We learn to do things and to be certain ways that allow us to survive—but then we still don’t know how to let go those survival mechanisms.

How did we get here?

I don’t know and mostly I really don’t care.  Explaining how I got here is a long and boring story because its a litany of what I survived which is only another way of saying I am here—I AM alive.

To be fully alive is to be in the process of surviving whilst also finding a way to thrive.

We thrive when we are healing ourselves and sharing what we have learned with others: helping is how we heal. 

On my worst day, I can offer a smile to someone who needs it more that I will ever understand. I can open a door, let a car go first, etc I can be grateful for everything I have even when I think I need more……..

My incredible opportunity to work with children has saved MY life, not theirs.  I am not here to save anyone but me and I can only do that when I am connected; tuned in, turned on, and plugged in to the beauty and connection of community. Communion. Nature and my body and my feelings are all my connections to this life.

The opportunity to know you is something I almost missed in my life.  I was wrapped up in my own pain and drama when your mom married your dad.  I didn’t have money to travel to WV to the wedding and when Susan sent me a card announcing she was pregnant I was so out of touch with everything that had transpired in her life that I was just shocked.  I do not even know what I did —but it was not enough and I wasn’t there to support her through the pregnancy.  Your mother is part of her mother, who was in many ways a saint—an angel on earth, as is your mom.  Your mom never gave up on me.  She somehow believed that I was worth hanging onto, though I cannot fathom why.

The only reason I even know you is because she was gracious enough to bring you to Louisville and invited me to come meet you.  Dumb and wounded as I am —I somehow made it to that hotel and it was really one of the happiest days of my life. I no longer have the picture of your sister on my lap—but I swear you could have been my children. 

Life is long, if we are lucky, and labels are short.

I don’t know what I am still, but I know enough to know that love is ALL there is.  Your mom is one of the ONLY people in the whole world who has supported me and loved me no matter how fucking stupid, egotistical, selfish, wounded I have been. 

She has never been anything less than the very best friend in the whole world.  I have so many gifts because of her generous spirit, not the least of which is a beautiful relationship with you and your sister.

I am so many things—as are you, as are we all. 

I have done a million things and I have at least a million more to do—but all I want is to be in love.  In love with life and with the people who show up in my life.  Its not how they show up that makes me love them-it is simply THAT they are there.  My God, my spirit, my soul, knows after all this time and all this shame and blame and worry that it was there ALL the time—inside of ME—everything I need is already baked in. Just like in The Wizard of Oz.

If it is happening in my life—it is FOR me—ALL of it—the pain, the joy, the peace, the fear—everything and everyone is for me. If something comes up in my body—illness, disease, injury, pain—it is MINE.  This is my body and everything that happens in it is mine and if its mine—its for me to learn something.

The body shows us where we are blind—literally. It shows us where our emotional wounds are and it we pay attention —it shows us how to heal everything.  Healing is not symptom relief—it is peace and when we have peace many symptoms go away. 

I hope I can teach that to as many people as possible before I die. 

To be loved unconditionally is a self love journey—and we can help others see their worth through our eyes—our vision—(I’m not making a joke about your vision—I am trying to make a point though—that you can see just fine through your heart). 

Every single thing each of us needs is already inside of us.  The journey is to learn to stop letting our fears stop our wild and unique expression of who TF we are.

I know this was totally unsolicited—

I hope it lands as intended—with love.

We have to face the hard things in our lives to discover our truest selves—and that journey never ends——I don’t even think it ends with physical death—but I will let you know after I transition—hopefully many years from now.

I will love you forever, unconditionally. 

You were born as perfect as any seed with everything you need  to become fully you already inside.  

The work is to find it all and set it free. 

Give it ALL away.  We can only ever keep what we give freely……

I know you will—I know you are already and I hope I get to celebrate a lot of milestones with you along the way.

All my love, always, ALL ways,

Your aunt, 

Giulia “

 

**If you think you have a problem with alcohol or drugs,  you do.

If you need help please find a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous https://www.aa.org or Narcotics Anonymous https://na.org/ 

If you were raised with alcoholics or addicts and/or you have an eating disorder or any other addiction, please seek help. You can text me or email me or call me and I will personally help you find the help that works for you.  

“We are all just walking each other home.” Ram Das 

 

What Seeds are You Planting Now?

Hello!

Finally there is hope of summer here in Chicago-land.  I am sitting outside in my beautiful back yard oasis as I write this.  I have just planted some seeds to plant in the garden and while I still have much work to do to prepare the soil, the sun and warmth reminds me that better things are coming, as long as I plant the seeds.

The seasons remind us that change is afoot.  And while we all know that winter leads to spring and spring to summer and summer to fall and on it goes, it can be hard to envision a summer amidst the dark and cold of Chicago winter.

What seeds are you planting now?

One seed I planted is my new course “Fit From Within

This project was conceived with my dear friend Alexis on the 13 hour drive back to Albuquerque after a weekend Breathwork retreat in Joshua Tree.  It arose from deep inner work and sharing our visions and a desire to collaborate.  How beautiful and bountiful to have a connection that leads to growth for both parties?

I am so blessed and I am beyond grateful. The gestation period for this project was long and while the labor was arduous at times it was always joyful and profound.  It garnered a feeling of alignment with purpose even though I couldn’t see it during its growth.  When I was “pregnant”I certainly could not stop and pull the “baby” out to see how it was developing. Even if I could have, it wouldn’t have looked anything like the final product.  We can’t slice open a rose bud and find a rose, after all.  We have to nurture the rose bush and pay attention to the thorns.  We have to water it and make sure it gets full sun and keep the aphids off of it so that it has a chance to develop fully.

When I first felt this course emerging in its nearly complete form, I still didn’t know if it was finished.  It turns out that it doesn’t have to be finished before its born—it just has to be developed enough to thrive outside the womb.  Once a baby is born there is still a lot to helping it grow and evolve.

So it is with Fit From Within.

Alexis and I are continuing to tweak it and nurture it along.  We are doing some “course Corrections” base on who is in the course.

My goal for the course was to have 10 people in the first cohort and we have 13!

I was afraid at first that I would only have one person and I just kept faith and, sure as rain, it filled up. And people I have never even met are in the course! I love that.  It tells me that some seeds I planted are growing.

As with gardening, there is no guarantee that the seeds will make it through the hard layers into the light, and even if they do, will they be able to survive the harsh conditions of this world? We only know if we keep trying.  Not everything is meant to stay.  Some things come and go for various reasons, which I like to imagine are for my learning.  If I get too attached to what the seed is supposed to become then I can find myself disappointed thinking it should be different somehow.  Taller, more robust, a different shade of green…….

And, there will be people who will agree with that voice.  Some people told me I was doing it wrong, or that I was releasing it at the wrong time, or that people don’t want to do this type of work, or that I should add this or that, even when they really didn’t know what was in it…….

And I had a wonderful realization that people were just telling about themselves.  My baby is just that; my baby.  And now I am watching this baby grow into something I could never have conceived because now it is in the hands of 13 people who will be changed through it and who will touch it and mold it with their experience of it.  This community that we bring our babies into is so important. We are in communion and that is a living growing, evolving dynamo that no one can predict.

I am always learning to listen.  I am learning to go with the flow of my creatrix and it feels good.  I know I am not for everyone and that makes it even more special to see who shows up.

My job is to be the energy I want to attract.  My job is to listen to my own heart, to water the seeds of my desires, to deliver my baby when it says its ready to be born and not hold it in because someone else isn’t ready.

Make your art! Nourish your soul!

Listen to your heart.  There will never be a lack of noise in the world shushing you and telling you whats wrong.  And there will never be a lack of signs telling you want is right for you.  The difference is just what you choose to hear.

I hope you will join the next cohort of Fit From Within!

We are growing a membership community and I can’t wait to see how it develops!

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The Mind Body Echo

The only thing we have our whole life is this body

We take our first and last breath in this one body we are given.  The only thing we have our whole life is this body; the one thing we are guaranteed.

I really feel like our body is the most important thing we have.

Whatever ailments come up in the physical body are an echo of our mental and emotional life. Healing will not come in the form of a pill or a potion or something outside of us. We are taught from a very early age to medicate any and everything.  As a society, most people generally have no idea how the human body works nor how biochemistry works within the body. A fever is not something to stop or get rid of with a pill.  A fever is a symptom of healing. Taking ibuprofen, acetaminophen, aspirin, Motrin or any other Cyclo-oxygenase inhibitor is NOT healing.  It is killing the messenger (and your gut microbiome is being destroyed), it is numbing the feelings and ignoring the wisdom of the body which is raising its temperature to illicit a full immune response, which will resolve the issue.  Killing the messenger is a temporary bandaid, which are also generally unnecessary.  The bandaids often serve as a reminder of pain that when we look upon we remember and relive.  To what end? I don’t need to relive pain, but I may need to remind my caretaker that I need attention?

Pain is a symptom of healing. Pain and injury and illness are all messengers for a deeper inquiry into what is going on beneath the message. Your life and all the ways you are living are expressions of your emotional health. Your life is your medicine.

Your body has an infinite wisdom that cannot be over ridden. When you take the pills and potions, does the thing go away forever? Probably not.  The pills have to be taken daily, sometimes 2 or 3 or 4 times daily. 

We must address the root cause. We must address the imbalance in the system and work towards finding balance anew. 

An alcoholic can quit drinking and solve all his problems, right? Wrong.  

Quitting drinking is changing the EFFECT not the CAUSE.  Creating sustainable change demands change at the level of cause.  You see this with people who “diet”.  They do the diet and maybe get a result and then they boomerang back.  Change is not about DOING something it is about BECOMING someone who doesn’t just DO something.

Change, then, requires a deeper understanding of what is happening in the body and in the belief system of the individual. 

Bessel Van der Kolk wrote a book called “The Body Keeps The Score” where he revisits the trauma of living and the pathways to healing and recovery.  There is a lot of information floating around about the spiritual connection between the mind and body. There are a lot of us who are exploring the mind-body connection and the way it echoes the spirit. I understand that what ever comes up in my body is a way of showing me my blind spots.  Achy joints? Where am I holding on to anger?  Diarrhea? What do I find undigestible in my life? 

There is not a linear path to self discovery, though western medicine would have us work that way.  Western medicine is geared not toward healing but toward ridding the body of whatever the issue is. Cancer? Cut it out! Fever? Take a pill.  Parkinsons? Take a LOT of pills!!Does anyone else notice that none of these “solutions” is healing anyone?

What would healing look like?

I find this a critical query for all of us in every area of life: mind, body, spirit, environment, equality, mother earth, socio-economics, politics, etc……..

Healing is a spiritual practice, whether you take the pills or not. 

By the way, I am not suggesting that you don’t take the pill or that the alcoholic not stop drinking—for many people this is the first order of business, and, in my humble opinion, is certainly not the last.   

What comes immediately to mind for you when you hear the word spiritual? 

Usually, when I use the word “spiritual” I look both ways before emitting a sound.  

I have heard some really interesting meanings given to the concepts of what spirituality means.  Some people say it means following a guru, reading certain texts, or not believing in God.  Some people say it is synonymous with religion. Some people say it means crystals, and burning sage, and tarot, and astrology, maybe even breathwork.  Certainly some of these things may be ritual in a spiritual practice, but only ones mindset will determine the outcome. 

When I say I don’t have any religion and I am very spiritual, I mean I practice bringing into awareness that which I hold unconscious. 

Our minds want external circumstances to change so that we can feel better.  But how many people do you know who have a complaint yet no matter how many great strategies could be employed to shift their experience, they remain “stuck”.  The prayer is Dear God please undo the thing.”

The spiritual prayer is “Spirit/Universe/Grandmother Moon/Goddess/God…help me accept what I cannot change so that I change what I can.”

What is the nature of what you call spiritual? To those who are aligned consciously in their lives with spiritual work what is the nature of what you call spiritual consciousness or dealing with your unconscious? 

What does it look like to you?

Surrender is all we can really do and that involves recognizing how we never really live with anything, we live with our own inner experience of it.  How we emotionally respond with events in our life is really what we are experiencing. People never experience a dented fender, they experience their own emotion about a dented fender.  People live with their thoughts and beliefs about what a dented fender means and they live with their thoughts about how it occurred and possibly who is to blame, etc.  But none of that is about living with a dented fender, it is living with the THOUGHTS about a dented fender. 

When I realize the thoughts I have about what a dented fender means, I can explore the beliefs I have that lead to those thoughts.  And when I understand what I am believing, I can choose to keep believing that or I can choose to shift to something that feels better.  I can choose to see the fender as it is, dented.  I can choose to see the fender as the defender of the car body and be grateful that the car was not dented.

Either way, it is a practice.  

Yes—we practice feeling bad, we practice having thoughts that perpetuate our bad feelings. We all practice practices that augment and galvanize beliefs that are ingrained in us, until we choose to make the unconscious conscious.  This is the point when we can change for good.

As C.G. Jung said, “Until we make the unconscious conscious, it will rule our lives and we will call it fate.”

I would invite you to have a personal inquiry practice.  One that I recommend is taking a blank sheet of paper and dividing it right and left with a line down the center.  On the left top, write “Body experience: illness or injury or pain”. On the right side write “Life Events”.

See if you can notice what was or is happening when different things show up in your body. 

The very acts of writing it out begins a healing process.  It means that you are willing to see things differently and this shift in your mindset is exactly what is required to experience something better. 

See if you can notice the advent of ear aches with a chaotic household of anger and yelling.  What did you not want to hear? 
Like I said there are very few linear exactitudes in spiritual work.  Its always an inside job—but so is taking a pill.  You must BELIEVE that the pill is the answer for it to work.

Take some time to explore the concept of placebo and nocebo.  

Take some time to inquire within. Is the pill working? If you stop taking the pill is your problem solved? Does your problem solving require that you ingest pills for the rest of your life? 

What does healing mean? Maybe you will recognize that you never thought about medicine as healing, you were just trying to rid yourself of something inconvenient, or painful, or even life threatening……. 

I am asking you to consider healing. Grace is found in allowing the body to serve up its infinite wisdom.

On the road to consciousness, peace is found.  And whether one reaches radical remission or not, the quest for peace will be the salve.  

If we want to heal we must learn to exchange with our life in ways that bring about the transmutation of energies we have held in us. Our pain is our medicine. Our life is our medicine.  And our healing is what we are willing to exchange for our medicine. 

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Movement Is An Expression Of Well-Being

how often have I found where I shouild be going by setting out for somewhere else

 “Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” Joan Didion

It was 4:30 in the morning.  rise early for work and I get ready upstairs before coming down.  We have a routine, the dogs and I. A ministry of love.  Lillie sleeps with me and is almost always lying next to me with her head on my right shin as I wake.  We cuddle in bed a bit and then I get up.  When I come downstairs I always sing to Roadie and rub his head and ears and give him hugs and kisses for the morning.  But this particular morning he made a beeline to the back door and I followed. I put the collars on the dogs and got a few makeshift pats and hugs in on Roadie and then opened the back door and the storm door leading to the screened-in porch.  In atypical fashion, I let the storm door close.  I opened the outside door for the dogs and propped it open, as always.  I turned to go back in the house and the door had locked itself behind me.  Now, this door has a history. This door has locked me out before. But, you see, I keep a set of keys to the house in a lock box on the porch.  Alas, I did not have my glasses and no amount of light or squinting could bring the tiny numbers on that box into focus.

What to do, there on the porch? Kept from my home by a tiny piece of metal, entirely unable to see what was literally right in front of me.

I had no keys, no phone, no glasses.

I sat there on the floor of the porch and thought isn’t this hilarious?

Luckily, I had gotten dressed before coming downstairs, so I had that going.  I have new neighbors to the south of me.  We have been friendly and they are early risers like me. I hopped my fence because I was also unable to see the code to unlock the fence.  I rang their doorbell and they answered.  (Cue the angels singing and the sun rising) The grandparents do not speak English but they understand “help” and went to get their son.  He came over—with his glasses on-and helped me get the keys.

In the moments on the back porch when I sat on the floor staring at the lockbox bewildered, I had some time to reflect.  I do think Spirit has quite a sense of humor.  What are we to do when certainty evades us?  When are we ever even certain of anything?

I notice the ways I have tried to create certainty in my own life and in the moment on the porch spirit said look up, look around, see all the Grace that is available to you.

What else is right in front of me that I am not seeing?  What could be the miracle that is awaiting me in this moment?  How can I arrive in my body accepting this?

I recounted my story to a person I love and the response was “I bet that was infuriating.”

I actually did not feel any anger rise.

I felt complete surrender which was refreshing and a little terrifying.

I knew that even if I missed my work that day I would be safe.  The dogs would be safe.  If my one neighbor had not answered the door I have many others who might have—and eventually someone would have.  We live in community for many reasons, mostly because we need each other.

When the pandemic hit and people were hoarding toilet paper it was such a bold example of the me first culture we have built.

Divisions of the haves and have nots.

Age old and tedious AF.

But also a revelation about how shitty some people actually behave.

I seriously want to know how any person is finding their salvation in hoarding toilet paper?

Anna Lembke, Stanford University researcher and author of the book Dopamine Nation writes: “Human beings, the ultimate seekers, have responded too well to the challenge of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain.  We have transformed the world from a place of scarcity to a place of overwhelming abundance. “

Tom Finucaine who studies diabetes in the setting of chronic sedentary feeding said “We are cacti in the rain forest. And like cacti adapted to an arid climate we are drowning in the dopamine.  The net effect is that we need more reward to feel pleasure and less injury to feel pain.“

I am immediately struck by imagery related to the phrase “chronic feeding in a sedentary setting.”   Really, isn’t this what the pandemic produced for many people? Children reported to me that they didnt even get out of bed to start school—sleeping with their phone or computer they simply rolled over and signed in to classes while still in bed, and typically fell back to sleep or dozed on and off through the day.

“The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle delivering dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation”, writes Lembke.  Dopamine is the molecule monitored for measuring the addictive potential of anything. The more dopamine, the more addictive.  How much do we need to feel reward?

Craving is the moment of the brains pleasure balance tipped to the side of pain.  We are all seeking relief from the pain in which we are drowning ourselves. The book is about how to overcome compulsive consumption.

Do people actually want to learn how?

This book discusses the science of addiction and recovery.  And it points out that each of us is an addict of sorts—we live in a culture primed for addictions and the consequences of the pandemic seem to have turned the volume way up on addictive behaviors not even remotely limited to hoarding toilet paper.

When I consider the concept of what and how we feed ourselves the word fitness comes to mind. Fitness is such a fat word, overripe and oozing with judgments.  What we feed ourselves might be a story about why we are not fit or a story about how our body is different or how we have some limitation.  But, it seems to me that fitness, like addiction,  is self defined and truly every single body is different.

As a coach, what I teach is that awareness is the only point of change.  If you plug coordinates in your phone to get to a specific location you also need to know where you currently are located in order to draw the map.  This is true for any change.

Where am I?

Where would I like to be?

How can I get there?

What am I feeding myself and how?

What do I want to eat, to consume, to digest?

Its not just the food we are eating.  It is how we get our food, where we get it, how we eat it, and how it makes us feel.

Its not just what we are eating, its what we are doing while eating; reading, watching, listening etc…..

Its not just what we are doing while eating its what we are doing and thinking and consuming all the time.

The only thing not fixed is the path from A to B but A and B are fixed points.

I ask everyone the simplest question: What do you really really want?

And, unfortunately, mostly people answer with “well, I will tell you what I don’t want!”

But that is seriously missing the point.

You are focused on what you don’t want.  And that is the surest way to get more.

All of the places a person can be marketed to reflect a place within them where exchange is off.

What am I willing to give and to receive?

What is the payoff for consuming toxins—anything from alcohol and drugs to sugar, fast food and fox news (or any news)?

What stirs within—what amount of dopamine hits your reward center? What follows?

The point is, when we can get curious instead of certain we can make some progress.

How do you get in touch with what you are feeling?

Why are you doing what you are doing?

What are some things that you are doing more that you would like to do less?

What are some things you are doing less that you would like to do more?

One of the ways to gain some clarity is through the breath.  If you are willing id like to do a type of breath with you today.

Together we can breathe some life into our hopes and dreams today. Collectively we can call on our higher selves and our spirit guides to walk us closer to our higher selves.  For me this means opening the channel to allow more flow.

I’d like to share one simple practice I use called alternate nostril breathing.

In Ayurveda is called

Nadi Shodhana: Alternate Nostril Breathing

The word nadi means “river” or “flow.” Shodhana means “purification.” This practice cleanses and purifies the nadis or channels of the body, and balances the flow of breath through both nostrils, which balances our solar and lunar energies. In western terms, it increases the flow between the right and left hemispheres of the brain through the corpus collosum.

It calms, purifies, and strengthens the nervous system. And is best practiced on an empty stomach.

Instructions:

  1. Begin sitting in a comfortable seated position, aligning the spine over the pelvis.
  2. Using the right hand, fold down the “peace sign” fingers toward the palm.
  3. From this position, you will use the right thumb to open and close the right nostril, and the right ring finger to open and close the left nostril.
  4. With both nostrils open, inhale and exhale completely.
  5. Begin the first round by closing the right nostril and gently inhaling through the left. Close the left nostril with the ring finger, open the right, and gently exhale through the right nostril. NOTE: Always switch before the exhale!
  6. Inhale through the right nostril, and switch nostrils to exhale through the left.
  7. This is one round, the pattern being: IN left—OUT right—IN right—OUT left
  8. Begin with 10 rounds, adding one round per week up to 30 rounds.

Benefits: relieves insomnia, stress, and anxiety, purifies the channels of the body, calms the nervous system, regulates body temperature.

Precautions: headaches, fever, restlessness, agitation, seizures, blocked nasal passages, cold.

One thing I practice through the breathwork is a way to DO something without doing something. The breathwork I practice and teach is a meditation.  The pranayama breath is way of breathing through the mouth only and is a way to bypass the mind and move directly into the body.  There are infinite paths inward and I choose several to deepen my connection to self.  Even in the way I teach movement there is not one way.  There is your way.  Right now.

And Way will shift. Way opens and closes not unlike our heart center.  It seems to me that part of my work on this 3 dimensional plane is to continually seek and find way knowing that like every aspect of self it too will shapeshift and disappear and reappear in new ways, as I do.

The quote—

“how often I have found where I should be going by setting out for somewhere else”  by Buckminster Fuller rests on the wall in my studio.  I know this intimately.

I moved to Chicago in 2006 for a postdoctoral position in Biochemistry and molecular genetics at UIC.  I worked in a prestigious laboratory with the worlds expert in Anti-coagulation.  My doctoral research was examining the interactions of enzymes involved in the coagulation cascade: Blood clotting. The human body has fascinated me since I can remember.  I knew when I was 16 that I would study biochemistry.  It took me longer than some people to finally gather the courage to pursue my dreams.  I’m still pursuing them and they shift perpetually.   I found it difficult to emerge amongst the overwhelming noise that bombarded my own inner signal. I quit things most people wouldn’t.  I went to college on a scholarship to play the violin—I was recruited in 1984.  Who the hell even knew I was down in Louisville, Ky making music? I wanted to play field hockey in college but apparently I was meant to play music. I left college after 2 years—even though I loved my school—I did not understand that I could get a degree in music and not have to be a musician for the rest of my life. I knew what I wanted AND I knew I didn’t want that. I left college.  I had been cooking in a retreat center in the mountains all summer and rafting and watching luna moths as big as my head and making new friends and so I stayed a while until my parents convinced me that I should be productive—so I was shepherded back to Louisville to live with my parents and get a job.  I started cooking in restaurants and then went off to Italy to study cooking in a 5 star hotel in Salsomaggiore Terme near where my father had grown up. I began to gain weight through college and after.  While I lived in Italy I rode my bike everywhere and ate clean food.  I worked a lot and spent time with family and lost a lot of weight.

This would be a theme in my life: on purpose, lean—off purpose, fat.

Until I stopped the cycle.

When I was 24 I lost over 100 pounds and have kept it off for the last 32 years.
Weight loss is a practice—not a diet.  I lost weight by getting clear on exchange.  By resuming physical activity that I loved, eating whole foods that I cooked, and quitting toxins.  
There have been periods of my life traceable to relationship woes, job changes, and general angst where it was harder—but its always a practice.

Everything we choose is a practice.  What doe it feel like to eat things you know don’t make you feel good?

For me change came from the constant awareness that I wanted to feel better.

The book Dopamine nation will give you all the science—and the truth is we are getting a fix, like a drug.   There is real hormonal chemistry happening…….every pursuit of pleasure  (from a physiological perspective) is rewarded with a pain response—Dr Lembke calls them gremlins who hop on the other end of the see saw to re-equilibrate it.

My personal philosophy assumes that everything is emerging as a consequence of both the tension and unity between interacting systems. I believe that mental phenomena are neither separate nor distinct from physical events. (Thinking and feeling are deeply connected) What is happening IS felt in the body because thought produces form. And the Body keeps the Score, for sure, as Basel Van Der kolk has written so eloquently.

And sages describe a state without suffering and a way to get there. That way is not to by searching for a remedy, a panacea, a magic bullet, or a pill, but to engage in the ongoing process of learning to become more animated and more connected.  To become, in essence, more charged with life force. My intention is to be progressing toward greater integration through the cultivation of my own energy.  My practices allow me to NOTICE when I am not in alignment and to come back faster and with greater ease and with some grace for myself for reacting in an old pattern. I feel better when I choose grace.  This is the guiding Principle of my life and work.  It feels good to be kind.  It feels good to laugh.  It feels good to move.

Movement as Meditation is not to create states of ecstasy or absorption but to experience being.

In meditation, as in movement, there is a quality of both being and of rest. An arousal of your feelings of trust. Trust in what?

Finding your home ground.

Paying attention to what is happening in your body.

You are not meditating on anything else.

Whatever we do in life we are affected by our mind.

Movement can be a meditation that allows us to

s l o w the speed of thinking. Let go.

Tune in.

If you’re not sure what that is and want to make a commitment to yourself I invite you to watch the video below

 

 

 

 

From my heart to yours,

Center Yourself

Center yourself

When I consider the concept of what and how we feed ourselves the word fitness comes to mind. Fitness is such a fat word, overripe and oozing with judgments. What we feed ourselves might be a story about why we are not fit or a story about how our body is different or how we have some limitation. But, it seems to me that fitness, like addiction, is self defined and truly every single body is different.

As a coach, what I teach is that awareness is the only point of change. If you plug coordinates in your phone to get to a specific location you also need to know where you currently are located in order to draw the map. This is true for any change.

Where am I?
Where would I like to be?

How can I get there?
What am I feeding myself and how?
What do I want to eat, to consume, to digest?

Its not just the food we are eating. It is how we get our food, where we get it, how we eat it, and how it makes us feel.
It’s not just what we are eating, its what we are doing while eating; reading, watching, listening etc…..
It’s not just what we are doing while eating it’s what we are doing and thinking and consuming all the time.

The only thing not fixed is the path from A to B but A and B are fixed points.

I ask everyone the simplest question: What do you really really want?
And, unfortunately, mostly people answer with “well, I will tell you what I don’t want!”

But that is seriously missing the point.
You are focused on what you don’t want. And that is the surest way to get more.
All of the places a person can be marketed to reflect a place within them where exchange is off.
What am I willing to give and to receive?
What is the payoff for consuming toxins—anything from alcohol and drugs to sugar, fast food and fox news (or any news)?
What stirs within—what amount of dopamine hits your reward center? What follows?
The point is, when we can get curious instead of certain we can make some progress?
How do you get in touch with what you are feeling?
Why are you doing what you are doing?
What are some things that you are doing more that you would like to do less?
What are some things you are doing less that you would like to do more?
One of the ways to gain some clarity is through the breath. If you are willing id like to do a type of breath with you today.
Together we can breathe some life into our hopes and dreams today. Collectively we can call on our higher selves and our spirit guides to walk us closer to our higher selves. For me this means opening the channel to allow more flow.
I’d like to share one simple practice I use called alternate nostril breathing.

In today’s video I will walk you through a simple, daily practice to center yourself.

simple daily practice to center yourself

In Ayurveda it’s called

Nadi Shodhana: Alternate Nostril Breathing

The word nadi means “river” or “flow.” Shodhana means “purification.” This practice cleanses and purifies the nadis or channels of the body, and balances the flow of breath through both nostrils, which balances our solar and lunar energies. In western terms, it increases the flow between the right and left hemispheres of the brain through the corpus collosum.It calms, purifies, and strengthens the nervous system. And is best practiced on an empty stomach.

Benefits: relieves insomnia, stress, and anxiety, purifies the channels of the body, calms the nervous system, regulates body temperature.

Precautions: headaches, fever, restlessness, agitation, seizures, blocked nasal passages, cold.

One thing I practice through the breathwork is a way to DO something without doing something. The breathwork I practice and teach is a meditation. The pranayama breath is way of breathing through the mouth only and is a way to bypass the mind and move directly into the body.

There are infinite paths inward and I choose several to deepen my connection to self.

Even in the way I teach movement there is not one way. There is your way. Right now. And Way will shift.

Way opens and closes not unlike our heart center. It seems to me that part of my work on this 3 dimensional plane is to continually seek and find way knowing that like every aspect of self it too will shape shift and disappear and reappear in new ways, as I do.

I am grateful for your commitment to your own growth, and I celebrate you!

From my heart to yours

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