I am adding this to my routine I love it so much!
http://www.alignedandwell.com/?p=3562&option=com_wordpress&Itemid=223
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Meditation Links
http://www.dhamma.org/
http://breakingmuscle.com/mind-body/5-simple-tips-start-meditation-practice
http://breakingmuscle.com/mind-body/5-simple-tips-start-meditation-practice
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Good Health Habits
Every Sunday, I teach a 35 minute lesson to a group of 7 girls, aged 12-13. There is a manual that I get to work out of and today's lesson was Good Health Habits. I think I failed in my lesson because I wasn't able to communicate to them how much I love this body of mine, this gift from God, and how seriously I feel about our responsibility to care for it. There was just way too much feeling to express, and not near enough time. Also, I had them cut out a few pages to glue into their journals, and well, who knew their cutting skills would be so...well, slow. TWENTY MINUTES!!?!?! for the cutting and gluing. Lesson learned!
Anywho- I didn't always love my body. That's actually a rather recent development. I'm tallish- nearly 5' 10", and I have a broader bone structure- mostly my shoulders, and, yes, I'm quite blessed on top. Too, blessed, really. When I turned twelve, I started to hate my body. I was dancing with a competitive team at the time, and I just felt so betrayed by maturation, course I was a C in 6th grade, so, yeah. 6th grade boys didn't really know to handle that, and neither did I. Thus began a lot of self-consciousness. It also didn't help that I compared myself to girls who, well, were still girls (even through high school). My mother encouraged me to have "Good Health Habits" which I heard as "diet." A well-meaning woman gave me Phen Phen when I was 13. And at some point, I developed a rather distorted view of myself that controlled too much of my life in college.
Begin Fall 2005. I hit a point where I was faced completely with what I thought I was- ugly to the core, with nice cheekbones, eyes, and good hair. And I was confronted with what a problem that was, and I decided to change it. I happened to be living at my sister- The Health Guru in our family, at the time, so I had all of her positive energy to draw on, but I also decided that I needed my own positivity. I had no clue how to do that. I understood principles of health, but they stayed in my mind and didn't translate anywhere else, certainly not to my heart. I started praying about it fervently and diligently. Slowly, a plan sort of formed itself with how to attack this thing ugly, distorted view of myself. And the keystone was that October session of the General Conference of my church. There were five different speakers that had a message specifically for me, a few on the Sanctity of the Body (like the one listed below), one on healing, one on faith, and one on prayer. The Spirit bore witness to me that THOSE were the messages I needed to write on my heart. And I did. And I was changed.
I hope to write more of this story here, because it was one of the most transformational processes (as huge as becoming a mother) of my life. But today I am thinking about how little a lot of us think about our bodies, and how little we emphasis the things that take care of it (and when we do, we are so often off the mark). It's the rhetorician in me, I know that it's the "dull daily repetitions" that are so important for teaching and influencing how we see, think, and feel. My mother talked a lot about dieting and losing weight. She didn't care about food for food's sake but just as a necessity to continue to live, and sometimes as an enemy to overcome. I really hope that I'm in a good place to teach my daughters a joy in the body and in health.
But in my lesson today all I had were those few short minutes to share something so much bigger and important. And I really failed, I think. And I'm pretty frustrated by that. So I guess I need to work on my Health Talking Points. I need to get things down to succinct little packets of information and personal testimony and enthusiasm about these subjects. And I need to be conscious of the message my example is sending.
Anywho- I didn't always love my body. That's actually a rather recent development. I'm tallish- nearly 5' 10", and I have a broader bone structure- mostly my shoulders, and, yes, I'm quite blessed on top. Too, blessed, really. When I turned twelve, I started to hate my body. I was dancing with a competitive team at the time, and I just felt so betrayed by maturation, course I was a C in 6th grade, so, yeah. 6th grade boys didn't really know to handle that, and neither did I. Thus began a lot of self-consciousness. It also didn't help that I compared myself to girls who, well, were still girls (even through high school). My mother encouraged me to have "Good Health Habits" which I heard as "diet." A well-meaning woman gave me Phen Phen when I was 13. And at some point, I developed a rather distorted view of myself that controlled too much of my life in college.
Begin Fall 2005. I hit a point where I was faced completely with what I thought I was- ugly to the core, with nice cheekbones, eyes, and good hair. And I was confronted with what a problem that was, and I decided to change it. I happened to be living at my sister- The Health Guru in our family, at the time, so I had all of her positive energy to draw on, but I also decided that I needed my own positivity. I had no clue how to do that. I understood principles of health, but they stayed in my mind and didn't translate anywhere else, certainly not to my heart. I started praying about it fervently and diligently. Slowly, a plan sort of formed itself with how to attack this thing ugly, distorted view of myself. And the keystone was that October session of the General Conference of my church. There were five different speakers that had a message specifically for me, a few on the Sanctity of the Body (like the one listed below), one on healing, one on faith, and one on prayer. The Spirit bore witness to me that THOSE were the messages I needed to write on my heart. And I did. And I was changed.
I hope to write more of this story here, because it was one of the most transformational processes (as huge as becoming a mother) of my life. But today I am thinking about how little a lot of us think about our bodies, and how little we emphasis the things that take care of it (and when we do, we are so often off the mark). It's the rhetorician in me, I know that it's the "dull daily repetitions" that are so important for teaching and influencing how we see, think, and feel. My mother talked a lot about dieting and losing weight. She didn't care about food for food's sake but just as a necessity to continue to live, and sometimes as an enemy to overcome. I really hope that I'm in a good place to teach my daughters a joy in the body and in health.
But in my lesson today all I had were those few short minutes to share something so much bigger and important. And I really failed, I think. And I'm pretty frustrated by that. So I guess I need to work on my Health Talking Points. I need to get things down to succinct little packets of information and personal testimony and enthusiasm about these subjects. And I need to be conscious of the message my example is sending.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Things to Read/Watch
This video.
Elizabeth Gokhale is someone I came across via Liz Koch via her Core Awareness that I found because she interviewed Katy Bowman. (I think we will be playing Seven Degrees of Katy Bowman a lot around here...) There seems to be some crossover and similar principles between KB and EG, but I haven't really explored EG much, just looked at her book on Amazon and the said interview. So this video is a version of her introductory course.
This KB lecture
called De-Frag your Physiology
This KB lecture
called Beyond Balance
(because I can't get enough of KB)
Elizabeth Gokhale is someone I came across via Liz Koch via her Core Awareness that I found because she interviewed Katy Bowman. (I think we will be playing Seven Degrees of Katy Bowman a lot around here...) There seems to be some crossover and similar principles between KB and EG, but I haven't really explored EG much, just looked at her book on Amazon and the said interview. So this video is a version of her introductory course.
This KB lecture
called De-Frag your Physiology
This KB lecture
called Beyond Balance
(because I can't get enough of KB)
New Use, Old Soul
I think this blog should be called the Eternal Makeover because there is so much to learn it's going to take me that long. But I've begun a new concerted effort to hit a new plane of health, mostly thanks to Katy Bowman, and I wanted to record it all and attach all the things I'm coming across and learning, right here. Hopefully I won't spend too much time in catch up, as I've already learned so much that my world has been rock-ed, but that I will still be able to chronicle and remember the things I have learned so far that have influenced my choices so profoundly.
Anyone is welcome to chime in!
Anyone is welcome to chime in!
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