Spring Cleaning for Mind, Body, & Spirit

I recently saw this quote by Marie Condo, “The objective of cleaning is not just to clean, but to feel happiness living in that environment.” I was so inspired I not only decided to create a webinar based on this topic and start writing this blog post, I started seeing mental and emotional cleansing as opportunities to feel happier within my own internal environment. With my background in art, psychology, yoga, and health coaching, I am drawn to inner exploration, personal growth, and healing. I love learning about and doing things that allow me to feel mentally and emotionally more grounded, at ease, and healthier in mind, body, and spirit.

The spring equinox arrives on Tuesday, March 19th this year. Season changes are always a wonderful time to reflect and prepare. As you reflect, you can begin to clear out the clutter and cobwebs from the winter that have lodged themselves within your psyche, your body, and your spirit. Preparing for any changes you’d like to welcome in with the spring season will help inspire the new growth you desire to welcome into your life. Spring represents renewal, color, growth, life, and optimism. I wanted to explore and offer some ways to welcome in the spring season in a way that allows you to lighten your load from the winter, so that your inner environment can feel happier.

Breathing Practices

The breath is our most powerful tool for healing. It’s something we always have with us, it’s a reminder that we are alive. Breathing is an automatic process in our body that will continue to go on whether or not we are paying attention to it. When we do bring our breath into our direct awareness, we can positively impact, and communicate with our nervous system, and therefore all of the systems of our bodies. There is a saying in yoga, the nose is for breathing and the mouth is for eating. Most of the time we want to breathe in and out through our nose. However, there are some practices that are used while exhaling through the mouth, but only while engaging in those specific practices. Here are some cleansing practices that will help you spring clean your mind, body, and spirit through the power of your breath.

• Ujjayi Breathing: Breathe in through your nose, slowly and deeply, open your mouth and exhale as if you were attempting to fog a mirror, let the exhale continue in that way slowly until you complete your exhale. Repeat for one minute with your mouth closed for the exhales. This breathing practice is cleansing, and brings a deeper connection to the present moment. It also builds a little heat in your body, so it has an energizing effect as well.

• Lion’s Breath: Breathe in through your nose until your abdomen and lungs are full, pause, open your mouth, stick out your tongue, look up, and exhale. If you like, you can add curling your fingers in claw shapes as you exhale energetically. This breath is deeply cleansing, and releases stress from your mind and body.

• So-Hum Breath: Breathe in through your nose, exhale through your nose, with your normal breathing rhythm. Allow your breathing rhythm to become calming and serene. Say “So” in your mind as you inhale, and “Hum” in your mind as you exhale. Continue for 1-5 minutes. This is one of the most simple mantras you can use and it offers connection to the present moment. This practice calms the mind and the body. This breathing practice naturally dissipates stress, tension, and discomfort. When your mind wanders, which it will, gently, with compassion, bring your mind back to the mantra, “so, hum” with each inhale and each exhale.

Journal Prompts

Journaling is another wonderful tool to help clear mental clutter, process your inner world of emotions, and offer a place for your psyche to rest. A journal is a container that can hold, separate you from, and provide relief for the inner workings of your mind. Taking time to process your feelings, keep a log of your day, write down what you are grateful for, log your challenges, your wins, what went well, what you need support around etc… can all be deeply healing for your mind, body, and spirit. Journaling allows you to feel connected to yourself, your intuition, and it invites your soul to speak. Here are few journaling prompts that can support clearing the clutter of your mind, body, and spirit.

• When you look ahead to the spring season, what seeds do you want to plant within yourself? This could be a goal, a hope, a plan, a new positive internal belief, just write for 1-5 minutes from a stream of consciousness, anything that comes to mind.

• Take a moment to reflect back, thinking about the past couple of months, has something blocked you, or stood in your way to move towards what you want? If so, how can you reconcile that now in your mind and body so that you can begin to move forward? 

• Reflect on any patterns of self-sabotage all throughout your life. Not to be unkind to yourself, but to look for one way you can disrupt this pattern to ensure it does not cause harm to the seeds you’d like to plant for yourself moving forward. Examples could be, doing more daily reflection with self-awareness, working with a therapist to heal these old patterns, doing more of anything that creates more confidence and trust within yourself. 

• Now imagine, how you will provide these seeds with nourishment? How will you help them grow? How will you ensure that they will be cared for as they sprout, and blossom? Write out all of the ways you will care for these seeds that you’ve planted and commit to their growth within your mind, body, and spirit.

• Write out anything else you’d like to clear from your mind, body, and spirit as you ease into the spring.

After your do this journaling, commit to spending time with the seeds you’ve planted within yourself. Keep a daily and/or weekly reflection log asking, how did I nourish the seeds I’ve planted of my intentions for the spring today? Consistency is key. Believe in your ability to grow what you desire within your life, ask for support and help if you need it, and show up for yourself fully and compassionately.

Self-Affirming Statement Creation

Having a helpful affirmation can offer hope, a reminder, and way of shifting out of the old patterns and beliefs, creating new, more useful ones. When you think about what you’d like to cultivate within your life as you ease into spring, what simple statement would help you re-anchor into the present moment. Think about a statement that will support you to move forward rather than being pulled down into past patterns. Take a moment and brainstorm all of the affirmations that come to mind, and then say them all out loud. Which one resonates with you the most? Write it down, set it as a reminder in your phone to pop up daily, practice saying it consistently, use it as a mantra. This statement will always be available to remind you of your desired outcome and reconnect you to the seeds you’ve planted within. Take it with you, use it to nourish these seeds, and your mind, body, and spirit. 

Visualization

Visualizing what you want is a helpful practice when cultivating the garden of what you want to create and grow within yourself. Our brain is essentially a recording of everything we’ve known, seen, and done up to this point in time. It will always return to default mode, especially if there are lingering negative, limiting, internalized beliefs. It will also return to default mode when we are living mindlessly from day to day. When you visualize what you want, you are offering your brain a new template, a new way of seeing things, a new way to be. This allows you to practice, to rehearse within your mind, new ways of being and offer options for your future self. Visualization is amazing and powerful work.

When visualizing, it is helpful to be comfortable, relaxed, and at ease within your mind and body. Take a moment to steady your breath, letting it become calming and serene. Allow your body to relax, easing the space between your eyebrows, unhinging your jaw, and softening around your shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles. Now bring to mind this seed you’d like to plant within your psyche, your mind, your body, your heart, and your whole being, as we ease into spring. Begin to see the daily practice of watering it, feeding it, growing it, nourishing it, nurturing it, see what all of these offerings look like. Now see yourself attaining the blossoms or fruit it’s bearing, how it will impact your life, how you will feel, really allow these feelings to sink into your being. Hold the image for as long as feels right. Bring in your self-affirming statement and repeat it in your mind to strengthen this image, for as long as feels right. Now allow the image to sink into your heart space, and hold it there for a breath, knowing you can bring this imagery forward to return to hope, self-trust, and inspiration to take consistent action any time you need to. As it fades, smile, and say to yourself, “and so it is.”

I hope these practices offer you support to believe in yourself, to trust yourself, and to allow hope and compassion to lead you forward into a healing, resourced, and healthy spring season. Practice letting go daily of what you no longer need, practice breathing, journaling, and visualization to guide you forward. You deserve to live a life filled with compassion, hope, inspiration, and joy. 

Intuitive Eating Principle 9: Movement - Feel the Difference

The ninth principle of Intuitive Eating is: Movement—Feel the Difference. This is another non-food based intuitive eating principle. This principle offers a powerful way to feel connected to and truly alive in the body you have today.

Feeling healthy, strong, empowered and content with your body is a primary component of this principle. We all know that movement/exercise is important for our physical and mental health, so why can it be so difficult to create and stick to a consistent movement routine? One main reason is that we can often get hung up on what kind of exercise is “best” versus what we actually enjoy. If exercise feels like just another chore it will be difficult to remain excited about it. When you find what movement you actually enjoy and look forward to, you can feel the difference in both your mindset and your body.

There is no one “best” or right way to move your body. When you find movement that you enjoy and actually find pleasure in, you are far more likely to make it a habit. Many people think that running, high intensity interval training, Crossfit or getting a Peloton will make all of the difference and will magically create the desire to exercise. However, if you don’t enjoy it, you most likely will not follow through with doing it consistently. Consistency is really how movement benefits our mental and physical wellbeing and allows you to feel the difference.

If movement/exercise becomes a means only to support a desire for weight loss, it can get tangled up in the diet mentality. (You can review principle one: Reject the Diet Mentality here.) When it feels like exercise is solely related to attempting to control the size and shape of your body, then that movement can feel like a chore, or worse punishment, and can create feelings of being a failure. This will ONLY equate to giving up because those feelings of failure, resistance and discomfort are the very feelings most people attempt to avoid.

When you break it down and consider what you enjoy doing to move your body, if you can find something that brings you a sense of accomplishment, makes your body feel good and lifts your mood, it is a win-win-win! When you focus on how the movement you choose makes you feel, this creates an opportunity to choose movement that brings you pleasure and can become something you crave. Another benefit of focusing on how the movement makes you feel is that desired feeling state can support you through any resistance.

Focusing on how movement makes you feel will create feelings of alignment with how you want to feel. When you can connect with how you want to feel and movement/exercise creates those positive internal connections, you are far more likely to follow through and remain consistent. When movement creates feelings of being strong, accomplished, healthy and relaxed, you will be more consistent because these are feelings most of us want to feel more frequently.

The true key here is finding movement that you truly enjoy and look forward to doing. If you love to be outside, find movement that you can do outdoors in nature such as walking, biking, playing a team sport, jogging, hiking… If you prefer to be indoors you might enjoy yoga, dance classes, barre classes or any other group fitness classes at the gym. You can always catch a YouTube video of any kind for any movement you like to do. If you love a variety and mixing it up you can craft a routine based on several forms of movement that bring you pleasure.

No matter what form of movement you choose, be sure not to entangle it with calorie burn, punishing yourself for eating something you judged as “bad” or in any way to control your body in some form. While your body may change as you become stronger with consistent movement, that can be a side bonus that just happens by the way. If changing and controlling your body is your sole purpose, most likely it will trigger anxiety, stress and frustration—and this is simply not sustainable. Find movement you enjoy and allow yourself to do it for the sheer pleasure of moving your body and feeling good in mind, body and spirit.

Now to feel the difference. When you begin to create your movement routine and put it into practice consistently, keep notes on how you feel prior to and following the movement that you engage in consistently. Reflect on how the movement you choose to do makes you feel. Any time that you are experiencing resistance, consult your notes and connect with the feelings you experience following the movement that you do. If you experience resistance, ask yourself if you could commit to doing 10 minutes of some form of movement. Allow the positive feelings that you know you can create for yourself through movement to motivate you to commit to those 10 minutes. Once the 10 minutes are up, you can stop, or if you’re feeling really good, you might just find that you want to keep going! Getting started is generally the hardest part. Keeping up with your reflection log related to how movement makes you feel gives you a layer of support to create consistency.

The first step is consider what you love to do. The second step is to get started. There is no right way to get started and you can always change your mind and find something new so try not to get hung up until you find the “perfect” exercise. When you begin moving your body in a way that you enjoy consistently you will feel the difference and create a healthy relationship with your body and with yourself. What movement can you commit to doing today?

How to Integrate Intuitive Eating Principle 1: Reject the Diet Mentality

The first principle of intuitive eating as created by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch is Reject the Diet Mentality. Did you know that the diet industry has about a 95% failure rate and yet it is one of the most profitable industries out there? That’s pretty frightening, and yet anytime someone feels frustrated by the previous diet that didn’t work, they can get sucked into the false hope of another one that may just be the golden ticket to lose weight (which most likely it won’t…). Even worse, chronic dieting can create a very unhealthy relationship with food and lead to disordered eating patterns.

The trouble with any diet is that when you begin, you know full well that there will be an end point. This end point might be a desired weight goal, size goal, event or season. What happens at that diets end point is the need to eat, to feel satisfied and to make up for lost time of deriving yourself from receiving pleasure from food. While it might begin with the intention of just this once I’ll eat this or that, or there’s a special occasion, and eventually the old patterns of eating find their way back into your life and the weight gain increases rapidly—way more rapidly than it took as you suffered to lose it. What may have taken months to achieve can be overridden in a couple of weeks.

It is clear that dieting and deprivation do not work for the long term. Diets feel restrictive, punitive and at times joyless and frustrating. In our current culture we have now shifted diets into new shiny wording of wellness and lifestyle to take the edge off. However, if a lifestyle or wellness plan requires complete restriction of certain foods it’s still a diet. If you are attempting to create an actual path to wellness with a desire to heal your relationship with food, any diet or lifestyle will most likely keep your feelings and thoughts about food and your body at the top of your mind. When this occurs it often creates stress and anxiety over food which only more negatively impacts the cycle of emotional and stress eating patterns.

Intuitive eating invites you to become the expert on what your body wants and needs—not a dietary theory. When you reject the diet mentality you can release the rules about food, the judgments you project on food and in turn inevitably internalize towards yourself. Then, you are able to step into being in tune with your food, your body and your internal experiences more fluidly and decisively.

Intuitive eating is a pathway to connecting with yourself and your body where you create a new and powerful way of being with your food that encourages health and wellbeing in mind and body. When you reject the diet mentality you might feel lost or worried that you might overdo it with food, and in the beginning you just might. However, the truth is that when you tune into your body you can recognize what foods satisfy your body, what foods make you feel good, vital and satiated.

When you integrate mindful eating into this first principle you can build a way of being with your food that is both informative and pleasurable. As you begin to let go of the diet mentality, commit to a daily practice of eating one meal or snack in a mindful way. When you eat mindfully, you notice the impact of what you are eating on your mind and your body.

Mindfulness is all about being fully engaged with the present moment without judgment. When you release judgments of your food (salad: good, pizza: bad) you are just eating what you are choosing to eat in this moment. When you tune in, eat slowly, pay attention to how your food makes you feel, you begin to create your own record of what foods make you feel good, of what foods allow your body to feel vital and the foods that you truly derive pleasure from and enjoy during and after eating them.

When you find that you are eating and you are not hungry, that is information that you are most likely in a pattern of emotional or stress eating. You can disrupt this with the pause, reflect, release practices to ensure that you give space for your emotions and stress in a way that does not involve food. That way when you are eating what you enjoy, you can focus on and be engaged with the process of eating, not the squashing of emotional discomfort.

Over the next week try these practices to begin rejecting the dieting mentality, integrate mindful eating practices and tune in to the wisdom and intuitive of your mind and body:

-       Keep a log of any dieting thoughts, fears, shoulds, hopes, shame…

-       Practice mindful eating each day with one meal or snack

-       Prior to eating allow yourself to tune inward and relax your body and mind and ensure that you have minimal distractions

-       Eat slowly, chew thoroughly and engage all of your senses

-       Practice nonjudgment of your food—stay away of thoughts of good/bad, superior/inferior

-       Make notes on how your food makes you feel and how satisfied and satiated you feel

-       Notice any tendency to restrict, count calories, any behaviors that feels like a diet

After practicing this process for the next week or so, go back and reflect on your log and journals and make any notes about insights you gain into what it means to let go of the diet mentality and step into mindful eating. Let me know how it goes!