Are you busy trying to detox your body? Don’t forget to detox your brain!
“The mind is everything. What you think, you become.” – Buddha This time of year countless fad diets are floating around, coaxing billions from people turning to miracle foods and supplements to detox their body and lose weight. Makes sense. You are what you eat, right? Healthy is as healthy does? Growing up we were told food and drink are the building blocks for a healthy body. Taking a daily multivitamin was considered de-rigor for maximum health – until recently. Medical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine recently blew the lid off that theory when they published studies concluding multivitamins don’t work any better than placebo pills.
So it turns out, you are not what you eat. Well here’s something to chew on. You are what you think you are.
There’s no point in making other lifestyle changes until you detox your brain! Toxic self-talk will keep you trapped in a cycle of negativity, creating stress and dis-ease until disease manifests. I’m sorry to say no amount of healthy smoothies can negate that, my friend. But I know something that will. Forty years ago Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s ground-breaking book Psychocybernetics proposed that a person can’t perform better or worse than what they believe to be true. Since then, further studies in neuropsychology concluded we have the power to change our lives through our innate ability to change our minds. Only you have the ability to change the way you think and feel about yourself. It’s relatively easy to affect change in your life, but first you must stop wasting energy listening to critical inner dialogue and reprogram those internal conversations. We think constantly, day and night, but up to 85% of those thoughts are habitual and no longer serve you. Affirmations, on the other hand, are thoughts you deliberately choose because you want the results they’ll produce. They’re a powerful tool to help you replace negative mind chatter with beneficial thought patterns that can change your life, and they work hand in hand with visualization. Affirmations should always be phrased positively, in the present tense. For example, “I love and respect my healthy body now.” Set aside time each day to focus on your goal, using all your senses to imagine it just as you wish it to be. Then, while holding the image in your mind, say your affirmations silently or aloud, or write them 10 times. If negative thoughts arise, release them before returning to your positive thoughts.
Don’t think affirmations can work for you? Quell that doubt by writing “my affirmations will work for me whether I believe them or not,” 10 times a day for two weeks. Recognizing your thoughts create your reality puts you in the driver’s seat of your life. Like a GPS, affirmations and visualizations will ensure you get where you want to go, every time.
Yoga for weight loss? Sounds like a bit of a (ahem) stretch, doesn’t it? I mean it’s not like running a marathon, or taking a high intensity cardio program at a gym, so logically may not be the first weight loss activity that springs to mind. But it can be an effective tool to have in your tool box nonetheless. Here are 7 ways yoga can help you lose weight.
Though it’s a gentle form of exercise, yoga still is an aerobic activity. Your muscles are working constantly for the whole class, (except for savasana the final resting pose) lengthening and strengthening and doing core work (except for savasana the final resting pose)
Yoga reduces binge eating because it teaches you to be present and deal with the emotions that cause overeating
Yoga helps you stop gaining weight. A four year study showed that people who participated in yoga one day a week lost five pounds. Those in the group that didn’t do yoga gained 13 lbs
Yoga lowers stress hormones and increases insulin sensitivity, signaling the brain to burn food for fuel rather than storing as fat.
Yoga teaches you to love and accept yourself as you are now, regardless of your shape and size. This loving acceptance will help you stop punishing yourself with bad food choices that lead to weight gain.
Yoga encourages you to love your body for all it does for you rather than despising it for not currently conforming to your view of what it should be
Yoga’s inward focus makes you more aware of how your body feels throughout the day. It has the power to shift how you feel and think about your body which can stimulate other positive behavior, such as eating when you are hungry (not when the clock says to) and stopping when you are full rather than continuing to eat till you are over full.
So there you have it – 7 ways Yoga can help you lose weight. With the added bonus of helping you love yourself more! Yoga anyone?
What is a chakra? Chakras are energy centers located along your spine in your energetic body. Your chakra system body consists of seven primary energy centers (and many minor ones) ; Root Chakra (Red), Sacral Chakra (Orange), Solar Plexus Chakra (Yellow), HeartChakra (Green or Pink), Throat Chakra (Blue), Third-eye Chakra (Indigo) and Crown Chakra (Violet). So you see, we truly are living rainbows! Each chakra relates to a specific color, sound, body part and function, level of consciousness and stage of life. I have created a program that teaches all about chakras; you’ll find it here Chakras regulate the rate energy flows through your system. They keep your body functioning on the energetic level, where all ailments begin. Keeping them balanced will help you achieve and maintain vibrant physical, mental and emotional health. Energy excesses or blockages in any of your chakras can result in physical, mental or emotional imbalances. And because they’re so intimately connected, an imbalance in one chakra affects the others as well. Everything you think is felt in your chakras. When you feel stressed, you feel the tension in the part of the body connected with the chakra that’s stressed. Why you feel the tension determines where you feel it. If the ‘dis-ease’ is intense and continues over time, physical symptoms may develop. These symptoms are very useful as they tell you what’s happening with you on a physical and energetic level, so I encourage you to pay attention to them. Once you understand their message and resolve the issue, the symptom has served its purpose and can be released. Now that you know, ‘what is chakra’, learn how to clearing blockages and balance your chakras in my Wishful Thanking Program, to release dis-ease before it can make you ill, enabling the energy to flow freely once again. In Light Alexandria
Are you busy trying to detox your body? Don’t forget to detox your brain!
Yoga for weight loss? Sounds like a bit of a (ahem) stretch, doesn’t it? I mean it’s not like running a marathon, or taking a high intensity cardio program at a gym, so logically may not be the first weight loss activity that springs to mind. But it can be an effective tool to have in your tool box nonetheless. Here are 7 ways yoga can help you lose weight. 