5 Love your Body Practices

1. Go on a gratitude walk.

In our busy world and life, it's easy to overlook the benefits of simply moving your body with pleasure and gratitude. Practicing gratitude with movement reprograms your cellular biology much faster than just gratitude alone. Movement can make improvements in areas of digestion elimination, serotonin and dopamine. It'll also develop the will center of your prefrontal cortex, making you more committed to your self loving practice.

2.  Eat with the vision of love

Put guilt and shame behind you when you eat, and eat with love of yourself and nourishment in mind. Take a look at the emotional need behind the craving of certain foods and figure out how you can lovingly care for yourself in a pleasurable way, without the need for food for emotional avoidance. Try replacing the habitual consumption of food with an action: try an activity you've postponed, put energy toward developing a friendship or relationship, honor your creativity, explore something new that gives you pleasure.

3. Give yourself an all-over-body hug.

Treat your body to something that your body craves, such as a hot bath with Epsom salts or essential oil body scrubs. Utilize the caregivers around you for a full body massage that its just the right pressure.  As you do these, imagine you're washing and melting self-judgment away.

4. Health the relationship you have with yourself and you body

Look in the mirror and say "I love you". Start by place one hand on your belly and one hand on your heart, and tell yourself out loud how much you love every inch of YOU.  Say it like you mean it.

5. Give your body rest

Sleep when you need to and let yourself rest often. Taking care of your body is not a sign of laziness or not being motivated, its a sign that you are taking time to love and respect your body.

Setting an Intention for the New Year

When we roll into the New Year we often think about making a resolution, however they typically last 6 weeks and don't always come from the healthiest mindset. Where as setting an intention  will help you create more clarity in your life, especially when the seed is planted right before you start your daily routine.

You may now be asking the difference between a resolution and intention. A resolution is typically done forcefully, the purpose of the intention is to have you come by it naturally.

The wording of an intention is different too. Some examples of intentions to set are:

• I intend to manifest happiness naturally.
• I intend to respond first, and then react.
• I intend to witness Divinity in everyone.
• I intend to lead by example.
• I intend to be open to success and abundance.
• I intend to stop taking things personally.
• I intend to forgive others, and myself.
• I intend to love unconditionally.
• I intend to make meditation a more important part of my lifestyle.
• I intend to make someone smile every day.

Its time to think about where you should fit your intention into your day, So, what if you tried fitting an intention in this routine as the first thing you do upon waking?

In addition its valuable to embody your intention.

So when you open your eyes, ask yourself: “How do I want to feel?”

Is it to feel... loved? Wholesome? Nurtured? Like a Superhero?

Then invite that in your life though your own actions verbally or physically. Make sure to keep it positive and allow for it to evolve over time.

Using an intention every day is life-changing, because you have an amazing tool to use for the rest of your life. Even if you slip up or feel the struggle, you’ll always have something to fall back on.

DBT effective in treating Eating Disorders?

Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is an effective recovery tool that helps women realize their potential to create a meaningful life for themselves, regardless of challenges they have experienced in the past. They are supported in this pursuit through education and practice of recovery skills when confronted with:

• difficult, overwhelming emotions

• invalidating environments

• problematic thinking patterns

• old, destructive ways of living

Dialectical behavioral therapy is a form of integrated treatment combining behavioral, cognitive, and supportive therapies. Developed to address complex mood and personality disorders, DBT is especially effective in treating persons who have suffered repeated relapses of self mutilation, eating disorders, co-occurring psychiatric illnesses, or addiction.

By focusing on both the behaviors and the feelings with specific skills provided change can occur. Read this article to find out more.

https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/treatment-for-eating-disorders/types-of-treatments/dialectical-behavioral-therapy-dbt/vs-cbt

How Meditation Can Help Anxiety

Meditation helps with racing thoughts by quieting the overactive mind. The process of slowing down your mind allows you to silence thoughts that have you buying into your fearful racing thoughts. By meditating you can start identifying what silence can exists between every mental action/thought. This practice is just that, a practice, through time you will be able to practice mediation without the urge to run from the silence. In addition with regular practice, you experience that you’re not simply your thoughts and feelings. You can detach yourself from these to rest in your own being, in your own body. Many people are detached from their body, and mediations allows you to return to your body, and keep you centered rather than pulled outside by a thought or trigger.

 Anxious people often shy away from meditation for various reasons. “I can’t meditate” is code for feeling too restless to sit still or having too many thoughts while trying to meditate. However, anyone can learn to meditate. With being patient and having a guide, these objections and one like them can be overcome.

Numerous scientific studies have found meditation to be effective for treating anxiety.  One study, published in the Psychological Bulletin, combined the findings of 163 different studies. The overall conclusion was that practicing mindfulness or meditation produced beneficial results, with a substantial improvement in areas like negative personality traits, anxiety, and stress. 

All mental activity has a physical correlation in the brain, which has been studied in relation to anxiety. Chronic worriers often display increased reactivity in the amygdala, the area of the brain associated with regulating emotions, including fear, flight/fight/freeze. Neuroscientists at Stanford University found that people who practiced mindfulness meditation for eight weeks were more able to turn down the reactivity of this area. Other researchers from Harvard found that mindfulness can physically reduce the number of neurons in this fear-triggering part of the brain.

Mindfulness practices can be the first step to learning to meditate.

If interested in learning more about mindfulness practices continue to follow the blog as there will be follow-up post talking specifically about that.