Why I choose doTERRA

My passion in life is to love and be wild in love. I found doTERRA when I went to an emotional healing through essential oils class. By the end of the class, certain emotional evoking oils were passed around due to their their tendency to often provoke reactions in us. The oil that an individual responses to most is the oil that is said we need the most. I respond most to was patchouli, the oils that is to evoke self love and linked to personal body image. When i found out that link, my ground was a little shaken since it was so directly related to what I struggle with. I decided to immediately meet up with the women that taught the class, and buy a bottle of patchouli. 

In that moment and ones to follow I gained a new sense of wonder with my body and what I put into it and on it. I started listening to what my body was asking for and allowed my self to respect what I was hearing. As a psychotherapist that is something that I have always done, and now I have a renewed sense of encouragement to my do the same for myself daily. 

This thought processed than brought me to other considerations for how I was looking at my life, I was believing that I needed to listen to the constraints that other people were putting on me. Like I said in the beginning my passion is to love, in order to do that I needed to stop listening to the nay sayers and start telling myself yes, you can grow, you can heal, you can make a difference.

Yoga can Heal

Yoga helped me learn to love my body for the first time. After years of struggling with loving my body I finally tried yoga, and did it even when it was uncomfortable. I had always hated on yoga, for reason such as "its not a real workout", "its too slow pace", "only yuppies or hippies practice yoga", and finally "I don't burn enough calories during yoga, its a waste of time". 

For many years I was an avid runner, or perhaps an addicted runner that wouldn't let up. I started running in high school as a means to fit in and loose weight. Running in fact help me accomplish both goals, so my logic was that if I run more, run before practice, stay late at practice, run everyday, and so on that my goals would be exponentially achieved. And that worked, for awhile, and even when it didn't I kept trying to make it work, because after all it worked before. In this way, I was just like an addict, chasing that first "high" that I had gained from running.

There is a lot of "story" in between this point in time and to where I began to love yoga, so for time sake I'll fast forward the time line to then. 

So I start practicing yoga because my therapist at the time stated that it would be a great practice in mindfulness. With time, yoga taught me to create space for me to feel my feelings, to treat my body as a vessel of love rather than an enemy to despise. I went to classes that focused on the breath work and had no mention of "six-pack abs". I felt the connection and safety I needed to in that time—I was vulnerable, but supported and I loved it. I learned about the Sutras and Tapas and felt a spiritual connection that I have cut myself away from during the obsession with food and my body shape. 

Healthy mind and exercise collided for me when I began yoga and I am so grateful for my practice. So much in fact that I became a yoga teacher myself to help give back the connect and safety I felt to others. 

Disordered vs Disciplined

There is a thin line between what makes up disordered eating from "disciplined eating" or diet as commonly called. Diet culture is everywhere, and it often comes disguised as a "healthy food plan".

Dieting is a preoccupation of food and/or exercise, and is seen as "normal" in our culture, seemingly an innocent attempt at eating healthy. Yet it can lead to disordered eating especially when those "dieting" get positive feedback from others. The more positive feedback one gets, the more likely they are to continue in similar behaviors. 

Anxiety often builds over eating, and/or shame develops as a result of eating. This is the danger of dieting, foods get labeled as "good/bad" healthy/unhealthy", broken down into calories, fats, carbohydrates, sodium and so on. While being educated about the food we put in our bodies, placing judgements on them is the slippery-slope. 

When people begin thinking about food and/or exercises often, it allows them to distract themselves from other emotional concerns in their life. In other words having this preoccupation about food/body shape/exercise allows an individual to avoid and numb other problems. This is reason for concern because the long they utilize eating/not-eating as a coping skill to distract/avoid the worse their health becomes and most likely their problems begin to snowball as well.

If you think you or a loved one is on this path, please don't hesitate to contact me or another professional about these concerns. 

Intuitive Eating, Is A Lot Like Mindfulness

10 principles of intuitive eating:

1. Reject the Diet Mentality
Intuitive eating says that you are the expert of your body and to eliminate rules for eating. This can be empowering and help free yourself of restrictions and allow you to gain more awareness of your body.  

2. Honor Your Hunger
Hunger is your body’s way of telling you to eat. Start to cue in to your hunger and fullness by taking time throughout the day, to check in with your body, and by asking yourself how hungry or full you feel. By doing this you’ll be able to identify those different levels of hunger and fullness.

3. Make Peace with Food & 4. Challenge the Food Police
Are there foods that you consider off-limits? Or do you feel guilty about what or how much you eat?  So make peace with food by giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. Drop the labels of "good" and "bad" or "healthy" and "junk" foods.

5. Respect Your Fullness
Learn to identify when you’re comfortably full the point when you’re no longer hungry and the food you’re eating is losing its enjoyability. Do this by taking time during your meal to ask yourself how the food tastes and how full you feel.

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor of Eating
Eating should be an enjoyable, satisfying experience. Make the time special by eating with others, or making the food with others. Viewing food as precious and valuable can truly help shape the experience of eating.

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food
Although eating should be enjoyable, it shouldn’t be your main source of comfort. Learning and utilizing other coping skills that revitalize your senses. Smell, touch, sight and hearing can all be as powerful as a source of comfort that taste is.

8. Respect Your Body
Accept and respect your body as it is now, whatever shape and size you are. Your body is a temple, its what protects you, moves you and holds you.

9. Exercise — Feel the Difference
 Tuning in to how exercise feels, and try experimenting with different forms of exercise and finding things you enjoy — if it’s going to the gym you don’t like, think of walking, dancing, bike riding, rock climbing or playing with your kids instead.

10. Honor Your Health
When you start tuning in to how food tastes and how your body feels when you eat, then you’ll also start noticing that some foods make you feel better than others. Strive for foods that taste good to you and, in your overall diet, get in foods that are also healthy for you.