Recently in Body Category

This past summer, I took part in a survey that asked women what they were hardest on themselves about, 78% said their body. While sad, probably not a shocker to you. Let's face it, we are all guilty of body hate and what I call 'body slavery' - treating your body like a drive-me-til-I-drop workhorse, ignoring her needs, pushing her hard and paying her little, if any, appreciation.

When you consider the fact that you can't actually accomplish anything without your body - it is literally the vessel that allows you to do everything -- ignoring and hating on it doesn't make much sense. It's totally counter-productive, yet we smart women do it all the time.

I think part of the problem is that most of us don't think about our body until she is making us unhappy. She's not the shape or size we want, or she's not functioning as the machine we expect her to be. Imagine what would happen if you ignored your partner or husband until they made you unhappy! If we treated our lovers or friends like we treat our bodies, they would leave. But our bodies are stuck with us - they can't leave. They can only revolt.

The other issue is that we treat our body like a project or a problem instead of like a sacred relationship. Imagine if you turned this tenuous relationship into a sacred relationship.

One of the most self-loving and smart acts you can take is to realize that you are having a relationship with your body. Just like you have a relationship with a man or woman, a friend or a lover, you are in relationship with this vessel of flesh and bones that your spirit takes rent in for your entire life on this planet.

The question is, what is the relationship you want to have? Slave and owner? Abuser and abusee? Neglector and neglected? I personally prefer temple and person fortunate enough to live in a freaking way beautiful temple!

What about you? Do you dare to treat your body as the temple she is? And if you did, what would change? And more importantly, how can you get started today? Doesn't it sound divine? It is... and here are 4 tips on how to get
started transforming your relationship with your body temple now:

1. See your body as the portal to which you experience everything in life - good food, great love, beautiful places, joy/happiness/smiles/hugs.
2. When you notice something about your body you don't like you choose love vs hate - it's as simple as changing the channel in your head or the words coming from your mouth. Tell yourself what you "do" love about your body.
3. Shift your perspective from entitlement to gratitude -- See yourself in servitude to you, this beautiful temple you get to inhabit while on this earth 
4. Treat your body as a temple every day

 

And for extra credit, take a double self-love dare... tell your body today how much you love her. Hug her. Tell her how beautiful she is. Thank her for all she does for you. She will appreciate it and in response will be more beautiful, more healthy and more likely to give you back the love you deserve.

I'm devoting this blog to the Lingerie Loves Your Curves Charity Drive that is taking a stand for all women to say, "Stop comparing ourselves and instead love our bodies, embrace our curves and see our own true beauty."  Go here http://info.aboutcurves.com/llyc-blogathon/ to see how you can help raise awareness for this great cause that was created by the National Organization of Women.




Your donation to this fabulous organization, will truly make a difference. Go here to donate http://info.aboutcurves.com/llyc-blogathon/ .

Remember, when women come together, shift happens...  

The other day I was talking with one of my long-time clients... a fellow recovering achievement junkie like myself, who was totally stoked about the new job he landed recently - a promotion, more direct reports, more money and more travel - but realized that once again he was falling back into old achievement junkie patterns. So I asked him to run down his entire day for me. He ran me through his entire treadmill routine... emailing before brushing his teeth, no time for meditating, yoga or breathing much for that matter, skipping lunch (no time) or eating it while glued to the computer screen, maybe getting in dinner before 7pm and finding little time for fun and friends without his fifth appendage (his iphone) distracting his attention and pulling him into the vortex of 'to dos'. Other than the people he worked with, he and his computer were having his most intimate relationship.

What struck me in our conversation was that this entire cycle of achievement junkie behavior (which admittedly I used to fall into myself) started from the moment that he opened his eyes. It starts that way for all of us. From the moment we open our eyes, the choices we make in how we spend the first hour of waking determine the flow of the rest of our day... and determine whether that day becomes one that nourishes our body and soul treating them like the temple they are, or whether it becomes another day that our bodies and souls become slaves to all the 'to do's' of the day. Even if those to dos are things that we enjoy, is being a slave through them really want we want?

So I got curious - that's what us coaches do, we ask silly questions to see what pops up. I asked my achiever client and his workhorse body, tell me the first 3 things you do as soon as you wake up. I was super curious about what he was putting into his body before he even stepped out the door... this was his answer:

1.  Coffee. I make a cup of coffee and start drinking it. Okay, check caffeine and adreneline taken care of.
2. Cigarette. I go outside and have a smoke. Okay, check, breath, albeit full of nicotine and toxins, but breath none the less.
3. Computer. I go to the computer, check email and surf the net. Great, information filling the brain, check.
   

 
The three C's! Wow. We took a moment to pause after he answered the question, and I asked him,"So what do you notice?" Another vague but sneaky coaching question. And his answer, "I am fueling my body with toxic junk before I ever leave my house. No wonder I crash about 11am, have more coffee, skip lunch alot, and then by 4pm I am dead tired, and have no energy for fun, friends  or taking care of me."  I pointed out the fact that he had infact made his body into a sweat factory. And he agreed, 'It's like here you go body have some porridge and get back to work!"

The thing that I love most working with achievers is that once they realize that something isn't working they will jump full in to making a change.

So I invited my client to join us all on the
My Body is My Moving Temple 40-day self love practice, and went on to invite him to make his first order of self love practice to change the first three things that went into his body everyday to...

1. Breakfast Tea. My acupuncturist told me that putting something warm into your body first things was the best way to tell your body, hello, its time to wake up. Welcome to the day. He also told me that coffee was the devil to your body temple, and even with clients who smoked, he asked them to give up coffee first. That says alot. Turns out that my client already had lots of great herbal tea and a good tea cup (the cup is super important. get one you love. My cup says I LOVE ME on it, of course!). I am a big fan of Mighty Leaf teas, Gypsy Tea and Yogi Teas myself... Licorice is my fave! By breakfast tea, I mean herbal, not black liquid.

2. Breath.  Sans toxins begotten from puffing on the smoke stick. Just sit, set the timer on your stove, Iphone or blackberry for 3 minutes and breathe. In and out. Everyone can do this, no training required. You can get fancy and do alternate nostril breathing, where you plug one nostril while leaving the other open and then switch. Or you can do more advanced yogic techniques like breath of fire. But most importantly just close your eyes and breathe!

3. Breakfast Shake. I've already written about how trading in my breakfast sausage for a breakfast shake has changed my life... in fact i am sipping tea and a shake right now. I do them together. Fill it with super foods. Its portable. All you need to do is shop for food, get a blender and you are good to go! An achievers dream. 

BONUS... I also added a fourth part of this self love practice, and that was taking a half day every week with no computer, no iphone, and only personal phone calls. He chose Sunday mornings til 2pm. A good choice, I myself have Christine Morning every Sunday, and it's better than chocolate!

My client accepted the invitation of 4 B's instead of 3 C's for fueling his body temple every morning. And on Sunday, after 2pm, I got an email saying he was 2 days in, successful! Gosh, I love achievers!

So now, you and YOUR body temple. Here is my invitation to you.

1.  Write down the first three things you do each morning.
2.  Write down the first three things you fuel your body temple with each morning.
3.  Make a conscious choice to change whatever fuel you are putting in that is not treating your body like the temple she/he is.
4.  Listen to this weeks Self Love Studio interview with Dr. Deanna Minich on Fueling Your Body Temple. You'll learn lots about your energy system, about cravings and about what you put in is what comes out. My favorite line from her book is this...

THE BOTTOM LINE IS THIS...
EAT THE ENERGY THAT YOU WANT TO BECOME!

I've never been a big breakfast person, but over the years I developed certain A.M. habits that seem to fit my sensibility and my body needs, or so I thought. The whole-wheat bagel with butter and agave. The scrambled egg whites (okay well sometimes just whites). The organic turkey sausage patties, never links, from Whole Foods. Yummy vanilla granola with a dollop of Nancy's organic yogurt and a squirt of Agave. Way better diet than the Coco Puffs and Snap Crackle Pop I was brought up on, and way tastier than the Cream of Wheat my mother tried to force feed me during the cold winter months growing up in Chicago.

And then I met Shakaya Breeze (her name even sounds like a shake!) I am not sure how it even happened. What started as a phone call inviting me to be on her super duper wellness tele-series as a guest -- which I did and loved --  turned into her daring me to try her raw shake recipes and drink my breakfast. All this before she even knew that I had been contemplating doing a cleanse and a 40-day self love practice called My Body is My Temple. I took her challenge as a sign from the universe that something needed to change. And I didn't like it.

I told Shakaya, "Sure send me the recipe and I will think about it..." while at the same time underneath my calm and graceful consideration of her invitation, my inner self was screaming in my head, 'Are you flipping kidding me?? Drink our breakfast. No way. We don't do that. We will starve. Our stomach will go crazy by 9am. Only crazy dieters drink their breakfast. We need solid food!' My inner self, scared to death of starvation, kept going, "You don't like raw food. It makes you sick. Every time you try it you feel funny. Shakes are good for people with different body types than you." Now she was getting rational, sneaky.

The truth is I was totally freaked out about the idea of drinking a shake every day for breakfast. Which is exactly why in the end, I took Shakaya up on her invitation (remembering that I love living by invitation!) One of the big reasons I decided to do the 40-day self love practice of My Body is My Temple is because I wanted to challenge all of my beliefs about food. I wanted to rewire any food patterns that were no longer serving me. So even though I didn't want to admit that I had negative food patterns running my life... when my inner self went bezerk and started spewing fear all over the place at the idea of giving up solid yummy staples in exchange for a shake I had no choice but to face the truth. It was time to trade in my breakfast sausage for a shake.

And here is what I learned:

1. I won't starve. Turns out I can get just as much if not more protein plus other good things for my body by slurping through a straw.
2. Super foods. Who knew they existed? Chia seeds. Maca powder. Cacao chips. Coconut water. Kiwicha. I found an entire new section in the grocery I never about. These foods go right in the shake and are like super powered with energy that go directly into my cells, making my temple really happy. There's no super food in sausage!
3. Shakes are meant to be chewed not slurped. I put apples, cacao chips and other things that let me kind of chew my shake, which tells my brain something different than if I just drink it. So it does fill me up. Don't know why it works, just does.
4. Makes traveling easier not harder. I had to go to NYC for 7 days and was a little concerned I would have a problem doing my shakes, but then I found "NAKED"... not me naked, but the brand of shake. Can pick it up at lots of convenience stores, groceries, etc.
   
5. It's faster and it's portable. Enough said. 21st century woman, of course i love this.

It's been way over 40-days now, and I am happy to report that after my 40-day practice of ONLY having my breakfast shake / 7 days a wee, I committed a very self-loving act... I changed my practice to 6 days of breakfast shakes, and one day of whatever I want for breakfast, usually on Sunday. Today, Sunday I had a poppy seed danish, a latte, and what else, but two breakfast sausages!

I invited Shakaya to be my first interview on the My Body is My Moving Temple series on Self Love Studio. To get the free download of our interview, visit http://www.selflovestudio.com

And if you dare to trade in your version of sausage, here are three fabulous Shakaya Breeze recipes...

BEVERAGE
 
CREAMY-DREAMY CHAI-LATTE-CHINO
TRY TO CONTAIN YOUR EXCITEMENT! This is better than STARBUCKS! I've never drank coffee, but this is so AMAZING it will DELIGHT your tastebuds and soothe your nerves.
 
1 C raw Cashews
2 C Water
1 frozen Banana
4 pitted Dates or 2 T Honey
1 t Vanilla Extract
A few pinches of CARDAMON, CINNAMOM and NUTMEG
Blend away to HAPPYLAND...;)
 
 
BREAKFAST 
HAPPINESS IN A BOWL
 
1 C Almond Mylk
½ C Goji Berries
½ C Chia Seeds
2-3 T Agave Nectar or Maple Syrup
pinch Sea Salt
pinch of spices like nutmeg, cinnamon or cardamon
drop of Vanilla ~optional
 
Pour the mylk into a favorite bowl and add sweetener to-taste along with salt, spice and vanilla.  Add goji berries and chia seeds, stir and let set about 15 minutes until it is like tapioca. This is comfort food for the soul and will spread a smile across your heart!

DESSERT
SHAKAYA'S KEY-LIME MOUSSE PARTY FOR ONE PARFAIT
 
3 Limes squeezed
2 Avocado ripe and pitted and peeled
4 T raw Honey
A dash of Vanilla
1 C fresh or frozen Berries
 
PROCESS everything but the berries until creamy and smooth.  Layer in a pretty glass with berries in the middle and on top.  Garnish with a sprig of mint. Sooooo sweet and tangy, this dessert is a delicious little guilt-free splurge, and you deserve it!

Only a week into the My Body is My Temple self-love practice I've come upon the most disturbing realization.... I've been scheduling my body out of my life for years. No wonder I don't ever feel like I have 'time' to do the things I need to take care of my body... it's only when she acts up or doesn't perform that I pay any attention to her at all.

WOW! Sitting here with this realization of my self-created self-love sabotage, how I wish that I could blame the fact that I never have time for my body on some all-powerful Calendar God who has taken control of my calendar, making it impossible for me to find me time... and making it inconvenient at best to find time to take care of this thing called a body. But the fact is that it is I, me, Christine, who over and over again seems to schedule myself right out of my own life.

That became crystal clear to me last weekend when I found myself at my acupuncturist office on a Saturday morning. I really needed to be in that office four days prior, on Wednesday when the immense pressure and tight stress that had been sitting in my shoulders for days, suddenly moved its way into the entire right side of my body, from my finger to my toe, causing my arm and leg to feel like dead weights vs. healthy active limbs. But when I looked at my schedule and compared it to the open office hours, there was no space for me. My calendar was full of commitments to other people... all great stuff, and all things I love, but all things that meant there would be no time for my body until Saturday.

So my temple and I did the best we could, asking my generous guy Noah to give us spontaneous massages before bedtime, just to do something with the stuck energy sitting in our body. And on Saturday, I made it to see Dr. Feng, After many needles, he said what he often says to me, wise man that he is, "Christine, you must take care of yourself too. When you give and give to everyone else you will have nothing left for yourself.' "Yes, Dr. Feng," I thought, "I have heard that before." But this time I went on to think, "Well, why is it that those words never make it past the Taoist zen of his office?"

And then the Calendar God spoke... or maybe it was my Inner Wisdom that responded, "Uh, because you never schedule yourself into your life. You schedule yourself out of your life, by scheduling everyone and everything else in first." Ahhh! Ancient Chinese Secret! Yes, I get it.

Seeing my life through this new self love lens of "My Body As My Temple" suddenly I got something that I had been missing about this sage advice from Dr Feng.  While I was vastly improved on taking me time to do something I enjoyed, I hardly ever took time explicitly for my temple.


The 40-day self love practice of "Taking Care of ME" that I did from January through Feb 13th had made an impact: I improved at taking ME TIME when it came to 'doing' something I want to do. I could read a book, or start work a little later without guilt.

So much so that on Friday, I went on ABC-TV to share how I take and find ME-TIME. From Tiara time, to Narnia time, to The World Is MY Oyster time, we shared a lot... check out the clip here, and see the real results of what I got from that previous self-love practice.


Scheduling time to take care of my body, to do the things SHE wants and needs, hmmm, that hardly ever makes the list. In fact it only seems to make the list when my body and her needs have reached the place of dire straights. Like, my toenail polish is currently half missing... my dentist appointment rescheduled twice.... my refrigerator on it's way to barren... and don't get me started on the underwear again...

And wait, the self-sabotage becomes even more clear... when I walked out of the treatment room at Dr. Fengs on Saturday... I approached the receptionist and said with pride, "I would like to schedule my next appointment with Dr. Feng" (thinking to myself, okay Calendar God, we are going to schedule this temple first!)...

"In fact," I went on to say with pride, "I would like to schedule my WEEKLY appointments for the next month to support My Body as My Temple self love practice."

Her face smiled, my face smiled, both full of happy at the thought of my body receiving such love. And then... my Iphone emerged with news that announced, "You can't do Tuesday, you can't do Thursday, you can't even do next Saturday... you have no body time availability to see Dr. Feng for a week and a half!"

How can that be I thought as I looked again and again at the days and times, asking that poor receptionist at least 10 times, so when again are your office hours? Again and again I searched, and there was nothing. And that is when it struck me...

Christine, you have scheduled yourself right out of your life!

And you know, as much as I hate to admit it, that statement is true. If I am honest, then I have to admit that I have never made my body a priority. It has always been a "thing" I needed to take care of.... And usually only after it acted up in some way. You think I would have gotten to see Dr. Feng if she hadn't started acting up this week. Honestly, no.

And that makes me sad.
1. That I would think of my body as a thing vs a temple.
2. That I would call her an 'it'. And
3. That I haven't made her ME TIME a priority.

Well thank goodness for this 40-day self-love practice, My Body is My Temple!!! Because now I am actually aware of a pattern I didn't really understand. Yes, I am much better at taking ME TIME, but wow, I still have some shifts to make in ME TEMPLE TIME.

So you know what my first action was after I sat their frantically trying to find 'time' on my Iphone calendar while the very very kind receptionist watched me, "I surrendered. I said, okay, next week is what it is. And, the week after I start my ME TEMPLE TIME with Dr. Feng weekly. And I scheduled my body right into my calendar for the entire month of April! And then, wait, I went one step further, I came home and instead of picking up my computer and going right to work, I laid in bed and let the magic of Dr. Feng Temple Time soak in. I am shifting... more self-love on the scene!

I love this 40-day practice, and I invite each of you to find your own epiphanies and share them on our Madly in Love with ME Facebook Fan Page. We are in this together!

Here is to each one of us knowing that our temples need ME TIME that isn't about "doing" anything but taking care of her...

And may we always remember to take care of her, before she has to get ornery and draw our attention to the fact she's been neglected.

I have always been a big believer that how you feel on the inside is how you feel on the outside. And when it when it comes to my spirit and soul - I get an A+. 9 years of personal exploration, a daily practice and a lifetime commitment to being connected to and serving a source much bigger than I. The core of my being, my spirit and soul feel pretty good.

However, when I go from the spirit/soul level to the inside of my physical and very human body, my grade slips because I do really love red wine and cheese. But I still give myself a solid B... and getting better every day as my body becomes my temple over these next 40 days.

But now let's go two layers out -past the epidermal layer to the layer that sits on top of it... my underwear, and Houston we currently have a problem!

I have always believed that feeling good from the inside out included how the clothes under my clothes felt. Old and comfy grandma-like underwear... feel old, comfy and tired. Mismatched or uncomfortable bras and panties... not operating or looking my best on the outside. And we won't even mention the ones who've become faded, holey, or a relic from history.

Think about it... when you put on your best underwear or your super fun panties don't you feel fabulous?


And when you put those, let's just call them 'other' underwear, do you feel any kind of good at all?

Yesterday, I found myself looking through my underwear drawer noticing that my supply had dwindled to two pairs of 'feel good and sexy,' three pairs of 'fun and free' and many pairs of 'other.' Which I might not have noticed, had I not been getting dressed to go to an appointment with my personal stylist at Nordstrom's. I thought that I had chose a cross between feel good and fun undergarment, up until I found myself in the Nordstrom's dressing room removing my jeans and shirt to slip on a designer dress, and to my complete horror... I discover I have a hole in my panties! Ahh!!!

Not big, not even that noticeable, but a hole in my panties. The panties on my temple! And my temple says to me, in the most loving voice (quietly so no one else could hear thank goodness), "Really Christine, this is an unacceptable adornment for a temple... and for you. Where is the self-love? I am calling for an Underwear Revolution!

 

After successfully finding and buying the cutest black and white spring dress, I beelined myself to the lingerie department. What I quickly realized is that I had just walked into a huge jungle of underwear! Trees and tress of panties, bushes of bras, and the occasional tiger striped slip lurking in the distance. I was overwhelmed!

Nylon. Cotton. Rayon blend. G-string. Boy short. Full panty. Lace. Bows. Seamless. White. Bright Pink. Multi-colored. And I won't even get into the bushels of bras! All I wanted was some fun, super-powered panties and now I found myself feeling like I used to feel when I would go to buy wine... staring at the rows and rows of bottles, feeling rather uneducated, not wanting to make a mistake, and ultimately just closing my eyes, trusting my intuition and hoping for the best!

Something in my intuition said not to approach buying my fun super-powered panties this way... that it would pay to take some time to make choices that would make MY temple happy, which may or may not be the same for another woman.

I didn't buy a single pair of panties that day... but I did come up with some rules about what my temple wants from the fabric that sits between her skin and the clothing the world sees. I am going to sit with these proclamations... do a little more research... and then when I am ready, wave the flag to start the Underwear Revolution.

1. My temple wants to breathe - she doesn't want to be suffocated.
2. My temple wants to feel super-powerful - not like she is wearing a diaper.
3. My temple wants to be fun and free - not dowdy and constricted
4. My temple doesn't like things crawling into crevices they don't belong - she likes things in their right place, that feel good.
5. My temple wants to have choices about how she wants to feel on any given day - sassy, super powered, fun, sensitive, sexy, sporty, free.
6. My temple wants to be adorned with beauty, always, and appreciates the care and self-love I put into every piece of fabric I put on her, as much as she appreciates every morsel of food I put in her.

I am SO enjoying the conversation I am having with my temple about our Underwear Revolution. And it feels so much better than the way I would have approached this before: Picked a few underwear from the rack, not paid attention to the $$, hoped for the best when I got home, and probably been half happy and half disappointed... ultimately creating guilt for spending too much money, stress from not knowing the right decision to make, and judgment about how I should know better to repeat this not self-loving pattern.

It's only Day 4 of the My Body is My Temple Self-Love practice, and all ready I have more self love! Who would have thought you could get that from a pair of underwear!!

Okay, maybe I AM addicted to 40-day self love practices, but hey, there are way worse things to be addicted to! This addiction actually brings me more LOVE vs. less, so I say, let's keep the 40-day self-love practices going all year long.

I am just coming off of a 40-day self-love practice of Receiving, and the one that preceded that was the 40-day Taking Care of ME practice that many of you have been doing the last 40 days. We started on Feb 13th and finished yesterday, March 25th by everyday waking up and asking ourselves, 'What do I need to do to take care of ME today?"

So what is next? When I asked this question I got inspired by two things... 1. Last year, one of five 2009 themes was "My body is my moving temple." I spent a whole year trying to bring that into reality and ended the year with a B-.  I want more! And 2. At the Madly in Love with ME Celebration on February 13th, I asked two transformational artists to perform something that embodied the energy of My Body Is My Temple, so that women could literally FEEL what that would be like. My friend Kalila danced an amazing temple dance, and Lone Morch created this amazing movie, My Body As Temple which you should so check out on our you tube channel.

This all leads me and you! to

the "My Body is My Temple" 40-day Self Love Practice

which is the perfect practice to do now! We just celebrated Spring Equinox last weekend which is all about renewing and replenishing. Spring is a time to start shedding all that extra energy we were holding on to to keep us warm and cozy during the Winter months. In the Ayurvedic tradition it's one of the main times to do a full body cleanse. And lets face it, Spring is the time right before bathing suit season, so many of us may have our bodies on our minds.

My relationship with my body has never been my strongest relationship. For me it's not that I hate her, it's that I forget about her. Like I can go months without looking at my toes, feeling my calf or noticing that I have this appendage called an arm. I take my body for granted, as if she is always going to be there to be the workhorse I have always expected her to be. As an achiever I have driven her past the brink of exhaustion on many occasions to 'get the job done' and the truth is that I have treated her more like a piece of machinery at my beck and call than as the temple that she deserves to be treated as.

The other truth is that without her, I would be nothing. I don't exist on this planet without her. My spirit needs this form to be on this earth. None of the passions, missions, dreams I have can be accomplished without her. And although I like to think that I am in charge of her, the truth is that very quickly, if I don't adore her the way a temple deserves to be adored, she will be in charge of me, and I won't be able to do a darn thing about it.

Just think about any time you didn't feel good physically -- from a canker sore to a cold to a much more serious condition - you were at the mercy of your body, and the only way to change the situation was to treat her well.

Well, what if we treated her well before she revolted and got sick?

What if we treated her well, despite our judgments on what she 'should' be?

What would it be like if we treated our bodies like temples, and everyday that was the lens through which we made choices?

I am not sure what the answer is to that last question, but I want to know, and that is why today, I say YES! to this new self-love challenge...