Spirit Science: You can be anything you want to be and feel the way you want to feel

Just take a few minutes and watch this video. I truly believe that health starts with improving our consciousness, that is, being aware of our thoughts, motivations, defenses and negative self talk. We can change our lives just by opening our eyes to the fact we are responsible for ourselves.

How our food is designed to be addictive

Is our food refined the way cocaine is refined from the cocoa leaf, designed to make us addicted and spending more money on our food drug of choice?

This video provides an interesting way to look at food and addiction in today's society. Check it out!

Pre New Year's Resolution Exercise

Today I did an interview with 680 News in Calgary and wanted to share one of the central pieces of advice I have for people wanting to improve their relationships with their bodies.

True lasting change doesn't start with choosing the perfect type of yogurt or finding the next miracle food or even committing to a new exercise regiment. It's not about finding the perfect trainer or the next hottest fitness studio that will be the answer to your health and fitness problems. It doesn't start with micro choices but instead trickles down from our larger life intentions.

Transformation and improved peace in life starts with knowing what really matters to us, that is, getting in alignment with what is truly most important. When were are out of alignment with our core values, we are driven to dissociate or numb out from our internal dissonance. This internal struggle and departure from what really matters to us can lead to lethargy and suck our energy dry.

Getting out of alignment could be letting our ego/ambition dominate our choices, working too much, taking us away from enough quality connected time with our kids or enough time to exercise and care for ourselves. It could be taking on too much outside work in terms of volunteerism so we look like supermoms to the outside world. It could be not setting aside enough time to connect with ourselves or our spouses or partners. I could go on and on. But we all know when we stray from the things that REALLY matter in our lives. When we are in alignment with our deepest selves, we don't feel the same drive to overeat or engage in behaviours that help us forget about a lack of fulfillment. (AKA addictive behaviours)

We all know on some level what our guiding core values should be.

If you're serious about really making change in your life for the better, I suggest you take a few days to ask yourself if your overall life paradigm is in alignment with your true self.

After living in the question of "What is truly important to me" write down the top five most important things in your life. These are your guiding principles. Start asking yourself every opportunity you have in making a choice, big or small, if you are moving closer or further away from your true values. Give yourself a break when you don't honor your values and notice when you've strayed. And make the next choice in front of you with consciousness and a sense of responsibility.

Life is too short and sweet to waste on living someone else's life eaten up by regret about what we wish might have been if only we knew at the time.

Exercise therapy for creative blocks

Over ten years ago my life took a dramatic turn. I left the security of a corporate career to start doing anything but that. I didn't know exactly where I was headed. I was just headed in the opposite direction and fast. I started reading the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and followed her book to the letter. It helped unlock part of myself buried by my drive to conform to external ideas of what was normal, stable and successful. As part of my journey I started working with an acting coach, Richard McKenna, in semi private classes. Immediately, he assigned daily exercises that included free movement and meditation. The whole idea was to help remove my censor through the daily practice and free up my creative self. I did what he told me to do to the letter as well. As part of this process, I started painting again (I'd spent much of my childhood painting surrounded by artists) and explored some Kundalini yoga in addition to getting back into high intensity boxing and strength classes. I started reading about Kundalini and realized I was waking mine up. Although I doubt it's completely open, I do know it's no longer dormant. I'm not an expert in this area and would never pretend to be. However, I could feel something powerful energetically alive again and I found a part of myself waiting to we woken up. I eventually got enough work together to have an art show which I named, The Kundalini. There was a lot of painting with my nudie bod' on the canvas as the paint brush. My work kind of sucked. I sold one painting. But the process is what was most important. The awakening. I had been living from my neck up since starting business school at 19. I was seriously blocked from my creative self for several years.

Kundalini is a psycho-spiritual energy, the energy of the consciousness, which is thought to reside within the sleeping body, and is aroused either through spiritual discipline or spontaneously to bring new states of consciousness, including mystical illumination. Kundalini is Sanskrit for "snake" or "serpent power," so-called because it is believed to lie like a serpent in the root chakra at the base of the spine. In Tantra Yoga kundalini is an aspect of Shakti, the divine female energy and consort of Shiva.

The power of kundalini is said to be enormous. Those having experienced it claim it to be indescribable. The phenomena associated with it varies from bizarre physical sensations and movements, pain, clairaudience, visions, brilliant lights, superlucidity, psychical powers, ecstasy, bliss, and transcendence of self. Kundalini has been described as liquid fire and liquid light.
Read full article

I could write a book about exercise and movement and removing creative blockages but instead I'll just summarize the way I approach it. I've worked with accomplished writers, artists, directors and loads of creative types. But I do believe that anyone needs to have their creative centre alive and well to be CREATING the life they want.

So my advice is vitality important for artists but equally important for the survival of everyone's creative life force which to me is the same thing as spirit.

First, we need structure in the way we try to remove creative blocks. Many artists lack structure and therefore can flail during blocks. Scheduling appointments with ourselves to move, workout, practice yoga is a vitally important aspect of helping our creativity flow. It can be an anchor for meditative movement and a disciplined approach to making work.

We have to wake up the muscles around the root chakra to wake up our creative centre. This requires excellent pelvic floor engagement, strength in the pelvis and butt muscles and extra strong lower abdominal muscle fibres to create a container for the powerful creative energy we all can manifest. Many people say they have no lower abdominal strength. It is merely a function of our ability to use our brains to send signals to these muscles. In creating the pathway from our brains to the muscles around the Kundalini we are building an energetic pathway from our primal creative life force up to our intellect so we are no longer just using just ourselves from the neck up to create. By building this energetic pathway and by building a strong container around our Kundalini we can then strengthen our abilities to tune into our creativity. A strong connection between our root energy and our brains eventually manifests as a feedback loop, our intellect and physical beings in balance.

But guess what? Sitting at a desk all day actually shuts down this area and these muscles. Most people now sit for work all day and this leaves many people feeling blocked creatively. This powerful creative energy lies dormant and even stagnant.

The cure? Set up a time to come see me for a private, come to one of my classes or if you're not in my area, we can do a remote coaching session. Everyone needs a slightly different approach depending on how weak the mind body connection is and long someone has lived with being out of touch with their body and pure life force.

All the best in your journey creating the life you dream of.

Jane

Exercise therapy for depression

This time of year people often experience a dip in their energy levels. It's a hard time of year for people to avoid using food to pick themselves up from their lows, like a way to stuff away the blues. We all turn to different activities to self medicate from whatever is bugging us. It can range from food, sex, cigarettes, booze or even just a thought process that provides us with a dopamine jolt.

When I was 15 I started using exercise to pick myself from the stress and anxiety of growing up in an insecure and tumultuous household. It was my go to drug of choice for picking myself, even temporarily from the downs I would feel from being in a household I didn't feel like a fit. Always being told I was too sensitive, had to grow a tougher skin or being coached that I overreacted to unpredictable rages and sometimes even violence. The only time I felt totally free of my pain was when I was kicking my legs up in the air during old school high impact aerobics. The environment of Fitco, my club of choice, also made me feel like I belonged somewhere. I felt light and alive.

Even though these highs were temporary, I thank my lucky stars that I had the wisdom to turn to these activities and this positive community oriented environment to feel good. I did take this too far as some points in my life. Using exercise too much, being obsessive compulsive about exercise and not listening to when I had over done it.

Not all teenagers or not all people for that matter are as lucky as I have been to find something non-destructive to medicate themselves with. Many people find much less healthy methods to keep depression and anxiety at bay. My passion for fitness comes from my own personal experience with how it has saved me at many different points in my life.

I urge anyone who knows that exercise will help them particularly as the days get shorter and the urge to hibernate and overeat kicks in. We all know exercise is good for us. We are assaulted with the knowledge that we should be doing better at taking care of ourselves.

But if we can let go of the idea that we have to do it perfectly, get 5 workouts in a week, achieve the recommended 150 minutes of exercise a week and just focus on doing something even small, certainly the tide in our lives will shift and we can slowly propel ourselves into forward motion towards picking ourselves up with something so obviously beneficial to us.

I could list the benefits exercise to brain chemistry like better serotonin uptake, the feel good chemicals that act like natural heroin in our brain, the feeling of vitality in moving our bodies the way they we were designed to be used, increased sex drive due to increased testosterone levels not to mention improved body image. We all know this by now no?

It's just about taking the first scary step into perhaps an unfamiliar gym or even dragging your ass down to the beach in your parka for a long walk. My most important piece of advice is to choose an environment for your brave step forward that makes you feel connected with nature or people. Find somewhere you can move be it gym or the outdoors that makes you feel lighter where you can exhale your stress and let go of your worries.

This comes from my heart and soul. I don't know where I would be today if I hadn't lucked out back when I was fifteen. I know I can get blue in the winter. I know I couldn't be relatively grounded or a glass half full person for most of the time if I didn't move my body.

Just take the first step and keep finding the inner discipline to do little things that make you feel better, not worse.

I know from first hand experience working with hundreds of people that exercise can be the flotation device we need during a storm and that it can even propel you forward in a new life direction.

When NOT to buy someone a fitness gift

My most recent iVillage column is all about the giving of fitness gifts this season including a clear description of when to or not to buy someone a fitness or health related gift.

I also list my top my recos at different price points.

So go check out the full article.

But first, a teaser...

Many people have the best of intentions when buying fitness related gifts for their loved ones. Of course we want people we love to be healthy and happy and to feel great about themselves. But make sure you are giving this gift because they are demonstrably into health, not because they complain about their weight. Do not buy anyone fitness gifts unless they've already expressed an interest in tackling their fitness or are already working out.

If you’re the mother of a teenage daughter absolutely DO NOT buy her something fitness related unless she’s been begging you for something. I’ve spoken to too many female clients that relive the moments their moms gave them workout videos telling me how much it scarred them to this day.

Also, a wife giving a husband a fitness gift can easily be construed as another behavior in the nagging spectrum only creating MORE resistance to change like a regressive little boy who will subconsciously refuse to do something just because someone is pushing too hard. STOP. THINK. THEN BUY.

Exercise Therapy is My Passion

MY DEFINITION OF EXERCISE THERAPY: Exploring the opportunity to accelerate physical, emotional and spiritual healing through movement and exercise.

What physical ailment or mental condition can't be aided through movement and exercise? Everything I'm reading is about yet another study showing the benefit of regular exercise on illness, medical conditions and psychiatric disorders.

My passion for quite some time has been in working closely with people who are looking for hope, looking for a promise that they can feel vital again despite major set backs in their lives. I'm doing my best to manifest new clients who need my passion, who's doctors haven't given them hope in their diagnosis or treatment. I love working with clients just before they take a giant leap of faith into an unknown path in life that might be ending a relationship, starting a new business venture or just simply taking responsibility for designing their lives the way they want them. Anyone I've described above needs to build stronger containers (their bodies) to support their beings through difficult times or transitions. Plus getting in better touch with our bodies forces us to listen to ourselves more closely. We can't ignore the need to rest. We can't shift into auto-pilot as easily and we certainly can't accept the status quo once we aren't numbed out.

I have clients with growing neuropathy down the entire side of their bodies and their neurologists just shrug and prescribe steroids. I have clients with MS who have been told this is the best they are going to feel for the rest of their lives and prepare for degeneration, that being able to stay out of a wheelchair is the best they can hope for. I have clients with potentially debilitating rare auto-immune diseases who need to find the strength to care for their young children and pay their bills. Their options for fitness environments are limited.

I have a hard time integrating into mainstream fitness communities because the fitness industry does not focus on the people who need help the most. Sure having a nice ass is great! Losing weight can definitely aid in the healing process of many illnesses and conditions. But how many people with serious shit going on feel welcome going into a big box gym? First, you have to fill out piles of waivers and medical release forms. You might be lucky to work out unsupervised in environments focused on protecting their own liability before helping people. Second, most trainers are scared to touch people who have complex issues. The most fit looking people out there are the ones who often have the most fucked up ideas about what true health means. Obsessive compulsive behaviours and type A attitudes towards health is not health to me. This is merely about micromanagement, not about taking a step back to look at what it means to be a balanced human being. Looking the part of a fit person does not require heightened levels of consciousness, deepened self compassion and alignment with what is truly most important in this world. When we get in alignment and start focusing on consciousness, a fit body will follow because we are listening to what we REALLY need in terms of food intake and movement.

There are no fitness certifications for many of things I see at Urbanfitt plus by the time I read an out of date textbook, there has been more research and development. It's an on the job learning process and forces collaboration with progressive health practitioners and constant finely tuned intuition and deep connection with each client.

The future of fitness is in exercise therapy. I'm not talking the traditional use of the term in physiotherapy settings or specialized medicalized environments. It is in using movement and exercise to release emotional repression, in improving true vitality so our bodies can heal, in getting in touch with our MOJO again so we are less likely to slip into depression and anxiety, in finding holistic ways to change our brain chemistry so fewer of us need to medicate our issues.

This might be a rant but it is a public announcement that I've been in this industry way too long to focus on the next it fitness toy (unless it fits with my priorities) or the hottest new fad eating plan, diet or cleanse. I don't want to contribute to the fitness industries' dysfunction and I certainly don't want to pretend I'm fit just because I have a flat stomach and small tush.