Nourish your Brain, Nourish your Life!

Did you know it takes more than studying, memory games, and mental gymnastics to have a happy, healthy brain—and a healthy life?

We need nourishment in our lives and mental practice is only one form.

Do you think more clearly after a good night’s sleep?

Are you less reactive after your meditation, Qigong, or yoga practice?

Do you have more insights and awareness during or after a relaxing vacation?

Or perhaps you notice more clarity and concentration if you avoid that sugary dessert or snack?

Have you ever noticed that your memory is better for the times you were present in the experience you are remembering?

Everything we put into our bodies, consciously or unconsciously, affects the functioning of our brain. This includes your thoughts, the information you take in, the food you eat, the air you breathe, the well-being your bodysoul feels…they all affect the blood flow needed to keep your brain happy and healthy.

Here are five simple tips taken from Dr. Amen’s Brain research:

Maintain A Healthy Lifestyle—8 hours or more of sleep per night, no or limited caffeine and alcohol, regular exercise and regular relaxation, reduce stress, avoid toxins, drugs & smoking…
Eat a Healthy Diet—No refined flours and sugars, limited additional sugar, lots of veggies, enough water, protein, healthy fats, and regular meals. Your brain uses 25% of all the nourishment you take in—give it the nutrients it needs to function well! In addition, all diseases lower blood flow to the brain.
Manage Your Weight—As weight goes up, brain function goes down. Obesity is linked to Alzheimer’s.
Engage in Personal Growth Work—Whatever works for you to untangle the stories and beliefs that keep you limited. You can start with a simple practice of accepting all of your feelings with compassion. Depression is linked to the onset of Alzheimer’s, and lack of emotional well-being affects our brain’s ability to think clearly.
Engage in Spiritual Practice—Prayer, meditation, yoga, qigong, gratitude lists…anything that brings you a deeper sense of meaning, purpose, and connection. Research shows that we can’t sustain our mental health without this.

In my understanding, all of this is important because we need to nourish our whole bodysoul, not just one part. Your body, heart, and mind are all completely interwined with your soul. Your soul is in them and they are in your soul. Read more.

Nourishing your body, heart, and mind nourishes your soul and nourishing your soul nourishes your body, heart, and mind. So, these tips are not just for your brain—they are for your overall well-being, for the nourishment of your life.

The good news is that Dr. Amen emphasizes that we can change the trajectory our brain is on at any time. Work with the tips above that need support in your life, surround yourself with others who are living the lifestyle you want to live, and support each other.

Nourish your brain, Nourish your life!

**Collage is an exploration of Enneagram type Five.

Your Body–Refuge? or Refugee?

Take a moment right now and sense your body.

When you sense your body, what arises?

Perhaps it’s “I feel fat.”
Or “Ugh—feeling gross.”
Or “I don’t sense anything.”
Or “Ouch, that hurts.”

What’s your version?

Most often, the women I work with sense their body and judge her. (Yes, if you’re a woman, your body is a “she”! Please make the appropriate substitutions if you’re a man.)

She is never quite right—too fat, too thin, not fit, not comfortable, not satisfied, too hungry, craving unhealthy food…she is just plain wrong.

How do you think your body feels with all this judgment?

Here’s a hint: When you feel judged, how do you feel? Hurt. Sad. Angry. Confused. (And probably more…)

Your body is you. She is intimately intertwined with your soul, part of what I call your bodysoul. When you judge her, you are judging you.

Would you judge your girlfriends this way? Probably not.

Imagine living with an intimate partner—your body is about as intimate as it gets!—and all you ever hear is about how messed up you are, over and over again.

Would you feel good, happy, resilient, vital? Your body doesn’t either.

In fact, in these conditions of persecution, she is kind of like a refugee. She can’t really leave very easily, but she can check out. Perhaps you don’t sense or feel very much because she’s in hiding. Or perhaps she’s trying to escape, on hyper-alert, running on stress, but unable to go anywhere, causing you to feel anxious, upset, frazzled…

If she’s checked out or on high alert, she won’t be comfortable, and she won’t be able to focus, find well-being, make nourishing choices, or make changes easily.

Just like your friend, she doesn’t want to be shamed or coerced into change. She wants to be accepted as she is. Loved as she is. Understood as she is. Then, perhaps, she could easily make nourishing choices, or consider making some changes for her well being.

What would it take to welcome her home?

Imagine your body as a place of grounding, grace, and gratitude. Imagine feeling her support, her love, her exquisite attunement to your needs. YES! This is possible.

What if you could find refuge in your body instead of forcing her to be a refugee? Sense that in your bodysoul.

Breakfast as Spiritual Practice?

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

What and how we eat affects everything!

Not only our tastebuds and digestion,
but also the wellbeing of our cells,
which create our organs and tissues,
which keep our body alive….

And without an alive body, our spirit would have no vessel to animate!

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know I refer to the body as the bodysoul. We can’t separate our physicality from our spirituality. The soul lives in the body and the body lives in the soul. Read more.

So, what and how you eat breakfast affects your entire bodysoul!

Do you pump your bodysoul full of caffeine and sugar in the morning, wreaking havoc on your adrenals and blood sugar levels?

If so, your bodysoul may have a hard time feeling balanced—being jerked around from caffeine creating stress and sugar causing nutrient depletion and energy drop.
It’s hard to stay present, meditate, have good relationships, or be the best person you know you can be when your bodysoul is affected in this way.
I could go on and on…but I won’t! 🙂

So, how could you choose to eat breakfast as a spiritual practice?

Start by checking in with your bodysoul to see what you really want/need to eat.
If you’re having caffeine, drink at least 1-2 cups of water first. And then drink your caffeine while eating protein.
Lessen or drop the added sugar altogether—unsweetened fruit is a great way to enjoy healthy sweet, and consumed with healthy protein and fats, you’ll find you have a sustaining meal.
Skip juice—it’s so concentrated that it’s pretty much as harmful as eating sugar! (Think of it as dessert for breakfast.)
Consider adding veggies to your breakfast! This was a revolutionary idea to me years ago, but now I often include veggies in some way. Find recipes for Find recipes for, Green Breakfast Bowl, and one of my current faves, Summer Breakfast Bowl. Berries and cucumber make this simple breakfast fresh, juicy, and nourishing—perfect for starting your day with your bodysoul in mind!
Once you have your food chosen, take a moment to savor it before you begin to eat. This is a way to mindfully take in your food with all of your senses BEFORE and while you are eating it.

Enjoy starting your day with a super-charged bodysoul spiritual practice and see how it affects the rest of your day!

How do you make breakfast part of your spiritual practice?
I’d love to hear about it!

dancing with summer

Summer!

Sun!

Everything greening and growing and blooming and blossoming!

Nature is exclaiming her fullness, her lushness, her LIFE!!!

(Exclamation points seem to be called for here.
My fingers can’t help but type them.)

Sunflower turns its face toward the sun, smiling, drinking in its warmth, its radiance…and shines its beauty, its smile, its full-on radiance into the world.

The Buddha, grounded sitting peacefully, surrounded by lacy green ferns, cool and calm in the midst of heat, of flame, of fiery summertime.

And so is my life. Always a balancing of fire and earth, of flurry and ground, of blossoming and releasing, or accomplishing and resting…

I am here. Supported, surrounded, summoned…to be here.
In this summer.
I am here. Supported, surrounded, summoned…to be here.
In this body.
I am here. Supported, surrounded, summoned…to be here.
In this life.

Where are you? What is your dance of summer summoning forth?

inviting playfulness

Supportive, firm, slightly bumpy…

Smooth, almost silky…

Aaah—cool, soft, moist, and soothing…

Tickly, scratchy, stroking…

My bare feet delight in the textures they are taking in.

Each step a celebration of impressions.

It’s almost like my feet have little antennae attuned to each touch of the sole of my foot on the ground.

Delight, curiosity, wonder!

What will the next step bring?
Concrete—bumpy, gravelly, smooth?
Grass, clover, weeds?
Marble? (on a sidewalk, leftover from the construction of the State Capitol)
Wet or dry earth?

Each bringing its own impressions, my feet play with each one…

All around me, Summer also delights my eyes with a riot of color and texture.

Yellow and orange ruffled marigolds
Brilliant spotted and streaked, stately oriental lilies
Friendly-faced, simple daisies
Soft, pink and purple flowers of all kinds
Sunny, yellow primrose and simple stella d’oro lilies
Spikey yet gentle beebalm

Everywhere, flowers bloom forth, as if delighting in their own beauty.

And birdsong surrounds me—robins, cardinals, sparrows, finches, and more…

Mother Nature is my playground this morning—
my senses are awakened and aroused as I run and walk through her glory.

Even my body responds, reveling in the invitation to feel the lightness, the delight, the celebration in this summer full moon morning.

I jog.
I run, limbs flying with wild abandon as my inner child takes over.
I prance and leap.
I skip.
And I slow back down to a walk.

I allow my body to delight and play with life all around me—through my feet, through my eyes, through my ears, through my core.

I read once that play was something we do for recreation only—not for practical purposes. This morning, I set out for practical purposes—to exercise my body and soul—and I discovered play!

So often I forget this—that playfulness can be part of my everyday life—slipping in to lighten up my serious, hard-working, responsible approach. That I feel happier, lighter, and even get more done when I allow my senses/my bodysoul to play.

How do you invite playfulness
into your daily life?

What practices or reminders
do you have in place to invite delight?

Greetings from a Peony

This.
This amazing peony.
Right here.
Opening, graceful, present.

How can I not look at it?
How can I not stop and drink it in?

Now, it says.
I look.
Yes, this.
I drink it in.
Come again.
I sink, I dive, I am drawn in.

The beauty.
The simplicity.
The “isness.”

This simple peony.
From my garden.
In a vase.
Sitting on my desk.

Inviting me.
To stop.
To savor.
To be.

Now.

And now.

And, forever, now.

compassionate awakening

A friend from my SomaYoga Teacher Training shared this from one of her friends in our online homework forum:

Mindfulness asks us to awaken to life
(not always pleasant or easy)
and self-compassion comes in to help us
cherish ourselves during this awakening.

I’m struck that, with the goal of awakening, we’re often taught to empty ourselves, to clear our minds, to become still, silent, vast, spacious. It’s no wonder that some part of us rebels!

Yes, we need this calming of the mind, this inner quiet and emptiness—but it is not the be all and end all of spiritual enlightenment. [Gasp!]

We also need the cherishing, the compassion, the love of Being.

Our True Nature is both. Our lives need both. To be complete and whole, we need both.

We need to live in the world, without believing all the thoughts of our minds, open to spaciousness and clarity.

And we need to LIVE in the world, with our hearts and bodies alive and brimming with juicy passion, desire, authenticity, strength, love, and, oh, so much more!

This is the real measure of our awakening—living our realization with mindful awareness and compassion. With our True Mind and our True Heart online. With the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine guiding us.

When I live from this place, I know what I want, what I love, and I am sweet and compassionate with myself when I can’t have it, or when I behave less than skillfully. I have practices that support Quiet Mind and non-attachment, and I have practices that grow compassion and love. My practice actually affects my life, making me a more real, authentic, compassionate, contactful, clear, and awake human being.

I must bring my realization off my mat—whether it be yoga, tai chi, meditation, prayer, or any other practice—into my real, lived life.

What practices support you in developing both awakeness and compassion?

What fruits of your practice do you recognize in your lived life?

This, too.

What do these words evoke in you?

Of course, it’s good to be kind to others. It’s good to be a compassionate person, to be friendly…that’s what we’re taught, by our parents, at school, in our faith traditions, by our culture. Being a good person, a nice person, an appropriate person includes being kind.

But what is kindness? And what does it mean to be kind?

To do kind things for someone?
To say kind words?

What if we aren’t feeling or thinking kindness?

There’s something to be said for practicing kindness whether we feel it/think it or not.

But if we only practice kindness toward others, we’re missing something.
We may never really feel what we’re doing/saying on the outside if we are not also practicing kindness for ourselves on the inside.

This is the place we need to start. With ourselves.

Are you kind to yourself?

Think about the last time you did something you wish you hadn’t—it could be something small like unintentionally hurting a friend.
How did you treat yourself?
Most of us have learned to judge ourselves in some way: “Why did I do that?” “Messed up—again.” “What’s wrong with me?” “I shouldn’t have done that.” Or maybe something much stronger…
Is that the way you would treat your friend or a child?
Is it kind? Is it compassionate? Is it friendly?

Meditation teacher Tara Brach has a beautiful book called Radical Acceptance in which she describes another possible way of living that includes learning to accept rather than resist (judge, ignore, deny, etc.) our experience.

Accepting our experience is the ultimate act of kindness.

I’ve been playing around recently with one of her practices, which she refers to as “This, too.”

When I unintentionally hurt a friend, I breathe and sense my body and heart and say “This, too.”
Just by saying “This, too,” instead of moving into a habitual judging or doing response, it gives me a pause.
What is this “This”? What is my experience from causing hurt? What is actually happening in my body, in my heart?
Perhaps I feel fear or sadness or disappointment…How does that sense in my body? What are the actual sensations and where are they showing up? …This, too.
The mind will have a lot of ideas about this and may want to jump in with stories or judgments about me, about what this means, about what to do… I don’t need to try to stop those—that’s futile anyway! I simply keep returning to how I feel in my heart and body when these thoughts arise. …This, too.
I might notice that from staying with myself in this way, some feelings of closeness with myself, of welcoming myself, of being friendly with myself arise. …This, too.

This is being kind to myself. This is accepting my experience in the moment. And this is what will organically lead me into heartful, mindful action if needed.

As Tara says, “All that matters on this path of awakening is taking one step at a time, being willing to show up for just this much, touching the ground just this moment.” (p. 324)

As I practice this at various times during my day, I feel softer, gentler, more aware of what is actually going on inside me, creating a sense of intimacy with myself. This, too.

Then when I’m kind to others, this kindness feels congruent. It arises from a place of knowing kindness with myself. My inner and outer experience reflect each other. Kindness is real and truthful. This kindness ripples into the world. This, too.

May we all practice loving kindness.

grounded & growing

Bring it on!!

After a long Winter of inward time, of resting and dreaming, I am READY for the greening, the new life, the new possibilities of Spring!

In my backyard city garden, the lettuce is up, the peas are just beginning to poke their curious heads out of the ground, the chives are gathering together in a clump to stay warm on still chilly nights, and the garlic, having overwintered, is raring to go, shooting upward toward the sun, which will be much less once the trees fully leaf out… I have also planted kale, calendula, and morning glories, all of which can handle some cool nights and even the bit of Spring snow we are getting today!

Spring energy can feel exciting and revivifying, waking up all our senses from a more inward-turned attention. Yet even as I eagerly breathe in Spring’s fresh nourishment, this new energy can also feel overwhelming and challenging to my comfortable (read “habitual”) way of living—my habits, the ways I know myself…

I may need to undertake some Spring cleaning, inside and out. And like the plants emerging from the earth, I must be willing to meet what is in my growth-path, willing to be changed, while at the same time sensing how to stand firm as I emerge into the new light of Spring.

How to do this?

We can remember to turn inward, sitting quietly and breathing into our deep roots of inner contact and ground. We can practice slowing down, listening, receiving our own inner wisdom as a way to ground in ourselves as we meet what is in our path.

In this way, we can emerge into Spring confident that the soul roots we continue to grow will support us as we step out into the newly forming world, trusting that we can lean back to connect with our steady ground as needed to keep our balance.

If our seeds have been sheltered wisely and received true nourishment, they are ready to push up and reach out of the dark, cozy holding of the earth, into the growing light and warming air. Life is opening again, in the world around us and within our souls.

Deeply rooted in ourselves, can we meet whatever we encounter along the way with interest and curiosity?

With a desire to open to and learn
from the unfolding of this fresh, new life?

Visioning Your New Year

I used to have a lot of trouble coming up with New Year intentions—all it ever felt like was an exhausting, never-ending to-do list, what my colleague Laura calls a “devil’s to-do list.” I’m still working out exactly how to do it each year, but it’s feeling more comfortable, more like an invitation to land in myself and envision my life.

What better time, in the middle of winter, to make space to dream about how we want our lives to be? You can read about dreaming during our winter cave-time in more depth here.

One of the things that I really love doing is taking the time to look back at the past year—I usually get together with a girlfriend sometime around the cusp of the year, but you can do this now, too. We spend time going through our journals to get an overview of the patterns, the learnings, the moods. We ask ourselves questions like: “What did I learn, integrate, accomplish? What do I want to remember? What can I celebrate and what do I still need to focus on or let go of?”

Then we look forward to the New Year, at what lies ahead and allow ourselves to dream. What is calling to us? What do we need to integrate / learn / lean into? What do we want next? After writing and allowing time for this exploration, we usually draw at least a Goddess Card and perhaps another visioning tool to allow more guidance from the unconscious to be part of the process. When we’re ready, we share what we are understanding and support each other’s paths and visions.

Sometimes we choose a word or a phrase as a North Star. Sometimes an image really captivates, and just recently I read about choosing a “beautiful question.” Steve Quatrano explains: “Questions also fire the imagination. A question is a puzzle: once it has been raised, the mind almost can’t help trying to solve or answer it. In this way, questions enable us to begin to act in the face of uncertainty; they help us to organize our thinking around what we don’t know…”

This year, I chose the Goddess Card for Coventina, who represents purification, and from my hearthstones, the word “faith.” I’m playing with my beautiful question…Its current form is: “What needs to be purified within me so that I can live in more faith?” It feels like there could be many layers in this—and it feels simple enough to answer, two other important criteria for beautiful questions…

May you find more beautiful questions
than to-do lists to light up
your vision for the 2015 New Year!

* Coventina image from Doreen Virtue’s Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards and the heart with “faith” in it is from a set of Hearthstones.