If there’s one thing that comes up in almost every week of coaching my clients it’s “how to make the most aligned decision” or how to get clarity on the next most heart-centered step for some situation in their life. I mean, it makes total sense, we are decision making machines and the quality of our choices directly correlate to the quality of our lives soo naturally once we wake up to how powerful we are we are also hyper conscious of our decisions.
Also, for those of you who haven’t worked with my one on one yet, my style is always to teach you HOW to fish and lean away from just giving you the fish. I want to teach my clients how to tap into their soul’s gps and listen to the voice of their inner guidance system so that they can use that skill for everything in their life. There are so many ways to do this and one practice I love is body wisdom but the technique I walk you through in this video may even be simpler — and I find super eye-opening and confirming for those of you who may struggle around important decisions.
I recently used these three steps on a really important business decision that I had be sitting with for weeks. I was in sooo much pain around this decision (probably because it was kind of a big deal for me!) and it wasn’t till I finally got to STEP 3 that the fog cleared and I got my big “ah Ha!”
Watch the video below and let me know what happens when you apply it to something that you need more clarity around right now! Also be sure to SUBSCRIBE and support my YouTube channel — I’m really working on building it up right now so it would mean a lot to me! 🙂
Did the video make you want to dive even deeper? Would you like to get my ear one on one to discuss a business or personal decision that you are craving greater clarity around? You can check out my one one one offerings here: click here for personal or body related and click here for business.
As always, thanks for watching, see you next time!
In this week’s episode of Eat with Intention TV, Cassandra makes her tofu waldorf salad, it’s a great, easy healthy lunch for yourself or when you have guests. You can find the full recipe in her book “Eat with Intention” as well as tons of other great, intentional, plant-based meal options!
This salad is a weekday favorite of mine for something nourishing, delicious and ‘restaurant’ feeling with out the fuss, price or sneaky ingredients! It’s also one of my favorite dishes to serve as a first course (on small plates!) when I’m hosting people for a dinner party!
Making the Tofu Waldorf Salad is pretty simple as you can see in the video but here’s a little grocery store “cheat sheet” to help you stock up on all the ingredients before you dive in!
TOFU WALDORF SALAD GROCERY LIST:
organic dairy-free yogurt (coconut or cashew are my favs — unflavored!)
fresh organic parsley
organic ground oregano
2 organic lemons
organic EVOO
16oz package of organic firm tofu
organic dijon mustard
organic baby kale
1 organic granny smith apple
organic garlic powder
organic grapes (red or green is fine based on preference)
In this week’s blog I wanted to share with you my favorite healthy travel companions. So many of you LOVED my instagram stories of everything I was packing right before I left for Israel and New York for two weeks and requested different links that I wanted to put it all together for you in a nice little blog post + video.
As so many of you already know, I am no stranger to traveling and over the years I have gotten more and more savvy about what I need to pack in my carry on so that I can feel happy, healthy and lit up while venturing away from my home base. With summer just around the corner, I am sure a lot of you are also planning vacations, week-end getaways and even little road trips to enjoy the beautiful weather and get some R+R or do some exploring so I’m hoping these products that I’ve totally fell in love with (and keep me sane and feeling good on the road) are useful to you as well.
Traveling is the BEST when you are feeling rested, nourished and present but it can quickly be the worst when you feel exhausted, hungry and like you are running on empty! Let’s rig ourselves for travel bliss by planning ahead and adding small touches to keep our wellbeing rituals on track regardless of where in the world we are.
Check out my video below for a little sneak peak into my carry on goodies and check out the links below to grab any of my go-to’s for yourself this summer!
My adorable palm print backpack that has now safely made the transition from travel bag to life bag.
So there you have it! My travel must haves, my secret sauce for staying refreshed and balanced even after traveling all over Israel and then spending a week with back to back meetings in NYC. I can safely report back that no only was I healthy the entire time, I was in great spirits and felt very loved up! Also, Israel was probably the most epic trip of my life thus far but I will have to save the details on that for another blog post. 😉
What are your favorite travel companions? How do you take your well-being rituals on the road? I want to know! Comment below or underneath the video!
In this episode of “Eat with Intention TV”, Cassandra Bodzak shares her easy, healthy vegan, gluten free sugar cookies for the perfect holiday treat. This recipe features Bob’s Red Mill gluten free baking flour as well as date sugar to make it gluten free and cut the overly processed sugar with a more nutrient dense date alternative.
**This post has been sponsored by Bob’s Red Mill who I am thrilled to partner with as they are my favorite brand when it comes to healthy, gluten free baking ingredients!**
Healthy Holiday Cookies
3/4 cup of vegan butter (I used soy free Organic Earth Balance)
3/4 cup of sugar (I split it up — 1/2 cup Bob’s Red Milldate sugar + 1/4 cup regular cane sugar – both organic)
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet pan with parchment paper. Combine your flaxseed meal and water in a small container and set a side to solidify. In a food processor or stand mixer, combine your sugars of choice with your soft vegan butter until both are thoroughly creamed. In a separate bowl, combine your dry ingredients (flour + baking powder) and slowly start adding them to your sugar/butter mixture. Once they are fully added, toss in your flax egg as well as your vanilla and almond extract. When everything is fully combined the dough should be thick but not crumbly, if it’s too dry add a couple tbsp of water till it combines well. Place your dough in the center of your parchment paper and another piece of parchment paper on top of it. Use a rolling pin (or your hands if you don’t have one) to flatten out the dough on your baking sheet (sandwiched between two parchment papers) and stick it in the fridge for 20 minutes to cool.
After 20 minutes, move your parchment papered dough on to the table and put a fresh piece on the baking sheet for your cookie cutter-ified treats. Take your cookie cutter and get to work, putting them into your oven for 5-10 minutes and baking till the edges turn just slight golden. Let cookies cool before decorating.
You can have as much as you’d like with toppings but for the video, I used a simple vegan cream cheese icing with peppermint bark shavings. The vegan icing was simply 1/2 cup of vegan butter, 1/2 cup of vegan cream cheese and 2 cups of powdered sugar (or till prime consistency).
Happy Baking my loves!
xo,
C
Check out my girl Sarah’s Salthouse Mkt Holiday Hosting Guide here: http://bit.ly/2o2rYAG
Check out my “Eat with Intention: Happy Healthy Holiday Survival Kit” at http://bit.ly/2AOgjHD
Please SUBSCRIBE, like and share if you enjoy this video!
Grab the book “Eat with Intention: Recipes and Meditations for a Life that Lights You Up” on amazon here: http://amzn.to/2cXdfQl
Work with me one on one to finally get FREE from food + body drama and tap into your body’s deep intuitive wisdom: https://cassandrabodzak.com/mentoring
In this episode of “Eat with Intention TV”, I share my favorite easy, healthy plant-based holiday appetizers. These recipes range from super basic to simple but impressive and they are perfect for hosting a healthy holiday gathering or bringing a dish to your office’s Christmas party. All of the dishes are vegan and absolutely delicious! Let me know which ones you are trying!
Check out my girl Sarah’s Salthouse Mkt Holiday Hosting Guide that I mention in the video here: http://bit.ly/2o2rYAG
Please SUBSCRIBE, like and share if you enjoy this video!
The recipes from today’s episode like the ‘spicy squash soup’ and ‘veggie balls’ are available in my book, “Eat with Intention: Recipes and Meditations for a Life that Lights You Up” grab it on amazon here: http://amzn.to/2cXdfQl
Work with me one on one to finally get FREE from food + body drama and tap into your body’s deep intuitive wisdom: https://cassandrabodzak.com/mentoring
Somethings been weighing on me for a bit now, I’ve felt like I wasn’t being totally transparent with you and it wasn’t from a place of consciously lying about anything but I had been dodging and dancing around certain questions since “Eat with Intention” came out last year. Of course, this weekend being not only the full moon in Gemini (pushing all of us to stand in and communicate the truth of who we are) but also the Design Your Life weekend with Laurie Gerber of Handel Group where I’ve been learning a lot of the not so obvious ways we lie to ourselves and others (talk about ah-ha moments), this came so powerfully to the surface to be cleared.
I don’t want any secrets between us. Full transparency equals total freedom for me. It simultaneously allows me to be 100% myself and for you to decided if that’s someone you are aligned with. It’s been scary for me to come straight out with this because, to be totally honest, I hate people not liking me. However, I’m learning more and more how important these difficult conversations are and I’m refusing to let that fear get in between me being fully who I am and being integrity with my personal truth in any moment.
The intention of this video is to clear up any confusion around my eating habits and beliefs in order to create a space of full transparency between me and you. I talk about food, are relationship to it as well as listening to our body’s wisdom and honoring our personal truth a lot, so it felt needed to put this all out on the table. Our relationship is so sacred to me and I promise to be this upfront continuously going forward and call myself out when I sense I am dodging a particular subject.
I hope you can forgive me.
I hope there is something in this video that resonates with you. Please watch it till the end.
And if not, that’s okay too. I am not open or available for any cruel comments, only love is accepted in the comment box. Unsubscribes or unfollows are a much more graceful way to handle your disagreement. I send you love regardless of your thoughts of me.
As for me, I’m going to keep standing in the truth of where I’m at right now, loving myself with all my imperfections and pushing through any fears that stop me from me doing either of the aforementioned.
Finally, the second video in my “Dreaming to Doing It” series and we are tackling the nay-sayers!
I thought this was a super important topic to drop in on because that sad truth is that this is an inevitable reality that every big dreamer faces. You will at some point or another come up against someone (and gasppp –it could be someone that really loves you and that you really love!) who belittles your dream in a direct or indirect dream and if you are not primed for this, you may actually take what they say seriously. Which I would NEVER want you to do.
What a lot of people don’t talk about is the fact that so much of turning your dreaming into your doing is keeping it sacred in your heart and protecting it from the projections of others. Click the video below to hear some of my real talk on the subject as someone who deals with this on a regular basis..
So what do you think? Are you feeling more prepared to tackle those people who may diss your dream? Let me know in the comments below. I have found that so often with my clients, a lot of the battle is simply KNOWING that it’s just part of the course, it’s not personal and it’s something that everyone that you admire or feel inspired by has tackled at some point in their life and probably still continues to tackle it but is just better at putting the nay-sayers on mute by now!
If you want a deeper dive into turning your dreams in to your doings, visit my mentoring page for more info on booking a one on one intensive with me to give you a jump start.
It seems perfect and hilarious to me that I never ended up completing this post until the Libra New Moon but (now) the timing couldn’t be better for it and a lot of the themes I wanted to discuss with you guys anyway are super prevalent with the current astrological aspects so thank you Universe for the procrastination this week! ha
But now back to the matter at hand, so really, what are you so scared is going to happen if you allow yourself to truly dream BIG, to honor that niggling feeling in the depth of your being and (gasp) speak aloud what you would truly love to do in this one precious life we are living?
For me, I’ve always been a BIG dreamer, not sure how that happened — you can blame it on the pisces in me, blame it on the crazy in me, blame it on how illogical I am — yet it’s always been an important part of my life. I spent so many years growing up LIVING in my dreams to escape my reality. My big, bold, bright as the sun dreams were my medicine, my saving grace, and in some ways my coping mechanism for whatever life was handing me at the time. So a funny thing happened once my life started feeling more and more like a dream in my mid-twenties, my relationship with my dream changed. I dreamed about living across the country in Santa Monica and so I did it. I dreamed about having a book published and so I did that. And then one fateful day came along and I was in the middle of a group text conversation with a few of my soul sisters and a single, harmless question stopped me in my tracks.
“What would you do if you weren’t so concerned with savings the world?”
Whaaaaaaat?! Wait. Isn’t my only purpose to save the world?! OR at least completely exhaust myself trying?!
No, said the deep voice coming from the peaceful part of my soul — your job is to find what lights you up and do THAT. The whole saving the world, helping people, making an impact, that happens WHEN you are lit up, when you get live your DREAM because that’s how show you people what’s possible for them. “The world needs more people who have come alive.” – famous John Lennon words.
“I would be a cooking show host and write books for the rest of my life.”
There it was. So easy. Like it had been hiding out there all along under blankets of guilt and shame. It had. I was ashamed. I did feel guilty about it. I thought, “I’m a coach, I’m a speaker, I’m a meditation teacher — wanting to host a cooking show is so vain, it’s not as spiritually ‘worthy’.” I was scared to dream. I was scared to even think of my dream to myself no less share it publicly with the world. “What would they think?” “Would people not want to work with me as a coach if they new that as much as I do love that — there was an even bigger dream on the horizon?” “Would I get laughed at or shunned?” Yano, the typical insanity that swirls around our brain right before we are about to own a truth of ours in any really big way.
Yet once it came out of my mouth (or out of my fingers to the text thread), I felt an insane amount of freedom. It was like the clouds parted and the angels started singing because I finally had ALLOWED myself to own my big dream again.
I felt more aligned than ever and I also realized that WHATEVER I did I would be using as a catalyst to spread light so it doesn’t matter if I’m a barista at starbucks, NYT best selling author or a cooking show host. It’s me, I’m light, I’m clear on my message and my mission so I can turn anything into a catalyst for raising consciousness and helping people live their best lives — and guest what? SO CAN YOU.
Which brings me to the first video for you in the “Dreaming to Doing It” series!
I recorded three videos after coming home from the set of Hallmark’s Home and Family TV and having a super fun day at work doing what I love. I just felt super compelled to start talking with you guys about following your dreams AND about how important it is to let those big, juicy dreams of yours see the light of day. This is just the first to get you going, if you want to be the loop for the next two later this week, make sure you are subscribed to my email blast — I’ll be dropping them there!
In this video I dive into one of the questions I get asked all the time around my book, “Eat with Intention” — How to start
listening to your body and begin communicating with it. Here, I break it down into basics, explain how to reconnect with your body and then get into a daily practice of asking it questions. I am so excited for you guys to take on these tools and challenge yourself to tune into your body and it’s intuition on a regular basis. Let me know below if you have any questions, are going to step up and take my two week challenge as well as any other helpful tips you’d love to share about talking to your body!
If you enjoyed this video, please share it with a friend that you could benefit from it, SHARE it on your social media and SUBSCRIBE so that you never miss a video from me!
You can also order a signed copy at the link above or a regular copy on amazon here: http://amzn.to/2cXdfQl
Want to dive DEEP and make peace with your plate and your body once and for all — book a one on one session and I’ll walk you step by step through reconnecting with your body’s wisdom. Details here: https://cassandrabodzak.com/mentoring
In this episode of “Eat with Intention TV”, I share my easy, healthy flight snacks for staying sane and satiated while traveling! These grab and go snacks are perfect for tossing into your carry on and will be miracle workers when mid-flight cravings kick up and you have a nourishing alternative at arm’s length. Let me know what YOUR favorite flight go to’s are and maybe you will see them in an upcoming travel healthy video!
You can shop the products I talk about in this video below:
Work with me one on one to finally get FREE from food + body drama and tap into your body’s deep intuitive wisdom: https://cassandrabodzak.com/mentoring
In this episode of “Eat with Intention TV”, I’m sharing a vegan, gluten free recipe for berry scones from my book, “Eat with Intention” that I have remixed using Bob’s Red Mill Paleo Flour and using some beautiful summer berries. We also chat about the power of embracing your quirks, the mantra that goes hand in hand with my favorite scone recipe in the book and how this has had a profound impact in my life. When you embrace your quirks, own all of the out-there beliefs you may have or weird things you love doing, you give yourself permission to LIGHT up and invite others to get on with their freaky selves too! We are all so beautifully unique and bizarre and too often dim our shine to fit in or feel loved. I think you are going to love both this delicious vegan, gluten free, paleo (all the things!) scone recipe and really resonate with this loving reminder to fly your freak flag and have fun with this one precious life we have!
1. Preheat your oven 375 degrees and grease a small baking sheet (or scone pan) with 1 teaspoon coconut oil. Set aside.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and mix throughly, breaking up any clumps. Add the melted coconut oil, coconut milk, vanilla extract, almond extract and mix thoroughly, and then fold in your fresh berries. (The batter should be thick like cookie dough)
3. Roll the batter into the ball, place it on the greased baking sheet, and then press down to make a 2-inch thick disk (or use a cupcake pan like I do in the video). Bake for 11 to 13 minutes, or until the edges crisp and fork comes out clean when inserted. Set aside and cool for fifteen minutes.
Don’t have time to get to the spa or take a mini vacation away? Here are some easy, affordable at home things you can do to make your home a zen den. Watch me walk you through my favorite tips on the video above and get an easy, spark-notes breakdown below for anything you missed or if you are curious what particular ones I own/use for anything.
MY 5 EASY TIPS FOR MAKING YOUR HOME A ZEN-DEN:
1) Fill your home with fresh flowers! I love to have fresh flowers around that i’ve bunched together from the farmers market.
2) SPA day at home. I use spa water that has fresh fruit and herbs infused in a mason jars of cold water. The fresh water is ready to go whenever you have guests over, want to reach for something refreshing and delicious. I also love to use epson bath salts- especially lavender! Make a yummy salt soak in small mason jars or scrub an at home with salt, herbs, rose pedals and a hint of coconut oil. Every time you step into the bath or shower you have a nice little treat to exfoliated and treat yourself with.
3) Make your home smell delicious!!! Essential Oils are have so many uses. I like to have my Nebulising Essential Oil Diffuseraround me around me with jasmine or peppermint in it. Using a beautiful aroma creates a zen den right in your own home. Here’s how it works. Try to avoid using think oils like sandlewood, vetiver, and patchouli.
4) Keep your eye open for small little objects that make you feel joy. I have a dream catcher from Ojai on my wall that spoke to me after seeing an intuitive up north. Little trinkets such as this create small but meaningful moments around your house.
5) My biggest zen den tip is to create scared spaces around your house. For my meditation nook, I have comfy little cushions and pillows with candles, crystals and some dried lavender to bring a zen relaxing energy into the space and make it an exciting place for me to spend my most nourishing time. I even have a small space on my desk where I honor my goldfish that passed away because his memory always makes me feel love and supported while working. Make these spaces your own and feel free to get creative — it’s about making this YOUR zen den and it’ll be a little different for everyone.
Got a zen-den tip of your own you’d love to share? Please do so in the comments below! I’d love to hear.
