Blasts of Light

            I had the wonderful opportunity to go to a very special event held by Live in the Grey called “Whiteboards + Wine” featuring special guest Fadia Kader, the fabulous woman behind those little reminders all over the city to “Protect Your Magic”. It was a gathering of all different kinds of magical, motivated minds who love to live in the grey [ Living in the Grey: Loving what you do and living what you love. Blending the professional with the playful. ] to discuss what exactly what our individual magic is and how we protect it.

         Upon arriving, I was greeted by my lovely friend and fellow The Taste/team ludo lady, Sarah Ashley,  and her magically delicious toasts! Enter gratuitous food porn because.. why not?

This deceptive little treat is actually vegan! The chocolate spread is made from cacao and avocado. Clearly, I ate more of these than I'd care to admit. ;)
This deceptive little treat is actually vegan! The chocolate spread is made from cacao and avocado. It tastes so deliciously decadent, you could never tell! Clearly, I ate more of these than I’d care to admit. 😉

 

Sarah's "Mexican street corn" on toast!
Sarah’s “Mexican street corn” on toast!

 

Peach and Marscapone Dessert Toast
Peach and Marscapone Dessert Toast

 

Okay enough of the food porn! Back to the MAGIC.

So the whole group of us, lead by Fadia, started discussing our individual magic. I loved hearing about what was going through everyone’s mind. We had different versions of our magic but they all really resonated. One man said his magic was discipline. That really spoke to me. He said that his magic came from his willpower, his ability to work hard every day for what he wanted. I kind of love that. I feel like that IS a lot of it. It’s MAGICAL to be able to get up everyday and hit the ground running, for anyone who’s ever launched a business or started a new diet plan, you can understand that magic. Sometimes our magic is our accountability to ourselves. What do you do when no one is looking? What do you do when no one is going to check up on you?

Another magic buzz word was AUTHENTICITY. Of course, this also sets my heart a flutter. How could you not agree? Your magic is in being that person that only YOU can be. Being your authentic self in every area of your life is magical. Ready to create some magic in your romantic relationships? Try adding a dose of authenticity. Want your business to blow up? Yup, you guessed it, be your authentic self. Trust me, people really dig that shit. It’s a blessing to be so connected to who you are and not let circumstances force you to be a less real version of yourself. Now, that’s some stuff worth protecting right there!

Protect your magic event with Living in the Grey

Well now that you have this magic, what do we do to protect it?

Someone offered,”Being selective with who you spend your time with and who you let in your life.”

Ah, yes. That quote about how you become most like the five people you spend the most time with. It’s increasingly hard to be around others who aren’t as tapped into their magic and not forget about your own. I think people forget that this process doesn’t have to judgmental. There are plenty of people I choose not to spend my time with yet don’t think anything negative about them. It’s a matter of making active choices to engage with people who energize you, fuel your fire and make you feel alive. Keep choosing those interactions and those relationships and you will naturally find the others falling to the side. I agree that this can be a tremendous part of protecting your magic. Ask yourself who in your life makes you feel energized, excited and expansive. Spend more time with them. When you find someone bringing you down or into their negativity, it’s okay to be a friend and help them out but be careful about letting it drag you down as well. Relationships with people who are constantly negative or unaligned with our highest good often need to be kept at a distance to protect our magic.

Along with that, respect people for where there at and find their magic, popped up in our discussion.  Not everyone may be the glittery, magical being you are, so it’s important to respect them for where they are on their path. I like to call this “looking for the gold” in people. Everyone has their gold or magic at all times, sometimes it’s just a little harder for us to see it because of what they’ve put over it. It’s a truly magical skill to be able to see the magic in someone who might not be able to see it in themselves but we have something to give. Making it your mission to see that nugget of gold in other people can be a really magical mission.

protect your magic white board

Confidence. Living in the moment. Purpose. Tools. So many beautiful thoughts floating around the room. I couldn’t help but change my mind about my magic. Hearing all these beautiful ideas made me realize that we all have A LOT of magic in us and that “making healthy food delicious”, which is what I initially wrote on the board when I entered, was just the very tip of the iceberg.

It became apparent to me that my magic is my mission. It’s what has me waking up everyday with a big smile on my face. It’s what gives me the energy to write a book, shoot a TV show, post on this blog and see all my clients every week. It fills my days with sunshine and sparkles. When I’m connected to my purpose, everything else can just fall into place. It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever been given. So how do I protect this magic of mine? Well, I mostly protect it in my morning  meditation ritual. I use my tools whether it be a kundalini meditation or just sitting and doing a visualization (like this one here for your inner rockstar). For me, it’s non-negotiable. When life hands me lemons, I can easily get thrown off track and lose my magic for a bit if I’m not practicing my protecting. Staying connected to my purpose, waking up everyday and being incredibly present to the work I’m here to do, the message I’m here to spread about health and happiness and all the people who I want to help, inspire and mentor to start living the life of their dreams, that’s my magic. And you best believe I’m going to protect it! 😉

What’s your magic?!

I’d love to hear in the comments below what your magic is and how you go about protecting it!

 

 

            Today marked the first of 40 days I will be spending practicing this Kundalini meditation for self love. It was such a beautiful experience starting this journey and such a hurricane of events that lead me to it that I felt immediately compelled to share it with you once I finished my first day. This month I’ve been learning more than ever that everything comes back to our relationship with our self, self love is so paramount to our experience of every single day. Want to know why you’re not attracting the right guy or the right job or maybe even the right friends? It’s all a reflection of our self love and it doesn’t have to be a bad thing, it’s just a sign that there is more work to be done! Too often we associate lack of self love with people who have no self esteem or confidence, and that can be true but it’s not exclusively them. More of us than not suffer from some sort of self love deficiency at some point in our lives. For me, self love has been a continuous journey as I’ve gotten older, I’m constantly evolving, loving myself more, taking better care of myself but always looking to go even further, clean up even more negative beliefs.

             Of course, like any good break up does, my recent romantic unraveling brought up some pretty important issues to the surface. More importantly, it showed me I still had even farther to go on my journey to self love. It’s when we are in the midst of rejection that our self love is truly put to the test. And I have to say, to a certain degree, I really impressed myself. I have come a long way and I certainly am in a very different (better!) place now than I’ve been with some break ups in the past. Although, I must admit when someone you love leaves you, it’s easy to fall into the whirlwind of negative thoughts like “what did I do wrong?” “why wasn’t I good enough?” “what made me so unlovable?” and on and on and on. I am certainly not immune but it did shake me up and make me realize that I needed to get to work. I KNOW that my truth is none of those crazy thoughts but sometimes it takes going a step farther to really kill those negative self thoughts at the root instead of just slapping an affirmation over them. With this meditation, I’m digging deep, bringing whatever is there up so it can be healed and loving myself and taking care of myself through this  However, I do want to stress that self love isn’t just important when you are in the middle of crisis or feeling rejected, self love is important in your everyday life. It plays a major part on what practices we incorporate into our lives, everything from what we eat, how much we sleep to how we relate to other people. When our self love is burning bright that’s when we’re feeling our best, that’s when we attract amazing things into our life and that’s when we effortlessly eat healthy, commit to a daily exercise or meditation practice and set boundaries with people in our lives who bring us down, that’s when everything starts FLOWING!!

So I ask you to join me (or just follow along and hold me accountable) on the 40 day journey using the kundalini meditation for self love. In kundalini yoga it is recommended to do every new meditation for 40 days to get it’s full effects and then to continue it beyond that to further ingrain it in your subconscious.

The meditation consists of three different parts. Each have a different allotted time and a different arm posture.

PART 1: Sit in a comfortable position (cross legged – easy pose for me) with your spine straight. Place your right hand palm down a maximum of six inches over the crown of your head. Bend your left elbow in by your side and bring your left palm up to shoulder height with the palm facing forward. Focus your closed eyes downward on your chin. Breathe in slow, long, deep breathes with feelings of affection.

Hold this posture for 11 minutes. ( you can chop the time in half if 11 is too long when your start off)

PART 2: Still seated, extend your arms straight out from your shoulders, parallel to the ground and palms facing down. Same eye focus and long deep breathes.

Hold this posture for 3 minutes or chop it down to 1.5 to correlate with the previous section.

PART 3: Stretch your arms straight up in the air, with no bend in the elbows. Keep your eyes focused on your chin still and continue long deep breathes. 

Hold this for the same amount of time you held part 2.

To close, take a long inhale and hold for 10 seconds while reaching your hands high to the sky and then exhale. I personally like to sit with my palms up for a little while afterwards to really soak in the energy of the work I’ve just done before I open my eyes.

My personal playlist for this meditation is “I am light” by India Arie, “Magic” by Cold Play, “Just Do You” by India Arie, “All of me” by John Legend, “Moved by You” by India Arie. I set the timer app on my iphone for the allotted time spans and it plays a little chime when I’m ready to move on to the next part! Feel free to comment below if you have any questions, comments or want to share with me what meditation your currently working on!

Sat Nam,

Cassandra

In the book I just finished reading “#Girlboss”, Sophia Amuroso says,”Learn to create your own opportunities. Know that there is no finish line; fortune favors action. Race balls-out toward the extraordinary life that you’ve always dreamed of, or still haven’t had time to dream up.”

First of all, I highly recommend “#Girlboss”, if you can’t tell, I absolutely loved it. Second of all, Sophia is a thousand percent right and I could not agree with her more. FORTUNE FAVORS ACTION. The only way to get out of your own way is by taking action. You may be saying but I don’t even know what kind of action take, I can’t even bring myself to begin. Well there is an action for that as well. The best thing you can do for yourself is start moving yourself forward and here are three of the biggest ways to get into action by taking very small steps..

1. Make ONE small tweak. Getting into action doesn’t have to be a massive ordeal. It can be as simple as waking up an extra 15 minutes earlier to meditate in the morning or making a conscious effort to eat green veggies twice a day. Just find one small thing and promise yourself to get into action with it and watch how that naturally will help you build momentum to go even farther.

2. Get CLEAR on what you want. Write down on a piece of paper or journal it out and get really clear about what you desire, whether it’s personal, business or health oriented. You will be instantly better at taking actions in line with your goals when you are crystal clear about what your goals are. I find it helpful to keep that piece of paper or note in my wallet or next to my bed so that I’m constantly reminded of it.

3. Ask for HELP. Whether it’s a professional like me who can help you through health coaching or business advice or it’s just a trusty friend or family member, sometimes when we’re blocked we just need an outside perspective to help us along in the right direction. A lot of my clients hire me solely to help keep them accountable, in action and on the path to their goals. I also am a big advocate for “accountability partners”, if you can find a friend or family member who you can check in with regularly and make sure each other is on track they can be worth their weight in gold. It’s important to understand that asking for help, whether it’s just a silent prayer to the universe, in the form of typing in Google’s search box or sending an email to set up an appointment, is a crucial but small step to getting out of your own way.

I hope that helps you start taking action this week! If you need help busting through those blocks or finding what actions you need to take feel free to email me at cassandra@gosweetandskinny.com to set up a breakthrough session and get yourself in to action. If you have success with these tools and are able to get out of your own way with it, I ‘d love to hear! Feel free to write about  your experience in the comments below or post it on the facebook page and I’ll be sure to respond!

I’m actually sad to see my seven day Gingersnap’s Organic cleanse come to an end but I am so excited to share my cleanse results with you! I have been feeling absolutely amazing these last few days. I’ve loved all the delicious food they’ve given me for the past four days, two days on Spirit Junkie which was half liquids, half solids and two days on their GO cleanse which is all real, raw, vegan food. The last stage of the cleanse has had me on a menu that includes chia seed pudding in the morning, a delicious salad at lunch (sprout salad or spinach salad) and then a creative raw dinner with a  side salad (reuben wrap or thai kelp noodles). I even get a dessert! The raw banana and mango puddings were super tasty and left me feeling like I had more than enough food for the day. I can’t even tell which meals were my favorite because I honestly enjoyed them all so much.  I have been so full, my belly has been so happy and my energy has been through the roof. I seriously don’t want to go back to eating the way I did pre-cleanse, and I wasn’t even really eating bad!

This raw vegan reuben wrap from gingersnap's organic blew my mind. I didn't even think I liked regular reubens but this was out of this world.
This raw vegan reuben wrap from gingersnap’s organic blew my mind.

This cleanse has re-energized my passion for cleansing, it made me realize how even the “healthiest” of us can use a good cleansing and how fantastic our bodies are meant to feel when we’re fueling them with the right stuff. I’m going to continue eating as close to this as possible from now on, I may not be able sustain total raw veganism but I’m certainly capable at keeping away from the sugar, dairy, gluten and eating as much fresh, organic, raw vegetables as possible. Of course, I love knowing when I’m in a jam I can always swing by Gingersnap’s and get something to hit the spot.

I would highly recommend this combination cleanse to any of my New York buddies, to me, it did exactly what a cleanse should do, energize you, make you feel better and inspire you to eat healthier following it. And yes, I did lose weight, I know that’s the first question everyone asks. I lost about 5-7lbs over the week but more importantly I gained a glow! Isn’t that what we really want?

Gingersnap’s has definitely inspired me in my journey of creating a Go Sweet and Skinny Cleanse for all of you out there who don’t have the priviledge of being close enough to a kick-ass place like G.O. where you can just drop by and pick up your food everyday. It’s certainly a bit more work to have to make all the food yourself but it’ll do the job and make you feel great just the same. As for me, this was my first cleanse where I didn’t prepare any of the food or juices and let me tell you, it was a pleasure!! I absolutely loved getting to pick up my supplies each night and not use my kitchen for the entire week. It made life so much easier and once we got into the real food portion some of the meals were certainly something I could have never whipped up at home like that raw reuben wrap. It was so nice to be able to relax during the cleanse, enjoy the carefully crafted meals they had chosen for me and worrying more about taking care of myself then preparing a slew of meals for the day.

            It’s my second day off the cleanse, I’m still in the habit of eating my chia seed pudding for breakfast except now I top it off with some fresh berries, still eating clean, veggie packed lunches and dinners, and most importantly, still feeling like a rock star.

For more information on Gingersnap’s Organic cleanses, click here.

Woo Hoo!!! 3 days of pure juice all done! Yesterday was by far the toughest for me because I was on set all day shooting these delicious recipes for Shape.com and making this super healthy, oh-so-tempting food all day long! Feels GOOD to get this far with out many other cravings though. I haven’t felt crazy hungry or weak at all. It’s been much easier for me this time around than usual (when I make my own) and I can’t help but think that the low to no sugar in Gingersnaps’s juice is the reason it’s been a much smoother ride. Although I do have one ridiculous juice-zombie story for you, I was so exhausted yesterday from the shoot that I got home, took an hour “power nap” and when I woke up I got dressed and left my apartment like I was on autopilot searching for food. Luckily I snapped out of it by the time I got to a nearby cafe and got myself a tea and walked myself back home, haha. I think I’d blame that one on exhaustion from a crazy week though and less on actual hunger because by the time I snapped out of it I realized I wasn’t even that hungry. Had my savory “green soup” made of kale, cucumber, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, nutritional yeast, olive oil, cayenne, ginger, tumeric, curry and sea salt, and was barely hungry enough to finish the whole juice/soup!

The highlight of my cleanse so far, liquid-wise, has definitely been the Sugar Free Vanilla Superfood Milk (made of raw almonds, vanilla extract, stevia, maca, sea salt and filtered water), it literally tastes like the best milk shake I’ve ever had and doesn’t make me painfully sick afterwards. I’m totally in love and will certainly be frequently buying this gem from Gingersnap’s post cleanse. On Tuesday (day 2), I was on the train in the morning and I got my whole bag of juices stolen from me! Totally unbelievable, right? I am still in shock that someone would steal sixty dollars worth of juice but I guess I like to believe that people are inherently good and that no one that loves juice as much as I do, would find snatching someone else’s an acceptable thing but you never know. I’m safely assuming that some guy thought he was going to hit a jack pot and realized he just got a ton of fresh juice. Regardless, I hope someone drank it because it was too wonderful to go to such waste. So I was forced to improvise during the day, which was hard because I was on set filming cooking videos all day in a studio out in Connecticut. Luckily, one of the producers was nice enough to go to whole foods for lunch and pick me up a fresh, organic, green juice to hold me over. However, by the end of the day I was literally dreaming of my visit to Gingersnap’s later that night to grab the next two days worth of my cleanse and buy a Vanilla Superfood Milk to immediately put to my face. I drank that milk so fast when I got there that I actually gave myself a stomach ache, but it was glorious and I was satiated and so so happy.

The highlight of my juice cleanse and new personal obsession, Sugar Free Vanilla Superfood Milk from Gingersnap's Organic.

Feeling wise – I’m doing okay. I have bursts of incredible energy during the day from the juice but also sleep like a little baby at night and quite honestly, feel like I could sleep even more when I wake up in the morning. It’s hard to say if that’s the juice because I have a lot going on right now both professionally and personally and our body tends to need more rest during intense times. However, it would also make perfect sense for my body to want to relax during this cleansing process since I’m sure a lot of toxins are being released and removed. I do have a surprising confession to make however, I have been having a lot of trouble finishing all the juices! I’ve never liked beet juice so that particular one never quite gets finished despite my best attempt, and the “green soup” that Gingersnaps Organic gives you for the end of the day is absolutely delicious (I wish I could heat it up and drink it like real soup!) but I hardly have enough appetite to drink it all by the time I get to it. I feel slightly conflicted about this because whenever I talk to someone about doing a juice cleanse I will be the first person to scold you about drinking ALL the juices, no matter what because your body needs the nutrients and the calories. However, I feel so full and content, it’s hard to push it. Plus, I feel like not being hungry while cleansing is a very lucky thing, so hopefully I’m not jinxing myself!

Today I get to start the “Spirit Junkie” portion of my cleanse, inspired by my spiritual guru, Gabrielle Bernstein, this part of the cleanse is mostly liquid with a little light food. I start off my morning the same with my SF ginger lemonade, then move on to “KICK” which is a green juice with ginger, soon after I get to my fabulous SF Vanilla Superfood Milk, then a green SMOOTHIE (yipee!!!) and finally some food, SF vanilla chia seed pudding and a borecole salad. I’m excited! I’ll be doing this for two days and then graduated to their all food cleanse. Can’t wait to share how the rest of it goes!

AKA. Why I’m cleansing this week..

gingersnaps organic GO Deep Juice Cleanse

            I’m on the first day of my Gingersnap’s Organic cleanse, this is my very FIRST cleanse where I’m not making all the food myself and I’m beyond excited for this week. I’m in the process of writing my own detox and am savvy enough to put myself on my own sort of cleanse/detox/juice fast (hey,  I even wrote a book about how I do it) but there is something quite delightful in having someone else handle all that for you and I was eager to give it a go. Everyone has different reasons for wanting to cleanse, sometimes you’re feeling gross from several weeks of eating processed foods, maybe you’re feeling sluggish and want to boost your system back in to gear and lots of  people go on a cleanse because they want to lose an extra few pounds fast. My reasons are none of the above. I actually eat pretty healthy, feel just fine and have no desire to lose weight.

I’m cleansing mostly for my mind! See, my favorite thing about doing a juice cleanse is the crystal clear focus that comes from it after the first few days. I love that excessive amount of clean energy that just oozes out your pores and makes you feel like you can take on the world. I’ve decided to do this cleanse to help focus. Writing my first big girl book about my entire lifestyle plan, creating a detox, planning lots of exciting events and handling some personal and family things that have come up have really made my brain mush. I forget dates, sometimes forget emails, and I’m just struggling to finish writing sometimes, to be really honest. Also, I’ve been under a lot of stress, a break up, family health issues, it’s enough to turn even this green juice drinking, meditating body into an acidic danger zone. Even the healthiest of us still release stress hormones that can turn our inner environment acidic, lower our immune system, slow us down and make our skin break out. So it’s always a great idea to focus on eating alkaline, organic and nutrient dense food when your world is spinning a little too fast for your own good, but you know what’s even better?! Having an amazing place like Gingersnap’s handle it all for you so that you can have one less thing to worry about and know that you’re in good hands getting the nutrients your body needs to function at it’s best. As someone who makes food all the time for my blog and for various cooking videos and appearances, it’s such a pleasure to have it all come to me for a change and be able to focus on my life and my work instead of worrying about what I’m making for dinner, or what I’m juicing for the day.

Of course, the other reasons for cleansing are also very valid so I don’t want to completely skip over them. Going on a cleanse is a great way to get back into the habit of healthy eating when you feel you’ve fallen off track for a few weeks, it puts you on a strict regimen so it’s a lot easier to avoid temptations that pop up and remind you of how amazing you can feel when you are treating your body right. I highly recommend it to my clients who are struggling with gaining motivation to make some serious changes. It’s also a great way to rev your body up if you’ve been feeling sluggish because chances are you’re feeling sluggish because you’re not getting enough nutrients in your diet or you’ve let stress bog you down and need a nice healthy rush to re-calibrate you. While I never recommend trying to do something drastic to lose weight quick, if you need to drop a few pounds for a special occasion, going on a cleanse is a great way to accomplish that by flooding your system with glorious good for you foods or juices and NOT depriving yourself! Plus, instead of feeding  unhealthy behaviors like some crazy get skinny quick schemes do, going on a vegan, raw, organic juice or meal cleanse will actually influence you to start putting healthier, good for you foods into your body when you’ve finished.

Why did I choose Gingersnap’s Organic out of all the juice spots in NYC?

Gingersnap’s Organic is a raw, vegan, organic cafe in the East Village that makes all of it’s cleanses (and juices or food you can purchase) on site. I love that I know where my juice is being made and I can trust that it’s the freshest possible because it’s not being carted on a truck from a warehouse somewhere in Queens or Brooklyn. I also know that the juices are made as a whole, in other words if there’s a juice with kale, cucumber, pear and lemon, it’s being made all at once and there isn’t a massive container of kale juice, a massive container of cucumber juice, etc, that’s being mixed together to make my juice. This may seem a little crazy but there are actually some well-known juice spots that do this sort of mixing. The reason why that’s not so fabulous for your juice quality is that when they are mixing batches of juice like that you could be drinking kale from 3 days ago, cucumber from this morning and lemon from yesterday. Not an ideal situation. You should always be stickler about your juice, and even more so on a cleanse where you are drinking a lot of it. NEVER drink juice that’s not made with organic fruits and vegetables, you do not want all the nasty chemicals, hormones and antibiotics that can be found on non-organic produce inside your body. Also, never ever cleanse with pasteurized juice, look for cold pressed or high pressured processing like they do at Gingersnap’s.

I also chose Gingersnap’s Organic because of their kick ass founder, yogi and raw foods expert, Jamie Graber, she personally sat down with me and helped me customize this cleanse for my needs. Gingersnap’s offers a wide variety of cleanses from all juice to all food and they let you mix and match them. When I told Jamie about why I was doing the cleanse and that I was pretty open to whatever she wanted to throw at me, she encouraged me to do a combination of three. We decided I would start off on their Go Deep Sugar Free juice cleanse for two days, then move on to their half liquid, half solids Spirit Junkie cleanse (inspired by my guru, miss Gabby Bernstein) and finally finish off the week with their Go Cleanse which is all real vegan, organic and gluten free meals. I loved the idea of being able to experience a whole range of cleanse options and work my way from liquids back to solids over the course of the week. I also find Jamie totally inspiring and love how passionate she is about making the best possible juice and food for her clients. I know my body is in good hands with her this week!

 

One of the most frequently asked questions I get, other than “what is Anthony Bourdain like in person?” is always about how I got started with my health coaching business and my blog. Sometimes I don’t get the opportunity to send the lengthy emails I’d like to, to tell all of you lovely budding health coaches and entrepreneurs about it so I decided that I would make a video! I’m also really excited to announce the launch of “breakthrough business sessions” due to overwhelming demand of people wanting to chat with me about their business.

In my breakthrough business sessions, we’ll spend an hour together discussing your business goals and ideas, your brand, where you’re target market is, your income stream, among other topics (depending on your personal situation) and then leave you with an actionable list to get started on immediately. If you’re curious about learning more or wish to get one scheduled ASAP, please feel free to email me at cassandra@gosweetandskinny.com.

This Guided Meditation for Channeling Your Inner Rockstar is all about accessing your BEST self on a daily basis. Join me for a short visualization that I do with all my clients to help them tap in to their ideal body, ideal life and connect with the place in them that knows it is possible. You can re watch this meditation over and over again and use it in your daily practice by forwarding to the 1.30 mark and skipping all my intro chatter. I hope that you use this to help you connect to the you that’s trying to break out and live your best life. Unleash your inner rockstar everyday and get ready for some major changes in your life with this practice alone. By allowing ourselves to visualize our best self in this guided meditation, we are able to get a clear picture of what we want the future to look like and use it to inform our decisions and actions today.

           AKA. HOW I GOT DE-RAILED ON “BOOKCATION”

                As many of you know, I’ve been out in LA for the past couple weeks on a “bookcation”. I’ve been absolutely determined to remove myself from any distractions and finish my first REAL book  (“Juicespiration”, is technically my first book but it’s only available as an e-book so I’m saying it’s half-real, haha) . I was beyond excited to win a publishing package with a Hay House and Balboa Press and absolutely over joyed to finally share my story and the tools I’ve learned over the years with all of you.

Unfortunately, once I got out here, life just kept on creeping up in my way. Don’t you hate it when that happens? I’m a very sensitive person when it comes to certain things having the ability to de-rail me. I had three different levels and different situations of just being taken completely off my game mentally while being out here and I was angry with myself about it!

I had a disagreement with some of my close girlfriends one weekend which had me all sorts of out of whack. I’m not the kind of girl who regularly engages in drama with her friends, if you couldn’t of guessed, I hate fighting. I can’t remember the last time before this incident that I was actually in a fight with any of my girlfriends. Needless to say, it’s all I could think about and zero book writing got done for a few days as a result.

Just as I was cooling off from that, my boyfriend flipped out on me about something trivial. He decided he needed to take the holiday weekend to himself and not answer any phone calls while I was a disaster about everything in LA and then sent me a lovely break up email on Tuesday afternoon. Real classy, right? At this point, I was less sad (since I spent all weekend crying and NOT writing my book) but more flabbergasted that an almost 30 year old man thought it was appropriate to send an email to end a relationship of almost a year. The blessing of having people handle things so terribly is that it certainly helps you see their true colors and heal faster than you might otherwise.

Sandwiched right in there, I got an even bigger blow. Someone I’m very close to was having serious health issues and was going to be rushed into emergency surgery. This one really made my heart hurt. I could barely think about the two former situations other than the fact that I was dealing with such a traumatic event in my life with out some of the people I counted on most for support. I’ve been so blessed so far in my life that I haven’t had to face the mortality of ones I love too often. My grandma had thyroid cancer when I was in college and that was really my first major brush with disease affecting someone so close to me. (Grandma is all good now BTW and I’m so grateful everyday for her presence in my life, she’s one of my favorite people in the world and gives the best advice.) So I have to be honest, I’m really not doing well with the whole situation. I’ve been having random public outbursts of crying and have some amazing friends on text-support for me at all times. I’m praying, meditating and journaling. Just writing this right now feels very therapeutic and this whole ordeal has taught me some really important lessons.

I’m not a machine, I’m human.

While crying on and off and feeling sick to my stomach, I kept on beating myself up about not making better progress on the book. I was so angry that I was letting these situations take me down and I got frustrated with my tools.  I was meditating and doing yoga and I still couldn’t ‘un-funk’ myself. And then it finally hit me, like a loving voice whispering into my ear,” it’s okay to just take care of you right now, that’s your only job”. So I stopped trying so hard to make myself calm enough to get work done and started doing things that made me just feel better! I took a long walk in the California sunshine and listened to music that made me happy, I watched documentaries about GMOs and other food issues (this is my favorite chill-out activity, I know I’m a dork), I let myself hang out in a bubble bath and most importantly, I let myself sleep as much as I needed.  All that stress, sadness and anger takes such a toll on our internal environment and it can make us beyond exhausted, I know for me at least, that’s always the case. I realized that right now, this was what I had to focus on so that I could return to my book (and my life!) as a whole, functional human being when the time was right.

Trust your tools.

            Through all the different hurdles that came up for me on this trip, I brought it to my meditation pillow. I have a daily practice that includes saying gratitude when I wake up in the morning, doing my ACIM (A Course in Miracles) lesson of the day and then I do a kundalini meditation. I typically do a manifesting meditation but I switched it to a meditation for irrationality, and added both a “willing to see love” and “manifesting love” guided meditation from Gabby Bernstein when things to a turn for the worse with my now ex-boyfriend. I also practiced a kundalini kriya (which is a 30-45 minute yoga sequence) daily. Needless to say, some days it still didn’t really help, I’d feel my emotions well up during my kriya and even though my meditations were helpful in changing my state for the hour after, I would fall back into my thinking patterns all too soon and be down the rabbit hole again. I did it for three days straight despite not seeing any tremendous results, I kept the faith and I didn’t know what else to try and then a miracle happened on the fourth morning. I woke up and all of a sudden I felt a profound sense of clarity after my morning routine. My circumstances hadn’t changed, but the way I looked at it did. I felt an overwhelming trust that everything is happening for a reason and that it was for the greater good. I started focusing on my loved one’s health crisis in a very practical way of steps I had to take (switching flights, arranging my schedule) so that I could be with them. I spent time on the phone with them, seeing how they were handling it, instead of worrying about how I was and just realizing that the other two situations weren’t anything to garner my attention right now. My girlfriends and I will smooth it over soon enough and put it behind us and my ex, well who needs someone in your life that doesn’t want you in theirs and would treat you like that? I focused on what was important and all of sudden I was able to start writing again, I was able to function again. I learned to trust my tools, it may have taken a little while for me to see the effects but I certainly wouldn’t have made it to the other side without them. Plus, who knows how much worse those first couple days would have been with out them!

I get by with a little help from my friends…and family.

             I feel so tremendously grateful for the support I have amongst my friends and family. I tend to try to keep things to myself and handle them on my own as much as possible before reaching out to too many people. I always feel like people have enough of their own stuff going on and I don’t want to burden them but I realized this past week, that sometimes we need to lean on those around us. Nothing was more comforting than having someone who just listened and helped me gain clarity on the situation. I finally got to the point where I just let myself come completely clean and ask for the support I needed at the time. So often, we keep everything swirling in our heads and try to put on a good face when the best thing for us can really be lifting the veil, being vulnerable and asking for someone to take the time to listen. I’m also a big believer in journaling which can be a tremendous tool in helping us gain clarity and unload emotional thoughts. When it’s too late to call, grab the journal!

I love my work.

             Every step of the way, I never missed a client meeting or a breakthrough session. In fact, the time I had with the lovely ladies I coach was the highlight of my darkest days. Speaking to them, hearing their successes and helping them tackle new challenges was like bright rays of sun in my otherwise grey sky. I felt so happy, so energized and so at peace when working with them. I always knew that I loved coaching, ever since I’ve started, it’s brought me more joy and pleasure than anything I’ve experienced to watch the people I work with get healthy, lose weight, make positive changes in their life and just become those happy, glowing people we’re all meant to be with my help. However, this trip really solidified it. I don’t think any of my clients realized how much they were helping me (although they may now if they read this – love you guys!) but just by having the responsibility to show up for them in a big way got me back on my game. I stand in so much gratitude right now for what I do, the people I get to work with and all the people that I’ll work with in the future. There is nothing more beautiful than supporting someone who is ready to make massive changes in their life and creating a healthy lifestyle that makes them incredibly happy together. They inspire me everyday and really inject so much joy in my life!

The book will get done when it’s supposed to.

            I believe in divine timing, everything happens in it’s own time. I also believe in productivity, goals and timelines and sometimes the two really butt heads. This whole bookcation was a tremendous example of that. Luckily, I have a very loving editor whose also my girlfriend and she reminded me that it’s more important to write a really great book than to “just get it done” and to be more patient with myself.  So the book may not have gotten finished this week but the book that it has evolved into, is leagues better than the one I had planned on finishing. I revamped it mid-vaca to be more of guide in the vein of the work I do with my clients, which I’m super excited about and it’s also going to have some pretty kick ass tips for dealing with a broken heart and crisis while staying on track! All of which never would have happened without me having to fall of track, bring myself back into the game and learn a little bit more about myself along the way.

                            The topic of owning our food sensitivities manifested itself in numerous conversations this week, between clients, friends and then finally my own inner dialogue  in my journal, it was just bursting to come out! I wanted to out myself with this little instagram note, stating all my negative food reactions and also use it as a reminder to myself on a daily basis why I actively choose to not incorporate those things into my diet. I often recommend tools similar to this to some of my coaching clients when we are food-mood journaling and going through the discovery process of finding which foods work with our bodies and which foods cause negative reactions in us but last night I made this for myself for a reason beyond just reminding myself how gluten, sugar, and dairy effect me. I made this to empower me when I have to talk to the people in my life about my dietary preferences.

              How many of you have felt judgement or the need to explain yourself when you start taking the food that bothers you out of your diet? I know I have! It’s actually one of my biggest stressors to be perfectly honest. I hate having to explain or defend myself to certain people in my life every time I order from a menu. You wouldn’t attack or questions someone who’s allergic for nuts for asking the restaurant if there’s nuts in an entree, then why would you roll your eyes if someone asks if there’s sugar or gluten or dairy, etc?  To that same point, you wouldn’t feel like you needed to apologize for having a nut allergy so don’t feel like you need to apologize for choosing not to eat food that doesn’t make you feel good! Trust me I know how hard this can be, I’ve watched clients struggle with it and it’s certainly come up time and time again in my life so I wanted to give you 3 tools today to really start owning your food sensitivities that I’m also going to be incorporating into my daily life!

3 TOOLS FOR OWNING YOUR FOOD SENSITIVITIES

1. TREAT IT LIKE AN ALLERGY. A food sensitivity is really an allergy of sorts anyway it’s just not always severe enough to send you to the hospital or lead you to popping a ton of Benadryl so your throat doesn’t close up. However, when you eat food that’s not working for your body, there is a very real reaction going on! Get clear on your symptoms, use tools like writing them down in your phone, as a graphic like mine or on an index card you carry in your purse so that when you’re tempted to eat them you are reminded of the consequences and can make a healthier choice for your body.

2. TALK ABOUT IT LIKE AN ALLERGY. When people ask you why you’re not eat X, instead of saying,”well everyone knows that X is not good for you, I read this article saying that if you eat X then yada yada yada insert whatever horrible things may be associated with X.” make it personal to you and say,” I don’t eat X because I have a really negative reaction to it, I experience X, Y, and Z symptoms and just feel better when I leave it out of my diet.” The power of this lies not only in owning your truth and prioritizing your well-being but also in letting the person off the hook. When we make something “bad” that the other person might consume, they immediately feel defensive or even guilty and that’s a lose-lose. When you make it about yourself and what happens for you, it’s genuine, approachable and much more effective at communicating your message with out making the other person feel judged.

3. PLANNING AHEAD. I think the worst part of not eating foods for me is when you go to a party or a restaurant and you have a really tough time ordering off the menu or finding something you can eat. It’s not that I actually mind, it’s more that I feel bad that everyone else now feels terrible because I can’t eat! So to side-step this I always look up new restaurants and check out what items off the menu I can order ahead of time or even call up and see if they offer a vegan option, steamed veggies, etc. Most places are more than happy to accommodate but figuring it out ahead of time makes everything a little smoother when your sitting down ready to enjoy dinner. I also love bringing food whenever someone invites me to a gathering, I love to cook and share my food so it’s genuinely fun for me but it’s also a good way to know that there’s always at least one thing I can eat at the party!

I hope these tools prove to be useful to you, I know they have really helped my life tremendously. And at the end of the day, you just got to OWN IT! You are such a magnificent, enlightened being that’s doing the best you possibly can to be your highest self and to take care of your physical and mental wellbeing and that is a beautiful thing. Stand in that presence, in that greatness, in that light and truth. Don’t let other’s opinions or negativity bring you down. More than likely, if there judging you it’s because they are not as far along the path as you are and seeing you show up for yourself like that reminds them of the work they need to do for themselves.

Sending you peace, love and light my GSS girls! xo!

So thrilled to bring you the first video in my new MEDITATION Mondays series. Every monday this summer you can expect another guided meditation from Go Sweet and Skinny TV. I decided to kick it off with a great beginner meditation called “Let-Go” which is simple but powerful for anyone at all stages of their meditation practice to unwind, de-stress, focus and connect back with their best self!

The guided meditation begins at 3.04 for those of you who are repeat customers and want to FFWD to the good stuff! It is my hope that you use this video every day to create a daily meditation practice in your life.

Please LIKE – SHARE- SUBSCRIBE if you enjoy this video and would like to see more like it. Also, feel free to comment, ask questions and share your experiences below.