spirit junkie

Well, technically, it may be the second day of September but I know most of you were out enjoying your “last day of summer” yesterday and have only clicked in to full September mode today! I wanted to share with you a practice that is very near and dear to my heart and has proven very effective for my wellness + meditation coaching clients, intention setting! Since we were little, September signified a fresh start, it was the start of the school year, a new grade, new classes, new teachers and a chance to re-create ourselves after the blissful relaxation and adventure we had all summer.

WELL WHY NOT NOW?

Hey, maybe we’re a little older, JUST a little, but September always feels like the start of something new to me and I still love to imagine I’m starting the next school year of life!

So last night, I whipped out my bad ass “Manifest Journal” given to me by the ever-lovely and inspirational Kelly Bennett ( she creates them all individually and infuses them with lots of love and good energy for your manifesting). I keep mine specially for times like these and use my regular pink moleskin for the day to day breakthroughs and brilliant ideas. Regardless, you can use whatever you’d like, you can even get all crafty with it and bring paints, construction paper and the whole nine yards and make it really fun!

Now comes the good part, the actually setting intentions part. Here’s where you start brainstorming what you want to create / manifest in your life for the month ahead.

What this looks like for me is spending about 15-20 minutes in a meditation, connecting with my higher self and really asking for guidance surrounding what the next step is for me. I allow whatever comes in to come in with out judgement and then I start scribbling! I just let the information flow and allow myself to be surprised by what pops up and excited about any and everything I put down on the page. You can have one or two intentions or many, listen to what resonates with you and feels good while your setting intentions.

What are my September intentions?

Well, my overwhelming theme for this month is **FALL OF FOCUS** so everything fell under that massive intention. I’m determined to eat ONLY high vibe foods that help me stay CLEAR and focused, which means for me, no sugars and no alcohol. I don’t eat very much sugar or consume a lot of alcohol but I recently came across the saying “99% is a bitch, 100% is a breeze” and it truly resonated with me. It’s fine for my day to day life and for my clients to indulge in moderation, however, this is my FALL OF FOCUS, and that for me, means going big and really fueling my mind + body to be performing at it’s peak. And I know, even the occasional vegan cookie or glass of red wine, certainly gets me to a “less than crystal clear” place and I’m just not willing to make that sacrifice right now. It also means, earlier wake up calls because I’m at my best in the AM and creating more programs so that more people have access to my coaching than the people who are able to work with me one on one. I have a lot going on this month, creating a new online program, my first ever group coaching program is launching (details below!) and I’m finishing up my book. I’m excited to make a fresh start this Fall towards being the clearest, brightest version of myself so that I can show up as my highest self for all of you!

For more information about my FRESH START FOR FALL group coaching program, click here and email me to reserve your spot today. Class size will be VERY limited to keep it intimate and allow everyone personal access to me.

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!

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.

Want to know the EASIEST way to start losing weight and keeping it off? Well it’s mindful eating! In this video I share with you my skinny secret for mindful eating and give you a couple different ways to start incorporating it in your life now!

If you want to really get into it and cause some serious changes in your health and happiness, join me in NYC (or order a recording if you can’t) this Sunday 2/16 for my HAPPIER, HEALTHIER LIFE NOW class where I will be teaching you 5 effective tools for eating more mindfully and 3 different meditations to keep your stress levels down and your energy up! tickets and details here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/happier-healthier-life-now-with-cassandra-bodzak-from-abcs-the-taste-tickets-9999515821

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You ARE far too smart to stand in your own way!! STOP IT! Okay, enough tough love, but seriously what are you getting in your own way about? Take a few minutes right now, take three deep breaths and ask yourself – where am I getting in my own way? The answer might surprise you. It might even be a major breakthrough!
I recently did this for myself a couple weeks ago and had a radical revelation. I was getting in my way in a MASSIVE way with my work. This might sound ridiculous but unconsciously I think I was really scared of my unlimited potential. I was SCARED of success!! There is a great Marianne Williamson quote that goes,”Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” And that is exactly what was happening to me.
Luckily, the greatest blessing is in the acknowledgment of where we are blocking ourselves because then we can simply open our eyes to how we can bust through that block. I’ll spare you the story of how I busted through mine but it’s safe to say now I am more ready than ever to embrace success with open arms.
Now for you, if your dealing with a body weight issue, this could look like being scared to be skinny! Are you nervous to have attention called to you? Does it scare you a little bit to step into that ideal body? Maybe it’s the effort that it will take to get there that scares you? Take a minute to think about what it could be. This could be a great time to free write some ideas. Whatever you come up with, ask yourself, what am I sacrificing by holding on to this belief? Write that list, get honest and emotional with yourself. Decide that you want whatever it is more than you want to hold on to that limiting belief.

Have a beautiful day! I’d love to hear about what beautiful blocks you’ve discovered – comment below so that I can help support you!