~ Daria’s Wednesday Wisdom column ~

How do you begin your day? For most of my life, I jumped right into a task as soon as I walked in my office. I felt like I was getting more done that way! When that task was done, I zipped on to the next one. Then I took lots of little (or not so little) breaks because I was working so hard. (Well, it made sense at the time, lol!)

In dealing with my increasingly busy days now, however, I am reminded of a joke. It says that Ghandi meditated for one hour at the start of every day, without exception. Discussing a particularly demanding day that was coming up, he told his assistant that he would have to meditate for two hours to start that day.

When the joke is told properly (sorry), you expect Ghandi to skip his meditation to better jump into his busy day. The absolute last thing you would expect is to spend even MORE time meditating!

Yet meditation has been proven in studies to calm us, relax us, and improve our thinking and effectiveness. It also can benefit your physical health. If you can get more done in less time because of it, then you certainly have time for meditation.

Start today with just 5… no, how about streeeeeetching into 6, 8 or 10 minutes a day! All you have to do is sit comfortably and feel your body or watch your breath. As sounds, thoughts, and life’s craziness rise around you, notice it, name it (thinking about my meeting, noisy kids, big worry, ankle still hurts, truck in street…) and let it go. Breathe it out if you like.

Just for a few, blissful minutes. Close your door. Take the phone off the hook and enjoy having NO responsibilities for a few minutes. When does THAT ever get to happen?

The Secret about Meditating

Beginners are often relieved to hear that there is no way to answer, “What should meditation feel like when I get it?” It feels like you, sitting quietly, naming the craziness of life and over and over, returning to the calm center that IS inside you. The masters never get to a magical point where they “have it.” You probably aren’t doing it wrong. Meditation is a practice, like playing soccer or lifting weights. You just keep getting better and better at it.

The more you practice, the faster you return to calm after interruption. The more you meditate, the faster you can return to calm when you are not meditating, for instance when the baby is crying, your boss is phoning, the pasta is boiling over, and the doorbell rings.

How can you commit to living an easier life, right now, by starting your day with a few minutes of meditation? Put it in your calendar. Do this at home before you go to work, on the train or bus in the morning, or first thing when you get into your home office.

Try it out for just 10 days and let me know how it goes, and whether you have any questions. (Hint: Which days are more productive for you, the ones that start with meditation, or the days you forget or “don’t have time”? Yeah, me too.)

(c) 2012 Daria Boissonnas

I looooooooove eating pomegranates and have since I was a kid.  An ancient fruit of myth, symbolism, and medicine, today the pomegranate is known for its antiviral and other healing and health properties. 

It’s easy to find pomegranate in many fruit juice mixes, but if you don’t want to drink straight sugar, there’s nothing like the fresh fruit!  They are generally in season in November & December.

One day in my 20s I rediscovered pomegranates in the grocery store and took one home.  There it sat until it dried out because I had NO idea how to cut it!  Luckily, being the persistent type, through trial & error and dozens more pommies, I put together this easy routine for cutting and serving pomegranates.

What You Need to Know:  A pomegranate is a tight jumble of lobes of red juicy seeds, encased in a rind about 1/4″ thick.  All you have to do is cut the rind open, and then you can tease apart the lobes. 

So get out your cutting board and a nice sharp knife.  You may also want to wear a full apron in case a seed or two squirts at you.

Step 1:  I slice off the flower thingy on the end, about even with the rind.  (It leaves messy dried flower parts sometimes.)

Step 2:  Cutting only about 1/4″ or so into the fruit, slice the skin all the way around, ending where your cut started.  Gently pry apart the two halves.  Do this well into the counter space because lonely seeds will often fly out of the fruit.  Admire the beautiful arrangement of seeds inside!

Step 3:  Cutting only 1/4″ into the fruit again, cut each rind in half again, creating quarter wedges.  Pry apart gently, following the lobes.

Step 4:  One more time, cut each piece in half by the rind.  I often just bend each 1/4 fruit backwards and tear the rind into its final 1/8th piece size. 

Step 5:  Make it look pretty & serve!  Peel of excess white membrane to reveal the beautiful seeds.  Arrange the eighths attractively, seed sides up, in a flat wide bowl.  These sizes are perfect for the kids, tho our youngest will eat 4 of 5 of them if she can, heh.

Enjoy!  Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions about my pomegranate cutting method.

Wondering about the nutritional content of foods that don’t come in labeled boxes? Their caloric, sugar or protein content? Cholesterol or transfatty acid content?

This morning, in searching for the potassium content in your average banana, I happened upon this useful and information-packed nutrition website, from Self magazine, which I recommend you take a peek at.

Check this out:

http://nutritiondata.self.com

Why do I love this site so much?

1. So many listed foods!
You can find nutritional information for all kinds of foods: fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, condiments, generic foods, you name it.  Type in “pasta” and you get a listing of both general and brand-name foods. You can search by restaurant chain, too!

2. Choose your serving size!
I can see nutritional numbers for a cup of mashed banana, a small, medium or large banana, etc. It does the math for me. Love it.

3. So much more than calories!
In addition to the usual facts in the government “Nutrition Facts” label, you can see fascinating factors like:

• Estimated Glycemic Load™
• Inflammation Factor™
• Nutrient Balance Indicator™
• protein quality/amino acid score
• ALL the vitamins and minerals, even if zero
• calories
• DETAILED carb, protein, and fatty acid profiles
• sterols
• and a great “other” category including caffeine, alcohol, and theobromine!

4. Footnotes and explanations!
Footnotes include sources for data, so you can look them up yourself. There are links to more information about the fact they are listing, other names for some of them, and what they mean. Lots to learn.

Most tables do include the recommended daily values (DV). Just remember that the DV number tends to be how much of a nutrient you need in minimum to have fairly normal functioning or to avoid becoming deficient. I’ve found in my healing practice that some bodies need much more of certain nutrients, even 10 times as much as the DV. Listen to your body. 

Enjoy your research! Here is the link again: http://nutritiondata.self.com

And by the way, a medium banana has 422mg potassium, or 12% the Daily Value. (http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1846/2)

A Recommendation for Supplements

While we are talking nutrition, if you are looking to buy supplements, I use and recommend iHerb.com. Their prices are good, service excellent, and shipping is free over $40. They have many ways you can earn discounts, including volume pricing, specials, and affiliate recommendations.

$5 off your first order: By entering our affiliate code, NAS875, at check out, you can earn $5 off your first order!

After your first purchase, you can even sign up for your own referral code and email it to all your clients, family, and friends.  I love iHerb! in fact, it’s top of mind because I just ordered this past weekend. Try it out: iherb.com.

Note: we do earn affiliate commissions, at no expense to you, when you use our code NAS875 in your purchases from iHerb. Of course, we like iHerb so much, we recommend using it even if you don’t type in the code to give us a referral commission.

In every moment, you are healing.  Your body tends constantly towards health, repairing, replacing, replenishing.  Your thinking and emotions continuously heal and you move on.  You are a walking and talking bundle of healing!  Once in a while, this process hits a snag, but think of how much healing happens in the meantime!

Today at the GIA booth at the Wellife Mind Body Spirit EXPO, I chatted with a vendor of water ionizing machines about why zipping water around in circles helps clean it up to be more usable by the body.  It seems to “erase the tape” and clean the water of negative energies.

Water is fascinating!  It is a liquid crystal — that means it can record memories and impressions just like a disk drive or those old magnetic cassette tapes.  Water picks up emotions, thoughts, intentions, and more from its environment, which includes you.

Here’s a highly enjoyable and inspiring movie that explores the nature of water.  It’s called “Water: The Great Mystery.” 

I must warn you however — this movie was made in Russia and translated into English.  It is not your typical American science-focused movie like What the Bleep!? or a Discovery Channel flick. 

That’s what makes it fascinating.  It incorporates insights from scientists, and it also interviews religious authorities plus surveys the folklore about water.  It mixes entertainment, mystery and science!

Does that diminish the science?  Not in my book.  It strengthens it when done well.  If the world works in a certain way, that information can be found across disciplines in science, in nature, in our religions and in our stories or folklore.

Click on the cover picture above to get yourself a copy at amazon, and let me know what you think!  (Comment below.)  Enjoy!

“Moooooom! Can you do something for my leg? It hurts!” 

My 15-year-old is in his tuxedo for the band concert, running upstairs for socks.

“What do you mean your leg hurts?” I ask, concerned, following him to the bottom of the stairs.

He turns the corner towards his room.  “I dunno, it’s just been hurting behind my knee and in my leg all day.”

A couple hours earlier, I had returned from a training class for a powerful new form of healing called Awakening Healing.  (Officially I am the first practitioner trained in all of North America so far!)  As my son ducks into his room for the socks, I raise my hands. 

“I’ll try the new thing I just learned, OK?”  I say, focusing on listening to his knee and legs. 

He returns right away and sits at the top of the stairs to put his socks on.  I wonder how much I’ll be able to do before he leaves.  Then I put on my Mom hat and start to wonder why his leg is hurting.

“Um, mom?” he says standing up with two socks on.

“Yeah?” I say, concentrating.

“It doesn’t hurt any more, thanks.”

Mouth open, I step aside as he speeds by me. 

Healing happens in an instant.  How fast we accept the healing results is how fast it “happens” in the physical world.  Kids are excellent at accepting fast healing, until we train them to expect it to take a long time!  Shift back into that childlike acceptance of the world’s abundance by practicing accepting ease and all good and wonderful things flowing to and through you.  Build that muscle, that habit, that mindset.  Healing IS the natural order of things.  It is the highest expression of human consciousness.

To experience the deep relaxation and inner connectedness of Awakening Healing yourself, visit this page: http://GIAwaken.com/AH

GIA is pleased to endorse and recommend a new type of New Healing — called Awakening Healing – due to its extraordinary ability to help you:

• Become who you really are, much more easily
• Reclaim your feeling of wonder and joy in life
• Build self-confidence, love and acceptance
• Accelerate your spiritual journey (ie. your happiness)
• Make the world a better place
• Create spiritual and material success, and
• Create the most permanent positive change (aka healing) in the world, starting with you. 

This is exactly what we do, too, and we feel Awakening Healing can help you get there more easily and quickly.  We are pleased to announce that we are offering Awakening Healing with our workshops in special packages to enhance your learning and implementation, so you can create powerful results!  The first comes with “Calling In Your Calling“, starting March 16th.

Free Audio Interview Here:
Bee Jimpson, the founder of Awakening Helaing

Now you can discover the story behind this type of healing, what has been channeled about it and more — in our new audio interview of founder Bee Jimpson, below.  We can actually feel the Awakening Healing flow when listening to this audio, especially when Bee describes what she does in a distance session.  Follow along and try it yourself! 

“Awakening Healing is like nothing else I’ve experienced – deeply powerful, loving, grounding, and calming.”
          —Daria Boissonnas, GIAwaken.com founder

Click to listen to AUDIO here. Right-click to download.

Next training for Awakening Healing is in Minneapolis, MN, USA March 11-14.  Check out BeeJimpson.com for classes near you.  (Not an affiliate link, we just highly recommend learning this healing process for yourself, your family, and the world.)

What is “New Healing”?

There are three main types of healing on the planet right now.  All are valuable and compatible, and should be a part of any healthy lifestyle.  Here is roughly how they are different:

1. Physical/Mental Healing

Physical/mental healing looks at the body/mind as mechanical and logical.  It focuses on what you can observe and think about.  Physical/mental healing applies logical processes, mechanical devices and physical substances/chemicals to change the body’s mechanical or thinking behavior.  Often, the physical and mental sides are focused on separately.  Medical healing and its pharmaceuticals is a great example of physical/mental healing.

2. Energy Healing

Beyond the physical/mental and EMF energy, Energy Healing addresses the subtle energies of the body.  For instance it may use acupuncture meridians, chakras, subtle bodies, the aura, and more.  By maintaining and repairing the body’s energy system, Energy Healing enhances the body’s energy communication system.  This enhances healing and health, since loss of information carried in our energy systems eventually shows up physically and mentally as “disease”.  Ways to improve energetic function and structure include a range of energy manipulation techniques, energy toning, herbal energies, homeopathics, and much more.

3. New Healing

The body is our lowest and slowest type of energy.  The thinking mind is just one slice of the different types of consciousness we can access.  New Healing looks beyond all these to the core essence of each person.  What is your greatest gift?  What is your highest inner truth?  In what way are you a precious blessing for the world?  When you share your core essence (yes you) you creates health, healing, love, peace, wisdom, service, joy, meaning, fulfillment, bliss, and more — for yourself and others. 

We often call this stepping into your Higher Calling, sharing your Blessing, living your Life Purpose, etc.  How can your greatest Potential outcome unfold more easily and bless the world with its expression?  New Healing realigns your physical/mental/energetic life with your Calling or core energy pattern and potential.  The natural consequence is flow, grace and ease, healing and health, and permanent positive change.  You leave the world a better place.  

GIA founder Daria Boissonnas believes New Healing can be found in the Munay Ki rites, the work of the Trivedi Foundation, The Reconnection and Reconnective Healing, and now in Awakening Healing. 

Most people find the experience of Awakening Healing palpable and deeply relaxing.  We invite you to try a session today!

It’s what you were born to do.

It is the highest expression of your gifts.

And stepping into it creates the greatest life you can imagine, flowing with wealth, wellness, and genuine happiness.

It is your Higher Calling. But if you don’t know what it is or how it works, you can spend your life chasing shadows and suffering.

Join us for a free talk on Friday, Feb 18, when we’ll share 10 important facts you need to understand about awakening your Calling and creating your dream life in a way that naturally makes a positive difference. You’ll be glad you heard this info!

Super-Easy to Register for the Call

To register, just make sure you’re on our email list. If you’re new to us, sign up for our free kit at the top of this page and follow the directions. If you’re on our email list will receive reminders about this call and the audio afterwards.

Many blessings on your spiritual journey,

How are you like an SLR camera, and what does that have to do with living your best life? I’ll tell ya…

To register for this free call and get the audio afterwards, sign up for our free kit at the top of this page and follow the directions. If you’re already on our email list, you’ll get a reminder and notice when the audio posts.

See you on the call!

To give back to our beloved members and fans, we’ve given away six FREE Clear Wisdom intuitive consult calls this month!  Enjoy the magic.  Sign up now to receive the new call-in number as well as access to the recordings and case studies.  (Yes, we’ll be following a couple volunteers as they implement their assignments!)

Our volunteer callers are lined up for Tuesday, 12/28, with questions including:

• How to start a business
• Figuring out one’s life purpose
• Getting a book done
• And more

You can also hear the audio from Tuesday (12/21), when callers received guidance for:

• Where to focus in a busy life
• How to best give back
• How to improve a relationship
• Dealing with allergies
• The strugle of an addiction nobody knows about
• Where am I blocked to funding and expanding my business? And how do I move thru it?

Besides swimming in inspiration and ideas, when you listen to these calls, you tap into frequencies that can help you break through your own blockages, permanently.  Healing flows through Clear Wisdom sessions, and everyone who listens receives what they need.

What’s Clear Wisdom? 

Listen as GIA founder Daria Boissonnas asks the caller’s higher consciousness for the most robust, effective and efficient way they can break their patterns of limitation and reach the goals they seek!  Daria provides five wisdoms in one consult:

1. 13 years of healing expertise & experience helping folks permanently break through their own barriers
2. Life purpose expertise to help you know what you are on the planet to do and DO it
3. Years of business & marketing experience
4. Spiritual mentoring, helping you understand what’s going on in your life, and your role in the universe
5. And of course her lifelong empathic, psychic and channeling abilities

Sign Up Here

Sign up below and we’ll also send our special offer for your own personal Clear Wisdom session at over half off the usual price.  (Spaces are limited, and you must sign up by the end of 1/1/11!)  

Thanks, and we’ll connect with you on the call!

It’s here — Healing 101!

Have a few ideas about how to make the world a better place?  Empower yourself to do that by learning to think waaaaay beyond the box — that is, to think like a healer.

Discover how you already have the ability to do the “undoable,” change the “unchangeable” and make the “impossible” happen.

Register now to listen FREE to Healing 101 and learn:

1. What is healing?
(It’s so much more than physical repair of your body!)

2. Why is every person on the planet a natural healer?
(Just how are YOU a healer?)

3. What three main types or styles of healer are there?
(And which is yours?)

4. How can you awaken YOUR inner healer and tap into your own natural abilities to make a BIG meaningful difference?

5. Five things to listen for to benefit most from each call. Also download in our pdf Listener’s Guide on the listening page.

Once you register, we will send you a link to the listening page, including Healing 101 and our first four interviews.

Discover Our Groundbreaking “I Am A Healer” Series

Register for access to these free calls here and we will send you occasional emails as soon as new calls become available.

At 5pm this evening, I walked into a conventional grocery store. 

I was desperate.  I wasn’t thinking. 

My husband and two of our four kids were home sick today.  I bounced between biz work and healing and caring for them.  Over the long holiday weekend, though, we’d drained the fridge dry.  Except for a gaggle of lonely baked potatoes that seemed to me to be crying out to dance with onions, peppers and sausage.  Mmmmm, comfort food.

The food co-op was 30 mins away, too far at 5pm.  So I casually stopped by the grocery store on the way home from extracting my book-crazed teenager from the library.  She stayed in the car to read of course.

I ended up doing a lot of reading myself.

What was I thinking?!  I’d completely forgotten how hard it is to find no-nitrates, no-nitrites, no-MSG, no-preservative (not to mention organic or grass-fed) sausage!  I desperately scanned the sausage area, which in Wisconsin is brighty loaded with piles of kielbasa, bratwurst, breakfast sausages, and the usual section of hot dogs. 

I read the fine print:  MSG, BHA, MSG, nitrates, MSG, nitrites, MSG, propyl gallate, whew!  I read them all. 

And found I just could not bring myself to feed these chemicals to my kids.  Though my mouth was watering for foods I ate aplenty 13+ years ago, I couldn’t do it.  I’d rather do something else, thank you.  As I took in the massive sausage section, I marvelled at how so many people in the world trust whatever is wrapped in a happy plastic package. 

I remember how I used to do that. 

One Tiny Change

13 years ago, when I first started reading about healthy food and why some of what I had been eating was harmful, I was overwhelmed.  Everything I was doing seemed to be wrong!  I had to change everything! 

So I changed nothing.  For a long time.

Then one day, just one random any-old-day, I chose a loaf of wheat bread instead of white bread.

I didn’t even like it much at first.  But after eating whole grain bread for over a decade and finding the brand and recipe I like, today white bread tastes weird and even gross to me.  (I only like it in restaurant rolls when travelling, go figure.)

That one day, I stepped sideways out of overwhelm, and I simply took a step.  My first step.  One tiny change.  I followed that one change for a while, still feeling overshadowed by how much I wanted to change.  But listen to this — I followed that one step, that one tiny shift, until it became my norm.  Until I loved wheat bread and looked forward to eating it.

No, my palette hasn’t been ready for all the healthy food I’ve tried.  Some of it was just a “try” and an “oh well”.  But tonight when I stood before the festive, preservative-laced meats this evening, I realized how far I’d come.  I knew I was gonna warm those potatoes with organic veggies in raw fair-trade expeller-pressed nonwinterized coconut oil, with sea salt, and NOT in an aluminum pan.  I stood suspended, keilbasa chilling my right hand, as I appreciated how far our family has come in its eating habits.  And how deeply grateful I am for the Madison farmer’s market and stores like the Williamson Street Food Co-op that offer the alternatives I seek.

You Can Do It!

You too can change your life, change your diet, change your body, change your mindset, change anything you want.  All it takes is one step.  Forget new year’s resolutions.  Forget aggressive huge PLANS.  Forget massive goals!

Just choose ONE thing today to change consistently.  Just ONE thing.

ONE fewer cigarette per day.  Add ONE new vitamin/supplement.  Get to bed at the same time each day.  Get ONE health concern looked at or treated.  Eliminate ONE “bad” food from your home.  Change ONE thing in your environment – and keep it up.

Change that one thing.  Become that one tiny change.  Do this and it will become a seed for other positive change to flow naturally into your life.  All you must do is choose to start.  Decide to make  ONE.  TINY.  POSITIVE.  CHANGE.

And let me know how it goes! 

Many blessing on your journey.   
xoxo,
Daria

You have a tremendous power within you — right now — to make a meaningful positive difference in other people’s lives.  To move beyond problems to a place where they simply become irrelevant:  to heal.

Join us as we celebrate our goal of bringing more healing into the world with our groundbreaking FREE interview series — “I Am A Healer”: 100 Inspiring Stories from Ordinary People Who Are Changing the World and How YOU Can Too.  To listen, all you have to do is register.  Then mark your calendar for Tuesday, November 30th at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern.

It doesn’t take much to awaken your natural Inner Healer.  Listen to this information-packed call led by Global Institute for Awakening Founder Daria Boissonnas, and expand your possibilities by learning:

1. What is healing?  (It’s so much more than physical repair of your body!)

2. Why is every person on the planet a natural healer?  (Just how are YOU a healer?)

3. What three main types or styles of healer are there?  (And which is yours?)

4. WHat you need to learn to awaken YOUR inner healer and tap into your own natural abilities to make a BIG meaningful difference

5. What to listen for on the calls. 

TO LISTEN TO THIS CALL, REGISTER FOR THE SERIES HERE:  http://GIAwaken.com/100healers

Register for this interview series right now, and listen to this introductory call with Daria Boissonnas, Founder of the Global Institute for Awakening.

I love love love healing!  As a mother and wife and busy person, I am so grateful to have options in my life for speeding healing that I can use to feel better quickly and to help my loved ones feel better too.  

There is NOT a rule that says you have to get sick.  What I’ve seen as a healer is that when we can’t fully process something emotionally or mentally, it drops down into the body to be processed in a visceral, vivid, physical way.  (Your body is an amazing healer and helper that way!) 

Me, I don’t listen to any of those ads commiserating about “cold and flu season”.  Baloney.  I know because I barely get sick any more (thank goodness), and my kids are rarely and barely sick as well.  Oh, I used to get one thing after another, plus asthma and allergies to boot.  Rip-roaring colds that lasted weeks (starting with a runny nose, then sore throat and down into my bronchials for a lingering cough).  Now I get much, much, MUCH milder versions.  I’ll spare you details, but I can tell I’m sick usually in the morning, then feel OK or have very mild symptoms during the day. 

As my symptoms have become milder over the last few years, I became much more aware of the underlying icky feelings and emotions that come with each illness.  For example, while what was typically a pounding headache is now a mild ache, I still feel foggy and want to lie down and not move.  (I LOVE that it’s so much less painful, whew.)

Now the universe is training me to back up even further.  Two weeks ago was a big wakeup call.  I was traveling at a business conference.  The morning of the day I was to be on stage in the afternoon, I woke up dizzy, weak, and nauseated.  Reviewing the prior two days, I saw the signs of mild dehydration move to significant dehydration, one after another, laid out clearly.  I had been traveling and preoccupied.  I had even missed the big red-flashing-light sign the night before.  So I guzzled water, did a little healing, went back to bed for a couple hours, got up and ate sea salt, and felt much better by lunch time (tho I look quite pale in the photos, what can ya do).

Yep, the signs had all been there, but I didn’t notice them.  Point taken, and thanks for the insight, Universe.  I’m paying attention!  Last night, I started to feel like I was getting sick — lungs less elastic, felt a touch weak & a little “off”.  It had come on gradually over the day. 

Remembering my lesson from earlier this month, I worked on it first thing this morning, did a little healing work, about 20 minutes’ worth.  Right now it’s about 12 hours later and I feel 100%!  My lungs feel completely free and unconstricted.  I am more than grateful.

What’s Your Mindset about Getting Sick?

Even Louis Pasteur, the father of vaccinations, said near the end of his life that it’s not germs that causes disease, but the terrain — the environment you provide in your life, your mindset, and your body.  Are you a likely breeding ground for problems, or are you taking care of yourself and detaching from cycles of illness?  Are you seeking health or are you a willing victim to “cough and cold season”? 

Here’s three things you can do right now to avoid getting sick in the first place:

1. Take care of yourself.  Clean up that terrain so no germs want to move in.    In my healing practice, I find most adults are deficient in sleep, rest, and play — not to mention many minerals and B vitamins.  Consider setting a goal to get 8 hours of sleep a night, or start taking a 15-minute lie-down empty-mind rest period in the middle of your day.  Consider renewing your nutritional supplement schedule and sticking with it.  Make ONE change right now, and stick with it.

2. Get yourself some healing tools and processes.  Take a healing class.  My favorite healing modalities are Awakening Healing and Health Kinesiology.  Learn about essential oils or homeopathics.  Learn to meditate.  Keep an open mind and explore possibility.  You are quite familiar with what you THINK you can’t do.  What CAN you do?  How healthy can you get?

3. Hang out here at the Global Institute for Awakening and learn to awaken the greatest possible outcome in every situation, including your health and spiritual well-being.  We help you get your inner work done easily and quickly, layer by layer, so you can achieve greater and greater levels of wealth, wellness and wisdom.  Then you can get out there and succeed brilliantly at whatever you choose!  To join us or check out our generous annual program, hop on over to http://GIAwaken.com/benefits.   We look forward to getting to know you.

Many blessings on your path to wellness and healing!

There is an art and a science to creating an addictive food, and many packaged and chain restaurant foods are so engineered. Like the toxic cocktail in cigarettes, foods are also designed to make your body crave them.  Hey, it’s good business for manufacturers.

Is it fair, though?  I have definitely had my share of food addictions.  I know those cravings you can’t stop, the ones that send you to the convenience store at night.  You might as well be headed for a liquor store or a street corner for a pick-you-up. 

When we give in to these engineered cravings, it’s rough on our bodies.  These foods often carry preservatives, bad sugar, bad fats and worse.  And then comes the guilt, the self-criticism and even more toxicity in our thoughts. Food addiction is just as serious as any other addiction.

I highly recommend you read this article about food addiction and engineering on Huffington Post, by Dr. Mark Hyman (MD).

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/food-addiction-could-it-e_b_764863.html

(While you are on HuffPost, sign up as a reader and friend/follow me!  I’d love to connect with you.  Or comment below!) 

GIAwaken Recommends

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, by Dr. David Kessler MD

Related GIAwaken articles:
The Secret of Addictions, Part I
     http://giawaken.com/2008/12/the-secret-of-addictions-part-i/

The Secret of Addictions, Part II: bypassing them
     http://giawaken.com/2009/01/the-secret-of-addictions-part-ii-bypassing-them/

Watch this. Take mental notes. Then put it out of your mind. From the University of Arizona medical college, here’s a new type of CPR that’s reported to be more effective than the traditional method you might have taken in a Red Cross training. 

What do you think of the method?

Here’s the Heart Association’s video, where they put chest compressions first, now, ahead of airway & breathing:

Nice article about panick symptoms vs. heart attack in women:

http://www.womensheart.org/content/HeartDisease/panic_attack_or_heart_attack.asp

For 12+ years I have been advising against using fluorescent bulbs and have removed them from our own two homes.  (Why are they always in the kitchen?)  I have seen and experienced the significant and long-term detrimental effects they have on the human subtle energy system.  They are stressful and can degrade your energy.  (The new bulbs also have mercury in them, no thanks!)

Here is some recent anecdotal evidence with more conventional measurement.  What do you think?

“Having leftover drugs around the house is a significant safety risk and, in some cases, fosters prescription drug abuse and fuels black market trade.  However, throwing drugs away in the home or flushing them down the toilet can result in water contamination.  A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey study of 139 bodies of water in 30 states found that over 80 percent of the water samples were contaminated by personal care products, including prescription drugs.”

“This Saturday, September 25, Wisconsinites can safely dispose of their leftover and unwanted prescription drugs at one of over 85 collection points throughout our state as part of National Take-Back Day.  National Take-Back Day will provide Americans with a safe and effective way for getting prescription drugs out of their homes, where they can pose a risk to children and families.”

“To find a collection site near you, go to http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/takeback/ and type in your zip code.”

–Excerpts from a note this week from Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl

I used to avoid exercising.  I could not make myself do it.  Have you been in the same boat with self-improvement or resolving a certain problem? 

Yes, I had the treadmill that slid under the bed.  I had weights and tapes.  But they gathered dust, and I loaded up on the guilt.  I wanted the results (fitness, health, self-confidence, a hot body) but I didn’t want to go through the process. 

When I decided it was really, really time to get in shape, I found a shortcut.  I found a way to make it easy: I took a class.  (A martial arts class, but that’s not the important point.)

While I could not make myself exercise at home, I could drag myself to a class and do what the teacher said.  Classes had other benefits: beginners like me to comiserate with, advanced students to ask for tips, and intensive weekend classes with national-level teachers to learn special routines.  Yeah, I was sore for the first while, but all of us beginners were.  It was funny and we bonded.  It wasn’t so bad.

After about 8 months, the results of consistently going to classes started to become clear.  Consistency is a huge key to success.  When you show up, things happen, even when it doesn’t seem like it at first.  You have to get the momentum going energetically.  Consistency tones and strengthens your energy system and helps you make change.  Without doing anything extra, I started dropping weight.  Eventually I whittled down to size 6, which I hadn’t been since coming up through the sizes in early high school.  Wow, was that fun!

The Formula for Success

To get unstuck doing something good for yourself that you are resisting:

1.  Commit to a quality program that takes you to your goal, even if you can’t commit to yourself.  Find a wise teacher and a great place you’re excited about.  Pay enough so you want to get to classes.  Show up and let the teacher take it from there.

Tip:  Please don’t let this be the class you take to distract you from your misery.  Let it really help.  Where are you stuck in your life?  Take a look at your top 5 frustrations and miseries.  Think about what you need to break through them.  Ask friends, make a list, find places that do that.  You are worth it!

2. Keep showing up.  Even when you can’t see the results, they are building.  Your body, mind, and energy is rearranging itself.  Each time you go to class (or meditate or take those vitamins or…), you reinforce to yourself that you are the kind of person that does that, easily and regularly.  It WILL pay off.   

Tip:  Make a cool chart and check off the classes so you can see your progress!  Mark on your calendar when you do the exercises so that you can see and appreciate all your work!  Track your meditation time and add it up.

The Institute Recommends

Here’s a training program that will help you live a successful life that really counts, discover your purpose in life and do it, and increase your physical and financial health while you give back to others: our membership.  It includes our monthly core curriculum spiritual training and guidance program.  Each month, we build and strengthen a new spirtiual or self-improvement muscle together.  How good can your life get after a year of consistently building 10-12 new habits of dealing with life in a positive effective way?!  Get the details and sign up here:  http://GIAwaken.com/benefits

It seems like a no-brainer to me, but I’m the one that designed the program to be the kind of spiritual training and healing mastery program I always longed for.  It’s worth it at ten times the full price!  Get 12 months of self-improvement practice and spiritual guidance to create success in all you do.  We create positive habits – so you don’t even have to think about reacting well to life and reaching for success in all you do.  If this calls to you at all, take a look at the program here http://GIAwaken.com/benefits.

Join our other members in creating an energy pattern of radical self-mastery.  I so look forward to helping you make your life count in a big way while you reach your dreams more easily.  Join us to get where you want to go, even if you’re dragging your feet.  Join here:  http://GIAwaken.com/benefits.

When you want to succeed at anything, the best advice is to find someone who has already succeeded, and do what they did!  Transform yourself by resonating with each of our guests for 30+ minutes. We are pleased to announce our first two Healers are Bee Jimpson and Sheri McConnell!

Live your life from a mindset of possibility like our guests are doing.  Let this new series further awaken your powerful innate ability to solve problems, think outside the box, operate authentically from the heart, and create BIG positive change on the planet!  

Sign up now to access all the live calls and the recorded audios:   http://GIAwaken.com/100Healers

Yes, this series means we are officially launching our membership Sept 1!  Your chance to save $50 ends August 31 and will not be repeated.  Make 2010 the year you expand your mindset and lifestyle to live with meaning, possibility, and joy.  Check out our life-changing benefits here: http://GIAwaken.com/benefits, and sign up ASAP!

.

Healer #1  |  13 August 2010, 8am Pacific / 9am Mountain / 10am Central / 11am Eastern US time

Bee Jimpson  ~  The Next Sense
Professional Healer, Intuitive, and Intuition Teacher

Bee was raised in a culturally mixed home (Egyptian, Spanish, European and Quechua) in Argentina where traditional or folk healing was commonly used.  It wasn’t until much later in her life, however, that she stepped into her own power as a healer.  Today Bee travels the world to mentor other healers (including me) and teach people how to accept and truly use their intuition.  Join us to hear about her powerful journey!

.

Healer #2  |  13 August 2010, 11am Pacific / noon Mountain / 1pm Central / 2pm Eastern US time

Sheri McConnell  ~  Smart Women’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Learning
Author, Millionaire Business Coach, and Mom of 4

Sheri helps women start and grow membership-based businesses to attain financial independence, so they can make powerful life decisions from a place of abundance and balance, not from a place of poverty, fear, doubt, and “what if”.  As you might guess, she has recovered from being in that position too many times herself.  Today, she is the author of  Smart Women Know Their “Why” – A Guide for Discovering Your Life Purpose While Owning a Business So You Can Create Positive Change in the World (and Make Big Profits!)  Join us to hear Sheri’s powerful story of healing and how she helps others today.  (P.S. She is my business coach this year for the Institute.)