Awaken to Health, Confidence and The Power of You!

“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” Gloria Steinem

Achieving happiness is by no means a matter of luck. It requires a mix of planning, dreaming and believing in yourself. If you want to awaken to the power of you, then you need to open up to your amazing potential. Tap into your creative energy, be a role model for change and actively create the life that you love by daring to dream big and by putting your dream life into action. Discover that happiness, energy and vitality are not some elusive goals but instead a matter of connecting with your body. The elixir of life simply stated is healthy living. In my latest blog, “Awaken to the Power of You,” I’ll give you a preview of my upcoming workshop at The Awakening Festival in Montreal on June 18^th. In it, I will share steps you can take towards living an inspired life powered by healthy living.

Today’s women are plagued by low self-esteem, high levels of stress, record obesity rates, physical inactivity and lack of sleep. Our lives have become a vicious cycle of increased stress due to work and family commitments, resulting in lack of time to exercise, sleep or eat well. Increased demands on our time are making us fatter, tired and creatively uninspired.

Living life in overdrive is coming at a cost to our health and well being and it’s time for a shift in our values and perspective. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”, says Albert Einstein. And insane, we are! Our current behaviour, if not checked, will continue to result in a host of health related problems, unrestrained stress and resulting unhappiness.

“The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way,” says Betty Friedan. Sadly, when we are speeding around life in fifth gear, the first thing to get left by the roadside is our creative energy. However, it is this expression of creative energy that is paramount to our self-esteem and our sense of purpose. In the 1950’s and 60’s, Betty Freidan was renowned for her contribution to the feminist movement and for her book The Feminine Mystique published in 1963. In it, she explores the “problem that has no name”-a pervasive unhappiness of women in American culture who were left wanting more in life than being a mother and housewife.

Sixty years later, women are more liberated, more equal and more intellectually challenged, but we are still failing. We are now trying to do it all-balance work and family life and at the end of the day, there’s little left for us or our creative expression. Women are notorious for putting ourselves last. As caregivers of our families, this is second nature for us. However, by never taking time for ourselves to exercise, to eat right or to recharge our batteries, we are sending a message to our families and peers that our needs don’t matter. We know we are better mothers, wives, employees and role models when we invest time in ourselves. When we learn to say “no”, we can begin awaken to our needs and potential and we can become exemplary and inspiring role-models of health and well-being to all of those around us.

Shockingly, 80% of American women are dissatisfied with their appearance. Why are women failing so dramatically? When did we become so self-conscious and ashamed of our bodies?

More importantly, how do we get back that joy? The media is largely responsible for creating these deep-seeded insecurities in ourselves and our bodies. It’s no wonder we are insecure when the average American woman is 5’4” and weighs 140 pounds and the average model is 5’11” and weighs 117 pounds! So, we find ourselves reaching for a quick fix. In fact, in 2006 Americans paid for 11 million plastic surgical procedures, a 7 % increase over previous years. Instead, women need to celebrate their amazing and healthy bodies, not denigrate themselves for having “large hips” or “flabby abs.” I love the above photo and quote from the Dove Self-Esteem for Girls Campaign as it speaks to our need to love our bodies for what they are! (See top of page).

More than a quarter (26%) of Canadian women ages 45-64 report a high degree of life stress, according to Statistics Canada (Health Indicators 2005). Longer work weeks are the new norm, leaving less time for family, friends and less time to grow personally and spiritually. These numbers represent a hard truth and an obstacle that is difficult to work around. True we are more pressed for time, but we also need to look at our behaviour in response to stress. When we are stressed and tired after a day of work, it’s easy to turn on the TV to relax. Instead, we could be going out to a yoga class or going for a walk to get some fresh air and exercise. Or perhaps, we are dashing home from work, only to rush out the door again to take kids to a program, grabbing a fast-food dinner en route. Again, we have a choice instead to re-evaluate our kids’ schedules, maybe cutting out a dance program or chess club. We need to be careful of over programming our kids for their sake and for the sake of our family and life balance.

Among Canadian women ages 12 plus, 53% are physically inactive. Also, 53% of Canadian women ages 18+ are overweight or obese. We are spending an average of $40 billion per year on diets and self-help books searching for a magic bullet to alleviate our problem with obesity and yet, the answer is free-eat less, move more. Most nutritionists claim that the most effective way to lose weight is to restrict caloric intake, and the most effective way to maintain that loss is through regular exercise.

There seems to be a real disconnect in our society between what we know to be healthy food and our behavior. We’ve all seen Canada’s Food Guide and although we probably don’t have it memorized; we instinctively know the message- eat more vegetables and fruit and eat less processed food. And yet, in the time trap of our daily lives, we still justify reaching for a frozen pizza to feed our kids after arriving home from a busy work day. It’s these kinds of processed, salt-laden, nutritionally void foods though that are killing us. Results from The Canadian Heart Health Strategy and Action Plan (CHHS-AP) Nutrition survey in 2009 indicate that processed foods are the main source of sodium in our diets, accounting for an average of 77% of our average daily sodium intake! Most processed foods are also a mine-field of unhealthy sweeteners, salts, artificial flavors, colourings, chemicals and preservatives. Shifting behavior isn’t always easy, but there are many ways to create quick and nutritious meals from home, without all the additives!

In my workshop on June 18^th in Hudson, Quebec at The Awakening Festival, together we are going to further explore many of these issues of self-esteem, stress, nutrition and weight challenges and give you tools to create positive change in your life. In this interactive session, I am going to help you Awaken to The Power of You and begin to live your best life! To register for The Awakening Festival, please go to http://www.awakeningfestival.org/registration/.