5 Wellness Practices to Help You Transition Into Fall with Ease

5 Wellness Practices to Help You Transition into Fall with Ease

If you have been following my blog, you may have checked out my post from last week. It was all about how eating with the seasons can help create ease in your body as it transitions to the changing patterns in nature. I heard from several people that they’d like to know other ways to support the changing of the seasons as they are finding the transition into fall rough on their skin and energy as well as disruptive to their daily routines.

There are several wellness practices that can assist your body in this transition and I wanted to share my favorite top 5 here!

1.    Daily Self-Massage with Oil

Self-massage improves circulation, moisturizes your skin, and is warming, grounding and calming in nature. Daily self-massage will help to offset the cooler, drier air and the impact it has on your skin and energy. Choose an oil that is warming in nature such as sesame oil, sweet almond or jojoba oil. Before you shower, massage a small amount of oil into your skin— beginning with your face, neck and shoulders— massaging your entire body all the way down to your toes.

2.    Take a Mindful Moment Everyday

With the increase activities and routines of the fall and the diminishing daylight, you may be feeling more scattered and as though your energy is more quickly depleted. Adding a mindful moment into your day will offer you a major return on your time investment! Choose a time that works for you and practice consistently. Set a timer for 1-5 minutes. During this mindful moment you might simply breathe deeply and attempt to remain connected with the rhythm of your breath. You might set your intention for the day and visualize yourself living this intention throughout the day. You might journal or pray. Whatever you do in this mindful moment, allow it to be centering, calming, grounding and peaceful.

3.    Add A Restorative Yoga Posture to Your Evening Routine

Try this restorative yoga postures before going to bed. It will help calm your mind, body and nervous system to help prepare you for deep sleep.

Reclined bound angle pose: Recline in bed or on the floor, step your feet in towards your hips, allow your knees to open out to the sides and bring the soles of your feet together. Place pillows under your knees for support. Allow your arms to rest comfortably alongside your torso or rest your hands on your abdomen. Breathe deeply and remain in this posture for 2-5 minutes.

4.    Eat Cooked Vegetables

This time of year, your body will most likely prefer warmer foods. All summer you may have been like me and enjoying salads, smoothies and raw fruits and veggies as snacks. As the temperatures begin to dip, my stomach responds to raw food in a completely different way! This is related to our digestive fires and the response our body has to the changing temperatures. In order to keep your digestive fires stoked and happy, add in cooked vegetables. Simply steaming, sautéing or lightly wilting your kale, spinach and arugula rather than having raw greens will make your digestive system oh so happy!

5.    Create a Consistent Daily Routine

The scattered feelings that come with transition and change can be eased by having a regular, consistent routine. Simple practices such as going to bed and waking at the same time each day, regular mealtimes and integrating the other wellness practices listed above into a plan and structure each day will provide the routine. Following your desired routine will offer you a sense of being grounded and calm and will help alleviate scattered energy. Once you create your specific daily routine, challenge yourself to follow it for one week and take notes on the impact. I hope it will help you feel balanced, peaceful and comfortable in mind, body and spirit.

When you begin integrating these five wellness practices into your daily routine, let me know how they impact your life including your energy, mood, body and mind as you continue to transition into the fall season!

How to Reset Your Mindset in 5 Days

Remember those plans you had to improve your health? Remember the desire to exercise more, eat more vegetables and drink more water? Remember how you were going to get more sleep, spend more time doing something creative or practice more self-care? The difficult thing with creating a new goal is sticking with it. This is where mindset is vitally important. When you have something well prepared in your mindset, you are far more likely to make it happen than if you don’t. Are you ready to reset your mindset but you aren’t sure as to where to begin? Here’s a plan to create a healthy mindset reset in just five days.

Mindset is focusing on what you want with determination and making each and every choice based on what you want. You decide to choose your desired outcome. This is a commitment to yourself and your future goal. To begin, get your calendar out and mark in it right now where you will devote 15-20 minutes to this practice for five days to reset your mindset.

Now that you have decided, planned and prepared for the reset, commit to following this plan for the next five days.

Day 1: What Do You Want?

What is the health-related goal that you have been meaning to do, you have been putting off or fantasizing about but have not yet made it happen? Ask yourself if there is a reason for this? Now, set a timer for 5 minutes and bring to mind what you want. Visualize it and stay with the imagery for the full 5 minutes. When the timer goes off, use this affirmation: “Today, I will focus my mindset on what I want.” Spend a few minutes reflectively journaling about your experience.

Day 2: Strengthening Your Desire

Day 2 day is about expanding and internalizing and strengthening your desire. Begin by visualizing what you want and while it is becoming stronger in your mindset, allow it to sink into your heart. Ask yourself: why do I want this? Allow yourself to tune into your inner desire and allow it to rest in your heart. Set a timer for 5 minutes and focus on how it feels to hold what you want in your heart center. Breathe and stay as focused as possible on your heart. Once the timer goes off, use this affirmation: “My mindset is becoming stronger with the strength of my desire in my heart.” Spend a few minutes reflectively journaling about your experience.

Day 3: Make it Happen!

Now that you have established what you want, you have felt the desire for what you want, now believe that you have the ability to make it happen. For the meditation, visualize yourself actively doing or achieving your goals. Set a timer for 5 minutes and hold this belief within yourself that you will maintain action towards your goals. You will make this commitment to yourself and believe in your ability to follow through. Once the timer goes off, use the affirmation: “I believe in my ability to achieve my goals.” Spend a few minutes reflectively journaling about your experience.

Day 4: Take Consistent Action

Action is the difference between wanting and creating. Action can cure any fears you have surrounding achieving your goals. Today, choose to take decisive action towards you goal. What you have in your mindset is focusing on action and the mindful meditation will be reflecting on the action you did take today. As you are ready for the meditation, reflect on the action you did take towards your goals. How does this reflection on your action make you feel emotionally, physically, energetically? Set your timer for 5 minutes and reflect on how it felt to take decisive action. Once the timer goes off, use the affirmation: “I create what I want through taking consistent, decisive action.” Spend time reflectively journaling about your experience.

Day 5: Maintaining a Focused Mindset

When you focus more on what you have accomplished and less on what you haven’t, you are more likely to feel accomplished and motivated. When you only focus on what you haven’t accomplished, it depletes your energy and will cause your mindset to waiver. Stay focused on what you want! Any time your mindset begins to waiver, check in with yourself. Remind yourself of what you want, reflect on your commitment to yourself daily. Set a timer for 5 minutes and visualize yourself pushing through any obstacle or challenge to achieving what you want. Notice how it feels to remain focused and to maintain this mindset of determination and overcoming obstacles. Once the timer goes off, use the affirmation, “I am committed to myself and what I want.” Spend time reflectively journaling about your experience.  

Shifting your mindset is difficult. Often, we get stuck in old patterns and habits and can be hard to change. When you create a daily practice with devoted time to reflect and search inward, you will bring what you want into focus. When you are focused, you are more likely to maintain the positive yet challenging journey to continue the hard work. Showing up for yourself, showing up for your life, your experiences and choosing to keep your focus on what you want will help you maintain the ability to consistently make the decision to choose what you want. Set your mindset daily, take decisive action and you will find that what you want it on its way.

Want a guided support to reset your mindset? I created a 7-day guided mindset reset practice to help do just that, you can find it HERE!

The 5 Stages of Awareness: A Mindful Approach to Heal Emotional Eating

Emotional awareness adds tremendous value to life as it creates a rich experience of the totality of being alive. Understanding the inner workings of your mind, your heart, and your spirit requires an ability to feel and understand the depth and breadth of your emotions: all of your emotions. However, many people spend a lot of time unconsciously avoiding their emotions. Why is this? Because as human beings we tend to seek comfort and avoid discomfort.

Emotions are an incredibly valuable element of being a human, of being alive. They are a response to our experiences, environments, relationships, and our lives as a whole. If you have been avoiding experiencing your emotions for some time, or using food as an escape from your emotions, this may seem like a daunting task: to learn to be present with and feel your emotions. Working with the five stages of awareness allows you to experience your emotions and grow in your emotional awareness and well-being. Over time, you will create a sense of being more grounded, comfortable with, and grateful for the wholeness of your being.

When you embark on this process, you will stop trying to escape your emotions. Many people use food to avoid emotions and find only temporary comfort from the discomfort of their emotions. This leads to mindless eating, over eating, poor body image, and disordered eating.

When you numb yourself with food to avoid an uncomfortable emotion, you are setting yourself up for more discomfort internally. The emotions don’t just go away.  When food is the temporary solution to your problems, food then becomes a problem, leaving you stuck in a vicious, dangerous cycle. Use these five stages of awareness to break the cycle and begin experiencing your emotions. Allow yourself to begin the journey into some of the darker places within, in order to experience the fullness of your light. As Dr. Kelly Brogan says, “You have to walk through the wound.”

The foundation for the five stages of awareness is mindfulness. It is about experiencing your life, your emotions, and really being present for whatever is true right now. Mindfulness is paying attention from moment to moment with a nonjudgmental awareness. That means you are present with whatever arises in the moment. When you are present, you don’t run from whatever arises, you don’t resist it, you don’t numb it out. This numbing may protect you temporarily from discomfort, but it limits your experience of your deep internal world and can end up numbing out all emotions, the pleasant and more desirable ones as well. Here are the five stages of awareness:

1.    Mindful moment

By giving yourself a mindful moment each and every day you will connect with what is true in this moment. The mind may try to run from it, resist it and search for distractions. However, with practice, this process becomes more and more comfortable and leads to acceptance and peace. This is a moment of quiet reflection where you can just be.

2.    Recognize and name your emotion

Notice an emotion as it arises in the present moment and how it impacts your thoughts. Name it, not to judge it, but to understand it and to connect with it. Practice being aware, notice what is present without getting on the roller coaster of your thoughts and feelings. Notice the impact of the emotion on your physical body. This experience may be pleasant (happiness often comes with a feeling of warmth internally) and some may be unpleasant (anxiety often comes with increased heartbeat, muscular tension and shallow breathing). Notice your tendency to want to avoid or grasp onto the emotion and try to stay present with it.

3.    Create a non-judgmental awareness through observing the emotion

Here, you practice simply noticing and observing the emotion as if you are a witness to it. You are observing the emotions and working to release any judgment of your response to it. Judgements such as, happy (good) and anxiety (bad), are not useful in the process of witnessing and accepting emotions. Rather, you are now simply noticing the emotion and then sitting with it from the witness/silent observer perspective. Remain in the witness perspective for about 1-5 minutes. Set a timer, notice the mind’s desire to avoid, distract and move away from the emotion. Try not to judge that experience knowing that this process is challenging and takes time, effort, determination, and focus.

4.    Gather the information the emotion is providing you

In this stage you are tuning into the information the emotion is providing you. Understanding the emotion is useful wisdom regarding your internal experience. Allowing yourself to understand why you had the emotion in the first place will create an opportunity to choose how to respond to the emotion. Emotions are information about our experience of the present moment. For example, if I am happy, why? If I am anxious, why? This is extremely valuable information about our experiences. Understanding the why behind your emotions offers the opportunity to make a decision about how to respond. If I am anxious because I am worrying about something I cannot control, that is not useful. If it is something I may be able to control, how could I cope in more effective way or take action? When you understand what the emotion is trying to communicate to you, you become more self-aware. This creates freedom to be more comfortable with your emotions, the depths of your being, with your true self.

5.    Witness it and let it go

The final stage of emotional awareness is to let it go. Release the emotion. Often what is feared is that an emotion will bring you down, will take over, or will be unbearable. However, emotional awareness brings just the opposite, it lifts you up to know that it can be released. As you learn to let it go, you will feel more grounded in your being. As you understand, manage and cope with your emotions, you will become more comfortable feeling them, to let them go and move forward.

Begin integrating these stages of emotional awareness into your daily routine and notice the impact. When you allow yourself the freedom to experience your emotions you no longer seek out the comfort of escaping with food. When food becomes a facet of life that is pleasurable, nourishing and life enhancing rather than a battle internally, you will make peace with food through the process of making peace with your emotions and yourself.