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What's the difference between feeling totally comfortable in your own skin, and feeling slightly out of place at a party? My theory: self love! 

Coaching at ESP is always profound, but today seemed to click on another level- it was like feeling months worth of small recognitions/puzzle pieces connect, producing a breath-taking picture of who I am- a recognition that produces immense joy. 

Now in my life joy used to find me when I: 
a)accomplished something 
b)learned something profound or 
c)someone loved me
but tonight at a friend's birthday party I had the amazing experience of being more connected to myself than I have been, perhaps ever before.  This was purely me connected to me; self love, focus, and joy radiating from the inside. 

While I don’t have a long-term study on this,  tonight I ended up with two separate offers for dates and two more great exchanges with guys I adore. Self love = external love? We always talk about having the internal create the external effects is this that equation in action? Does loving yourself make you more attractive, even when you're not trying? Especially when you're not trying? 

While I’m not about to date all four of these lovely people, the recognition that by being myself I become more attractive to the people around me is a profound one- and fun too! By creating self- love we create love all around us- we see it in the trees, the lights, the air. We see it in the world, and perhaps, just perhaps the world will see it in us too. 

My suggestion- be the person you would fall in love with. It seems to be a path worth loving!

Insomnia is one of the most common and under-treated aspects of our current lives. Many things affect it, from diet, genetics, to the level of noise, light, and electromagnetic energy in your sleep environment. For those of us who have experienced tossing and turning to fall asleep, waking up unable to fall back, or simply light restless sleep we know that insomnia disturbs our energy levels, our ability to problem solve to experience joy, and to connect with ourselves and other people but nonetheless it's a reality that many of us live with. 

So what is both the common thread in terms of cause and cure for the toss and turn tango? Stress. If we accurately identify the stressors in our lives, work to minimize them, and more than anything adapt the way we think and interact with stressors, we have the capacity to overcome insomnia re-estabilishing a foundational piece of our health and happiness.

Now you might think "Easier said than done", but in my personal experience with insomnia which is echoed by Dr Gregg D. Jacobs' book "Say Goodnight to Insomnia" there are four major areas that can help bring your state from sleepy to sleeping. Read below for the first steps:

1. Make the bedroom a sanctuary. Reserve this room for sleep, eliminate most interactions and stressors to de-link the association with the bedroom with stress, and reform the bed= restful postulate.

2. Reinforce the body's relaxation response. If we're constantly triggering our body's relaxation response we program ourselves into a cycle of stress begets stress. As our brain's sleep center is tied to our parasympathetic relaxation response, if we retrain relaxation into our system, we'll also open the pathways fro sleep to occur easily and naturally. Tools like meditation, yoga, walking, a pet, boardgames, laughter, and the BioMat will give you options and multiple avenues to slip into your healthy relaxation with ease. 

3. Hold off on midnight snacks & caffeine- period. Eating too close to bedtime can divert your body's resources away from the sleep response and into digestion- this internal activity can keep us awake by keeping our body temperature high (our temperature dips for sleep). If you need to eat after dinner, eat a light snack 2 hours before bed or simply enjoy a cup of calming herbal tea like mint or chamomile. This brings me to the coup de gras of for those of us who wish to be sleep savvy: Take caffeine right out of your system. Like many drugs, caffeine creates imbalances in your natural rhythms creating a need for caffeine where your body's natural morning rise in temperature and brain chemistry would otherwise wake you up. If you're drinking caffeine it's effects, which mimic stressful alertness, are http://www.keithraniere.comweeblylink_new_windowthe first place to look for the cause of evening restlessness. 

4. Eliminate or minimize stressful thought-patterns. While there are genetic, environmental and physiological reasons for insomnia, most commonly it’s our thoughts that create stress and tension in our bodies which inhibit the body’s relaxation response. The tool that I found to be the most effective for eliminating the “mind chatter” and anxiety that contributed to my decade-long insomnia was Keith Raniere’s Executive Success Programs. Not all tools are right for all people so seek out the one that’s correct for you. 

Insomnia affects more and more people and occurs in many forms: from being unable to fall asleep for more than 30minutes, to waking into the night unable to fall back asleep, to shallow sleep that leaves you feeling exhausted in the morning, but there are solutions. Create an environment that supports sleep, make time to relax, watch your caffeine and evening snacking, and bring joy to your life- your sleep and life will thank you!

The journey into love begins with a question: There’s an amazing phenomenon going on in Vancouver, and lucky for us, around the world. People are moving from focusing on the external, to the internal. To what’s important, what makes them feel connected to love and alive from the sheer experience of it all. While I teach people to connect into their bodies through deep relaxation, there is another component that’s necessary to true connection- breaking through the barriers of false beliefs. 

In Eastern philosophy these misunderstandings of how the world works are seen as veils of confusion. Children are taught that they are not their minds, their thoughts, words, actions, and belongings but that they are connected to something deeper. As North American adults however, these principals are in many ways theories, to be meditated on and studied, but seem so challenging to embody.  We take time out to relax from our lives, but our thoughts come with us and our hearts are filled with self-doubt. We react to the ups and downs of life, and confuse who we are with our status, intelligence, possessions, or personality.  

Einstein said that “we can’t solve problems with the same kind of thinking that created them”; so assuming this is true, How do we transcend our own limitations of thought?

My experience of the Executive Success Programs has been an answer to exactly that. Over the past 18 months it has been an exquisite bridge between my understandings of my limiting beliefs, and the emotional education that allowed me to see out of my own assumptions on the world... based purely on my own responses and my own experience of life. With rich, deep inquiries on a variety of topics in life, this beautiful organization never told me what to think, but taught me how to think deeper, and to bring consistency to my own understandings. This is an education that brings the focus from the external effects to the internal state, and unveils one of joy, compassion, and a deep connection to self. 

This second year of Restorative Spa Yoga is one of introspection as I invite every person to connect into what they truly wish to create in the world and take steps to make those ideals reality. Over the next year alongside articles and writings on yoga for digestion, and restorative spa yoga, I’m going to share my experiences with Executive Success Programs (developed by Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman) and the changes that unfold as I deepen my connection to life, work, and love in all realms. 

While there’s no doubt that every person has within them an ability to experience joy in life, in my experience these tools and this education IS how we can take the principals we wish to live by, and ultimately to be the change, be the love, and be the SELF that we wish to share with the world. I look forward to sharing my journey. 

-Namaste.