(3 minute read) It happens more often than we would like: a deadline that is approaching quicker than we anticipated, a family argument that is making our blood boil, a toddler that just will not stop whining. Stressful moments come and go almost every day and collectively they can have a profound negative impact on our physical and mental health. The good news is that we can adopt simple tools to learn how to cope with them as they arise, which can greatly reduce any harmful effects. 1. Pause, breathe, and notice The first tool is the simplest and quickest to implement. Pause, breathe, and notice. When you feel yourself losing control, getting highly stressed, angry, tense, anxious etc, stop…
3 minute read. What is meditation? When you think of meditation, you no doubt picture someone different from yourself, sitting cross legged on the ground, peacefully stationary for hours. And, while you are not incorrect with this image, this is not what meditation looks like for the majority of practitioners. Basically, meditation is a group of techniques all having the conscious attempt to focus attention in a non-analytical way, and then attempting not to dwell on any thoughts that arise. Meditation offers our mind the gift of learning to choose, at any given moment, where our focus goes, where we wish to be. Benefits of meditation Studies have shown that having a regular meditation practice reduces stress and anxiety…
Did you know that the average day that people give up on their new year’s resolution is day 12? Seriously! We cannot last even 2 weeks… And that is why I have given up on resolutions and instead have decided to set an intention for each year instead…
Mornings used to be a quiet, ease-into-the-day, informal ritual. With my 2 babies, they are instead chaotic, trying-to-keep-up, and impersonal. I was losing the calm that I felt I needed to begin my day with. So, I decided to take back control of my mornings and regain the peace. This is how I did it…
“How do you know? Don’t you want to checkme?”, I asked. “Because I can see the head”, answered Janet, my midwife. That was about 9 months 6 days and 19 hours into this story. Approximately 5 pushes before I held my baby Logan in my arms for the very first time. Here is our story…
*This is my birth story from when I delivered Maya last year (Feb 28 2017). I have not edited or changed it in any way. I wanted to read it again before I give birth to baby Nugget and, when reading it, thought others may enjoy reading it as well. I hope you do xxx “You will see your baby within the next 30 minutes.” Those are the words I remember hearing at one of the most testing times of the whole 19 hours. My midwife was right. About 3 pushes later, this wriggly, vulnerable miracle was born. Back it up 1 day and 19 or so hours… At just over 38 weeks and feeling no signs…
As I worked through my own contractions, I visualized the magnificent and beautiful elephant mother guiding her own baby through the birth canal, just as I was. Like her, I too am fully capable of and strong enough to birth my baby…
My day started off with all the feelings described above: failure, inadequacy, insignificance. It ended with me sitting on the couch alongside my family, drinking champagne, eating pizza and laughing hysterically at Friends re-runs, while my beautiful baby girl lay sleeping peacefully in the next room. At the same time, only 2 blocks away, another mom, who through the lens of objectivity was living the perfect life, chose to end her life…
The common belief is that one has to wait for the motivation to arrive and, once it does, everything will be ok and get ticked off the list. As soon as we feel motivated, the work will get done. I just have to get a little motivation and everything will be ok. What if I suggested that motivation does NOT lead to action…
*This was written a few days after I had my miscarriage. It is raw and unedited – exactly as I wrote it at the time. Going through an early miscarriage is generally not something that gets talked about. For one thing, as it happens before 12 weeks, chances are you haven’t told many people so, when the miscarriage happens, you just *simply keep that quiet too. I put an asterisk next to “simply” because there is nothing simple about it. Suffering in silence is difficult and, I now believe, unnecessary. When you first fall pregnant, you read a lot about your chances of having a miscarriage and pray, quietly to yourself, that you will not be…