Mental Health and Wellness Archives - Page 4 of 27

Dolphin Pose Yoga + Water Animal Flexibility

Dolphin pose yoga is a common pose like Downward Dog. Both animals are enticing to pet and add joy to our celebration of life.

Dolphin pose yoga is named after a cute dolphin like this guy.

But if you can’t get your hands on petting a dolphin, today is National Strawberry Parfait Day.

You can celebrate a simple moment of joy with a summertime strawberry lemon parfait you can make that’s healthy and 100% delicious!

…You can also get in your Dolphin pose right where you are! 🐬

For inspiration, dolphins are one of the friendliest animals to us out there… and we think of them as our happy, summer ocean friends we can pet.

…Next to our dog land friends. And maybe that’s why the yoga Dolphin pose is similar to Downward Dog… and both poses are done on dry land.

In Dolphin pose yoga moves, instead of your arms fully stretched out, your elbows bend while your forearms and palms are laying flat like pancakes on the mat.

Because of this, your nose in awareness is also a lot closer to the mat.

…Like dolphin beaks called rostroms that are in placement where noses usually are on mammals.

This gives dolphins their appearance that they’re smiling and then when they show their pearly whites, we smile… and maybe that’s partially how they charmed their way to Hollywood as celebrities in Dolphin Tale with Florida home perks. 😉

But back to noses, dolphins have blow holes at the top of their heads where air is connected to their lungs.

This is where they breathe like us (and not like fish with gills)… and we can remember them in our daily Ayurvedic yoga breathing.

On the mat (…maybe you’re there now?), our Dolphin pose yoga fins and palms are also flat on the mat for good yoga form.

You get a good stretch in your entire body from head-to-toe in Dolphin pose yoga moves.

What you may notice that’s different is your body formation.

Your top half of your body may not be the same length as your bottom half.

If you have long legs and a shorter torso, then you won’t be as high peaked.

Your upside down “V” in the air will look different if that’s your body description. So you get to play around (or splash around 💦) in your Dolphin pose.

…You’ll be more like a hill than a mountain by design.

And that helps you to embrace your unique body and special creature that you are!

…You look more like a dolphin swimming instead of jumping hoops in dolphin show formation. 😁

Like us, dolphins are social and intelligent creatures with abilities.

To get more of their vibe, you can swim with a dolphin and not be afraid that you’ll be thrown.

Well, I take that back…

Once upon a time I swam with dolphins… or a better description is I was thrown from a dolphin’s beak landing into a pool of water.

That was a dolphin ride! Even though in the beginning I wasn’t sure what to expect 🤔

But I did know dolphins are happy and friendly creatures, so I knew we’d get along great in the end. And we did that day.

So all was good…

And I got my Vata anti-worry and cool and simple Pitta balancing self-therapy day in.

In that spirit, you can try these other water animal yoga poses that help with flexibility, and you can do on dry land without a splash.

Water Animal Poses

You can use Dolphin pose as a transition break pose before ending in Fish Pose (that’s an opposite position pose on your back), reminding us that dolphins aren’t fish.

And if you’re starting in Dolphin, you can then transition into a Turtle Pose, turning and facing sideways on the mat.

This way you can use the length of the mat and get a new perspective of your surroundings.

💡This is a good metaphor in life to change your perspectives for good outcomes.

Turtle Pose is especially good for shoulder streching and tight hamstrings where you’ll feel a good stretch in those parts.

In the pose, your shoulders are a bit hunched over forward to give that turtle back look. 🐢

Turtle is a low to the ground pose where you’re seated and legs are ideally in “V” formation laying flat on the mat, or with slightly bent knees until you get more flexible.

Yoga is a journey.

Then you span your wings (that were fins in Dolphin pose) as far from one end to the other underneath your legs.

Maybe you bend forward with body closer to the mat if you can.

You can challenge yourself daily to bend forward as much as you can in the pose, and then build up your flexibility with knees straightening and legs flattening down toward the mat.

Then after you’ve spent enough time as a turtle, you can turn into a frog.

…Which btw, turtles are reptiles and frogs are amphibians even though they both live on land and water.

And in your land-water abilities, still optimizing the length of the mat, you can flow your legs that were positioned forward in a “V” previously… and move them behind you like frog legs.

Your arms can rest on the mat and floor in front of you.

Frog Pose is exceptional for inner hip and thigh flexibility.

🎉Between turtle and frog, you’re getting full upper leg stretches. Your legs are in the largest muscle group in the body.

You optimize your legs in Frog pose that looks just like the yoga pose name, so it’s easy to remember and get into the position.

If you’re a swimmer and know frog swimming strokes, then you’ll be a natural. 🐸

This is a good pose to challenge yourself and see how low you can go eventually, but if you can’t get there just yet (and still feeling a bit like a turtle), blocks are good to rest your forearms on.

For any yoga pose, don’t hurt yourself by overdoing it the first go-round.

Let yourself open up slowly like a lotus 🪷 and that way you protect your joints and tissues from injury.

💡It’s better to start up high and easy and then work your challenging way down, down, and more down to the mat over time.

In a good way, yoga can take you out of your regular norm and reset your mind because usually going down references in your day are easier than getting up and going.

You can pause and think about that one in the pose. And the longer you spend in the pose, the better! 😊

If you spend 5 seconds in a pose, that counts for total time. If you spend 30 seconds in one pose, that’s 6 times the amount for total time.

Not that you’re playing a game of keeping score, but the point is the longer you spend, the greater the daily benefit… and for next time.

Yoga flexibility is all about gradually stretching further each time.

The longer you hold the pose, the more flexible you become in your body’s abilities.

So don’t expect it to happen the first time.

And if you take a break or a season off from yoga, you’ll start over in flexibility. BUT, the your body cells don’t forget so you’ll likely get there quicker than the first time you tried.

Like dolphins that have good memories, body cells also have good memory.

And like the turtle fable metaphor, slow and steady wins the race.

If you’re naturally super flexible, you can rest your forehead on the back of your hands in front of you for both poses.

Then to round out your water poses, you can finish by going into a seated position and laying back into Fish pose. You can do a Dolphin pose yoga move before your transition if you like.

Fish Pose is a great stretch for your neck.

You lay back with your elbows resting on your mat behind your shoulders like you’re catching some rays. ☀️

Then you let your neck rest backward behind you.

Your neck could be wound up as we spend most of our day with our heads and necks leaning forward especially if we work most our day on a device.

So a counteracting reverse pose like Fish Pose helps our neck unwind.

Before you try it full on without prep, it’s good to stretch your neck looking up first to get it more ready and flexible.

Our necks are delicate because they have such small muscles that also have to hold up our heads that weigh like bowling balls.

Like other areas of injury, necks can take weeks to fully heal so be gentle the first few times.

For precaution, a good pre-stretch for the stretch can be practicing looking up toward the ceiling at least 15 seconds several times a day.

I micro-habit stack this move while I’m filling up the filtered water pitcher that takes about that amount of time.

You can also do head circular motions wherever you are and turn your neck from side to side. Those are good if you spend a lot of time car seated.

Hope this keeps you encouraged in your yoga moves and instruction. Stay cool! 😎

Brain Fog Is Often Spiritual

Brain fog is a way to describe the forgetfulness nature that Ayurvedic Vata minds commonly daily express that we accept as part of us.

Our morning habit choices we choose could be adding to brain fog. — Brain fog accumulates in our daily lives.

In this article, you can learn all about brain fog from our daily environment and simple things we can tweak. You’ll also learn how brain fog isn’t always bad like when it’s from spiritual sources.

Brain fog is the general symptom description for not being able to think clearly.

Often this is when you want the mind to work for you.

Brain fog moments often shows up as confusion, lack of focus, or forgetfulness.

So brain fog would make sense as an explanation for simple memory blips.

But there’s more to this from a spiritual lens that I explain further below on how you can see it as a benefit and a blessing at times.

Because usually brain fog only has negative connotations in our practical culture.

And this article provides some healthy lifestyle tips to eliminate those daily negative brain fog aspects, plus presenting the balancing Vata brain fog positives (that’s a common built-in feature in our Vata mind nature).

In either positive or negative case, we don’t often sit around and analyze what’s going on with brain fog when our minds are in the clouded mist.

And what we experience is usually harmless, like forgetting eye glasses on our heads and looking everywhere for them.

While that can be comical, it’s extra minutes of distraction when the answer was sitting on you above your nose.

For daily routines and tasks, Vatas often create forgetfulness habits to set reminders and purposefully not forget.

High Vatas have active minds of worry-anxiety, more so than Pittas and Kaphas that can have other brain fog distractions.

This btw happened to me when I baked a healthy dessert for the morning and next morning. And the next morning, I forgot about all about it in my mind’s distraction.

A simple scenario like that happens to all of us at some point.

…And when I remembered the forgotten cool peach dessert, it was actually when I would appreciate the bite more after lunch so it could be an enjoyment positive experience.

In your daily life, if someone ever asks you why you didn’t do something and you answer I forgot, you often don’t get a lot of out-of-the-ordinary questioning.

Because forgetting is so normal.

Forgetting can also be healthy for us who like to control ideas. You let go of controlling your mind or the device in front of you that you’re tethered to.

This can invite in creativity inside us and help us let go of rigid ways.

But then there are also negatives such as cognitive decline brain fog instances we want to help prevent. It’s the “elephant in the room” but a diagnosis growing in our world, and that’s something we can be aware of and doing something about in our lives today.

Preventative Healthy Living Helps With Brain Fog

Brain fog can grow when we have these elements in our daily lives: high-processed foods, pesticides, phthalates, non-purified air, and mold, to name a few culprits in our modern lifestyles.

They alter our bodies and that affects our mind in the body-mind connection and in our mental health.

Processed foods for example become whole nutrient-stripped in the plant process (as in factory plant 🏭).

Organic plants 🌱 are better options where we don’t find the same trace levels of pesticides that are found in non-organic foods.

If you garden, you know what natural sprays you’ve used or not used in your care. And when you bake like I do, you know what ingredients you’ve added. You know the wholesomeness details.

In grocery stores, we see the ingredients in our carts we’ll be using to cook with or eat. And we can read labels.

But we don’t see the processes in-between, so this makes comparing foods an apples to oranges experience.

Cheese is an example. Rennet that is found in some parts of the world isn’t the pasteurized cheese process found along the shelf rows in our American grocery stores.

The goat and sheep’s cheese that the Sardinians farm and eat isn’t what we find in our guts.

And for daily coffee drinkers, switching to organic is good for preventative health as coffee is naturally high in mold.

Mold is a brain fog offender.

Organic coffee is considerably more expensive and more difficult to source, but it’s out there when you look and put your health first.

You can get resourceful and save money by buying whole roasts and then doing the grind work yourself. You can feel much more grounded like your coffee when you do. 😊

Daily clean air is also going to be healthy preventative help against the brain fog cause. Developing daily hayfever-like allergy symptoms is one common sign.

And building in more wellness habits and healthy intentions to your life is going to help you most in your sleep, health conditions, and mental fatigue. Yoga is one way to bring in more self-awareness intention.

When you calm and relax your mind and self that also brings down your stress and anxiety levels that help Vata brain fog.

Calming and Relaxing the Mind

Good answers and thoughts show up when the mind is calm and relaxed, and not anxious or worried like when running with high Vata brain fog symptoms.

When our minds are under stress, often we can’t think of the answer when put on the spot.

If we’re asked a Family Feud game show question like what is the first thing you do in the morning?, we can usually come up with an answer. And maybe one that lights up on the board.

But when someone asks us the same question in an interview where we know others will put judgment on what we say, we can’t come up with the answer under mind stress.

We could just give a safe answer.

…Or you may surprise yourself by blurting an answer that surprises you.

Those answers that pop up in memory unexpectedly often come from our spirit.

The answer that pops in our mind come from our deeper wisdom inside us.

We didn’t rack our brain for the answer. They just entered out of no where.

Those thoughts can be blessings when you connect-the-dots.

I’ve had a lot of time and spiritual experiences to teach me wisdom lessons learned to show me this.

Over time, the lessons gave me a different perspective to gain the deeper meaning behind those memory moment lapse blessings.

Once you know you can’t go back to not-knowing and wouldn’t want to as cracking the code secrets toward a happier life.

And you can notice when thought lapses land in aligned perfect timing.

That’s when it’s a spiritual miracle and blessing.

An example is we forget what we were going to say from our rational brain from losing our train of thought.

We get other thoughts that enter.

In groups I attended, we called these other thoughts: popcorn thoughts. These answers come from our heart as though we didn’t process the thought first.

If it’s a helpful suggestive thought, it’s often helpful for others to hear who need the suggestion.

If you can get over what others will think or any insecurities you have in those moments, and blurt out what you’re thinking, often it helps someone else.

You don’t necessarily know how it will help, but it does when you dare to stay vulnerable in sharing.

They are spiritual collaboration opportunities that are expressed when you speak them aloud. You can feel good about showing up.

In the same token, sometimes others blurt out something you needed that sticks with you. It’s the same when purposefully listening to a podcast or a message that you need.

So we’re giving back in a way.

We can all contribute and give back in the energy of life in this way and without much effort.

If you want more of these opportunities to show up and are willing to have your day rearranged in some way, ask quietly aloud or in self-talk: what can I do today to be helpful?

Then be prepared to be useful to others. 😊

And in daily life, these prompted thoughts and memories will show up more frequently if you pay attention (that’s an active move).

You could ignore and override those thoughts to stay on your linear agenda.

That’s how I was until I knew better.

As a planner, we don’t prefer going off course. But over the years, I grew to embrace impromptu thoughts entering, seeing this new spiritual perspective.

And maybe that would help you.

Spiritual impromptu thoughts help you align and redirect to a better way, day, and life. They lead to a life of more purpose, happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. 🎉

So you can be curious next time and openly ask yourself: why did I have ____ particular thought? And see if you get anything back as a thought.

Most likely you won’t immediately.

But that makes you consider another way of thinking and living that can be spirit-filled and coming from deeper inside of you that knows deeply what you want.

And you can stay curious and wondering until something clicks like it finally did for me.

So if we wonder about those spiritual impromptu thoughts, that opens the door to our exploring our spiritual wisdom inside us that isn’t brain fog.

This can be our new norm.

And for our daily mattering lives, we can invite in ad hoc thoughts in our mantras, meditation, and centering to help advise us on what to do next.

And as you can tell, I enjoy baking meditation where this dessert was dreamed up and you can enjoy making.✨

Low-Sugar Peach Shortcake Dessert

Course Dessert

Cuisine American, French

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup plain flour
2-3 eggs
fresh peaches
sugar and salt (optional)

Instructions

Melt the butter in the milk and water on medium heat on the stove.
Add the flour and stir.
Take the mixture to a mixer and mix in egg yolks.
Pipe into a baking vessel to make a shape or add on a baking pan for a free form.
Bake at 325°F/165°C until warm golden brown.
Use your favorite filling, topping, and add diced peaches as the star ingredient. Peaches have fiber, Vitamin C, and A antioxidants.

Vata Active Mind Calming Tips

Vata active mind runs in high Vatas and imbalanced Vatas.

The mind overruns when we want to be done with our thoughts and the turmoil emotions that anxious, stressed, or worry thoughts can create in the mind-body connection.

This looks a bit like Pacman eating pellets that was a happy memory for me. And this low-sugar very Greek yogurt berry cheesecake recipe is one you can re-create. 🫐

This article is about how to deal with a Vata active mind that isn’t serving us.

When we’re confronted with ingested stress turmoil, we want to run from our mind especially when our ego dials up high fear trying to protect us from the world and our repeated hurt past experiences that have semblances in our current situation.

It’s not that severe, but our minds can overreact if we allow it to.

Because the ego serves us repeated warnings that can grow into anxiousness from our fearful thoughts.

The problem grows and can fester when our fear and associated negative thoughts have no where to go unless we successfully get them to take a hike and that satisfies our mind… or we get the feelings from I got this!

Otherwise we ride the trapped ego wave with our evolved human heads spinning in a brain fog cloud until exacerbated ego goes away or some other message distraction comes along to switch up what’s important.

We want to change our channel that can stubbornly stick around on its own.

The default is: we allow our ego to build drama in our lives until we exercise our right to put away the anxious thoughts.

We don’t have to delay our balance for more than a day or more than a few moments. We can practice shutting down our ego and getting better at our practice.

I didn’t start off as the poster child for this as I let repeated thoughts get to me.

But these days I recognize the offender right away and shut it down as soon as humanly possible.

You and I get to celebrate progress in us! 🤸🏻

The progress motivation can be as simple as wanting to enjoy life as much as possible.

We can do this if we know how to recognize and change the thought trajectory when an anxious triggering thought arises from a triggered situation or trauma.

Getting rid of a Vata active mind means having a new way with your new or current situation to get away from anxious thoughts and worry.

Developed fear or insecurity could have come from a past trauma situation, thoughts, or memories.

We can start practicing getting rid of unwanted emotions stirred up by an Vata active mind.

This is how it can go in a typical scenario…

A day can go by where we’re busy and caught up with those nagging thoughts as an under current theme.

We can delay doing something about it until the next day where we’ve confirmed we lost sleep because of the active mind in Vata.

We stayed up way too late in anxious-worry thoughts that’s now confirmed as stuck in our body’s energy.

So now we’re paying for it the day after feeling tired and bad in some way.

We want to get rest and sleep. We know that’s the formula to a healthy life that we want and productivity for our day.

And if we’re healthy, we can be more happy. If we’re happy, we do more in our lives that fuels more happiness. Plus, happy people live longer.

So ridding of an over active mind vs. calm mind isn’t just about feeling rested and better. It’s a protocol for a healthy well-being lifestyle.

It’s easy for us to tell others to not worry or be anxious. But when we’re confronted with our situations, we’re intimately wrapped up with our mind, the emotions, and thought implications of what if the worse happens?

This can show up in all kinds of other ego feeling-defeated flavors.

In those cases, one way I know that works is to have a backup plan so that the best happens coming from Plan A and you don’t have to resort to any backups.

Just having a backup plan shuts the ego down. (Remember: I got this!)

The best time to handle this is right now in this moment.

The tip again is coming up with a backup plan that satisfies you.

It’s not what you’re actually planning to do.

But things do happen in life, that you and your ego know from the past experiences and history that you have no control over.

So having a Plan B in your mind puts you and your (ego) mind at ease at the moment, as not putting more energy into worry, what-if, and other time sucking thoughts.

And in the rare instance that the situation outcome you don’t want to happen actually happens, you have a trampoline to fall on (your Plan B).

If you do this mental exercise for your Vata active mind, this puts your mind at rest.

And when you rest a Vata active mind, then you feel calm and can get on with your day.

You can enjoy the next moments instead of leaving worry on the table to be seen again later on in your thoughts without any real life evidence you need to be alarmed.

There’s no reason to be anxious or worried about anything not alarming, as it solves nothing and is unproductive.

Breaking this down: once you know what the anxious thought is about and determine it’s not clear and present danger, you can move into active mind management, such as having a mental Plan B.

The second thing you can do is have a specific mantra that becomes your outlook.

When anxious thoughts loom, you can refer to a mantra like: I know tomorrow will be better. It always is.

How can you convince you and your ego that’s true?

You have so many examples in the past of that truth. Find a supporting example in your past where the worry you had didn’t pan out, and you actually turned it into something better now that you have hindsight.

Remind your mind.

Because there’s 3 of you on your team: you, your mind, and your body.

When you have positive belief and conviction like “it always is” you’ve defeated ego because there’s no debating “always” in ego language. It’s like calling ego out.

That was ego’s ploy to turn “always” into a negative position such as it’s always going to be like this or it always will be raining.

But you’ve turned the always statement upside down on its head to a positive thought and belief that shuts ego up.

That’s how you fairly head wrestle with ego.

And, here’s how you can practice this:

Let’s use the weekend or your work days off as an example since you have more control over what you get to do or think on those days.

Say, today is Saturday and you’re stuck indoors with lousy weather and you had planned to relax today.

You didn’t sleep well because of anxious thoughts circling from the week before, so all that compounds and adds to your feeling deflated or defeated in some way in your day even though it’s your day off.

This isn’t how you wanted to spend part of your day.

But you can’t plan your thoughts and feelings in advance. What you can do now is prepare your better thoughts and feelings for tomorrow with these steps:

Start re-setting today. Think and repeat: tomorrow will be a new day.

Go to bed earlier tonight so you can get a good’s night rest (as you didn’t sleep well the previous night).

Plus, going to bed early keeps you from scrolling on your devices, overeating and overdrinking, and watching shows that make you feel bad or worse the next day.

So to recap: you’re productively going to bed early and you anticipate a better day tomorrow. And the next day (or Sunday), you wake up better rested compared to the lousy night you had before or on Friday.

That’s because you put a good intention the day and night before.

On Sunday, you’ve reset yourself and your thoughts. And hopefully you got more sleep.

You keep the mantra running in your mind: it’s a brand new day.

You have a new chance to feel productive and happy.

Plus, our minds loves to compare. And fresh-in-mind-memory was that yesterday wasn’t so great. Yesterday is over. So this new day is victory in comparison. 🎉

You could enjoy a cup of tea in peace and that makes you feel much better than turmoil yesterday.

Keep focusing on re-centering yourself in the moment.

The anxious fears of yesterday are put in the dust. Re-focus on your built-up love intentions today.

When the clouds lift, celebrate with singing, dancing, humming or whatever fancies you so you create a new recent happy memory.

Bring out more of the happy, creative person within you. Remove and lower unfocused Vata tendencies.

That’s the happy balance in life that we can reset daily.

Keep doing this even if it takes a few days. Sometimes we need more than a night. The more you practice, the shorter the time becomes to bounce back.

You can choose to get out of self-pity, feeling anxious. or sad in a healthy and graceful way faster.

We can shorten the duration of regurgitating thoughts that don’t serve us. We can put them to bed after we realize they serve no helpful purpose and rob us of time and energy.

Robbing can show up as depressed moods, procrastination, self-loathing, blaming others, self-pity, etc.

I spent way too many seasons feeling self-pity. Especially if my seasons didn’t measure up comparing myself to culture’s standards, those around me, and the high-elated feelings on the flesh level.

Those created my next season lows in the hangover effect when they didn’t measure up.

I had the wrong set of wants that weren’t aligned with what would actually make me happy… me.

People, accomplishments, or things were crutches. It was me that could make me happy.

And it’s you that can make you happy.

If that doesn’t resonate now, know it’s now in your system to digest.

Welcome in your curiosity and questions that wonder about this idea. Maybe you wrestle with this a while. But by processing this, one day, you may find yourself happy with authentic you and who you’ve become that started with practicing quieting a Vata active mind.

Baking in a healthy and happy dessert like a berry cheesecake can start your daily happy.

Greek Yogurt Berry Cheesecake Recipe

Born Again Is Your Choice

Born Again is a mysterious phrase.

Potato waffles are like being born again where you can’t turn them back to the mashed potato form they were before. And they’re so much better. Recipe below. 🧡

It’s a mysterious term that you don’t hear often. It’s a miracle and life changing event like being born. You only do it once by choice, if ever. And then usually as an adult. It’s a personal decision.

Similar to an important event like getting married or landing a dream job that can be highlighted milestones in your life, there’s no taking back.

And like the potato waffles pictured above that started out as another form of the same food, these spuds can’t go back to before. The recipe is below. 🧇

You can’t take back what’s already happened in the past and you can’t go back in your mother’s womb. Or in this born again case, back into your pre-born again old identity.

Once you’re born again, you’re alive with the spirit living inside you. In the Bible, it’s the same as the Holy Spirit. There are no accidents in becoming Born Again… like the miracle of life.

The story of your real life birth from your birth parents may have sounded like you were an accident oops! baby, but it was no spiritual accident.

And it’s another miracle.

In choosing to be Born Again, you won’t have signed up if you’re not ready.

The choice to be Born Again requires a level of maturity that you’ll know when, and your spirit will help prompt when.

Likely, it has been building up inside you. And one day a water baptism opportunity will show up and call you.

And if you do go through, no other earthly person would know whether you’re born again or not unless you told them or they witnessed your water baptism.

The event is the primary marked outward expression. It’s equivalent to an official wedded ceremony and is spiritual bonding bliss.

But unlike most marriage weddings, the dress code is casual wear like a tee-shirt that will get soaken wet and you will too, as you’d be fully immersed in water either in a bathtub of sorts or outdoors in the open waters.

I know this experience because that’s what happened to me. And as life is an adventure, I never set out for that mission.

I didn’t grow up religious either. This was something I grew into gradually. Never having been baptized before and then for the first time, that’s when my Born Again life began.

Born Again Feelings In the Beginning

It was an ordinary day with extraordinary impact. You never forget the day. You wonder how being submerged in a pool of warm water can be so profound. But it is.

And you’re never the same person you were, again. Because you apply meaning to what just happened in your ceremony.

For one, you get to be a butterfly experiencing more of life’s abundance compared to a caterpillar’s existence with even more limitations.

It has unforgettable, deep feelings like the day you experience a once-in-a-blue-moon total eclipse as it’s happening…

You feel chills and something deeper emotionally happening inside you that you can’t explain with logic and leaves you with a wave of tears and emotions.

Or when you see a painted sky where something is special in the air around you even if you’re the only one who notices.

born again is a miracle like a unique painted sky that you may be the only one notices.

And you know life is not just what you see in your daily busy life. You know there’s so much more meaning and that can make you want to discover more about yourself and your potential.

You know you were touched by the Universe in love and finding out what that means for your life can be the greater step.

When you’ve already been leading a spiritual life and have gained Biblical knowledge that precedes a baptism day, you know the source of what you’re experiencing.

You know there’s a spirit living inside you.

Referred sometimes as the wind or a dove 🕊️, it’s the same spirit that connects us all under the sun.

There’s an energy that connects us all.

It’s also the guided handed helper, comforter, and all-knowing messenger all rolled-up-in-one.

And those first few days and weeks after baptism, you’ll likely be intentional to live out life differently.

After The Born Again Honeymoon

But then after some time has passed, you’ll have forgotten your baptism event day like everything else in life.

The feelings wear off. And you’ll want to set reminders to what you want your life to be about post-baptism.

You’re back to your life reality, except you have a desire to do better and grow further.

You still carry the same mind as before (pre-baptism), and you’ll still make mistakes like all us humans do.

But now you are aware that you can lean into your deeper gut or heart feelings where your spirit is for higher answers, and trust those be the ones best if you want to live a life of meaning and purpose designed for you.

Pre-Born Again life, you may have called these gut instincts. They still show up as whispers or hunches, but now you’re aware they’re as real as you are.

So you’re now a little wiser and want to live the higher ways of living. You’ll want to learn from like-minded others and to help you with interpretations from the one resource manual guide (the Bible).

And as a new butterfly now, you went through a transformation. Your human wings are invisible as are your changes.

There’s no going back into your chrysalis.

You can choose to become more humble as you see through another higher lens.

Looking back, I could see that I acted pretty foolishly when I was younger, but I thought I was invincible and smart at the time.

And had I stayed as is, today those would be regrets… but I know I needed to go through those phases to get to the season of maturity needed. That’s usually how it is.

And then by learning lessons, never wanting to go back to those old ways that we’ve grown out of.

Been there, done that, got the kid T-shirt. And now I have an adult baptism shirt (and you can too).

What to Expect With A New Life

Expect to have favor in your daily walk if you maintain a deep relationship with your spirit and God. Also expect for you to be the change as nothing changes around you for certain prayers.

That goes for the details of ordinary daily life from when you walk out the door, run errands, are working, and then are back home.

You also give up some control of your life (yes, more than what you have been experiencing). But you gain more control in other areas explained below, as you keep reading.

And remember, none of us are in control anyway.

For me, that was the hardest part at first.

Letting go was not my strong suit. Because I did life on my terms my way as a strong-independent person.

I learned and was groomed that way since I was a kid.

I’m still fundamentally that person, but I exchanged control for a more fulfilling purposeful and creative life.

I started out my adult life mostly in the structured corporate work life. And had I not been made aligned with my identity (Born Again) and my second act of my life’s work, then I would’ve missed what was in the cards dreamt up for me before I was born.

Dreams I never had when I was younger.

What I did feel when I was younger and in my late-20s and early 30s, was that something was missing inside.

Daily life didn’t seem all that exciting even though I had a good job, health, stable work-life balance, side hustles, great relationships, a lakefront home, nice cars, and everything else that I thought I needed.

And yet I felt unfulfilled.

I thought there had to be more.

That didn’t feel like wisdom at the time. It felt like self-pity.

Then suddenly I lost a job and a career when the industry was wiped out.

And bam!.. a spiritual intervention happened.

About two years after that incident, I got Born Again.

And that’s when life got really quiet around me. I was working but the work was easy.

I found I had time to look at personal and spiritual development areas that I didn’t delve into before.

That’s part of the inner peace that comes with being Born Again, knowing that you’re provided for and having some direction to seek levels of growth.

You know when doors shut it’s not a coincidence and that forces you to keep looking in other directions. And when they do open, you’re magically aligned.

I had work situations like that which were problem-filled but since I was anointed to be there, they immediately got fixed without my fixing.

Those bittersweet open doors were short-lived.

But in those experiences, I starting realizing this life isn’t about what you do. It’s about what you’re becoming in this life.

And on the journey, you can be proud to look in the mirror at who you are that’s not just the aged person staring back.

You’ve transformed fear, anxiety, and worry that don’t have to take over and permeate life. Especially fear.

When I was a child I was afraid of everything from lightning, darkness, to boogie monsters. And then as an adult, the opportunity to exchange fear for love became part of the process.

We can grow away from those unproductive beliefs. When you take action to move toward love that’s part of being Born Again, then you choose to exchange those negative earthly feelings.

It’s also co-created, as you seek toward your growth desires and the spirit helps you from the inside.

You can count on that as the spirit isn’t earthly.

You’re never alone. Not for one moment. When you seek help, you get help, truth, and comforting answers. They may not match or exactly match what you thought you wanted.

But as your perspectives align with the higher ways, you know that they guarantee your highest and best use in this life. So don’t worry if you feel you’re blooming late. You and your spirit will help you grow and make up for lost time.

And you can use the weekend brunch potato waffles as a reminder that these waffles started as mashed potatoes, and became these plate tasty treats. You can find this potato waffle recipe, potato dip, and other brunch waffles.

Character Alignment Discovery + Mother’s Day Hibiscus Berry Mocktail

Character alignment reminds me of dogs and Cesar Milan’s Better Human, Better Dog National Geographic series that evolved from The Dog Whisperer series. This article is about how to get to your best self version with character development.

For starters, bringing in more joy like this fruity joy hibiscus mocktail can help us align with our day. 🌺

A Hibiscus Berry Mocktail is good for celebrating Mother’s Day and May’s calendar full of events such as the Met Gala where this year’s theme is flowers and the garden of time. This is an easy floral and balanced tea drink you can make at home and I think is a beauty in a classic martini glass. What do you think?🍸The recipe is below. 💕💜

And on that note… let’s begin with the dog analogy.

Dogs could be the first character that pops up in your daily mind especially if you have a Fido running around where you notice whether character intervention is needed 🐾

And in both Cesar Milan dog shows, we learn that each dog’s character comes with some breed born, individual learned, and universal dog traits. We also discover that bad behaviors and characters can be retrained and it’s usually the humans that need the training. 😅

It’s up to dog owners to follow through while exerting their calm assertive energy if they want a happy and peaceful life with their dogs. And that can be you or I, or any of us.

The opposite, undesired behaviors often stems from humans carrying around negative energy like fear as a dominant trait.

Dogs pick up on the human stress and misbehave. Essentially they feel chaos in them because they aren’t being led by a dog pack that is natural in the wild.

In domestic dogs at home, the same inborn traits are there but it’s our job to lead the pack if we want order and not chaos.

Training a dog to get into a calm surrender sit with wagging tail and lay down with tongue loosely hanging is the desired outcome state for a dog owner.

Then we can enjoy, pet, and play with dogs.

Dogs are naturally loving and loyal and ready to get in this submissive state.

They don’t hold grudges for long if at all to anything (even though we can project that on them).

Those points are a couple of the universal traits of why humans love dogs as pet family members.

And as a test, when they can get along with everyone in the family either two or four-legged, then it’s a match made in dog heaven.

…So now you have the gyst of how humans and dogs can better co-exist and blend together.

Finding compatibility among humans in human relationships is not as easy. Because of the disaccords when we want peace and harmony. It gets much more complicated because of our built-in human features and intellect.

We have complex minds and many more moods than probably there are English mood description words for.

We make daily micro decisions based on cognitive reasoning for understanding what’s on the screen in front of us.

Oh, and we have opposable thumbs so we can do more than our canine friends who can barely play with toys.

Dogs can bring us to a simpler lifestyle that’s healthy and healing for us from balancing our digital world vs. real life.

Our best calm surrender defense for ourselves and dogs is letting go of fear, negative, and non-peaceful thoughts.

That keeps us out of trouble. From miles away, dogs can pick up any excessive worrying “scent.”

Character Alignment Growth In Us

When we grow in our character alignment using our moral sensibilities, we can speed up growing out of old, past ways that don’t serve us.

Choosing and being able to live out a healthy, balanced lifestyle fosters an environment to live this good way that promotes longevity and a life well lived.

The sooner we can make healthy and balanced as a priority, the faster we can work on our character growth that’s aligned with who we are because we can pay attention better.

“Where attention goes, our energy (intention) flows.” – James Redfield

Living out two lives or multiple roles are examples of alignments that are not in order.

When you have to be somewhere because someone else relies on that, then you’re living out someone else’s need. That takes us away from our personal growth, but we can get back on the trail as easily as we hopped off.

When in character alignment, we also feel overall that we’re at peace with ourselves and that extends to what we’re doing. We’re not dissatisfied with what we do because we also get to show up as ourselves.

Consider those times when you were at ease and feeling like you were meant to be where you were, and not worrying.

In those moments, you’re calm and you produce more because you’re not second guessing your moves. You just naturally are attuned in your elements.

You’re also exuding the positive character traits of yourself, the one that others are attracted to.

When you’re in stressful environments, the opposite happens.

If you saw you coming, in truth you’d wanna probably run for the hills. 😉 Most of us have been there.

But that doesn’t have to happen often as we can always choose to rewrite our thoughts and our daily outcomes from our thoughts in our situations we find ourselves in.

In the tough moments, those are opportunities to grow and not fight with ourselves or lean into the old habits.

We can learn the lesson then and not repeat next week in a different situation.

A shortcut way is to challenge our own beliefs.

Are they helping us?

Do we believe we’re an underdog or not worthy? Do we believe we’re doomed or do we flip the script?

Because something is going to happen anyway, so why lose extra sleep over something you can’t do anything else about?

And when you find something positive that could come out of the situation no matter what, then you’re in an empowered position.

And that’s the healthy feeling you want.

An example: often we come across a problem that could start off as good or a challenge. But now confronted with an issue, finding an opportunity to address the problem-at-hand is a better way. And then after a while it goes away.

And then you can be glad that you were confronted with the potential problem because otherwise you would’ve not come up with this other better way.

Or it showed you something new you would not have seen about yourself or the situation.

Gradually we grow into our better, more wise character by these subtle and micro shifts in thinking and ways of doing things.

We become more patient, less selfish, and more content as side benefits.

Without trials or some stress in our lives, we wouldn’t have picked up these growth ways that all point to our character alignment that helps align our lives.

And like with any life skills, they can be more impactful than even a vocational skill you use as they are transferrable throughout life.

What We Can Do Today To Align Sooner

We can stop being so busy. When we cram everything into the waking hours we have available, we do the opposite.

We pretty much are leaving our lives up to our tasks and chosen activities that are not always aligned with our daily spiritual walk or purpose.

We can instead prioritize our lives as the only one we get. We can’t do over years but we can start over. And if we’re not doing what we know can be more impactful in our lives when we know or when we can, then we’re not aligning ourselves fully.

That doesn’t mean quit what you’re doing today, but the tea leaves are out.

And when they are, that means it’s just a matter of time before you can confront the truth set before you or choose to ignore.

Being brave and confronting is going to get you what you want if you take that risk that’s calculated because otherwise the deeper idea wouldn’t be planted inside you.

Ignoring our inner calling prevents us from getting closer to our aligned ways and purposes because of the four letter word… B-U-S-Y. When we’re too busy to get out of our busyness funk, we can’t think clearly. What could emerge stays hidden from our view.

And when we get to slower paced life seasons either by choice or have more time because of changes that happened to our lives, then we get an opportunity to see where we can improve our lives.

And maybe restart with a fresh start in certain areas.

We don’t have to continue what wasn’t working well or no longer serves where we’re aligned to now. That’s when we can feel lost, something missing, or misaligned.

That includes: relationships, work choices, training humans around us on how to treat us, our habits, attitudes, and outlook.

And one specific area that can help us grow this season is checking in on our pride that can often be a source of misalignment.

Character Alignment Grows Healthy Pride

If we have a dose of unhealthy pride in us that’s very common in modern culture, learning to strip those outward and deeper layers helps us in our relationship communication, motivations, and our healthy blood pressure.

We are healthier and happier as the cure to heavy pride is humility, that gives us the warm and fuzzy feelings inside us.

We feel good quietly in our soul, we’re building up our character, and people remember and respect us in a good way for that.

Compare that to the high pride that we air and we get claps and cheers, but those are short lived and forgotten in our digital era.

Pride is healthy when we’re proud of ourselves for making the finish line or achieving our accomplishments big or small. It’s a good thing we have goals! 🎉

And at the root of unhealthy pride are wrong motivations such as feeling superior over others that an unhealthy fed ego loves.

Pride can swallow us up when situations can tear us down. We want to build a stable environment inside us that’s content whether situations are good or not-so-great.

…What happens next doesn’t make or break you is the empowered feeling.

And then others recognize the humility energy and also give you the accomplishment credit.

You’ll enjoy your life the most that way and avoid the up and down roller coaster life that’s like Monday morning hangover dread after Friday afternoon joy and a weekend of eventful and relaxed bliss.

Dogs and Pride Analogy

…So back to our dogs that we can learn from. Dogs don’t act prideful as they don’t have that gene, but they can act dominant, as in trying to protect their owner and territory.

So in pride and dog analogies, if we build up humility in our dogs for their loving personality traits to come out then they show us their calm side that lets others get close and pet them.

And they respect us as the leader. That’s what we want in ourselves… to be a leader in our lives.

Even when we think we’re humble, there are still traces of unhealthy pride that can be lingering layers deep.

I discovered this in my life when I used to speed past a pedestrian crossway on a major road fare. No one in their right mind who didn’t have to, would cross walk at that dangerous intersection.

I had never seen anyone in my daily drive do so.

But one day, the flashing light beside the walkway suddenly came on without warning just before I drove up there. I had to slam my foot on the breaks. And while that wasn’t an unusual step to do and for the cars behind me, that was a wake up call for me.

In awareness, I realized I still had unhealthy pride in me that I thought I had worked hard to try to successfully rip out.

How was that incident related to character alignment?

Deeply rooted, I realized I hadn’t taken seriously enough the idea that you can’t be too thoughtful when it comes to signs and other people showing up suddenly out of the blue.

While I know that sounds a little silly and we can all act similarly in that way in our busy lives, when you are getting closer to character alignment in certain areas you’re introspective and observe small details in your life.

When I took that lesson to heart and how my initial reaction and outward layer disregarded other possibilities, I learned to humble myself more deeply in future situations by being more thoughtful and slowing down automatically before the intersection. That was a good alignment test.

And that gave me the peace, calm surrender, and self-control I needed for better humility growth and character alignment.

There are many other traits that similar lessons can apply to, but humility is one healthy trait can help your life out in so many ways.

As much as rescue dogs can be trained to become a new healthy dog, we have the ability too.

We can always make up for lost time in development areas we didn’t gain or need to re-learn.

Sometimes when we don’t have much or live simply, we see this better. And we turn inward and dig deep for help and answers.

This type of growth comes from the inside out that speeds up our progress. We’re each in our own marathon.

Starting with a desire to make specific changes marks the starting point.

After we’re aware, it’s in us and we have a high chance of succeeding as we aspire to make the change.

And then one day that’s usually after many tries, we are transformed into this new better way.

We can’t go back to the old way as it no longer fits us in character alignment.

Along those lines and in your journey, you can pick up good character alignment traits that help you in more ways than one and for the rest of your life.

That’s something to celebrate and look forward to in your bright future!

Shout out to the mom’s for Mother’s Day. This is a Hibiscus Berry Mocktail you can make that the moms and ladies can enjoy! 🌺

Mother's Day Hibiscus Berry Mocktail

This is a pink and lavender celebratory and festive mocktail with healthy notes that any mom would love! The drink checks the boxes for the service and quality time love language mom as she kicks up her feet to sip on this special mocktail that can be made into a cocktail.

Course beverage

Cuisine American

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Equipment

martini strainer or other strainer

Ingredients

blueberry tea
hibiscus tea
can of coconut cream (or heavy cream)
blueberries and strawberries
lavender tea bag

Instructions

Reserve the thickest part of the coconut cream. Then mix the thinner part of the cream to make a milk consistency that will be used for blending.
Combine brewed blueberry tea and hibiscus tea and milk consistency cream. Shake up and strain to create the lavender purple color layer. Optional: add berries to this layer if you wish.
Freeze the first layer.
Repeat the second step but omit the blueberry tea to make the pink color layer as red and white make pink. Optional: add berries to this layer if you wish.
Freeze the second layer.
Add the thick coconut cream to the top. Add a little of the milk consistency cream to make the thickness of choice.
Decorate with dried hibiscus and lavender tea leaves, and/or fresh fruit.
Enjoy and watch the drink change colors!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Btw, my mom was a dressmaker for most of her working career, so this pink and purple color celebrates her life well and fits into the Met Gala’s Garden of Time dress theme she would’ve liked.