Physical Health and Body Archives - Page 20 of 24

Shower Thoughts For Self-Care and Creative Day

Shower thoughts often give us new and creative ideas because in the shower we’re relaxed and that’s good daily self-care.

Sometimes that brings a smile and a laugh to our day.

Bring on the feel-good water sprinkle! 🚿

self-care and shower thoughts

We can wash away our anxious thoughts temporarily.

And, you can get the dual benefit of self-care and shower thoughts from your shower experiences. This article is how to embrace and bring more shower thoughts alive!

A shower can be both a sauna and steamy therapeutic experience more powerful than taking a walk outside.

You can turn showers into a productive ritual in your mindfulness where you’re focused in the moment.

Mindfulness is full of physical and mental health benefits in the mind-body connection you may not have known about.

When you feel good, that shows up as good happy feelings, but also as healthy in and on your body. In other words, your skin radiates too when you’re feeling good.

Plus, when you get shower clean, you’re washing away bacteria on your skin accumulated from sweat and dirt and maybe why you got in the shower as a daily ritual in the first place.

Another benefit to a shower is you can check in with your internal body thermostat temperature.

If your body feels warm when it’s cold outside, that could indicate an irritated Pitta emotional state for your season (or until your situation changes).

If you’re cold when it’s warm outside, then you could be feeling worried or anxious in Vata or depressed or tired in Kapha, as examples.

Your body leaves clues and you want your shower temperature to be a reminder and one solution to what you’re positively feeling and hoping to achieve this season.

With the right water temperature hitting your skin, you feel good, so that relaxes you all-around to allow good thoughts and creative ideas to come into your mind more easily.

Your brain feels safe and free from defense fight-or-flight mode. So then you can safely let your guard down in room seclusion.

Your spirit alignment can also come alive as you get deeper into your heart’s desires. These ideas also help you manifest your want to a life of purpose.

When relaxed, here are 3 things you can do productively:

1.You can get your best ideas in the shower when you least expect them. You can come up with new ideas while performing self-care practices.

When allowing in shower thoughts, you can get creative and adventuresome ideas for your projects, next trip, food and daily plans, and even solutions to problems you haven’t solved.

A-ha solutions can appear when you’ve forgotten you had a dilemma but were reminded at the moment. With time and space, your brain is seeking a different angle, perception, or perspective that allows these memories to pop up.

2.You can reset your daily intentions in the shower. You can change you style approach in a situation using self-care and shower thoughts.

If you’re trying to stop knee-jerk reactions or blurting out often, you could exert self-control by thinking the word “jerk” is not what you want to be, and maybe that helps you change your patterns for the better.

Sometimes we lean into being hard on ourselves for our good, so we can get over the hump of missing the mark.

3.You can pray in the shower and get loving thoughts in return, similar to ideas but they can be more focused on growing yourself and handling relationships in your life.

You can get mental self-care and shower thoughts.

You can exchange critical-judgmental thoughts for open suggestions from your mind and what others have given. That’s a good way to cool off the Pitta mind.

5 Yoga Tree Pose Life Metaphors

yoga-tree-pose-metaphor with rainbow eucalytus tree

We can use a yoga Tree Pose today and these days as a reminder and metaphor for our lives, and the trees that have impacted our lives.

Firstly, what is so special about trees that have meaning in our lives?

The obvious being that trees are growing, living creatures just like us humans with unique features. We know trees are alive because they bloom, shed leaves, and pollen (not their greatest spring dominant feature).

Trees can grow from a mere seed that fits in your hand to a super strong tree you can climb (similar to a growing person from an egg to an adult).

The appearance and rings on a tree can show age, as our human bodies and features do the same thing.

When I was growing up, we purposefully remembered trees on National Arbor Day. Usually, the celebration included the installment of a new baby plant at school. The remembrance of the special day has been crowded out by other hashtag events but you can do your appreciation just by looking out the window at the trees near you, or by getting in a yoga Tree Pose.

These days, we celebrate yoga days more than we do trees it seems, but luckily there is a standing pose that represents trees in yoga. We can appreciate trees from a personal growth perspective.

Trees are a metaphor for our lives.

In Tree, remind yourself of these 5 areas:

1.Growth and direction. You can change your yoga Tree Pose at any point. You can lift your right bended-knee leg to rest on your left shin, or you can lift your right leg higher to form a number “4” formation with your right foot rested on your left thigh (looking like a flamingo).

You can take your wide arms and open them to the sky, have them go straight up parallel to your ears, or bring them to heart center with prayer hands.

Your tree can go in any direction of your choosing. As you balance one leg, you can build up strength and notice one leg is usually stronger than the other.

2.Grounded. You can feel grounded with your feet planted on the floor, like a tree with a stump firmly rooted in the earth. When you’re not sent from busy task to task, you can gain clarity about your life and deliberate actions you take. You’re not wishy-washy, tossed to and from. You’re steadfast and purposeful like a tree.

3.Learning. A tree is also a symbol of knowledge. From trees, we make paper that we can bind together to make books that expand our minds.

The more branches we develop, the more we can become useful to the world. Animals can use our tree and we can impact the community around us like moss growing on trees.

As you grow older, you can become wiser and stronger as you’ve experienced situations to increase your know-how.

4.Being alive! If you feel a sensation in any of your parts, you can take that as a positive sign you’re alive. Your automatic breath is no longer a gift you take for granted, if you become consciously aware of your inhale and exhale.

In yoga, we do a lot of breathwork. The inhale is often when we’re facing up or lifting up, and exhale when we’re grounding down. The breath is a little different than when lifting weights in a gym. So don’t get confused. And you can pause at anytime and do 4-7-8 breathing.

Trees and plants don’t get confused. They play a sustainable role for us by giving off carbon dioxide. Without them, we would not have a life in our ecosystem.

5.Uniqueness. The more you practice your various yoga Tree Pose styles, the better your tree can enliven yourself as you let your roots develop into hybrid trees. You can have properties like a flexible and resilient palm, a durable evergreen, or a hardy cactus. You could have overlapping properties in your versatility and personality. Continue reading “5 Yoga Tree Pose Life Metaphors”

Ideas for Healthier Lunches, Picnics, and School

Ideas for healthier lunches is always on the agenda year-round.

Ideas for healthier school lunches make kids and adults happy with a balanced plate of veggies, fruit, protein, dairy, and carbs.

The time we take for lunch is often hurried and goes by in a blink of an eye. There are ideas for healthier lunches that you may have forgotten to try in your busyness.

We learn to speed through lunch when we’re old enough to learn. Lunches can be an afterthought when we’re hungry, running in between activities.

I would encourage the idea that lunch is the most important meal of the day (one I don’t recommend skipping or skimping on) when you need the extra energy to carry out your day!

If you like and can eat carbs or pasta, this is a meal where you can get the most efficiency out of your carbs.

You need and burn the energy in a working or working out afternoon. If you focus on carbs for your dinner meal, as you age, this can slow you down.

That’s why I like the idea of the plant-based dinner. But that doesn’t always fill you up during the day when you need the energy boost to keep you going like carbs can.

Growing up you have a memory about your overall childhood lunches.

My public-school lunches were both memorable… and not.

They were a special time that I could sit and spend time with my friends, and that probably helped me appreciate just sitting around with others socializing and chatting.

The cafeteria food I ate though was a different story… I wish we had ideas for healthier lunches. Continue reading “Ideas for Healthier Lunches, Picnics, and School”

Barre Class Gives You Nice Legs and Teaches You Personal-Growth

Barre class can be a metaphor for what we need to grow ourselves. When you think of a row of ballerinas with their arabesques, port de bras, and extended swan necks, you can be reminded of control and grace–what we all need in life for better performance and balance.

You can also grow strong. When you have control over your body in a certain position, your muscles are flexing to build strength.

Don’t be fooled with thin and dainty ballerinas as they have very strong legs (and toes)! They’re usually slender, have Vata-like bodies where they are aware of every body position from the waist down to the crown of their heads and through their fingertips.

To get in perfect positions, they have concentrated mind-body awareness. If they lose focus then they could soon fall or be out of alignment.

If you aspire to have ballerina moves, that usually requires hours of imperfect practice. A Nutcracker play ballerina has paid their dues.

To start, you can make your life easy and see how the barre concept feels especially if you’re new, by trying a mild, less-strenuous workout in a barre class.

You usually start off standing along a bar as your equipment. And if you’re doing this from home, you can use a chair. It’s that simple!

One of the first things you want to think of is extended height. That requires stamina and strong legs and specifically upper leg strength in your quadricep muscles (quads) that could give you the endurance you need.

That’s not something you develop overnight, but you may be naturally more built out in that area. That’s the opposite of someone who wants to try-out for America’s Ninja Warrior show. There you see athletic men and women alike on the show who have demonstrated strong upper body strength. We’re all given different strengths in comparison.

And ballerinas are athletes, with strong quads. Like everyone else, you can develop your legs in other ways every day. Like, climbing stairs or doing squats in place. And say you want to take an outdoor 20 plus mile bike ride, having strong upper leg muscles will help give you the extra strength and extra oomph to push you over the hills.

A great way to develop your quads is by following a barre class.

If you take a class, that can be just as effective through video, you can lose your inhibition. You’re focused on your screen and mimicking the instructor and not thinking how silly you look with self-consciousness and awkward body movements (that we all have).

Your body doesn’t care how ridiculous you can look to move its joints, muscles, and all the parts gluing your butterfly parts together. It’s just happy you’re moving and that’s what you can positively focus on.

Similar to learning foundational yoga poses for a yoga class, you can learn and focus your attention on ballet positions for a barre class.

You can even find that you’ve known or been doing some of the French named barre positions for years without knowing how that they would be practical in your barre class now.

What I love most about barre class:

I do think barre is a Vata-designed workout. ♥ ♥

A Vata person’s middle name is Variety.

Choosing to take a barre class is a variety from the norm while the type of exercise is growing in popularity. The crux of the class can be ballet moves, but most barre classes incorporate moving to the floor for pilates and yoga poses.

You just never know what kind of journey your barre instructor can take you on and how intense the workout is until you get a sense of the instructor’s style.

If that unknown element of what-happens-next appeals to you, then you may have a ‘lil more Vata in you than you think (we all have some trace).

If in your recreational time, you still like to know every move you’ll be taking and that’s expected, then you could be more Pitta/Kapha dominant or falling into those stronger imbalances.

In any case, life is full of surprises so taking a barre class can help you become flexible.

By the way, do you know what your main dosha is?

If you want to know the reverse, what is not happening the way you want, then you can take the balance restoration, Body Balance Quiz, to find out what you can do to get back to yourself.

If you pay attention and learn to get in awareness of your natural body tendencies, then you can lean into your ways and not be so hard on yourself. We can wonder why we’re different in some ways from our friends and people we admire.

Doshas may be one insightful clue and a more fun way (leaning into your natural strengths) to follow in life.

Be encouraged, many others share your mind-body type. You just have to find your peeps. They’re out there!

barre

But back to barre… whether you’re a natural Vata body-mind type or not, you get a mix of a heart-pumping workout with very few breaks to catch your breath, unlike these peeps just standing around. …sorry, Easter is in a couple weeks, so I couldn’t resist the reference!

One class I went to regularly for a season had exercises where you moved from one end of the room to the other, mimicking a Nutcracker Toy Solder.

Repeating the movement takes body coordination and also self-discipline, as you’re trying to look cookie-cutter mechanical. Concentration is good mind-body health (and can help a Vata-sporadic brain get back in line).

Making even-movements is a talent that I don’t have today (maybe you do and could consider trying-out for the Rockettes!), but whatever the case you still can have your best-attempt version.

In that one class, we learned how to march across a room with our stiff arm and leg movements, and afterward we each picked up a stability ball for an even more energizing workout.

We transformed from gliding Ballerinas to marching Toy Soldiers to Downward-Facing Dogs. …Phew! I was tired.

So next time you’re wondering if you should give barre a try, here are few surprise benefits that can help sway you:

-Increasing mind-body awareness

-Developing grace and better performance

-Building strength and resilience

-Finding self-discipline and self-control (that leads to bigger and better things!)

And if you can’t dance, barre is a good alternative to say Zumba, as you’ll still be on your toes and you may just become a ‘lil more aware which is the right, left foot 😊

Happiness Book and Spring Swiss Roll Recipe

Happiness book announcement 📣.

Happiness Book Launched 2021 — Happiness Book Launched March 20, 2021

Today is the first day of spring and the a hashtag event calendar day for #InternationalDayofHappiness.

It’s also coincidentally the weekend of my happiness book release. And I have a spring roll (swiss cake roll recipe to share below 🍥) to celebrate the occasion.

spring swiss cake roll recipe. — swiss cake roll recipe below.

Up to now, most of us have learned to be more patient with the world, and uniquely in our individual lives. For better health and to enjoy your day, it’s better to celebrate what you have. Time today is a gift.

In the wait, focus on the positive things. You are a day closer to your destiny and joy if you decide to focus on love, beauty, and growth that you can find evidence all around in spring and nature.

In my muse and self-reflection today, I’m tickled (and a bit relieved) that my happiness book, Empowered Happiness, that I started editing last summer is completed and available now. I had intended for the book to be published last year.

I started writing in 2019, but for all kinds of start and stop reasons, I didn’t make the deadline. …and now I understand why it takes most authors more than a year to publish a book that has nothing to do with procrastination or writer’s block 😊

You know how things always take longer than you expect… my happiness book project was no different.

On the other side now, I see how slow cooking a book takes patience but produces a better, heart-filled, and soulful meal (end-product) than microwaving can ever produce. (…and as a writer, we prefer “simmering” over “nuking” and also the rhyming words associated).

When asked yesterday in a phone interview why I wrote the happiness book, I was stunned by what came out of my calm thoughts, mind, and mouth.

Like you, if you choose, I’m here to impact others’ lives with the gifts and opportunities I’ve been given. With the book, I aspire to impact readers in their own lives, no matter what stage they’re in as I know others have gone through similar experiences as I have. The mentors that I’ve turned to, time and time again, have been self-help books. And this is my way of giving it back as a writer and mentor advocate.

Everything else is gravy.

We all need each other for validation and can learn from one another about authentic living in this beautifully organized, delicate, and sometimes complicated Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs place we share called Life on Earth.

With what you can do, you just never know how you can positively impact someone else with similar or different backgrounds.

While piecing together my happiness book, I decided to include a childhood story about an older neighborhood kid who put on an Easter egg hunt. What suddenly happened that day, impacted my life and helped put a memorable smile on my face, like colorful confetti or rainbow sprinkles can.

You never know what an ordinary day can bring. Maybe I’ll get a chance to put on a surprising egg hunt someday and you’ll get a chance to plan or suddenly impact your local community in a way you never imagined.

Make it a great first day of spring… and if you think about it, reach out to someone you haven’t talked to for months. They may just be waiting for your text, call, or a nudge of encouragement that only you can give ♥

I was inspired to bake this spring imprime cake roll from watching an episode from The Great British Bake Off. Enjoy! 🍒

Print Recipe

Spring Sponge Swiss Cake Roll

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

3 large eggs, separated
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1.4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt (or pinch of salt)
1/3 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
1/3 cup granulated or monk fruit sugar
Filling (Jam or Greek yogurt for healthy version)

Instructions

Separate egg whites from yolks. Tip: it's easier to separate eggs cold and straight from the fridge. Then let them warm to room temperature.
In a bowl, beat egg yolks and add in sugar. Add water and vanilla.
In the same bowl, add flour to make a slightly thick batter.
In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Gently fold in fluffy egg whites.
Pour on rectangular baking sheet (Silpat recommended).
Level with a spatula or knife. Then bake at 325°F for about 12-15 minutes. Watch closely toward the end. Look for when the cake is set/baked. If thinner, browning on edges can happen quickly after the 12 minute mark.
Immediately peel off Silpat-lined pan onto a tea towel.
Roll into a spiral log while warm-fresh-out-of-the-oven.
Let cool in fridge for 20 or more minutes.
Unroll and cut off ends.
Add filling of choice (Greek yogurt for healthy) and then roll cake back up.