Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Feeling-Thinking Mood Balance In Your Practice

thinking feeling mood balance with intention and purpose.

Getting your feeling-thinking mood balance this season prevents burnout, staying stuck, or feeling helpless from bouncing back.

And below I share tips to encourage your best mood season ahead.

Where most people don’t think about how their moods affect them. They’re focused on what they’re doing or not doing.

And most working people start their work day thinking about their workday, and not so much how they feel. When they have free-time or their feelings are provoked, that’s when feelings enter the scene.

So, there can be a disconnect between thinking and feeling on any given day. And over time, that can weigh any of us down or turn into heavy moods over a longer season.

But striking more of a balance between both in daily life helps to restore and prevent chronic moods and create space awareness of what’s missing today that needs restoring for a better tomorrow.

And knowing this can be the game changer for your bursts of daily joy and peace vs. disconnected or hopeless feelings.

Yoga is one empowered tool or practice you can use to get into calm feelings and feeling better right away in any moment.

You can get in your peaceful headspace wherever you are.

So, what if you’re well-intended to get on your mat, but you’re not feeling inspired? And no where near Happy Baby!? 👼

That’s a common example of disconnect from feeling-thinking that shows up in moods.

The good news is a thinking-feeling mood balance is something you can work to restore in small baby steps, just like mind-body imbalances. Knowledge and knowing what to do when unrest hits is how to healthy restore.

Simply scooping your body to the floor can start the process.

And if you don’t feel like it because your mind is fighting you or you’re tired, you can decide to just sit or lay back on the mat and see what comes up. It’s your second resting place next to your bed or couch.

Your higher thinking tends to show up when you create the space. So rely on forces outside yourself to kick in when you make just a little scoot effort.

The act of being on a mat or being on your sits bones can do that.

Your “being” is the baby step.

Yoga or your quiet practice is how you can get your deeper insides to awaken from feeling outside sensations or stretching. Sit in silence. Some call this meditation. And others, self-care.

If you rest your palms on your eyes, that can feel nourishing.

Many common stretches without yoga names are yoga poses even if it’s more a gym mat style one than a yoga one. In yoga poses, you’re usually working on multiple muscle groups at one time versus isolated muscle stretching. It’s balancing our muscles.

Yoga includes mind brain muscles where you get to marry thinking and feeling. Thinking because you have to remember which side you’re working on. Your left and rights can get tangled up easily if you’re not focused or tend to have two left feet.

If you don’t stay focused or start daydreaming, you fall out of your pose. Each move is an opportunity to stay present and feel areas and sensations in your body that are tight and tense.

Making Yoga Progress

If you don’t know what pose to begin with, work with common tight body parts first. The hamstrings (back of the upper leg) is one area that can tighten easily for most of us. The back is another. So you can get in a seated position on your mat, and try to reach your toes. Feel the stretch. And do it on each side, separately.

You get more flexible and the stretch feels better as your muscles loosen up if you’re not injured. And that’s the ‘lil accomplishment boost your mind needs to feel encouraged to keep going.

And when you release your tightness over time, you sensitize other parts of your body and start feeling other sensations. The same ones that breathe new life into you.

And that’s when you can mindfully think about and appreciate your body parts that work for you day in and day out.

When you get familiar with how it feels activating a specific muscle or muscle region, you become more in tune and sensitized to your body.

And that leads you to awareness of deeper parts you can’t see like your heart or brain. You can think of how you deeply feel or think at that moment, that btw, would not have been an opportunity had you not gotten in the stretching pose.

Or you can do yoga from a chair If that’s where you spend most your waking hours doing computer work, where you likely got your tight hamstrings in the first place.

Take Anywhere Intention

In yoga anywhere, then you can reap the full mind-body benefits that help to feeling-thinking mood balance restore you. You can mindfully lighten the load and burdens from where you just came from.

And if you look forward to yoga or enter with enthusiasm, that activates growth intention as you operate with healthy intention and your body cooperates in your full range of motion that each pose offers.

You get more healthy intention energy with your open headspace.

You also deepen the connected mind-body benefits of being present and engaged, that lead to:

-relaxation vs. stress undertone (stressful energy)

-joy vs. depressed (if this hits everyday at a certain time, then you want to restore this)

-calm vs. unrest (restlessness is a sign for a need to shift)

-peaceful alignment vs. disconnect (this can show up as two identities that are often affected by moods)

-clarity vs. confusion (feeling stuck or making poor decisions)

And calm, joy, peace, and clarity all help to mood balance.

Blocks To Remove

A repeated ego block could be the veiled blind spot that is not helping you see overall if left unaware. Catching your ego in the act is the way to awareness. You do this by watching your reactions and actions that you internally question whether they’re helpful or hurtful to you and others.

Other blocks could be a misaligned season in your situations. I discovered this in my own block removal seasons when emotions got the best of me from my situations.

Yoga helped me to gain revelations to remove my blocks. When I centered with my deep breaths, I could stay in the moment in those breaths. And that created space and a way to escape from thinking thoughts that caused emotional unrest.

And you can do the same in your life. 🎉

You can get back to your center. In the pause, you can feel good and think good thoughts.

And after you leave your yoga mat or breathing space, you can continue your feeling-thinking mood balancing.

Feeling-Thinking Mood Balance

For some of us, we prefer to feel our way through life over thinking (and over overthinking). Thinking is work. And most the time, worth the time and effort for the positive thought-out results that occur.

And some of us feel more than think. Feeling can be suffocating if we can’t get away from our feelings. And it can be cathartic releasing feelings, so we are aligned with ourselves and don’t hold onto negative energy.

Finding the healthy feeling-thinking mood balance is always the best answer. And when balance is restored:

As a thinker, you know the benefits of noodling out ideas, problem solving, and planning.

As a feeler, you know the benefits of your feelings guiding you, and empathy for helping others and yourself from your feelings first.

Tipping the scales so they’re more feeling-thinking balanced, make a big impact to your daily perspectives and outlook. And that’s everything that matters in life. ⚖️

Getting More Feeling-Thinking Mood Balance

A good way to get more balanced on your thinker-feeler scale is bridging intentions and calming the mind to feeling sensations in the body that help to feel more in life. Yoga was one way already mentioned.

And if yoga is not in your wheelhouse, you can try other quiet practices like taking a nature walk, meditation, or journaling.

Find a solo practice that makes you feel alive.

Those restorative activities are good to time block in.

But where we spend most our time influences us the most.

Such as, those who choose careers in physical labor work or play sports rely on their bodies to work, and they rely on their feelings as to how to move and use their bodies.

They feel the weather impacts for outdoor sports when a ball or a person tackling them collides into them. They feel pain effects lifting or pushing intentionally to activate muscles.

Or those who choose professions that help others like nurses, social workers, and teachers feel for their patients and students.

Then there are those who do office work, behind-the-scenes jobs, data analyze or problem solve for a living. Those are thinking jobs.

One profession is not better than another. We’re all called to do different work.

But whatever you do impacts your feeling-thinking mood balance. And over time if not aligned, you could feel there’s something missing.

#1: To help stay balanced, you could do the opposite feeling-thinking moves when you finish your work, like an office worker plays or coaches sports after work. Or someone who spends time in a kitchen or gym most the day, then works on the computer at night.

You get the feeling of relief as you have an outlet to express more of yourself in feelings or thoughts in your spare time. That’s the healthiest daily restore.

But often situations change on a dime so as soon as you get your rhythm, the beat changes.

I know this all too well when I was constantly adapting to new work situations from hotels, offices, and remote.

When I did corporate work, that was heavy on the thinking. I often felt uninspired that turned into feeling lack of purpose and growth with unhealthy feelings. So I was out of balance.

Until I was able to pivot. Today, my thinking-feeling balance comes from writing, doing yoga, and baking on the weekend. And having those elements baked into my week creates balance so I can do the other purposeful work tasks.

The contrast is I look forward to my work and balanced activities and that create a healthy lifestyle that provides enough sleep, emotional rest, and joy.

And maybe that’s what you need…

And if so, taking a few moments this week for you to consider how much feeling-thinking mood balance you have (and by default, discover the deficit). You’ll gain self-insights and revelations.

When you get awareness and connect the dots, then you can make self-helpful shifts to find your way back to your balance. And those become your better ways.

…And that’s about a decade or two of lessons I had that you can do in a weekend. 😊

Especially when we’re younger, we have times when we’re less aware or de-sensitived because our professional and personal lives are jam packed with being busy.

Leading with activity that’s not helping us grow is an easy way to lose sight of who we’re becoming as time passes, and time is the only asset we know we can’t get back.

From experience, I know those seasons catch up with our mind-body when we look in the mirror one day in present awareness, and wonder who the stranger is staring back at us that we’ve become.

And in intention and wisdom, we can make the change, start the process, and seek the answers we don’t know today.

Like the shift I made from “being busy” in the busy metropolitan culture I grew up around. I learned “being busy” as good for us and made us more important.

And then along with culture shifting away from working all the time, I realized that busy was actually hurting. So I unlearned that way that’s aligned with my value in balance.

I’m not sure that has caught up with most people these days…

And in the upcoming weeks I’ll share my tips and thoughts on work life blend that work life balance has turned into, as I DO believe balance can exist in your prime years!

And especially since we have so many work choices these days, more than when I started and it was expected you went to college.

…And thankfully these days, there are even mental health resources and departments in companies as acknowledgement that personal life can be part of the professional life. And if you do career life your own way, then you choose your tasks and days.

So stay tuned for that! 🌱

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Yoga Side Benefits From Traditional Yoga to Yoga Today

Yoga side benefits and bends are great for stretching your mind and body. And fall is a good time to bring back out your mat.

yoga side benefits are more than just the obvious health and wellness. You can have a reason to wear a fun pair of seasonal socks like this heart pair. — A little heartfelt yoga love spread to a mat never hurts!

National Yoga Month is in autumn. And that’s the season when I first started attending yoga classes regularly for the first time at 35. It was mostly all women. Rarely did you see a male in class. And when you did, it was an older male (wise fella!).

Yoga wasn’t seen as a physical activity or as a form of mind meditation. It was considered stretching or relaxation class. It was so foreign like this beet cauliflower soup color.

beet cauliflower soup recipe. — Get out of your norm with this tasy pairing cold beet cauliflower soup recipe below. 🌱

Today, yoga is widespread in the western world and has evolved into mainstream classes. There are male teachers and school-age kids in some classes. And that’s partly due to the yoga side benefits that we now know and I’m sharing below.

…And maybe just the encouragement and inspiration you need.

And, we know yoga is good for overall health at any age. When we work on our physical fitness in a yoga pose, we’re also doing our mind and Universe a world of good. We’ve leaped years into our awareness for our good planet.

We’re more united. And that’s fitting because Yoga means “union.”

…Oh, how far we’ve come…

“Oh, the places you’ll go!” – Dr. Seuss

Evolved Yoga Wellness

Yoga took years to get mass appeal, but the benefits came just in time for our wellness needs. Our evolving culture is a heavy virtual world vs real life. It’s 80/20 for many of us these days, that was once 80/20 real life vs. virtual world.

And, yoga is one way to bridge the divide, and get back to our healthy lives.

Primary yoga benefits are for physical, mental, wellness, and developing mind-body intentions. Evolved poses today are still based on textbook, timeless, and traditional yoga poses usually named after an animal or things in nature.

But today, there seems to be less focus on variation and more on intensity under the categories of Restorative, Vinyasa, and Hatha yoga.

It’s less about inversions, and more about restoring and getting deep. And that makes me happy because that helps to get us back to balance.

What happened to hot yoga?

It was trendy but heat revvs up the heated engines and that’s not good for relaxation and balanced Pitta. Plus the body goes into mild shock, so drinking a sip of water can be momentary trauma. I would hear students in their near inversion poses around me come crashing to the floor sometimes.

So we’ve wised up in our classes as you can actually get hurt. But that’s how we learn what not to do that makes us grow. 🌱

Today the yoga stretches are deeper and more deeply described by instructors who are more knowledgable on the widely adopted subject.

Someday, medical and physical fitness practitioners may be required to take yoga classes to get certified. And that POV would help our longevity and prevention as a whole. We would focus more on building up isolated muscles and joints that protect our aging human bones.

But that’s just my early yoga trend predictions based on 15 years of observation.

Our culture is becoming more science research and healthy knowledgeable on extending life, but that hasn’t exactly caught up in our Western world ways yet.

As we do more yoga, we will gain deeper knowledge that will empower us to stretch the core mind and body to greater depths. We live in times like no other, and nothing is impossible.

Timeless Yoga Side Benefits

And Yoga has always been a personal journey and adjusting to your body. That’s timeless and traditional.

Traditional yoga has always been about building strength, flexibility, and balance at the core.

We still use the same tools: our bodies and a mat. And the same timeless props as when I started: a strap, blocks, a blanket and a bolster.

I like the simplicity. Our bodies are the complicated piece.

And application for our bodies’ needs is where we can make the deepest impact to our personal lives.

You can use blocks for additional development in core and arm muscle strength. You can use two blocks to do dips. Blocks are like human lego blocks. There are unlimited yoga block poses for beginners.

Blocks and yoga are tools for everyday health. And these are 3 evolved yoga side benefits today where you can bridge timeless traditional yoga benefits:

1.Yoga for personal empowerment

Strength can be in Chaturanga as a bicep push up move which is great for men and women to build tone in the biceps.

I did daily push ups and saw no muscle tone gain. But holding a Chaturanga, lowering and rocking back and forth on the mat got me back to feeling arm strong and empowered (while my muscle looked more svelte, in case you’re worried you’ll build Popeye arms that won’t happen for women!). You can also build Chaturanga into your Vinyasa yoga flow.

In building personal strength, yoga can help you feel challenged and renewed. You can feel successful when you reach new heights like in a Crane Pose, or feeling stealthy (strong and wealthy 😉) like when you get closer to the floor in a Lunging Lizard Pose, and you then remove the block and crouch down lower. This reminds me of a crouching tiger pose in the wild. 🐯

And if yoga is new to you, it’s like crunching smaller into a ball to fit in a tight space, but you’re actually doing stretching good to your body that’s unraveling beyond limits. 🧶

You can do this with a simple seated stretch forward to reach your toes. As you try longer, you will stretch further. And as you do it more often you’ll find your flexibility improves.

So yoga empowers you to do better and challenge yourself at your own pace.

You feel accomplished, and gaining confidence with each move and that helps your body and mind. And your strength transcends into your balance poses where you can hold the poses longer, and this slows us down in our needed busy lives.

2. Yoga for disconnecting

Yoga is a great practice to purposefully disconnect from technology attached to our hip. No devices belong on your mat. It’s a no device zone. 😊

A few short years ago, we learned a new way of working: WFH 2020 (or smart work as some countries call it). Today or sometime this week, maybe sit on your yoga mat and meditate on what you gained over the past few years. It’s smart to process what you learned about yourself.

Most of us were and are on our devices just a little too much. And 80/20 was skewed toward digital, especially in 2020. We all had our reasons whether it was social media connection, doing work, or digital escape. Some of us took vacations online. And we took our phones to sleep that never slept.

But when you’re on your yoga mat, you should have the intention to disconnect. Get off the grid. If you attend classes, you leave them in your car or lockers. Because a vibrating phone in a class would be a faux pas. That’s a good reminder to stay disconnected.

That yoga time block is your appointment to connect with yourself, the Universe, and your body-mind. You gain physical health yoga side benefits as you feel and listen to your body’s kinks and tightness. And when you come out, you feel renewed and refreshed.

3. Yoga Therapy for Change In Us So We Can Better Change The World

We go into yoga with an intention to come out with a personal growth change, being taller and wiser. These days with the generation swap in younger teachers than when I started, most of us are familiar with mantras and now being intentional is just part of the yoga practice.

One intention can be we step up to embrace change. We start with ourselves and how we show up, and let that intersect with what gift our world needs from us.

We can learn more about who we are and are becoming, so we can step into our awareness and make life impact sooner. And sometimes that comes out as a transformative identity like as a butterfly from our formative caterpillar years. 🦋

Late bloomers and those who seek personal growth often look forward to the benefits that comes with irreversible change. And with the yoga side benefits that could be an intention.

Diverse Yoga Side Benefits and Moves

When I started out in yoga, the world was so diverse. And these days, it’s less of a melting pot. Everywhere metropolitan you go, we all have our devices.

America used to be so different than our mothership UK. We were worlds apart in culture.

But today, it’s globally aligned in ways such as food.

UK and its big city London was about fish and chips and pub food. And now it’s a global food haven with many diverse ingredient influences.

But it had to grow into that identity. And these days, it’s funny to watch The Great British Baking Show use popular in America movie references for openers. It’s not dry humor, it’s just humor. For Cake Week, this is my version of cake celebration.

While I’m waiting on the oven, I’m on my mat.

I’m step hopping or hinging forward. I windmill my arms, and heel-to-toe move across the mat until the timer goes off. ⏲️

And this is something you can do in the short minutes you get a break!

Hatha yoga is a great way to start especially for balanced moves if you’re a beginner. You learn new poses and incorporate the sun and the moon in your morning or sunset yoga.

Namaste Dei

Enjoy your autumn and with climate change, you can can enjoy a cold beet cauliflower soup… and maybe a warm soup too!

Beet Cauliflower Soup

Course lunch

Cuisine American

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

beets
cauliflower
cumin
turmeric (optional)

Instructions

Puree beets and cauliflower cooked and soft.
Add cumin spice.
Add turmeric (optional).

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5 Best Vata Season Tips to Love This Autumn

Almond Whoopie Pies

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

2 Egg whites
1/4 cup fine almond flour
Pandan
Pistachios (optional)
monkfruit sugar or white sugar
Greek yogurt (for filling)

Instructions

Whip up meringues with egg whites and add monkfruit sugar or sugar, almond flour, and Pandan.
Bake on 300°F for 12 minutes. Do not overbake. Tip: flip tops over to bottom if edges begin to brown and use top shelf of oven.
Let cool. Make top and bottom sandwiches with Greek yogurt and decorate with pistachios (optional).

transitioning into vata season with pandan yogurt cakey whoopie pies. — These healthy frog green Pandan Whoopie Pies are decadent sandwiched with Greek yogurt, white chocolate, almond flour and pistachios and in celebration of Cake Week of The Great British Baking Show. I’ve added a healthy (but tasty) vertical cake to my list of baking projects! 🍥 Proof that pandan has grown into the modern, Western baking world. 😊

And below, I have some tips on how you can evolve and make the most of your Vata season with autumn mind-body balance tips.

We know we’ve hit a naturally changing season when daylight savings time hits and we fall back in time (and then give back an hour in spring forward).

But before these time clock changes, our healthy bodies naturally start to transition into the upcoming season. And our daily preferences change much sooner. Mostly because the stores and media around us have started their promotions on the first weekend before the new season starts.

And when we are ready, we get ourselves ready for a new season…

We change up our home candles, spices, and teas. And we opt for warm drinks over cold drinks. We also like burnt, spicier shades of browns, reds, and oranges compared to the bright whites and colors of summer.

We subtly shift from light caramel lattes to pumpkin spices. And we feel it in the sea air in the last days of summer.

And for Vata bodies (maybe that’s your dominant dosha), the mind-body can feel most balanced during the Vata season. And for any of us we want to lean into this season. And there are easy changes to help our Vata balance.

Vata Season – Surroundings Change

We lean into Vata season with a change in home décor that can cost nothing like bringing in pine cones or adding a splash of color inspired by the changing of the trees and leaves outside.

I like to pull out different cornucopia color coffee table books or magazines (…remember those?) that have the colors I’m looking for.

So it doesn’t have to cost much of anything except bringing out your creativity and the resources around you. That can help you get closer to your inner child when in those days that’s how everyday was when you wanted to do more.

And maybe that includes rearranging books and decor on bookshelves, and creating new table centerpieces. Some people like to change up their bedroom or wall colors too.

And maybe you have a second getaway place you call home like a cabin retreat, that can be very nourishing as you move away from the summer beachy vibes.

You can look at your new surroundings and inspiration, and feel warm and cozy inside, like you get from a crackling lit fireplace, but it’s still too warm outside for that!

5 Vata Season Body Shifts

1. Warm

In Vata season, we start preferring the warm drinks, but not the hot ones. We prefer warm drinks to start the day, and that gives our soul a small boost to enter the day with optimism.

In the shower, we may feel very relaxed with the therapeutic water pitter patter comfort of warmer water drops, but your skin could still be screaming for cooler jet streams because it’s still hot outside (and you’re part Pitta!).

2.Dry

Vata bodies also shift into their natural dry, wind-like features. Maybe your lips, lizard dry feet, or another part of your body feels the transitioning effects. Even though you may have felt the dry effects during the heated summer that’s another cause.

And Vata season, all around us we see proof as nature is withering into the season.

3. Tastes and smells

And we have certain flavors that we go to that give us seasonal joy. A good reminder for us is when we already know our preferences in food, tea, drinks, and spices. Because we can reach for those with little extra decision effort and maybe they’re on hand already.

But for a Vata who prefers variety and the preferences change daily, cinnamon and ginger does not. And those are good to lean into during Vata season.

Also, orange scented candles as in orange fruits, but could be orange color too. There are so many options in candles these days that I have to specify. 😊 Because pure orange citrus calms the nerves and that helps with Vatas who are feeling naturally anxious in their body when triggered, unlike Pittas and Kaphas who don’t understand.

4. Colors

The changing fall leaves help to inspire fall colors. Out in California where I have family and friends, to me it never feels like fall because the lack of deciduous trees with shedding leaves.

And I always feel “off” like something inside is missing even if I’m only there for a short visit and seeing the lovely evergreen palm trees and coastal vibes.

And my body calls for the changing landscapes of parks and cooler temperature vineyards.

5. Activities

Fall is a great transitional period to start a physical routine again like hiking, pickleball, or YOGA. That’s my favorite.

I’m back in classes and I’m gonna share with you my lessons old and new in the coming few weeks! It’s an anniversary for me as I started going to Hatha yoga classes regularly in the Vata season after I had my Ayurvedic epiphany. 🧘🏻‍♀️

And even if you’ve just left the happy-go-lucky and vacation summer days, and headed back to busy fall, find time to get your alone time in yoga or meditation wherever suits you best.

That will help you ease into the season, and ground and round out the rest of the year. And gear up for holiday time and a new year that’s getting closer.

And finally…

Get An Vata Season Empowered Reset

The change in season gives us a reason to reset.

We don’t really need a reason because every day is a new start, but a new season like Vata season is a good reminder.

So we can a start new project, have new goals, and a way to remember the same season last year.

Our body cells don’t forget. I learned this experientially in a yoga class when years ago I took a break and my muscles remembered.

And you can consciously activate your brain cells by going down memory lane.

What were you doing this same time last year? I’m sure there are areas that were 180 degrees in another direction when you check.

Maybe you moved or something in your work or relationship changed. You’ve made great strides, so you should pat yourself on the back for all your soft and recognized accomplishments.

You empower yourself with healthy thoughts.

Photos, journal entries, and other personal external things can conjure up happy memories and thoughts that bring nostalgia and joy as you go through the transition of the season.

Make some new routines. Maybe some end-of-year goals. Now is a good time so you can make impact on this year’s progress. Just a thought. 💭

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Restore Body Balance For Longevity

Restore body balance is the way to live a calm, more joyful, and less stressful daily life, while boosting longevity.

restore body balance

Over the past few decades, American culture is becoming more exposed and open to mind-body connection healthy revelations, where we know that our thoughts and mental health affect our bodies and physical health through the mind-body connection.

And that was the premise of the second part of this balance series and what I’m all about as a life balance seeker.

And, the reason why I’ve kept stress under control (and you should too!)… at least after the first 30 years when I started on this health-saving quest.

This has been a high priority for me ever since and I doubt I’m ever going back. I never say never because life is unpredictable, but when you’ve got a taste of the better life, why would you go backward in awareness?

…And I’m sure that’s how you feel.

In earlier years, I didn’t have the means for lower stress wisdom. I wasn’t ready and it probably would’ve hurt me, as I wouldn’t have stretched myself in work as much.

Plus, when you’ve suffered accumulated stress, then you know that you don’t want that life in your second and future acts. Your younger years are the best times to test out “what you don’t want” so life gets better and you grow.

When you’re younger, you’re more resilient and energetic. It’s a good time to develop habits that make you more adaptable and flexible.

And then you can look back and say, “I’m sooo glad I don’t have to do that again”!

And maybe that’s what you needed as encouragement to keep growing your mind-body balance in your life today and EVERY day moving forward.

Internal balance is not all about the better situations, like having work-life balance.

It’s influenced by how we process the situation and find new grounds like gratitude and attitude. Daily, we can choose to see something that appears negative to us (and our ego) and flip it into a positive like what we’re experiencing is needed to get us to where we want to go.

And when we get into the habit of doing this in the small life things like daily interrupts, then we get to feel more joy in this life and our energy comes across to others as approachable.

What people actually think about you (and don’t say to you) in all the important roles you play is one life success measurement that is underrated and often overlooked.

What you are trying to become can backfire if not careful (and I’m sure you’ve seen many examples of people saying they want to be more ____ and end up doing the opposite).

…So much of what happens is based on people’s subconscious reactions in the moment. And the only people you can control is you and your reactions!

So, flipping your script from what your subconscious ego wants to serve up daily as prickly and unattractive personality points is going to be one habit change that leads to your personal success.

At anytime, you can simply walk away from your moody self (and that’s healthy!) and reject the associated thoughts. That empowerment is 100% in your control.

…And you’re wise to do so, because when your mind takes on negative thoughts, then your body feels the effects from immediate feelings that get transferred in the mind-body connection. And over time, they often show up as delayed response symptoms on or in the body.

Body Imbalances

These unwanted body imbalances “show up” as events that often need to be prioritized and take you away from your busy, planned life. You take work effort to nurse yourself in the areas that need attention or take time out to see a doctor so that you get back to normal.

But the opposite is snowball-building body stressor events that lead to chronic inflammations and common diseases. And as mortals, heart-related (CVD) is still in the #1 spot (and in the top 5 list of mortality causes).

A quick, easy scan to know if you’re increasing your chances for body symptoms and illnesses is if you’re accumulating anxiety, anger, or depression. These are the extremes of Vata, Pitta, and Kapha doshas.

And if you have a natural mind-body accumulation for any one of those ways that align with your primary dosha body type, then you increase your chance of being in the hurricane-eye of accumulating body issues.

…So that’s especially why you want to pay attention to your body cues, prevent, and know your Vata, Pitta, and Kapha imbalances. And where we know most are life situation or lifestyle created.

And being conscious of this is a good thing because that means you can make changes that over time make an impact on your body.

Early on, I learned that if you’re sick or not physically well, you’re not helping anyone. And that thought stuck with me. Making impact in this world requires us to be healthy.

Restore Body Balance

Most of us want to restore body balance first (over mind body balance or mind-body connection balance that’s deeper to penetrate). One way to restore body balance is yoga, if you have a tightness.

You can restore your body symptoms and that can be healthy for your mind too as the mind-body and body-mind connection is bi-directional.

When you work to restore your body balance, you focus on doing everything you can to take care of your body so it gets well, and you gain new and better healthy knowledge.

And one piece of knowledge today that’s helpful is measuring body mass index (BMI). It’s still one of the medical relied-upon predictor tools to help determine body health outcomes.

BMI doesn’t measure a stress-free, joyful, purpose, relationship-filled life that contributes to longevity healthy outcomes, but it’s something we can impact and change.

We don’t have a say in our genetics, but we do decide how we take care of our bodies in our environment. We are empowered with lifestyle choices, even if we’re not living our dream life yet.

We can take daily small steps and make quality choices, like in moving daily and choosing quality calories. We know apple calories are more nutritious than cake calories. So balancing our nutritious food choices is in our control.

The point is, we don’t need to see signs of inflammation to know that we are making better or not-so-good choices. We don’t need to test how far our body limits are.

We want to show our bodies love as showing up for us rain or shine… so we can do what we want everyday.

And this love includes knowing that naturally our bodies are deteriorating slowly as we age and as we are exposed to daily pollutants. So better calories are feeding our compost growth, and not the gut weeds that can exponentially grow and leave a jungle path in our intestines.

When we adopt the healthy ways, we love ourselves and that adds a new happy to our lives. And we can show up to the world as our BEST selves that everyone on a similar mission is working toward.

We’re our best advocates. And that lets us live a more enriched life where we get to do more.

Restore Body Balance Healthy Lifestyle Leads to An Easier Life

And this makes our lives easier…

Like, when you eat the quality calories as your healthy habit, something great happens… you no longer have the same taste for the empty-quality calories that go down great, but leave you feeling and looking more full.

Similar to new habits, this takes a few weeks or longer for your body’s getting used to. But if you seesaw back and forth between old and new ways, you’ll not give the healthy way a real chance.

Healthy Mind For Body

To help your body out, start with the mind. If you want to be healthy eating, you want to tell your mind something that will choose the healthier option, especially in the beginning.

And when you do have a bite of the not-so-healthy, that’s okay too. Be okay with that. And actually DO that once a week, so you don’t cycle back to your old ways. That’s healthy wisdom. We’re not meant to be like sloths or koalas that eat leaves.

And every day, just keep on going without beating yourself up or going overboard because you didn’t meet an arbitrary goal.

Your healthy mind will show up on your body if you keep aiming for the healthy.

And eventually over time, the healthy will be your desired choice in every fiber of your being. And one day, fiber foods you didn’t consider before, will be something you reach for.

And I can use the analogy of intermittent fasting as something I do not do for losing weight reasons, but that would be my go-to if that was a goal.

Final Thoughts to Restore Your Body

Restore your body is like restoring your computer in many ways. Sometimes something breaks, like a part that needs to be put back together.

Body parts are resilient but when something breaks, then the area is fragile and open to damage. And that’s why physical therapy is so needed for sports injuries and the like.

And for disease-related problems, it’s the same. Once your body has a weakness, the wound is open and subsceptible to repeat chronic episodes.

If you look at football quarterbacks and how much they have to endure every play, they’ve made a career out of weekly restoration. They know how to bounce back with helpers trained to help them heal faster and to prevent injuries.

And they’re more appreciative to their bodies and how they perform like daily machines. We need that sometimes when we get used to something that we miss.

We need to see what we miss from a new perspective.

Prevention is the #1 defense. And that’s why having a healthy lifestyle is so important. 🌱

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Balanced Mind Questions For Better Outcomes

personalized mind body recipe to help get answers to balanced mind questions — Get better mind body answers with a recipe from an online personalized assessment.

Your mind life is the second part of this mind-body series that I started last week… and below are some balanced mind questions to ask yourself if you want to:

✅ Live your best abundant, joyful, and empowered life

✅ Get out of your rut patterns in life

✅ Restore and feel your peace and calm

And in calm and joy, the mind is where good moods start. And then in contast, where discouraging moods like unrest or boredom kick in. Rarely, are we in neutral-mind mode. Like, dogs who have this natural built-in feature. 🐶

As a higher-thinking creature, you want to start your day not believing everything that enters your mind so you can better influence your moods and feelings. This was a strange concept for me early on as we’re not taught this in school or growing up. …and maybe for you too?

And if so… don’t worry, you’re in good company. Most of us start out that way and you have a chance to keep growing especially if you keep the below beliefs and open attitudes in mind.

Balanced Mind – Question Your Feelings

Challenging your thoughts is a healthy habit.

An easy way to gauge your thoughts is observing how you feel from your thoughts. Is it a negative feeling-thought that you’re holding onto? Do you feel icky from the thought of the thought, and does the thought unpleasantly linger longer than needed when you’ve already moved on?

…Or, is it a positive feeling and thought where you want to hold onto the nice memory, new thought, or dream about the future?

Does the thought bring you warm fuzzy feelings and make you happy?

…Or is it a neutral thought like when you’re in work mode, busy, or just focused on the task at hand?

Determining whether it’s a neutral, good, or bad feeling is an easy first step. And these are some feeling thought types from balanced mind questions you can ask yourself.

Do you have?:

Calm vs. worry thoughts

Peace vs. angry or irritated thoughts

Encouraging or exciting vs. withdrawn, listless, or repetitive thoughts

If thoughts are repetitive or disruptive to your day or longer, then you want to do a little detective mind work to discover where it may have come from and then end the mind drama with distraction.

Is there something you can gain or learn from this thought episode that may have shown up as a slightly different situation the last time?

…Because the sooner you figure that out in present awareness, the sooner you get to live our your optimal thought life. You’re free from mind imprisonment and you know what to do again.

Next time you connect the dots of your thoughts and life, that’s victory because then you can do something better with the thoughts… like tell it to take a hike or rewrite the thought to an aspired one that could become your dream life one day in self-fulfilling prophecy.

The opposite would be letting the ego have its way. Sadly, most of us live that way for some parts of life when we’re not fully aware.

And had I not lived that way before I was aware, I would’ve not clearly been able to see the other side. 🌈

The ego affects your feelings (and vice versa). The problem is that when the ego is stroked, it can run your thought life (or ruin parts of life leaving a regretful backlash).

The ego in your mind is like a clock in that it’s running all the time. Even if you want to shut if off, you can’t.

It’s job is to try to protect you, but in the modern world we don’t need most of its protective ways. It pulls information gathered from your past and in the present, tries to protect you from getting hurt. Doesn’t sound bad, right?

…Well, except its methods are deceivingly destructive. The ego ticks in a very twisted way, and can lead you into prideful ways or unconsciously hurting people in its wake.

You want to feel better, but not at the cost of others or yourself.

And if you want to live an abundant life through your better thoughts, then in most daily situations you want to disconnect the invisible-to-the-eye ego cord.

And if it involves people, pause and override your first reaction. Then move onto your higher intellect and power within you to trust people when they’ve earned a bit of trust.

No one is perfect, but if someone shows up consistently 90% of the time and doesn’t deliberately or intentionally take action to hurt you in some way, then your ego is wronging you by putting up a defense for this person or all people.

The ego loudly tries to influence you by reminding you to stay away from all people that do ___ or have ___ traits in certain situations.

This creates divide and me vs. you. The opposite of love.

And btw, this power struggle is what happens to unaware couples in long-term relationships where the ego in them takes over one or both of them in a few short months or sometimes years.

The effect is: you don’t recognize the person you’re staring at based on what comes out of their mouth (and what’s going on behind the face with their ego mind running their show).

So, how do you become more ego aware?

You unmask the ego and make it naked in awareness. You remove the feelings attached and you observe your thoughts. And you ask balanced mind questions.

Do a thought inventory check. Start objectively with openly asking yourself: how much of your life is ruled by ego?

Take a guess… is it 20% of your day or 80% or more of your day?

To get a better answer to balanced mind questions, do any of these describe your daily thoughts?

__ your initial entering thoughts make up most your daily small and/or larger decisions

__you have obsessive or repetitive thoughts that take up a good chunk of your day

__your thoughts go down rabbit holes and sometimes may even have unfactual endings attached that are NOT based in what’s happening in reality

Any of those descriptions could easily put you in the 80% or more category. And that’s common, so you’re not alone.

AND you can change this in you.

The solution is simple: if you want better results, then remember to frequently change your thoughts.

Staying closed minded and far away from present-moment mindfulness are some of ego’s biggest defense tricks. So keep questioning if you have balanced mind thoughts or need some tweaking love in some areas.

It’s not always easy to do if you’ve never practiced or stretched your thought mind muscles. Once you’re aware, it’s a LOT easier. And to give a nudge encouragement, just know it’s not about being a deep thinker.

It IS about getting happy, free, and the best abundant life you can have.

Just something to consider as you rewrite your habits and daily thoughts. I’m cheering you on. 🤗

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