Showing posts categorized: Soul
Saturday, 14 April 2012

Changes ahead

Well hello there! You may have noticed there has been a distinct lack of blogging happening from over here over the past few weeks! I missed you !

I have good reason I promise you. First we went on holiday over Easter to the lovely sunny Hawkes Bay, and then left the kids up there with their grandparents and came home so we could get work done. It is the school holidays, so organising childcare can be a bit tricky. When we got home, I  decided to use my time sans kiddies doing some good hard thinking about my blog, and upcoming health coaching business and where they are going.

I am a big believer on listening to your intuition on things like this, and my intuition has been telling me loud and clear that it was time to make a change.

What Ali Did Next has been my baby for a year now, and I have loved every minute of it, but I now also have my studies at the Institute For Integrative Nutrition, and my coaching business which will come from that. So after a lot of soul searching, and some great chatting with my gorgeous coach Kris Britton ………..I have decided to combine it all together. I have planned for a while to call my business Nourish, with a focus on helping women to learn to nourish their bodies, minds, and souls.

It will take me a while to make all the changes I need to make on the website – tech stuff is not my forte (Any experts out there do let me know!!) For now, I have the same domain name, but I am moving to Nourish Body Mind Soul when I can. If you are a fan on facebook you will see the new change in name there.

I really hope you come along with me for the journey, I am sooooo excited. I cant wait to share recipes for the Body, Mind AND soul with you.

Cheers

Ali

 

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Wednesday, 7 March 2012

Ease that morning chaos

A lovely part of my morning routine

No matter how hard I try, mornings always involve me barking instructions at my family along the lines of :

“Have you eaten your breakfast , brushed your teeth, got your lunch, made your bed, got dressed”
closely followed by a screech of:
“You have been getting ready for school every morning for 6 years, how can you possibly not know what to do next”.
This does not make me a bad mother, it makes me a real mother. What helps me to stay relatively calm during this morning chaos, and able to function once I get to work (yes believe it or not that was actually me being calm – it could have been a lot worse!) is my morning meditation.
I have a very simple routine that I practice every morning without fail, and I thought I would share it with you. It is a short mindfulness practice that helps me focus on the present moment when I wake up rather than immediately plotting and planning the day ahead.
I grab a hot drink, go and sit in a quiet space and follow these steps.
  • Sit wherever is most comfortable
  • Shut your eyes
  • Take a few deep breaths
  • Start to notice your physical sensations – your back against a chair, your bottom on the seat, maybe your ankles or legs touching, you might have a slight headache – just notice and name them mentally.
  • Start to listen for noises you may hear outside – a truck going past, a bird chirping, a garbage truck picking up a trash can, a car going past. Again as you hear the sound mentally note it to yourself.
  • Bring your attention inside the house and note what you can hear – someone talking, a radio going, the dog barking, kids arguing(!), note it mentally.
  • Try and bring your attention even closer and you may start to notice little sounds close to you – a clock ticking, a fly buzzing, sometimes you can even hear a slight ringing noise in the air.
  • Finally bring your attention internally to your breath going in and out of your body and notice that for a little while.
  •  Slowly open your eyes, stand up and have a big stretch, breathe deeply and smile
Throughout this whole practice your mind will try and wander off. That is just what minds do and it is completely normal. Try to not get upset about it, or latch onto whatever tangent you were heading off on, just gently bring yourself back to what you were listening too or feeling at the time.
There is no right or wrong way to meditate, and an incredible array of techniques, advice books, Cd’s and support for you if you are wanting to learn.  What I can say is that I have tried many forms of meditation, and right now a simple mindfulness practice is what suits me best. It is a lovely relaxing start to the day.
Give it a go for a week. 10 minutes a day, and see if it makes a difference to your day.
Go on.
Question: Have you tried Meditation?

 

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