Creating magic in 2008
As we head towards 2008, now is a perfect time for you to start visualizing what you desire and want to create in the New Year. Placing your attention and intention on what your goals creates the action and magic that will bring them towards you with greater velocity.
Here is an exercise for you, and one I give to all my clients. I have broken down the areas of our lives into nine general categories:
1. Family and friends
2. Romance /partnerships/intimate relationships
3. Fun, recreation and creativity
4. Health and well-being
5. Money and wealth
6. Personal growth and life/style
7. Physical environments (home, office, etc.)
8. Career
9. Generosity/philanthropy/karma.
What I would like you to do is to think about each category and write down, as specifically as you can, what you want to achieve in each one in 2008. I want you to THINK BIG! If you wish, also put a date when you would like to achieve these goals so you can prioritize what you want to start playing toward first! In addition, keep this list close by during your year so you can keep focused . . . . and add anything else you’d like as the year goes on.
When you achieve something you desire and worked for, mark it completed on your sheet, write out (and send, where appropriate) gratitudes to anyone or anything that assisted in your achievement, and find a way to celebrate! In this way, you can actually use this exericse as a template for your year . . . and when the year is up, you can look back and see what you achieved!
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”
* Helen Keller *
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need a vacation?
January is a low-energy month, and combined with post-holiday fallout, many of us are exhausted! One great way to energize yourself, as well as create a plan for adventure in 2008, is to start planning a vacation. But not just a regular vacation -- how about a vacation of a lifetime? How about visiting a location that you've always dreamed about?
Need ideas? On a lunch hour, why not visit a bookstore and start digging through travel books? Or visit a travel agent. Or peruse travel sites online, office policy permitting! Websites to check out that cater to women include Gutsy Women Travel and Tango Diva. A written resource written by one of the founders of Tango Diva is Fly Solo: The Fifty Best Places on Earth For A Girl To Travel Alone (Penguin).
And to keep your eyes on the prize, why not load pictures of your destination as your screen saver and even put some around your office? It will infuse joy into your workday -- and isn't the anticipation delicious?
ROCK THE VOTE!
Voting is, in my opinion, one of the coolest and most important things any of us can do. Are you registered to vote? If not, it's super-easy to register. Just visit Rock the Vote and they will handle those details and you're set to go. Nothing could be easier!
And don't delay! It's important that you register NOW if you haven't yet, because, for example, the presidential primaries in New York are on February 5th, and your voter registration must be postmarked by today, January 11th. If you live elsewhere (the primaries are taking place in Washington DC on February 12, for example), you can find out the dates at the Rock The Vote website, too.
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feminine health in winter
At Laughing Sage Wellness, we’ve noticed that the winter season is particularly hard on women’s health. Women work hard to stay on top of career, community, and family--and try to maintain the same level of productivity throughout the day, month, and year. But maintaining those productivity levels in the winter takes a toll on our health because it works against the cyclical functioning of our bodies.
We have created the Attune 5-Day Food-Based Post-Holiday Detox to help you address the specific challenges facing your hormones after the madness of the holidays. All of that information is at the end of this article.
Check Your Chart
Women’s hormonal function is based on a complex and beautiful circle (not a straight line up the middle of a productivity chart!), connecting our minds and our bodies, in which different glands are more active at different times of the month.
When we ovulate, for example, the active hormones give our minds sharper focus and our bodies more energy to be outgoing and productive. When we menstruate, the active hormones give our minds better reflection and intuition skills and bring our bodies into a state of observation and rest.
When we understand the strengths of each part of our cycle, we can respect them and use them to our best advantage. When we work against our cyclic functioning, we quickly exhaust ourselves and set the stage for hormonal imbalances to arise.
The Weather Isn’t Just Outside
Women are attuned not just to their internal rhythms, but to the rhythm of weather and season. Looking at a whole year, the winter season corresponds to the menstruation phase of a woman’s monthly cycle—it’s a time of introspection. In warmer weather our energy is high, and we want to be outside having boisterous fun, but in the winter we crave more peace and quiet.
These are normal, healthy messages to receive from your body. Think of the sap pulled deep inside the bare trees, or the animals hibernating during the dark cold months. In the same way, our energy and focus turns inward during the winter. Winter is the time to rest, meditate, reflect, and nurture the seeds of new plans you want to execute in the spring and summer.
If you tend to work against the winter season because you don’t want it to interfere with your obligations—if you stay up late, take on extra tasks for other people, and book all your time with projects and responsibilities—you probably experience winter symptoms like colds and flus, intense cravings, weight gain, difficult periods, and seasonal depression. These health problems arise because your body feels stressed and needs you to slow down.
Fuel for the Fire
The heart of our work at Laughing Sage Wellness is the medicinal foods we recommend to heal specific hormonal imbalances. In addition to these individualized recommendations for each client, we also support our clients to eat seasonally as a way of tuning in to the cycles and rhythms of their female physiology.
Winter foods grow naturally in cold weather and/or are nutritionally beneficial to the body’s specific needs in the winter. These foods also have slightly contractive properties to help your body draw its energy down and in, creating internal warmth to support you through the winter. Likewise you should consume hot, well-cooked foods in the winter to warm your body—this is definitely the season to skip the salad!
Winter foods recommended by Laughing Sage Wellness include:
Grains: buckwheat
Beans: aduki, black, kidney, and pinto
Vegetables: sea vegetables;mushrooms;burdock, beets, and other root vegetables; hearty greens like kale and mustard greens
Nuts and Seeds: cranberries and blackberries; chestnuts and walnuts
Animal Foods: shellfish, duck, ham, pork, eggs (small quantities)
Seasonings: tamari and miso
Teas: bancha, kukicha, and other roasted teas
ATTUNE: Post Holiday Detox
Laughing Sage Wellness wants you to get your 2008 off to the best start possible for your health! We know how crazy the holidays can be for our bodies:
•the STRESS of too many events, parties, obligations, and shopping
•TOO MUCH sugar, alcohol and rich foods
•the TOLL of not exercising regularly and sleeping less
by the time new year's day rolls around, we can feel, bloated, sluggish, and worse!
This is why we are joining forces to bring you the very best in restoring you QUICKLY and SIMPLY back to health!
What if we told you that in FIVE DAYS ONLY:
• you would LOSE anywhere from 5-10 LBS
• you would ELIMINATE your addiction to sugar and junk
• you would DETOXIFY your liver from all the holiday drinking and rich foods
• you would know HOW TO EAT the RIGHT foods after the cleanse to stay on track
• you would have more VIBRANT SKIN, ENERGY and MOODS
Wouldn't that be a WORTHWHILE way to spend the first TEN DAYS of the new year?
IMAGINE how you would FEEL AFTER having created this NEW LEVEL of HEALTH in your body and how much more you would accomplish in other areas of your life!
Well, we KNOW how AMAZING this is going to be so let's get right to how it works:
Your detox starts with a shopping list of foods for ATTUNE - LSW's Post Holiday Detox - 5 days of the most amazing eating you will ever experience in your life – you’ll receive step by step meal plans that detoxify your liver, eliminate sugar cravings, rebalance your hormones, flush excess fluids from your tissues, and train the body to crave whole foods - and you'll wrap up the last day of your program with a 30 minute post cleanse assessment with LSW to make sure you have all that you need to stay on track!
After 5 days on this program, you will feel more alive, more energized and ready to take on the FUN GOALS you have created for your 2008.
Don't let your health stop you from making 2008 your most successful year- you deserve the best foundation possible!
The cost for this COMPREHENSIVE package is ONLY $170 and includes:
•a 5 day guide including shopping lists, meal plans, and recipes for the ATTUNE program from LSW
• access to LSW's online communities so you stay connected and receive daily support
•a 30 minute personalized post cleanse assessment with a counselor from LSW by phone
Contact us at info@laughingsagewellness.com with ATTUNE in the subject line and we'll get you all set up.
It is our privilege at Laughing Sage Wellness to help you launch yourself into achieving your dreams in 2008!
Your partner in health,
Alisa Vitti www.laughingsagewellness.com 212-581-0001 alisa@laughingsagewellness.com
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The possibilities that the New Year brings are endless! I love when one year tips us into the