Three Easy Tricks to Get Out of a Rut

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Thursday, January 28, 2010

Thank you Helen.

I touched on aspects of these emotional transformation tricks in a post last month on managing holiday stress. If I only I could remember to put them into practice more often! Nudged to reconsider these today when I was stuck in a rut, I once again marveled at how instantaneous they were in shifting my state of being. I went from feeling irritated, frustrated and focused on what wasn’t happening in my life to feeling alive, inspired and focused on what I can do next to grow as a person, to be fully expressed, and to provide value to my family and my community. Within minutes! Knowing how well it can work for me, I’m now inspired to guide my 3 year-old in trying these out when she gets emotionally stuck.  I can remind her of how she felt in this picture when her arms were outstretched in pure, unfettered bliss. 

1)  Change your physiology. When you’re pissed off at life, how does it feel in your body?  What do your shoulders do?  How do you breathe?  What happens to your forehead, your mouth, your jaw….?  Now think about your physical state when you’re feeling your favorite emotion.  My favorite emotional state is a combination of inspired and secure.  When I feel this way, I feel energetic, powerful, open, and tapped into Life.  My chest is open versus hunched, my face is bright and content versus scrunched or clenched and my breathing comes easy.

To find the emotional state that matches the physical state, start with the latter.  Stretch.  Walk outside.  Dance.  Practice Yoga. Check out this great article from Fit Yoga Magazine posted in Yoga in Tribeca on how to impact the way you think and feel and create through direct manipulation of the body.

2)  Check in on your focus and your beliefs in that moment. This morning my rut was around focusing my mind and perception on “everything taking so long”. Putting my focus there, I was energetically blocking anything else from happening and ultimately inhibiting any number of miracles that can happen every day.

3) Change the question.  If you hear any version of “What’s wrong with me?” or  “Why can’t I figure this out?” in your head, get conscious of it, recognize that no valuable answer comes from a negatively oriented question, and try asking a different set of questions like:

• “What’s next?”
• “How can we have fun?”
• “What am I grateful for right now?”
• “What am I willing to do to create a new reality?”
• “How can we make this an amazing adventure?”
• “What is perfect about this moment?”
• “What am I learning?”

Posted in AP & Self Care | 2 Comments

The Power of Intention

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Sunday, January 24, 2010

Our brilliant and amazing friend, Helen Attridge, has played a powerfully supportive role in our lives including marrying us in Austin almost five years ago. My how life has changed! 🙂

She’s a talented coach who shares all kinds of great tools for creating a life you love.  Here’s an easy meditative journaling exercise she adapted from the 15 minute miracle that you can do at the beginning of each day. In the past, I’ve done variations of this, including expressing gratitude at different times during the day for something I seek before it happens as if it already has.  This week, I’m all about expressing appreciation for my family’s health and practicing patience for this becoming so.

Today________is a new day for me to enjoy. I am free to choose my thoughts and in choosing my thoughts , I can choose what I attract and create in my life.

Today my intention is_____________________________________________________________

1) Give gratitude for the blessings you already have in your life. (Research shows that just 3 minutes a day spent in gratitude impacts the immune system for 6-8 hours.   Example:  I am so grateful for my health that allows me to enjoy my friends, my children.

2) What is a positive emotional state that you love to feel?  (grateful, inspired, passionate, secure)

I love it when I feel___________. When I feel this way I__________________which makes it easier for me to________________.

3)  Play wildly in your imagination and picture yourself living the life of your dreams — a life you would love to wake up to. Write about it as if it were already so.

4) Re-read #3.  Close your eyes and visualize yourself living this life, notice how it feels in your body and write down a description of the sensation.

5) Invite assistance from  your Higher Power. This may be spiritually based for you or may be a relative or friend you cared for who has passed away, a strong connection you have with nature, or other guides you check in with.

Dear______, thank you for your guidance, love and ongoing support. If it is in my highest good and supports my well being and my path and the path of others, please divinely orchestrate the following in just the perfect time. Examples:  Give me the strength to…….inspire me to……..guide me to……….help me to………

6) I am now ready to release any beliefs, patterns or behaviors (eg. self doubt, need to control, sabotaging myself), plus all other issues known and unknown that are preventing me from living my best life now. This act of releasing enables me to_______________.

7) Ask your wise self for advice or guidance.  Dear__________, please make it easier for me to move forward in my life by providing wise advice on the following question:_____________________________________.

Write down answers that you receive.

With enormous gratitude I now agree to __________ these and even greater gifts in just perfect time in wonderful ways that bless and benefit me and others.

Signed_____________________

Date______________________

Posted in AP & Self Care | 1 Comment

Recharging & Fortifying Depleted Mama

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Wednesday, January 20, 2010

“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.”  Buddha

I fear this is going to come out sounding ridiculously trite and cliche, and I’m saying it anyway.  Health is everything! And like anything in life that we love, it’s so damn easy to take for granted until you don’t have it.  This last round of sick for everyone in the family has me bound and determined to make health our #1 priority.

We’ve been committed to eating mostly vegan (we still eat eggs, fish and butter), and to minimizing our consumption of fried and processed food and refined sugar.  Fans and friends of Rip Esselstyn who convinced us to change our diet six years ago, we believe diet is the #1 foundation for both short-term and long-term health. Check out his Engine 2 Diet web site.  The name comes from his fire station in Austin — all vegan firefighters, thanks to Rip’s influence.

Sleep and regular exercise come next of course — the first of which must remain in its current “lack” state in order for me to stay committed to attachment parenting in the way I’d like.  The second, I have the ability to get on top of and will when we’re all past feeling so crummy.

What I can do is follow what I’m calling the Recharge & Fortify Mama Plan.  It’s a combination of prescriptions from my naturopath and a diet recommendation from my friend, Patrice Sullivan, the most amazing healer and acupuncturist I know.  These women, among others, became concerned when seeing me last  fall following my year of mothering a newborn, toddler and teen, and told me I was extremely depleted and needed to get on top of my health immediately.

I’m doing my best and find it challenging to keep up with everything they’ve suggested while taking care of two small children.  I’m on top of the supplements for the most part and am eating this way 80% of the time — just not juicing yet. Here is everything suggested to me:

DIET

Morning:  tea, red clover in tincture for hour or two.  When hungry, fresh juice: veggies plus apple and lemon with 2 tsp spirulina, 1 tsp maca.  Next, miso soup with 1/2 tsp bee pollen, more tea or diluted jar juice. Smoothies fine on a warm day.  Chew juice/smoothies to activate better digestion.

Lunch: vegan meal: combination of beans/legumes, rice, kale, and veggies is ideal; salad with sprouts and seaweeds.  You can make a “pressed” salad while you juice in the am. Mix 1 tbsp goat yogurt and 1 tsp fresh lemon into salad and put a heavy bowl on top to press.  Pressing has the effect of “cooking” the vegetables in the sense of making them more digestible, but preserves the active living enzymes.

Dinner:  80% veggies.  Some almonds, egg or legumes if you feel like it.  Sprouts and seaweed are good too.

* Note:  use soaked beans versus canned, and soaked, raw almonds.

Bed Time: goat yogurt with minerals.

SUPPLEMENTS & HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES  (Am I keeping up with this?  Not entirely…..but I do my best)

Posted in AP & Self Care, Nutrition | No Comments

Creating Family Wellness – Our Path to Closer to Fine

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Monday, January 18, 2010

I feel like I’m living some variation of the old “Closer to Fine” Indigo Girls lyrics. I loved this song when I was an undergrad; it was the perfect lyrical representation of my state of mind in college.  Now, twenty years later, I’m living a very different life as a mother of two small children, and oddly enough — I’m still looking for answers.  The questions have just changed a bit as I’ve gotten older. My current quest is getting my family well — especially my youngest daughter who has been mostly unwell since she was born. I feel like we’ve tried everything, and yet I know there’s more to discover on the spiritual realm that could help her.  My current “Closer to Fine” lyrics as they relate to my baby Izaroo:

We went to the naturopath; we got cranio-sacral therapy; we looked to the psychic; we tried aromatherapy. There’s more than one answer to our questions, pointing us in a crooked line.

Honestly, I’ve hit a wall with all that we have tried and I now realize it’s time for me to dig into the energetic, subconscious lack-of-ease within me that may be contributing to my highly sensitive baby’s chronic physical manifestation of dis-ease.

“A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.”  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

For the sake of my health and the health of my family, I’m going to attempt to keep my post short tonight so I can rest. We’ll see how that goes. I say that every night I’ve committed to write and generally stay up way too late out of sheer determination to finish.

Izzy is particularly sensitive and I’ve known this since before she was born. I just didn’t know exactly how it would manifest, and I didn’t predict (who can?) that she would be sick more often than not for the first 15 months of her life. I also didn’t realize until now just how critical my own well-being — which I realize is way beyond the physical — is for hers.

I generally trace the challenges and potential “trauma” of her life that may have contributed to her ongoing physical challenges to my pregnancy. While pregnant with her I experienced some intense grief with two deaths. The first was a child of someone I grew up with who died in an accident and the second was my dog Hazel, who was a sweet companion to me for many years prior to meeting my husband.  Also, when I was seven months pregnant, I fell down our stairs while carrying our then 2 year-old and was pretty freaked out by the whole experience.

Then, came her intense entry into the world. A home VBAC where she went into distress after transition and my midwives calmly told me I had to get my baby out within the next 5 minutes or we would have to transport to the hospital immediately. Her entry into the world:  me screaming through the final pushes and an episiotomy;   immediate skin-to-skin time together and nursing (thank God for that sweetness) and then the midwives determining she needed a tube down her throat to clear the passage and help her breathe.

She had difficulty breathing most of her first few months which led me to sleep holding her to my chest while sitting in a chair so that she could be upright.  She also had basic reflux symptoms though I never wanted to call it that at the time.  I took her to a naturopath to get tested for food sensitivities and completely altered my diet for 3 months to try and help her. No dairy, no nuts, no eggs, no soy, no wheat, no citris……but I held onto a few simple pleasures and wish that I hadn’t as it might have helped her more:  the occasional glass of wine and chocolate. I knew better.

Two cranio-sacral therapy sessions altered her life and she experienced her healthiest little chapter from about 3 or 4 months to 8 months, though she still didn’t sleep worth a damn.  buy cialis doctor online garde,century gothic,comic sans ms,times,times new roman,serif;”>The chronic colds began after that. She had a month reprieve after some intense aromatherapy sessions, but ultimately she’s been sick more often than not since then and she’s almost 16 months now.

I think her nose has been congested or runny most days since Thanksgiving.  I’m not kidding. The past week or so, her nose hasn’t stopped running; she’s had difficulty breathing at night; she’s coughing quite a bit and is ultimately pretty miserable.  We’re currently embarking on a 2 fold wellness plan.  One, dosing her up with homeopathic remedies as prescribed by our Naturopath and staying clear of Baby Tylenol which we learned was suppressing her immune system; and Two, me taking responsibility for her health by digging into my state of wellness beyond the obvious.

The obvious:  get more sleep, exercise more consistently.

The not so obvious:  to be discovered after I finish reading “Zero Limits” by Joe Vitali.

Posted in AP & Self Care | 4 Comments

Applying “Say What You See” to Adult Relationships

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Last night I was fortunate to experience a very insightful workshop called “Communication in Relationships” led by our friend Chris Douglas — all from the comfort of our couch.  He offered practical wisdom on ways to engage more effectively with the primary adults in your life — your spouse, your friends, your co-workers, etc.  And I was able to take in just about all of it in between jogs upstairs to tend to my perpetually restless baby.  (Topic for another post….)

In the beginning of his presentation, Chris reminded us about about universal psychological and emotional human needs and how conflict arises when those needs are unmet. The top two needs on the list of many were: “to be accepted and loved” and “to be understood.”

It struck me having just finished reading Say What You See, that Chris may be teaching essentially the same concepts. Say What You See author, Sandra Blackard, coaches us to look for the unmet need of our children when they are behaving in a way that we don’t like, instead of judging or reacting in anger to their behavior.

In a very basic way, we’re no different than our little ones in feeling upset when our basic emotional needs are unmet. We’ve just been trained and socialized over the years to not fall on the floor, flail our bodies around, and scream or cry. We  have each developed our own home-grown patterns for responding to our perception of being rejected or wronged in some way.  In the case of our more intimate relationships, i.e. our spouses or partners, a common downward spiral challenge occurs when one person feels misjudged or misunderstood and cuts the other person off to defend himself or herself. (more…)

Posted in AP & Self Care, Respectful Communication | 4 Comments

Follow Me

 

• Blogs I Like...

  • Breastfeeding Moms Unite
  • Motherwear's Breastfeeding Blog
  • PhD in Parenting
  • Slow Family Living

Places to go


 

Add us to your site!