Letting Go . . Again
Some years ago, I accompanied my husband on a business trip to The Cayman Islands, which are known for some of the best snorkeling in the world. He decided to teach me to snorkel by having me jump from a low wall into rough water wearing my snorkel gear. I began thrashing and almost drowned the two of us. We made it out of the water alive, and then noticed a group of beginner snorkelers swimming in a barrier reef that looked like a shallow pool.
That’s where I finally learned to breathe through that ridiculously narrow tube. I don’t do well when I am thrown in over my head. I like to wade in with my feet touching the bottom, if needed, at least at first. This makes it easier for me to let go of my fears.
Once I got the hang of it, my husband would wake up in the mornings, startled to see me standing beside his side of the bed with my snorkel gear ready to go. I had surrendered to the ocean.
That’s what I felt like when I was thrown into India last week. I again traveled with my husband for this adventure. This time for ayurvedic health purification treatments.
Even though this was my fourth trip to India, the accommodations were more third world than I expected. My room was without windows and had a broken air conditioner with no one available to fix it. The electricity went out every day at noon for a couple hours without any regard for the 100+ degree temperatures. And did I mention the roaches in my room, including one climbing out of my toothbrush?
I know it sounds strange to many people that I would even go to India for rejuvenation treatments,but it is the home of an ancient health treatment called panchakarma.
.
In the same breath, I might add that India is not for wimps, but it is a great place to burn off karma, stretch your boundaries and let go of limiting beliefs. In my clearer moments, I watched preconceived perceptions wash down the drain.
It’s a country of opposites — beggars, poverty, deeply spiritual citizens and holy people in the Himalayan mountains are quite common.
The scene outsidewas interesting — an empty lot filled with trash, that was burned on a daily basis, filling the air with choking smoke. Right next to the lot, was a small country club with a beautiful swimming pool filled with water, but no swimmers. Indian chants were blasting over a loudspeaker in the lovely park on the other side of the trash lot. The clinic is in a nice neighborhood, so there were no beggars on the streets, nor smoke from cow dung burning at night.
Their standards of cleanliness, however, are different than mine. I won’t even go into detail. Each day I would let go of my notions of what I needed to feel comfortable.
In each moment I had to die to my beliefs of cleanliness, of fine customer service, of being in control of my environment.
India was a gift that gave me practice allowing the death of my ego, the surrender of how things SHOULD be. The little deaths we go through when we fail, or find ourselves in deep water outside our comfort zone, create a more open-hearted, compassionate, enriching life.
For me, I find that coming up for air to find solid familiar space under my feet every once in awhile, supports the practice of letting go.
LETTING GO is a fast track to experiencing strength, growth and freedom. When we choose to try something different, we learn to stay flexible.
Grab change by the hand, maybe get a lifejacket, and swim.
What is your ‘India’? How have you learned to let go? I’d love to hear from you.
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Happy and Healthy Heart
In 1995 researchers started following 1,739 healthy adults living in Nova Scotia, Canada, for 10 years to determine whether attitudes affected their health.
Known heart disease risk factors were calculated, and still researchers found that the happiest people were 22% less likely to develop heart disease over the 10 years of follow-up than people who were in the middle of the negative-positive emotion scale. This study involved 14,916 person-years of observation.
People with the most negative emotions had the highest risk for heart disease and people who scored highest for happiness had the lowest risk.
On a NONscientific note, when we’re happy, we tend to use expressions describing our heart–such as ‘my heart is full of love’, ‘I’m open-hearted’, or she’s a ‘big-hearted’ person, or my ‘heart is overflowing’. It makes sense to me that the heart is closely linked to happiness.
The researchers are theorizing that if they could make people happier (‘increase positive affect‘), they could decrease cardiac risk in a larger part of the population. My personal experience over 18 years of helping people to be happier, shows that when we decrease the number of limiting beliefs we live by, we are free of the pain they create in our lives. The result is that we feel happier …and often healthier.
Additional research is needed, to prove (not just to suggest) that heart disease prevention may be helped by experiencing positive feelings as well as reducing symptoms of depression. The findings also do not prove that happiness protects the heart. This will require rigorous clinical trials. I don’t usually wait for scientists to tell me what I already suspect is true! One way that happiness may protect the heart is because many happy people eat and sleep better.
Do you have a healthy heart because you have more positive emotions? What do you think?
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
VITAMIN D, the SUNSHINE VITAMIN: It’s that time of year in the northern hemisphere when there is cloud cover about 70% of the time, and many people begin to feel dreary.
I started taking 5000 international units of vitamin D3 every day exactly one year ago in January 2009. I wrote the first of 4 posts about the amazing healing properties of Vitamin D3. My main purpose was to offset this feeling of gloom that I feel in the depth of winter.
After only one week, my mind became clearer and that clarity has lasted. I didn’t expect that result, nor did I figure I’d notice any changes that quickly. It was as though a light had been turned on. (more…)
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Welcome back to my blogs! I thought it was time to change and usher in the new year with a brand new name and address for my original ‘The Happiness Zone’ blog that I started in January 2007, now called Be Happy Life Coach.
I’m celebrating change and invite you to do the same in your life. As Johann Goethe wisely stated, ”We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden…”
So here’s my Top 10 Ways to Be Happy in 2010. I’d love to hear your top 10 of anything too…10 for 2010
1. Walk 10, 000 steps (5 miles) every week. Don’t worry that 10,000 steps are recommended every day. If I wait for that goal to be met, I won’t even try. I can always change the words, “every week” to “every day” later on. It is zero degrees in Iowa right now, so the treadmill is my friend, sort of.
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
I don’t usually write about nutrition, but the value of taking vitamin D seems so important to our health and well-being, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it again. You may read more about Vitamin D in my January 2009 original Vitamin D post and my second entry May 18.
In this article I’ll focus on Vitamin D and its ability to lower the risk of cancer.
More than 60 epidemiology studies conducted over the last 30 years have indicated that Vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increased risk of more than 16 different types of cancer.
According to research from the newly published study by Cedric F. Garland, Dr. P.H., FACE, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and Moores Cancer Center of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), “It is projected that raising the minimum year-around serum 25(OH)D level to 40-60 ng/ml (100-150 nmol/L) would prevent approximately 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer each year, and three quarters of deaths from these diseases, in the US and Canada.”
Most experts recommend getting blood tests to evaluate Vitamin D levels, and taking up to 2000-5000 IU of Vitamin D each day to help increase your levels. As I first mentioned in my January ‘09 post, I checked my Vitamin D level when I had lab work done for my annual cholesterol test. However, I had to ask my doctor to specifically request the test from the lab (they don’t automatically check your Vitamin D levels). If you’d like to test yourself and send to a lab, check out Track Your Plaque. Click on the menu in the left sidebar.
My Vitamin D level was 24ng/ml (the healthy therapeutic range is 50-65 ng/ml). After one week of taking 5000 IU per day, I felt clearer and happier, even though I wasn’t expecting to feel anything dramatic, and especially that soon, so it was not a placebo effect. My follow up appointment is scheduled at the end of summer.
There is now overwhelming evidence pointing to the fact that many of the 560,000 cancer deaths expected to occur this year could have been safely prevented with one simple lifestyle change – sun exposure.
If health officials would simply recommend that you get some sensible sun exposure, or supplement with oral vitamin D3 if you can’t get out into the sun, there could be major advances made in the fight against cancer.
One recent study also points out vitamin D’s potential in treating breast cancer; not just in preventing it. They found that calcitrol (the active form of vitamin D) can induce a tumor-suppressing protein that inhibits the growth of breast cancer cells specifically.
Calcification of blood vessels and other tissues is much more common with low intakes of vitamin D-3 than high intakes.
According to an article by Dr. Mercola, “it’s important to realize that even if you live in a perpetually sunny environment but work the entire week indoors and don’t make a conscious effort to go outside during the weekends you can, and probably will, become vitamin D deficient.It is simply not enough to walk from your car to work and home and expect to get enough sunshine to alter your vitamin D levels.
In order to reap any and all the benefits that vitamin D has to offer you need to make sure your levels are within the therapeutic range of 50-65 ng/ml.”
Dr. Mercola again stated in an article, “According to Dr. Heaney — whom I interviewed for my Inner Circle expert segment on the topic of sun exposure and melanoma, earlier this year — your body requires 4,000 IU’s daily just to maintain its current vitamin D level.” So in order to actually raise your levels, you’d have to increase either your exposure to sunshine, or supplement with oral vitamin D3.
Remember, if you chose to take an oral supplement it’s essential that you get your levels tested regularly by a proficient lab to make sure you’re within the therapeutic range. In the U.S. Dr. Mercola recommends using LabCorp.”
One of my blog readers recommended this Vitamin D site that is free and chockfull of information about vitamin D.
Have you experienced greater health and well-being using Vitamin D?
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Here I am soaking up the sunshine this winter allowing my skin to to produce some Vitamin D in Arizona, while visiting my friends, Dena and Len. The sunshine and friendship were nourishing after a long cold winter here in Iowa.
My first blog post about Vitamin D was in January. Now I’m just reporting my experiences since I started taking 5000 IU per day–increased energy, greater clarity and happiness.I wasn’t expecting any of that. It’s as though someone turned on the light! Although some scientists have called Vitamin D the Sunshine vitamin, I’m dubbing it the Happiness Vitamin. Vitamin D is critical for everything from immune health to bone strength and cardiovascular function, and more research supporting its health benefits emerges every day. But it’s almost impossible to get enough from the foods you eat. In fact, over one-third of Americans are now deficient in Vitamin D.
In addition, vitamin D supports cellular integrity, improves muscle function and agility, enhances heart health, and even helps your body process sugar properly, therefore Vitamin D is helpful for diabetics.
Dr. Mercola, online health advisor and osteopathic physician, says,
“Get plenty of vitamin D! Vitamin D — which your body produces naturally when you expose your skin to sunlight — optimizes and up-regulates over 2,000 genes in your body. One study mentions up to 3,000 genes, but it may be even greater than that. I have written extensively about the health benefits of optimizing your vitamin D levels, and the dangers of being deficient in this essential nutrient. I recommend viewing my one-hour video lecture.”
However,in order to watch the video, you need to register by giving your email, but it’s well worth it. You can always unsubscribe at any time in the future after you watch it.
You can listen to a radio show here to hear a discussion about Vitamin D with naturopathic Doctor Dan Carver. You may also take cod liver oil to ingest your allotment of Vitamin D.
For over half a century vitamin D was thought only to mineralize bones. But studies indicate that it does much more:
Regulates calcium in all cells, especially brain cells, protects the immune system, regulates cell growth and cell death, provides antioxidant and antiviral benefits.
Dr. David Williams suggests using a $65 home test for Vit. D testing. This is normally a $100-200 dollar test from with a doctors visit fee and probably not paid by insurance. Get results in a week. You’ll need a two months supplementation to get a good reading as it is fat-soluble and takes a while to replenish. The suggestion is 4000 IU per day for 130-170 pound person and levels should be 50-80 ng/ml year round. Please do your research and decide for yourself.
I am not an expert nutritionist but it’s hard to keep quiet about something so well researched by both the medical and alternative communities, especially if it can make a huge difference in your emotional health and well-being.
Have you improved your health through Vitamin D? Let us know.
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Photos from the greenhouses of my local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Top photo: Scrumptious cucumbers growing upward not trailing along the ground. Because they were grown during the winter months, even though it’s mid-April in the midwest, I came home with cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, chard, basil, bok choy, huge romaine and red-leafed lettuce and chinese cabbage and cauliflower. The flavors and tenderness of each vegetable were sublime. The other cool note for earth day is that all the greenhouses use energy from the one windmill on the property. They produce enough power that they sell some back to the power company!
22 years ago, Earth Day was born, in 1970 on my birthday, April 22 when I was 17 years old. My birthday wish is twofold: One is huge. (more…)
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Each Thursday I’ll share a favorite quote or thought. Have one you’d like to share? Please do so in the comment section. Author Dr. Christiane Northrup has said: “The state of a woman’s health is indeed completely tied up with the culture in which she lives and her position within it, as well as the way she lives her life as an individual…healing cannot occur for women until we have critically examined and changed some of the beliefs and assumptions that we all unconsciously inherit and internalize in our culture.”
We get conditioned just like the kittens in the Nobel Prize-winning experiment who were raised by scientists in an environment that contained only horizontal lines on the walls of their cages and in the rooms where they were kept.
Once they grew into mature cats, they were placed in a normal environment and proceeded to run into anything with vertical lines. The cats literally didn’t “SEE” anything vertical. Many of us also cannot “see” options or choices outside of our past conditioning either, UNTIL WE CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE to change the patterns.
Question the validity of our conditioning. What thoughts do you have that limit you?
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Photo: Author (left) Marci Shimoff and Lenora Boyle
My dear friend, Marci Shimoff, author of Happy For No Reason , six Chicken Soup Books, and featured teacher on the movie, “The Secret” is known for many outstanding accomplishments around the world, but she holds a special place in my heart because she introduced me to my husband of 27 years. For that I am grateful to her. Now her wonderful book, Happy for No Reason is coming out in paperback, today, March 4. It’s a wonderful book that I read in hardback a couple times and is chockfull of tips on how to be happy no matter what the circumstances.
You probably know that there’s actually research that shows that UNhappy people:
* Have a greater risk of heart disease, strokes, hypertension, infections, and Type 2 diabetes
* Release more of the stress hormone cortisol. They have a higher heart rate and may be at higher risk for heart attacks
* Are 65% more likely to get a cold
* Are less likely to find a spouse
* Live nine years fewer than their happy counterparts
So… when you are happy, you are likely to live longer. You are more emotionally and physically healthy, creative, energetic, compassionate, and successful!
When you order by clicking the link, you’ll receive many free gifts too.
Happy for No Reason was #1 on many bestseller lists, including Amazon and #2 on NY Times. It’s been translated in 28 languages and it has inspired a national PBS special called Happy for No Reason that Marci hosted. It’s also a mega-bestseller in Japan (in 19th printing in just 3 months). and has been nominated for the Audio Book of the Year Award (AUDIE).
When you buy the paperback “Happy for No Reason”, you will receive these fantastic programs and many more as a gift
* “2009 Happy for No Reason Coaching Manual” — plus live group coaching session with Marci over the telephone.
* “Eliminate the #1 Belief that Blocks Your Happiness” — an online interactive process with expert Morty Lefkoe.
* “Happiness: From the Blues to Bliss” recording by Marci and award-winning actress and author, Mariel Hemingway
* “Turn Happiness into Money” recording by Marci and CNBC wealth expert Phil Town
* Over 150 top authors and thought leaders, including Jack Canfield, John Gray, Marianne Williamson and Deepak Chopra, will give you recordings that support you having a wonderful, happiness-filled life of abundance and peace. (These alone are valued at more than $3000!)
Order your book right now by going to:
http://www.HappyForNoReason.com/MyBook
Let me know what you think! Maybe Marci can help you find a life partner too!
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
I love it when science discovers what we already intuitively know. Women are different than men! In this particular study, explained in an article by Ellen Michaud in Prevention Magazine and reprinted on Learning Place Online, it was found that women do not have the usual fight or flight response to stress. It’s not a surprise to me that they instead meet together to bond and communicate. (more…)
Lenora's Italy Retreat blog | Lenora's Change Limiting Beliefs Website
Subscribe by RSS
