Didn’t this just feel wonderful to read?

http://www.curvyyoga.com/body-positivity/what-my-self-care-practice-really-looks-like/

I was delighted to find this website dedicated to women with large bodies who practice yoga. Have you noticed that most of those yoga ladies are super-skinny? I mean, you look at those poses on the web or in yoga books, and it’s by people with such impossibly fit bodies that I sometimes think, “Wow, my body will never do that.” Great self-talk eh? My body will never do that… so it doesn’t.

I knew this sort of thing existed because Sweetie & I went camping with an amazing woman, a civil rights lawyer, who was very, very large. So large, she had a tough time getting into the double-kayak. She was tough and strong, and smart and vulnerable too. I’ll never forget her, even though we’ve lost touch. Anyway, she used to talk about her yoga classes, yoga for “round bodies”. I’d never heard of such a thing.

So when I found this website, I thought I’d share it.

Another thing that’s come up around the subject of weight is Collette Baron-Reid’s new book:

http://www.amazon.ca/Weight-Loss-People-Feel-Much/dp/030798611X

Colette is the last woman I ever thought would write a weight loss book… and I never thought I’d consider buying one either. But I listened to Collette talk about this book on Christopher Reburn’s podcast, and I think she was on Karen Hagar’s too. She is saying exactly the same things I’ve been saying the past few years, mainly:

The *energy* of the food you eat, matters. If you eat the body of an animal that has lived a sad life full of suffering, maybe some of that suffering transfers. Maybe it’s not healthy for us to eat abused animals (ya think?) Colette was talking about eating chicken that comes from a company in the States where they humanely euthanize their grass fed, free range chickens by “gas”, where their death is described as just “going to sleep”.

Now, I’m not sure I’d want to eat a chicken that had been gassed, but it’s got to be a lot better than the antibiotic-infused, genetically effed-up, horrible 6 weeks of sadness chicken meat we get at the grocery store. Oh, and a friend of mine has uterine fibroids – she CAN’T EAT GROCERY STORE CHICKEN because the sheer amount of estrogen in factory-farmed birds makes her fibroids bleed and endangers her life. Crazy eh?

I’ve got to do a chicken entry sometime soon. They are just the coolest animals.

Colette didn’t go into the detail on air that I have in past entries about the energy of food, how you can hold a vegetable and sense how it’ll make your body feel if you eat it, and in that way you can determine whether you *want* to eat it, but I get the sense she’s on the same track.

I’ve shifted easily back into the diet I was on last summer – scaling back the wheat and sugar. I’ve been looking forward to it, actually. It’s funny that I just don’t feel like eating cold foods in the winter, so next winter I want to come up with a variety of warm foods that satisfy my need for starchiness and sweetness in the wintertime. I haven’t quite got my winter diet nailed. I ate an alarming amount of grocery store pizza this year.

I’ve also decided that I am cool with my weight increasing 10 lbs in the winter, because it drops off immediately when I phase back to the summer diet. They key, for me, is to figure out what my seasonal cycle is with my diet and my body, so I can stabilize my body in this place of health.

So how is my perfect health manifestation going? Actually, it’s going really great.

I’ve discovered, shocker, that the key to perfect health for me is boundaries. Boundaries create the space in my life for self-care, and I have decided I’m entitled to a lot more self-care than I was getting. Like sleep – for instance. I generally go to sleep at 9 pm, and I’ve been waking up at 6 or 6:30 without the need for an alarm. Perfect.

Yoga: My approach to yoga has completely transformed. I’ve decided that whatever pose I am holding, I must do it with a smile, and I must have it feel good. The stretch must feel good, or I will release the pose. Yoga has become a time when I tune into and speak with my own body, and gradually phase through the postures that bring my body into balance.

As part of my yoga practice, I’ve reintegrated my meditation practice. FINALLY! I am so happy I’ve found a practical, enjoyable way to incorporate meditation into my life. I find that at times during my yoga practice, my body just wants to be still and rest. So I sit in a kneeling or a lotus position and I take that time to meditate – and wouldn’t you know, meditation is easy and enjoyable when it’s part of an exercise routine. I’ve said this before to people who have trouble sitting in meditation: go do some cardio, work out the tickle in your muscles, and THEN sit down. You’d think I would’ve done that sooner when I found myself struggling with a daily meditation practice.

During this meditation, I’ve started to listen to Aleya Dao cups of consciousness

http://www.aleyadao.com/landing/

I *really* enjoy these mediations, and I found some more on youtube. I may subscribe to her for more, because I’ve found the healing I’ve received through working with these recordings to be quite profound. You don’t even have to sit and listen to them, you can just put them on and go do other things, like get ready for work in the morning. It works best when you don’t think about it, but just let yourself take them in.

The second time I sat in lotus position, listening to one of her recordings, I felt my posture lengthen. For the first time in my life, the lotus position became an actual, comfortable posture for me. Something was opening in my hips and spine.

After that mediation, I lay on my back, curled my knees up a bit and rolled gently side to side – and I felt my very lower click in delicious release.

This might not seem like a big deal – but it is. My very low back has been locked up since I was a teenager. I first noticed it in dance class when I didn’t have the flexibility in certain postures, and it’s not anything that chiropractors massage therapists or acupuncturists have ever been able to impact.

What happened during that meditation was I decided I was ready to let go of fear. I guess I was carrying a lot of fear in that base of my spine (first chakra?) When I let go of the fear, my back released, my pelvis released, my hips opened and my posture corrected.

Since that click, I have not had any hip pain, knee pain, shoulder or neck pain. Come to think of it, I haven’t even had foot pain. I feel my stride has lengthened, and I almost seem to walk pelvis-first, my spine is so loose. I can easily move into postures that my body hasn’t done since I was a child. I feel like I’m reverse-aging.

It’s a wonderful feeling.

I’ve also programmed and have been carrying some crystals to help me solidify this new vibration of perfect health in my life. I discovered I needed to do two separate programmings: one set of crystals I asked to elevate me into the vibration of perfect health. The second, a polished blue agate, I asked to ground my body in perfect love. The perfect health vibration would not stay with me if not for the love and acceptance, which I’m discovering is absolutely intertwined.

Hence the self-care and the boundaries. It’s really self-love.

Even as we lay dying, we can exist in perfect health, free of suffering. Love is all you need, truly.