Embrace Yourself as a Whole: Body, Mind and Feelings

To embrace usually means to circle around with the arms, to give a hug, to show affection. It also means to include as an integral part, to unite, to see as a whole. 

When do we usually give affection? We tend to protect and look after the things we care about. 

Keeping them safe and well becomes a goal in itself. We do this with our relationships, our social image, our phones, cars, houses and even our clothes. 

But the things that tend to be the first ones we neglect and / or take for granted are our bodies, minds and feelings.

The body is a complex, delicate yet powerful mechanism we have to face life with. It gets to do all the heavy duty tasks. We ask it to perform smoothly, with rushed meals and often inadequate sleep, in a continuous search for goals, targets and life experiences. When it makes a mistake, we backlash at it. You know, we have that negative self-talk inside our heads.

Speaking of heads. Inside of them is another amazing piece of equipment that we aren’t even aware of most of the time: our brains. All that we are, all that we know, do, like, feel etc, exists because of all the billion neural connections and constant electro-chemical exchanges between the synapses, in response to our bodies’s contact with the outside world through hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell.

We need to become aware about the fact that the body and the brain are connected. That the things we experience and the things we think and feel are influencing each other more than we think.

Multiple sclerosis forces us to pay attention to this connection, it signals that our entire system has gone haywire and that we need to rebalance it through affection towards ourselves.

We are not robots in this postmodern world. We think, we feel and we react. Get out of autopilot and start paying attention to your sensations, to each movement your body makes, learn about how it all binds together.

This week, I invite you to embrace your body as a whole. To start healing it with food, exercise, rest and mindfulness. 

I’m taking the same path as you. Let me know if I can help.

We are what we do, think and feel. Focus on the blessings you had in life so far. Pay attention to what your heart really wants you to achieve. It must feel real and strongly motivational.

And if you don’t find the so-called purpose in life, don’t despair. Not all people do. Or not immediately anyway. Just focus on doing good work and deeds wherever you go. Focus in giving it your all, be it in work, relationships or inner thought. Embrace your inner self.

As always, transformation comes from within.

Thank you for taking time to read this post. The following months we'll go deeper into what it takes to become stronger: body, mind and spirit. To become the architect of your wished lifestyle. To become #strongerthanMS.

Until then, I thank you for being here. Liked this post? Share it with friends. Want to receive more articles like this right into your inbox? Add your email to the SMart Choosers list HERE. You’ll receive every new article and a monthly Newsletter of wonderful resources and insight, to help you make the smart choices that best fit your lifestyle.

Sincerely yours,

Denisa

December 2015 - Monthly Learnings & Analytics - #SMartWednesday

Hello there, you! Happy 2016! We begin this year’s posts with a review of what happened in December. It’s better to sum up and count blessings at the end of each year, so this is what we’re gonna do this week at SMart Choice. Let’s begin!

For more structure, I decided to organize the things I want to share with you into three main categories: mind, body and spirit, followed by a short review of the blog and social analytics.

MIND

When the voice in your head is constantly rambling, you can’t do anything right. You tend to be unproductive and feel overly-stressed. What has worked for me and hopefully it will help you too, is allowing myself to let go of whatever was going on inside my mind and unplugg.

Make time for 10 minutes each morning and each evening to simply sit in silence, with your eyes closed, praying, meditating or simply being aware of the present moment. Allow your thoughts to come in, but let them go without making any stories around them. Stop. Breathe. Be calm.

BODY

Making lifestyle changes is like running a marathon. You have to keep up with your training and performance in order to achieve consistant results. The end goal is to be healthy and in shape. The reward you get for doing those healthy choices is the good life you’ll be able to live.

Focus on the race, not on the end goal. Keep away from distractions both culinary and “to tired to exercise” occasions like Christmas, New Years, etc. Taking the easy way out may be good for you now, but in the long run, you’d wish those exceptions never took place.

SPIRIT

All the troubles we face are because we don’t know ourselves from the inside-out. We don’t know who we really are, what are wants and goals are and so we miss the point. Always looking at others, thinking about our past or planning our future, we miss the present moment and who we really are.

Make time for yourself. Start a daily journal and write down three amazing things that happened to you that day. Write about your emotions, plans and wants. Review it weekly and see how you really are and what you stand for.

ANALYTICS

December was a full month for everybody and so there were fewer visits to the blog, but more engagement on Instagram & Twitter. That made me understand that people prefered shorter and more easily digestable content. We could all need more time nowadays so, by making content more concise and of more value, people dropped in to say hi.

As engagement and bringing traffic to the blog go, Instagram and Twitter were on first place, followed by Facebook and Google Plus. The majority of the audience came from USA, Russia and Romania, followed by China, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Thank you so much for making this thing possible!

This was all for this week’s #SMartWednesday! Thanks for being here!

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Love,

Alexis

Quick Way to Reset Your Mind - Stop. Breathe. Be calm - #LifestyleFriday

Do you happen to feel that sensation like the walls are comming towards you, threatening to squish and nail you to the ground, feeling helpless? Do you feel that anxiety that slowly crawls in on you and makes you feel jumpy and irritable? Do you feel that on a daily basis and have lots of thoughts and things around you all the time? Things that seem to need your immediate attention and energy? Stop. Breathe. Be calm.

When you stop and breathe in order to become calm, the world around you doesn’t colapse like you think it will. In fact, the world doesn’t rely on you for anything. It doesn’t even care about you at all. You invest to much energy and thought into something that goes on existing just fine, with or without you. It has been doing that before you were born and it will continue doing that after you are no longer here. Stop. Breathe. Be calm.

If you are like me, you are so used to being efficient and afraid of letting time pass by without actually doing something in the hours that come and go. So used to be held accountable by someone for doing the right things, at the right time and in the right way, that you become that someone who is constantly pushing yourself to more and more effort, detail and strain.

This is not the kind of push that gets you further in life. It’s the kind that leaves you exhausted after a day’s work and realizing that you hadn’t had so much done after all. It leaves you with three quarters off your to do list untouched and feeling guilty about not being able to do it all. It tears down your self-esteem, your focus and your happines. Stop. Breathe. Be calm.

But there is another way to do things. There is a way that helps you rise your head out of the clutter.  A way that allows you to purge all that tension away and work at giving your best with the least amount of energy drainage possible. That method is simply alowing yourself to let go. Once you catch yourself being tense, stressed and anxious about the next deadline, task or about the new doctor’s appointment, allow yourself to pause and just be.

It might sound like woo-woo stuff, but is has been proven that psychologically and biologically, the mind and body need to unwind in order to function at their maximum capacity. You cannot have a relaxed mind if you clutter it with all kind of thoughts. You cannot have a relaxed body if you get tense in the neck or in your abdominal area. So, allow yourself to let go. Do it right now.

Sit back on wherever you’re sitting right now. Allow your legs to sit comfortably on the ground. Put your hands in your lap and close the eyes. Notice how you feel. Breathe in fully through your nose and breathe out also through the nose. Notice how that makes you feel. With your eyes still closed, let thoughts float around your head, but don’t create any plans around any of them. Just let them float. Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel your body beginning to relax and letting go of tension. Rotate your nose and form circles one way and then the other. Sit up tall, rotate your shoulders 2-3 times, take a deep breath through your nose and a deep exhale through your mouth (if you are at work, breathe slowly, you don’t wanna scare anyone! :)) ). 

Open your eyes. How do you feel? Let me know in the comments below. Repeat for as long as it takes to make you feel comfortable (and as time alows it).  

This was all for this week’s #LifestyleFriday! Thanks for being here and I'll see you next week!

Subscribe in the right hand corner.

Love, 

Alexandra