Valentine's Day Retreat...

Yoga Therapy Class for MS...

“I felt like I became steadier and stronger in my core,” Meltzer said. Prior to yoga, she described herself as a “wall walker,” someone who felt safer holding onto the wall in order to get around. “To be able to stand on one leg and feel balanced is amazing.”

Meltzer, out of a wheelchair and walking without a cane, was one of 14 women with moderate disability due to MS who participated in a pilot trial conducted by the Rutgers School of Health Related Professions. A specially-designed yoga program for these MS patients not only improved their physical and mental well-being but also enhanced their overall quality of life.

quote from an article on www.yogauonline.com

Beginning in January I am teaching a Yoga Therapy class for people with MS.  If you know anyone with MS please share this information with them. 

Are you ready to receive?

I’ve said from time to time that yoga starts when you take what you learn on the mat off the mat into your everyday life.  Over the past year it has become clear what my gifts are and who I am meant to serve.  I know that I need to get out into the community and spread my message of Yoga AS Therapy.  To do this I started calling other providers like chiropractors and various Integrative Medicine providers offering to speak to their clients and patients about Yoga.  But, no one is calling back or responding to my follow up emails.  I feel like I have been forcing things so I spent some time over the past few days asking questions around what I can do reach and help more people.  I also backed off a little on the DOING, and instead focused on being open to receive.  I began to think about what it is like when I practice my yoga.  I am fully present in my body.  I listen to it, feel it, and enjoy it.  I noticed that when I was calling and “doing” I was thinking about the end result rather than being present in each conversation.  I was striving and grasping for that end result.  Today after backing of on the doing and being more present in each moment, with each client and in each class, some connections came to me effortlessly and in unexpected ways.  A good friend talked with her hairstylist and he may become a client.  Another client of mine talked to her chiropractor yesterday and today that chiropractor called her to get my information so he could refer a patient.

I wondered how many of you have experienced something similar in your life.  You work hard and grasp for that end result only to find yourself exhausted and wondering why after all your work it hasn’t come.  But then when you decided to relax around how you expected it to come, all of a sudden it arrived just not in the way you had imagined.  Maybe if what you are grasping for hasn’t arrived yet it is because there is something you are meant to witness, learn, absorb or process in order for you to be fully ready to receive. 

Do you have a mental list of “good” foods and “bad” foods?

                         

           GOOD FOOD                     BAD FOOD                             

I’d really like to have some discussion about this. 

Do you think about and crave the bad foods more because you tell yourself that you can’t have them?  

When you eat the supposed “bad” foods do you truly enjoy every bite? 

After you eat the bad food do you feel good about allowing yourself the indulgence or do you feel guilty? 

Food is not inherently good or bad it is neutral.  We label a food either good or bad based upon our programming by the media, so called experts, our own experiences, etc.  Think for a moment about a food you label as bad.  Do you fear it, fight it, sometimes crave it and maybe even label anyone eating this bad food as a bad person?  For me a bad food is chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven.  I would say I fear it because I know I can’t just eat one.  After I eat one the craving for more kicks in and I give in.  Then I feel guilty and I won’t make them at all even though my husband loves them.

I have been reading the book Nourishing Wisdom by Marc David where he talks about the implications of labeling food as good or bad.  He states that when we do this we “instantly suppress the natural flow of biological information.  We cut off the rich and complex messages that the body would otherwise feed back to us about the food we are eating.”  He uses the following example to illustrate his point.  “Say, for instance, that a person you have never met walks into the room and I say to you, “Avoid that man.  He is a bad person.”  Chances are, you will believe me.  You will never get to know him, understand him, or experience his depth simply because of this initial judgment.  The same is true with food.”  

I want to suggest that you take a food from your bad food list and eat as much of it as you want for a week without any judgments.  That you enjoy every bite of the food while remaining open to what your body tells you.  Here are a few suggestions for questions you may want to ask yourself after eating the so called bad food.

How does this food affect my energy level?

Does this food give me a headache?

Do I feel bloated after eating this food?

Do I feel drained an hour later?

Does a certain amount of this food work well for me but anything more than that cause undesirable effects?

Does the food work well for me on some days but not on others?

My hope is that this experiment will help you to release all your rules around good and bad food and begin to rely on your own body’s feedback rather than blindly following a book or diet expert.  Let me know if you are going to try the experiment and then comment your experience.

Free yoga and workshop "Happiness is an Inside Job"...

Yummy bean spreads a healthy alternative to butter...

I have been playing around with ways to incorporate beans as a healthier option for protein and also more fiber.  This is a quick and simple spread I made using canned white beans mashed and then I added non-dairy mayo and mango habanero salsa...mmmm mmmm yummy!  I used the spread here on a slice of flax bread.  You could use the spread as a dip for tortilla chips, a spread on crackers, in place of sour cream on a baked potato, in place of mayo in a sandwich or wrap... I could go on and on.  Experiment with beans this week and share your favorite spread recipe in the comments or email me at janetgolow@gmail.com.  I will compile all of the recipes and share with everyone.  

What is your story and are you willing to give it up?

What is the story that keeps playing in your head?  What is the story that keeps you stuck?  What is the story that keeps you from living the life of your dreams?

These were just a few of the many stories that kept playing in my head…

Work is hard.  Work that pays well is not fun.  Get a job based upon what is in demand.  You can’t make a living in the field of art or doing anything really creative.  

These stories and beliefs kept me from being truly happy.  Oh, I had numbing moments of happiness … like watching a movie, eating chocolate, spending a day with a friend, exercising endlessly for that high I would get.  I did all of these things to numb the fact that I was not happy with how I spent most of my life.  And where do we spend most of our lives?  At our jobs or in our careers.  I was so afraid to face my unhappiness and confront my story that I almost lost my health and my relationship with the man I love.  Why do we think it is easier to stay in what we know even if we know it is slowly killing us?  I finally listened after hitting the wall and being so desperate that I knew I had to face my fears in order to get healthy and live again.  I trusted my inner guidance with the support and encouragement of my husband, many friends and two wonderful women who became my life coaches.  The steps I took did not at times make logical sense, but in the end they lead me to discover my gifts, talents and desires.  I am now a yoga therapist and health coach working with women and men to navigate life change, manage health challenges, or just learn tools to create a healthy body that moves with ease.  I love my life!  I love every minute of every day.  I wake up feeling so grateful and so blessed.  So I encourage you to look at the stories that keep playing in your head.  Ask yourself if they are serving you.  If they are not serving you then let them go and start creating a new story based on what you would love.  I am here to talk or help you in any way I can.  

Daily Questions To Awaken Your Soul...

I was inspired to write this blog from a talk I listened to today by Deepak Chopra.  He is one of the teachers in my health coach training at Institute for Integrative Nutrition.  I have been contemplating what the mission of PurBalance Yoga Therapy is and also who it is that I want to serve.  I want to serve those people who are unhappy with their career but don’t know what else they can do, or don’t even know where to begin to find out what it is that they would love.  I didn’t listen to my discontent and it cost me my health and I almost lost my most important life relationship … my relationship with my husband.  I now teach yoga so that I can help others learn how, through asana, breathing techniques and other yoga tools, to go into the inner silence and become comfortable with uncertainty.  That inner silence is the space between our thoughts where we can connect to the infinite intelligence.  When we are unhappy our soul is speaking to us.  It may be speaking to us through an illness, through a life circumstance or just pure discontent.  If we can go into our yoga practice to move deeper into our discontent and unhappiness we begin to feel where it is within our body.  Once we feel it and name it we can then begin to ask questions.  We don’t need to know the answers we only need to ask questions and then allow life to move us into the answers. These are the questions from Deepak Chopra …

·         Who am I?

·         What do I want?

·         What is a peak experience to me?

·         What is my life purpose?

·         What kind of contribution do I want to make to the world?

·         What does a meaningful relationship look like to me?

·         How do I contribute to the relationships that I have?

·         What are my unique skills and talents and how do I use them to contribute to society?

·         Who are my heroes?

·         What is my story?

Asking these questions will begin to awaken your soul.  If you listen and follow your inspirations, intuitions and interests you will have ignited the power of your soul and you will transform your life.  The mission of PurBalance Yoga Therapy is to help you discover what lights up your soul so that you can wake up every day in a healthy body loving what it is that you do!

I hope you will begin to take time each day to slip into the stillness and ask one or two of these questions and see how your life begins to change.

Outliving Your Cravings...

I thought this was a great article on cravings that many of you could relate to.  This is exactly what we talk about and work on in my Yoga, Food & Love: transform your body and your life group classes.  We will have another 8 week class starting in a few weeks.

Posted on Kripalu Blog February 22nd, 2014 by Aruni Nan Futuronsky, Life Coach, RYT in Words from the Wise

Like many of us, after dinner and before bedtime is the part of the day in which I might find myself hungry—not necessarily physically hungry, but wanting something to fill me up.

As I trolled around my kitchen one night, some years ago, an extraordinary thing happened. I noticed that my hand was reaching, as in an out-of-body experience, toward the cabinet! It was a startling moment of self- observation. I was able to stop, arm in midair, and ask myself that $64,000 question: “What am I really hungryfor?”

This stopped me in my tracks. I realized there was nothing in that cabinet, nothing in the house, actually nothing on the planet, food-wise, that I was hungry for. Standing in my darkened kitchen, I realized that my hunger came from something else: I was lonely and perhaps a little anxious about the big work week looming. My feelings had nothing to do with a physical hunger.

Awed, I walked out of the kitchen. I picked up the phone and called a friend—nobody answered, but I left a message. I headed toward the bathtub, soaked for a bit, then got into bed and read. As I reached to turn out my light an hour or so later, I recognized the miracle: I had outlived the craving.

Because I didn’t act on it, because I didn’t feed it, the feeling integrated. It released and changed.  Because I didn’t kill the messenger by stuffing it down with a bowlful of chips, the messenger was there to tell me to slow down, connect with someone, and be with myself. And by substituting the habitual snacking with the phone call, the bath, and the reading, the feeling changed.

In the Kripalu model of riding the waves of sensation, the feelings are not the problem. The feelings don’t hurt us. It’s what we do to try to control the feelings, to change the feelings, to push the feelings away—this is the problem. The feelings are “coming to pass,” as the Bible says; they are not coming to stay. If we allow ourselves to soften around the feelings, just as we do on the yoga mat, using the breath and relaxation mindfully, the feelings will integrate.

For those of us challenged with habitual snacking patterns, riding the waves of feelings carries us to the freedom of new choices. Neuroscience encourages us with research about the plasticity of the brain—the brain’s capacity to re-create its response to the moment by creating new neuropathways. Yoga on and off the mat gives us that leverage to change. “Self-observation without judgment,” Swami Kripalu’s core teaching, forms the foundation of our mindful model of transformation: Notice. Relax. Realign.

Consider some substitutions. What might you do when you feel pulled toward your cabinet? Consider some ideas: Might you take a bath? Do some journaling? Call a support person? Go for a walk? Hug a cat? Practice putting these substitutions in place when you feel the strong pull of your habit patterns carrying you forward.

Remember—you have the final decision. How do you choose to be in your moment? 

Discover Yoga Day in Wales...

Please come join us for a day filled with fun and lots of yoga!  This is a great event to bring your friends and family to that have never experienced yoga.  There will be a drawing for a great yoga package at each class.  

Pumpkin hummus...

I just made this great pumpkin hummus that I had to share.  It's very smooth and creamy even without the tahini which you find in most traditional hummus recipes.

1 small garlic clove
1 15oz can garbanzo beans
1 15oz can of pumpkin puree
1 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp olive oil

Put all these ingredients into a food processor or Vita Mix and you're done.  If you're not a big fan of pumpkin I would only use 1/2 can of the pumpkin puree.

Put on rice crackers, Ezekial bread, veggies, salads, and more...

Get creative and let me know how you use hummus.

Yoga makes you live longer...

This is a great interview of a Dr. Doraiswamy on the effects of yoga on aging, the brain and the nervous system.  Just think of how a regular practice of yoga can change your health and life.

Experiencing life from the soul...

I have experienced a deep and profound transformation these past two years.  My journey of diving deeply into yoga and becoming a teacher and yoga therapist has allowed me to connect with that deepest part of me, the true me, my soul.  I am finally living most every minute of every day in the present moment.  You may have read about this before in books or experienced it briefly yourself, but let me give you a glimpse into what this means for me.  Yesterday it snowed and a year ago I would have just thought about what a pain the snow is and I’m sick of it.  But yesterday, I was so happy to see the snow and a little warmer temperature.  I felt like a kid again experiencing snow for the first time.  Yes, that is exactly what it felt like … that I was finally living from my soul.  This soul that had been so patiently waiting for me to discover it.  I was finally living from it so it seemed as though it was the first time my soul was experiencing snow.  When we got home after teaching yoga, working out and then grocery shopping.  My soul was longing to get outside and feel the air, smell the snow, walk it in, play in it, and yes, even shovel it.  My husband stopped the car and normally he gets out and shovels a path for us to drive the care up the driveway.  But this time I was excitedly ready and when he stopped the car I exclaimed, “I want to shovel the snow!”  I jumped out of the car, ran up the driveway and hurriedly grabbed the shovel and began.  I was so happy shoveling the snow.  I’ve never felt like this before.  It is as if I am alive for the first time … I am living from my soul and it is having a ball.  I hope I have captured this moment and what I mean by living from my soul for you.  This is why I am teaching yoga so that I can help others connect with their soul and experience each moment from that place.  When we live from this place life is pure joy and we relish in each moment.  I want to invite you to experience yoga, experience deeply breathing, experiencing shutting out the world and all those racing thoughts, experience hearing what your soul has to tell you and then beginning to listen, trust and take action.  This is why I became a yoga therapist … so that yoga will become a part of everyone’s life … as that vehicle to connect them with their true self, their soul.

Have you ever...

·         Tried to diet and ended up in the same place (or worse)?

·         Struggled through endless attempts at the gym?

·         Beat yourself up for not having enough willpower?

·         Noticed that no matter what you do you are unhappy with the way you look?

·         Lost more weight than you currently weigh?

·         Beat yourself up every time you see a small number change on the scale?

Do you want it to be different?   

Can you imagine it different?

In this Yoga, Food and Love series of 8 week 1 ½ hour classes you will  …

• Uncover your food triggers and create new healthy patterns
• Change your story to change your body
• Change how you eat
• Learn to eat for purity, energy and balance
• Connect the food you eat to your mood and energy
• Break the cycle of stress eating
• Learn yoga postures for your body type that will turn on your metabolism

Classes beginning Fri Feb 24th 11:30-1:00pm

Optional Sunday afternoon class for those interested.  Please email me at janetgolow@gmail.com

Janet Golownia, RYT, PYT, Certified Health Coach

PurBalance Yoga Therapy LLC

Listen to this Ted Talk on "Why Diets Don't Work".

IBS research showing mind (brain) body connection and yoga as a treatment...

I came across this fascinating YouTube video on research being done by Dr. Emeran Mayer at UCLA.  They are studying the brain in relation to irritable bowel syndrome and seeing the direct connection between the brain (mind) and the gut (body).  From this they are using more eastern ways of treatment such as meditation and YOGA so that they can bring these treatments into mainstream conventional medicine.  Wow...very cool!

Tips for Optimal Digestion...

In Ayurveda, one of the oldest surviving holistic health systems in the world, there is the belief that a well-functioning digestive system is the foundation of sound health.  Digestion is associated with the fire element and referred to as agni, or digestive fire.  The fire element in the digestive system is seen in enzymes and acids which break down foods and transforms them into a form the body can use.  These nutrients are then absorbed and assimilated into the body.

It is believed that agni (digestive fire) behaves differently throughout the day.  It’s stronger at midday when the sun is high, diminished during sunrise and sunset, and nearly absent at dark.  Therefore, it is best to eat the majority of your food during the day when agni is strongest and lighten up meals at other times.  Prime time for your agni is between 10am and 2pm.  This is the best time to have your biggest meal.  Like the term “supper” suggests, the other meals are merely supplemental.

Allowing agni to rest is important, too.  When food is taken too soon after a meal (within 1 to 3 hours) or too late in the evening, digestion of your previous meal is disrupted.  This can result in a residue of incompletely digested food that becomes fodder for toxic build up.  The whole system benefits from a long intermission overnight, allowing the digestive cycle to come to full circle with elimination in the morning.    To support this natural timing the best aid is a cup of warm water first thing upon waking.

CCF (coriander, cumin and fennel) tea – a balancing brew…

Take equal parts coriander, cumin and fennel seeds and toast them in a dry pan over medium-low heat.  Add the cumin seeds last to avoid burning them.  Remove from heat when aromatic and slightly brown.  Add 1 tsp of CCF seeds to one cup cold water and bring to a simmer.  Remove from heat and steep for 5-10 min or longer and allow to cool.  Strain and if desired, stir in raw sugar (I use coconut sugar) or honey (I use raw honey) after cooling.  Enjoy as a morning tea or with meals. 

The 12-Hour Fast…

To get digestion back on track, go without food between dinner and breakfast the next day.  A 12 hour rest period is ideal; for example after a 7pm dinner have breakfast at 7am.  If hungry, a cup of herbal tea can fill the belly and calm the mind.

New class Yoga, Food and Love...

Yoga, Food and Love

  

This 8 week yoga therapy class is designed to help you become aware of your food triggers, awaken to your food choices, and be fully present to your body. You will...

·        Learn yoga techniques that will help you become aware of food triggers.

·        Learn to change how you eat before making any changes in what you eat.

·        Learn how a deep and complete yoga breath is better for your waistline than a crunch.

·        Develop a yoga routine specific to your body type that will help your body begin to burn fat again.

Instructor: Janet Golownia, RYT, PYT and Certified Health Coach

Fridays, Jan. 17-March 7, 12:30-2:00pm at PurBalance Yoga Therapy in Wales

Sundays, Jan. 19-March 9, 1:30-3:00pm at You Go Yoga in Elm Grove

$249 Register on or before Jan. 12 to get an early bird discount of $50 and a free personal hour of nutritional counseling with the instructor.

No previous yoga experience is required. In fact, if you have yoga experience you will be encouraged to approach this class with what the yogis call a "beginner’s mind!

Free Sampler Classes Come get your questions answered! Sat Jan 11th 2-3:00pm at You Go Yoga Sun Jan 12th 2-3:00pm at PurBalance Yoga Therapy PurBalance Yoga Therapy LLC google maps link You Go Yoga google maps link