Getting Grounded and Grateful

I am just loving connecting with so many self inspired women, who are real, authentic and living and breathing their passions.  Today's guest to the blog is the incredibly talented spiritual coach Pip Herbert from Grounded Guidance.  

Pip is going to share some insights on how to get practice mindfulness through being grounded and showing gratitude.  Pip take it away...

Each morning, I get up, go outside and ground myself, I usually exercise at this time too, and I get present.

But what does this mean and what difference does it make?

By stopping to listen to the sounds around me, tune into my body, my breath, notice my emotions, I am fully present in the moment.  It is very challenging to maintain this level of mindfulness, of presence throughout the entire day, as of course we lead busy lives filled with distractions… doing several things at once, day dreaming, or thinking about what to cook for dinner.

If I’m ungrounded, I am clumsy, my head is in a haze, I feel scattered and may try to put the milk away in the cupboard, I am certainly not feeling empowered by what I want to create in my life.

 Like anything, mindfulness takes practice and getting grounded takes intention. Remembering to stop for a moment and BREATHE. Plant your feet on the ground and send all that buzzing energy into the earth, let go of the exhaustion. Be in that moment.

Allow yourself to be fully present with the person you’re listening to.  To feel what your body needs, and be connected to your soul-essence, your intuition.

 In this space of grounding and mindfulness, I find what naturally arises is gratitude.

I am present enough to notice the beauty around me and appreciate how lucky I am. You do not have to be feeling particularly optimistic to allow the blissful feeling of gratitude to envelope you. If you are struggling to think of something, simply remember how privileged you are, that there is always someone worse off than you.

When we are focusing on the many wonderful things in our life, we create more of this thanks to the universal law of attraction. Often we are thinking about what’s yet for us to achieve, to buy, or what we don’t have yet. When we shift our attention to what we DO have, the universe conspires to give you more of that. In the space of gratitude I experience joy, happiness, thankfulness, peace, love, excitement. Hell yeah to more of that!


So – try it. Each day, think of or write down 3 things you’re grateful for. Really connect to the emotion of it when you do this. You may be surprised how great it feels.

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What exactly is a Holistic Health Coach

Setting an example is not the main means to influencing others; it is the only means.

Some of you may know that I've been studying to become a Holistic Health Coach.   I am so damn excited about it, I love my course so much.  Every Monday night around 10pm the next weeks module is released and I can pretty much say that I wake up during the night every Monday and download the next module just so I can see what I'm learning that week, then try to calm my excitement to go back to sleep.

I have honestly never studied anything that lights me up so much.  It is in line with my true purpose and god damn, I know that this is what I was put on this earth to do!

Seriously this is what I feel like doing when I talk about Health Coaching. (photo from the gorgeous kinfolk site)

In our current healthcare system, almost no time is spent discussing daily diet and lifestyle.  I believe that there needs to be more well-trained professionals to teach people how to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

As a Holistic Health coach I will offer guidance and inspiration to help my clients shift their behaviour to healthier habits by making step-by-step changes to their diet and lifestyle.  I'll be able to teach you about new, healthy foods and the concept of primary foods - i.e. relationships, physical activity, career and spirituality.

When you work with me I'll make sure that you develop a deeper understanding of the foods and lifestyle choices that work best for you, and implement lasting changes that improve your energy, balance and health.  Instead of prescribing one diet or one way of exercise (because we all know this doesn't work), I'll be focused on teaching you to become self-sufficient by observing your own unique responses to various modifications and choosing health-promoting behaviours that work for you.

So what exactly is a Holistic Health Coach

A Holistic Health coach is a guide and mentor who empowers clients to take responsibility for their own health and supports them to implement and sustain lifestyle and behaviour changes that will contribute to the achievement of their personal wellness goals.  Some common areas where a Holistic Health Coach may help a client to focus include weight management, food cravings, sleep energy, stress management, and digestion - just to name a few.

As confucius says:

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

If you are interested in working with me, please don't hesitate to get in contact with me.  I'd love to hear from you.

Nourish Yourself from the Inside Out

After getting active for 10 days straight, it's now time to concentrate on Nourishing yourself from the inside out for the next 10 consecutive days.  The question that I am going to put to you, is what does Nourishing Yourself mean to you?  The reason I ask this is because what works for me may not work for you.

We live in a world of modern nutrition.  Almost everyone is on one diet or another.  So many people dwell on calories, carbs, fats, proteins, restrictions and lists of good and bad foods.  It would seem that each day we are hit with a new discovery, proclaiming the health benefits of a certain food or the best way to lose 5 kilos in a week.  Diet books are best sellers, cooking shows are more popular than ever, while more and more families are eating out.

The world of nutrition has become incredibly complex.  How is it possible that one expert can prove dairy is a necessary component of a healthy diet, while another expert can prove dairy is extremely detrimental to health; one expert can claim meat is essential to a healthy human body while another expert says meat is an unnecessary and unhealthy part of the the human diet?

So to avoid and navigate myself confidently through a media-driven an perplexed diet industry, I now take a new approach to nutrition and that is one of bio-individualtiy.  

No perfect way of eating works for everybody.

The food that is perfect for your unique body, age and lifestyle may make another person gain weight and feel lethargic.  Similarly, no perfect way of eating will work for you all the time, what may have worked for you a number of years ago, may not be right for you now and what you eat during the week may be totally different to what you eat on a weekend when you are relaxing.

One thing that you need to remember is that being healthy is really not that complicated.  Trust that your body knows what it needs and what it wants to eat.  It's the brain that makes mistakes.  It's very easy to convince yourself to follow some diet plan and after a week it may leave you feeling lethargic and bloated.  You don't need to read nutrition books to know what to eat, instead you have to foster a deep relationship with your body in which it naturally tells you what it needs to function at its highest potential.

So for the next 10 days I don't want you to think about restricting anything from your diet, I want to you concentrate on ADDING IN the right clean foods.  

Here is a list of things that I would encourage you to ADD IN to your diet each day:

• Upon rising have a warm glass of water with 1/2 a lemon. 
• Pump up your green vegetables, have at least 4 servings of vegetables per day - you might do this by having a green juice or a green smoothy in the morning, then one serving of greens with lunch and one serving of greens with dinner.
• Don't be afraid of fruits, have 2 servings per day - this could be an apple with a spoonful of nut butter, strawberries, blue berries, add a banana to your smoothie for breakfast.
• Eat good quality and properly prepared whole grains - have at least 2 servings per day - think quinoa or oats for breakfast, sprouted bread, sourdough bread for lunch
• Lean meat and protein sources - have at least 2 servings per day - think chicken, pork, wild salmon, sardines, and white fish
• Good fats - have 2 serving per day - think coconut oil, olive oil, fish oils (essential fatty acids), seen and nut oils and organic butter - use coconut oils for cooking, pour olive oil over your salad, add seeds to your salad, spread organic butter over your toast.

Real food is medicine.

Great food and a healthy diet means enjoying full flavours and invigorating meals while relishing the fresh, simple and unadulterated.  Remember that processed food is loaded with sugars, artificial sweeteners, damaging hydrogenated fats and oils, white flour, chemicals, fillers, synthetic vitamins and minerals, food additives, preservatives, heavy metals and pesticides, all of which contribute to the toxicity with our bodies and are damaging the health of our planet.

Over the coming days I will go over some of my favourite super foods, we'll have a guest post from the fabulous Clair Power from Power of Wellness and plenty of fun recipes and healthy tips and tricks that you can incorporate into your diet.

Nic

xx

Primary Food Vs Secondary Food

@yogakiss and I, mucking around while doing something that we both love :)

Nutrition is a secondary source of energy.  Primary foods, or non food sources of nourishment, are what really fuel us.

All that we consider today as nutrition is really just a secondary source of energy.


Do you remember when you where a child, that you used to play and play without a care in the world for things like eating every three hours.  Remember when Mum used to call you in for dinner, all you could think about was playing still and eating food was the last thing on your mind.  At the table, you Mum would have dutifully ensured that you left no morsel of food behind, and as a child you would have forced down the required amount eager to get back out and play.

Do you remember being deeply in love for the first time?  Everything is light and warm, colours are vivd, and life is full of joy.  You're high off your lover's presence, sustained and exhilarated by the blissful connection.  You float on air and food becomes secondary.

Think back to a time when you were involved in an exciting work project.  You believed in what you were doing whole-heartedly and felt confident and stimulated.  Time stopped and the outside world was muted - food was an afterthought.

Now recall a time you were depressed or experiencing low self-esteem - you were starving for primary food.  No matter how much you ate, you never felt satisfied.  The need for love, power or mere acknowledgement drove the desire for excess food.

Even in good times when we come home at night, we often look into the refrigerator for something to eat, when all we really want is a hug or someone to talk to.

Primary food goes beyond the plate, nurturing us on a deeper level.

Elements such as a meaningful spiritual practice, an inspiring career regular and enjoyable physical activity, and honest and open relationships that feed your soul and your hunger for living all constitute primary food.

The four main primary foods are:

• Career;
• Relationships;
• Physical Activity; and
• Spirituality.

There more primary food we give ourselves, the less we depend on secondary food.  On the contrary, the more we fill ourselves with secondary food, the less space we leave for primary food; our true source of nourishment.

Take some quality time to explore your personal balance between primary food and secondary food - explore for yourself which area could use some attention??

Feel free to leave me a comment below to let me know which area you could be working on.