Posts Tagged ‘health’

Affirmations for Health & Wellness

Affirmations are statements of acceptance that one uses to allow the manifestation of your destiny. They are powerful and positive thoughts and statements that you send out into the universe. That positive energy reaches far beyond what the eyes can see and can do wonders in your life. To do positive affirmations, you need to eliminate the negative around you. If you come into such energy, you must find ways to not let it hold you back from what you are trying to accomplish. That energy should not stick to you.

You must first believe that YOU CAN manifest your destiny. It must be a positive, powerful belief. Not just a “maybe I’ll try this and see if this works.” Having the right thoughts and visualizations can help you to create the life that you want. Many of our readers are interested in changing their lives for the better through holistic health and wellness. It’s partially changing your lifestyle and eating routine, but it is also about changing your mind. Let’s focus on changing the way we think, on allowing more positive energy in our lives, and in turn also giving us the positive energy we need to affirm and achieve our goals.

Before You Begin
There are several areas of our lives that we can apply affirmations to. For this article we are going to focus on our health and wellness. As you work with the affirmations provided below, remember to:

• Use the present or past tense. Do not use the future tense. You want your mind to know it has already happened.
• Be POSITIVE. Use the most positive terms you can. Never use negatives in affirmations.
• Write them down. As you are learning to do these, write them down so you will remember exactly what you want to say.
• Believe. Always believe that what you saying is happening. It may seem weird or even difficult at first, but with practice you will change your mind. The more you believe, the stronger the affirmation.
• Repetition. Being repetitive and persistent helps to set them i your head and into your own unconscious being. Do you want to change your life? Then speak your life into existence.
• Time. Always have a specific time daily set aside for your meditations, affirmations and visualizations. This will help set a pattern for you so you can do them daily. Make them a part of your life. Make the time.

Affirmations for Your Heath
Here are some affirmations to get you on your way to optimal health. These will more than compliment and enhance the strides you are already taking. One ounce of the right thoughts get way more done than a million ounces of action.

• I have the power to control my health.
• I am in control of my health and wellness.
• I have abundant energy, vitality and well-being.
• I am healthy in all aspects of my being.
• I do not fear being unhealthy because I know that I control my own body.
• I am always able to maintain my ideal weight.
• I am always able to maintain my ideal weight.
• I am filled with energy to do all the daily activities in my life.
• My mind is at peace.
• I love and care for my body and it cares for me.

Resource: Affirmations http://www.mjbovo.com/Affirmations.htm

Wellness Wednsday: Happiness

This Wellness Wednesday post is from the mind of Jessica, the visionary behind Raw Food Nation:

hap-pi-ness [hap-ee-nis] noun
1.     the quality or state of being happy.
2.     good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy.

What will it take to make you happy? If someone were to ask you right now, “{insert your name here}, I want you to be happy, what will that take?” How would you answer? Would you have an answer? Would it come quickly or would you have to get back to that person later, after carefully thinking about the question.  We are all on individual paths of enlightenment as we unfold the mysteries of this life, as we experience the ups, the downs, and everything in between. But when it comes to happiness, to true bliss and contentment, when it comes to that inner protected light in which no man or thing can extinguish, how do we obtain that?

I was enjoying a warm summer day with a good friend, under a shaded tree laying on a blanket, discussing life, literature and everything in between, when she recommended that I read the book Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I had initially thought this book was about dieting given its location in the bookstore and proximity to other nutrition/lifestyle books. But little did I know that within the pages of this masterpiece was the definition of happiness that agreed with me the most, so clearly articulated and written with good choice of words. I would like to share this definition with you, which to me goes far beyond the dictionary definition above, and makes more sense too.

“…people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you are fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray [to whomever you choose] when you’re in distress; but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.”

Suddenly the notion of happiness is much more than awaiting for something or someone to fall upon you, directly into your path. And it’s also something that you must not only work to obtain, but also work to keep. Happiness becomes something that you can have in this lifetime, instead of spending a lifetime searching for it, it becomes obtainable and within reach. No longer being a stroke of luck, consider this: your happiness is your responsibility. Just as is your health and wellness, and just as it is your responsibility to rise each morning and carry out your mission on earth. So your daily “to do” list should read something like this: “take shower, prepare lunch, get presentation ready for meeting, work on obtaining/maintaining my happiness….” and so forth and so on.

I close with article with yet another excerpt from the book, on the same page nonetheless, “…all sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people… The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Cleaning out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people… When you set out in the world to help yourself, you inevitably end up helping everyone.”

And it is with these final words that I encourage everyone to get up, go out, and get happy!

After reading this article, feel free to comment below and let us know your personal definition of happiness for your life.

Meditation Monday

Introduction:

The practice of meditation is over 2,500 years old, and countless individuals have utilized its power to cultivate compassion and wisdom. Scientific and medical research has shown that meditation can reduce stress, improve health, enhance performance, and measurably make us happier. Meditation is a way to calm the spirit, relax the body, and to become more in tune with oneself. At Raw Food Nation, we are not only dedicated to promoting the health benefits of eating raw foods, but also the lifestyle choices that come with it. For this reason, we are introducing Meditation Monday as a reminder for you to take a moment to center yourself. We hope that these posts will be educational, and beneficial to your well being.

What is mediation?

Simply put, meditation is a form of relaxation. All meditation involves substituting your thoughts for an alternate object of attention. Whether it is your breath, an image, or a sound, when the mind becomes absorbed in something other than thought, it relaxes.  According to the book Quiet Mind by Susan Piver, meditation is “a profound relaxation of your conventional mind which then naturally calls forth the mind of wisdom” and understanding.

How am I supposed to sit?

There are several different practices that offer a variety of ways to meditate, but one of the overlapping foundations of them all is to take good posture, in other words, finding a way to sit that is both upright and relaxed. Generally speaking, you can sit on a pillow on the floor with your feet crossed or you can sit at the edge of a chair with your feet pressed firmly on the ground. Once you have chosen the way to sit that suits you best, make sure your back is straight and relaxed. Susan Piver recommends that you “feel the crown of your head reaching up to the sky while your sitting bones reach down to the center of the earth. This way…you are joining heaven and earth simply by being a human being who is sitting down.” (we bet you didn’t know you had that ability!)

Your hands should rest comfortably at mid-thigh or just above the knee, or you can place one hand within the other. Depending on the particular practice of meditation, you may have your eyes open or closed. If your eyes are open, they should gaze slightly downward to a spot on the floor that is 4-6 feet away. Your gaze is soft, your jaw is relaxed. Your body also begins to relax.

As you sit, pay attention to your breathing, as it comes in and out of your nose. “Your breath is always in the present moment,” says Susan Piver, “so the simplest way to ‘be present’ is to be with your breath. Sitting this way is a basis for meditation.” See if you can do this at the beginning and end of your day, for just five minutes – ten minutes. What a fabulous way to decompress, center yourself and to gain clarity.

References:

We are not experts and nor do we claim to be, so whenever possible we will provide the resources we used so that you can explore further. For this post we used the following:

Quiet Mind: A Beginner’s Guide to Meditation, compiled and edited by Susan Piver