Transformation: Mind and Body

For the past month I have been going through a transformation of sorts, a real mind body transformation and I am loving the results!  I feel that you can't transform your body unless you're willing to transform your way of thinking!  If you stop growing, you stop living!  I am constantly looking for ways to grow and improve, some growing challenges are more welcomed than others, haha, but nonetheless they always make me become a better person whether I see it at the time or not!
This last month I decided to take on a yoga challenge from yoga_girl on instagram!  I had NO idea the journey it would take me on, just by having a focus everyday!  Focusing on improving my own life and others is just what I needed to get out of my selfish slump of everyday monotony!  Don't get me wrong, I am totally a busy mom, a trainer, a gym goer, and church goer!  All the things in my life come to a sum total of business!  But is the business making a me better?  Yes, in a sense....  but having that focus of one thing everyday, a mantra,made a difference in taking me to the next level of new growth!  I LOVED it!  It made me raw and open, and happy!
    Another thing I have been trying to focus more on is my relationship with God, connecting with Him or whoever your Deity might be, has helped me to connect with others in my own life! I have a strong core belief in God,connecting with Him everyday helps me have a positive way to start my day, by beginning it with thanks!  Being thankful comes full circle in your life.  I start my day with prayer and hopefully a little scripture to learn and grow and then I am open to Large amounts of awesomeness for the day!:)  Lets not forget meditation, loving my 22 day challenge I have been on, meditating everyday!  And Hey even yoga helps me connect with myself and becoming a more spiritual person!
     Lets not even begin to assume I am without trial!  I am an open book so most people that know me know the trials I've had this past year!  It's been crazy!  One thing after another... and I was in a slump...  I so needed this month to help me step up to the challenge of making me grow instead of shrinking in my trials!:).  I felt completely broken and humble. It all culminated to my sister and I running away to a town 2 hours away to go listen to a Buddhist monk from India speak to us!  I am so open to truth, and when I hear it I KNOW it, I guess its a gift I have been blessed with!  But when I listened to the wisdom of Nithya Shanti, it was like peace to my soul!  When I was going to listen to him I felt like I was literally about to have a break down and every word he spoke was like raindrops to my beaten down soul.  It was beautiful!  The main thing I learned from him was to live with happiness from the inside out, rather than from the outside in!  In other words nothing that happens on the outside is your source of happiness and peace!  NO matter what happens in your life good or bad is what defines you!  If you can decide to be happy just because you are a happy person by your own merits, and not by the things that happen to you...  when you learn this, then you finally can TRULY be happy!  I LOVED it and it totally jived with me!
    All of this along with good work outs and AMAZING yoga sessions!  Especially kicking up my running to new levels has been amazing in my growth to becoming a better person!  If you stop growing your dying right?  Stay Alive, BE HAPPY from the inside, connect with God (or whatever your higher power is), exercise your body and mind, eat well and just BE......  Growing is a process!  Don't stop!  Be better!  I share this because I want everyone to be happy and whole!  Now on to my new challenge of eating more clean....  Love your body, love yourself and treat it well!  Mind and body and soul.....  keep challenging all of the above and BE HAPPY!!!!!

Calling all lean, mean, fighting machines!

I believe in being passionate, passionate for life in general!  I have always been a lover of life, and the older and more wise ;) I get, the more I realize how important it is to live your life with passion!  I believe STRONGLY in what I believe about life, love, religion, politics and fitness!
     I have always had a passion for fitness!  Ever since I can remember I was in my room making up routines for myself to work out to, I was dancing, I was running the track even after the extra dance rehearsal I might have had, or at the local rec center working out, and when I was older it was all about the gym!  I LOVE it!  And from a young age I always knew it was important to me.  My mom always stressed the healthy eating part ever since I was little, always telling me that "someday your gonna have babies, so you need to eat healthy!"  So eating healthy, and really knowing what your body needs to stay healthy has always been second nature to me, and the education of it came after that for me.
     I believe our bodies are a gift and we need to take care of them!  I want to help people achieve those goals as a trainer and share my knowledge of what I have known and loved for a long time!  As a trainer, I am talking to you!  I want to help you achieve your goals through fitness whether its one on one or in a group. You might be the one that wants to achieve your fitness goals, but just arent sure exactly how to get there, or just need extra motivation!  I want to motivate you, talk you through it, and help you achieve your personal best!  I want you to feel happy, healthy, and passionate about life!  Be on my team and I know you can achieve what you have always wanted.... take a risk, and just do it!

Heres to a happy healthy body and cheers to my protein shake I can drink now!

I have held the belief for a while now that our bodies are bogged down by crap (for lack of a better word), crap that we eat, breathe, and as women our hormones are just plain messed up from having babies,, and getting older!  We feed our body so much sugar and our food is so processed that our body doesnt know how to process it and it gets bogged down and dont work to their optimal best. That's why, in my opinion, more and more people are struggling with losing weight after diets and exercise, and being diagnosed with all kinds of autoimmune disieases.  Now I am no doctor, but as a certified personal trainer and a woman, its really just what my gut or instinct tells me!  That is why I think a good cleanse every once in a while is a good thing for our bodies!  Being a mom I dont have a lot of time to be juicing all day long, so looking at dfiferent cleanses I really liked the ones that were already put together and ussually delivered to your door, the problem was, they were all pretty pricey!  Not so much loving the price tag on those plans I decided to atleast juice once a day and try to eat as healthy as I could!  So one day while shopping at Costco, I came across the  pre-packaged Sambazon Purifying 3 day Cleanse!  I snatched it up right away, because it was already done for me and the price was perfect!  You cant beat $9.99!  I love Costco!  Since it was going to be my first cleanse I was so happy to see that it was only for 3 days AND you had a meal plan that complimented all the juices you drank during the cleanse, total clean eating and drinking for 3 days is never gonna hurt anyone right?!  No problem, and SO excited!
        I was so excited I posted it on FB and a lot of people wanted to know how it went, but I had 4 awesome friends that decided to do it with me and I am SO glad they did, it made the process so much easier!  Easier because of the fact that I was eating differently than the rest of my family for those days and just the fact that I knew someone else was getting through 3 days of craziness really helped A LOT!  We all decided to take a meal and deliver it to each other to cut down on the extra work it took to eat this way!  I gotta say, I try to eat and feed my family pretty healthy but these were uber-healthy and I think I decided along the way I could never be a vegetarian, or a vegan for that matter!  LOVED doing this whole thing with my friends though!  I thought every meal and snack, and drink were all awesome though!
         On day One I felt bloated all day and it was pretty easy, as well as day two, NO PROBLEMO!  It was day 3 that hit me hard and I couldnt wait to get back to my regular healthy diet that I wasnt restricted to certain foods.  After all I have never really been on a diet before because of the fact that I have just always known how to eat right, thanks to it being second nature from all my mom taught me, a few classes in college, and my personal training class!  Day 3 was a struggle but I got through it and after my last meal of the day I might have had a small scoop of icecream for my sons birthday....  I had been SO letter of the law for 3 days I was feeling a little rebellious!  haha  Another interesting thing was that I sweat WAY more when I worked out, and got hot way easier than normal!  I guess my body was working overtime to get purified!
       After the 3 days I have to say I feel GREAT and I have no regrets!  In fact I plan on hopefully doing a cleanse maybe for every season change, just to clean my body out!  My goal for doing the cleanse was not to lose weight, although I probably lost about 3 pounds, not bad, not bad....  But it was to clean out my body so it was fresh!  Hopefully I helped my hormones balance by eating awesome and hopefully my liver, and kidneys feel happy and renewed!  I want my body to be able to work optimally so I can get results in the FUTURE!  I wasnt expecting a miracle in 3 days, I was hoping to make it so my body would be happy and work the way I want it to as I try to live a happy, healthy life by continuing to eat well and exercise!  Loved this experience and highly recomend it to everyone so they can live their best optimal, healthy life!  In the mean time I am so happy sitting here writing and drinking my awesomely yummy protein shake after a good workout and getting my kiddos off to school! 
Happy Cleansing and good luck on yours!

For the love of running......

I wasn't hit with the running bug until I moved to my current town.  Since I moved 20 minutes away from my gym, it seemed I had no choice but to start running on nights I couldn't get to the gym.  Fast forward about 5 years before moving into my current house and I was running in my first 5k which my avid running sis in law convinced me to do, everyone was dressed in tutus and it was nuts but it was way fun!  I don't think I realized then what a culture club running can be!  Fast forward to high school and I pretty much hated running!  Haha!  I have always been into fitness and dancing, making up routines in my bedroom in jr. High, to dancing on dance company, to always having a gym membership.....  You can say I am a little bit of a fitness fanatic, which apparently to some people means I am a vegetarian too....  I am not, but being healthy in general is very important to me, kind of second nature actually.......
Nature....back to running.....  Rewind to my life now and the past 7 years....  I love to run.  It's a passion, it's a getaway, it's a gift.  I love running outside and feeling the wind, staring at the beauty all around me, so in awe..... Listening to awesome music, and feeling free.  34 years old and feeling passionate about what I love and who I want to be, clearing my mind while running makes me feel pretty great....  You should try it sometime...  But watch out, you might get bit by the running bug too!   Happy running!

Inspired on passion for life!

A friend of mine sent me an email that I sent her back in 2006 and I revisited my old self for just one minute.... I used to write poetry, or rather it was just swirl of imagination, deep thought and words all in black and white on a nice white piece of paper. I read it and didnt even recognize that it was my own thoughts and words... Sometimes I feel like with the craziness of life we get lost in our busy lives and forget to stop and think of who we are, what we are born to do, what we have a passion for!? I know what I have passion for, but do I live for it everyday? I hope, but life is numbing sometimes and its easier to be so involved with your kids and the business of day to day.... Back in the day I was a little more in tune with my passions in life... this was the email... Dont laugh, just think about it....

 A passion for something, it is the one thing in life that we all hope for. A passion for something, its like the wind blowing in your tiny round head and it swirls around until you figure it out. What is that wind whispering to you? Dance until you figure it out, that dance of odd scarcities in life. The scarcities in life that so many foolishly dont listen to, that passion, that one driving force that is whispering, no shouting in your tiny little head until finally through your eyes so many still see it coming through as if..... as if it was the one thing you were born to do. Passion, what is that amazing, sparkle in your eye saying to you..... and live it.....dont be afraid.....it is the one thing of many wonderful things you were born to do..............................

 Have a happy passionate week and think about what your driving force is! Namaste

POSE OF THE DAY...

Hot yoga happiness... 2 of my favorite poses... Standing Bow Pose Dandayamana-Dhanurasana- benefits include moving all the blood from one side of the body to the other, then back again. It develops balance and increases the size and elasticity of the rib cage, and firms the abs and upper thighs. Improves flexibiltiy and strength of the lower spine and builds patience, determination and concentration. My other favorite pose in yoga has always been tree pose, its different in hot yoga though, but I like it.... The tree pose Tadasana -improves posture and balance, increases flexibility in the ankles and knees, and hip joints. It also prevents a hernia by strengthening internal obliques!

The hottest of the yoga

Everyone that knows me knows that I am just slightly obsessed with yoga! Ok... maybe more than slightly... I have been intrigued for a long time with Eastern philosophy, and so yoga kind of just went along with that. My dad and my mom really connected with yoga before my dad died and I believe it brought them closer. It also was very healing to my dad after his stroke and heart attack.... So perhaps my obsession with yoga is maybe a need to somehow still connect with my dad, or maybe its all about feeling centered everytime I go! Whatever reason it is, I always know (and my husband for that matter haha) knows that whenever I start feeling out of balance, or grumpy, its time some YOGA and me time! That being said, I have always pretty much done power yoga at the gym, which I know is pretty westernized version of the goods but it still has roots... When I discovered hot yoga, I went with my awesome friend Jen and the minute I started I was hooked to Bikram! And every time I went after that I knew it was where I needed to be. I needed this, it was a new challenge, and it was almost like a step up from the yoga I had been doing for SO many years! I was hooked! So right away I signed up and have been squeezing all the toxins out of my body that I never even knew I had! haha! All I know is it is total, and complete amazingness, and uncomfortableness all rolled up in one 90 minute class! With the room being 105 degrees, by the time you leave, it is like you jumped into a pool and drip dried by getting squeezed out like a super wet wash cloth! Depending on so many factors, you can lose up to 1000 calories in one class alone! Its amazing and its like I have been taken to a whole other level in yoga land and I am completely infatuated.... Happy yoga!