Think Yourself Skinny

I love that Dr. Oz highlighted this concept in this morning's show.  I have been using and developing this technique for the past two years with fitness and weight loss clients.  I have been working with these kinds of clients for over five years. When I first added coaching to my personal training sessions I noticed how much emotional weight the women I was working with carried around. As we worked through releasing their beliefs about food, exercise, motherhood, family life, and the many ways that women guilt themselves, I noticed a significant difference in their performance and results. Emotional connection to everything was keeping the weight on. Emotional release was the first step. Belief about why their bodies were not cooperating came next. I worked with clients on the way they use food and exercise to get something that they wanted, which was always different than what they were voicing. Their deepest desires were about staying safe and secure in their world. Working with them on creating that safety outside of their bodies seemed to propel their results even further. When I added meditation to their weight lifting routines they were able to lift more weight and increased their endurance. Now that these bodies were experiencing incredible results I bumped it up an notch and after hearing a story about how the imaginative work of the muscle created a physical response I decided to experiment with virtual fitness. Olympic trainers use this method to increase the results in their athletes. As clients created a multi-sensory experience with an activity they actually felt the muscle response. After using this technique for a minimum of twenty minutes a day, clients were dropping dress sizes from size eleven to size four in less than three weeks. Now I teach physical mastery using the techniques highlighted in Dr.Oz's show. By using the power of the brain to change assist clients becoming conscious about their experience they feel good about what their food and exercise choices, experience fewer binge and purge moments, and resist impulse eating.

Habituation is the psychological theory behind the information presented on the show this morning. Habituation is the mind's auto pilot. We have two minds so to speak. The logical mind and the emotional mind. Some refer to the emotional mind as the "Monkey Mind," others the inner "Caveman." I like the caveman mind simply because it references our basic instincts for survival. The caveman in each of us makes quick decisions about risk based on easily retrieved information mainly images. The logical mind takes longer to access, sort, and compile information for decisions and because we make so many decisions with our caveman mind it has become lazy. Increased intentional involvement of the logical mind results in sound decisions, decreased emotional chaos, and decreased fear resulting in reduced stress, illness, hypertension, bad cholesterol, and fat.  The caveman mind uses the fight or flight mechanisms of the brain as it reacts to stimulus which turns off our immune system and routs energy to the adrenals, increasing insulin, adrenaline and cortisol into the body. The heart pumps harder to get blood to the extremities to prepare them for fight or flight. Adrenaline and insulin are pumped into the blood to provide fuel for the fight or flight, and cortisol increases to protect the major organs with fat to prevent damage.  All in all it is a perfect system. The glitch is that we live in an environment that is constantly filled with information for the caveman to draw on when assessing risk and depending on how highly we feel the probability of a thing happening to us the more it sticks in the quick memory system. If we have a highly emotional response to an event we see on TV or hear on the radio it increases it's stickiness in the caveman mind signaling it that this scenario is highly probable and to be on the lookout. Images about scenarios we don't feel will ever happen to us in a million years like being hit by a meteor are low on the caveman's priority list. The caveman thinking really comes in handy when there is a threat that we need to take immediate action on, other than that it can cause us a whole lot of trouble. The logical mind keeps an eye on the caveman but as long as the caveman seems to be doing a pretty good job the logical mind doesn't get involved, it just doesn't want to be bothered.

Increasing the involvement of the logical mind in decision making takes a little work. This is what I call conscious living. When you are using more of the conscious mind to make more of your decisions and using the subconscious caveman for what it was built for, fight or flight, you are living consciously and have more power in your life. You take on the power of creating the results you desire to experience in your life. The real secret is setting your mind to work in this conscious way so that your focus shifts to what you want and away from what you don't want.  Because the caveman is your auto pilot and we are all looking to make life easier as opposed to harder, I wanted to tell you that by repeating a behavior over and over again, it seeps into this caveman mind and resets your auto pilot. Similar to the example I like to use of the car with the manual transmission.  When you first learn to drive a car with a clutch it takes practice before it becomes "natural."  Any behavior you would like to put on auto pilot can be programmed into your caveman mind with practice.  This is what the psychologist referred to as habituation.Those beliefs you have about the way life works that are down deep in your subconscious and are effecting the way you react in the world can also be modified and reprogrammed. That's what I do, I teach you how to reprogram your thinking system to shift the way your are experiencing life by waking up the logical conscious mind and reprogramming your subconscious caveman mind to use its autopilot to streamline those logical responses to life's events, including how food and exercise impact your body.

The body is set up with systems that run perfectly and provide feedback when something is not working correctly.  Learning the language of these systems, how to interpret the feedback, and how to communicate effectively to adjust them is the key to creating change in your life. Being created of many layers of matter that are of different densities and vibratory frequencies we experience life through all of these layers and they all inform our experience. Simply by slowing down, breathing and thinking about our responses to input we become more effective and change what shows up in our experience. I tell people that as long as you are breathing you might as well make the most of it. And, as well as you are eating, moving, thinking, feeling, and using energy, you might as well make the most of it.  Breathing is one of the best ways to slow down and get the logical mind to get involved in your decisions. Taking three or four long breaths before acting slows this thinking process down and signals the logical mind that you want its input. If it takes you less than ten minutes to make a decision you are making it from the caveman mind. I have tons of resources, techniques, and methods for making the switch to conscious living. Keep an eye on my posts, Facebook, and my new Blog Talk Radio show to gain information that will assist you in living the life of your dreams.

Elle

LIving BiG

In all of life, we experience the belief of opposition. We cannot experience beauty without the belief of ugliness. We cannot experience joy without the belief of despair, and so it goes, light and dark, male and female, tall and short. As we learn to accept this opposition, and that life delivers contrast from moment to moment for our experience and growth we open a oneness with all life that comes as we flow through change. We begin to see the world from the creator’s perspective, understanding the truth of our identity, living with grace and ease without forming opinions or creating judgments.

When I chose the name of my coaching practice to be My Big Skinny Lyfe I was working through a very difficult event in my life where I learning that I wanted to live big so that I could give big. However, to live big it was important to eliminate the thoughts and feelings about the skinny-nesses in my life. I learned that a flexible, open and loving attitude for others and myself helped me to manage my life with grace and wisdom despite my living through the results of residual choices about myself and my life. We all have skinny-nesses that keep us living small in the world, such as, unworthy-ness, unlovable-ness, cynical-ness, anxious-ness, dark-ness, old-ness, negative-ness, not enough-ness, small-ness, and other Skinny-ness which separate us from our true identity and allows us to live big.


Plotinus says, "Let the body think of the Spirit as streaming, pouring, rushing and shining into it from All sides" We all have an internal recording that plays throughout the day, some are better than others are, louder or more constant yet it does exist for each of us. Checking in with this internal recording gives us clues to the contrast we see. The contrast of skinny-nesses to our desires to live big guides us to identify what we want in our world. Often we verbalize the skinny-nesses for reasons such as, a rationalization for our “yeah-butts,” or a plea for others to validate our big-ness as we feel ourselves unworthy of living big. As we verbalize these skinny-nesses, we create more of them. Belief that we are worthy of receiving goodness makes the mind and body healthy and whole. Accepting the best of ourselves assists us in creating clearly defined boundaries that guard us from attacks that may diminish us. Acknowledging our worth reminds us of who we are, what choices are for our highest good and it essential in creating balanced life strategies that, in turn, will move us to joy.


In some circumstances, it may be difficult to see that goodness is happening all around us and we are stuck in our Skinny-nesses. Nothing gets us moving toward joy, and living BiG, faster than gratitude and service. Gratitude allows us to gain the creators perspective while service focuses us outward. There are emotions that are part of gratitude such as, love, happiness, optimism, and joy. Gratitude in action is a great power. Activating the energy of gratitude in yourself and those around you changes your environment, relationships and perception of the world.

BiG LYFE Tip: My mom always says, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”  Practice noticing the opportunities to play a negative recording and simply choose to be with what is.

George Bernard Shaw expressed, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” I invite you to take a moment now to change your mind and to bring gratitude into your current circumstances. Remember a time when you felt filled with gratitude and feel it fully in your body now. In your mind ’s eye, visualize a large movie screen in front of you. You see your life playing on the screen. Notice all of the players and their environment. Notice what they are feeling as you are stuck in your skinny-nesses. Notice your interactions with each player. Notice all what you are hearing them say and other sounds around you. Notice the color hues of the movie as it plays. Is there one that stands out the most to you? Notice how the environment smells, any textures that you see and feel. Notice the temperature you feel on your skin. As this movie comes to completion you notice a second movie screen next to the first playing a movie of your life filled with gratitude. Notice the feelings of gratitude in your body as you watch the players interact with each other. Notice the environment with all of its sights and sounds. Notice the colors and textures you are seeing. Notice how the environment smells and even the temperature on your skin. Now you begin to notice all of the differences between the first movie and the second. As you notice the changes you feel compelled to share the feelings of gratitude that fill your body now with all of the players on the screen. And as you do so, you notice a single color, sound or feeling on the skin that is shared with the players and it fills them. Now slowly merge the two movies screens together and notice the congruence as the players share the resource of gratitude. Notice how your body feels as you wake up tomorrow morning, throw off the covers, and you are filled with these feelings of gratitude. Notice your interactions with others as you move throughout the day, the week, the month, the year. Take a look back on your life and notice the generations that have followed you and how they too are filled with gratitude. Notice how their lives are different because you chose into gratitude. Notice how they are sharing their gratitude for you with you as they move through their lives. And come back to today, bringing with you all of the feelings and knowledge you have just gained and notice what you are feeling. As you feel complete, gently open your eyes and notice how you feel in your body, and your mind.

H₂O (Heart to Others) Project: To deepen your experience, create a Gratitude board out of poster board. Put it in a place where you will see it often each day. Each day, add an entry that reflects what you are grateful for and invite others to add their gratitude to the board. Notice the change that happens to your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual self as well as your relationships as you fill your world with gratitude.

Live BiG to Give BiG,

Elle

Excerpt from the BiG LYFE Design^© workshop series by Elle Eyre, Gratitude, A Shortcut to Joy. elle@mybigskinnylyfe.com. www.mybigskinnylyfe.com.