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.

Joy Rising

If man was created to have joy then where is it and how can I get some? When life is life-ing joy often gets lost between the cracks of the everyday. When joy and passion are not present in our everyday lives, feelings like doubt, despair, frustration, anger and disappointment can creep in and steal happiness right out from underneath us. Then, before we know it, we are asking ourselves why we are here, wondering what the purpose of this whole thing we call “life” is, and our identity becomes confused with daily routines, work, children, friends and possessions which leave us wanting for more.

Esther Hicks says, “The most important thing is that you feel good.” When we “feel good”, we are sending out a vibrational beacon to all things that match the frequency of our vibration, much like a radio signal being picked up by a car stereo. When the stereo is tuned just right, we are delighted by the sound of beautiful music through the speakers. When we are out of alignment with the signal that matches our favorite radio station, we get static or overlapping waves that are confused and garbled.

Untangling our identity, or coming into alignment with the frequency of our favorite radio station, object, feeling, circumstance or situation is possible by retraining the way we think or process external input. Our minds are continually taking in input that we are categorizing and connecting to events, feelings, situation, and circumstances, which is how we make decisions about what to do; we call this judgment, frame of reference, experience, or conditioning. Our bodies are complex and beautiful energy systems tuned into different vibrational frequencies. Anyone who has ever experienced tension in a room so thick you could cut it with a knife has experienced the frequency of “tension” through the emotional energy system. What we do with that information happens quickly based upon “experience.” We connect the information about the tension with the images, words, actions, smells, sounds, textures, and temperatures of the event we walked into, store it in the brain and resource it as a whole or in parts when making judgments and choices in similar circumstances.


At times, we feel things that we do not like and wish we could change but feel helpless or held hostage by our emotions. Knowing how your body is receiving, storing and recalling information is the key to change. Our minds are pliable, teachable and trainable, seemingly automatic responses to input can be retrained to give us new results simply and with a little practice. I remember when my granddad taught me how to drive a stick shift. He took me out to a seldom driven dirt road in his little white truck. His instructions to me were simple, to go I needed to push on the brake, push in the clutch, put the car into first gear then slowly let out the clutch while gradually accelerating. To stop the instructions were easier. I was to take my foot off the accelerator, push in the clutch, and pull the truck out of gear then push on the brake gradually until I came to a stop. He had me begin the stopping process well before the stop sign and in my mind’s eye; the image I see is one of a stop sign about the distance of a semi-truck and trailer away from my location in the truck. Now that I am practice in the skill of manual driving this process is smooth, effortless, and automatic. I have a similar experience with my route home. I moved recently and one afternoon after completing some errands, I began the trek home. My new place is not far from my old one and the shops I frequent are the same. I was busy checking phone messages and returning calls when I came to a stop right in front of my old place. I got a good laugh as you might imagine. I had taken this route from the shops so many times in the past that it was deeply conditioned in my mind. I am almost embarrassed to tell you that this was not the last time this happened. I recognize that due to the distractions I was allowing as I was driving that I set myself on auto-pilot to get home. I needed to be more aware or conscious about my choices to get myself to my new place and retrain my brain to get there on auto-pilot. Our emotional navigation system can also be trained to get us to our desired destination as we are willing to recondition its auto-pilot.



Here are some simple manual driving instructions for you to practice. First, consider what you would like to be feeling most of the time. Next, connect with how you are currently feeling. Notice everything about it, Use all of your senses to identify it and locate it in your body. Remember a time when you felt the way you would like to feel. Notice everything about it and fill your body and mind with this feeling. What color is it? Now imagine getting out of bed tomorrow morning and feeling everything about this new feeling and notice how there is a tint of color to your world. As you move through the next weeks, months, and years you notice that the world seems more joyful, vibrant and effortless. Gently open your eyes and notice what you feel in your body. Anytime you wish to recall this feeling simply imagine being drench with the beautiful color you chose to represent this feeling and it will come back to you as a flood.


Live BiG to Give BiG,

Elle

Excerpt from the BiG LYFE Design workshop series by Elle Eyre, Emotional Intelligence. elle@mybigskinnylyfe.com. www.mybigskinnylyfe.com.

Mastering the Bulge

According to World Health Organization, nearly two-thirds of Americans are overweight, fifty percent of women and twenty-five percent of men are on a diet, over fifty-eight billion dollars are spent each year on weight loss products, and according to a U.S. Today online article, by Nancy Hellmich, obesity, thirty percent body fat or higher, will cost you twelve years of your life. In the Federal Trade Commission's Report on Weight Loss Advertising they clearly state that the reduction of obesity is the responsibility of the community as well as the individual then very soon into the report they state," Many of the products and programs most heavily advertised are at best unproven and at worst unsafe. By promoting unrealistic expectations and false hopes, they doom current weight loss efforts to failure and make future attempts less likely to succeed."



Physical mastery is essential to living BiG and while our community is producing products and providing resources the experts have pretty much doomed us to failure, as a collective society, we have agreed that certain things are true. We have agreed upon the information that food and exercise are the causes of thickness or thin-ness and that it is only through deprivation, pain, and punishment that our desires to reach our best body is obtained. Through my personal and professional experience as a fitness coach and a friend, I have listened to countless women, and men, discuss their personal fitness dilemmas, goals, aspirations, failures, successes, failures, likes, dislikes, frustrations and victories all in the name of health and fitness. The obsession with the body, food, and exercise does not sound healthy and neither do many of the methods. Most include eating too much of one thing and none of another, eliminating everything that tastes good, eating on a schedule (I am guilty of this one as well), regimented, rigid, and "rewarding," if you survive.


One definition of health is well-being mentally, emotionally and physically. I cannot imagine a world of well-being in any area of life especially in fitness where there is fighting with the body and where failure is preset “experts”. It’s as if we feel there are only two choices, either we live and do what ever we want when ever we want regardless of the result or the shape of the body, or we are rigid, regimented and deprive ourselves of the good stuff. I am still wondering what makes us punish ourselves for something that is so beautiful and amazing, a body that deserves to be celebrated and loved. I am wondering why we engage in failure, deprivation and rigidity? We are powerful creators. By the time, I was twelve I knew a great deal about the world and had accomplished many things. I had been in a dance group, performed on stage in a couple of musicals, and twirled a baton in several parades. I learned about boys and my body (ewe), had my first crush and my first kiss. I knew how to make a peanut butter sandwich, tie my shoes, and button my shirt. I knew my abc's, multiplication tables, addition, subtraction, that I loved to draw, the color pink and I had even had the chicken pox. Of course, I learned a lot of other great stuff and my point is that there is a lot to be done in twelve years, books to read, or write, babies to kiss, friends to be made, pies to bake, places to go, people to see, things to know and do. I do not want to miss all that I could experience in twelve years of life, do you?


When we get out of our own way, we allow our desires to come into our lives at quantum rates. Removing the barrier of obsession over the body’s physical appearance and performance is crucial to accomplishing purpose and living lives of passion. The spirit self is the highest working energy we have as living souls. When we allow our spirit self to lead through purpose and passion we live fulfilling lives. We live in a time where the power of thought is mainstream; thanks to Oprah and her attention on the authors of The Secret and Eckhart Tolle we new light is shed on our world as one of intention and manifestation. The body is the most intimate experience we have with matter so it makes sense that we have the ability to use intention to manifest a body that is in alignment with our purpose. By layering mental, emotional, and physical behaviors we can easily shape the body. Olympic athletes have been using virtual technologies to train their bodies for decades in concert with emotional and physical techniques for physical mastery. NLP practitioners use the brains ability to create a full sensory experience to rewrite the neuro-pathways creating greater performance and success for businesses, entertainers and other professionals. It is all about resourcing. According to the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, another definition for health is “a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities.” Getting the body into the shape we deserve is less about external input, food and exercise, and more about internal mastery and resourcing.


Elle


LYFE© Strategies Coach
and Author of The BiG Skinny BUTt Camp©.


The BiG Skinny BUTt Camp© is an experience in revolutionary strategies for physical mastery using proven mental, emotional, and physical training methods. Rewrite your body contract so that it will do the job you have tirelessly been attempting without it's cooperation, discover the effortless virtual technology used by Olympic athletes for shaping and training the body's performance systems, and learn how to layer mental, emotional and physical action to enhance results.