FREE Resource: Meditation Videos

Are you feeling tired, stressed, frustrated?  Of course ypu are, from time to time or most of the time, depending on your circumstances.  If you're thinking I'm going to ask you to sit quietly and "think about nothing" as one of my clients put it - nah.  [My new book 101 Stress Busters has lots of walking meditation and active visualizing meditation, along with 86 really fun and very powerful creative arts that will induce relaxation among other important medical changes.]  

Slowing the adrenal cascade improves your blood pressure which protects your sexual health, as well as protecting you from deadly strokes and kidney failure.  It also protects your brain from loss of memory and general dopiness - powerful medicine for everyone from full-time parents to small business owners and entrepreneurs.  

If you're an entrepreneur, it WILL boost your income - giving you great new marketing ideas, boosting your energy to work, and wiping out the worries that sap your productivity. 

How about taking 45 seconds to a minute and a half to contemplate a really beautiful natural scene while you take 5 slow, deep breaths?  Here are some examples:

https://youtu.be/aGuUCEoSfD8

https://youtu.be/teQds4mz_C8

https://youtu.be/Bdz_UmDXFvs     for entrepreneurs

https://youtu.be/wYAmJyOfsMw

https://youtu.be/T7KSbv8cXag     end of day, gratitude

https://youtu.be/hLbwlDiYduY     walk in the woods

Join my mailing list for inspiration, to get first crack at free beta test enrollment of my new online classes, and special offers just for subscribers.  email victoria@soaringdragon.biz

www.soaringdragon.biz

2 key concerns and 4 big solutions for perimenopause and menopause

When you are 40-50 years old and female, you are in perimenopause, the time when major changes are happening all over your body, on the road to the major landmark of menopause. Women have to accomplish in approximately 18 months what a man gets to spread out over a decade. [The male version is andropause, when a man's internal biochemistry shifts from reproduction to conservation of resources for aging.]

Problem #1:  Failing Thyroid

One of the most common problems is a failing thyroid. While many changes of perimenopause and menopause are normal parts of life, including hot flashes, a failing thyroid needs intervention,

What does thyroid hormone do?

Thyroid hormone must be absorbed by every cell in your body. It is the metabolism hormone. Without it, you will experience more and more lethargy, you will constantly feel cold, you will gain more and more weight and (if the thyroid levels fall low enough), you will die. The ONLY way to deal with a thyroid that is failing to produce enough T4 (which is converted to the active hormone T3) is to supplement with genuine T4 or T3. Syntheroid doesn't work well for a lot of people but it's cheap so you'll probably start with that one. Armour is "natural" in that it is taken from the bodies of pigs who were killed for meat, and that natural moniker appeals to some of us. The doses aren't going to be precisely equal because every pig is different, which is why your doc may not love it; it's harder to feel good if you're not getting the same dose every day, so if your ideology pushes you to Armour (which I love, by the way), you understand that her concern is your health, not anything sinister, please. You can also take T3 directly, whose brand name is Cytomel.

Your body needs you to take T4 or T3 every day, so your cells can have the chemical it needs to run your metabolism. There are NO herbs, and iodine supplements are included here, that can substitute for thyroid hormone. If you genuinely need it, do please take it. An iodine supplement can only help if you are not producing hormone due to an actual iodine deficiency and if you are eating a healthy diet, you don't have one. You can harm yourself very severely if you overdose on iodine, so don't muck around with this. Do what your body needs.

Another cure: get serious about exercise.  Do it; stop making excuses.  I KNOW that when you aren't sleeping enough, etc. you get frantic about What Isn't Getting Done.  This increases your stress.  There is a solution, it is actually the ONLY solution, and it will work.

Here's the solution: cut your to-do list in half.  I. AM. SERIOUS.  For the first two years that perimenopause starts and the 18 months of actual menopause you need to cut back your responsibilities sharply.  You have to.  You are the exquisite ancestral result of 10,000 generations of people who dealt with reality, not with what they wished was reality; those folks ended up dead and left the gene pool.  You have to have less worries and responsibilities.  Get a good night's sleep and hire a life coach like me and make it happen.  

This is a major biological transition and moderate exercise (energetic walking, treadmilling and spinning, yoga, weights work, classes, etc.) every single day will improve your hormonal balance every single day.  I know you hate this truth, but it is a truth, supported by reams of clinical evidence.  Moving enough to get a mild sweat going shifts your bouncing hormone levels onto a more even keel.  They need to trend downward slowly; you can deal with that.  It's when they are all over the place that your poor brain gets crazy and has you drenching sweat one minute and freezing the next and sleeping deeply and healthfully never  If you want the torment to stop, lace up your shoes and re-read/view/listen to the Moving Domain. 

Taking hormone supplements (even the natural, bioidentical, blah-blah stuff) ups your chances of breast cancer.  Think breast cancer will be less hassle than exercising every day?  By the time we hit 45, we're past the fantasy that devastating problems and illnesses only happen to other people.  Whatever it takes, make exercise and healthy eating your priority.

Eat more soy.  Soy metabolizes as a molecule that looks enough like estradiol (estrogen) that it connects to hormone receptors on cells and makes your body think it has more hormone than it really does.  So your peri- and menopause symptoms are less intense.  Japanese women have lower levels of reproductive cancers and easier menopause and a lot of the reason is soy in the diet.  Soy milk.  Edamame.  Tempeh.  Tofu that's flavored.  If all you've ever eaten is the boring while stuff, that's only for the hard-core.  Ordinary folks like me get the flavored stuff, yum.  Non-meat sausage, bacon and you-name-it can be made from tapioca and other healthy substances, but a lot of it is soy.  Enjoy!

Problem #2: Catastrophically dropping calorie requirements

This cause of slow and steady weight gain during the perimenopause and menopause years is a sharp drop in your metabolic rate.  You burn less calories just running basic processes.  You will have to cut 100-300 calories per day out of what you input by changing what you eat or eating less overall food per day.  You’ll be mildly hungry a lot of the time, because of the crazy hormones, and if you respond with eating, you will compound the problem. 

Good news: exercise dulls your appetite as well as revving up your metabolism for several hours.  The amount you burn working out is trivial compared to the benefit of boosting your metabolism.  Adding muscle – not bulk, remember; breathe! – adds to your metabolic rate because muscles burn up calories getting ready to leap into action, whereas fat just sits there.

The good news about this 2^nd issue is that you don’t need a manufactured hormone to save you.  You can be the heroine of this story all on your own. 

Check out  101 Stress Busters for Energy, Joy & Healthy Longevity for great ideas!!  Only $1.99 on Kindle; $9.99 in paper.  

www.soaringdragon.biz
victoria@soaringdragon.biz

How I Made Brussels Sprouts Lovable...

How I Made Brussels Sprouts Lovable
                                       – Without Requiring a Vulcan Mind-Meld

Copyright 2017, Victoria C. Leo

             

              Yeah. Brussels sprouts.  I wanted to pick the most difficult palatability challenge just like I chose the toughest demographic when I began working on weight loss challenges in my business nineteen years ago [women 35+ with full-time careers or businesses, kids, cats, parents, poodles, a 21^st century household with 12 different kinds of insurance to fill out forms for, and cars, appliances and electronics that break, need cleaning or explode at the least opportune moments; you know, people like YOU!]. 

I’m going to prove you to you that it’s just as easy to turn this tough tiger into a sweet pussy-cat as it is to – well, pet a pussy-cat.  All the vegetables that you “can’t stand”?  Bring ‘em on!!

What’s the matter with…

1)   Brussels sprouts

2)   Green beans

3)   Peas

4)   Spinach

5)   Kale

6)   Swiss and red chard

7)   Collards

The problems, if you think about it, fall into one of two categories: either the greens are bitter, have an “aftertaste,” are tough to chew, etc.  or they are just boring.  Beans, peas and spinach fall into this latter category.

How to Make the Boring Exciting

One of the best things to do with peas (and everything else on the list) is to toss frozen peas into soup or stew.  101 Healthy Meals in 5 Minutes or Less has a whole section on soup and stew.  Start with a low-sodium soup and hype it with more fresh or frozen veg, or start with vegetable or seafood stock and do the same.

But here’s what so many people forget: you can radically change the Yum rating of food by adding spices.  That’s why Europeans and Middle Easterners wanted so desperately to find new, faster, cheaper routes to Indonesia, aka The Spice Islands, and India.  And if you’ve ever eaten traditional English cooking, you’ll wish they’d tried harder, sigh.  In 101 Healthy Meals, I explain the sweet prices and sharp spices in more detail.  The short version is: pepper, garlic and stuff like that all taste good together; all the sweet spices taste great together.  Don’t fuss over exactly which one to use.  Just throw a moderate (sharp spices) or generous (sweet spices) amount in the soup/stew.  Set the burner to medium, set a timer to 15 minutes and go back to writing your memoirs or paying the bills.  Come back and stir it at intervals until you taste it and it tastes good.   It will!

Peas, spinach, that boring white tofu or anything else that you don’t want to eat because it’s blah – give it the spice treatment.

Another option is taking boring veggies and putting them into a burrito or omelet. 

·Turn a pan on medium heat, spray it liberally with olive oil, and saute (lightly cook) your spinach, onions or other greens.  For the noxious ones like kale, chop them small, removing the stems.  Put a lot of greens in the pan, because greens are mostly water and the volume will shrivel to 20% of what you started with.

·When the shriveling is well along and things are making sizzling noises, turn things over with a spatula, so the warming is equal on both sides.

·Add eggs or egg substitute and when the egg mixture has set, add Daiya or similar brand of non-dairy cheese.  The “cheese” is made of tapioca or something equally innocuous and non-fat, with lots of nice digestible protein.  Keep turning it over so it doesn’t burn.  Add sweet prices!

·Shovel parts of it into tortillas, and make wraps or burritos, or just plunk it on a plate and eat it. 

The cooking removes the bitterness from the bitter greens.

Another option, instead of an egg dish, is to add a small amount of pasta sauce and the non-dairy cheese.  This gives you a “pasta-type” flavor, especially if you add some (not a ton) of parmesan or romano blend cheese on top. 

Bitter Greens

You can dump them in soup or make egg and other saute-veggies in pasta sauce dishes.

The key to taming the taste is to chop them up as small as you can, and give them a good amount of saute time.

For kale and collards:  spray with olive oil, put them in a broiler and get the broiling started.  Then pull them out, throw on some sharp or sweet spices, and finish the broiling.  You get a really good “crunch” with this, although it might not come out perfectly the first time. 

Baking is another great way to tame the bitter taste. 

·You can make a “meatloaf” with veggie-substitute for ground round, plus chopped up kale and collards, and the filler. 

·You can bake fish on a bed of quinoa, brown rice or couscous, with a ton of kale and collards and chard.  [All of these are in 101 Healthy Meals so I assume you know the basic procedure.]

·You can bake any form of protein, including beans, with pasta sauce and get your Lasagna fix with these no-longer-bitter greens.

So now you can see so many different ways to make really yummy meals and side dishes from all kinds of leafy greens and peas.

But what about Brussels sprouts.  I DO understand why it’s not everyone’s fave veg.  It takes more time to cook, yes, it does.  But does it really deserve the horror that my husband treated it to when we first started cooking together?  Nah.

The key to making the Brussels sprouts yummy is to find a way to apply a lot of heat.  Baking works.  You can put it into a baked ensemble and in 30-40 minutes, it is bubbling in its pasta sauce or light patina of olive oil and it’s as docile as a – well, not a baby if you have any experience with them; a more willful and obdurate age doesn’t reoccur until teenagehood – how about docile as you wish your children, spouse and manager were?

You can steam it easily with a microwave.  Put some water in a microwave-safe bowl and set it for 6 minutes.  Add some of that lovely cheese sub and nuke it for another 1.5 - 2 minutes.  Yum. 

You can always steam it in an actual steamer if you have one.   You can also boil sprouts, and then add a 1 minute nuke with cheese sub or Parmesan.  Finally, you can get them half-cooked in the microwave, and then broil them.  Spray them with olive oil, perhaps spices or Parmesan.

ALL of these options are really yummy!

And the Vulcan mind-meld.  If you have spent the past half-century engrossed exclusively in literary fiction or living in your underground bunker, and don’t know what that phrase means, a generous translation would be “without extensive mental manipulation.”  In other words, you don’t have to have your normal thinking reset to love the unlovable veggies; you just have to know how to cook them and your beliefs will be a natural result of your Yum response!

Enjoy!

Want a copy of the basic cookbook this references?  Go to Amazon print or e-books, or your local bookseller.

Victoria C Leo    253-203-6676    victoria@soaringdragon.biz
www.soaringdragon.biz

Facebook group: Healing Minds, Healing Bodies

Blog:  soaringdragoninjapan.blogspot.com

Creativity to Boost Your Sleep!

My regular readers know how enthusiastic I am about creativity.  My class on using Creativity to Cleanse and Clear Specific Chakras (on learnitlive.com) is a big hit.  I use specific creative exercises whose action is to clear blockages in a specific chakra.  It's been a happy all-day class and I recently experimented with dividing it into chunks of a chakra or two, for people who digest big changes slowly.  I also include specific creative activities in all my really powerful transformation programs. 

Why?  Do I just like the idea of the whole world painting, drawing, coloring, making things with wood and cardboard, building kits, making mosaics and collages, and on and on?  

No, I'm not really addicted to paint.  I'm addicted to alleviating suffering.  Getting into your unconscious mind is the fastest, most powerful route to ending problems.  [I also use thinking-oriented, cognitive-behavioral techniques, but they only work if you already have an accurate idea of what really is the problem, and that is NOT usually the case.  My entrepreneur friends, you don't just need a tutorial on the new magical marketing tool in order to instantly have a million-dollar business.  Nope.]  

And how do you get into your unconscious mind when you don't have me in person or via video to guide you?  One way is deep meditation.  Another is listening to a journey with Belleruth Naperstek.  And another is to get yourself engrossed in color, shapes and the feel of creation in your hands.  My friends, you will never feel so close to god-like powers as you do when you step back from a work you created and realize the spine-tingling awe of "I MADE that.  From nothingness."  When you look at something you did and you feel deep into your DNA that you LIKE it - and you love yourself.  When you look at something you made with your own two hands (or whatever you have), and you feel deep in your DNA, "OMG, NOW I understand why I have always had trouble with taking charge, swimming, speaking in public, being praised, failing to excel at anything I try, ."

THAT moment of either pure joy or transcendent enlightenment is the real purpose of a consistent creativity practice.

So what about sleep?

After you have taken warm milk and melatonin, you turn off your blue light electronics, you have a bed that is not too hot or too cold, and you have made sure that you weren't arguing about politics or other aggravating topics for the two hours prior to bedtime, if you still can't sleep, start reiki-ing yourself.  Don't know reiki?  How about tapping?  Meditation of the Ommm and breathe style.

And if you haven't learned any of that, after you made a note for tomorrow AM to go to www.soaringreiki.biz and sign up to learn, then it's time to get up and pull out the pencils.  [Painting at midnight requires you to wash your brushes.  If you live with people who will be disturbed, go the colored pencils on quality paper route.  Same effect!]  Breathe deeply.  Close your eyes, call on your spirit guides, your goddess guides and helpers [another class at learnitlive.com, very powerful and fun.], or your Wise Adult, take a walk at the beach, or along a forest trail, and tell them all about it.  Then start to draw, without waking up your conscious mind at all.  Just let your "feelings" guide you to colors, shapes, and effects.  I have glitter glue sticks, animal eyes and all kinds of magazines, for pictures.  Whatever hair-brained idea pops into my mind, I breathe deep to make sure I'm not thinking, and then I let myself do it.  The results can be quite extraordinary!

When the emotional energy is discharged in a good cry or some creative arts, you'll be able to sleep.  Sometimes I take a few minutes to write down the insights into my journal for later cogitating as well as feeling.  But with the emotional burden lifted, I drift away.  

Bliss.....

The Road to Happiness - Right Through Your Bucket List

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPBgbOuU388

5 Ways to Boost Your Energy, Boost Your Joy, Lose Weight AND Much More!

 One of my constant refrains in my group coaching as well as individual programs is that joy comes from learning new things. If you haven't done any significant non-career learning in a while, this probably sounds .

So here's my suggestion: trust me enough to try it. Options are endless. There are practical classes (what to do when the next disaster strikes; how to fly-fish, etc), and there are fascinating, intellectually-stimulating classes (how did the early Christians evolve their idea that Jesus was god; how did dinosaurs evolve into birds; how to write engaging travel stories for your family to enjoy).

What they all have in common is that they are engaging (you are thinking about them, not politics, the bills, your teenagers, your boss or the job market), and they are FUN.  When you spend time having fun and learning, as opposed to fun that you’ve done many times before (watch football on TV), you make more areas in your brain work.  You particularly make your hippocampus, where memory is stored, work hard.  The harder it works, the larger it gets.  New neurons emerge from neuronal stem cells if you work your hippocampus enough.  [Stress kills neurons and shrinks your hippocampus.] 

As you move through life, you tend to get into habits and routines, so your brain starts to “coast.”  When you are not learning new things, you invite cognitive decline to make a home, a process that doesn’t wait until you are in your 60s, please note!  I totally get why most of us don’t want to go into Learner Mode.  A Learner, by definition, hasn’t got a clue what’s going on. Do you enjoy that lost and clueless feeling?  No, course, not.  THAT, dear friends, more than the “I don’t have time to have fun” is the real reason why Learning isn’t compelling.  If we’re honest, those of us who “don’t have time” do make time for sitcoms and sports.   

Do you have any idea how many dinosaur species you get to learn about and try to remember in the Paleontology: How Therapod Dinosaurs Became Birds class from U of Alberta on Coursera?  A lot. I wasn’t taking it for a grade, so who cares how many times I take the tests before I get it?  Just trying to remember as much as possible was enough of a workout to kick my hippocampus’ butt.  Man, was that fascinating!  Hubby and I couldn’t tear ourselves away, every evening for a week.  And it was FREE. 

You want your hippocampus as robust as possible if you are going to avoid Alzheimer’s, and besides, learning is FUN. 

So here’s my challenge to you all:  One night this week, turn the TV off, get the kids to do their chores, and sit down at your Internet and research:

·        **  Coursera – where I do my dinosaur study, and many others learn history, language, writing, and on and on.  Most classes are FREE.  I've learned from Laura.com, but that's mostly work-related, not fun.  I have heard good things about Udemy, but haven't taken anything there.

·        ** The Great Courses – which aren’t free, but are regularly discounted, and many libraries carry some of them.  I bought How Jesus Became God and was amazingly enlightened at hundreds of years of conceptual evolution on just exactly who Jesus was, and if he was god, when he became god.  Whatever your actual beliefs, the history is can’t-stop-listening engrossing.

·       ** Local community centers  – where you can try something entirely different to give your hippocampus a real workout.  How about art?  [Can’t do it?  Great.  Skilled is what you are when you FINISH, not before you start!]  You can sign up for exercise classes while you’re at it.  My community center has a water slide that is open on Saturday mornings.  Just try to convince me that’s not fun.  You can’t.  Your head is shaking but your lips are curving up in an unconscious smile.  You know how much fun it is. 

·       **  Local community colleges will let you attend some classes without a grade.  If you want to attend Over 55/Senior college, you can, even if you’re not quite that experienced with life.  You don’t have to dye your hair grey and the yearly fee is only $125 in my town.

The key is to set aside your performance anxiety and your reluctance to be clumsy and dopey (as one of my clients put it).  Not knowing what you’re doing is the fog that clears as you work at it.  Working your brain and having fun doing it is the greatest rejuvenator of tired minds, hearts and souls, second only to physical exercise.  I combine the two by looking through crochet-pattern and art-instruction books while I fast-walk on a treadmill, 4 days a week.  [The other three I splash and laugh in water aerobics classes.  Not too much learning, but lots of movement; laughter reduces my cortisol load as well.]  When I emerge from my dinosaurs, or my crochet-treadmill, or my splashing, I have such a surge of energy, the “lost time” is more than made up in increased cleverness in solving problems and getting tasks done, and the enthusiasm to embrace all the boring and/or scary parts.  It’s easy to plunge in and just git ‘er done, when you have so much fun to get back to!

Next week: pick something to learn.

Week after: start it.  Get through the initial discomfort to break through to the “wow, that’s cool.”   The discomfort that has been scaring you for years might only last a minute!

Want to discover more ways to have fun with the same 24 hours you have now?  Call for a FREE Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch).  www.soaringdragon.biz