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

FREE: Extended deadline: Kick Dieting to the Curb: Get and Stay at your Healthy Weight Forever!

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But the reason we don't have what we want is only because we aren't going about it in a comprehensive way.  We CAN make time for the healthy habits that we need to have a joyful and vibrant life, with peace of mind and clothes that fit the healthy size we want to be.  Willpower won't do it, but having a touchstone will.  Buying a bike and not riding it won't, but a movement plan that fits your life as it really exists.  Sleeping for 8 hours and reclaiming your birthright of clear thinking and energy can be yours.  The deep psychic surgery that excises the voices that are keeping you stuck is hard work but you have courage, and you WILL succeed - because you have the best guide in the world, right here, working to make it happen.  It will!

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Take a Spiritual Path to More Effective Weight Loss

There are about a million blog posts, videos and even books on how to lose weight and (presumably) keep it off.  

We all know that we need to eat fewer calories, burn up more calories and jigger our internal biochemistry so that we preferentially ditch fat not muscle mass.  How do you do that?  You eat abstemious amounts of healthy food.  No, pizza isn't on the list, except for my birthday and Christmas.  Had my Xmas cake and GOD WAS IT GOOD.  Ahem. I love veggies.  Yes, I do.  Or to be exact, I like the health that I get when I eat veggies and a lean vegetarian diet.  

We all know that we need to move our bodies, to build muscle mass [no, ladies, you will never look like AHnold, no matter how muscled you get; bulgy muscles come from testosterone and have nothing to do with actual strength] and to juice metabolism.  YOU NEED TO MOVE.  You need strength training with weights and with yoga. And you need aerobic activity that gets you to sweat.  You cannot, cannot, cannot get healthy without exercise.  I did an entire class on the mental blocks about exercise and how to overcome them.

And you need to jigger your metabolism.  If you have winter blues, you need to get that under control [Journey Out of SAD, 2nd Ed., at Amazon or your local bookseller].  If you aren't spending time every day in effective stress control, that will shift your hormones.  101 Stress Busters for Energy, Joy and Healthy Longevity is just out!  Amazon or your local bookseller.  You absolutely, positively cannot be healthy with cortisol, adrenalin and hormones that are screaming at your body to hold on to fat.  Can't be done.  You have to prioritize this and strategize to spring loose time for it.

But you know that - or some of it.

What you don't know is that relying on willpower will just get you through a few weeks at most.  Then you will start making an exception to your new regime.... just this once.  And then it will be every other day and then it will be gone entirely.

You need to harness the deep parts of your mind, where you genuinely make your decisions, and where unresolved anger, resentment and childhood damage and adult trauma generate powerful pulls away from health and wellness, into passionate needs to assuage all those feelings through substitutes like cake... TV....video games.... you name it.

You don't really want those substitutes, at a deep level.  You want to be happy, at a deep level.  The only way to circumvent the sabotage that is running 24x7 in your deep levels, is to get down there with clinical hypnotherapy and turn it OFF.  And substitute a belief that you really can get what you really want.  And deep surgery to heal whatever needs healing, so it is gone forever.  Surface treatments like affirmations and coaching can never, ever have a lasting impact, because they can't get to the deep levels where the sabotage is happening.  Only hypnosis can do that - and you're only safe with an experienced, highly trained practitioner.  [I was in training and supervision for a year at my school. You want this level of training, not a grad of a quickie course, who doesn't know what they are doing with these major issues, this deep surgery.]

So think it over.  Do you want to have change that lasts?  Yes? Then sign up for a FREE transformation class.

For those with spirituality in their lives, many of these classes use spiritual tools.

And when you are ready to REALLY commit to change, find the package that is specially tuned to your specific problem, or a 30 day program just for you, at 

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https://www.learnitlive.com/class/9897/FREE-Transforming-My-Beliefs-About-Myself-The-Creator

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8842/Retrain-Your-Immune-System-Smarter-Cells-Healthier-Life

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https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8839/Harness-Your-Goddess-Energy-to-Stop-Self-Sabotage

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Or explore the list of almost-free classes:

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https://www.learnitlive.com/class/9873/6-Week-Stress-Busters-for-People-Who-Don-t-Have-Time-to-Waste

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/9879/Goddess-Connection-to-Drive-Weight-Loss-6-Weeks-to-Happy-and-Healthy

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/10091/Become-the-Shaman-of-Your-Own-Life

10 Keys to Transform Your Life Right Now!

Some great webinars to start your year off well – the inexpensive 4-6 week very powerful programs:

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/9895/Meet-Your-Biological-Ancestors

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/9896/30-Days-Create-Your-Way-to-Health-and-Joy

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/9873/6-Week-Stress-Busters-for-People-Who-Don-t-Have-Time-to-Waste

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/9879/Goddess-Connection-to-Drive-Weight-Loss-6-Weeks-to-Happy-and-Healthy

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/10091/Become-the-Shaman-of-Your-Own-Life

Free:

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/9897/FREE-Transforming-My-Beliefs-About-Myself-The-Creator

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8842/Retrain-Your-Immune-System-Smarter-Cells-Healthier-Life

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8844/The-Spiritual-Path-to-LOVING-Exercise-Veggies-Yes-you-will

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8839/Harness-Your-Goddess-Energy-to-Stop-Self-Sabotage

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8843/5-Magic-Components-of-Your-Successful-Self-Care-Program-Starting-with-Self-Love

Stress Busting - and Having FUN!

I’ve never done this before in my life: 240 pages, written, rewritten, edited and polished in a little over 6 weeks.  Georg F. Handel did his Messiah in about that long, but he was a genius.  Oh. My. God.  The newborn 101 Stress Busters for Energy, Joy and Healthy Longevity is on its way now to bookstores, Amazon and me.  As I contemplate this blank page, I feel like a battery that is completely devoid of charge.  Yet, thinking about this amazing experience, I can feel psychic energy sparkling through my exhausted soul, and suddenly I’m a bit less exhausted.  Just enough to pick up my fingers and pour my soul out on the page.

Two hundred and forty pages, most of which is about creativity.  There are preliminary chapters about fun ways to breathe and meditate and walk and exercise, and there is a chapter on making plans and making sure that you execute on them – so important! - but the bulk of the tome is page after page, tool after tool, that takes you out of your worry mind, away from the tunnel-vision that stress creates and into the realms of divinity.  After all, in the beliefs of most faith traditions, there is a deity who creates the world from the raw materials at hand.   The Bible creation story, and the Babylonian Tiamat story that it cribbed from, involves breath and clay soil and the transformation of dead nothingness into glorious somethingness.  God is God because he, she or it brings forth life.  God is the Creator in Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, the Norse pantheon and most animisms.  [Buddhism is the only major faith that doesn’t have a creator being.]  There is nothing that so closely mimics the divine as this simple path of creating something with your own hands and your own soul.

What flows through your mind and what frisson of excitement flows through your body when you first behold the works of YOUR hand?  Regardless of how imperfect it may be – and when you do anything for the first time, it won’t be the Pieta, so if you are perennially in the humor to tear yourself down, plenty of scope for it – it is creation.  It is beautiful in the same way that all newborn babies are beautiful.  The awe that overcomes you when you see the results of your work, the vision and the execution of your heart, your soul and your spirit resembles nothing else on Earth.  Even the transcendence you experience on the mountain top, or sitting on the rim of the Grand Canyon, or driving down a road three feet away from a live bison isn’t the same awe as the awe of true creation.

Creation of any kind, whether it is a vegetable bed or an oil painting, puts you in a mental and emotional place that transforms your physical body as well.  The adrenal stress cascade stops or slows.  Your heart stops laboring.  Neurons remain intact and new ones are created from neural stem cells; your memory improves and the clarity of logic sharpens.  Your kidneys stop laboring; your immune system, especially the T-attack cells and the Natural Killer cells that go after cancer as well as outside invaders, generates its full complement of soldiers, ready to protect you from killers within and without.  Chronic inflammation quietens.   The chemicals that scratch the walls of your arteries and allow plaque to attach become fewer and far between.  All over your body, from your skin to your bones and everywhere in between, the deadly effects of stress are muted.

Time spent in a creative fog is time that exists outside of the normal minute-by-minute “real time” that we are all used to.  The first time you can put aside your OMG, I’m Doing It Wrong, I Know I’m Doing It Wrong thoughts and really deep-end in the process, narrow your thoughts and focus to simply what you are doing, you will sink deep into the Time Without Time.  Time simply ceases to exist as a reality. 

And the act of creation doesn’t seem to even involve you.  People have reported feeling as if a power took control of their voice, their typing hands or the hand holding the brush or the glue pot while the Real Me just watched.  They are absolutely right, if the Real You is your thinking, planning, analyzing Pre-Frontal Cortex, the part of you most active when you are consciously, logically trying to “figure something out.”  In order to create, you need to let your PFC step back [“take a nap,” in a hypnotherapy journey] and let the part of you that knows how to play and that knows the real agendas and the real goals of your heart take over.  This is the part of you that passionately wants to express those agendas and goals – dreams – in whatever medium you allow.  Let the real Real You come out to play, and to express to you what is truly Real, and you will have a gold mine of Truth about yourself and how you truly perceive your world and your life.

I’m not immune from the glorious results of allowing Truth to flow.  I thought my new book 101 Stress Busters for Energy, Joy and Healthy Longevity was about health through blunting the deadly ravages of stress, and it is.  But if you look at the page count, and at the chapters that flowed out of me like a mighty stream, it is the power and glory of a life spent creating that the book is really about.  My subconscious was so insistent on this book that I bumped my planned 2017 releases to accommodate it, and I worked at a fever pitch to finish it, rewrite it, polish it, edit it and produce it in 6 exhausted weeks.  I mean, stress causes a lot of the problems that my work erases, but still – why?  Now, looking at the finished product in printed form, I know why.  My soul wanted your soul to create, and it produced a 240-page how-to guide to all the forms of joy that would fit into 101 tools, and still leave some space for breathing, meditation and the importance of moving. 

Want to learn more?  Come visit me at www.soaringdragon.biz or check out my Facebook group Healing Minds, Healing Bodies and join my monthly (or whenever I get around to it) newsletter.  I offer free and low-cost classes on Learnitlive.com as well as a free Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch) for entrepreneurs who want to wake up every morning, do their self-care and then execute, execute, execute all day long, no wasted time, for the maximum income and greatest joy.  I also invite anyone who thinks they’re “not creative” to call me or buy 101 Stress Busters, and I invite people who’ve had traumas in their lives, to know that the impact on their lives today can be ended - permanently.

Healthy Female Body Image - and Healthy Female Bodies

Harriet Brown (Missed Images, October 2016, Prevention Magazine, prevention.com) fell into a common error:  she discovered that she’d been doing something to harm her kids and decided the only solution was to go to the opposite extreme.  Specifically, she’s spent years criticizing her body in truly unhealthy ways, in front of her kids.  She’s stopped that.  Good.  

Now listen to her list of what the rest of the world has to do: no mentioning of weight, calories or carbs, ever.  Those of us who are determined to stop being victims of the nationwide-epidemic of overweight – a very serious health hazard, personally and for our country! – can’t even mention our weight loss and strengthening victories, much less celebrate them!   If we congratulate each other on vegetable-eating and subsequent weight loss, talk about recipes, talk about yoga and water aerobics, about losing fat and putting on muscle, then we are “trash-talking” our bodies.  We cannot discuss these health facts and victories with our kids or with each other – ever, in any way.   

Any factual information about the health hazards of obesity are equivalent to body-hating.  What other pressing problems could we solve if we stop thinking about improving our health by reducing our fat, the author asks?  More important than a strong, healthy body and the self-care that precludes stress-eating?  Health is the #1 most pressing issue in your or anyone else’s life.  What does it profit a woman to save the rainforest and die young herself of preventable disease?  We women have been modelling THAT kind of devaluing ourselves for way too long.

The cure for trash-talking isn’t a gag rule.  We can't switch from shaming each other for our unhealthy bodies to trying to make ourselves feel better by shaming those who are trying to improve their health - or ours.  

What this author should have said is that she used to refer to herself in self-loathing terms, now she is self-loving.  She now tells herself that she completely loves and respects her physical self AND she is charting exercise, calories, carbs and meditation every day so she can nourish and care for her physical self in the best possible way, during the making-muscles, losing fat transformation period and on into maintenance of her healthy, vibrant body.  

Insisting that all body types are equally worthy of LOVE is right on.  Saying that all body shapes are equally HEALTHY is utter nonsense.

I can make your day 15 minutes longer - or more! Don't believe me? Read on.....

I'm a big fan of yoga (fun), walking with my dog (see photo) and yard work (not so much, but it gets me sweating).  

But who doesn't dream of making time for all that lovely exercise that our bodies crave, by lengthening the day?  Oh, please, please, please, great spirits of the astronomical, can't you slow down the Earth's rotation and give us a longer day?  

Not possible, thank goodness, or we'd all die for celestial mechanical reasons I'd be glad to bore you with [just ask], but isn't it a great fantasy??

Fortunately, we don't have to.  We don't really need more time, and in our saner moments we do know that.  What we need to clearer priorities and the strength to stick to them.  Kids and spouses can do more, if we are willing to draw on our ancestral courage and make that shift happen, and not be distracted by the hooting and hollering and "I hate you"s.  Many things just don't need to happen at all, which means courage again to face up to peers, family and the parental voices in our heads.  Courage is more valuable to your life than diamonds, or hours more in the day, and you know that, too, at the wise core of your soul, down below all the noise and rumpus of emotions and fears.

Priorities....

I like to try out new exercise options and so I picked up the Women's Health Big Book of 15 Minute Workouts.  Some of them are strictly for the 20-something crowd, but many of them look interesting, done straight or modified for my aged and decrepit body.  Before the workouts, the book features a list of time-wasters that you could eliminate, to get more time for your workouts - and for Reiki, meditation, tapping, art and the rest of the stress-elimination protocols I teach my clients.  

Here are my favorites:
* Turn off Facebook.  Set a timer, give yourself 10 minutes a day and then TURN IT OFF.

*  Say NO to what is not on your priority list.  If everything is critical, then your decision-making is seriously askew (a stress symptom), or you need additional help from your probably-not helpless family members.

*  Do one thing at a time.  Scientific studies have proven over and over again that you can rapidly-switch your attention from one thing to another if we are talking about mindless chores - laundry or vacuuming, or with my cooking style, cooking - but if you are doing something substantive, give it your undivided attention!  You actually spend less total time if you do something with all your attention and then move on to the next thing.  If you don't believe it, test it out - fairly - and see what happens, for three days minimum. 

*  Make cleanliness and order a priority, so you don't waste time trying to find things.  Put things in the same place all the time.  Put up a key hook and always put the keys there.  Put your glasses in the same place.  Keep your office or bill-paying area organized.  Do your bookkeeping and filing every month.  Clean the house once/month.

I have my fridge organized, and used to go ballistic if hubby puts things on the wrong shelf. Then I decided to do a test.  He did his usual higgledy-piggledy and got 3 seconds to glance in the fridge and list what was there.  I got an organized fridge and the same 3 seconds.  Then we switched.  He saw that HE was faster with an organized fridge too.  His cooking improved because he could tell at a glance what raw materials he had available. That's why he puts food on the right shelf just like I do.  Right, honey?  Honey?  

But don't be a neatnik.  Understand that too much cleanliness is like too much dieting - a desperate attempt to control SOMEthing.  Channel those urges into art or journaling.  Take one of my classes and get super-good at identifying your real needs before you start vacuuming under the bed.  [I put my beds directly on the floor.  Nothing to vacuum, whoopie!]

* Spend less time on cheap, unimportant purchases and decisions.  Some people are naturally decisive (Myers-Briggs J types).  My first husband and I went to purchase a new washer one day.  I scanned all the options, narrowed it down to two, then one, slapped my hand down and summoned a sales rep with a "This one."  While hubby was still thinking about the first model he came across.  I had a clear idea of my criteria before we got there, then I laser-focused on the criteria list, and done.  12.5 minutes, according to former hubby.  And that included the time spent asking "Where are the washers?"  Myers-Briggs P types need to consider this tip.  Some decisions are important enough to deserve protracted decision-making.  Darling hubby #2 and I spent two years meticulously researching and finding our ideal future retirement location.  For a P, making a commitment to one course of action, and leaving all the rest behind, is less than comfortable.  Practice zipping through unimportant decisions.  Become the cheetah, who focuses exclusively on the impalas, then one impala in particular, with laser intensity.  Enjoy the sunset some other time.

*  Put it in your calendar.  This is a gotta-have for anyone who wants to accomplish anything.  Your priorities are in your calendar.  If they aren't there, they don't really matter to you - whatever you say. 

*  Use that timer for other black holes, those astronomical phenomena that suck in every bit of matter and energy that comes close to them.  You know what you waste time on.  Use that time to rest!  Or exercise, which gives you more energy and burns up the cortisol that makes you feel tired.

*  Set out your exercise clothes, or always keep them in the same place, near the front door.  You set out your next-day clothes before you go to sleep, right?  I actually have two set of clothes - the stuff I'm going to sweat in and the stuff I am going to meet clients in.  No decisions to make the next day, just jump into one and then the other.  Or keep them in the dining room, like one of my clients does, because she works at home and seeing them during breakfast reminds her of her commitment to her health, her family, her income and everything else that first and foremost depends on her health.

Doesn't that all sound eminently logical?? Sure it does.  Now pick ONE item on that list and do it every day, every single day, for a week.  Then add another one.....

Contact Victoria Leo for a FREE Getting Unstuck session at victoria@soaringdragon.biz, or visit www.soaringdragon.biz. 

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

Stress and the Joys of Dessert - and Pasta

Stress releases what we popularly refer to as adrenalin, and cortisol.  Wonder why you can't lose weight?  Too little sleep and too much cortisol.  That is why a primary component of my Weight Loss packages (www.soaringdragon.biz) is attention to methods of FAST, EFFECTIVE providing comfort and relief from whatever is driving that flood of cortisol.  As the Dalai Lama and others point out, when you are calmer you can determine if it is something you can do something about - and most of the time you can do SOMEthing.  So go do it.  Or it's something beyond your powers.  Then really, truly let go of being upset about it.  Move on.  Focus on what you can gain in the future, not what you lost in the past.

And sometimes it just means that you have to hang on, and try again, in a different way.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, a hero is no braver than an ordinary person, they are just braver for 5 minutes longer.  Amen.

So when you tell me that you are "too busy" for an inexpensive Reiki class, or tapping training, that you can't take time to exercise or learn breathing exercises, and I know that you are choosing instead to give yourself comfort in the way you always have - with food - think about this:  You can learn nearly all of the above in an 8 hour day with me.  And the only effect will be longer life, stronger body, heart and soul - and effortless relief from the effects of stress for the rest of your life.  What POWER in your hands.  Continuing to medicate your feelings with sugar, dessert and pasta shortens your life, weakens your heart and soul, and comforts you for at most an hour.  

You deserve more than that!  

Don't you?  When getting real power is so easy?  

Call or email for a FREE Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch) and see what power you can put into YOUR hands!

When Do You Drive Ahead Regardless - Mind over Matter - and When Not To...

We've all heard the joke about the efficiency expert who thinks waiting 9 months for a woman to produce a child is a process that can be improved; just get 9 women to work at it for a month!

 Doesn't work that way.

 So watch out for how you implement the new craze for short, intense gym workouts.  The reasoning goes that we are all stressed for time, so why waste time?  So far, so good.  But you have to understand that some truths are Truths; they are not a matter of personal opinion, and you cannot use willpower, vision boards or any other mechanism to overcome them.  

 Good:  Warm up with a treadmill or other slow, rhythmic, aerobic moves for at least 10 minutes.  Then do your shorter, more intense workout, realizing that intense HAS to use perfect form and correct placement of limbs and weights, because if you are too heavy or too intense and you make even a small mistake in placement, you are going to get injured.  Injured removes you from workouts anywhere from two days to the rest of your life. 

 Bad: Jump right in and start pushing and pulling at high intensity.  Muscles and fascia that have been over-stretched or over-tense during hours of work and worry, usually in the same position, are really ripe for a major injury.

 So - impatience can kill you, just like your parents told you oh so long ago.

 Take your impatience and treat it like the problem that it is.  Breathe deeply for a full minute.  Allow your muscles and connective tissue to relax a bit.  Pray.  Reiki.  Meditate.  Stare into the abyss until the urge to think that you can overrule the physical laws of nature, what your physical self needs, dissipates and you are returned to sane, rational humanity.  

 If you only have 10 minutes, don't go to a gym.  Walk up and down the stairs at your job or home, at a walking pace.  Don't run.  You only have 10 minutes and you're not loosened up yet.  Or do yoga.  Cats and cows, boys and girls.  You can do it in a dress, in a cubicle, so you can surely do it at home. 

 If you only have 20 minutes, walk on a treadmill to warm up for ten, then do intervals of rapid or hard work, with a slower pace. for another 10.  Cool down by walking for a few minutes.  

Any strategy is better than going from overstretched and over-tense straight into an intense, especially weights, workout. 

ANY time you feel "I have to" preceding something that violates the laws of physics or biology, know that as a signal to change your faulty thinking. A law that is equally true on Earth, Ganymede and all the planets and moons of the Andromeda Galaxy is not going to bow down to your demands.   

Two plus two will always, always equal four, not twenty four, no matter how busy or important you are, or think you are.  I permanently crippled my hands by exactly this kind of crazy decision-making, and it took me five years of rehab and you don't want to know how much pain and suffering to regain most of my function (and life), but the life lesson has left me with a permanent twerk toward a sane approach to facts. Truth exists, apart from opinion.  Much of what we think of as fact, is truly opinion - but not everything.  

Slow down.  Breathe.  Make a sane assessment of what is truly possible (Truth) and commit to that.  Let go of everything else. 

www.soaringdragon.biz

Classes for May - Transform Your Life

The Spiritual Path to Loving Exercise and Veggies [Yes, you will!]

4/30 10 AM;  5/21 2 PM

So many Americans hate exercise and won't do it. Not MY clients! They have learned the spiritual path to genuinely (no gimmicks) loving to feel their bodies move, and loving how they feel with veggies. We never have trouble making time for the things we love to do, and the things we love to eat. No willpower needed for me to spend an hour creating things with crochet, or photographing distant planets and galaxies. I love it! 

You love things, too. And you don't have to use any willpower to get yourself to do these things, do you?

In this one hour class, I will start you on the road to LOVING your body, moving, and loving the taste of really good, healthy food. The spiritual path is unrelated to any religion or faith. Your spirit core is where your deepest desires live. Not the substitutes that you crave, because your life is too stressful and too filled with have-to, and not enough true joy. Not that. Your spirit core will lead you to the vision of yourself, and the decisions about your life that will transform your life - and your surface desires that now are driving your life in unhealthy directions.

You can love exercise as I've learned to love it - because it is a time of loving myself and my family, preparing to do my very best as a healer, and having fun. In a typical week, I joyfully splash and play in water, deep-end in wonderfully creative dreams of crochet and acrylic artwork, and touch the deepest core of my soul. It's a wonderful life! 

No matter how many hats you are currently juggling and how many years it's been since you had anything other than popcorn and TV for yourself, if you take this class, you will be setting forth on the Hero's Journey to Health.

After the class, you'll have the option of discounts on the entire transformation program. www.soaringdragon.biz

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8844/The-Spiritual-Path-to-LOVING-Exercise-Veggies-Yes-you-will#

Meet Your Biological Ancestors

5/3 6PM;  6/3  10 AM

Within Homo sapiens itself, you have over 10,000 generations of ancestors! Your people domesticated plants and animals, migrated across continents and created gorgeous works of art. Moving back farther in time, there are thousands more - the people who first tamed fire, developed language and created home bases to nurture babies and elders.

Getting in energetic connection to all these generations, connects you to their characters, their struggles, their triumphs and their tragedies. Connecting empathetically to these DNA contributors to who YOU are, allows you to question your own deeply-held beliefs about your life, deepen your empathy for yourself and others, increase your pride in your own courage and virtues.

Clients have reported everything from better sleep to losing unwanted weight after completing the day-long class that includes both biological and past life ancestors. The clients who beta-tested this shorter version reported significant shifts in their inner landscape. You will too! Join us live for interaction and join us via recording if you can't.

Pre-requisites

A sincere desire to understand yourself, and a willingness to be transformed, in mind, body, spirit and soul.

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8591/Meet-Your-Biological-Ancestors#

The 5 Magic Components of Your Successful Self-Care Program (Starting with Self-Love)5/10 6PM;  5/21 3:30PM

How many times have you tried and failed to launch a permanent self-care program?  The fault is not in you or in your stars.  All you need is the RIGHT tools and the RIGHT incentives.  You are guaranteed success!

This class will introduce you to the 5 must-have components of your successful self-care program, and help you in putting your personalized plan together - something flexible enough to get you through "bad days" and powerful enough to generate serious change in your health and wellbeing.  You CAN transform your life, no matter how many barriers you see on the road to self-care.

You owe it your yourself - and your family and your business/career - to invest an hour in learning these 5 components, so transformative, they feel truly magical!     www.soaringdragon.biz

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8843/5-Magic-Components-of-Your-Successful-Self-Care-Program-Starting-with-Self-Love

Harness Your Goddess Energy To Stop Self-Sabotage

5/11 5:30PM; 5/12 6PM

Have you been trying to stop your self-sabotage and generate more confidence for your life, your business or your family? Not working, huh? STOP beating yourself up! You are using the wrong tools, that's all.

In this workshop, you will connect with your inner goddess energy (not associated with any religion or faith!), and watch the real barriers to your successful completion of your goals start to crumble before your eyes. Take effective action against the barriers that are holding you back.

Enrollment is limited for the highest-quality experience.

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8839/Harness-Your-Goddess-Energy-to-Stop-Self-Sabotage

The Secret Ingredient of All Successful Transformations

5/16 6PM

We all have barriers that we would like to blast away.  Why is it that some of us succeed and most don't?  What do those "lucky" winners have that YOU don't?  It's simple!  No matter whether it is a new career or a healthier, slimmer body, a new love life or freedom from addictions and habits, a better handle on adult ADHD or a new freedom from the effects of past trauma, all successful transformations rely on one special ingredient - that coaching can't give you and therapy doesn't want to.  Come explore the Secret Ingredient and discover how to use it to blast through the barriers keeping you from your heart's desire in 2016!

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/7551/The-Secret-Ingredient-of-All-Successful-Transformation

Claim Your Power, Claim Happiness

5/19  6PM

It looks like you have multiple goals, but you don't really. All of them - money, family, business- are about happiness that comes from getting What You Want. So first we will explore how to remove external barriers to happiness.

Then we put power back into your hands. All these years, you thought that power to be happy was "out there." It's not. 

Sure, it makes sense to remove as much of the external barriers to happiness as possible (see Magic Ingredient and other classes that spend an hour on just that). But what do you do about the situations that just stubbornly refuse to change? Do you have to be unhappy because your mate doesn't materialize and wealth doesn't manifest? 

No simplistic "don't worry; be happy" jive here! This is the real road to taking back the power that you always had, Dorothy. You don't even need ruby slippers to wield THIS power. This is the infinite power within you.

All you need to tap all that power is courage to confront what you have been doing to sabotage yourself, to prevent yourself from taking this power. Do you have the courage? 

On the other side of the river is a power no one can take away from you! 

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8840/Claim-Your-Power-Claim-Happiness

Retrain Your Immune System: Smarter Cells, Healthier Life

5/16  12 noon; 5/21 10 AM

Your immune system is a complex of different cells and messenger molecules that try to identify both external invaders and internal malfunctions (proto-cancer), coordinating with each other for your best health. The stem cells that trained in your babyhood start to malfunction over time, leading to both an upsurge in invaders getting through and also mistakes leading to auto-immune diseases.

The bad news: medications and herbals can only boost or suppress the whole system. To get an auto-immune disease to calm down, you suppress the whole immune response and you get sick more often. What do you do??

You CAN teach your immune cells to be more discerning! Through the power of advanced hypnotherapy and specific imagery, you can calm a cytokine storm without coming down with the flu. You can boost your NK cells in their cancer-killing work without stimulating other T and B cells to the point where they start looking for enemies that don't exist (and make you ill).

Come get a sample of the process before you sign up for a complete program. You CAN have more power over your immune response!

You will have an opportunity for discounts on the complete Retrain Your Immune System (www.soaringdragon.biz) as well as an 18-hour MP3 on How Your Body Really Works, explaining all these immune system components and interactions in detail.

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8842/Retrain-Your-Immune-System-Smarter-Cells-Healthier-Life

The Spiritual Path to Permanent Weight Control: Blasting Through the Barriers

5/19 6:15 PM

Have you been struggling with your weight? Does it seem impossible to get results that last? Are you TIRED of counting calories and constantly telling yourself NO? Do you feel like a failure? [You're not. Your strategies are ineffective, that's all.]

Trying to change your life with only willpower and "inspiration" is a losing strategy. It will work for a while, but it can't transform your life. The complete Spiritual Path program WILL! The key to success is using the right tools, in the right way, consistently and with intentionality. Once you have your first experience of blasting through the barriers that are keeping you from success, you will never look back - never return to the old, ineffective strategies. 

Spiritual means a connection to the transcendent, which has an infinite number of forms. Religious means adherence to practices, rituals and dogmas. This class harnesses spirituality to unlock the door to PERMANENT weight control.

If you have been able to achieve permanent weight control, great; keep doing what you're doing. If you haven't, it's time to admit that what you're doing isn't working for you, long-term, and commit to a new program that really works.

Join a group of dedicated seekers who are tired of the old shame and blame game and are ready to combine effective action with joy. You can do it! This is the road to success.

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8440/The-Spiritual-Path-to-Permanent-Weight-Control-Blasting-Through-the-Barriers#