MM#3-Extravagant Ear!

. "The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them." — Ralph Nichols

Our ears are one of our body’s powerful instruments! It allows us to hear music, listen and capture voices of our most prized relationships, hear impending danger, and enjoy conversation among many other things. Could you imagine what it would be like not to hear?

We can find balance and harmony with our bodies, and we can keep our balance thanks to our wonderful ears!  Did you know that the body’s equilibrium is kept in balance by the amount of pressure of the inner ear?  I was cleaning out my ear’s one day and accidentally knocked that q-tip a bit too far in, puncturing a hole in my ear drum…DISASTER! This was during my years as a gymnast, let’s just say I was not doing balance beam that week!

The middle ear bones are the smallest bones in our entire body and the cochlea is the hardest bone! The amplitude of the vibrations made for barely audible sounds is comparable to the diameter of a hydrogen atom, crazy! We are able to hear by sounds traveling down the external auditory canal which cause the tympanic membrane to vibrate.

Take care of those ears. Listening to sounds over 85 decibels can begin to damage your ears. Examples of such are rock concerts (110) and Boeing 747 (140). You may just want to turn that IPod down once in awhile

Ears are funny things. At one point in my life I had about six piercings and have always wanted to do one in the middle part of my ear, but have been prone to getting bad scarring Ear piercing dates back to ancient times holding symbolism for pubescent rituals to male status symbols such as Shakespeare. Now, they adorn us more as decoration and are limited in number by most employment companies.

Regardless, we learn about another amazing part of ourselves. I am so thankful for my ears, even if they may be a little funky looking. I am VERY THANKFUL for my hearing and the fact that I am able to balance, YEAH YOGA!

So remember to wash behind those ears, keep them clean (if you do use q-tips despite the warning, be careful!) Listen carefully to you, your body, and everything special! Definitely, turn a dear ear to all that negativity, who needs that!

“Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, for your soul is at stake…”-Isaiah 55:3

Have you done your body pledge yet?

Pledge to My Body

I hereby agree from this day forward to fully participate in life on earth. I agree to inhabit the appropriate vehicle for participation…a body. As a requisite for the sustaining of that body, I agree to eat consciously. This agreement fully binds me for the duration of my stay on earth.

As an eater, I agree to hone my hunger, eating when I feel hungry and stopping when I feel full. I recognize that as the biological need to eat is fulfilled with greater awareness, the benefits of well being will increase.

Because the essence of my participation in life is one of learning and exploration, I agree to experience uncertainty in my eating. I recognize that my relationship to food is a learning process and I will inevitably make mistakes. Therefore, I agree to accept my humaness and imperfections and not blame and judge myself.

As an eater, I accept pain, I recognize that I may suffer pain when my body is disturbed by my choice of food or eating habits. I may also experience pain when emotional and spiritual hungers are confused with physical hunger. During these times I agree to sit with and hold a safe place inside myself in which to explore painful and difficult feelings. I recognize that to be fully alive I must be willing to heave the courage to sit with a full range of emotions.

I agree to work on finding the time and energy necessary to feed and care for my body. I pledge to speak lovingly and kindly to myself and to incorporate movement into my life in fun and joyful ways.

I further agree to accept that I have a woman’s body; a body that is imperfect and vulnerable, curved, and rounded. Because I am giving up the need to be perfect, I am willing to accept m body at its natural weight. I realize that my female body has qualities that mark my womanhood and that have a profound role and effect on human kind.

I recognize that eating joins me to all humanity and at its deepest level is an affirmation of life. Each time I eat, I agree somewhere inside to continue life on earth. This choice to eat is a fundamental act of love and nourishment, a true celebration of my existence. I choose life again and again and again.

-Wellons, L (1997). Celebrating the Body. Austin, TX

This was giving to me at a pivotal time in my life and we were encouraged to write our own individual pledge to our bodies. After doing so, we each came back and shared them as a group, it was phenomenal, and powerful. Some went off the format that Ms. Wellons had written, some took a path completely their own. Everyone is so unique, and everyone brings such a refreshing persepctive.

My hope is that you can take this, post it somewhere to remind yourself what an amazing and beauitful creation you are! I also hope you can take some time, reflect, and write your own pledge. Please come back and share your thoughts, your pledge, or whatever so we can continue to learn, live, laugh, grow, and empower both ourselves and one another!

Blessings to you all!!

Mantra Makeover #2: Appreciate Your Brain Bucket

image from Wikipedia

“A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday.
As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes today.”
-Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Sorry about the delay in the next Makeover Mantra series, I was a bit busy living, laughing, and loving with my momma! So from our beautiful hair, we travel just below to our amazing skull which is intricately made up of 22 bones and bound together by fiber.  When we are born, the skull is not even entirely formed and actually takes about 18 months to fully develop.  Also known as the “cranium,” it has four large holes to hold very important parts such as our precious eyes, nose, and brain.  In addition, there is a hole for blood vessels to travel through.  In the 1800’s, Franz Joseph Gall created Phrenology, a science where one could supposedly tell traits of a person based on the features of one’s skull, though it is no longer practiced, unless you maybe visit a side circus   While to some the skull, cross, and bones may be the latest fashion statement, we now know it is so much more!

Thanks again Wikipedia!

So have you ever given much thought to your scull? Maybe when you bumped your head against that coffee table as a child, or a kitchen cabinet left open (as I am often guilty of?) Perhaps you have suffered a brain injury and know the importance of the skull better than any of us and what a precious gift it is! I used to work in a Level 1 Trauma Center and have seen the skull first hand in more unfortunate circumstances than one. Please people, always wear your bike helmet, biking, rollerblading, a helmet when rock climbing, protect that noodle of yours, use your “brain bucket!“

It amazes me how our Higher Power has so intricately created our bodies and I am so thankful for it. He has craftily enabled us to build hearty fibers to protect our beautiful minds and senses (eyes, mouth, and nose) with this 22-boned skull. There is more under that skin that meets the eye, just as there is more to you, remember that!

Here is something heavy to get those neurons going:

“The variety of the passions is great, and worthy, in every branch of that variety, of the most diligent investigation. The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of His wisdom who made it. If a discourse on the use of the parts of the body may be considered as a hymn to the Creator, the use of the passions, which are the organs of the mind, cannot be barren of praise to Him, nor unproductive to ourselves of that noble and uncommon union of science and admiration, which a contemplation of the works of Infinite Wisdom alone can afford to a rational mind; whilst referring to Him whatever we find of right, or good, or fair, in ourselves, discovering his strength and wisdom even in our own weakness and imperfection, honoring them where we discover them clearly, and adoring their profundity where we are lost in our search, we may be inquisitive without impertinence, and elevated without pride; we may be admitted, if I may dare to say so, into the counsels of the Almighty, by a consideration of his works. This elevation of the mind ought to be the principal end of all our studies, which, if they do not in some measure effect, they are of very little service to us.”-Edmund Burke

And lastly:

“By simply changing our mind with the same ease with which we change our socks, we can move from lack to abundance, absence to presence, persecution to empowerment; and by observing our internal dialogue and reversing the content, pitch, cadence, and conviction of our thoughts in another direction entirely, we can, as an artist before a canvas, paint a whole new reality before us.”

-Saleem Rana

Are you going to wear dirty socks today?

Please share your thoughts!

Mantra Makeover: Honoring Yourself From Head to Toe

I have always been an advocate for women’s rights and did a minor in women’s studies in college. My heart constantly aches at women who deprive themselves of who they truly are and can be because they let themselves be held back by society. That is why I am going to start the Mantra Makeover series.  We will literally go from head to toe, through each part of our bodies, learn about it, appreciate it, even if it’s a new fun fact, and find a little self lovin’! We are beautiful women, both inside and out, and it is my hope, that throughout this series, you will discover that within yourselves.

ok, so we're not talking the movie here....

MM #1: Luscious Locks-Hair

Our hair is an amazing thing. We use it to say something about ourselves, we dye it, we grow it out, cut it short, curl it, complain about it, for some it is their glamor, for some it’s a pain in the butt. Nevertheless, it is a part of us! Some cultures throughout history have proudly adorned their hair, while others have had to hide it under cloths.  Maybe you’re at a time in your life when you don’t have any hair. In Mayan culture, the nobility actually had shaved heads and wore beautiful headresses, there is no reason to be ashamed! (I actually did not have hair for a period of my life and loved the clean and crisp feeling of the cold water every morning when I swam, plus I think it made me faster :p)In ancient Greece women dusted themselves with Gold, and adorned themselves with fresh flowers and tiaras.We all have a powerful Goddess within!

I love to run my fingers through my hair, I love to have someone brush it, and I love having my mom braid it for me. Oh, how I love finding a good hairdresser and the wonderful scalp massages!! Hair can be fun, remember all those terrible hairstyles from the 80’s that give us good laughs? Side pony tail and the crimper anyone?

What does your hair do for you? How are you going to appreciate it today? It can be big, small, funny, or something just for you!

MM#1 Exercise: Gently warm a few tablespoons of cream or olive oil and massage it into your hair. Wrap a towell around your head, put up your feet, light a candle, and put on some soothing music. Relax for an hour and let your strands soak up the proteins from the cream or the nutrients of the oil. Rinse. Live, laugh, love.