meditation Archives - Nirvana Diet

Alec Baldwin loses his temper again… has he tried meditation?

July 4, 2013 by admin Leave a Comment

Poor communication skills is the number one reason relationships do not work. Being prone to angry outbursts and talking to people in a disparaging way catches up with you in the long run. What can you do? Start with something called awareness.

Recently, the Washington Post reported that Alec Baldwin lost his temper again threatening to become violent towards a flight attendant when she asked him to turn off his phone. As if that was not enough, Baldwin cancelled his Twitter account because a reporter wrote that his wife tweeted during James Gandolfini’s funeral.Give me a break! Why should he care? Because the guy’s riddled with complexes.

Yes anger and getting reactive are good places to start to understand your complexes. We all have them. What most people don’t realize is that they have us. If he hasn’t tried it I would recommend meditation for his anger management. It just isn’t cool to treat other people badly! But then again you have to want to change.

Despite how he or people think he “gets away” with this kind of behavior, I really do not believe this is how Alec wants to be. I feel badly for him, as I do not think this is something Alec can control. Most people have no idea how much of what they think, feel, and how they act is unconscious… not within their conscious control.

Hilary Rosen, a Washington media strategist who has known him since college said this behavior is part of his persona.She is right, but living life with a persona is not an enlightened way to live either.

Unlike what his friend Rosen said, I do not believe “his outbursts are as authentic as everything else.” Yes be may be a passionate person and feel passion about his charitable causes, but the outburst are really childish and suggest a lack of personal growth. I am sure he has had his share of therapy, but this is part of the problem, therapy today is too based on whining, complaining, navel gazing, diagnoses and medications.

In my upcoming book The Nirvana Diet™ which is based on the coaching work I have done for over ten years, I talk about the persona and complexes… how to acknowledge and move beyond them. The persona was concept developed by Carl Jung, the wise Swiss psychiatrist who was Freud’s contemporary but whose work is unfortunately not as well known. The persona is the big complex made up of many little complexes we form that functions as a band aide of sorts for our wounds.

The problem is that the persona is an adaptation of the real you.. it’s more how you think people want you to be. As an archetypal astrologist and coach, it seems obvious that Alec’s persona which is prone to fiery outbursts is very resonant with the Mars archetype. Without really knowing his real birth time I could not be certain, but using the reported 12pm time, validates this. That’s what i found, Mars located in 7^th house aspecting his 1st house. This usually creates relationship issues and a fiery hot-headed personality.

The persona may help cover up the wounds and vulnerabilities, but it does not serve the evolution of the person’s character which is really what matters in the long term. It also suggests poor social skills which do matter in the long run no matter how much you think you get away with it.

What I learned is that living behind a persona is usually destined to create unhappiness as it keeps us from experiencing our deepest longing, which for most of us is to be loved unconditionally for who we really are. This by definition may include vulnerabilities or aspects we are ashamed of … but until we are able to peel back the layers of the mask we wear and become transparent, we will probably never really be authentic and probably never feel loved.

The bottom line is that people have to want to change and no longer feel as if the behavior longer pays off. To change your personality reality you have to start with your personality. I would recommend Alec try meditation. Meditation teaches awareness and helps us to pay attention to what and when we get triggered… then we can ask ourselves…Why?

Feeding your creativity. What are you really hungry for?

May 10, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

So how do you ‘grow’ creative ability and lose your appetite for the things that do not serve you in life?

So we are born creative, to be creative and then we seem to lose it. To grow and reconnect with the creative spark within you must be willing to make mistakes, and laugh at yourself. Einstein’s quote is relevant here: “A person who has never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

Creativity can be re-cultivated. Creativity comes from using the “whole brain” that is left and right working together. Believe it or not meditation has been shown to increase creativity helping to connect left and right brain. Meditation and creativity go together and both can become your daily practice. To begin your daily practice check out the meditation made easy program I developed. You can also look at Julia Cameron’s groundbreaking book on creativity The Artist’s Way. Growing creativity is like exercising you have to do it everyday as a daily practice.

Something happens in school that shuts that down, favors and rewards left brain thinking. I remember with my own children growing up and how different it was moving from kindergarten to first grade. My daughter came home from school one day very upset complaining how the first grade and school was not fun anymore. There was the big push to learn how to read and from then on creativity was not honored but marginalized. I also think it has a lot to do with playing… children spend so much of their lives playing. If you can bring more play into your life you may find yourself more focused to achieve your lifestyle goals whether it be to lose weight or find your passion.

Ultimately creativity involves the capacity to see relationships between things that are not related and to “think out of the box.” The problem is if one lives in a box, how does one think outside it? I also think creativity comes from the muses. It is about inklings, flashes of ideas that just pop into one’s head that may not even be one’s own.

Creativity is also about change and transformation. It is the process of bringing something new into being and making something of it. Does that sound familiar? Isn’t that how we change a habit? To that I would also like to add Amit Goswami’s definition: “creativity is the discontinuous exploration of new meaning in new and old contexts(s) of value. Looking for the link between creativity, change and values is a creative act.

What do you want to create? When you give some focus and attention to this drive, you may see that eating healthier food and exercising daily comes more naturally to you and watching TV are no longer interesting. Ultimately tending to our creative side makes us more stress hardy as well.

Tell me how some ways you can begin to activate and tend to your creative side.

Goswami, A. (1999). Quantum creativity. Creskill, NY: Hampton Press.

Does losing weight make you happier?

January 18, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

I think most people would think that losing weight makes you happier? The research shows it doesn’t in the long run. Losing weight, just like falling in love or getting a promotion creates a short term bump in happiness but after a while you return back to where you were. Could this be one reason why so many people regain their weight? One question I ask people I coach that is very enlightening is: what do you want by losing weight that you don’t already have? Or what are you hoping that losing weight will do for you? These powerful questions are what lead us to the unresolved issues that need to be worked on so that the weight loss is illusory.

What is also interesting is how much we compare ourselves to other people and how that affects our happiness levels. Nick Powdthavee who wrote the book The Happiness Equation, said: “it feels okay to be fat when our loves ones-or other people with whom we normally identify-are fat as well.” This I found to be very revealing. We live in a thin-obsessed culture. If we are comparing ourselves to celebrities and social expectations, we will be miserable. That is why I suggest you look at your weight goals differently. It’s not about losing weight. Weight gain is often a symptom for something else that is unresolved and the eating is a distraction for those unresolved issues. It is about feeling good. When we feel good emotionally and physically it’s easier to do what we need to do to stay at a healthy weight.

So I learned some other interesting things from The Happiness Equation that we can learn from. Our capacity for happiness just like our weight has a set point to which we continually return. Happiness is a point of view, part of how we see the world. It’s similar to our personality. That is perhaps what really needs to be worked with or else we continually fall back to the place we began. It is kind of like a catch 22: happier people tend to earn more, have more satisfying relationships and even better health. Albert Schweitzer so wisely said: ‘Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.’

I think the answer or the key lies in how we define happiness and how we go about attaining it. The best way I know to increase your happiness set point is to learn how to meditate. It actually is proven to grow new brain cells in the area of the brain that registers happiness. That is why I developed by new meditation program: Smart, Sexy and Sane…meditation made easy. The sooner you begin the better you will feel. Then it becomes easier to guess what…eat healthy and stay fit.

Overcome unhealthy eating patterns…the “easy way” to follow a healthy diet

October 10, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

Let’s put first things first. Did it ever occur to you that the food you eat influences your thoughts and feelings? It has been said that you are what you eat, but who really things about that when they are eating. What you think affects what and how you eat. Most people are aware they are driven by their senses, the smells and perhaps the “memory of how good it tastes” and how they think the food will make them feel good. Advertisers know this and use it in their messages. Next time you watch a commercial for fast or processed food, pay attention to the underlying message.

It has become so obvious to me that many of my clients are eating poorly because of their feelings and how they think. Food and eating becomes a way to stuff down and not feel or deal with their feelings.

Overeating and eating junk or crap food (processed food with sugar or fat) becomes a coping mechanism or a release from the feelings. Usually it is what I call a “low vibration” emotion such as anger, fear, guilt and all the negative nuanced feelings that flow from those emotions.

Did you know what that the energetic vibration of thoughts and feelings can be measured? If you do not believe me pick up Dr. David Hawkins’s book Power vs. Force. Using kinesiology, he measured the different emotions. As you would expect, shame and anger were the lowest on the scale. This is why how you deal with your feelings and what you feel is so tied into why it may be hard for you to follow a healthy lifestyle and diet. You have to change your energy first.

That is why I have come to the conclusion that before anyone even attempts to change their eating, or embark on a new habit that is going to involve delaying immediate gratification, it may be better to start doing something to change your energetic vibration first and learn how to be more present to your feelings.

Overcoming unhealthy eating patterns should start with the practice of:

1. Mindfulness

2. Meditation

It is not surprising that mindfulness and meditation go together. Creating the habit of mindfulness and meditation makes it easier to practice a healthy lifestyle. I learned this from Jon Kabat Zinn’s Mindfulness Meditation Workshop years ago. Zinn calls it awareness.

I have found the best way to do this is to first become aware that you may have an unhealthy relationship with food because you have food patterns in your life that are unhealthy. Recently one of my clients came to the awareness that she eats processed foods because she does not process her feelings. She grew up in an environment where it was not ok to say what you feel or to “rock the boat.” So even though she is a successful highly functioning adult on some level she operates as if she is frozen in time and still that little girl. It has been an awakening to her to begin to feel her feelings and instead of stuffing down food, she can begin to express what she is thinking and learn how to let the feelings pass.

So instead of beating yourself up which is all about shame and guilt, why not start being aware of what you are feeling? Identify what triggers eating episodes, and how you may be trying to shut down and not feel. The problem with that strategy is that you may get temporary relief, but eating, especially junk food, lowers your energetic vibration even more. No wonder you feel like you have no energy. Gaining energy is one of the first things my clients report to me they see changing. Then you can move to the next practice which is exercise. Take one step at a time.

Before you try to make changes to your eating and are able to eat healthier naturally, you may have to understand why it has been so challenging. What purpose is the food serving? What is your relationship with food that is mirroring how you are unhappy with your relationships with other people? If you down load my E-book available on the website you will find an assessment that will get you so much clearer about what is really going on.

Stay tuned in because in the next post I will be talking more about how meditation is the foundation for change and how it can help you want to eat healthier naturally.

Best way to lose weight…learn the tools that break habits

September 10, 2011 by admin Leave a Comment

If you want to learn how to lose weight, get familiar with some powerful tools you can use on your mind that will strengthen your willpower. The truth is many people are overweight because the food they have learned to love or eat due to convenience and habit is addicting. There is a new book out Anatomy of Addiction by Howard Markel who explains how Freud overcame his cocaine addiction.

Everyone knows one of the hardest things to overcome is a cocaine addiction, but did you know research on rats showed the same changes in the brain from eating sugar as from cocaine.

Back in the days when Freud was doing cocaine, it was not known how powerfully addicting cocaine was. Someday we may look back on packaged and convenience food the same way. You may not know this, but the original formula for Coca Cola contained cocaine.

Most recovering addicts claim there are two keys “touchstones of successful recovery…daily routines and rigorous accountability.” So how can you create your version of this touchstone?

1. Get conscious about it. Some call it mindfulness and yes meditating can increase your ability to stay focused and concentrate which is key to gaining control of your actions. Just like in meditation, when your mind wanders, every time you come back to your point of focus, you dissolve the habit’s power just as you do a thought. Whether it is the breath or a mantra, when a thought comes up in meditation, by putting your attention on something else, you put distance between yourself and the automatic action.

2. Consider signing up for a website such as www.habitchanger.com. They send you frequent texts that cause you to think twice before acting. That is the problem…most people do not think! If they do think, there is this internal voice that can be negative and ends up having the wrong effect. You need to become aware of how you sabotage yourself and be prepared.

3. Try having a dialogue with the sabotaging voice. It is well known in the field of psychology that we have what amounts to a cast of characters within us that appear to be a life of their own. Next time you notice the sabotaging part of you that tries to tell you it doesn’t matter, engage with it until the impulse to eat inappropriately loses power over you. Repeat a preplanned mantra to yourself like “that is just the addicted part of my brain sending me a false message.” Remind yourself or think about vividly why you do want to change or how breaking this habit is more valuable than some fleeting gratification that causes you to feel bad in the end.

I recommend you try some of these strategies and put them center stage in your plan to lose weight. It is not just about the…diet and exercise. Successful weight loss involves the ability to do a mental tete a tete with your mind, have structured daily routines that work and to be