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Understanding Your Body

A couple of month ago I wrote about digging into understanding my sugar addiction and starting to treat it as it is: an addiction. If you’re wondering, I am still not completely sugar free, but I am consuming quite a bit less. The whole experience of trying to understand my own body mechanics and the effects of the things I put into it have raised a slew of interesting questions and thoughts.

Since the “I am Meredith and I am a sugarholic” admission, I started thinking more and more about my day to day physical and mental states and how they might be effected by everything I put into my body.

I’ve always had a problem with fatigue and blood sugar fluctuation. Blood tests I had done a little over a year ago got me taking daily iron supplements (and Vitamin C to help with iron absorption). I also added a B complex, pantethine, evening primrose oil, and switched my fish oil to a good quality capsule. Capsules actually hold LESS fish oil than just braving the liquid form, but this way I actually remember to take it!

I know that adding these supplements to my diet is a good thing; however, I was still suffering from quite a bit of fatigue and the blood sugar fluctuations.

I love doing research on natural remedies, so I’ve started adding raw apple cider vinegar to my water to wash down both my morning and evening vitamins. Within the last couple of weeks I’ve started taking two capsules of Panax Ginseng with my morning vitamins and I’ve certainly noticed a difference there. The energy it gives me is a nice normal level and it keeps me going throughout the day.

It’s a long road trying to unlearn life long habits and figure out if I am short on nutrients or even allergic to certain foods. I do think it’s a worthwhile thing to keep working on though. I look forward to seeing how my quality of life continues to increase as I figure out what is right for me.

Meredith DeLoca
Assistant Spa Director

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by Dr. Peter Borten

One day last March we got word that when we picked up our kids from school they wouldn’t be coming back for the rest of the month. A few weeks later, they told us to come clean out their cubbies and desks – there wouldn’t be school for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, we were told that our spas also had to shut down. Walking around downtown Boulder, I saw mostly dark storefronts and almost no cars or pedestrians. Sometimes I’d go into a grocery store and the shelves would be nearly bare. It was surreal … and it still is. Life is always unpredictable. But the amplified uncertainty of the current time plus the absence of many aspects of human culture that usually provide a backdrop of consistency in our lives – restaurants, concerts, school, work, team sports, movies, etc. – results in a feeling of profound instability for many people. I believe one of the healthiest ways to respond to this instability is to create a plan and improve personal integrity – two things we focus on in our Dreambook. When we started working on the first edition seven years ago, there was no pandemic and yet we still had dozens of friends and clients who were unsure of their vision for the future or how to move forward. At this time, it’s needed more than ever. The first section of the Dreambook features processes to help you get clear about what matters most to you. What feeds your soul? What supports your deepest values? What brings your gifts into the world? What makes life feel playful? When you know these things about yourself, you’re better able to manage the uncertainty of life due to your own inner stability. Then we teach you how to make plans. There’s a unique added challenge to planning when you don’t know whether you’ll be able to leave the country or if summer camp will be happening. When you have a plan, though, when something unexpected occurs you can make adjustments as needed, but you still know the direction you’re headed. Without a plan, detours and obstacles may cause you to feel totally aimless and without a compass. Plans don’t work without integrity though. We have to honor our word, being clear and honest with ourselves about the agreements we make and always following through on them. If we don’t keep our agreements, they’re worse than meaningless. Besides not getting the result we hoped for, we end up undermining our self-trust. But if we always do what we say we’re going to do, our self-trust grows stronger. At a time when it feels there’s not much we can trust in the world, knowing we can always trust ourselves is monumental. It’s possible for this topsy-turvy period to actually facilitate a vital reorientation in your life: where you honor and prioritize your values, gifts, and purpose, and you create effective, intelligent, soul-supporting plans to bring your dreams into reality. Thousands of people have utilized the Dreambook as a resource for making this happen. The new 2021 edition of the Dreambook + Planner is wire bound and available now in Classic White, Greenwood, and Periwinkle. Be well, Peter [post_title] => TOPSY TURVY TIMES [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => topsy-turvy-times [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2020-09-16 18:07:21 [post_modified_gmt] => 2020-09-16 18:07:21 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://thedragontree.com/?p=8057 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 6493 [post_author] => 5 [post_date] => 2016-10-25 20:33:47 [post_date_gmt] => 2016-10-25 20:33:47 [post_content] => I bet that if I said, “Let’s start the process of dealing with your psychological baggage,” most people would tense up a bit and expect that they’re in for a “heavy” experience. It’s funny, because if we’re carrying around this baggage all the time, it already represents a certain “weight” that we’ve gotten used to, and the “dealing with it” part should amount to feeling lighter and freer. While writing our book, The Well Life, we felt it simply wasn’t possible to guide people to the wellest of lives without encouraging them to resolve and/or release the stuff from the past that may be undermining their best efforts to be healthy and successful today. But we anticipated that some readers might react to this agenda about as well as if we offered to give them an amateur root canal. I don’t have enough space in an article to explain our whole methodology – not to mention the approaches we use before and after to prepare for and stabilize this work. But I’d like to share an except on how we introduce this process, which I hope will help you feel ready to liberate yourself: “Now, before you think, “Oh boy, this is going to be heavy,” we want to tell you that this doesn’t have to be a heavy experience. In fact, it’s an opportunity to feel lighter. It’s just that, between the heaviness and the lightness, there’s often something that one of our former teachers calls a “veil of discomfort.” The discomfort is only a veil because it’s really quite insubstantial. As soon as we become willing to experience it, we readily pass through it. And on the other side is lightness and opportunity! Let’s talk about how these loose ends from your past can undermine you. One thing that may happen when you prepare to go for something big (whether it be a new relationship, a career change, or a cross-country move) is that your mind quickly runs through all your baggage—unresolved issues, past traumas, mistakes, losses—and tells you this is a bad idea. Rather than hating your mind for this, it’s important to remember that you programmed this mind. You started out as a baby with a clean mental slate, and little by little you trained your mind to look out for things that might threaten your survival or happiness. That’s how your mind is built to work. It just happens that most minds are overly eager to do this job (especially if it means that your mind gets to monopolize your attention). The more intense the bad experiences of your past, the deeper the groove they cut in your mental record. The mind looks for anything in your present that even remotely resembles these past experiences so that it can steer you clear from repeating them. It produces warning thoughts and initiates intense emotions to grab your attention. So what can you do? Thank your mind for its efforts to protect you, but inform it that it’s working from outdated beliefs and overly generalized data. There’s no purpose in blaming yourself for how your mind functions. You’ve done your best with the resources that were available to you in each moment. But if you want the freedom to show up to each moment without being restrained by your past, it’s imperative to recognize that your baggage impedes this. Limiting beliefs and the echoes of past emotions are an intrusion on your space and the peace that lies within. The key to identifying past incidents that get priority cleanup status is that when you bring them to mind and then check in with your body, you don’t feel altogether light and clean. Instead, you might feel heavy, tight, agitated, or constricted. Or a negative emotion might come up, such as guilt, fear, shame, anger, regret, sadness, or grief. It’s possible that something you did that was objectively bad, like stealing the Statue of Liberty and burying it in your backyard, doesn’t actually provoke an especially strong physical or emotional response when you focus on it. In such cases, it’s important to remember that the objective “sin rating” of an event is less significant than how much of a hook it has in you. On the other hand, you might have accidentally thrown away your child’s first finger-painting and experience a tremendous feeling of guilt when you think about it—this would be something worth addressing. Think of this process like cleaning your living space. When your house is filthy, there are piles of documents, dishes, laundry, and areas needing repair. It can feel so daunting you don’t know where to begin. You don’t even want to begin. But once you start, and then you have one room that’s clutter-free, it feels more manageable. Eventually, the whole house is pretty well in order, and then it’s fairly easy to stay on top of it. In the same way, as you clean up your life, you’ll find it both easier and more appealing to continue to clean, and to nip any new messes in the bud so they don’t impede your future.” If this sounds good to you, I encourage you to let go of something right now. If you feel into your body, are you totally at ease? If not, is the unease associated with something that’s unresolved? Something you want to be different? Something you’re holding onto? Why not let it go – even if just for this moment? First try feeling it without any resistance, welcoming the feeling completely. Then take a breath into the feeling and as you exhale, let it go. If you’re intrigued by where we’re headed, check out our book. Be well, Dr. Peter Borten [post_title] => Losing Your Baggage [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => baggage [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2016-10-25 20:48:58 [post_modified_gmt] => 2016-10-25 20:48:58 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.thedragontree.com/?p=6493 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) ) [post_count] => 3 [current_post] => -1 [before_loop] => 1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7578 [post_author] => 5 [post_date] => 2019-07-16 21:22:20 [post_date_gmt] => 2019-07-16 21:22:20 [post_content] => Have you found yourself unclear on what your purpose in life is, and perhaps struggled with deciding if you even have one clear purpose or mission in your life? In this video, Briana shares some wisdom on how you can clarify and move towards what ignites your passion. What kind of service would you love to provide, and who would you love providing it for? If you feel like it's difficult to hone in on the specific answers to these questions, you will love this video. And when you decide to go more in depth with your search, The Well Life Book (available on Amazon and Audible) will be your guide to making your purpose a reality.

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