5 Effective Ways to Stay on Track and Thrive with your Health, Wellness and Energy [Episode #841]

This week’s topic is: 5 Effective Ways to Stay on Track and Thrive with your Health, Wellness and Energy

I’m very excited to talk about this topic this week post Thanksgiving, which is a really important time to not go down a rabbit hole of feeling like we’re getting more and more off track and feeling heavier or stagnant in our bodies and consequently in our lives. It’s really an amazing way to build energy, to build our health for the new year coming up.

And so the five ways I’m going to share with you today are ones that we can all incorporate and there’s some individuality within them, some broadness, and also they are fun. I would say they’re joyful practices to bring in and they’ll help to support you in feeling your very best.

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: 00:02 Namaste loves and welcome back to our Monday solocast show where our topic today is 5 Effective Ways to Stay on Track and Thrive with your Health, Wellness and Energy. So I’m very excited to talk about this topic this week post Thanksgiving, which is a really important time to not go down a rabbit hole of feeling like we’re getting more and more off track and feeling heavier or stagnant in our bodies and consequently in our lives. But it’s really an amazing way to build energy, to build our health for the new year coming up. And so the five ways I’m going to share with you today are ones that we can all incorporate and there’s some individuality within them, there’s some broadness, but also there fun. I would say they’re joyful practices to bring in and they’ll help to support you in feeling your very best.

01:08 And also, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving belated. I hope that you’re able to relax and rejuvenate whether you’re with family or friends or by yourself. And I hope that you are excited about the period ahead, which is a really wonderful one with more holidays and shifts in the weather, the time to be more inward, a time to care of ourselves and to reset for the year ahead. Before we go any further, wanted to give you a little reminder that first of all, today is actually Cyber Monday. So to please check out, this is the very last day of our amazing Sauna Site-wide sale, which is 25% off. You can check it out over at our site my sauna.com. It’s a great time speaking of self-care to stack up on your supplements, your amazing high performance skincare and all our courses and programs. So it’s all over there.

02:09 Please check it out. The code is 25 BFCM to get your 25% off. Alright, all that being said, let’s go right into these ways to stay on track. So when I said that they were fun, what I mean by that is we don’t want to feel like self-care or health is a drag. It’s something that gets too linear or mental. It’s something that we have to do. It starts to feel like an obligation, which we all know never feels good to any of us. Instead, we want to approach it with this feeling of freshness and that it’s an honor to take care of ourselves. And it’s a real privilege to be able to make these choices every day that support ourselves, that any of us, all of us

Kimberly : 02:58 Listening, this right now is in a really wonderful position. No matter what our individual life circumstances happen to be right now, we’re all able to first of all be alive and to be able to have a lot of free will in terms of taking care of ourselves and making these daily choices.

#1 Practice for Staying on Track and Thrive with your Health, Wellness and Energy: Create a simple ritual each morning

So along those lines, my first practice for elevating your health and staying on track is to create a simple ritual each morning to honor the new day. What I mean by this, for me, it is lighting a candle at my altar. I pass it on the way to the bathroom. It could be, I also say a prayer in the morning. I set the intention for the day a little bit later after I go to the bathroom, I meditate. The very first thing I do is to light that candle. And what this does for me, this simple ritual, which takes about three seconds with matches or lighter, is to say, wow, today is a new fresh day.

04:11 Today is special, today is the present moment. This is where we are. This is all that we really have is right now. And so this is a chance to break out of old patterns. This is a chance to make the best decisions for myself today. What happens when we don’t honor each day is that we get in our heads, we wake up, the news is on, or we get on social media and we just start going into this automatic mode and we’re racing ahead in our mind, we’re thinking about how we think the day should play out or we’re in our worries or fears or stress with work or whatever it happens to be. And so we’re not really in the moment. And when we’re not in the moment, we don’t hear the signals of our body. We don’t really know when we’re hungry. We can’t discern or into it the best ways to take care of ourselves.

05:06 We tend to create more inflammation. We tend to create more stress and imbalance of hormones in our system because we are in this perpetual state of fight or flight. So in contrast, to stay on track means to be awake to life. So I encourage you to think about a very simple practice. It could be the second your feet hit the ground from your bed to think of something that you’re grateful for. Or like me, it could be lighting a candle or saying an intention or a prayer or whatever feels natural to you. But I encourage you to start the day with this, whatever your ritual is. And it really is a way to bring us here and to make the best choices for the day. When you meet someone that says, oh man, time is going so fast. I don’t know where the day went or I can’t believe it’s already whatever month it is, it’s usually because that person isn’t present in their bodies and in their lives.

06:20 And so then they wake up and in certain moments and they think what happened to all the time? Where am I? So we don’t want to fall into those patterns. We want to create that simple ritual to honor the moment, to honor the day, to honor our bodies, and then we become much more in tune with our own self-care.

#2 Practice for Staying on Track and Thrive with your Health, Wellness and Energy: Pay attention to the sensations running through your body

So the second way that we can stay on track elevate our health wellness and our energy is to pay attention to the sensations that are running through our bodies, which are known as emotions and feelings and to not make decisions or eat until those have subsided. Now, many people that I’ve worked with, many clients, many readers aren’t really aware of sensations in their own bodies. And this can be a perpetual way that we increasingly get off track because we start to overeat. Our portion sizes get really big.

07:25 We’re eating from the emotional place of the fear or the anger or the grief or the upset versus really being connected to our bodies. And this is true with other things such as how we choose to spend our time or if we are exercising or how we are exercising. So it’s very simple, but it’s very powerful and I can honestly say it’s made a really huge difference in my life and being able to reset my own portion sizes and maintain my weight for many years now without counting calories. So we really want to feel and breathe into our bodies, into our guts. And notice, for instance, let’s say you watched a piece of news or something came up that made you feel tightness and fear. You just want to breathe and know that everyone feels those sensations and it’s okay, but let it move through you before you sit down for lunch or dinner.

08:23 And this is a really important reason that we don’t want to put on the news when we’re eating dinner and meals for instance. It’s a really important reason that we don’t want to have heated discussions when we are eating meals with other people. So we just want to be more aware this is true self-awareness, this is true. And then once we’re in this still place neutrality, that’s when we can decide, am I really hungry? What does my body need today? What is the best use of my time? Or should I focus my energy? Where am I drawn to in my work? Is it in a creative idea or is it in answering emails? Is it in something more detail oriented or is it in a brainstorming session or whatever it is? We want to make sure that the big emotions aren’t driving us. And so that means fear, jealousy, anger, resentment. We want to just let these wash through us. And we all know the concept of stress eating. We all know that we all heard of emotional eating, but in order to really balance it and to correct it for the long-term means that we just become more self-aware of all the micro and macro sensations which are moving through us like water, like a waterfall, right? They’re just passing through us. And the more we become aware, the more able we are to manage ourselves.

#3 Practice for Staying on Track and Thrive with your Health, Wellness and Energy: Don’t run out of healthy foods in your kitchen

10:02 Now, the next way to stay on track is a practical one. And this is similarly I would say to how we never want to get on empty in our cars because that would pose an issue. We don’t want to be stranded on the side of the highway running out of gas. So in a similar vein, we want to take just as seriously the fuel for our bodies in our kitchens. And so what that means is we don’t want to run out of food in our kitchens. We want to make sure that we are stocking our homes as much as possible. Now, it doesn’t mean you have to have a full kitchen all the time, but especially when push comes to shove and there’s a quote, food emergency, you’re starving. You need to make dinner for you and the family. And the choice is, oh, I have a couple things I can put together here, or I have to order pizza or takeout.

11:04 We want to make sure that the fuel level in our kitchen, so to speak, is not on empty, but it is at least let’s say half full. So for me, in my life with my family, what that means is I don’t always have a completely full kitchen. I definitely run out of things at times, but there’s always things in the pantry, there’s always things in the freezer, there’s always things that I can generally use to put something together. Can you hear the birdie outside? I’m recording this in Hawaii and I’m looking out at these gorgeous birds, sharing some of that energy with you and the sunlight coming through the ferns and the palm trees. Right now it’s really pretty. Anyways, in my pantry, for instance, I always have, and I shared this with you before because it’s very practical, is lentil or quinoa pasta, which my kids love and it’s far healthier to make something like that with some veggies and veggie sticks, which they na on while we’re making food versus takeout, which who knows what oils they’re using, if they’re inflammatory vegetable oils or seed oils or whatever it happens to be, or just not made with love made with a lot of inorganic ingredients or whatever it is.

12:35 So it’s not terrible to eat out of course or to get takeout, but we want to make sure that we’re not resorting to it and getting off track as a pattern repeatedly and overly because we’re not paying attention to the fuel level in our kitchen. So practically speaking, for me that means using Instacart. I don’t know if that’s something that’s available to you or some sort of grocery delivery system. I would far rather pick out my own produce. Of course, I love to hold it and touch it. I love to go to the farmer’s market, but sometimes I’m just too busy and it’s a little bit far from where I live because I live in a pretty isolated place in the mountains. So for me, practically speaking, it means making practical choices. And in our freezer we have frozen veggie burgers, we have sourdough bread, there’s things that I can go to there for sure.

13:35 There’s frozen fruit. My kids eat a lot of frozen ice. We call it ice cream. It’s frozen fruit bowls or smoothies. And so that’s almost always stocked in our freezer and that’s a way to stay on track because we all like sweet things. We all want to have some treats and I don’t want to resort to not as healthy treats for them and for me, which sometimes happens, sometimes we will eat other things. And with Halloween, my kids definitely had regular candy and things like that. But on a regular basis, which is what we’re talking about here, it’s not about being perfect, but on a regular basis, just having some things all the time in your freezer, in your pantry are going to serve you very well. I also recommend seeds and nuts, chia seeds, and you could always make a really simple delicious nut pate or nut-based dressing or my walnut tacos if you have nuts in your freezer, which is where I like to store my nuts so they stay really fresh.

14:49 I’ve been in a huge nut phase lately, actually. I’ve been making macadamia nut cheese here in Hawaii, so many macadamia nuts. So please check out our website, my sauna.com. Once again, for many recipes, many ways of blending seeds and nuts which are delicious and filling and just so healthy and can give you that feeling of fullness. Sometimes we really need more fat to feel full, especially in the cozier winter months. And so some of these nut pats and nut dressings can really help do the trick. And then you don’t have to resort to eating a chunk of cheese or french fries or something that makes you feel heavy and stagnant later. I will say though, if you do make sure that you’re taking your digestive enzymes three, at least if you’re eating a heavier meal, which happens to all of us, I took a lot over this Thanksgiving break.

15:53 Make sure that you’re taking a detoxy. I’ve been taking it every night to stay on track because our bodies can need extra digestive support and if we start to build and build and hold on to energy, then we get heavier both mentally and physically. So take your detoxy, take it often during the winter, and as I mentioned quickly at the top of the show, it’s a great day and week to continue to stock up with our sale. Right now it’s sauna.

#4 Practice for Staying on Track and Thrive with your Health, Wellness and Energy: Less time away from strong sensory input

Alright, so the next fourth way to stay on track may sound a little interesting to you, but I think it’s a very important one. In the modern world that we live in, city or not, we a lot of sensory input. So when I say sensory input, I mean loud noises, bright lights, just smells, sights, just so much is coming at our bodies and our bodies have to digest all of this reality that’s coming through it.

17:02 And so that’s one of the tenets of Ayurveda is that we don’t just digest food, but we’re digesting all the sensory inputs. So I think it’s very important to have time every day away from strong sensory input. So what does this look like in real life? Well, first of all, let’s talk about the benefits. The benefits are that you can start to hear your own intuition. You can start to hear your body’s cues for what it actually needs, which could be for rest. It could be to give yourself a little massage or to have some essential oils placed around you and breathe or to have a warm soup or to eat a little more or maybe to rest or do a little fast for that meal or whatever it is. It becomes very difficult to take care of ourselves and stay on track when we’re constantly being bombarded by senses.

17:58 And I’m always surprised when I go into the airport because I live a pretty quiet life here in Hawaii and also in LA where we live in the mountains. And so I used to live in New York City and I used to be in the middle of all the hustle and bustle, but now when I go to the airport or certain restaurants and the music’s playing really loud, I’d find that I don’t enjoy my food as much and I just don’t feel as good. And so this may again be something that’s normalized for you, but you can still carve out time, which I think helps us to relax the body. And when we relax the body, we tend to breathe far easier and more deeply. We start to take in more nourishment from the breath and again, being present, we start to be less reactive to the world.

18:50 We start to reduce our inflammation naturally. We start to balance our nervous systems naturally because we’re not in this hyper mode of dealing with so much sensory input all the time. So on a daily basis, carving that out, it might look like turning the music off in the car sometimes while you’re driving so you can have some silence turning off the radio or not calling somebody on that particular ride. It could mean sitting in nature or going on a walk in the park or a hike instead of being in a really loud gym sometimes. And of course, one of my personal favorites is to sit in meditation and to tune the world out completely and to feel your breath and to get into your spine and into your true self, which is at the core of you and is completely untouched by all the world and the externals and the sensory input. And to connect to that real place to drink from that, well, that fountain of energy from inside of yourself is very powerful practice. So whether it’s carving out a meditation time, and I’ll mention on our site, I have a whole library of free guided meditations for you, the practical enlightenment guided meditations, and we have a new method coming out soon called the Heart Align Meditations.

20:22 When we connect in, we feel that rejuvenation, we feel a type of strength in life with all the challenges that life brings us. And then we’re less susceptible to succumbing, to the stress eating and to feeling stressed out in general, to feeling overwhelmed. So the world isn’t going to give this to us. It means maybe going through your morning without turning on the morning news or turning on the TV at all, making that choice to say, Hey, I’ll watch the news later, or I’ll read the news on my phone later. Or like I mentioned, driving in silence to work or just getting up 15 minutes earlier so you can have some quiet time meditating and make it consistent. But it’s a really powerful way to reset your body, which will serve you very well, serve your energy and keep you on track. When we aren’t constantly being bombarded by all this sensory input, which has an effect on our organs, it certainly has an effect on our energy and it certainly has an effect on our ways in which we feel in our bodies and in our health.

#5 Practice for Staying on Track and Thrive with your Health, Wellness and Energy: Stretching every day for 10 minutes

21:37 Okay, so the fifth one is a physical one that I wanted to conclude with here, which is about stretching. And so one of the ways in which we try to, well, let’s start here. Our physical bodies are our temples moving us through life. Our minds affects our body and our body affects our minds and our emotions because everything is so interrelated and interconnected. So when there’s tightness in the body and there’s tight thoughts, we start to feel the shoulders tighten. We start to feel the hips perhaps tightening up or the belly or the back, and then we look for ways to relieve that tension and to find a sense of easefulness. And sometimes as it builds and builds and builds, that can mean the end of the day wine is the only way or smoking some weeded or I going out with friends and partying or binging on a show trying to escape or eating a huge amount of food.

22:53 And what we don’t want is to get increasingly off track because these are our go-to waste. Just create that soothingness and that sense of ease in the body. I have found time and time again with clients and many clients, many actors I worked with were very stiff, particularly the men, and I would stretch with them. And it sounds sometimes counterintuitive or how could this relate or what could this do? And I promise you what I noticed was that in opening up the back and just doing stretching and breathing, a lot of energy starts to pass through the body instead of being tight and constricted. And then we start to feel a bit looser in our lives. And then we start to make, as I mentioned, better choices about what we should be eating and how much we should be eating. And we’re able to face our lives without that sense of overwhelm, which can sometimes drive us to using those aforementioned and other coping mechanisms.

24:07 And there’s no judgment of course, because we’re all trying to feel our best. But back to the theme of our show today, which is staying on track in effective ways. If you take about 10 minutes a day to stretch, which is a daily practice for me, and I love to stretch my hips, my back, my shoulders, I roll out on a foam roller, which you can get pretty inexpensively for like 20 or 30 bucks. I feel very different in my body, and it keeps me from feeling tight or short in my conversations with my family, my loved ones. It just feels like it moves energy through. I don’t practice yoga asness to the same extent that I used to, but I do the stretching. And the stretching has such a beneficial effect. You can stretch naturally and organically. You can just roll out your yoga mat and see where your body takes you to, which I highly recommend.

25:08 It’s a beautiful practice if that feels quite foreign to you. Now at this moment, we have a stretch video component that’s part of our waterfall cleanse, which you could go back to if you’ve purchased it or you can check it out. And there’s other stretch videos that I’ve put out. You can find them probably on YouTube, but there’s definitely the waterfall clans one, which is more recent and it emulates some of the stretching that I do myself in the evenings. But you just want to find ways to move your body and to keep it from getting stiff. And you’ll notice that a lot of people that walk in a really stiff way that you may see marching across the supermarket or down the street, the way that we hold our bodies often reflects our outlook on life. And sometimes those people just, you can see a rigidity.

26:07 We don’t want rigidity to build because it means that we aren’t able to use our intuition. We aren’t best able to be gentle and to move through life with a real intuitive sense of how to best take care of ourselves, which will serve us so well over time from a food perspective, body perspective, less wear and tear in our organs, joints, tissues, less breakdown, less aging emotionally. And also from a spiritual perspective, we’re able to stay centered inside on the true self. When we’re feeling less stiff and rigid in our bodies, we’re able to feel just a lot more joyful in our lives and much better able to stay on track.

Recap

So in conclusion, let’s wrap this up and I’ll remind you again what our five ways are to stay on track and to thrive in your energy, health, and wellness. Number one, create a simple ritual to honor each day, like lighting a candle or saying a prayer tension, whatever it is.

27:14 Number two, to notice strong sensations in your body and let them pass through before you eat, before you make decisions. It could only take a few minutes, but you don’t want to be in that fearful place or that angry place while you’re eating lunch or while you’re picking out what to eat or whatever. Number three, you want to treat your kitchen and your food fuel, like gas fuel. You don’t want to go to zero. You want to keep some simple ingredients in your pantry and your freezer at least, and your fridge so that you stay at least half full, right? So then you’re not susceptible to constantly eating out, constantly getting takeout, which can definitely take us down a rabbit hole and get off track. Number four, we want to spend some time away every day from strong sensory input. This could meet silence while driving, going for a walk in nature, meditating, not putting on the TV in the morning or in the evening, whatever it is.

28:09 So there’s time for you to hear yourself and to come back to a natural rhythm, which isn’t all this strong sensory input. It’s quite unnatural to live in all these artificial lights and jarring noises and so on and so forth. So it’s really important to reset the body and to notice what that does to help our energy thrive. And number five, stretching every day, five, 10 minutes. Not letting any tightness build in the body will just help us with our stress levels. It will help us with our mental and emotional outlook for the day. Our mental health will help to keep irritation and frustration at bay and to make better decisions from a more intuitive place.

29:09 So I hope that you’re inspired by these. Let me know what you think. You can leave comments, you can find me on social media at underscore Kimberly Snyder. And please don’t hesitate to ask questions or remember on the website. You can also submit questions for our Thursday q and a show. So last little call to remind you that today is Cyber Monday. Please check out all the amazing sale site-wide sale items that we have, and all the other offerings are articles, the other podcasts I think you would enjoy, which we’ll link to in the show notes, tons, hundreds of free recipes and more. The meditations. Sending you so much love in this incredible season. Again, wishing you all the best, you and yours and your amazing body or amazing, unique, true self post Thanksgiving. But always grateful for you and I will be back here Thursday for our next q and a show till Ben sending you so much love. Namaste.