Posts Tagged ‘womens health’

InSpiriational Quote & Life Tip of the Day to help you live a life in balance!

 

Live fully
Create happiness
Imagine peace
Seek truth
Laugh often
Hope more
Inspire change!

From a wall poster !

Enjoy your glorious day dear friends and feel free to pass this on.

namaste

Zoey

We gathered extended family together yesterday for an Easter Sunday Brunch. We are at that tender stage of life where the transitions are many. There are elders passing on, new boyfriends, relationships changing and our generation preparing to move into retirement.

We all commented on the adorable babies and little ones dressed in their Easter finery.

We followed customs from my childhood and remarked on the passing of time. We mentioned those who couldn’t be with us; nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters in law and my mom, who passed away many years ago.

If you have seen “The Descendents”, which surprisingly I thought was very good, you will appreciate that we also experienced the vulnerable sweetness of an elder with Alzheimer’s and the wonderful good health of another elder in his 90′s.

Yesterday, we were missing the young babies but otherwise we experienced the full circle of life.

At the end, it’s all about our family isn’t it?  Whether a birth family or a global family, our relationships define and sustain us and support us to live a life in balance.

namaste,

Zoey

Easter Sunday Brunch with Grandpa and the Grandkids et al!

A beautiful photo to share with you on a Good Friday Full Moon!

I found this photo on f/b and would live to know who the artist is!

namaste,

Zoey

 

The photo brings to mind a woman’s spirituality & loving kindness!

This morning as I was getting dressed, I got hit by a star…literally!

I was pulling clothes out of my closet and a tiny, sparkly blue star fell on me.

It was one of those little stars that are put in gift bags and used as party favors. I guess it got caught on my clothes.

The falling star was a wonderful unexpected surprise and reminded me that life is a mysterious adventure and that my day can be sparkly!

I hope your day is sparkly too!

in peace & mindfulness

namaste

Zoey

wisdom coaching to set your heart on fire and soothe your soul

Discover your unique ‘nutritional truth’.

Nutrition tecommendations for women are often based on scientific research conducted on middle aged men leading to a ‘one size fits all’ nutrition prescription.

Ancient traditions such as Traditional Chinese Medicine or Ayurvedic Medicine acknowledge metabolic or body differences as well as incorporate the concept of ‘food as medicine’.

Many women feel best when they have determined their own ‘nutritional truth’ and eat accordingly. You can find this for yourself by experimenting, one food or beverage at a time, with withdrawing that food for 3-7 days and be very aware of your body symptoms and energy levels. If you feel better without the food, you know it’s one to avoid. You can do this in reverse when trying a new food and thus construct a list of ‘foods that act as medicine’, neutral foods and foods to avoid. This is your unique ‘nutritional truth.’

This process works best when you have had a stable and healthy food intake to start. Also, be very gentle with this process and yourself if you have a history of disordered eating, ‘food addictions’ or yo yo dieting.

Engaging in a regular yoga, tai chi or other body centered program can help you become more attuned to your body messages and mind-body connection which helps with the process.

You can also work with a professional trained in holistic nutrition, such as a Naturopath or a Holistic Nutritionist/Dietitian to discover your nutritional truth.

Dr. Christiane Northrup has an excellent chapter on nutrition & unique needs in her book ‘Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom’. I highly recommend all her books!

You will know that you are successful in discovering your ‘truth’ when you love eating and ‘overflow’ with life force, a feeling of optimal health and energy.L

in peace & mindfulness

namaste

Zoey

wisdom coaching to set your heart on fire & soothe your soul

 

I love yoga!  I love doing it, learning about it and reading about it!  I do it almost every day on my own and likely think about going to classes more than I actually go!  I love the natural and holistic health nature of yoga and how it is a ‘complete discipline’.  For me, it develops my mind body spirit connection.

I trace by love of yoga back to Grade 9, when I took creative dance classes and our warm up ‘exercises with Miss Porter’, included movements that I now know were yoga poses.  I kept using these poses as stretches for my running and other exercise programs and am happy to say that I have maintained flexibility through 3 pregnancies and beyond!

Throughout my life I have engaged in yoga in cycles, going frequently and then not going at lot for years .  I tried many different types of yoga without even knowing there were different types!

Certainly not a yoga instructor, nor an expert in the discipline,  I think of myself rather as an ‘imperfect beginner yogini’.

My two favourite yoga books are:

‘An Autobiography of a Yogi’ by  Paramhansa Yogananda

‘Light On Yoga’ by B.K.S. Iyengar

Interestingly, I love ‘hot yoga’ and have tried Bikrams quite a few times.  I haven’t tried Moksha yoga yet, however my yogini friends really like it.  I adore ‘yin’ yoga, using blocks and supports.  I was totally surprised once when I went to a ‘vinyasa flow’ class, thinking it was a hatha yoga class!

I have thought of doing ‘yoga teacher training’ for my own exploration and imagine a time in the future when I spend months in Mexico, Costa Rica, Thailand or Bali at a yoga retreat center!  The joy!

Last week, I noticed that simply walking into a calm, beautiful yoga studio gave me a sense of peace and serenity!  On that day though, rather than attend a class, I tried to ‘take the peace with me’ through purchasing a wonderful piece of jewelry.

I’m also interested in Ayurveda or Ayurvedic Medicine which is a whole holistic health discipline practiced in India and which provides a valuable explanation for me as to why folks either ‘love’ or ‘hate’ hot yoga!  I really value clues as to my metabolic type through the practice of yoga.

Perhaps what I love best of all, are the people one meets through yoga, like the yoga instructors and the other students.  I feel like I have found my tribe!

I’m on the upper edge of age for this tribe and even though I live in Vancouver, I don’t usually wear the fancy yoga pants and yoga wear, although I have appreciated the durability of my first lululemon yoga pants, purchased  13 years ago!

For four consecutive years, I hosted women’s life coaching, self care & yoga retreats to Mexico and remember those times with great fondness.  I provided the life coaching and my dear friend Beth was the yoga instructor!  One of my favourite yoga studios in fact, has blossomed in the small Mexican village of Yelapa, where I hosted two retreats.  Judith Roth of Yoga in Yelapa has built a gorgeous yoga reteat center, called Sky Temple and if you are ever in need of a rest and re-charge, travel to Yelapa and take in some yoga classes as well as learn Spanish at YESI, eat amazing food, and relax on the gorgeous beach.

The benefits of yoga are many, including: increased flexibilty and agility, increased core strength, stress reduction, improved digestion and circulation, a deepening connection with your body’s messages, reduced blood pressure, peace, serenity and calmness, to name just a few!  Also, yoga is a wonderful vehicle to bring up un-healed areas of life.  For example, through yoga practice, I have been blessed to learn how hard I am on myself and how my competitiveness no longer serves me, nor those around me!

I encourage all my coaching clients to engage in yoga or a similar body centered discipline.  Busy mom and busy business women find yoga is incredibly helpful with stress management as well as refreshes the  mind and body!

Yoga is my spiritual practice!

Well, enough of the rambling, I guess it’s time to pull on my ‘lulus’ and take myself off to class!

Enjoy your day!

 

in peace & mindfulness

namaste,

Zoey

 

Stressed Again!?

 

Are you feeling stressed?  “Wonderful” your life coach says!

 

Are you surprised at this response?  In our culture we are advised to “get rid of stress”, “make stress go away”, take a stress management program and de-stress.  Many respond to this message but with actions that further the stress or distract them from what is really going on in their lives.  How many of your friends or family members, or perhaps even yourself de-stress with a glass of wine or two or three before dinner, through intense exercise, long hours at work or high adrenaline producing activities?

 

What if we shift perspective to welcoming stress as an opportunity to learn about ourselves, relationships, life patterns and balance in life?

 

When my client’s says that they are feeling stressed, I ask the following questions:

- is stress a daily part of your life or is it transitory?

- what does stress feel like in your body, where does it reside?

- what message is your stress giving you?

- how does stress serve you?

- how does stress not serve you?

- if you weren’t feeling stressed, how would your life be the same and different?

- being stressed allows you to do what….?

- what does your stress keep you from doing?

- how do you want your future to be in regards to stress?

 

Through the ensuing conversation clients often realize that feeling stressed is part of their life pattern and in fact in the past is has helped them accomplish projects and tasks.    Clients often find that they are ‘adrenalin junkies’ and find it tricky to get motivated with out stress and adrenalin.  By mid-life, they usually have found that this pattern isn’t working well for them anymore due to relationship problems or observable health effects of high blood pressure, poor sleep, digestive problems and headaches for example, but don’t know how to “do their life” differently.

 

I suggest that folks “make friends with their stress” and even give it a name. Rather than  try to make the stress go away I encourage my clients to welcome it into their lives and bodies as an opportunity for learning.  In doing this many folks find meaning and messages in their stress as well as find that there is a softening of the area of their body where they generally “hold” their stress.  I also encourage clients to engage in physical activities that are in alignment with ‘getting to know your body’, such as yoga or Tai Chi.  Often this process results in major life changes and in retrospect many say “thank you” to the original stress that was such a powerful  trigger or a catalyst for positive life change.

Enjoy your day!

in peace & mindfulness,

namaste,

Zoey

 

 

Continuing with the story about women and the heart….

Some background;  for the past 20 years or so, I have been delving into what used to be called ‘New Age Spirituality’, and now I simply call it ‘my spirituality’.  My spirituality feels like a personal and unique blend of Christianity and Buddhism, with hints of other major religions thrown in with a lot of meditation and yoga.  I’ve read many self help, personal development, integral theory, and new age spirituality books.  As a working mom and professional woman, I did a mid-life career shift (after a couple of decades working as a Nutritionist ) and took professional training into life & leadership coaching, using a body centered, whole systems orientation.

About three years ago, my husband informed me that two ‘suspicious spots’ had been seen on his lung.  Not long after, I attended a seminar about critical illness insurance for the self-employed business woman and decided I needed to take out this type of insurance as I had a family history of both cancer and heart disease.  We were in a state of hopeful/hopeless anticipation of the results of his lung biopsy.  To add to the health concern, my husband had also developed pulmonary emboli also known as lung clots, in both lungs.

As one may imagine, I was very worried about my husband, about our family, about how I would support three daughters as a professional woman if my husband died.  My mind utilizes ‘worst case scenarioizing’ very well!  At the time I was 51 years old.

I was also going through menopause and was taking a compounded progesterone for the symptoms.

We had just returned from a sailing trip where we had ‘weathered’ a significant storm of over 40 km per hour winds and where our engine had almost failed, resulting in a very scary couple of hours on the water with an accompanying surge of adrenalin.

To re-cap, between us; we had money worries due to reduced income, health worries, significant additional stress, menopause, three daughters to support and help with college, possible lung cancer, a really bad scare, pulmonary emboli and a recently purchased critical illness policy.  I also found out later that I had undiagnosed ‘essential hypertension’ or high blood pressure. I had ‘gained a few pounds’ over the past years although I regularly exercised, was a non smoker and drinker and ate in a healthy way!  I looked pretty healthy for my age.

I engaged in daily meditation and walks and was reading a lot of Buddhist teachings about ‘keeping the heart open’ and  without actually being trained in the practice, using a breathing practice called tonglen , where you breathe in the pain of the world and breathe out clear healing love.

What happened was that I was ‘broken hearted’!  My heart literally broke!

On a Monday morning after a ‘power walk’ and coffee, I experienced shortness of breath and felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest.  This heavy sensation wasn’t in any way painful, but it was uncomfortable.  I had a tiny bit of pain in my neck and right shoulder.  The ‘heavy’ sensation came and went about three times after which I googled ‘symptoms of a heart attack in women’.  I basically had all the symptoms and had my daughter drive me to the hospital half of me thinking that I was having a panic attack and in my mind, calling myself a ‘drama queen’ and the other half, the holistic health half saying ‘listen to your body and take this seriously’!  I’m very fortunate that I did listen to my inner wisdom and trust my body’s messages!

I was not having a panic attack, I had in fact had a ‘spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD)’, where an flap of tissue from inside my heart artery tore off the wall of the heart and blocked the blood flow, resulting in a heart attack or MI.  I found out later that this type of heart attack is diagnosed in 70% of the cases upon autopsy and is not very common.  It happens more often in women and is associated with stress and changes in hormones and blood pressure. It has sometimes been called  ’Japanese Widows Syndrome’, as when a Japanese woman would suffer a heart attack  and die, just after her husband’s death!  In the hospital, my Cardiologist, Dr. Hamburger said that I had a ‘broken heart’, likely in some part caused by stress about my husband. If you google ‘SCAD’, you will find much more information

This may all sound very sad and upsetting and yes, it is and it was.  However, as a result of all of the above, our lives are better and we will live healthier and longer!  I can summarize the good results as:

- my ‘essential hypertension’ and ‘Syndrome X’ was diagnosed and I am now on appropriate medication.

- my husband was found to have a ‘clotting deficiency’ and likely would have died young from a heart attack but is now on the appropriate medication.

- as a result of thinking he had ‘lung cancer’ (he doesn’t) , my husband’s doctor reacted very quickly to my husband’s back pain (caused by the blood clots in his lung), which likely save his life.

- we both made further major healthy lifestyle changes.

- I received a significant critical illness claim which has helped tremendously with our daughters’ post secondary education!

- I have developed a very healthy respect for the power of spiritual practices and am daily reminded of what a beginner I am!

- I appreciate every day that I am alive and my family is well.

- I still chuckle that a former dietitian (moi)  would have a Cardiologist named Dr. Hamburger!

- I tell my story to help inform other women about heart disease, the symptoms of a heart attack in women and SACAD, so that any woman feeling ‘weird sensations’ (heaviness, difficulty catching your breath, tightness in chest, shortness of breath)  in her chest, will go immediately to the closest hospital emergency ward!  Please check with your local health authority for a complete list of heart attack symptoms in women.  In Canada, the Heart and Stroke Foundation is a great resource!

- I practice meditation and yoga and have a wonderful life!  I’m not quite sure what to make about the financial windfall part of this, however, I believe the ‘law of attraction’ was at play!

My life lessons from this experience?

- trust your inner wisdom

- listen to your body messages

- we are more connected than we think

- the mind body connection is powerful!

- trust that even though sad things happen, there is a bigger stronger more powerful loving force at work!

- the law of attraction is powerful!

- women are wise

- sometimes bad things turn out to be good things

- pay attention to life work balance

- have fun, be joyful, love!

Please share this information with other women and be aware that heart disease and stroke are big health issues for women and take good care of your heart and your health!

 

in peace & mindfulness,

namaste,

Zoey

 

Have you heard about a type of ‘heart attack’ or ‘myocardial infarction (MI)’ called a ‘spontaneous coronary artery dissection or SACAD’?

It is literally the type of heart attack where the heart is broken!

I know because I have had one!

The month of February holds Valentines Day and is also Heart & Stroke Month in Canada. Did you know that Canadian women are more likely to die of heart attacks and stroke than anything else? Even though we are better informed about health and are generally healthier, there are still gaps in our understanding of heart disease.

Over the coming week, I want to tell you more about SACADs so that you will be aware of this type of heart attack as well as more well known types of heart disease.

Stay tuned!

In peace & mindfulness

namaste,

Zoey

I first met Jean or Juanita as she is known locally, about 8 years ago on our first trip to Yelapa! We had a connection as not only were we staying in the same ‘neighborhood/hillside’ in Yelapa, but Jean spends her summers in BC and is Canadian. We have travelled to Yelapa as a family and I have hosted ‘women’s retreats’ in the village with wonderfully positive feedback about the friendly locals, the amazing physical beauty and the broad range of activities.

Intrigued with her business and life choices, I’ve gotten to know Jean better over the years and I absolutely love her approach to teaching Spanish!

Here is what she says about YESI or the “Yelapa English Spanish Institute”:

‘The YESI school was destined, it was never a plan, I hadn’t planned to teach, although I did want to be a Russian / French/ English translator.’

Yelapa is a novel gem, it is like ‘stepping back in time’ into an authentic Mexican beach paradise.

Jean serves her students very well, giving personal attention both in training/coaching, house/home stay arrangements, tours and activities.There are classes for everyone; children, adults, teachers, medical people, families, bird watchers. All classes are largely oral using a book of collected materials.

Jean says “We’re trained to be visual, I try to reinforce the oral approach, as it “fixes” the language quicker and better. Classes are very interactive, lots of pictures, games, songs, role playing. I strive to make each experience of Yelapa and Spanish studies memorable. I try to tailor to the needs of the class, giving the short cuts to the structure of the language, but add variety and novelty to keep the students and myself inspired! I’ve set the location in a peaceful mountainside setting under bird-filled trees with an ocean view and breezes, close to the village and beaches. Summer classes really see a side of Yelapa seldom seen – verdant green, crystal warm ocean water, a Mexican community at play in their normal non-tourist lives. I have time to assist family groups in learning together and experiencing Yelapa at its best with activities daily. I serve many adults who want special attention for specific work interests.”

While staying in Yelapa and learning Spanish at YESI with Jean, you can also attend yoga classes with Judith at the Sky Temple, soak up the sun on the beach, swim, snorkel, travel up river to the waterfall, eat luscious food at the amazing restaurants and dance at the local disco!

Situated on the ocean, south of Puerto Vallarta and only accessible by water taxi, Yelapa is a safe, quaint Mexican village untainted by big development or obnoxious tourists. Yelapa attracts a very laid back visitor who enjoys an authentic experience. There are many choices for accommodations and in my opinion, some of the best food anywhere in the world. Describing the food and restaurants would require another entire blog posting, however, I will highlight our favs: Cafe Bahia for brunch or lunch, El Manguito, El Cerrito, the Yacht Club and Angelina’s Garden Restaurant! The ceviche at Hotel Lagunita is excellent too!

Having lived in Yelapa for many years, Jean is a wonderful resource for planning your trip as well as providing you with an exceptional opportunity to learn Spanish.

Hotel Lagunita in Yelapa

Consider planning a special retreat to Yelapa and enjoy an adventure in learning Spanish with Juanita!

In peace & mindfulness,

namaste,

Zoey