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Getting your intuition back is the most valuable self development you can ever do. It is the no fail, no lie, no bullshit, truth serum. Listen to it, and it will tell you what to do. Getting your intuition back is the most valuable self development you can ever do. It is the no fail, no lie, no bullshit, truth serum. Listen to it, and it will tell you what to do. Childhood, for most of us, impaired our ability to access our intuition. When we listened to intuition and told grown ups, we were corrected, ridiculed, and told we were wrong. You may ask why is daddy hurting me? He isn’t hurting you, he loves you. Why is mommy crying in her bedroom. Mom’s not crying. She just got something in her eye. We accepted what they said, although internally we knew they were lies. These small betrayals to our internal compass slowly erode our confidence in our intuition. It’s essential you get your confidence back. Break the habit of doubting the voice which is quite clearly telling you what is going on. It's hard to do. You will learn to hear yourself in Be Your Own Guru, but begin by militantly being on your own side. You need to trust yourself - it’s the key to confidence and getting your intuition back. Relying solely on our rational mind - the alternative - does not nourish you. Meditation is helpful in this step. When you give space to listening you will hear intuitive hunches and create the internal space for them to percolate up. That’s valuable stuff. Love, Julia xo
Love, Julia xo You can enjoy the holiday season and any hectic time of life with bliss. Only thing you need is a little intentionality to put you in a space of ease under pressure. Here's how: Begin each morning with meditation. Meditation will center you and give you the power to pace your day. One minute to 20 minutes of meditation is all you need. Click here for a free 6 minute meditation to begin your morning. Eat clean whenever it isn’t a holiday or a party. Allow yourself to enjoy holiday parties, Christmas Eve and day, and New Year’s Eve. Whenever you are not celebrating, eat clean. The cleanse this coming week is a great way to begin. If interested in a future cleanse, click here. For me clean is eating vegetables and protein primarily - with two squares of chocolate and a glass of red wine every day. Move daily, even for just 20 minutes. A little counts - especially as it related to movement. Move to stay in the routine of working out, move to keep your mood up, move to burn calories. Check out my instagram for inspiration. Pretend there are only six days in the week. When making commitments, creating plans only factor in six days, this way you have a built in overflow or self care day. Take an at home spa hour. Self care is the oil that keeps you going without getting cranky, exhausted, or irritable. Self care at home for ease or schedule something for luxury. Visit jolie for some great products. Say no more often. When I am under pressure anything that isn’t hell yes, turns into a no. To enjoy the holidays, I commit to only that which really lights me up. I wish you a super fabulous holiday season!! love, julia xo Now that Irina is at NYU, she and I often have fitness dates in NYC. We take different classes, enjoy sweating together, and go for a meal - the restaurant depends on how demanding the workout was. Really sweaty = grabbing something and eating in the park. Now that Irina is at NYU, she and I often have fitness dates in NYC. We take different classes, enjoy sweating together, and go for a meal - the restaurant depends on how demanding the workout was. Really sweaty = grabbing something and eating in the park.
Our date is a miracle. I used to find working out at the bottom of my to do list everyday. But, as the number of my children grew, exercise crept up and up the list. Shocking...I got busier and found more time to exercise. It was a necessity. People ask me all the time, how do I do it. The key is extraordinary self care. Self care is not vanity, it is not indulgence, it is not optional. It is the gold in my day that gets me smiling from one day to the next and keeps me from getting sick and all stressed out. Working out is most effective and can be habit forming, IF it is not tied only to losing weight or getting stronger, BUT to feeling happier. When I finally tapped into the amazing, restorative powers of exercise, I went from rarely working out to it being a need and oftentimes something I choose to do as entertainment. The key is a workout which helps you soar and variety. I like something to challenge me, but is doable. I need a pace which allows me to check in with myself - that way it lifts my butt and my mood. The jolie row program is based on just that, and is about to get even better. In the fall we will begin ELEVATE. The program includes:
Love, Julia xo Happiness is not a place to get to or a goal to achieve. It is a state of the heart and mind which we must continuously cultivate. In that way, happiness is like a garden that we must give attention, water, feed, occasionally clear things away for it to grow. We have peaks of happy experiences in life, but they are not generally what it means to have a happy life. They are one part of happiness which is the day to day pleasure we take in life.
Taking pleasure in the moment to moment experience of living comes with practice. Essential elements are: gratitude, mindfulness, and allowing yourself to feel the full range of emotion in you. We can support daily happiness by consciously creating pleasurable experiences for yourself. The second part of happiness is how satisfied you are with life. It means you go beyond what’s okay to what truly lights you up inside. It requires that life evolve as you dreams and goals change. It means constantly reaching outside of your comfort zone so you can grow and experience new things. Here the important concept is to create time to listen to your heart - aka meditation - and do what comes up. When you find yourself off track find your way back to happy first with gratitude and acceptance. Then send out loving energy out to others and listen to what your heart wants. Know without doubt you have the inner resources to build a happy life for yourself. I love Kasia. She is the woman who has shaped my teaching more than any other. One of her first lessons was fully inhabiting joy. She didn’t teach it, but I saw it in her. Good news she would yell in joy, raise her arms, and smile the most sincere, childlike expression of joy. Good news via text - she answered me like she was girl tween. I began to experiment - pleasure research as I call it - with joy. As an emotion it moves up and out. It makes our chest big and full. Our arms and legs want to move, dance, jump. We get the urge to shout out.
What happens to us as adults? How did joy get reduced to a high five, to a happy contained smile? How did it become a simple thumbs up? What stops us? Do we think it’s not “grown up” to be truly joyful? Do we fear being laughed at or that something bad will follow? We stop up our joy. Robbing ourselves of joy, we rob ourselves of fully feeling alive, celebrating the triumphs - we miss fully feeling every ounce of the moment. Do some pleasure research with me? Next time you see a happy, joyful kid - study them. See what joy looks and feels like without “adulting” it. THEN, do the same thing next time something great happens! Just try it once. I guarantee you will feel soooooooooo good!! When you are in the good feeling - it will delete the negative, it youthens you, and you feel the rush of life which makes this crazy world so worth it. Love, Julia xo P.S. To get you in the mood, use this free meditation to pump up your joy! Recently, I've been feeling heavy. It is from all the end of school activities, not eating right by eating on the run, and everyday going until I hit that wall which short circuits my brain and drives me to bed. After my son's middle school graduation, I was talking with a group of moms feeling the exact same way. So, how to feel light now that summer is here?
1. Schedule in time to do nothing. Create a buffer that allows you to partake in unexpected pleasures like having a latte outdoors with a friend, sitting at the pool with your kids, or reading a magazine. I am putting daily time at our pond club in the late afternoon. 2. Eat more raw foods. Going to the farmers' market inspires good, light summer salads with fruit and raw vegetables which fill you up and are satisfying without making you lethargic in the summer heat. 3. Take life outside. Being outdoors reminds us the world is large and limitless. It inspires and calms. Eat outside, Camp in the backyard with the kids. Swim. Hike. Garden. Bike. Let me know what you think! Love, Julia xo Sometimes it seems the fog in our brain will not lift. We have been at a deadline or a big project, and find ourselves in the Twilight Zone of thought. Stale ideas that keep coming back. Our creativity vanishes. We get tired of even thinking. This is when you are in need of brain rest. The brain, like your muscles, needs recovery time to refresh so that it can work creatively and powerfully. Think of it as rebooting your computer -- everything closes, the computer shuts down, rest for a moment, and when it's restarted the glitch you had disappears.
5 Steps to reboot your brain:
Next time you are close to brain fatigue, whip out these tools. In just a day or two, you will find energy, productivity, and inspiration restored. with love and gratitude, Julia Workouts do more than burn calories or help you maintain your weight. The right workout rotation can also help you look younger and stay young looking for years What must you have in your routine to stay looking young and vibrant? 1. Weight Lifting. Post menopause many women experience a loss of muscle mass. This effects not only posture, but your ability to do routine tasks in life like grocery shop, care for children, and manage your home. Research shows that resistance and body weight exercises such as yoga or mat work (such as in the jolie row class) reverses aging on a molecular level.
2. Sprints. Interval sprints are essential for maintaining fast twitch muscle fibers. These are the parts of your muscle that allow you to quickly regain your balance or react quickly. Sprinting, such as we do in the jolie row workout, helps maintain those fibers. This keeps your reaction time fast helping you navigate through unexpected circumstances and avoid fails. As one ages, the ability to quickly respond and recover balance is one of the first signs of aging. Maintaining and strengthen your fast twitch fibers will keep you nimble. 3. Flexibility training. Yoga and stretch maintain flexibility. Limber muscles allow you full ranges of motion and loosen joints as you grow older. In addition, the weigh bearing nature of yoga strengthens at the same time. with love and gratitude, Julia |
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