5 Tips for a Healthier Vacation

5 Tips for a Healthier Vacation
It’s been a minute since my last blog post. Summer kind of took over and ran away with my life for a bit. But I’m back and ready to begin again after a short, but much needed, vacation. 

And speaking of vacation, why not let that inspire my next blog? Read on for some trips or staying healthy while traveling and on vacation!

I will be the first to admit that staying on track while traveling and on vacation is far from the first thing on my mind. I don’t want to have to think when I’m taking a break from reality. And I love easy and simple! But I also love feeling my best and want to be able to fully enjoy my time away. So I try to choose healthy as often as possible. Here are a few ways I do that: 

  1. Take snacks with you. Some that I find easy to grab and go, even if I’m flying, are trail mix, rice cakes, Lara bars (or another healthy fruit or granola bar), and fresh or dehydrated fruit and veggies. 
  2. Stay in a place with a kitchen. Even if you don’t plan on cooking the whole time, you’ll want a kitchen. Trust me. You get a bigger area to store all the yummy goodness that’s going to fuel you while on vacation. And you might just find inspiration to cook a time or two.Or at the very least, have salad ingredients on hand for a healthy, throw together meal. Other healthy options to stock your kitchen with might include smoothie ingredients and oatmeal.
  3. Scope out healthy eats before you arrive. You can find healthy choices when eating out. You just may have to look a little harder to find them.
  4. Get active! Go for a hike, find other outdoor activities, take your yoga mat and find your zin, head to a gym (some places will have one included in the price!). Whatever you do, make sure you move your body. Don’t just sit and let your vacation pass you by.
  5. That being said, also be sure to get some much needed R&R. Grab a book, find a hammock, and just enjoy being.

I know this is far from a complete guide to healthy travel. But it’s a start. I promise just the little things above will have you feeling your best on your time away.

Savasana ~ The hardest pose to master

Savasana ~ The hardest pose to master
I’ve been practicing yoga for years now. I admittedly did not embrace it immediately. It moved way too slow for my ever racing brain. It took some time to realize that that was the exact reason I needed yoga in my life. 

Over time I grew to fall in love with the practice and even became a certified instructor and yoga life coach recently. I am nowhere near a master and there are plenty of poses that are far from easy for me. But you want to know the hardest one? Savasana.

Should be easy enough, right? I mean, you just lay there. Let everything in your mind go. Yeah right. My brain does not like to settle (I may be a tad ADHD). If you’re anything like me, as soon as the yoga instructor tells you to lay on your back and relax, your mind goes into overload and you become fidgety. Just like every night when I lay down to sleep. My mind fills with all the things I should have done, the things I need to do, or things that have nothing to do with anything but just want to make an appearance. So goes the Savasana pose. 

You get where I’m going. It’s hard, y’all! Stilling your mind. Allowing yourself to just be.  Letting things go. Accepting where you are in the here and now. Loving yourself as you are. Ahhh, how do I do that???

So yes, the savasana pose has been the absolute hardest for me to master. I can learn to do all the twisty, bendy things. I can loosen up my muscles and joints (very slowly) and allow them to move in ways I never thought possible. Weird poses have suddenly become comfortable, resting poses. 

My mind however, is a whole other story. But I’m learning, slowly but surely. It does get easier. I’m learning to allow myself to slow down and accept the here and now. I’m learning to be at peace, allowing myself to just be, and take one moment at a time. It’s a process. And one I will continue to work on every day. Because the days I allow myself to at least try, go so much smoother. I feel a peace and calmness wash over me. It’s the perfect way to reset my mind and refocus on things that need to be done. This, my friends is what yoga is all about. It can simply be summed up in the savasana (or corpse) pose. 

xo Angela

PS. Need a little help and direction yourself? Schedule a quick 15 minute session and let's chat to see if my yoga life coaching is for you.

Broken and beautiful

Broken and beautiful

I’ve heard some say ”you’re not broken, you’re…” 

To be honest, I don’t even know how that ends. Because the truth is, we’re all a little (or a lot) broken. We live this thing called life. And guess what? It’s not perfect. It can be really ugly at times. And it will break us at some point. And then watches to see how, or if we put ourselves back together.

And therein lies the beauty. We get to choose how we react to that brokenness. We get to decide if we let ourselves completely crumble and lay on the ground like poor broken Humpty Dumpty, or if we get up and piece ourselves together like beautiful broken Japanese pottery that’s been patched with gold. 

We are all broken to some extent. But those cracks get filled with gold (if we allow them to be). They allow us to shine. To teach what we’ve learned through our hardships and to help others in the process. They make us relatable. Because I don’t know about you, but there is no way I could ever relate to someone who puts there life out there like it’s perfect. I don’t even trust someone who appears to live a perfect life. You know why? It doesn’t exist. 

Being broken is not a bad thing. It just means we’ve been through trials. It means we’ve been knocked down and have had to find our way back up. It means we’re human and we’ve lived a little life.

It builds us. It’s part of us. It makes us who we are. 

Being broken is nothing to be ashamed of. To me, it’s the exact opposite. It’s your chance to say, yeah I’ve been through this and made it out. Stronger, shinier, better, and ready to help others going through it now. 

Broken isn’t shameful y’all, it’s beautiful. Embrace all your brokenness and hold your head high. You made it!

Struggling to find the beauty within the mess? I'd love to chat with you and see how I can help. 

xoxo Angela

Self-limiting beliefs exposed!

Self-limiting beliefs exposed!

Limiting beliefs…we hear that term a lot these days. But what exactly does that mean? What are limiting beliefs? Can we overcome them or are they a forever thing? 

Let me first say, they are absolutely overcomeable (if you didn’t know that was a word, you do now). I know this because I’ve overcome so many self-limiting beliefs and continue to do so on a daily basis. 

So what are self-limiting beliefs? Anything you tell yourself, that you believe to be truth, that holds you back. The things you tell yourself that keep you from moving forward toward your big scary goals. The things that keep you from being the person you could be, and likely are meant to be. We can truly be so mean to ourselves. But why? And when do these things start? 

You guys, we didn’t start out with this kind of thinking. If we did we’d never learn to talk and walk. Seriously, I didn’t tell myself, “you’ll never be able to say that word right, so don’t even bother” or “you’re going to fall as soon as you try to move away from that couch. Don’t do it!” Y’all! These thoughts didn’t cross my mind when I was a baby and they didn’t cross yours either. But look what we did! We learned to talk. We learned to walk. We did it! 

So, why is it so hard to have that kind of belief in ourselves now? Chances are you’ve failed at something at this point in life. Like really good. Like impossible at this point that you haven’t. Somehow when we fail at something we begin to beat ourselves up and allow ourselves to believe it means we are incapable of accomplishing whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish. (This is when you go back and get a pep talk from baby you about getting up and trying again.) 

There’s also a really good chance others have said some not so nice things to you. And unfortunately that whole “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” isn’t really true. Words do hurt. And it can be so much harder to heal from mean words than it can be to heal from a broken bone. 

We go through life collecting all these negative beliefs and words about ourselves. And we tend to hold onto them and let them build. Before long we believe them as if they are the God’s honest truth. But here’s the thing y’all, they’re not! 

Our truth is exactly what we make it to be. If we believe without a doubt we will fail and not be able to come back to accomplish that scary thing, we will fail and not come back to accomplish it. If we believe there’s a chance we will fail but we push through anyway, knowing we will get back up and keep trying like our amazing baby selves would, we will! 

Our minds believe everything we tell them! Tell them all the good things. Feed them with all the personal development. Surround yourself with people who believe in you and lift you up. Follow the inspiring people on social media. Be good to you! Never tell yourself something you wouldn’t tell your best friend. Build yourself up and love on you like you would on those you want so badly to see succeed. 

Ok, I’ll step off my soapbox now. I could seriously go on and on about this. I’m slightly passionate about helping you believe in yourself. ;) 

xoxo Angela

Continuing to trust the flow...

Continuing to trust the flow...

Y’all, I’m going to get real for a minute. Daily life has been a struggle for me the last few months. I’d blame it on fibromyalgia but I know it’s not that. I’ve never struggled quite like this with my fibro. I learned at a very early age (I was diagnosed at the age of 19) how to manage that and live a normal, active life with it. But man, since testing positive in October of last year, life has been a struggle!

If you follow me on social media (and if you’re reading this, chances are real good you do), I’m willing to bet it looks like I’ve got all my strength and energy back. It looks like my life is back to normal. Let me tell you, it’s not.

I took a step back from my “normal” job to focus on my health. And I’ve been doing that. I’ve been moving my body, even on days I don’t want to and working on getting my nutrition back. But let me tell you, those things are hard! Moving through my workouts is a struggle more often than not. My body just doesn’t want to move. I drag and I move slow. Nutrition isn’t horrible but could definitely use some help in the veggie department. Thank you loss of taste. And then the brain fog and concentration issues. Ugh!

But I keep going. Giving up on my health is not an option. 

You’ve probably also noticed I’m moving forward with my fitness and nutrition classes and working on getting my business up and running. Again, I refuse to give up. Giving up is not in my genes.

So I push. And push. And push. My body frequently tells me I need to slow down. And I try. But I also know there’s a fine line between rest and laziness. Finding that line is not always an easy one for me. I tend to overdo it before my body forces me to rest. But I’m trying. I’m trying to trust the flow of this new norm. I’m trying to trust my body to tell me what it needs most. 

I am forever learning to trust the flow and trust the process. But let me be honest, as long as that flow and process is in a constant state of movement, I’m good (mentally). When it decides to slow down, or heaven forbid, take a break, I struggle. 

One. Day. At. A. Time.

xoxo Angela

P.S. I don't have a guide to managing this long haul stuff yet. But I'm sure I will in the future! However, what I do have, is a free guide to managing your fibro naturally. You can grab that here

 
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