Deirdre Walsh – Integrative Health Coach

One of my favorite local yoga teachers is Gina Faubert at Serenity Valley in Milton.  It’s a bit of a hike for me, but well worth the trip to the country.  She’s named her studio well as there’s a sense of peace just by pulling into the driveway.  She’s a treasure of information about the body and its physiology, but her real brilliance lies in her suggestions to approach your yoga practice.  As I hold the poses and listen to her encouragements, I often think how useful they are to life outside the studio.  Two encouragements that have travelled with me beyond the studio are “relaxation through action” and “fill the pose, and hold it actively with strength”.

Relaxation through action

Is it possible that moving into action doesn’t require meticulous planning, effort and sweat?  I don’t have to marshal my forces, work on my list, and climb up that mountain of tasks?  Clearly, I don’t have a graceful, flowing ability to get things done.  So it’s a real shift in perspective for me to consider that taking action can be a way of getting relaxed. 

On the mat it’s so easy to see where the extra effort I use to push into a pose is wasted and painful. As is the pointlessness of the internal chatter about how hard it’s going to be and how others find it easier, blah, blah, blah.  In my daily life, it’s not always so clear.  Sure, the pain is acute when I’m procrastinating on something important that will take focus and vulnerability.   Finally getting into action is such a sweet relief.  But do I remember how relaxing it is to get into the flow?  Not often enough.

Fill the pose, and hold it actively with strength

This thought gets me through many a wavering moment.  With this encouragement, Gina asks us to engage fully in a difficult moment with all the energy and strength we can muster.  As opposed to the half-hearted, floppy, droopy attempt that sometimes passes as my warrior pose.  To me, filling out the pose translates daily into fully stepping into the difficult tasks or conversations and holding firm while staying open.  It’s dealing with the discomfort in kind of a badass way.  Instead of contracting from the discomfort, it’s a way of standing tall and saying bring it on.

This week my coach, Tara Mohr, was in town and I had the chance to see her at two different events.  Brilliant woman herself, she’s written the 10 Rules for Brilliant Women – a guide to standing with strength and authenticity as you add your voice to the world.  I love her take on filling the pose, with the rule “Be an arrogant idiot.”  She’s not really counselling that we become that annoyingly confident self-promoter who’s so enamoured with their own unformed ideas that they convince the world of their (faux) brilliance.  But she’s suggesting that we adopt their unwavering belief in their abilities and take a few steps in that direction. 

Most of the time when we feel blocked it is because we are safer that way. We may not be happy, but at least we know what we are – unhappy. ~ Julia Cameron

Whenever I meet someone who is interested in growth and unlocking the potential for themselves and others they inevitably mention reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. It seems like her book is on the required reading list for squeezing more juice out of life. Julia’s approach is to start by creating a zone of safety that allows the space to experiment with the new. That means getting to know those internal voices that can stop us dead or lead us to new worlds – our inner critic and our inner champion. Read the rest of this entry →

Here’s an idea that usually makes people start eyeing the exit – how you tolerate discomfort is probably the biggest block between you and what you want out of life. I’m talking about that moment of discomfort when you can get on with the hard creative thing, or you can [insert personal choice of mindless soothing activity].  I know I go for checking my emails far more than I’m happy with. Read the rest of this entry →

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The calls for exercise get a bit tedious after a while, don’t they? We know, we know . . . we should be exercising every day, doing hot yoga, be able to kick any booty at boot camps. Not to mention running half-marathons and outscoring the kids at hockey. Sometimes it just sounds all so exhausting. And time-consuming.

The most annoying thing about exercise enthusiasts is this – they’re right on every level. Read the rest of this entry →

Goal setting is one of the most important parts of bringing your vision to fruition. But what a tangled thicket some of us have to climb through to get there. Too much like work, I often hear. Some people do better when they work with the intentions – the idea of setting a general direction or theme for accomplishment and grabbing opportunities that push you in that direction. Others like the idea of practices – daily rituals that will create space in your life for the good stuff to show up. Read the rest of this entry →

There’s been an surge in technology tools for health in the past few years, with some really interesting apps and gadgets coming to market. They hold promise to help people engage closely with healthy behaviors.

The tools can be broken down roughly into four categories:  educate, connect, track, and remind.  The more interesting apps combine multiple functions.  Here are some buzz-worthy health tools I’ve seen at health IT conferences in the last couple of years – through the filter of a non-techy person. Read the rest of this entry →

I started a fantastic health balancing program under the direction of Dr. Natasha Turner, author of the Hormone Diet. Almost two weeks in, and I feel fantastic and well past the bumps and rattles of detox. Her program is a genius combination of good sleep, good food, good exercise and balancing supplements. Still, there are a lot of changes to my day and I have to check the schedule quite a few times to make sure I’m hitting all the high points. I pulled out a great change model we were taught at Duke for help – the Change Ladder. It reminds me to be patient with myself and the process and to appreciate the progress I am making on my goals.

Any change involves four steps Read the rest of this entry →

The bubbly’s gone, we’re down to the last few chocolate truffles and that incredible French cheese was happily shared with friends and family.  The holidays were a wonderful, hectic time of fantastic meals, shared laughs and a few new sock monkey additions to the family.  For me, the few pounds that arrived were collateral to strengthening our social connections and sharing the familiar holiday traditions.  But if those few pounds (and a few of their friends) are still hanging around in March, as we’re packing for our sunny escape, I’m not going to remember why I was so benign about their arrival.  A plan is in order. Read the rest of this entry →