You probably know what it takes to live a healthy life, right?  Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, exercise regularly, take vitamins – maybe add in some fish oil for cardiovascular health.  Make sure you get enough protein, carbohydrates, and lean fats.  Fortunately for many, healthy eating and exercise have become more and more a way of life.  You know the list of do’s and don’ts to keep your body strong and fit.

What is less well known is how your thoughts influence your physical, emotional, and even spiritual health. Your mind is an extremely powerful instrument that can be either a friend or foe.  For most, left to its own devices, the mind is a foe, and can lead to pain, difficulty, and suffering.  With a little bit of effort and awareness, however, the mind can become a friend.  As a friend, your mind can be used as a powerful asset to help promote your health and well-being on all levels.

Understanding Your Mind – Friend or Foe

Is your mind your friend or your foe?  If you are like most, your mind bombards you with concerns, worry, anxiety, negative self-talk and a barrage of other nonsense.

Your mind may harass you about being good enough or healthy enough.  It might critique you for making “poor” decisions.  Are you being a good enough mother to your children?  Are you a loving enough partner?  Are you taking good enough care of your physical body?

And then let’s not forget gnawing concerns about physical appearance.  The mind may lament: “I have too many wrinkles.”  “How did my butt get so big?”  “What should I do about these sun spots?”

Does this list sound at all familiar?  You can probably write your own – your unique “flavor” of negative mental messages.  These messages range from annoying to downright tyrannical.  They are tyrannical because they control your life.

What kind of life can you live when your mind harasses you constantly with these types of concerns and worries?

It is my contention that true health is impossible when you live with a tyrannical mind.  And most people do.  You can eat all the right foods, do all the right exercises, take all the best supplements, and have a wonderful mix of alternative and conventional medical care.  Yet if you are a slave to your thoughts, believing every mental message that the mind produces, how can you be truly healthy?

The mind-body connection is by now well-known and documented throughout the scientific literature.  If your mind is producing stress, anxiety, and insecurity, whether that is through making you believe that you are not quite good enough the way you are, or that something is wrong with you, or making you worry and stress about situations over which you have no control, this mental turbulence has a very real impact on your physical health and well-being.

The tragedy is that most people live enslaved by their minds – their thoughts, beliefs, mental patterns and emotions.  The triumph is that with a little awareness and effort, you can begin to free yourself from the tyranny of your mind and move toward true health and well-being.

Freeing the Mind – Breaking Free from the Thoughts and Beliefs that Confine You

So, how do you break free from this ceaseless and controlling mind-chatter?

Fortunately, there are some steps you can take that will help you find freedom from a controlling, and even debilitating mind.

Step #1: Become aware of the thoughts that you think

Before you can break free from your negative thoughts, ideas, and beliefs about yourself, your body, and your life, you must first become aware of the thoughts that you think on a regular basis.

What thoughts and beliefs are being generated in your mind?  Everyone has thoughts, messages, “tapes” if you will, that run through the mind.  Without awareness, these thoughts control you and dictate your life.  Yet as you become aware of the thoughts you think on a regular basis, you can gradually begin to loosen the control they have over your life.

There is no practice more important or more impactful in breaking free from the thoughts that control you than the practice of meditation.  Over time, a regular meditation practice makes you more aware of the thoughts that are being generated by your mind.  With meditation, you discover that you are not the thoughts you think.  You are not the messages and voices inside your head.  Over time, meditation will gradually help lessen the grip and hold that your thoughts have over your life.  The amazing thing about meditation is that simply by practicing meditation, you will become more aware of the thoughts you think on a regular basis.

Step #2: Recognize that they are false

Before you become aware of your thoughts, they control you absolutely.  As you become aware of them, you can begin to notice that they control you.  You can begin to notice how they control you.  The next step in breaking free from them is recognizing that they are false.  You have to realize that they are simply messages, usually learned in early childhood, and they are false.  They are not about you and should not be allowed to control your life.

Step#3: Refuse to believe them

The next step is refusing to believe them.  As you begin to see more clearly that these false messages run through your mind, you can make a decision to not believe them.  You can recognize that they are false – false messages running through your mind.  As such, they should not be listened to and should be ignored.

It is like music running in the background.  You can carry about your business, go about your life, and ignore the negative thoughts and beliefs.  Disregard them, don’t listen to them – completely ignore them.  As you practice this, gradually over time they will lessen and recede more and more.

In this way, you can use your awareness to free yourself from the negative thoughts that you think.

As the mind becomes free from these negative messages and beliefs, it can be used as an ally to promote health.  When you are listening to the negative thoughts and beliefs that run through your mind, it promotes dis-ease.  As you become free from these voices, the energy of your mind is elevated to help you move toward true wellbeing.

Sarah Maria, author of Love Your Body, Love Your Life, outlines her 5-step process for helping you feel great in and about your body.  Her work embraces the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, for true, lasting healing.  Visit BreakFreeBeauty.com to learn more.

Technorati Tags: healthy thinking, love your body love your life, sarah maria, using your mind to help heal

Can you tell the difference between the objective feedback your body offers versus the critical condemnation of your mind?

Your body’s objective feedback can help you make lifestyle choices that promote your health and well-being, whereas the critical condemnation of your mind creates nothing but suffering.

Our bodies are incredible messengers, powerful gifts on the journey through life.  We can use the constant feedback that our bodies give us to help us make changes and adaptations to promote our health.  If we listen to the criticism of our minds, however, it will sabotage us.  The negative mental messages can eclipse the body’s natural intelligence and feedback, which will prevent us from making the healthy choices we want to make.

The mind opines, while the body illuminates.  The mind makes you mistakenly believe that your body means something about who you are as a person, your self-worth and your value.  It levels judgment and criticism.  It makes you believe that you are somehow not good enough, that something is wrong with you and your body.

Here are some examples to elucidate the point:

Objective Feedback vs. Critical Condemnation

• “I am holding weight in my abdomen – I can tell I have been under a lot of stress.”
  versus “My stomach is flabby and disgusting – I am out of shape and need to do more sit-ups.”
• “I haven’t been able to exercise recently and can tell that my legs are weak.”
  versus “My cellulite is disgusting and I cringe when I look in the mirror.”
• “I notice that when I eat sugar regularly it leads to weight gain and is addictive.”
  versus “Why can’t I control myself?  I am so weak.”
• “I can tell that my arms are becoming weak – it would be good for me to increase my upper-body strength.”
  versus “My arms are flabby, weak, and I don’t even want to look at them.”
• “It has been too long without a haircut.”
  versus “My hair is flat, dull, and disgusting.”

The key is to use your body for valuable, useful feedback, and to disregard the worthless messages of criticism that come from mental conditioning.

Critical condemnation is when you use your body and appearance to:

• Determine your self-worth
• Use it as a reflection of your “success” or “failure”
• Use it as a reflection of your “strength” or “weakness”
• Use it as a reflection of being “good” or “bad”

Here are three helpful steps to help you use your body’s messages for objective feedback, while dropping the mind’s critical condemnation:

1. Become increasingly aware of the difference between the body’s messages and the mind’s messages
2. Separate the “wheat” from the “chaff” – use the objective feedback and drop the self-judgment, criticism, and condemnation
3. Make lifestyle choices based on the feedback, not the condemnation

A key tool to help you learn to differentiate between your body’s messages and your mind’s messages is meditation.

A regular meditation practice is essential to help you break free from the critical mind-chatter that can sabotage your best intentions.

Technorati Tags: body image, sarah maria, self worth, self-esteem and body image

If you are like most people, you think you are doing life.  If you are like most people, you live by your to-do list.  You get up early—maybe you work out.  You go to work, take care of the kids, eat food, deal with your boss, figure out how to sell your house… For many, life itself is one big TO-DO.

In reality, however, life is much more about being and less about doing.  The exquisite blessings of life are not delivered based on how much you do.  No, life’s greatest treasures, life’s pleasures, life’s bliss, life’s ecstasy, are based on being.  Just learning how to be yourself, how to be free, how to be love, how to just be.  The true tragedy is that most of us have no idea how to be free, how to just be.  We only know how to do.  We have lost the art of human being; we have traded it for human doing.

Now the beautiful thing is that when you learn the art of being, it does not mean that you have to stop doing, for you can “be” doing anything.  Or not doing anything.  Being is simply the art of allowing life to unfold, allowing life to live you and lead you where it may.  To the outside observer, everything might look the same.  It is simply your orientation that is different.

One of the great master keys to learning the art of being is to discover that life is living you.  You think you are living life.  You think you are doing so much.  But in truth, in reality, life is doing you.  You are just here for the ride.  Learn to shift your awareness away from being the doer and instead allow life to do you.  This might sound esoteric, but in truth it is very practical.

One way to make it practical is to master the art of allowing.  Begin to approach life from the perspective of allowing. Do you have many tasks to complete?  Allow them to get done.  Yes, you may still be doing them, but you will be allowing them to get done.  They will get done through you, not by you.  Are you feeling stressed?  Allow life to unfold.  Are you looking for answers?  Live the questions and allow the answers to come.  Are you struggling with illness?  Allow your body to heal.

Now you might think this sounds simplistic.  Your response may be: yes, very nice idea, but I have bills to pay, and a real health condition, and I need to do things in order to get through my day.  And yes, this is all very real, and very true.  But when you have an orientation of allowing life to unfold, and allowing things to get done, everything gets accomplished with much more ease and less strain.

No need to do anything dramatic, no need to make any big change.  Just as you go throughout your day, remind yourself that you are allowing.  Whatever struggles you are confronting, allow whatever IS just to be.  Life is always much easier when you are not fighting with what is happening.  Life might be painful; it might be difficult; it might be stressful.  Or it might be fun, and light, and easy.  Whatever it is, just allow it to be.  Allow it to be.  Allow it to arise and subside.  Allow yourself to experience.  Just allow, allow, allow.  Allow life to unfold.

It is an absolute illusion that you are doing life.  Life is truly doing you.  And the more willing you are to allow life to do you, the easier it becomes.  The more you allow life to live you, the more freedom, joy, and love, you can and will experience.  So as you go throughout your day, just remind yourself occasionally, remind yourself to allow.  Remind yourself to be. In the midst of activity, just continue to be.  And watch to see if everything gets just a little bit easier, as you discover what it means to be a human being, an actual human BEING…

Technorati Tags: Journey, life, Life's treasure, Living Life, sarah maria, sarah maria body image expert

Life is meant to be a love affair, an actual love affair.  Life, as it truly is, is in fact, a love affair.  Now you can choose whether or not to experience life as such, whether or not to join in the dance.  But no matter what, life itself always remains a true love affair, an intimate dance in each and every moment.

Every desire for love, every desire to love, is simply the longing within you to experience the reality of life, the truth of what you are.  Your longing for love is your longing to know and experience yourself as the love that you are in reality.

Each and every human experience of love is designed for the sole purpose of showing you what you truly are; it is designed to illumine the nature of you true beauty.

The mistake that people make is thinking that love comes from some particular experience and is dependent on a particular experience.  The human mind creates the illusion that love comes from an experience or an interaction with a particular object.

In reality, love is inherent in every experience.  Love is what is actually happening in every experience. Most people miss this because they think of love as a feeling; they think of love as something that comes and goes.  But true love is the very ground of existence.  It cannot come and go because it simply IS.  Love is what is in every experience.  Whether your experience is pleasurable or painful, good or bad, friendly or unfriendly, what is happening is still love.

This may sound like a tall claim, an extreme claim, even an impossible claim.  But if you think about it, even for a moment, you will discover that it can be no other way.

You do not exist as a separate individual but exist only in communion with the entire cosmos.  You are appearing as what you perceive of as “you”, as a particular body-mind.  But in essence, “you” has no independent existence at all.  You are the same as the flowers, as the dirt, as the air, as your friends, as your lover, as your cat, as your dog.  You are the same essence.

As you realize and experience this, every interaction becomes a kiss; every interaction becomes intimate.  When you are open, when you are available, every experience is a kiss from the divine in its myriad forms.

1. When you walk through the park, notice the trees, the flowers, the ocean – they all stop to smile, wave, and embrace you, if given half the chance.
2. Instead of judging your body for its perceived flaws and imperfections, practice dropping into it and fully experiencing it.  Your body is always alive with love.
3. In every interaction, whether with pleasant or unpleasant, let yourself experience the love that is underneath the pleasure or the pain.

Love is what is happening all the time.  Simply let life love you. That is what it is designed to do, if given half the chance.

So instead of thinking that love comes from a particular experience, use every experience where you feel love to remind yourself of what is already and always the case.

When you experience a moment of love, a hug from a friend, an embrace with your lover, a smile on a child’s face, let that remind you of the love that is always there, always available, all the time.  Use that experience to remind you that life is love happening, and you are an intrinsic, indispensable, an exquisitely beautiful part of the cosmic love affair.

VividLife.me Contributor

Sarah Maria, author of Love Your Body, Love Your Life, outlines her 5-step process for helping you feel great in and about your body. Her work embraces the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, for true, lasting healing. Purchase your copy and begin to love your body today.  Visit: www.sarahmaria.com or for more about Sarah Maria’s work, please visit:  www.breakfreebeauty.com.

Technorati Tags: Healthy Living, love your body, sarah maria, self-esteem and body image

How willing are you to live in the mystery? How willing are you to live the mystery? Or another way to ask this question is how willing are you to allow the mystery to live you?

You see, you live in mystery. Or, better said, you are a living mystery.

Very few people are ready and willing to accept this mystery. The mind wants to figure the mystery out, seeking to grasp and hold onto the mystery. The mind asks:

• What about this?
• How do I?
• But what if?
• How does it work?
• What will happen when?

And there is nothing wrong with these questions. Yet the deepest longing of your heart and soul, the deep yearning for truth, cannot be grasped and understood – it can only be experienced.

I heard a story once that a great scientist (I think Einstein) said: “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”. With the advent of quantum physics, another leading scientist reveled: “God not only plays dice, but he throws the dice where no one can find them.”

This is simply a way of saying that we are part of a mystery that cannot be explained, that cannot be understood, that cannot be grasped. But it can be experienced. The mystery can be revealed; you can literally experience a revelation; you can experience the revelation of the mystery.

In my experience, the fastest way to experience this mystery, to live this mystery, is through the heart. When you live from the heart, you transcend the mind. For many people, the mind serves as a barrier to the experience of truth. Not because the mind is bad, not because the mind is wrong, but simply because the mind has been conditioned, trained, away from truth.

The mind has been conditioned to have all sorts of beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions. And none of these beliefs can show you the mystery of reality, the mystery of life, because this mystery can only be experienced directly. It can be experienced not through thinking, feeling, or doing, but rather through surrendering.

It is natural, almost inevitable, to be afraid of living the mystery because living the mystery means seeing that you are not in control. For those of us who like to think we control life, or at the very least control ourselves, surrendering to the mystery can seem daunting, overwhelming, even unbearable.

Yet the truth of the matter remains – we are part and parcel of an incredible mystery. And we do not control the mystery. It is when you are willing to surrender to this mystery we call life that true beauty can begin to reveal itself.

So take some time this week to reside in the heart. Reside in your heart and see if you can let the mystery guide you to an experience of your exquisite nature.

VividLife.me Contributor

Sarah Maria, author of Love Your Body, Love Your Life, outlines her 5-step process for helping you feel great in and about your body. Her work embraces the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, for true, lasting healing. Purchase your copy http://www.amazon.com/dp/1605501530/?tag=brefrebea-20, begin to love your body today. Visit: www.sarahmaria.com, www.breakfreebeauty.com.

Technorati Tags: peace and wellbeing, sarah maria

For me, 2010 will be the year of the heart.

In the West, most people think of the mind as being the source of insight, wisdom, knowledge and guidance. People think that the mind is where they will find the answers to life’s most important questions; it is where they think they will discover how to live. And yet for most people the mind is the seat of ignorance, confusion, and difficulty.

In other traditions, and in my own experience, the heart is the true seat of wisdom and knowledge. The mind get confused; the heart loves. The mind questions; the heart knows. The mind worries; the heart relaxes.

Now don’t get me wrong – the mind can be a very useful tool. When kept in its proper role, it is an incredible asset. But it should remain a servant, not a master.

As you learn to focus on your heart instead of on your mind, you will discover a whole new way of being in the world. You will be able to tap into wisdom, insight, and guidance that you never before imagined.

So consider this as a start for 2010: turn your attention to your heart; connect with the feeling of love, and share your love and gratitude. Are there people in your life who evoke a feeling of love? Did you experience blessings in 2009 that evoke a feeling of gratitude? Focus on these people or these blessings. Let them evoke the feelings of love and gratitude, and let these feelings pour out from you and gently guide your life.

Now one thing about this practice, and about following the path of the heart more generally: I am not promising that it might not be messy. Hearts can be broken. You can share your love and gratitude and have it rejected, and that hurts. You can give everything you have, offer all the love you can, and still feel hurt, betrayed, abandoned, unloved. There might be bumps, bruises, cuts, and scratches as you offer your tender heart.

But in my experience these pains and these hurts are never the end – they aren’t the final say. They don’t have the final word. The more you love, the more you give, the purer your heart becomes. Now this does not mean deplete yourself, abandon yourself, or deny yourself. Quite the contrary: it means love yourself completely; give yourself everything, and let this love become your life.

Always start by offering yourself love first. When you truly love yourself, you love others. For when you know how to love yourself, your heart becomes full. And your love begins to flower – it begins to bloom. You can begin to offer it, without regard for whether it gets returned or not. Your love might be returned; it might be reflected back to you. It might be rejected and denied because of someone else’s closed heart. But it does not matter. None of that matters. Because the love lives you; the love gives you. Your life becomes an expression of love and is complete in-and-of itself.

And the more this love flowers from within, the more beautiful the world becomes. Unexpected blessings flow into your life; grace finds you and begins to penetrate your being.

So in 2010, let your love flower. Love is not another item on your to-do list. Simply let it flower. Let it grow within your heart and radiate outward. And from this place of fullness, offer love to yourself, offer love to others, offer love to the Divine. Let your entire life become an expression of love and gratitude, for this life is truly an exquisite gift to be both given and received.

Wishing you a year filled with peace, love, and beauty always.

VividLife.me Contributor

Sarah Maria, author of Love Your Body, Love Your Life, outlines her 5-step process for helping you feel great in and about your body. Her work embraces the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, for true, lasting healing. Purchase your copy http://www.amazon.com/dp/1605501530/?tag=brefrebea-20, begin to love your body today. Visit: www.sarahmaria.com, www.breakfreebeauty.com.

Technorati Tags: gratitude, heart and soul, love your body love your life, positive living, positive thinking, sarah maria

Tune in LIVE to VividLife Radio Wednesday, December 30th at 2 pm EST

Love Your Body, Love Your Life: 5 Steps to End Negative Body Obsession and Start Living Happily and Confidently

Sarah Maria is a respected body-image expert who impassions people to love their bodies no matter how they look. Through her speeches, coaching programs and her new best-selling book Love Your Body, Love Your Life, Maria is showing women how to break people free from their Negative Body Obsession (NBO) and adore themselves, regardless of what the package looks like. The quest to eliminate NBO is the core of her acclaimed book. Maria shows women and men how to break free from their Negative Body Obsession and adore themselves, regardless of what the package looks like.

Maria’s mission is to create a world where every person sees the beauty in themselves and in others. Her passion grew out of her own 15-year struggle with body hatred and the obsession to stay thin. Despite her academic achievements, her NBO persisted. That’s when Maria began the long journey of self-discovery that led through the gateway of self-love and acceptance. She uncovered an empowering roadmap that she has distilled into the contents of her book. Love Your Body, Love Your Life outlines a powerful five-step process designed to help people break free from Negative Body Obsession and discover the beauty already inside of them.

“Read this book and you will discover that there is only one beauty, and you are that,” — Deepak Chopra.

Having trained with well-known spiritual teachers and physicians, including Deepak Chopra, Dr. David Simon, co-founder of the Chopra Center for Well-being in Carlsbad, CA, Wayne Dyer, and Jack Canfield, among others, Maria brings both a mainstream practicality and a spiritual inspiration to her programs, her book and her mentoring. She is a Chopra-Center Certified Meditation instructor and an Ayurvedic Lifestyle Counselor.

In addition to her extensive training in health, personal growth, and spirituality, Maria has a long and remarkable academic career. Prior to embarking on her career as a body-image expert, she received a law degree from Stanford University and a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University. She lived and worked in Latin America, focusing on economic development through small business assistance.

Sarah Maria now lives in Carlsbad, CA. For more information, go to www.breakfreebeauty.com

Love Your Body, Love Your Life: 5 Steps to End Negative Body Obsession and Start Living Happily and Confidently

Technorati Tags: love your body, Love Your Life, negative body image, sarah maria

Part II:  Excerpts from an interview with Sarah Maria, Body Image Expert and Author of ”Love Your Body, Love Your Life: 5 Steps to End Negative Body Obsession and Start Living Happily and Confidently.”

Question: In your book Love Your Body, Love Your Life, you present the five steps for ending NBO. Can you talk about these steps?

The first step is to set an Intention. This is the crucial first step in creating what you want in life, and in creating and experiencing a body and a life that you love.

Step Two is to Identify and Detach from Negative Thoughts. This step is about becoming aware of the thoughts that run through your mind on a regular basis, discovering that they are not your own, that they were given to you from outside. Then you can employ specific tools and techniques to help you detach from these negative thoughts so that they no longer control and influence your life and your well-being.

The third step is to discover who you really are. Who you are – or what you are – is not your thoughts, and is not limited to your body/mind. Who you are is the beauty and perfection of the universe manifesting as a human being. As you discover the truth of who and what you really are, this will help you begin to automatically heal whatever problems are plaguing you.

The fourth step is to befriend your body. Most people have an adversarial relationship with their bodies. The fact of the matter is that