fbpx
Not quite awful!

Not quite awful!

I am always searching for yummy treat recipes for myself and my family. You see I have multiple food intolerances. This can make things tricky, but I know when I nurture my body, I feel fantastic.

My family therefore, get to try lots of different foods. Some are great experiments and others are epic failures. Sometimes there is choice involved, and other times it’s “eat what’s on your plate”. But the consistent message is try the experience and then express your preference.

It’s a great analogy for life that I am trying to teach my daughter. Immerse yourself into opportunities. Have a go. If you don’t enjoy it, learn the lesson and don’t do it again. If’ the experience is good then repeat. Simple right?

 

These are gluten dairy and egg free choc chip cookies. The choc is actually cacao nibs and the egg replacement was chia seeds. Sounds exciting right?!

Soooo my husband’s verdict statement was this … “babe ya know those latest cookies?”

I replied “yeah”.

They weren’t exactly terrible but what the f*#%k is in them? Somethings not quite right about them!!!”

Oh dear flying cookie airborne towards the smart arse!!!! I learnt a couple of things.

I celebrated the free expression and frankly after that comment we all laughed ourselves silly. The statement in fact, has become the latest joke in my household – it’s not quite awful but ….!”

So here’s what I know…

1. Chia seeds make a brilliant egg replacement

2. Cacao nibs are a great semi sweet replacement

3. I still have a good arm and my aim is exceptional!

Whilst the cookies require some ‘attention’, I had a go. And I’ve reminded myself with a simple recipe – that as long as I continue to have a go and dish up experiences into the bowls of life, it won’t be quite awful! Life will be filled with adventures!

You really can choose to change your perception of life and bloom from within xx

Part 3 – Achieving Balance as I Chase Rainbows

Part 3 – Achieving Balance as I Chase Rainbows

Given my own health journey, I completely understand the resonance of chronic illness and the challenges that go with that. I understand the depth of despair and sadness being experienced by someone who feels stuck or afraid to move forward on their journey path. Because I’ve been there. I think that adds to the uniqueness of what I offer as a practitioner.

When I hold space for a client, it’s from a space of compassionate understanding of what it feels like to be unwell and unmotivated. I understand that deep dark hole and not knowing how to pull myself up an out of negativity – because I’ve been there. It’s so humbling to have clients who choose me to be of service to them.

I continue to chase rainbows in search of what else makes my heart sing and further me along my journey path. Why? Because every tool I have used for myself, I share with clients when I’m being of service.

I am constantly working on myself to ensure I remain energised, grounded, centered, focused, balanced and protected. I have a number of simple spiritual practices that I incorporate into my working life, and I’ve shared them below.

 

1. Smudge my space

I energetically clear the outside of my clinical space and home with incense and white sage daily using an intention. The energy always feels clearer and calm afterwards.

My clinic room will be cleared at the beginning and end of each day with incense.

2.  Meditation

Meditation is a wonderful gift to quieten the mind and monkey chatter. It also lowers my basal muscle tone and deeply relaxed me. I use this quiet time generally before my day begins to welcome in opportunities for the day ahead. At the end of the day I express gratitude for the abundance gifted to me.

 

3. Get grounded

Each morning generally after meditation, as the sun begins to rise, I go outside in bare feet and get grounded on the grass. It’s a fantastic way to discharge positive ions – not fantastic in winter but I definitely feel the difference.

I set my intention to be grounded centered, focused, balanced and protected in alignment with the heart of my earth mother and the arms of my spiritual father. I claim my energetic space and energetically protect it.

4.  I spritz my work space with aromatherapy oils

I spritz my work space after every session and use a product by Australian Bush Flower Essences ‘space clearing’. Everyone has their own stuff and energy associated with it and it quickly builds up over a day.

I also have aromatherapy in a cold defuser in the waiting room. Most days I use a drop of lavender because it’s a biochemical mood balancer – if you’re up it shifts you down and if you’re down it tilts you up. I add eygptian geranium to the mix to allow clients to open their heart space up and utilise their own resources to love all over themselves.

5.  Resonate Essence to manifest my intentions

I met the incredible Rachelle and Mel at this year’s AKA conference and absolutely fell in love with their products. Now their products feature in my morning rituals to manifest my intentions for the day.

6.  Get journaling

I journal out any speed wobbles and express my gratitude at the abundance already in my life.

Dreams don’t just happen. Your dream life evolves because you are committed to implementing the small actions which create the feelings which resemble the life of the dream. The more positive actions you take, the more you are living the dream and chasing your own rainbow!

I invite the rainbow energy to wrap around me so I don’t have to chase it.
I simple accept it’s been with me all along!

Part 2 – My life as a Kinesiologist & Coach (Rainbow Chaser!)

Part 2 – My life as a Kinesiologist & Coach (Rainbow Chaser!)

I’ve been actively practicing kinesiology for over six years and dabbling in the modality for twelve years. I’ve been in my business full time now for two years after migrating from a 25 year career in the waste industry. I now have the near perfect balance between work and life. And life with a tweenager is certainly full, so I need a job which provides me flexibility to work around being a mother.

Kinesiology is something I love, so it’s not a job, it’s a joy.

I find that the modality of kinesiology isn’t just a series of techniques incorporating muscle monitoring. It’s a lifestyle, and for me almost a religion! Kinesiology has gifted me the ability to look deeply within and easily connect to my true self and journey path. It’s also been one of the best modalities which provides a foundation of structure for a clinic session, and yet include new information and teachings as I gain them. This modality supports me to remain courageous and face all the stuff for which I need to be responsible for. It also supports me to open my heart space (ie chakra) and increase my capacity for unconditional love.

Even though I am a sole business owner, I absolutely love working for myself – now. The initial days were challenging, because it’s hard work doing everything yourself. I figured out a lot of things along the way. Firstly, I quickly realised that I needed to work hours that aligned to the needs of my family. I see so many of my business coaching clients fall into the trap of booking clients outside of set hours and exhausting themselves, as I once did.

Secondly, I realised that I needed to set my intention to be of service to everyone who walks through my door. In fact, I “call the clients to me” so to speak, using the Laws of Attraction. I write love letters to the universe. I manifest who I want to work with, my ideal client. It took a bit of research, but identifying my niche was vital to be able to create the right copy and marketing strategies to grow my reach.

Sounds a little weird, but in this day and age I believe you can’t create a business and simply expect the clients to come. You have to give a little of yourself in the process to engage that Know-Like-Trust factor before they commit to you. You have to align to the aspects of your dream work life and this includes the clients you ideally want to work with. Call in the clients you know you can be of service to, and, resonate with. Call in the clients who’s journey path you understand. What better way than to align your energy to those who you can best serve?

The sooner you identify your niche of perfect clients, and work through any barriers you may have in relation to that, the sooner they are knocking on your door! Why? Because the sooner you identify your niche the sooner you are aligning your marketing to them. And the sooner you work with them, they will be shouting rave reviews about you to their friends and family – because the changes will be that visible.

Thirdly, I’ve worked through a truckload of negative beliefs when it comes to working for both myself and my perfect client. The old belief that I needed to always be available to clients and never say “no”, and learnt very quickly to set boundaries to ensure my work to life balance was established and maintained. Working set hours that enable me to balance my family life supports that I meet my needs as a mother and wife is important. But more importantly working these limited hours means that I am always energised for everyone entering in my clinical world!

Then there was the discomfort at asking for money at the end of the session, because my self worth was a little wobbly. I loved supervised clinical practice for dealing with this. It also helped that I’d done corporate consulting work for nearly a decade prior, and, understood the need to be renumerated for my time and expertise. Believe it or not, when I first started out, I was still uncomfortable in my own private practice asking for payment!

I’ve overcome an enormous fear of being judged, by becoming publicly visible in my business. And I will even admit to the ocean of frustrated tears which have been shed that were associated with technotarditis. Frankly the depth of technology available to make our lives easier is overwhelming, but you need to understand the basic processes of your business first.

I was recently asked what would you like to share with your fellow Kinesiologists? I love this question and there’s a couple of tips I regularly share with my coaching clients. In the first instance I always tell my clients – Embrace Your Race At Your Pace!

Never get caught in the trap of comparisonitis, which often hits when you’re fatigued or frustrated. Stick to my business plan and assess my statistics. Reflect on other’s peoples work for ideas, graphics, styles of copy, but don’t try to become them. Just be you!

For all practitioners I recommend collaboration so you never feel isolated or alone. It’s important to feel part of a tribe. I’d like to advocate belonging to an association which easily enables collaboration across a broad spectrum. Events like conferences, webinars, online learning, facilitated advertising of registered training providers, regional gatherings are just some of the obvious things that our professional industry associations do.

But think of belonging to your association as a legitimate way to demonstrate to your clientele that you belong to a professional network, which isn’t just an online Facebook group. But an organisation with a charter and mission and dedication to it’s members and your given modality.

Online forums provide fabulous connection but it’s not for everyone in terms of geographic or actual desire access to utlise technology. I get that. So the beauty of an association is that it should provide a range of platforms to engage you – conference, magazine, online presence, as well as support when you need it.

 

 

But I always find myself returning to the excitement I felt when I first enrolled in the modality. The excitement of the story that the body can tell us using kinesiology techniques, still to this day blows my mind. I am so grateful for this modality and it’s ability to tap into the human body fields.

In a recent blog (Top Five Biz Tips) I shared my top five tips for embracing and building your business. A summary is below:

  1. Ensure you meet your needs first.
  2. Accept the ‘to do’ list will never end, and just continue to plug away.
  3. Get a mentor.
  4. Have a strategic plan.
  5. Be prepared.

With a little planning, and an open mind to confront your fears, you too can achieve anything you set your mind to when it comes to running your business. You can choose to change and bloom from within.

Embrace your race at your pace as you chase your rainbows

I Chase Rainbows – Part One

I Chase Rainbows – Part One

I often get asked how did I get into kinesiology? I generally take a very deep breath and slow down my mind and smile, because the additional of kinesiology to my life has been an incredible series of chapters in my book of life!

I generally respond with “my first experience with kinesiology was with Dr Charles Krebs in the late 1980s”. My brother was dyslexic and failing mid-range high school because he was struggling to read and write. My mother was open minded enough to try anything to support him to be able to read and write. Six months later and he was not only passing, he was top of the class with an almost identic memory. He went on to dux year 12 and then the entire science faculty at his university institution upon completion of his degree. Kinesiology unlocked his true potential.

For me, my initial reaction was to release anger, and lots of it. My poor mother wasn’t inclined to take me back in a real hurry! I was angry in my teens with little memory of my childhood. I thought that was normal. Turns out, early childhood trauma can cause people to ‘shut down’ memories – who knew??!!!

In my subsequent training, I’ve learnt a lot about the effects of significant life experiences and how the subconscious body responds with alterations to our behavioural patterns. How we respond to shock of losing someone to suicide, or a parent getting sick, or expectations to achieve during exams, are all simple examples.

Studying kinesiology, amongst other things, I’ve spent the last ten years working on my negative based story patterns that I had been running in response to life. Kinesiology empowered me to change the lifestyle mindset where I felt stuck. This amazing modality supported me to defuse stress and swing my life back into a positive space rather than dwelling in a negative void.

We all have stuff – right? Of course we do! We inherit the patterns of whatever and wherever our parents were (in their stuff) at the time when we were conceived. We are also affected by our environment– the food we eat, the technology we use, the people we interact with and our experiences. Is it any wonder we get stressed! The thing I love about kinesiology is the ability of the modality to bring a person back onto their line of recuperation so they can recuperate themselves.

Over the last decade, I returned to kinesiology due to a health crisis, triggered by stress that was held in my body with an association to some genetic patterns. I had reached a point whereby I was no longer be able to utilise western medicine fully. I also had a realisation during this time, that I was responsible for my health.

I sought out a modality whereby the stress could be defused, and I could power myself forward on my journey path. I liken the process of this awakening and evolution, similar to the joy of catching a rainbow for a moment or two. I am now motivated to chase rainbows all the time – because I want my life to be positive and filled with energetic joyous gratitude. My wish is that I can share this ability to have joy in life with all I encounter. I am living proof it’s possible.

Kinesiology has gifted me the release of a chronic illness, namely Crohns Disease. That said I am now very conscious about my wellbeing and take exceptionally good care of myself. Kinesiology has become somewhat of a lifestyle, because it’s afforded me access to so much more science, just from a different aspect and point of view. It’s given me health, a child, a happy marriage and loving relationships. It also continues to deliver me a lifestyle whereby my pace of work to life is balanced and well managed.

I now embrace my race at my pace.

What’s in a Name?

What’s in a Name?

I get asked a lot about my brand – Blooming From Within. It has a story, and everything I do is aligned to it. It’s both my motto, my catch cry. It serves as my constant intention and affirmation. My brand and business name are both one and the same. The logo of my business serves the purpose as the visual element used by my target audience in all correspondence and social media.

By definition, a brand is meant to be the overall experience of a customer, that distinguishes an organization or product from its rivals in the eyes of the customer. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising. Philip Kotler et al, in the book Principles of Marketing define a brand is as a “name, term, sign symbol (or a combination of these) that identifies the maker or seller of the product”.

LOGO

Be sure to have a logo by which your audience and clientele can recognise you. If you are in the process of organising you brand logo, try and keep things simple.

Top Tip – Limit your brand and logo colours to no more than three colours.

When I consulted a ‘visibility’ mentor, her suggestion was I can utilise these brand colours in all sorts of things like email footers, letter headers, flyers and of course social media. Your audience will come to recognise your colours, especially with your brand.

I tend to specifically utilise these three colours when creating social media content. Frankly it makes life so much easier not having to choose different colours when creating content. That decision has already been made.

Top Tip – I also recommend you obtain several versions of your logo.

You never know in advance where you might utilise your logo. When you acquire multiple versions of your logo at the time of design, it saves you time and money in the long run.

When negotiating the creation of your logo, include within your scope of work, (ie request the designer) to prepare you with the following options:

  • Varied format options–
    • small & large format options
    • colour
    • black & white
    • solid (jpeg), transparent (png), high quality print (PDF) format options
  • scope meeting with designer – always meet with the designer before they let their creative juices flow. You want to ensure they clearly understand what you are trying to achieve.
  • scope to include at least 6 graphic based editorial revisions – this allows you to edit the draft and achieve exactly what you want.
  • take your time! Print out various versions of drafts and hang them in your work space so that you are constantly looking at the options. This allows you to resonate with the right choice.
  • Request files be created graphically so that if modifying the size of your file, you don’t loose graphics integrity.
  • Request your designer to send files electronically in format compatible to your computer, not the designer’s hardware! This may be winzip, dropbox etc.
  • Make backup copies

Have a main jpeg logo for your business card and email type links.

Then have variations such as white, black and transparent versions. This will enable you to always ensure every single thing that you produce. Note the colours used in the following graphics all incorporate my logo colours.

TELL YOUR STORY

I started working in my business as a massage therapist whilst simultaneously being employed by an international corporate consulting firm. The stress was through the roof and I had begun my personal transformation through taking my initial spiritual journey steps. Short version of my story was the realisation that I in order to change, I had to take responsibility for my ‘stuff’. I had to choose to change in order to ‘bloom from within’.

The flower within the actual wording of my logo is significant of the spiritual journey as well as the logo. The font for ‘BLOOMING’ is intentionally bold, and, intended to be a call to action. The font for the word ‘within’ is intended to reflect our individual uniqueness.

References

Philip Kotler/Gary Armstrong, (2017) “Principles of Marketing”, Pearson Education Australia.

All I want for Xmas is Inner Peace

All I want for Xmas is Inner Peace

Research tells us that family gatherings are more satisfying when families remove the importance placed on the materialistic aspects of Christmas, (that is, the gifts). Instead, the emphasis should be shifted onto the positive aspects of family and togetherness. The aim of focusing on the presence of Christmas being to engage in “environmentally conscious consumption practices”.

In my own clinical practice, I support an ever growing number of patients who battle suicidal tendencies during what should be the most joyous time of the year – these people feel their most alone and isolated at a time of the year which should be filled with joy.

And then there are the clients who are incredibly stressed out to say ‘yes’ to all of the social engagements. They work themselves into a frenzy to fit everything in, but all they are really doing is stressing themselves out and not enjoying all of the festivities.

Every party and celebratory dinner becomes a chore. And then there is the building dread which comes of inviting family to the obligatory ‘family meal’, which more often than not, isn’t a pleasant experience.

The festive season is filled with our old stuff and patterns and negative reactions triggered by specific family members. Not everyone has joyous fun filled Christmas experiences. Sometimes there are toxic relationships. Sometimes there is alcohol or substances driving toxic or damaging behaviour. Sometimes there is poverty driving trauma based experiences.

As an adult, it’s imperative to remind yourself to approach your feelings as an adult, and acknowledge that the emotions and feelings may be associated with that younger version of you.

And then there is the societal stress of gifting the biggest and the best presents.

Is this really what the festive season has become?

Is it really all about ‘stuff’.

How did we lose our resilience?

From my clinical observations, it’s because we over commit, over spend, over eat and plain and simple over do it – in every aspect of our lives.

From a business perspective, November and December are the busiest time of my clinic year.

Regular clients commence demanding bookings as early as September to ensure they’ve got appointments to defuse arising stress in the lead up to the silly season.

A couple of years ago, I stopped accepting all of the invitations, especially where I had to travel. Instead I limit myself and my family to one event that generally lasts several hours or a day. I ensure that the event will support me to relax and laugh. It needs to replenish my spirit.

For other invitations I negotiate whether I can postpone the ‘catchup’ until the new year, when I’m generally on a break and can devote my undivided attention to the audience.

Often these involve sleep overs, beach visits, bush walks, picnics.

Lots of outdoor exploring, tree hugging, ocean swimming and laughter. I’ve always got the camera to capture the moment – for you never know when that most recent encounter will be your last!

Make it count.

There’s a couple of other strategic things I do. I book self care appointments well in advance. I make sure all of my needs will be met during the busiest of months. I’ve got my own Kinesiology and massage appointments booked. This ensures my body and mind remain super sharp and in ideal working order, whilst working at a busier pace.

If and when feelings of busy, overwhelm or stress arise I treat them like anything else – I breathe and allow the feelings to come and go.

Holding onto old feelings, especially from those who trigger you, doesn’t affect anyone but yourself.

So you’re far better off releasing the negative juju and moving on with joy in your life.

Meditation on a regular and consistent basis is essential to clear the mind, and relax the body.

Journalling is also an exceptional tool to debrief negative Nancy from doing her worst inside your head with all of those negative thoughts.

When it comes to socialising this festive season there’s a couple of basic rules.

Know your limits when it comes to :

  • Serving size
  • Hydration with water
  • Alcohol
  • Sugar
  • Servings of fruit and vegetables
  • The number of rich food meals

And finally set your intention of how you want your festive resilience and season to be this year!

My intention is always to experience laughter, love and happiness in all of my encounters.

May your days be merry and bright this festive season as well!