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Patrick Hinchcliff

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Health & Healing

4 Ways to Stay Healthy This Holiday Season

By Patrick Hinchcliff — 5 years ago

4 Ways to Stay Healthy This Holiday Season

In the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it can be difficult to keep your health in check. There are so many holiday parties, family gatherings and opportunities to overextend yourself. However, if you can follow these 4 simple tips, it will help you stay on track!

Hydrate

Drink plenty of water all day long. Choose water over sugary drinks and alcohol whenever possible. Keeping your body hydrated is a key ingredient in keeping your body balanced and in a state of homeostasis. Think of drinking water as bathing your cells in nourishment. If you’re at a party and everyone is drinking, just get a pretty glass and fill it with water and add a slice of lime or lemon. No one will know the difference.

Don’t Overeat

Only eat until you’re full. Did you know it takes 20 minutes for your belly to signal to your brain that you’re full? Eat slowly, mindfully and consciously, only choosing healthy options. You can treat yourself to dessert but try to keep the portion small and opt towards the healthier options.

Get Plenty of Sleep

Sleep is when your body rejuvenates and restores itself, so don’t skimp on rest during this fun (but often stressful) time of year. Keep electronics out of the bedroom and try to stay off screens for at least an hour before you go to bed. Instead, take a nice warm bath with bath salts and a drop of lavender oil. Read your favorite book or do a quiet meditation. Also, try not to eat 2-3 hours before bed.

Move Your Body

Exercise is another extremely important ingredient in staying healthy throughout the holiday season, as well as the rest of the year. Exercise brings oxygen to your cells and making you feel more awake and energized. If you can start your day with a yoga class (or even 20 minutes on your yoga mat in your home), it will set the tone for the day, helping you choose healthier options along the way. Even if all you can squeeze in is a short walk, you will feel so much better and less stressed.

 

Victoria Dodge is a cofounder of Yoga Salt, coauthor of The Yoga Plate, professional photographer, and cooking expert who has worked with companies such as Lululemon, Forbes, and Apple, as well as celebrity clients, models, and Hollywood figures like Shaquille O’Neal, James Cameron, and Sterling K. Brown. The Dodges live in North Carolina with their two children.

Dodge-Victoria-and-Tamal-©RussellBaerPhotography-2018

The community here at Sounds True wishes you a lovely holiday season! We are happy to collaborate with some of our Sounds True authors to offer you wisdom and practices as we move into this time together; please enjoy this blog series for your holiday season. 

To help encourage you and your loved ones to explore new possibilities this holiday season, we’re offering 40% off nearly all of our programs, books, and courses sitewide. May you find the wisdom to light your way. Use promo code HOLIDAY10 and receive an additional 10% off your order.

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Health & Healing Relationships

3 Ways to Deepen Gratitude This Holiday Season

By Patrick Hinchcliff — 5 years ago

It is true that misery cannot simultaneously exist alongside gratitude and that, despite ourselves, we are constantly being given more than we give. To prove that point, try this simple, elegant practice and see for yourself. Please note: If you resist doing this exercise, consider that you are doing so because you, like most human beings, prefer to believe that you give more than you receive. If you find you’re wrong, what will happen to your resentment or other feelings of disappointment?

Naikan Inventory List

Take a few full size notebook paper and draw three columns. At the top of column #1, write “What he/she/they gave to me.” At the top of column #2, write “What I gave to him/her/them.” At the top of column #3, write “The trouble I caused him/her/them. Exhaust each column with your list of SPECIFIC items before moving onto the next. The timeline to consider is the last 3 months. The use of “always” or “usually” should be avoided. Be precise.

Write three letters of gratitude

You should have enough evidence to write three separate letters of appreciation to your partner. Be sure to make each different, using alternate words expressing thanks to your partner. You can give your partner this letter (or card), or you can simply keep it to yourself. Your choice. The exercise was for you anyway.

Write three letters of apology

You should have enough evidence from your list to apologize for putting your partner out. Make each letter unique by saying “I’m sorry” in different ways. Again, you can give this to your partner or simply keep it private. Either way, the exercise does its magic. If you were honest and thorough, you might have noticed that column #2 was shorter than columns 1 & 3. We are selfish creatures; always aware of what we’re not getting and how our partners cause us grief.

I hope this exercise has helped deepen your gratitude during this holiday season!

Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT, is a clinician and author who integrates neuroscience, attachment theory, and current therapies. He directs training programs throughout North America and globally. He is the author of We Do: Saying Yes to a Relationship of Depth, True Connection, and Enduring Love, Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner’s Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship. 

The community here at Sounds True wishes you a lovely holiday season! We are happy to collaborate with some of our Sounds True authors to offer you wisdom and practices as we move into this time together; please enjoy this blog series for your holiday season. 

To help encourage you and your loved ones to explore new possibilities this holiday season, we’re offering 40% off nearly all of our programs, books, and courses sitewide. May you find the wisdom to light your way. 

EXPLORE NOW

 

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Health & Healing Spirituality

3 Ways to Welcome the Sacred Feminine This Holiday Season

By Patrick Hinchcliff — 5 years ago

3 Ways to Welcome the Sacred Feminine This Holiday Season (2)

If you are anything like me (and almost everyone I encounter these days), you are growing bored with the patriarchy and eager to reclaim feminine wisdom across the spectrum of human community: politics, academia, pop culture, and religion and spirituality. It’s not a matter of personal preference. The well-being of our Mother the Earth is inextricably entwined with our choice to either lift up and center the feminine or continue to bury Her. Here are a few ways for you to welcome the sacred feminine this season. 

Reclaim Mother Mary

With so much of the attention of the Western world focused on the legendary birth of a boy baby, we sometimes forget he had a badass mom. Mother Mary was anything but meek and mild. She was a powerful prophet, an unconditionally loving force, a broken-open heart on fire. She offered her divine YES (Hineyni, in Hebrew) and spoke truth to power with love. How can you soften and step up to the resounding call to be the instrument of peace you were born to be? Look to Mary as a guide.

Read Women’s Poetry

There are a host of truth-tellers in the form of contemporary women poets & they are brimming with mystical treasures. Back away from the news for a moment and pick up a poem. Read it three times. The first time, you are knocking on the door of the poem. The second time, the door opens. And the third time, you are invited all the way in. Here are some recommendations: Marie Howe; Ellen Bass; Lyla June; Hashem Beck; Lynn Unger; Naomi Shihab Nye; Jane Hirshfield; Linda Pastan; Mohja Kafh.

Cultivate a Sabbath Practice

The tyranny of tasks that bosses us around most of the year can intensify around the holidays. Even as the mystical traditions invite us to turn inward & rest in stillness during this season, the larger culture demands that we engage in an endless array of duties and expenditures. In the Jewish tradition, a weekly observance of Shabbat, infused with the Feminine Presence (the Shekinah), is not only a requirement of the faith, but the sweetest blessing. Find your way to keep the Sabbath holy.

Mirabai Starr writes creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. She taught Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog. A certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss. She has received critical acclaim for her revolutionary new translations of the mystics, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich. She is the award-winning author of GOD OF LOVE: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and CARAVAN OF NO DESPAIR: A Memoir of Loss and Transformation, and Mother of God Similar to Fire, a collaboration with iconographer, William Hart McNichols.  Her latest book is Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics. She lives with her extended family in the mountains of northern New Mexico.

The community here at Sounds True wishes you a lovely holiday season! We are happy to collaborate with some of our Sounds True authors to offer you wisdom and practices as we move into this time together; please enjoy this blog series for your holiday season. 

To help encourage you and your loved ones to explore new possibilities this holiday season, we’re offering 40% off nearly all of our programs, books, and courses sitewide. May you find the wisdom to light your way. Use promo code HOLIDAY10 and receive an additional 10% off your order.

EXPLORE NOW

 

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Health & Healing Spirituality

3 Ways to Connect With Your Higher Self This Holiday Season

By Patrick Hinchcliff — 5 years ago

3 Ways to Connect With Your Higher Self This Holiday Season

During the holiday season, when the material can easily overshadow the spiritual, making conscious connection to the Divine within yourself can bring you back to the real reason for the season. In every spiritual tradition, the days around the Winter Solstice are a time of reflection, connection, gratitude, and devotion to the Source of love that animates all of life. To solidify the meaning that underpins winter holidays, it helps to practice connecting to what I call “Your Inner Pilot Light.”

Humbly ask for a deeper connection to your Inner Pilot Light

Connection with your Inner Pilot Light is fueled by your desire to bow before the Divine within and acknowledge that while you can engage in practices meant to deepen your connection, Divine union is a gift, given as grace, not something you can control. Try this prayer. “Dearest Inner Pilot Light, I surrender my desire to connect with You to the Divine Beloved inside of me and humbly ask for help. Let my personal will merge with Divine will and show me how I can be a vessel for your love.”

Tune in and let your Inner Pilot Light communicate with you

As a daily practice, drop into your heart and allow your mind to relax. Ask your Inner Pilot Light, “What do you want me to know today?” Then allow the words, feelings, somatic sensations or images come through. If your message comes in words, write it down as a love letter from your highest self to the parts of you in need of reassurance, guidance, comfort, or healing. If your Inner Pilot Light communicates non-verbally, just take in the guidance in whatever way is most natural.

Learn to receive, interpret, and discern your inner guidance

Your Inner Pilot Light seeks to guide you to the life of greatest love, alignment, growth, and flow, but it takes some practice to see that guidance is everywhere. It may come through an inner voice, guiding imagery, medicine dreams, synchronicity, animals that cross your path, a felt sense in your body, or direct knowing. Once you learn the way your Inner Pilot Light prefers to communicate with you, you will feel less alone, as if Love Itself is guiding you to the life you are meant to live.

 Lissa Rankin, MD, New York Times bestselling author of Your Inner Pilot Light, Mind Over Medicine, The Fear Cure, and The Anatomy of a Calling, is a physician, speaker, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute, and mystic. Passionate about what makes people optimally healthy and what predisposes them to illness, she is on a mission to merge science and spirituality in a way that not only facilitates the health of the individual, but also uplifts the health of the collective. Bridging between seemingly disparate worlds, Lissa is a connector, collaborator, curator, and amplifier, broadcasting not only her unique visionary ideas, but also those of cutting-edge visionaries she discerns and trusts, especially in the field of her latest research into “Sacred Medicine.” Lissa has starred in two National Public Television specials and also leads workshops both online and at retreat centers like Esalen and Kripalu. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her daughter. She blogs at LissaRankin.com and posts regularly on Facebook.

The community here at Sounds True wishes you a lovely holiday season! We are happy to collaborate with some of our Sounds True authors to offer you wisdom and practices as we move into this time together; please enjoy this blog series for your holiday season. 

To help encourage you and your loved ones to explore new possibilities this holiday season, we’re offering 40% off nearly all of our programs, books, and courses sitewide. May you find the wisdom to light your way. Use promo code HOLIDAY10 and receive an additional 10% off your order.

EXPLORE NOW

 

4-ways-to-rest-this-holiday-season-feature image
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Health & Healing Yoga & Movement

4 Ways to Rest This Holiday Season

By Patrick Hinchcliff — 5 years ago

Giving yourself permission to rest during the holiday time is perhaps the most radical—and life-saving—act you can do. Here are a few easy ways to give yourself the gift of rest. Your family and friends will thank you—and might just lie down too!

Meditate Every Morning or Evening

If you have 15-minutes, try practicing yoga nidra meditation, a guided meditation also known as yogic sleep. This is supreme relaxation. You can find yoga nidra online. If you don’t have that kind of time, silent meditation for even just 3 minutes every day can feel restful. Close your eyes, and notice your breath. You can repeat a mantra or a relaxing word as you breathe in and out. If family is visiting and you don’t have a quiet spot in the house, meditate in your car or even in the bathroom!

Breath Counting

We tend to forget just how restful it can feel to breathe. Breath counting pulls the mind away from stress and towards a more centered, balanced feeling. To practice, count backwards slowly, with rhythmic inhalations and exhalations, and say to yourself as you breathe, “Breathing in, 11, breathing out, 11, breathing in, 10, breathing out, 10.” And so on, counting down to one. You do this while breathing the whole body or engage a chakra and breathe into that area. Befriend the breath.

Walking Meditation (extra points for bare feet!)

If you’re stressed over the holidays, walk in silence on the ground for five minutes or more. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Walk as if your feet are kissing the earth.” Walking bare-footed is ideal—outside or in your home. More and more evidence suggests that we need the Earth’s electrons for our well-being—it improves sleep, pain management, and stress. If you can’t walk in silence, try cooking your holiday meal mindfully in bare feet, Your body will thank you.

Watch the Sun Set or Rise

Sunrise and sunset are mystical times of the day. Busy lives don’t easily give us access to the soul. During sunset and sunrise the veils of illusions, which pull us away from our truest self, are thin. We can see ourselves more clearly and feel more intuitive and creative. If you can, watch the sun set or rise in silence. Your nervous system will thank you.

Karen Brody Karen Brody is a women’s well-being and leadership expert who helps women journey from worn out to well rested and then dream big in their work and lives. A certified yoga nidra instructor, she is the author of Daring to Rest: Reclaim Your Power with Yoga Nidra Rest Meditation, founder of Daring to Rest, a yoga nidra-based self-empowerment program for women. She has an MA in Women and International Development from the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands, and a BA in sociology from Vassar. Karen is also a playwright, and Birth, her theater-for-social-change play has been seen in over 75 cities around the world. She is the mother of two boys and met her husband in the Peace Corps. She resides in Washington, DC, but considers the world her home.

The community here at Sounds True wishes you a lovely holiday season! We are happy to collaborate with some of our Sounds True authors to offer you wisdom and practices as we move into this time together; please enjoy this blog series for your holiday season. 

To help encourage you and your loved ones to explore new possibilities this holiday season, we’re offering 40% off nearly all of our programs, books, and courses sitewide. May you find the wisdom to light your way. 

EXPLORE NOW

 

3 Ways to be Mindful with Your Family This Holiday Season
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Health & Healing Mindfulness

3 Ways to be Mindful with Your Family This Holiday Season

By Patrick Hinchcliff — 5 years ago

Mindfulness has long been essential to spiritual practice, but recently it’s been embraced by schools at all levels. Recently, as an author visit at a middle school, I saw for myself the results of starting the day with a moment of silence and encouraging students to be mindful of others in hallways. Here are a few suggestions for family mindfulness during the holidays.

Start each day with mindful breathing.

During the holidays, we often wake up with our minds already spinning and busy with a long to do list. Take a few moments, in bed or in the shower, while brushing your teeth or waking your child, to follow your breath. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that we have to be present to be here, fully live each day. Even better, practice mindful breathing with your child.

Light a candle each day.

There’s something magical about lighting a candle. Creating ritual is one way to slow down and be mindful of each moment. It might be hard for busy families to have dinner together during the holidays. And maybe everyone in your house rushes out to the bus or car without sitting down to breakfast. But this time of year, when many of us struggle with darkness, the simple act of lighting a candle can help center ourselves.

Treasure the joy of quiet reading time.

The holidays are a great time to gather together to watch films, but don’t neglect the joy of quiet reading, which nurtures our imagination and allows us to be quiet together. If you have children, it’s a great way to share together. If you’re visiting relatives, take a risk and suggest a read aloud activity. We all love to be read to, whatever our age. And as we come together with those we love in the wonder of books and stories, we are reminded of what we treasure most.

 

Deborah Hopkinson has a master’s degree in Asian Studies from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, where she studied the role of women in thirteenth-century Japanese Buddhism. She is the author of Under the Bodhi Tree: A Story of the Buddha. She lived in Honolulu for 20 years and practiced Zen Buddhism with the late Roshi Robert Aitken, founder of the Diamond Sangha and Buddhist Peace Fellowship. She lives near Portland, Oregon. For more, visit deborahhopkinson.com.

The community here at Sounds True wishes you a lovely holiday season! We are happy to collaborate with some of our Sounds True authors to offer you wisdom and practices as we move into this time together; please enjoy this blog series for your holiday season. 

To help encourage you and your loved ones to explore new possibilities this holiday season, we’re offering 40% off nearly all of our programs, books, and courses sitewide. May you find the wisdom to light your way. 

EXPLORE NOW

 

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Sounds True is a multimedia publishing company founded in 1985 by Tami Simon, with the mission of disseminating spiritual wisdom. The company is based in Lafayette, Colorado.

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