A root cause approach to holistic gut healing
As a Holistic Health Coach, it’s quite amazing how many times comments are made directly to me about being perfect, ALWAYS eating just the right things and yada yada yada! Truth is, I’m human. Just like you! I’ve got seasons of struggle. Just like you! I’ve got seasons where things are going pretty smooth. Just like you!
This is a question that gets asked frequently along with the comment…”I don’t know why you do, you’re so skinny”.
Well friends, I’m about to get real frank, honest and maybe a little sarcastic. You were warned. 😉
Today my fellow Health Coach Brenda Canas is here to chat all about morning and evening routines for more energy and less stress.
Brenda is a Health Coach for female entrepreneurs who want to have more energy. She teaches them how to 2x their energy to scale their business without sacrificing self care.
Do you practice a morning or evening routine? Drop a comment below and share one thing you love about it!
Learn more about my ONE habit that has been a part of my morning routine for 5+years.
Are you living your life in fear? Today my friend Brenna is sharing her story on how she found freedom and truth after living many years in fear!
Bad days. Hard days. Rough days. We ALL have them. Sometimes there are seasons of life that they seem to appear more than we would like. On some of those days, we handle it like a pro. Practicing our grateful attitude, staying on track and making choices that benefit us. Then there are those days that we just can’t seem to get it together.
What I’ve learned through a difficult season of my life is that we HAVE TO acknowledge where we are at and we MUST give ourselves grace during this period. Chances are the rough patch will pass and we will come through it with new growth.
So for this one particular day when you’re finding it hard to keep a positive mindset, read through this list. Pick one (or more) things and DO IT. It’s not a guarantee to fix things BUT it will give your mind a break and you will possibly find yourself just a little bit happier! 🙂
I want to hear from YOU!! What things do you do when you’re having a rough day?
As you know, a healthy gut is a special focus in my health coaching practice. For me, healing my gut changed everything! Day after day millions of people around the world struggle with some type of digestion problem: Gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, upset stomach, acid reflux; the list goes on and on. Poor digestive health weakens the immune system, causes nutritional deficiencies and hormonal imbalances and weakens all organ function. Not to mention the emotional toll it has on a human dealing with these problems. The good news? Most of these symptoms can disappear by addressing your diet & lifestyle choices! So let’s dive into what actually is normal digestion and 3 tips to improve it in the next week!
Recently I did an interview with my dear friend, business coach, and Holistic Health Coach Paula Roelands. Read below to find out more about her, her coaching practice and her tips for a healthy lifestyle.
Introduce yourself.
Hey, I’m Paula Roelands! A transplant from Michigan to the Wild West in the desert of Colorado. I’m on a journey of recreating my world; focusing on health not only for myself but many others.
What led you to be a health coach?
I looked at the areas in my life that I loved the most, bundled the best of them together and viola, created a way to bring that into the world to empower and support people, and brings a wonderful ripple effect toward a healthier world that speaks to me deeply. While I have lived a fairly healthy life, I’ve had setbacks of my own which created the desire to support others in getting to the other side of them.. The terrain that you come across, expected or not, whether it’s your health or something else that changes your world upside down, building confidence and gaining tools that you will be able to handle whatever it is, is a pretty cool story to be able to develop.
Explain what being a health coach means to you and to your clients.
From my understanding of a health coach, it is someone who can walk alongside a person who wants to improve their health in general, in the holistic aspect being more than just the diet part of your life and help guide the individual to a better situation for their individual needs.
For me personally, I see it as individual empowerment for myself creating a very intentional conversation with my body and my life and creating what kind of live experience you want to have. And inviting your body along for the ride, cause you’re going to get one. Why not help our body be the best that it can be to get the best experience we can have?
Describe a typical coaching day in your practice.
When I wake up I have an agenda that I have set the day before; that includes self-care, family time, work time and individual coaching sessions. My self-care routine includes dry brushing, breathing, lemon water, then a walk with a friend. After that I have a veggie & protein filled breakfast and kick off my working day by about 8:30 or 9:00 depending on clients. I work on my programs/marketing for a couple of hours before my first clients session. I schedule my client session for an hour, with time right after to do follow-up notes before my next client. On a given coaching day I may have 2-3 clients. One of which will probably be in person and 2 will be by phone or Skype. By 3:00 I’m winding down and setting up for the next day, returning phone calls and doing up follow-up with my strategy sessions. Then chillax 🙂
Can you explain a little more in detail about your strategy sessions that you mentioned?
Because coaching is very much a trust kind of situation, I don’t actually start coaching someone until we’ve had an initial strategy session together. During that session, I spend an hour with them just figuring out what kind of support I can offer them, how interested they are in having that support and seeing what health things they are motivated to work on and really transform. We come up with a couple of action steps for them to implement in the next 2 weeks. This gives us both a chance to learn just how serious they are about making these changes. If they don’t follow up with me, most likely it’s that they are just not ready. And that’s totally ok, and good to know before either of us invest in the work. Where there’s follow through and small successes, that gives great clarity of the immense potential for a success and transformation in a coaching experience together.
Is there a certain area that you specialize in or tend to gravitate towards in your practice?
I have had great success working with clients who are dealing with time management and stress issues. That seems to be an area where we make a lot of progress quickly with sustainable results results that also ripple into shifts in dietary health as well. I also tend to attract people with autoimmune diseases, where I’ve had success in helping folks increase their body healing, reduce medications by shifting toward a whole foods type of diet. I’ve had success working with them to go off prescriptions and incorporating a whole foods type of diet. Thyroid issues, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia are the most common issues I have worked with.
What 3 tips do you have for someone who is wanting to start making healthy changes to their lifestyle?
*Hydrate. Drink more water. The standard I recommend ½ oz per lb of body weight. People notice a big increase of ability to focus and the amount of energy they have in a day. If you have trouble drinking straight water, you can squirt some fruit juice in it to create some flavor. The cleaner the better though. Tea works too, herbal is better than caffeinated.
*Get enough sleep. It sounds easy but this is very difficult for people. it is so important as that it is when your body does its repair work. I do have an article on sleep hygiene that I am sharing here>>>click here for those details.
*Move your body 30 minutes a day. If you have a desk job or sit down a lot, make sure to get up and move for 5 minutes every hour. Not only does it help your circulation, your brain and though patterns clear and re-energize for more effective, efficient work. Taking 5 will give you at least twice as much back.
Paula Roelands is a Holistic Health Coach who guides individuals nationwide to a vibrant, confident, fulfilled life. She also hosts popular hands-on workshops on fermented foods and digestive health as well as engaging presentations on thyroid health, stress management, and fatigue relief. Known as the family “granola girl,” Paula is humored in her culinary experimentation by her patient husband Peter and her children – budding chefs Anika, Pagiel, and Tyan. They enjoy hiking, camping, and skiing – living la vida healthy in the desert on the Colorado Western Slope. Find her on Facebook and check out more info on her website!
Stress. We all have it. We all try to deal with it. Today Health Coach Mary Tirrell is sharing her tips on stress management!
I know what it feels like to be so stressed and overwhelmed that only the bare minimum gets done. Where everything seems too large and too heavy for me carry. But I thought I couldn’t ask for help because I’ve always been the strong one, the one who takes care of things.
I’m going to share a few techniques and ideas I use to alleviate that stress and make that load smaller and lighter so it’s easier to carry.
I’m going to start by telling you my biggest secret – if you don’t get any other benefit, I want you to hear this:
Sounds simple. But how often do we stop and notice HOW we are breathing? Or ARE we even breathing at all?
There’s a saying “Stop and smell the roses.” To me, that means, “Slow down, take a few deep breaths and notice.” Notice your breath and how you feel in this moment. Are you anxious? Overwhelmed from trying to do too much or being asked to carry too much? Are you afraid and holding your breath?
OR, are you relaxed and strong and ready to take on the world?
When you take a deep, full bodied breath, you bring in new air, new energy to fill up your empty spaces.
Take a deep breath for a count of 4. Hold it for a count of 7. Release it for a count of 8. Do this 5 times.
Notice anything different? When I do this exercise, I feel my heart rate slowing down, my thoughts slowing down and I feel calmer.
I literally say “Breathe in the Good” and raise my arms while taking in a deep full breath. I think about one good thing in my life – playing with my dog, watching a movie with my partner, drinking tea with my best friend. Just one thing.
Then, I literally say “Breathe out the Bad” and lower my arms as I fully exhale that breath. I think about the thing that is stressing me out RIGHT NOW. Then I release its power over me.
I started this when I had a job that was super stressful for me. Each day, I started taking MindCations. If I felt overwhelmed or stressed, I would take a few minutes and do something that would make me smile or have a little bit of fun. Jump up and down. Put on Pharrell’s song Happy and dance with my dogs.
Push back from my computer, close my eyes and relax all the parts of my body. It’s important to loosen the tightness in your body to open yourself to receive energy not close it off. Then, I would think about a time when I was in Nature and feeling really good. A hike with my dogs, a bike ride, sitting on the beach. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it is a memory of something that brought you joy.
Next are what I think of as the rational ways, the mind trick ways.
The gist of it was stop chewing things to death and then bringing them back up to re-chew again. Rumination and worry are where stress lives and thrives. We ruminate over things from the past that we can’t change. We worry about things in the future that we can’t control. Let go of stress by realizing that there is no point in ruminating over the past or worrying about the future.
Resilience is about how we deal with the things that pop up in our lives. How we view them, how we solve them, how we let them go. Keep in mind that there is no stress from “out there.” It’s “in here” – internal and self-created.
We can view events as either stress (bad) or pressure to perform (good). Stressful things block us, paralyze us, make us reactionary. Pressure to Perform things put us into action, focus us, make us proactive. And, once they are dealt with, we can let them go. If I allow myself not to let it go, I ruminate – Did I do the right thing? Did I take the best course of action? Could I have performed better?
A great visual from the workshop was a river… Water flowing along contained by the banks on either side. When we are performing well, the water flows smoothly and stays inside the banks. When we allow stress to build up, it’s like rocks and boulders that disrupt the flow. It breaks the banks, overflows and becomes a flood. When we are smoothly controlling the river of events in our lives, we keep everything under control. When we allow the events to get overwhelming, we lose control.
Remember to keep breathing. Allow your breath to calm your heart, calm your mind. Then, look at what is in front of you and see it as pressure to perform so that you can solve the problem and not stress out about how you are going to get it all done.
Mary Tirrell is a Health and Life Coach based in New Jersey. She loves working with people who are going through transitions and helping them come out the other side to a healthier, happier, more joyful life. When she’s not working with people, Mary loves cooking, hiking with her dog, Makia, being on the beach in any kind of weather and geeking out to Star Wars movie marathons with her husband! You can reach her here: mtirrellcoaching@gmail.com
What is energy? Webster’s dictionary defines it in a couple different ways:
What is vitality?
Coming from a place where I was exhausted all the time and felt like I was lacking in certain areas of my life, I can tell you that life sure is a lot different now that energy & vitality are in abundance! Here are 10 tips for you!
