I was fortunate enough this past weekend to get to spend some time speaking for the Women’s Grappling Camp up in Berkeley.  For those of you that don’t know about WGC, they are a fantastic organization that gathers four or five times a year simply to provide a supportive, empowering, educational environment for female grapplers.  I love this organization first and foremost because their goal is just what I listed above.  The women that run this camp have come to understand the unique experience that it is to be a female athlete in a vastly male dominated sport and are alone in providing a venue where women can come together and share their own experiences, share tips about grappling, and learn together.

My role was simple, speak about health, fitness and wellness and provide acupuncture to anyone with the need.  What always seems to happen though is that I walk away feeling like I am getting far more than I have given.  I walk away with a renewed faith in humanity, a renewed faith that people truly are interested in natural health, natural ways of living and most importantly – personal responsibility with regards to wellness.

A very heartfelt thank you to the Valerie Worthington and Felicia Oh for not only putting the camp on, but for allowing me to be a small part of it.  Keep up the great work, I look forward to seeing you all again next year.

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To *want* and to be ambitious and to want to be successful is not enough. That’s just desire. To know what you want, to understand why you’re doing it, to dedicate every breath in your body, to achieve . . . If you feel that you have something to give, if you feel that your particular talent is worth developing, is worth caring for, then there’s nothing you can’t achieve.” Kevin Spacey

This morning I heard a really great quote at Toastmasters while listening to a speech on starting your own business that I’d like to share.

“D o not mistake a clear view for a clear pass.”

I have no idea if someone famous originally said this nor if I’m failing to give the originator credit, so if you were the first to coin this phrase – mea culpa.  This quote is very applicable to new business owners and to anyone in transition – be it transitioning into a healthier lifestyle, transitioning into a lesser lifestyle due to an illness or anything in between. 

What I took away from this quote and have seen with a number of my patients and clients is that many of them know where they would like to be.  They have a clear view of what life would be like without cigarettes, without the extra 50 pounds that they are carrying around or with the added vigor and energy that comes from a consistent workout routine.  However, what trips them up and sometimes derails them all together is when the pass is not clear.  Let’s nip this right here and now – the pass will most likely not be clear, nor do you necessarily want it to be. 

When it comes to transitions, you are usually overcoming years, decades, even lifetimes of established patterns.  What do established patterns really give you?  Usually it’s an established set of outcomes and the familiarity that these outcomes bring.  This is the juice behind habits.  We as humans love habits because they consistently provide us with a familiar outcome.  I know that if I start my day every morning with a cup of coffee, I will have roughly the same energy spike, clear thinking and number of trips to the bathroom and I can depend on this each and every morning.  When I skip my morning coffee, I have no idea of whether I’ll have energy come 10am, maybe I will and maybe I won’t and to the reptilian part of my brain, this is trouble!

So, let’s forget about the pass being 100% clear.  There are lessons to be learned during transitions, that’s why they happen.  We’ve either outgrown a set of behaviors or they simply no longer work for us in the ways that they once did and it’s time to move on.  However, as we undue years of habits, our brain’s desire to return to the familiar will almost always test us.  This is to see how committed we are to our new routine.  Websites like Habit Forge or having an accountability partner will go far in these transitions, but so will coming into them with the knowledge that there will almost inevitably be bumps in the road.  Welcome them and then walk right over them.

Please take a moment and read this great article on the effects of acupuncture with regards to weight loss written in Forbes.  The blurb below is just a short piece of the ARTICLE.  Enjoy.

“What’s particularly interesting and somewhat shocking about the study’s findings is that weight loss occurred across the board without much exercise or dieting, something everyone believes is essential to trimming down,” Lamadrid says. “I certainly don’t want to discount the importance of healthy habits such as good fitness and eating nutritionally, but this study confirms that acupuncture is a viable tool for successful weight loss.
Key conclusions found that 81 percent of participants in Group A, which received three weeks of acupuncture treatments, lost weight, averaging 2 lbs. per week for men and 1 lb. per week for women. After the treatments ceased, 54 percent continued to lose weight. Meanwhile, 79 percent of those in Group B, the control group, which didn’t receive acupuncture, gained weight over the three-week period. At the end of those three weeks, this control group then received regular acupuncture treatments, and 77 percent then lost weight at a rate similar to Group A.”

Welcome back.  Did you all have fun inserting positive experiences and education into your lives?  I hope so!  If you haven’t, why the heck not?  Do you have too much fun already?! 

I have just finished reading Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution and I can’t recommend this book highly enough.  Robb was CrossFit’s Nutrition guru for a number of years and has led the charge to get the paleo diet to be the eating method of choice for CrossFitters (for those of you unfamiliar with CrossFit please check out www.crossfitpacificcoast.com). 

 Although many of us have a cursory understanding of why it’s beneficial to eat this way, The Paleo Solution goes into depth on the hormonal connection between food, health and disease. 

For me personally it was very eye opening as I have spent a good portion of my life dedicated to “curing” myself of food allergies – including wheat and dairy.  To be honest, these allergies and the search for the cure for them was the impetus behind my medical study.  What I wish someone had pulled me aside and told me 25 years ago is that there is no “cure” for a wheat allergy, nor is there one for a dairy allergy.  The cure is to simply stop eating them because even though people may not have the same acute symptoms that I used to get, those foods are killing them none-the-less.  

Now when I have any autoimmune patient or allergy patient, wheat and dairy are the first things that I tell them to cut out of their diets.  Permanently.   Usually they look at me as if I’ve asked them to curse God, but once I explain the relationship between these foods, their hormones, and the internal havoc that gets reeked by them, I have their attention.  It’s not until 2 or 3 weeks later after they’ve seen a huge drop in symptomology that they start to understand.  Is pasta tasty?  Absolutely.  Chemotherapy isn’t though.

Please buy and read The Paleo Solution.  Robb is one of the good guys and is leading a very unpopular fight to change the way that our entire country eats.

Cooking class anyone?

Happy Monday!  Hopefully you aren’t recovering from too many vodka sodas and are feeling healthy!  Today is a fun day folks, today’s action step is just that – the step in which we get to take some action.

On Thursday you all did a full 10-minute brainstorm on what exactly you’d like to have more of in your life.  Maybe it’s a dream client, maybe it’s a new hobby.  There is not right or wrong answer as long as what you listed is what YOU really want and that you want it for healthy empowered reasons.  (If you dropped a pain in the ass client only to replace them with “Now I can finally try to live up to my parent’s unrealistic expectations of me”…well then we still have some work to do.

Today’s Assignment: Pick the action step from your list that will cause you to have experience the highest amount of fun and take one action towards it.  Now an “action” means a verb.  This means that you will actually do something (another verb) as soon as you’ve finished reading this sweet blog post.  Make a phone call, set an appointment, walk into the store, order the DVD, buy the book, DO SOMETHING that requires you to set an appointment.  Yep, that means that if you’re thinking about picking up Brazilian Jiujitsu as your new hobby that googling “BJJ” isn’t enough.  You actually have to call the academy and request to meet with someone about joining. 

One of my good friends who works with my own coach and mentor Joy Pecchia is finishing up a 5 Saturday cooking class.  He loves to cook on his own and is very good at it, but freely admitted that without having to hold himself accountable to Joy, he never would have taken the class.  Is he glad that she “made” him do it?  Absolutely!  Is he slightly confused as to why he has to pay someone to make him do things that he wants to do anyway?  Ha!  He says that it’s the best money that he’s ever spent.

Have fun with today’s assignment folks, it’s the end product of a lot of hard work on your parts.  Enjoy it but first make sure that you do it!  I’d love to hear what it is that you’ve chosen as well, please post to comments!

See you all on Thurs.

Welcome back gang.  How was the week so far?  Was it strange to simply sit and enjoy the newly created space in your life?  For some people it’s a great challenge to not have the falsely stimulating and yet extremely draining energy that seems to stand shoulder to shoulder with drama.  Drama is great, in the theatre.  In our daily lives it’s like the Jerry Springer show; it will capture your attention, but you walk away feeling empty and confused.

Onward!  On Monday I asked you to sit with your space, today we are going to take it one step further and fill that space.  This is the fun part, this is actually one of the few opportunities that we get as busy human beings to consciously step out of the identical loops that we live in.  Today we get to do some brainstorming and chose what we want to replace our energy drain with. 

Today’s Assignment: Grab a pen and paper (most good assignments start this way) and your imagination.  Spend 10 minutes brainstorming what activity, interest, course of study, etc that you would like to have more of in your life now that you have some free time.  Here’s the caveat – you actually have to write for the whole 10 minutes.  Yep, once you pick your pen up you have to keep writing even if you are continually writing the word “blah”.  Why do we do this?  Left to it’s own devices our mind will return to that which we are most familiar.  If we suddenly have a void in our lives (which we now do since we created it consciously) we will most likely fill it with something in our sphere of comfort.  Break up with a guy and you’ll probably start looking for similar guys unless you set the intention to do something different.  Lose your job but like running, you’ll probably think about doing more running (which is fine) until you fill the void, but why not go outside of that circle.  How about  if you lose your job and enjoy running that you take up a cooking class instead? Or learn how to Tango?  Something that will open up your circle of friends, your circle of comfort and your circle of expertise in a radical fashion!

10 minutes of nonstop brainstorming….GO!

WPC's New Herb Rack

Sorry for the delay in posting folks, I’ve recently had the pleasure of moving and have gotten reacquainted with how much energy that process takes from start to finish (and lost a fish in the process…RIP little buddy!).  The last assignment that you were given involved clearing out an energy drain, correct?  How did it go?  I know for our commenter it was a large step in the direction of her energetic and emotional freedom.  Was it an easy step?  Probably not, but in hindsight I’m sure that she appreciates the space that that action step created in her life.

Let’s talk about that new space that’s been created.  One of my all time favorite quotes is the following, “The universe abhors a vacuum.”  Now, my business partner’s dog River truly abhors the vacuum, but that’s getting off topic!  What does this statement about the universe mean?  Does the cosmos or outer space now have it in for you since you fired a client, broke up with a partner or made some smart decisions?  Not exactly.  What is meant here is that if you create a space, in very short time you will also fill it.  This is done because it takes energy to actively keep something empty.  I learned this firsthand throughout my move.  Since your being wants to expend as little energy as possible, you will naturally allow people, activities, and old habits to creep back into your free space unless you actively fill that space with something positive.  Today we are going to do just that…but not quite yet.

Today’s Assignment:  Today your job is to simply sit with your new space.  Of course this is not a year long obligation, merely something that we will do together in the short term so that you may experience the calm and peace that come after clearing some wasteful energy.  Much like the calm that comes two or three days after losing a crappy job or leaving a dysfunctional relationship, I want you to experience the “lack of an energy drain” and do so consciously.  Notice the lightness in your thoughts, notice the myriad of possibilities that now exist in your world.  Do you feel like you have more options, more chances and are open to new possibilities?  You should.  Enjoy yourself, we’ll talk again on Thursday.

Okie dokie, back to the regular scheduled program.  So we have a list of the top 3 energy drains and we’ve brainstormed ways to eliminate those drains.  This is a BIG step as the majority of the free world has resigned themselves to the fact that they have no power over their life situation.  Thoreau was right when he said that “most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  Until we are honest with ourselves with regards to our current situations, we are powerless to enact change upon them.  Until we realize that after speaking to a certain friend or co-worker that the rest of the day is spent exhausted, we are powerless to tell that friend that we love them but cannot continue to have a relationship under the current paradigm.  Powerless. 

Today’s assignment (and it’s a juicy one):

-       Pick the most high-impact action step to eliminate an energy drain and do it!  Fire that client, set up a new boundary with a friend, quit your job, do whatever it is that needs to be done, do it now and don’t look back.  Do. It. Now.

See you on Monday.

Quick break in the action dear readers.  I know that we’ve been following the path to get you started on your road to natural health, but I had a great weekend and want to share it with you.  This past weekend, after week upon week of working out, setting up meetings, doing outreach for the wellness center, catching up on continuing education hours, and generally running around like a fool – my girlfriend insisted that we take off for the weekend.  Little did I know that “taking off” would involve having no cell coverage, no internet access and very little contact with the outside world.  I resolved myself begrudgingly to this situation and literally had to take deep breathes and say, “There’s nothing in my life that needs my immediate attention for 48 hours with the exception of the person in front of me.”  Low and behold I was right!

Here is your assignment for the day folks:  Take out your calendar and mark a weekend when you can either go camping or stay in a B&B without the technological comforts that you have grown accustomed to.

I know, you’ll be away from this blog for 48 hours and that may have far reaching ramifications, but we’ll be here when you get back.  I found that that not checking my phone every 15 minutes, not checking my email every 10 minutes, not answering the phone, not setting up meetings, not having my legal pad and calendar out in front of me was actually just what the doctor ordered.  Give it a try!  (we’ll get back to the rest on Thurs)