Energy
My best energy technique to get to sleep at night
Tomorrow, I’m leaving for a Vegan Cruise! Really, it’s like a floating conference. There are dozens of doctors, nutritionists, authors and fitness professionals leading lectures and classes and every day is jam-packed with speakers, panel sessions, cooking classes and activity choices. And, of course, delicious vegan food! To me, the cruise also marks the end of the long snow-bird experience I set myself up for this winter. I arrived in Florida on October 24th and I’m returning home to Colorado on March 14th, shortly after the end of the cruise. The pros and cons of snow-birding for this long are [...]
Are Your Choices Truly Yours?
Imagine you’re standing at the grocery store in front of all the plant milks. You want to buy some non-dairy milk, and maybe also a non-dairy coffee creamer. You’re looking at the marketing on the packages and maybe reading some labels. You might even have some criteria that you’re applying to your choice, such as a low amount of sugar per serving. You finally select one and put it in your shopping cart. Was that a conscious decision or an unconscious one? Most likely, unconscious. We know from neuroscience that a healthy human brain can process 400 billion bits of [...]
Unlock Inner Calm: Beating Irritability with a Simple Technique
Do you ever just feel edgy? I felt like that when I first arrived in Florida a few weeks ago (I’m here for 4 months this winter. Yes, I’m an official snowbird). I love coming to our home here and I’ve done it for several years now, so I was confused by all the internal irritability I experienced when I was settling in. I felt like I was on low-simmer and couldn’t get comfortable in my own skin. After thinking about it for quite some time, the only thing I could come up with was that I was going through [...]
Mastering Consistent Meditation
Thank you to all of you who did the Fall Energy Reset with me. It seemed like everyone there was so smiley and joyful! Leading it was my favorite part of those five days. It’s crazy how fast 20 minutes flies by! If you missed it, each day had a theme. They were: Tune into your energy: You learn about your energy by paying attention to it. Energy wants to move. Energy needs space to move. Energy runs in patterns and habits. It takes consistency to repattern your energy. All five of the themes are true and important, but today [...]
Awaken Your Inner Vitality: The Magic of Daily Energy Practices
Have you ever learned a new thing that was so mind blowing that you wonder how you possibly lived as many years as you’ve been alive without knowing about it? For me, that’s how it was with energy medicine. Firstly, as someone who was formally educated in Western medicine and also had a 20+ year career in it, I always knew there was something else going on. Learning energy medicine brought me the biggest “aha moment” I’ve ever experienced! ~ Side tango ~ I think There’s Something Else Going On is a potential book title for a future book I [...]
How to energize your immune system
Did you know you have a small organ that makes white blood cells, called T-cells, and plays a huge part in training your body to fight infections and cancer cells? It's also vital to the body's chemical messaging or endocrine system (also known as your hormones). It’s called your thymus gland. Historically believed to only be active from when you're born until you become a teenager, energy healers (and now modern science) know otherwise. In Western medicine, there’s a disturbing trend where if doctors don’t understand something in our body it’s deemed unimportant, useless, and a candidate for removal (often [...]
The One Best Thing for Consistent Energy
Yesterday, I was interviewed for a program on depression and loneliness. We talked about how to energetically get unstuck, achieve emotional balance and feel optimism and joy in your life. Of all the energy practices and techniques we discussed, the one that I emphasized the most was The Homolateral Crossover Re-Patterning Exercise. I emphasized it because if someone is depressed, their energies are almost certainly running in a homolateral pattern. Homolateral simply means that the energies are not crossing over well. Our DNA is a spiraling double helix which digs down into our bloodstream and spins out into our organs [...]
The uncomfortable truth about vacation.
When you go on vacation, do you fully relax? Does your central nervous system actually calm down enough that you can enjoy yourself and get some well-earned rest? I hope it does. I’m not finding that on this vacation yet, but I can’t decide if it’s just because I’m so tuned into my body that I notice every uncomfortable energetic flutter. On other vacations that I’ve had in my life, I think I did get to check out of my daily tension caused by meeting schedules and a bulging to-do list. But at those times, I wasn’t tuned into my [...]
Are you feeling ungrounded this summer?
How has the 4th of July week been for you? Has it been a little frenetic? Or calm and peaceful? For me, four nights straight with fireworks disrupting my sleep and a Tuesday holiday that interrupted my workflow has me a little (really, a LOT) ungrounded. In fact, yesterday I had to email a few of my students a message entitled “I messed up!” because I taught an EMYoga class one hour early on Zoom (I taught it at my Saturday time and not my Wednesday time, on Wednesday.) Those students had all patiently waited for me on Zoom at [...]
Could you have detox overload?
What detox isn’t: a short term, restrictive diet type of activity. What it is: a way that you take care of yourself every day to support your natural detox pathways. With a little support, your body is great at cleansing itself! If you’ve taken in more toxins than your body can reasonably deal with, it tries to expel them by any means it can. If you're struggling to keep up, that’s sign you could be in toxic overload. If you’re not sure if you could have (or ever have had) toxic overload, here are some common symptoms: constipation or diarrhea, [...]
How to Spring clean your energy
Last week was also both the spring equinox and the new moon, nestled right up against one another. I was personally feeling all of that new-beginning energy with the launch of the brand new Radical Health Accelerator, the new aerial studio, and I’m also starting a new running training program. It’s not too often that we have this kind of potent energy for planting new seeds, launching new projects, and setting fresh intentions. So I've decided to use this time to take stock of what feels heavy and ready to be released and what I want to focus on to fill [...]
How to change your own habits
I’ve sped way up since 2023 began. I think we've all had a similar experience: the years 2020 - 2022 were like walking through mud. Sure, I could list a bazillion things I did to keep a brick and mortar yoga studio in business during a pandemic and then deciding to jump though all the legal and financial hoops of selling it last summer… but it still felt like living life in slow motion. At the end of last year I did a big reset and now I feel lighter and motivated, with a fire-in-the-belly I haven’t had in a [...]
Fighting to change that stubborn habit is worth it!
There was a time I considered creating my whole brand around habit change. I’d spent thousands of hours learning about it and was considered an expert. Whenever I’d put together a program to teach about habits, it would sell out. I also love to learn and teach about them. What else do you need to kick off a new career, right? I even considered branding myself “The Habit Queen.” Obviously, I ended up putting my brain power into another idea, so that one never blossomed. However, teaching about habit science / habit energy is baked into every single thing that I offer: [...]
Energy Medicine: What is it and how does it work?
We have some newer people in the community so I want to say welcome to you, , if you’re new here! And if you’ve been around for a long time - I’m so glad you’re with us and that you let me be a part of your crazy busy inbox. If you’ve ever taken a class with me, or one of the monthly free trainings (or really anything I do!) you’ve noticed I always sprinkle in a little energy work to get us all in balance.Energy medicine is a funny thing to talk about so I thought I’d take a moment [...]
Do this simple cooling thing for anxiety and hot flashes
Well, here we are, smack dab in the holiday season: crazy, busy, cold and (mostly) fun. Even here in Florida, the temperature tanked last night and I got to experience a 45 degree morning run. It was the first time I’ve put on long sleeves to exercise since I arrived here a couple of months ago. Post run, I went to my Monday morning 7:45 am yoga class and the before and after class chitchat was all about busy-ness and to-do lists and feeling behind on holiday preparations. I swear, the concept of turning future planning off and doing yoga [...]
Do tension or triggers at family gatherings create more anxiety than fun?
What do you do when you feel like everyone thinks you're weird…? Right now, I’m at our rental property in Florida through December. We didn’t come down here for three years due to the pandemic, then we were here for 6 weeks last Christmas so while I love this place, I just haven’t spent a lot of time here lately. This year, it’s all about hurricane clean up so when I’m not working I’m building fences, replacing the roof on the lanai, painting and doing hundreds of other small repairs (or helping Berk do the big ones). We’re also celebrating [...]
A mean voice in your head. Do you have one of those?
Turns out, a lot of us are hyper-independent. Many of you also shared with me other habit patterns you have borne from trauma and, honestly, I think we all have them in one way or another, even if they’re not obvious. When I owned a yoga studio, I facilitated many workshops and trainings filled with women seeking positive change in their lives. In these groups, when I would share my story, I’d always talk about the mean voice in my head which was the pivotal breaking point that led me to yoga to begin with. Every time I told this [...]
Partly sunny, with a chance of Groundhog Day
Last night, I was tired and glanced at my watch thinking, can I go to bed yet? The watch face said 8:45 so, yes! Then another thought creeped into my mind and trickled down my back like ice water. Damn, I forgot to get my strength training in… again. I’d put “strength” on my calendar but when that time arrived I wasn’t done with a project I wanted to finish so I mentally pushed going to the gym to something I’d squeeze in before cooking dinner.And forgot. I’ve been trying to start a consistent strength training program for years. I [...]
What is Energy Medicine?
Yesterday, I arrived at Energy Fest in Cleveland. There hasn’t been an Energy Fest in 8 years so, as you can imagine, the vibe here is dynamic and lively. In many ways, being here is exactly like what we’ve all experienced when we see people we haven’t seen in years. It’s breathtaking and a little awkward… I need to dust off my social skills.I’ve only been here a few hours and I’ve already “met” so many people who I only know from Zoom. It’s a little trippy to go from seeing someone from 2D to 3D. People often move their [...]
A little bit every day over a long period of time
“I don’t understand what people are talking about when they say meditation makes them calmer. I don’t feel like that while I’m meditating. It’s like that runner's high thing… that’s never happened to me either.”A friend of mine recently shared that with me while we were talking on the phone about her frustration with meditation. I tried to explain to her that you don’t necessarily feel the effects of meditation while meditating, you feel them later when your boss gives you 3 new projects and tells you to work all weekend.You also don’t usually feel great during the run, it’s [...]
Do you pass up the temptation today for a bigger reward tomorrow?
Would I like the fries or the side salad? Should I buy the new clothes or put the money in savings? Do I go to the gym or keep sitting here doing what I’m doing? Pleasure now over long term goals… it’s something we wrestle with every day. I’m a member of a few social groups that are focused on helping women stop drinking. I do it for a couple of reasons, one of them being that I am happy to support anyone who needs a boost, but I also learn so much from watching the psychology of what happens [...]
Tapping on the chest
Last week, I was in Helena, MT at an Energy Medicine Yoga (EMYoga) retreat helping Lauren Walker. Lauren is the founder and creator of EMYoga and I met her through a mutual friend in 2017. At that time, we agreed that she’d travel to my yoga studio and lead an EMYoga teacher training, which I took. You never know who you’re going to meet that will change everything, right? You can’t pre-plan when you’ll be marching along your path and bump into someone who shows you a fork in your road you didn’t see before and you decide “now I’m [...]
Here’s the answer to the question I get the most
Do any of you have dry skin? I do. We all have our “things” and dry skin is one of mine. More than that, I have a dry constitution. I’m always thirsty, even though I drink a lot of water and use electrolytes. Staying hydrated with not-itchy skin is daily project for me. And aging hasn’t helped matters. I bring this up today because I recently got a text that said “Morning Blaine. Just following up on your classes where you talk about toxins. I’m wondering would you share what kind of lotion or oil do you use on your [...]
How to calm down fast
Wednesdays are always busy days for me. I used to call them “my toughest day” but I’ve recently changed my internal language about Wednesdays to “my day with the greatest opportunities.” Wednesdays have a lot of standing meetings and work that needs to be done for Thursday deadlines and there isn't much breathing room. I plan for these days. I make breakfast and lunch on Tuesday so that’s out of the way and get up extra early on Wednesday morning in an effort to “control” the day as much as I can. The control part is funny, right? Because it never works. Almost every [...]
Chinese Medicine Five Elements
When I was in my early twenties, I worked in administration in a large healthcare facility. One day, Sonya from Marketing cruised by my office for a chat and casually dropped this at the end of our conversation, “Gwen in Accounting thinks you don’t like her.” What??? I thought to myself (without any real emotion or drama), well…. I guess I need to spend some time being nice to Gwen. And I did. Gwen and I ended up being great friends, having many adventures together and even orchestrating life so we worked together again, years later, at a different healthcare [...]
Shake it off.
I was 23 years old working in a local clinic in downtown Oklahoma City. It was 9:00 am and I heard an earth shaking blast and the building started trembling, windows bowing out and in. There was construction across the street and, at first, I thought the giant crane that had been towering above us for weeks finally fell on our building. Then I saw the smoke. The Federal Building just blocks away had been bombed. We all jumped into action as it was only minutes before parents ran into our facility, holding children with shards of glass sticking out [...]