Happy New Year...

I want to wish you all a Happy New Year. I hope this year is healthy for you and brings you a wonderful, balanced life.

I don't know what New Year resolutions, goals, decisions etc you made for yourself, but last week's Life Club workshop (our first of the New Year) was all about you and what's important to you. What relaxes you? What sustains you? What gives you pleasure?

This picture used to be me (only with grey hair)! I love my work and you could often (well, slight exaggeration, occasionally) find me slumped over my desk in exhaustion. Last week I decided to change all that and go to bed as early as I could every night without my laptop but with a good book or even (serious treat) a film. Sleep before midnight is, I've been told, the best.

The week has been wonderful. I've been in bed most nights before 10.30 and, most of them, I've even been asleep by then. I watched 'Toast' one night (thoroughly enjoyable)'Bleak House' another (riveting), read an old diary another night and the others I just dropped off nice and early. I feel great.

I'm not a great believer in resolutions, but this week's workshop brought home to me how important it is to treat yourself well. I make sure my children get enough sleep, so what about me? Why don't I look after myself as well as I do them?

What would you do differently if you were looking after yourself as well as you look after others?

Next week's Life Club is all about finding out what you want in your life over the next two years. It's about discovering what's important to you from the past and present and weaving those things into the future - just by drawing circles. I've already done my circles and am feeling inspired.

See you there.

Hope you're having a great weekend,
Nina
Founder Life Clubs
Author: The Big Book of Me, The Life Book, How To Get What You Want

Add Post To: | | | | | | | | |

body lessons

Next week's workshop is all about re-connecting to the primal source of you - the place you live. Your body.

Speaking as a 8 month- pregnant person, I have had a bit of a journey with my relationship with my body on this ride.

• from having the 1000% cliché thought that all expectant parents have that they have created MIRACLE. (you and everyone else who was ever, um, born)
  
• to the exhaustion and weirdly flu-like,-trippy 1st trimester,
• to the blooming, strong hair and nails I Feel GREAT 2nd trimester,
• to the Wow, I Am Really Growing A Person and my belly is HUGE 3rd trimester
  
• to the final frontier of OMG, How Am I Going to Get Him Out???

Lessons galore. And I know many many more to come.

Here are a few I've been given. Trust. Rest. Balance. Slow. Extreme Care. Kindness. Belly love.

In fact we should all probably treat our body as if we are all pregnant. Eat when you are hungry. Eat frequently and really well. Sleep as much as you need. Rest. Relax. Move in ways that make you feel good. Take vitamins. Love what is happening in your body.

Brilliant for all humans!

Mostly I have discovered lot of trust in my body in a way that I never have before. IT knows what to do, even if I haven't a scoobie. For once, my clever and prone to control brain can't *do* this. It is kind of a relief.

I have a new found respect for what my wise body can do. And what a relief to finally get licence to really listen to what it needs.

And a perfect spring board for me ... I'll be going on my maternity leave after this workshop -- hopefully even more connected to the resilient place where both me and my unborn boy are living.

Won't you come and connect to your home? Find out what your body has to say. I bet it misses you.

Be well everyone!

Your Blooming Glasgow Host
Carol

Add Post To: | | | | | | | | |

Remember Me?

It's impossible to remember ourselves like this, but we are still that same person as we were when we were a baby. Yet do we look after ourselves as well as that gorgeous baby deserves to be looked after?

You may want to use the memory of that baby inside you to help you look after your adult self. I'll explain how that works, by quoting from a letter one of our clubbers sent to me. It'll help you see how he uses his 'inner child' to make sure he treats himself well:

"Throughout my life I haven’t made time for myself and I’ve consistently shelved my own needs for the needs of work, friends, family, lovers and even strangers. This regular routine has eclipsed my own basic needs for so long that I became depressed, deficient, and emotionally underfed.

To address this, I think of myself as a vulnerable separate entity (i.e. inner child) who has basic needs that I (as the adult and solitary care-taker) am required to fill (i.e Jake needs to go to swim practice, Jake needs to go to the gym, Jake needs his lunches made for the week.) In a way I’ve become a soccer mom for myself. Over time I have been able to integrate these facets more and am now able to see myself as a thing of value that needs to be cared for and schedule life around my needs schedule. I’ve learned to say no to others and yes to me and am coming to enjoy the benefits of reciprocity. And it’s made life *so* much easier. I still love to give to others, but it isn’t an obligation anymore and I feel much more ownership of my time."

Come along to our Remember Me workshop and find out what your 'soccer mum' would say to you.

My soccer mum is saying 'Eat less', 'Get some sleep' and 'chill'!!!!

See you there (week of 15th June).
Nina
Founder Life Clubs

Add Post To: | | | | | | | | |