To make room in your mind to create from your heart. When your mind and heart are friends, beautiful events unfold in your life.
“All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.” — Eckhart Tolle
Meditate. When?
Anytime you have a spare 5 minutes.
Sit. Walk. Rest. Eat. In meditation.
Meditate. How?
Pick a point of interest. Sunrise. Cactus. Your cat. A tree.
Look at it gently and breathe.
“If you want to understand Zen easily, just be mindless, wherever you are, twenty-four hours a day, until you spontaneously merge with the Way. This is what an ancient worthy called ‘the mind not touching things, the steps not placed anywhere.’ ” (Ying-an)
Through meditation you see how…
your mind is to be taught and instructed
While your heart is to be opened and shared
your body is to be moved
and your spirit is to be honoured
Or, count breaths in and out slowly.
Put a timer on to give your mind comfort knowing you will not get ‘stuck’ in meditation or ‘forget to live the rest of your life’ or run late for work.
#thatsit #inspiredliving with the #healingmuse
Need help deciphering your way in life and living mindfully? Book a session
Online, aromatherapy, self guided course. Contact me for more details here
Excerpt from Course modules:
Learn meditation practices to increase mindfulness, reduce stress, improve life balance,
Utilizing the strength and instant power and connection with essential oil aromatics. Teach connection between breath, aromatic use, and mindful focus for increasing healing long term effects and provide practitioners with a multidisciplinary tool to teach clients home coping and home healing methods.
Provide guidance and system for introducing meditation practice and aromatic blending into the practitioner’s healing modalities.
(written for South Etobicoke News, February 2024 Natural Health and Wellness Column)
Heat up this Winter
The coldest day of the year is usually in February and this year is no exception, according to Farmer’s Almanac. When celebrating Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year, Family Day or just good old Groundhog Day (hoping for early spring anyone?), turn up the heat naturally! To cope with this extra long (that’s right Leap Year!) month, take on the February ‘Turn up the Heat’ challenge.
Did you know that February 29th is celebrated as National Time Refund Day? All your Pisces friends finally get an extra day in their birthday sign to celebrate. On the flip side, who can we blame for adding another day to our winter? With winter dragging on, it is all the more reason to learn how to turn up the heat in our body, the way nature intended.
Heat up, how?
How can you increase your internal heat this winter? And, in turn successfully take on the ‘Turn up the Heat’ challenge?
hot chilies can do the trick – heat up your body in a tasty way!
Heat up this Winter – Way UP
The fastest way to turn up your thermostat is to exercise. But before you groan and dismiss this sage advice, read on. Exercise can be a brisk walk outdoors – yes outdoors. The cold air does the body good. Add on extra steps by skipping the escalator or elevator and do stairs instead. Regular exercise stimulates heat in the body.
You don’t have to become a gym rat.
Just get off the warm, cozy sofa and get all your steps in. Your body generates heat from exercise, any exercise. If you add in some weights, you can increase your metabolism 5 to 15 times your resting metabolic rate. This ‘burn’ continues for several hours in your body, which means you feel warmer overall AND you are also burning more calories. It’s really win-win if you plan on celebrating this month’s festivities with a night out!
Ready to embrace a more radical approach? You could go all in and embrace the coldest month in the coldest way possible: ice baths. Take the polar dip to the next level and dip into a bathtub full of cold water and ice once a week. It may be time for you to join all the Wim Hof lovers out there. Plunging your body into an ice bath or just tolerating a cold shower for 2 minutes activates your brown fat thermostat and turns up the heat. This heat lasts for several hours and help your brown fat respond better and faster. Set the timer and just do it.
Time is on your side. Put the timer on and do it.
Or avoid the agony of freezing baths and…get hotter naturally by creating healthy fat in your body. That’s right I just said make more fat! Choose brown fat. Your body actually contains a very small percentage of brown fat compared to white fat, yet the brown fat (also called brown adipose tissue) is needed to help you stay warm. It is activated in cold temperatures. Studies also suggest that fruits like apples and dried fruits can stimulate the production of brown adipose fat – though the jury is still out on this one. What if…there is another way to reduce white fat and make it more ‘productive’. Read on.
Enhance your thermoregulation in the most enjoyable way: eat your heat. If you have not yet enjoyed Winterlicious, the annual Toronto Festival of Winter Dining is the perfect venue for you. With over 200 restaurants across the GTA offering Prix Fixe (a complete meal at a set price) between January 26 to February 8, there’s no time to lose.
Your Mission is..
Your mission is to turn up your heat by selecting at least 3 restaurants that offer hot, spicy, well seasoned foods! You know, this is a sure fire-way (pun intended) to beat the winter blahs, speed through February and enjoy every moment. For all the foodies out there, you are encouraged to hashtag your favourite Winterlicious meals with #LiciousTO. By the way, February 4th is officially National Homemade soup day. Your bonus health challenge this month is to find a favourite new eatery that serves up the best ‘homemade’ style soup with chilies , cayenne or ginger. Ginger Pho anyone?
Thermogenics anyone?
Spices that heat up your body are called thermogenic. Whether you eat them in a Piquant Pad Thai or enjoy them in a Spicy Matcha Latte, they help your body produce heat through metabolic stimulation. Though there is no magic potion to help you lose weight, increasing thermogenic foods in your diet, combined with regular exercise is the powerhouse combo this February. Hot on the heels of well-intentioned January resolutions, this can be your hottest and healthiest month if you choose wisely. Start with these top heat inducing spices in your every day diet: black pepper, cayenne, ginger, cumin and turmeric.
Need more convincing to spice up your life? Some studies have shown that green tea and spicy chilies (and other foods with capsaicin) may activate thermogenesis or trigger fat oxidation. Oxidation is the browning of white fat. Combine regular exercise with spicy meals and your January resolution to be healthier is guaranteed to be a success.
Turn up the heat and you will have winter beat in no time at all. Let me know how your February ‘Turn up the Heat’ challenge turns out. Email me at monika@healingmuse.com with your experience.
“He who controls the spice controls the universe.” — Frank Herbert
“Black pepper is necessary to absorb the key antioxidants in most spices and foods..” — Steven Gundry
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Monika Meulman Intuitive Living Guide – Online Intuitive Healing Sessions Living Zen Workshops @healingmuse
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. – Bertrand Russell
Ready to dive into the divine growth of spring?
What is Intuitive Healing?
A meditation based support session designed to invite Inspired Healing on every level. Together, we welcome intentional living and loving, personal acceptance in love, kindness, compassion, and peace within. I have been practicing and developing my body reading skills for over 25 years. I utilize the energetics and plant medicine of reflexology, aromatherapy, meditative breath, body balance and structure, body language in movement, flow and sound.
We can connect online or in-person (locations vary with my travel itinerary every season)
6 SERIES – 6X 1 Hour ONLINE Intuitive Healing Sessions * SAVE $105
$795 + HST
6 SERIES – 6X 1 Hour IN-PERSON Intuitive Healing Sessions * SAVE $205
$1295 + HST
In an Intuitive Healing Session:
You are guided to see better with all your senses
Your body, heart and mind learn to speak well together
We go over the language of your body, heart and mind
Every step of your journey is connected for you
A recording of your session is provided for future learning
A series of homework exercises is provided based on our Exploratory Session time together
You receive a 4-6 week homework study plan to keep learning and expanding your heart, body and mind connection.
Intuitive Healing Discoveries Include One or More of the following:
Body Awareness
breath & space, expansion, how breath opens closed spaces
water = movement & flow, how water promotes changes and helps us move through difficulty and promotes growth
pain = talk & speech of our body, it is our native language which allows us to communicate clearly within our body
The Safety – Fat Storage Our body creates fat for so many reasons and is vital to our survival in many ways
body = map of life, 3 dimensions view, assessment of how our experiences work in our 3 dimensional physical space
Heart Awareness
love vs fear = expansion vs contraction, how do we use these, how do we see them, how we ignore them or forget about them
awareness = responsibility, once we know something not acting on it, when action is required creates destructive patterns in our body, in our lives,
intimacy = awareness + action, taking action on knowledge, wisdom and awareness creates a deep connection within us and also a deep connection to our outside world, our bodies, other living beings.
Road blocks = come as screaming pain, numbness, recurring traumas, must follow Maslow’s guide for basic survival, then move upward to higher satisfaction levels of learning
Safety Zones = FAT, fat loss, toxin storage, exposure, surrender, allowing, comfort, the truth in needing.
Mind Awareness
Balance = work & play, mind, body & spirit, external vs internal worlds
Moving Forward = building passion, building desire, creating goals, practicing discipline, establishing new patterns & habits, compassion growth to self
101 ways to practice self-care, body reading, life balance tips. ex. red lights pauses, long lines, sitting & waiting, wrong orders
Changes – physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, how to deal with them
Rest vs Action – when to act & give, when to rest & receive
Resistance vs Flow – when to work with pressure, when to step aside
