Category Archives: Spiritually Fab

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Getting to Know Your Chakras

A Beginner's Guide to Your Energy System

Get to Know Your ChakrasI’m finally coming around. After far too many years of rolling my eyes whenever a “new-agey” topic came up, I am finally starting to see the light. Do I still find some new age practitioners to be a bit too woo-woo for my liking? Yes. However; despite my initial cynicism around anything having to do with eastern medicine or new age practices, I can now say that I have become a believer–at least when it comes to the various energy centers within our body and our ability to manipulate them for higher levels of emotional and physical well being.

These energy centers that I’m referring to are commonly referred to as our chakras and each one of us has seven dominant chakras within our being. These seven chakras make up the backbone of our energetic bodies.

My transformation from cynic to believer came after I was treated to a couple of energy work sessions (Reiki, for those of you who are familiar with different energy work modalities) by a friend of mine whose sole purpose was to make me eat my words and unroll my eyes. It worked. I don’t claim to understand everything about what went down in those energy sessions (the practitioner never even touched me, she just ran her hands above various parts of my body), but I can tell you this–I (the eye rolling, cynic) absolutely felt a shift in my energy centers and this shift was radical enough to make me want to drill down deeper into the subject and gain a greater understanding of what role our chakras play in our overall well being.

Over the next three months I will be sharing several posts about chakras in order to help provide a basic understanding of what they are, how they operate within our bodies and what we can do to optimize their power. I encourage you (especially those of you who are skeptics, like I was) to approach this material with an open mind and be willing to consider the validity of this information. I wouldn’t be sharing any of this if I hadn’t personally experienced a drastic shift in my energy levels after those initial Reiki sessions–but I did, and because I did; I am now a believer and want you to have access to this valuable information so that you can put it to use within your own life.

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to your seven fascinating and oh-so-powerful chakras…

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Making Self-Care a Top Priority

Self Care

This post is one that I wrote several months ago. I decided to post it today because 1.) I am on my way to Hawaii to spend a wonderful week of fun and relaxation with my family so a post on self-care seemed appropriate since that is what the upcoming week will be all about for my clan and 2.) it is about a topic that we women tend to struggle with–we are so good at taking care of everyone else, but we rarely make our own self care a priority. I hope that you enjoy the post and I look forward to sharing my Hawaiian adventures with you once I return to good ol’ Colorado.  Mahalo!

It happened.  I’m not proud to admit it…but all the denying, justifying and excuse making in the world won’t change that fact that it happened.  I (a 45 year old wife, mother and successful career woman) had a melt down.  Not just any melt down mind you; I had a full blown, two-year-old-throwing-a-temper-tantrum kind of melt down, complete with tears, slamming doors and a few words that aren’t fit for print.

To be completely honest, I don’t even remember what exactly triggered my melt down. Someone must’ve said or done something terrible…right? I mean…grown women don’t just fall apart like that for no reason do they? Surely someone had to have committed some grievous crime against humanity in order to spark such an epic fit on my part…right?

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Meditation for Non-Meditators

A Beginner's Guide to Mindfulness

Meditation for non meditators (1)Oh how I wish that I were better at meditating. Everywhere I look I see articles citing the numerous benefits of meditation and I’ll confess–I could really use a shot of serenity in my busy whirlwind of a life. My personal meditation hang-up has always stemmed from feeling like I simply don’t have the time to commit to a consistent meditation practice. However; the more research I do on the subject, the more I have come to realize that I really don’t have time to not meditate.  For starters–the mental and physical health benefits are quite impressive (click here for a list of meditation health benefits) plus–the practice of mindfulness is one that can come in handy at any given moment of my day.

So…despite my numerous reasons for believing that I will be TERRIBLE at meditation (my inability to sit still without fidgeting, my constantly active “monkey mind”, the knowledge that as soon as I get myself settled into a meditative state, I WILL have to go pee…) I have decided to commit to a 30 day meditation challenge.  I figure that calling it a “challenge” might help to keep my naturally competitive nature motivated enough to stick with it.  

My research on the topic of meditation has shown me that there are really only ten things that are needed in order to get started with a meditation practice.  Those things are…

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My Word for 2016: SAVOR

Hands in knitted mittens holding hot chocolate, rustic wood background

If you’ve read any of my other posts regarding goal setting, you know that I don’t believe in setting New Year’s resolutions. I believe that resolutions focus too much of our attention upon problems that need to be resolved. Instead, I am a firm believer in setting positive intentions for our year and setting strategic goals to help us realize those intentions.

Lately though, I’ve heard a lot of buzz about about selecting a single word to represent your year. At first I thought that there was no way I could possibly pick just one single word to encapsulate all of my hopes and aspirations for the entire year–they are just too many and too varied. After giving it some more thought, however; I did settle on a word that felt right for me. One caveat though–even though I have chosen a single word to by my word for the year; I’m cheating a bit because I’m using the letters in the word to more fully represent my intentions for 2016. My word is SAVOR and here is what the word represents to me…

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Fab Factor #8: Altruism

healthcare, people, gesture and medicine concept - close up of women hands on top of each other over green background

I am typing this post while sitting in a hotel room in Washington D.C. and it just happens to be Martin Luther King Jr. Day. How serendipitous that I am typing about the value of altruism in our nation’s capital on a day that has now become recognized as a national day of service. Today, as I flew to D.C. for a business trip, my two teenage sons were back in Colorado helping to install free smoke detectors in homes in at-risk neighborhoods as a part of a volunteer project through the American Red Cross. As they were busy making a difference in our town, others all across the nation were joining together on various philanthropic projects to help make their communities and our nation as a whole, a better place for all citizens–something that I believe would make Dr. King extremely proud.

According to Dan Baker, Ph.D. and co-author of the book, What Happy People Know (Rodale Inc., 2003), this notion of altruism (the principle or practice of concern for the welfare of others) has been determined to be one of the top twelve contributing factors to a FabYOUlous life.