Betty Louise, life coach and radio host at CoachBettyLive! claims we can all live a more organic life. She says we just need to simmer down. Something as simple as hiding from our computers and cell phones for a bit each day can be a great benefit. (Try it, fellow iphone junkies! I dare you. You'll be in tears.) It's time to turn off the information overload and crawl our way back to our basic inner wisdom. We sat in my garden on a warm autumn evening and I asked her for some tips on slowing down the busy mind.
What do you mean by living an organic life? And why? Isn't eating organic food enough? Having an organic garden and an organic life. Isn't that overly sprouty?
Living an organic life is a life that flows with nature. It is when you don't resist anything...love, fear, frustration, anger... you embrace it all. Do the trees resist the arrival of autumn and losing their leaves? No, they flow with the seasons and each of the changes those seasons bring. Living with the flow of nature allows us to get in tune with the rhythms of Mother Earth and helps us get clear about how we can help bring our planet to a state of greater health. An organic life is one where this happens with ease and effortlessness.
We cannot tap into our true inner nature when we are rushing from place to place. Our inner nature is our intuition. When we make decisions from that place...all of our decisions are right for us and healthy for those around us. And guess what? When that happens, caring for our planet happens naturally and easily. One of my fabulous radio show guests, Trathen Heckman from Petaluma, California has an organization called Daily Acts where he teaches awareness of each profound decision and act we make every moment of every day.
What if you live in New York City and you're surrounded by miserable, callous people giving you dirty looks for walking too slow? And the only "nature" you have is the scrawny tree outside of your high-rise, where all the dogs pee, that's shouting, "Somebody get me the hell outta here! What part of forest don't you understand?" How can those people stop to hold an organic Scarlet Globe radish without getting run over?
Three times a day, take 30 seconds to breathe deeply. One of my clients calculated that's about 10 breaths. When you do that, you begin to slow your mind down and tap into the messages from the body. I suggest that you start by doing this before every meal. Before chowing down, take the 10 breaths and ask your body what information it has for you. I promise if you do this consistently, you will begin to get some answers that will change your life in incredibly positive ways. And no matter how busy you are... I know you can find 1-1/2 minutes. Yes, even you and your fellow New Yorkers can do this.
You recently had John Gray on your radio show. The two of you agreed that it is all about women. He said that the happiness of women is critical to help climate change and the environment. I agree with that. We feel Mother Earth's pain and boy, is she fed up. "What joker came up with placing autumn leaves in plastic bags? " I've heard her ask in a slightly annoyed tone.
When I interviewed John Gray, author of the Mars/Venus philosophy, he very passionately stated that, "If we are not taking care of the needs of women, we are not taking care of the needs of our planet. Mother Earth is feminine energy." He called out to women to take responsibility for their own happiness instead of focusing on trying to make our men happy. It is impossible to make another person happy, and yet we persist in that pursuit thinking somehow that if those around us are happy we will be happy. I believe John has a reasonable argument that men will be happy when women find true inner happiness. Imagine how cool it would be to solve many of our environmental issues by creating happy women.
I like that. It would behoove women to slow down and be cheerleaders for themselves instead of going 24/7 doing everything for everyone else. That's so old school! Another one of your recent radio guests, brain scientist and author, Jill Bolte Taylor discussed women and intuition with you. What was her message?
Jill Bolte Taylor said that what women needed to know and do is to "Always follow your intuition. Never doubt it." This came from her own personal experience having a stroke, and then understanding and writing about the science of where our intuition and instinct lives in the brain in her groundbreaking book, My Stroke of Insight. The year that she wrote the book she was named one of Time's most 100 influential people.
My own personal journey with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) has led me to deeply understand from a very real place (my body) that if I do not work with nature and resist what is going on in my life and the world, then I am in lots of pain. RA has slowed me down to see that every thought I think, word I speak, and choice I make has an impact on the world around me. So I work with the flow of nature by choosing to shop, eat, garden and care for my body, mind and spirit with great awareness and consciousness of how it affects me, the people around me and the planet. Awareness is ALWAYS the first step to making positive changes. Becoming conscious in every single moment. SLOWING DOWN to the speed of health and wellness.
Coach Betty launches CoachBettyLive! on the Transformation Talk Radio Network. Streaming live at 12:00 (noon) PT Tuesday, November 16, 2010. Find out more at www.coachbettylive.com and www.transformationtalkradionetwork.com.
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