What are you willing to change today

Alright! Here we go!

Today is a wonderful day to start something. It doesn't have to be a big thing, just something. Perhaps you could start trying to add one cup of tea per day in the place of a coffee. Perhaps you could spend one minute (yes, I said ONE minute) meditating this morning. Perhaps you could take the stairs at work. Physical, mental, emotional or spiritual, today is a good day to start something. Remember - brick by brick, step by step, moment by moment you are building something. Build something beautiful! Our choices don't always have to be hard or sacrificing....we can do this!

Let's do this thing!

Yours in healing,

Kit

What is today for you?

Today I am going to spend time with my family. I am going to spend time with my niece, my daughter, my sisters, my husband and a really good friend. It's a good day when you can fill it with family. It doesn't even need to be a lot of family. It can be that one special sibling, your mother, a cousin, a best friend who is more like a sister to you....just family. When you are with family you can be and should be exactly who you are without any facade. If you feel like you don't have "family" - keep your heart open and ask for "family" to find you. Be open to them however they come to you and let them be exactly as they are.

Today I am going to spend time with my family. Tonight I am going to watch an awards show with the 4 Triplets (that's my other two triplet sisters and a friend we call our "swing") and we are going to wear lots of jewellery, our most comfy pajamas and eat like hogs....why? Because that's just what we do.

What are you doing today?

Yours in healing!

Kit

Say it with me now...

Today is a new day. Today is a beautiful day. All good things are coming to me today. I am happy.

Come on...say it. I dare you! Even say it a few times (heck, say it a lot!) and see what happens to your day. Try it again tomorrow and see if it works any better.

Here I am in this beautiful morning. The sun is bright, there is a brisk wind that wakes me up and a crow that is sitting outside my window. I'm having a nice cup of hot green tea and it makes my insides feel so good. I'm anticipating doing some wonderful healing sessions today and I know that what happens in them is meant to happen. I'm completely open to it. Today I will see good friends and new friends and I'm really happy for the opportunity to live today.

Today is a new day. Today is a beautiful day. All good things are coming to me today. I am happy.

Yes, it is. Yes, I am.

Yours in healing,

Kit

Observing and modifying

So this week I am mostly observing my natural habits - what I eat, watch, read and wear, what I think, feel, do and say - and I'm very very slowly modifying little things at first to see how I respond. It's an experiment - It's fun!

Things I've noticed so far:

*I eat chocolate at the first sign of stress or displeasure

*Watching violent TV shows (like Heroes etc...) makes me feel sick to my stomach for about an hour afterword - it's anxiety. I love TV and I love sci-fi etc... but I find I (literally) no longer have the stomach for it! The same goes for TV shows that are nasty - shows about lying/cheating/conning etc... vicious things. I can't watch them anymore. My mother was right when she said "once you put something in your brain you can never get it out again". You'd think I had learned my lesson after 25 years of zombie nightmares!

*Reading gossip blogs like "Perez Hilton" and "TMZ" make me feel yucky and I feel like when I read them I'm adding to the negativity that goes out to these celebrities. Honestly, you couldn't pay me to live their lives so why do I think it's ok to find pleasure in their struggles?

Things to think about...

Why am I telling myself to be LARGE?

I've learned something.

If I want to be healthy and slim - why am I ordering things that are "large"? Even ordering things that are good for you in a "large" size seems to me that it's telling your body what you want it to be - large. If you keep it in your mind that you require large things your body will follow.

Next time, I'm ordering a small!

Just a thought...

Kitty

The Whole Life Detox

Ok, so it's been a week. Every morning I get up with some new inspiration to write and I get to the computer to put it into words for all to see....and then I don't. I've been waiting...I felt like there was something that I was supposed to do. I had taken on a lot of stress this week - things have happened in family and business that knocked me on my heels or made more of a priority than writing on my blog. I realize that my reactions to these things was off. I let the stress stall me, control me and move me in ways that weren't very comfortable. I ate things I shouldn't eat - I've gained 12 pounds since October, I didn't feel motivated to do things I should do...many things adding up to the same thing - SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE!

I had a revelation last night - a whole plan just opened up for me and I'm excited about it. I'm going to take 30 days and see how much I can help/love myself be healthy and rich in every way. I love my life - I am the richest woman in the world and I want to experience the best of it all the time in:

* Health
* Family
* Work and Finances
* Recreation
* Times of Connection

In essence, in all ways physcial, emotional, mental and spiritual.

I will change how I eat, drink and exercise, but that is only a small portion of the transformation of this WHOLE LIFE DETOX! I will change what I put in and on my body. I will change what I watch and read. I wll change how I speak and react. I will love myself unconditionally and just keep making choices that reflect that.

I LOVE ME!

Let's be healthy together - Let's be our best selves! You with me?

XO Kitty

Diversity

Today my attention has been brought to the issue of diversity. Global and personal. Today I will be more aware of my judgements. Today I will love myself and all of my weirdness. Today I will respect the thoughts, feelings and customs of others. Today I will be a little more aware of allowing others and myself to just "be".

I love my life. I love your life too.

Yours in healing,

Kit Woods

Fear and Shame - time to get over it?

I've recently been reading Deepak Chopra's book "Why Is God Laughing?" and there have been a few points that have struck me. The book is largely about the illusion of fear.

Last night these words had me thinking:

"Imagine that your worst enemy comes over to your house. He sits down in the living room, and no matter what you do, he won't go away. Day after day he refuses to leave. What do you do? You begin to ignore him. You pretend he's not there."

"You're home isn't your home if there's an enemy living there. It doesn't matter if you toss a drop cloth over him, or if you decide to completely redecorate the place. Until you figure out a way to make you enemy leave, you'll never feel safe."

"The world is your home, and it is safe. God created it that way. But fear crept in. Big problem. Nobody feels safe anymore."

"As long as you live in fear, the world is a threat. If that doesn't matter to you, okay. But living that way you'll never know the joy of your own soul."

Here is my thought on this - Most people will agree that fear in their lives is a bad thing and they would like to not react in fear, but many people don't recognize fear anymore and aren't aware that their reactions are often fearful. Fear is not just terror, fright, worry and anxiety. Fear is also known as depression, anger, guilt and shame.

I had a few phone calls and messages regarding the information I revealed in my last post. One person who called expressed concern about letting people know intimate details about my past, especially when they are not pleasant. When I thought about this and read my post again I realized that some of the information might be surprising to people but I'm not ashamed of it. I love my life in all it's glory (and not such glory). I have come to place where I have realized that feeling shame about what IS has no positive purpose and can only make things harder to move through and past. I have no shame about who I am and what has happend in my life. I embrace it and I love it. I'm happy to be completely open about myself, my thoughts and my journey. I think thoughts and information need to be shared because we are such wonderfully unique individuals and not one of us will have the same thoughts as another and encountering a new perspective can be liberating if we can share them!

No FEAR! No SHAME!

Kit

Where do we go from here?

So last night as it turned from one year to the next I lay on my bed (it was a very peaceful night) and meditated on welcoming this new year with all the love I had in my heart so that I could set the tone for how I wanted this new year to be for me. I'm making this my year of sincere love and abundance (not that I didn't have that last year). Somehow a lot of the people that I speak to on a daily basis don't believe that we can have MORE, be MORE, love MORE and experience MORE. It makes me sad because I know for myself that I have had more than I ever thought to imagine in my life.

Last night in my reflections and meditations I thought about my journey in healing (because, of course, I was starting this blog) and my reflections brought me back to New Years Eve 1999 and New Years Day 2000 - 10 years ago. I tried to put myself back into that place and time and tried to remember the little details and feelings. I was 25 years old. I was super skinny and had long blonde hair, I had a lot of guys that were interested in me at the time, I was working in a stable job and I had lots of friends. The truth was though, that I was a miserable human being. I remembered how seriously depressed I was at the time. I remember how desperate and despairing I was and how I couldn't feel emotions properly - could find no joy in anything and even though I had men asking me out and falling at my feet, telling me how beautiful I was, it was empty and I needed to hear it more and more because I couldn't connect to what they were saying. That night 1o years ago was one of the most desolate nights of my life. I was surrounded by friends (all exceptionally drunk!), one friend passed out on the floor of my bedroom where he'd been sick all over my floor. In the morning I was so sick, my apartment smelled, I had people passed out in my bed and I had no place to be alone. I remember going into my bathroom and crying, saying "I can't do this again, how am I going to do another year of this shit".

If someone had come to me that morning and told me that it would get better, I would have laughed in their face. If they told me that I would have everything I could ever ask for I would have thought they were crazy. In my mind it couldn't change because life was miserable and would always be miserable. But what I didn't know was that that year was to be the foundation for my journey into my own personal healing. In 2000 I went on a trip to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It was in Scotland that I first came to the realization that I was an alcoholic and I stopped drinking right then and there. It will be 10 years since my last drink come May. It was because I stopped drinking that I could really come to terms with the depression and despair that I had been feeling. I could look at myself and see the falseness of my persona. I was fake from head to toe - starved to be skinny, bleached hair, fake tan, fake coloured contact lenses, fake smile on my face....I didn't want to be fake anymore and slowly started to come out of the dark hole I'd been in. So I put on my glasses for the first time in years and started to find out who I really was inside and I started to look hard at my choices. It was at that time that I was able to be myself with the person who would, in 2001, marry me and be my partner on this journey, Mark. In 2001 I became a brunette again for the first time since I was 16 years old. It was for my wedding. That year I became part of an amazing extended family and really started to appreciate my own brilliant family more and more. It was that year that my sister, Kate, looked at me and said "Oh my gosh, Kit, you're back!" I knew exactly what she had meant - I had been missing for over 10 years....the shell of the person that had been trying to exist was not me, I had been in hiding, but here I was again, ALIVE for the first time in such a long time. She saw me return and it felt good to be recognized again. In 2002 I went back to school to finish my degree and got all A's and a scholarship where I had flunked out years before. In 2003 I had my beautiful daughter, Maggie, and in December of 2004 moved into my beautiful home in Bradford. 2005 saw me on a journey of true self discovery and spiritual development and in 2006 I started to learn how I could help others heal through the Usui Method of Natural Healing (Reiki) and the idea of "Ballawoods", my beautiful business, was created. 2007, 2008 and 2009 have been wonders for me - I've travelled to beautiful places, I've learned other methods of healing, I've taught other people how to connect with themselves and the beautiful life that surrounds them, I've been surrounded by love and joy and abundance the likes of which I couldn't have dreamed. Now here we are at 2010 - can you imagine what it will bring to me? To you? My GOD (literally!) I'm so excited!

We have the choice to stay where we are, always. We have the choice to change nothing. But seriously ask yourself why you'd want to do that. There is no end to the joys that can be found when you are open to change. It is never to late to put that first step into motion, to lay the first brick in the foundation that will build the rest of your life. Do it today, do it tomorrow or do it next year - but know that when you start you will never know how beautiful a life you are building until one day you too look back and see how well you've done. Build it one brick at a time, slowly, enjoying each and every part of the process. 10 years may seem like a very long time to people, but in my own life I would do it all over again to have this result. Here I am in 2010. Last night I was laying contently in my bed, loving my body no matter the size, with my beautiful husband beside me, my daughter sound asleep in her room below us, the cat snoring by the stairs and I was smiling because I couldn't believe it was possible to be this happy. Can you IMAGINE what it will be like for me in another 10 years!! HOLY COW I CAN'T WAIT!!!