Life is a perfectly balanced mix of pleasure and pain. You can not have one side of the coin without the other. Somehow our minds tend to seek the pleasure and wish to avoid the pain. When we can accept that pleasure and pain exist in association with one another, then the pain part is far easier to tolerate. Remembering that they are two sides of the same coin, and therefore go hand in hand makes it easier not to attach to pleasure.

This time of the year is a time for merry making and festivity, for family time and celebration, as well as for Summer holidays. Enjoy all that this  offers and smile when it hurts. Thank the pain for making the pleasure possible. Pain can come in the form of irritating family members, badly behaved children, disappointing results, goodbyes and much more. Watch and see how perfectly in  balance it all is.

So I wish you and your family peace this holiday season. I wish you presence and acceptance too. Thank you for all your support in 2011 and I look forward to sharing more learning, wellness, healing and stillness with you  in the famed year of 2012.

My daughter and I are busy planning her birthday party. She has it all wrapped up in her 9 year old mind. “We will swim, then dance and then go down the foofy slide and finish the evening off with some more dancing,” was her plan. I really understood from her how much fun being physical is. For her and her friends it is not goal orientated and a chore. It’s just pleasure.

So what happens between childhood and adulthood that robs us of our capacity to just love being energetic? I think physicality loses its charm because we don’t make having fun the goal. In deciding what to do as an exercise form, many of us set on doing something that bores us half to death. We decide that gym will get us good results and it is easy to access, so that’s what we do. My suggestion to you is ask yourself what is fun for you, and do that. So if you love to dance, then dance as exercise and if you love water then swim for exercise. Children have no need to lose weight or get fitter and so they just do what feels best for them. They are able to just get into their bodies and enjoy the sensations of moving, swimming and running. They do this just because it feels great for them. When it stops being pleasurable, they stop. They are oblivious to sweat, or looking good, they just let go and enjoy.  Once they get to their teens then of course all this changes, but until then, exercise is not an intellectual thing at all. Most children let go self consciousness and their bodies take over.

Why not see what happens if you find what feels fun for you and do that for the next week or two?
Maybe you can reclaim your childhood physicality and enhance your health without even trying to. If you are keen on getting fit, follow my training program here and leave your comments.

Don’t forget to like BodyBrilliance on Facebook we are giving you a daily suggestion for better health. These are useful tips that are easy for you to implement in your life. Give them a try and give us your feedback on Facebook as to how they help you

I just came back from an awesome weekend in the Drakensberg. I was so aware of how critical it is to spend time in nature. Living in Joh’burg, we need it more than most. Take your shoes off, and walk bare feet on the grass. Sit in your garden and listen to the birds sing or watch an insect for a while. Find what soothes your senses and gives you the chance to enjoy the magnificence of nature.
As I was walking in the mountains I realized the pleasure available in just enjoying the little flowers that came up through the grass and appreciating the spectacular colors of these tiny flowers. I have come home with the pictures engrained in my mind. I can draw on the memory anytime and continue to enjoy them even here in the city!
Take time to notice the little gifts available all around us. Try not to rush so fast you miss them!

Try running, just put-on your takkies and go. Let your legs loose and your hair stream in the wind. Hold your stomach firm and your back straight and breathe in your belly. It feels good!

Don’t try to go too far at first, just go until it isn’t fun anymore then walk home. Go again the next day, even if you have to face your own resistance to get going.

Make it fun and concentrate on how good it feels in your body. Notice how you feel afterwards and later that day. This is for freedom, for play, for the sheer joy of being alive and the gratitude for having a body that works.

As from next week, I will be posting a weekly program for you to follow!

Enjoy! And give me your feedback.

Sometimes with all the demands in life, I feel like I am painting a picture in my imagination and everyone in my life is blowing the paint all over the picture. By the time a busy week has gone by, the picture looks like a mess and my vision has become blurred. This often makes me feel frustrated and powerless and sometimes it even causes me to feel angry.

I find myself recreating the picture over and over again and get the sense that I never seem to move any closer to manifesting what I am visualising. My tactic is always to see whether I can turn something that feels negative around and look at it in a different way. In other words, I turn the coin over and see what is on the other side. When I turned this thing around it made me smile, because I realised that actually every time I recreate it in my mind’s eye, I develop it more precisely. I am also moving all the time, and this requires that the vision be reviewed and if everyone didn’t keep blowing the paint all over maybe I wouldn’t have the inclination to redefine it.

So now when I have this feeling of frustration that I can seldom make any headway with what I want to do, I  remember it is not all bad and I know that one day I will have manifested a dream and will have had a rich and brilliant time in the meantime. I also know that my perfectionist nature is being shaped as I realise my brand of creativity is not about perfection, but fluidity and flexibility

Energy is abundant, the more you spend the more you will have!

What does it mean when you say that energy is “abundant’? I was facilitating a few months ago and heard myself spew out this familiar statement as I attempted to inspire them to move more and enjoy exercising more. I saw several of the group consider this and then nod sagely.

Well I think it means that using your energy, stimulates your body and it enables you to make more energy through a raised metabolic rate and firmer muscles which burn fuel more effectively, this encourages you to take in more fuel and to therefore spend more. It is what they say about money and I have spent several years trying to get the full meaning of this and put it into practice with gay abandon. I have a way to go on my journey of embodying this money abundance truth, but I have always trusted energy to be free for spending and I have always enjoyed astonishing abundance of energy.

So why not try it even now in winter. Do some exercise and see if it energises or de-energises you. Try being more free with spending your energy and see what you feel.