If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve probably noticed how proud I am of my family, and most all of my nephews.

For me, living in LA (far from my hometown in Sweden) has been GREAT – being here, I have been able to explore, grow, and evolve. But one of the things that I have missed out on is the growing up of my siblings’ kids. We get by with constant communication (thank you, Universe, for SKYPE!) and I’m always cheering on all of their endeavors.

One of the things that gives me the most Life Force is the love I receive from them and the communication we keep. The crazy thing is that we’re actually able to stay close, even with the Atlantic Ocean between us.

Everything is possible if fueled by Love!

My nephew Miki, whom I held at the hospital when he was born, has grown into a man and is an entrepreneur. His baby brother Alex has recently discovered training and fitness, healthy eating, and girls. My nephew Ivan has turned to boxing and is a super champ already, planning to come to the States and box. And my nephew Marco was just crowned the 5th most beautiful man in the world! (As a little boy, he was pretty quiet, always glued to my side. I remember the days when he would sit in my lap, just quietly observing the world around him.) My fifth nephew is the newest and youngest gnome. I feel confident he will do amazing things with such brothers and cousins!

I have changed their diapers, wiped their noses, and held them when they were sick. Now they glow, grow, and shine, to make this world better, and to teach us aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents, something only they know. They have the spiritual goods to Evolve and Progress, and the exquisite genes to make it happen. Born Warriors!!

I am grateful for my family. They give me Life.

P.S. My Marco just announced he is taken off the market. Sorry, ladies. But do check out his Swedish blog over at improveme.se!

1. Find an exercise program you like. If you actually enjoy the workout, part of the stress relief has already taken place. Create, or get help creating, a program which is based on 2-3 resistance weight workouts and 3-5 cardio workouts per week.

2. Do breathing exercises 2-3 times per day. Breathing helps calm down the nervous system physiologically and helps the body find balance in stressful situations.

3. Meditate a few times per week. It can be a guided meditation, it can be sitting to your favorite music or in a quiet place, and it doesn’t have to be any more mysterious that that.

4. Eliminate unhealthy foods from your diet. Processed foods, refined sugars, and too much caffeine put stress on the body. Treat your body with healing products and energy-rich foods such as fruits and berries, fresh organic vegetables, and lean meats. And heal your metabolism by eating small meals every three hours.

5. Give to others. One of the most powerful ways to heal yourself, get stress relief, and feel joy is to give, give, give. Whether you choose to lend an ear to a friend in need or open the door for someone, give a gift every day!

As you can see, stress relief is about so much more than just working out. Get out there and Live as Loud as you can!!!

Image: Helga Weber

The busier we become, the more we steal time away from our “joy” time. If work demands more time and effort, chances are that our gym time will suffer, and when our kid has yet another tantrum, our desire to watch a movie or paint our toenails goes out the window … Does this sound familiar to you?

According to a study (Lewinshon, Munoz, Youngren and Zeiss, 1986), the first activities that get voted off a busy schedule are the ones that would actually make us feel better and less stressed in the long run. How is that for irony?

The more sad and depressed we feel, the lower self-esteem we have, resulting in doubt that all the things that previously lifted our spirits have the power to do so again. In the absence of these moments of joy and positive emotion, it becomes more and more difficult to separate ourselves from work, bill paying, and everyday routines.

Harvard economist Juliet Schor (1991) reported that when workers in an English factory had to give up their overtime hours due to the bad economy, they recovered both physically and mentally shortly after. Because of the new extra time they had on their hands, they started hanging out with their friends, and their zest for life returned. Money lost its close grip on their minds, and even the ones with bigger families to take care of found it thrilling that they had been given more time with their loved ones. Life was worth living!

Finding joy and happiness in our everyday lives is something we can learn to accept and implement. For many of us, it is not an automatic thought. More often than not, negative thoughts are quicker to arise than positive ones. Many times it is easier to eat sugar or drink alcohol to feel the chemical high of what seems like joy for a brief moment.

However, it is very possible to make a conscious choice to do things we truly love, to be with people we truly love, and to give ourselves permission to enjoy these things. When we give to ourselves, there is more for others to enjoy, too. We enter a good cycle of giving and receiving.

Maybe the challenge is to find the joy in all things possible? Most of all, I know that there is joy to be found in the freedom of self-love.

What makes you laugh, enjoy, and feel joy? How can you share these feelings and moments? Can you stop and smell the roses a little bit every day?

Sunny ideas:

• Never skip your work out

• Begin to feel, smell, taste again. Smile.

• Before you do an activity, visualize in your mind what it is going to look like. Let yourself know that no matter what happens, it will be good.

• Experience new things in progression, especially if you are nervous about them. Note that you have done a great job. Every time.

• Exchange “I should” for “I would like to”

Life is your gift – living it is your choice!

Live Life Loud!

Image: Robert S. Donovan

Consider three stories that you have told yourself and others for years.

It could be that you are bad at communicating or your parents never taught you how or, for example, one that I believed for many years, which was that I was not smart or creative enough.

Write the stories down on paper, and think a little bit about how you can change them, and if they really are true.

Who is it that made you believe them? Do you dare to tell a different story? Most of all, can you change how your stories affect you?

Write down three parallel stories, which are founded on three basic rules for change:

1. In your attempt to create a new story about something, link it to a primary value such as family, integrity, and kindness.

2. Present reality – the way things really are – as much as possible in your new story.

3. Create an abstract idea of hope and attach it to your new story – the idea that change is actually possible.

How does it feel to discover how much power your stories have over you? The stories may have been true, but after having dissected them, they have lost their grip, right?

Try this exercise in the weeks to come, discuss it with trusted loved ones, or just do it on your own.

Want the tools to develop life-long health habits?
Check out my e-book, Your Life Force: Training for Strength & Harmony.

Image: M Car

My training is my life force. I have learned to exercise in a way that feels almost meditative. I don’t mean calm and soothing, but that the only thing going on in my head is the task at hand. My breath. My motion. My strength. My focus is complete, as my body moves to renew itself and to live … and sometimes just survive.

This is a process that has taken a long time and has been born from my joy in physical movement, my mental focus, and repetition, repetition, repetition. One day at a time, one week at a time, from moment to moment in a never-ending flow.

When I am healthy, I follow my plan with the big picture in mind, knowing that every moment spent on the health and well-being of my body and mind is worth every drop of sweat and minute of pain. That is reality for me. I realized early, coming from a family that was prone to illness and stress, that my health was a privilege and not something to be taken for granted.

A sure path to unhappiness is to avoid the reality of your immediate world. Sometimes it is easy to get stuck on something that is not real, and then a whole existence is built upon a foundation that is unstable and unreliable. Maybe this resonates with you. I think we all carry that defense mechanism; I know I do! It can be anything that hurts: a friend who is not truthful or honest (but we choose to not say anything about it), or telling yourself that smoking is not really bad for you (you smoke because you “choose” to).

And exercise really falls in the same category. The body is meant to move. Not moving causes illness and discomfort, which has been proven by endless studies. Just the phrase, “I don’t have time to exercise” usually hides other issues. But it’s like saying, “I don’t have time to be alive and healthy.”

A client of mine would come to the gym with a constant hangover, tired, grumpy, and if it wasn’t “food poisoning,” it was almost always “sore knees.” Of course, the sore knees and pains were some kind of cry for help in my ears, and it was also a clear case of this person not wanting to stare reality in the face. It was going to take sweat, effort, and sometimes pain to get healthy. It was also going to take a detox of alcohol and sugar! Defense mechanism ON! I used to be a smoker a very long time ago, and I did the exact same thing. I could light one up and completely “forget” that I was literally putting a time bomb in my mouth.

I designed a plan for my client that was not only a physical journey of the body, but also a cognitive journey of concepts. Dream world versus reality. Establishing a foundation for feeling good more often versus the instant gratification of quick fixes. When the body starts to detox, it wants more of what makes it feel better!

But without a destination we care about, we won’t end up in the right place. Without focus, the task at hand seems unmotivating and unimportant. Without repetition, we can’t establish a new healthy pattern. Next time you are slipping away from your conscious living, remind yourself of the beauty you will create by seeing and being present.

The reality is, we can’t all look like Jennifer Aniston … but we can do the best with what we have. That is one thing we all share. There is NO point in buying expensive supplements, fancy gym memberships, or personal trainers, if you don’t use your body and mind with full focus in the process.

The closer to the truth we choose to live our lives, the fewer misunderstandings and surprises we will encounter. All of a sudden, you will have created a satisfying life environment where you will experience flow, love, joy, sadness, and most of all balance. That is a foundation to build lots of goodies on and you are definitely worth it!

Live Life Loud!

Want the tools to develop life-long health habits?
Check out my e-book, Your Life Force: Training for Strength & Harmony.

Fall is here! It’s the season of dramatic color and chilly nights. In the colder and darker areas of the country, the decrease in sunlight signals our bodies that it’s time to hibernate. (California might not experience it to the same extent but trust me, we feel it here, too.) It can be difficult to find motivation, but slowing down is not necessarily an obstacle, just merely a bump in the road on our long and exciting journey to a healthier body and lifestyle.

A big part of living a healthy life is listening to what the body needs, and accepting the changes it goes through. Let’s invite some new movement to play with, to get the body going and the mind motivated again. Here are a few things that bring the fun into staying fit…

Hula hoops
Go back to the old days when you were hula hooping on the playground! Did you think that it was exercise? Hula hooping can be a fun cardio workout as well as core and abs all in one. It can burn up to 400 kcal per hour! It’s very important to stretch before and after, but other than that, it’s a safe and fun exercise. There are hoop DVDs, but the easiest thing is to go to the nearest Target, pick up a hula hoop, and get going!

TRX Suspension Training
These are traditional strength exercises performed while hanging suspended from the ceiling. Your core must be involved and you will be working out your entire body, as you use your own body weight as resistance. Of course, it is important to receive proper guidance to avoid risks. In my business of personal training, everyone seems to have a TRX Suspension Training strap available for anywhere and anytime training!

YOSPIN fusion
Mix 30 minutes of yoga with 30 minutes of spinning for an excellent body-mind workout. The cardio-intensive cycling followed by flexibility-increasing yoga helps stretch and condition muscles. Switching between the two activities can lead to injury, so a mindful stop and switch – waiting until the heart rate recovers before starting yoga – is imperative. If you don’t have spinning or yoga at your gym, go to a spinning class, download yoga to your MP3 player, and do your own thing!

Of course, you can also create your own fusions of your favorite exercise routines! Do you have any tips to trade? Any fun workouts like hula hoping that you would like to share? Please let us know!

Live Life Loud!

Want the tools to develop life-long health habits?
Check out my e-book, Your Life Force: Training for Strength & Harmony.

Images: AmandaLouise, Amazon.com, Fitness Anywhere, Gaiam Restorative Exercise for Relaxation Kit

I wake up and think about the three clients I have this morning … I hop into the car, drive across LA, get out there and focus on each individual – all the while making the effort to maintain my spark and be fully engaged. Around midday my blood sugar drops, and I have not had time to workout. Lunch is happening soon but not soon enough. I must first find a dietitian for a client. I’ll make calls during my lunch break … I know I shouldn’t, but just a couple of calls …

Ahh, stress. It’s something I have to stay conscious of so I can avoid speeding myself up too much. I must respect the fact that there is only one Tanja, and that the world will not fall apart if I relax.

Where I live, you live to work. People talk about “good” and “bad” stress, which can be legitimate distinctions, but unfortunately what we often refer to as “good” is really an excuse to hurry and rush, avoiding the fact that we are torturing the beautiful bodies we have been given. Stress can really take its toll on both physical and psychological well-being.

What happens on an emotional level during all this stress and hurrying around, trying to squeeze everything in, is that we bypass our emotions. There is no space for them to flow freely, and at some point when we finally slow down, they can become overwhelming. It is common to feel emotions of sadness and anger when there is finally a break in the stress pattern.

During the week we encounter situations where it would be appropriate to emote, if only there was TIME for it. Instead, those emotions are suppressed and we hurry along to reach deadlines and fulfill obligations. The same thing happens when we don’t have time to enjoy and be happy about what’s around us. To actually feel an emotion, and live it out, requires an intimate relationship with the Self. This is easily lost during stress.

Try creating new habits for yourself to reconnect the “doing” and the “being.” Focus on unwinding, feeling, smelling, having thoughts and senses.

Give yourself some s p a c e and Love.

I wake up and sit and do my breathing exercises on the bed. Already before my day has begun, I decide to try and enjoy the day and my meetings. No telephone at mealtime – morning, noon, or evening. I’ll make it a priority to get a little alone time, even if it’s just 10 minutes on the toilet!

Image: stuartpilbrow

A: Hello, Nikita! In my book Your Life Force there is a whole chapter with tips and tricks on how to stop emotional eating. It requires focus and a real resolve, as stress is so common and we need to eat every day. But there is hope if you really want to stop!

My advice is to work with the different methods in the book, and if it still feels like you are not getting anywhere, you have to call in the Army! There are support groups for overeating, and there are cognitive psychologists who can help you change your behavior around food. Do not give up and do everything wholeheartedly!

Tanja

Do you have a question? Don’t be shy – ask it here!

A: Hello! Yes, exercise sounds very boring. Yes, it doesn’t seem like too much fun. Have you ever been a person who likes to move around? Are you trying to start a new healthy life all by yourself? Feeling better, happy, and motivated requires a catalyst. It is not something that comes in just a few weeks!

Usually it doesn’t help at all that OTHER people are giving you reasons why you need to do this or that… You need to ask yourself and create your own reasons! Sit yourself down and answer these questions about yourself and your life:

• Why do you need to start working out?
• How do you want your life and your health to look in 5, 10, 15 years?
• Are there activities that you would like to do with others, but you’re just too tired and feel inadequate?

How does this sound: join a group that works together to become healthier! Not an online group, but a physical group with real people?

With programs like Weight Watchers and Biggest Loser Club, you can find a few friends who feel the same way. It is easier to do this in a group, and it does not necessarily mean you should go to the gym right away, which can be a bit uncomfortable at first.

If you feel that there are other things that are preventing you from working out, such as depression or other issues, seek out a skilled life coach or psychologist who can help.

Good Luck!

Tanja

Do you have a question? Don’t be shy – ask it here!

Our bodies heal through movement.

This is a bold statement to make without referencing studies to back it up, which would normally be my style, but then there is something to say about the innate sense of something that intuitively feels right. (And, of course, tons of studies have been done to back this up.)

I spent all day Sunday in a seminar with my good friend and colleague Scott Kuhagen, of Functional Evolution. He teaches a revolutionary way to heal tender muscle tissue and reverse the aging of cells, thus slowing down our aging process. I know, that also sounds like a bold statement to make without citing studies, but broken down into physiology, it makes all the sense in the world. This new tissue healing system has two specialized research and practicing MDs who have helped to develop the program.

In simplified language, our physical movement is our metabolism. When we move, we convert nutrition to energy and expel toxins and waste products. That is what gives us energy to move. We are a moving, detoxifying organism just by doing what we were born to do: move! So what happens when we don’t move? Disease, depression, obesity, aches and pains in our backs and joints. Worst of all, this decline accelerates the older we get. Not a fun story at all!

There is also a somatic response to emotional trauma, which resides in our muscle tissues. I have encountered many incidents where a traumatic event from someone’s childhood has impaired their range of motion. By implementing psychotherapy with movement therapy, I’ve seen many people return to a normal range of motion. Once again, while there are case studies to reference, we don’t need the studies to know what is true when we feel it for ourselves.

Emotional release is a natural part of the healing process. We need to connect our bodies and minds again, by allowing movement to be not only a guide, but a therapeutic tool. You may have heard of NIA and Dance Therapy, which are both movement systems used in cases of eating disorders and other types of body dysmorphic disorders. These programs help individuals learn how to trust their bodies again and, through movement and sensation, feel themselves and slowly heal.

The next time you move, train, or workout, try to use all your senses. Be less intellectual and just start exploring what is really going on in your body. What do you feel? Maybe you will cry or maybe you’ll laugh out loud. Whatever you feel, you are making a good start in the healing process.

Live Life Loud!

Image: Elvert Barnes