Carly went through her first round of Body Thrive while working two jobs and raising two young children. Six months later, she had lost 35 pounds and was keeping it off. She felt better in her body and was better equipped to handle her day-to-day life. For Carly, the self care she learned in Body Thrive had to come first, before she could even consider starting her own business as a yoga health coach.

At the age of 52, Carolyn has worked in farming, banking, retail, and dental assisting. She retired this past February to focus on her health and her dharma. Carolyn gained 20 pounds following a knee surgery. Body Thrive helped her get back to where she was pre-surgery and has eliminated aching and cracking joints, which she had experienced for several years. Carolyn is picking up more and more self care habits with each round of Body Thrive and has found that her body responds well to intermittent fasting.

Having solidified her habits and her health in the Living Ayurveda course, Carolyn has her sights set on upleveling her dharma in Yoga Health Coaching.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• Why Body Thrive is a prerequisite for finding your dharma.
• How physical self care leads to easeful living.
• Why putting off self care until retirement is the WRONG approach.

Links Mentioned in Episode:

• Body Thrive
• Yogidetox
• Yoga Health Coaching

Show Highlights:

• 0:00 – For Carly, the self care she learned in Body Thrive had to come first, before she could even consider starting her own business as a yoga health coach. Carolyn gained 20 pounds following a knee surgery. Body Thrive helped her get back to where she was pre-surgery and has eliminated aching and cracking joints, which she had experienced for several years. Having completed the Living Ayurveda course, her next goals include building her self confidence as she begins the Yoga Health Coaching course.
• 3:30 – At the age of 52, Carolyn has worked in farming, banking, retail, and dental assisting. She retired this past February to focus on her health and her dharma.
• 8:00 – Carly went through Body Thrive while working two jobs and raising two young children. Six months later, she had lost 35 pounds and was keeping it off. She felt better in her body and was better equipped to handle her day-to-day life. But it doesn’t all happen at once, and we sometimes experience setbacks. In Body Thrive, we implement small steps toward better self care with the support of our online community.
• 10:00 – Carolyn is picking up more and more self care habits with each round of Body Thrive and has found that her body responds well to intermittent fasting.

Favorite Quotes:

• “That’s the kind of mindset that we get, right? You’re going to go to work. And you’re just going to work and just do it and keep pushing until you reach that moment where you can retire and then you’re going to focus on self and then you’re going to relax. Well, sometimes before you even get to that point of relaxation, your body runs out of steam because you’re pushing too hard. You’re not listening to it.” — Carly Banks
• “My circumstances had not changed whatsoever. But the way I felt inside my body and my ability to function and take on responsibility had amplified tenfold.” — Carly Banks, (post Body Thrive)

What you’ll get out of tuning in

• How to inspire others via your own transformation
• How to finally lose weight and keep it off for good with new habits
• How to detox safely and naturally with a group and a leader

Top 5 YHC Podcasts in the first quarter

This is our 25th YHC Podcast episode and we want to celebrate with Top 5 YHC Podcast episodes in our first quarter of publishing:

1. Learn to Time Bend with Dana Skoglund + Annie Barrett, By Annie Barrett
2. The Habits for Hope in Healing with Annette Shellenbarger, By Cate Stillman
3. From Fibromyalgia + Chronic Fatigue to Yoga Health Coaching with Lynn Taylor, By Cate Stillman
4. YHC Personal Evolution Paths with Grace Edison + Dr. Michele Colon, By Grace Edison
5. Hashimoto’s Autoimmune Disease: Healing with Yoga Health Coaching, By Cate Stillman

Links Mentioned in Episode:

• Catch the last Yogidetox offer 3 for 1 
• Yoga Health Coaching
• Diabetic Recipes and Juicing Recipes for Diabetics
• A Simple Ayurvedic Juice Cleanse
• Kitchari Recipe
• Diabetes & Your Feet
• YogiDetox Fall

Show Highlights:

• 0:30 — Dr. Michele explains how she lost 30 pounds in a year at the age of 48 by doing a seasonal detox
• 2:20 — Dr. Michele explains what the Yogidetox is and why she think it works
• 3:35 — Dr. Michele discusses her results with the detox
• 6:15 — Dr. Michele explains why it works best in a group setting
• 7:30 — Dr. Michele explains why it’s important for you to get clear on your why
• 10:30 — Dr. Michele discusses what she eats during the Yogidetox
• 12:15 —  Dr. Michele reminds us that we need to set aside a little bit of time to have a successful detox

Favorite Quotes:

• “Sometimes it just has to be a firm ‘no’.”
• “I’ve kept all of the weight off.”
• “When you change your habits, you incorporate them into your daily life.”
• “Get really clear on your vision.”
• “It doesn’t have to be an all-liquid diet.”
• “People don’t want to waste their money on expensive supplements and powders.”
• “Getting older doesn’t mean you have to gain weight.”

Yesterday, I finished writing this “love letter” to myself and a small groups of friends who’ve shared similar challenges surrounding food. I thought I’d share it here with the hope that it might be helpful for someone here in this group, someone in this fantastic, life-changing course that’s helped me over the last few years evolve into the person I’ve always wanted to become.

Much love to all of you, Michelle

Fellow Travelers,

What Are You Hungry for?

We’re on a hero’s journey, you and I. We’re far from what we thought of as home. We’re exploring our relationship with food and what we truly hunger for. We have the focus, determination, and will to plan our trip accordingly, driven by a shared yearning to live in alignment with what we’ve learned is true: freedom from obsession comes from paying attention to our current-moment experience and investigating it with kindness and curiosity.

Make a Personal Pledge

We are committed to healing our most potent samskaras and vasanas so that we can go home again as masters of our domain, not slaves to old fear patterns that push us to numb and punish ourselves with food.

The Distracting Voice that Says, “You are Never Enough!”

We’re ambitious, you and I. We know our path is not easy. We know that our greatest obstacle is our own mind, our own tendency to focus on how we haven’t lost enough weight yet or made enough progress yet.

We also know that this kind of thinking is exactly what slows our momentum. Focusing on these types of thoughts leads to misalignment with our highest desires and intentions to listen to and inhabit our bodies in the here and now. It steers us away from experiencing ourselves in present time.

When You Get Lost, Make A U Turn Back to Witnessing

We’re perceptive, you and I. We understand what prompts such thinking. In one form or another, it’s the Voice of Fear or the Voice of Anger or the Voice of Sadness or the Voice of Joy. All of these emotions take us for a ride, a detour away from the direct route of Witnessing what we’ve mapped. All of these voices intoxicate us with false beliefs based on past or imagined future “failures” with food, each one causing its own type of pain and exhaustion, either because we act as though it’s chasing us, or we’re chasing it, or we are it.

That Still Small Voice Within
We’re wise, you and I.

We have enough experience in our meditation seats to remember that there’s another voice, the Voice of Stillness. The Voice of Stillness reminds us that Steady is the new Sexy. The Voice of Stillness reminds us that Balance, Equanimity, and Contentment hold the answers to our success and well-being. We remember that we are able to feel open and spacious again with a wide, clear perspective—not jacked up or buried by regurgitated thoughts provoked by the Voices of Emotion. We remember that we don’t have to be flung off course by them or manipulated by them: We don’t need to eat to encourage or stop them.

Have Faith in the Goddess Within

We’re trustful, you and I. We sit every day because we know that when we choose silence, we will ask and hear what the Voice of Stillness has to say. Every woman’s Stillness will speak in Her own voice, but She will deliver a similar message to all of us if we listen. She will nudge us to return to our true home: the still spot at the center of our own heart, where the ups and downs of the other voices can’t exist, where there’s calm, peace, and relief from the limiting, fear-based question underneath all these voices, “How is this going to affect me?”

Inhale Deep Acceptance

We’re free, you and I. We know that in the absence of this limiting question that shrinks and disempowers us on every level, Suffering cannot breathe here. The only thing left here at the center of our own Heart-Home is Acceptance of What Is. Acceptance walks hand in hand with Trust: Trust in our decision to use our relationship with food as a pathway to healing, a pathway to our dharma, and a pathway to knowing our highest Selves. In this space, we trust Divine Will, that all events are conspiring for us and our own expansion rather than against us. Only when we allow our Voice of Stillness to guide us back home regularly will we have the fortitude to complete our hero’s journey by learning how to feed our true hungers and thereby live in integrity with our highest Selves.