Moving Free® with Mirabai Mind-Body Resolutions. Not Just A Dream By: Mirabai Holland, MFA © 2012

Mirabai Holland M.F.A. legendary fitness pioneer is one of the leading authorities in the Health & Fitness industry, and a public health activist who specializes in preventive and rehabilitative exercise for people. Her Moving Free® approach to exercise is designed to provide a movement experience so pleasant it doesn't feel like work. www.easyexercisevideos.com

January is a profound time. We can feel it. New year, new you they say
We vow to lose weight, get fit, quit smoking, and change our entire personality.

So why do we try and fail year after year and why have so many of us given up that resolution nonsense altogether?
I think it’s because we were setting ourselves up to fail instead of succeed.
We push ourselves too hard to do too much too soon to change habits that took half a lifetime to cultivate and expect that’s going to be ok with us and it’s not.
If we want to change long standing habits we need to look at it differently.
We need to see ourselves differently. See yourself thin. Feel what it’s like to be thin. Consider yourself a thin person, a non-smoker, whatever.

World-class athletes live by this. It really works. And it works for everything.

Here are two mind-body techniques they use and you can use right away to help set those resolutions into motion.

Visualization: happens mostly on the right side of the brain, the part that controls emotion, intuition and nonlinear thought.
So if your goal is to lose 10 pounds you visualize yourself 10 pounds thinner maybe by wearing that pair of jeans you have been wanting to get into again.
Don’t just see yourself as having lost the weight. See yourself as a thin person, someone who was always thin and will always be thin.
That mental image can replace the one you now have of yourself and help you transform your behavior on both a conscious and subconscious level.
It can allow you to finally put that desire into permanent action.

Affirmations: By engaging in positive self-talk you can change what you believe about yourself. You can speak to yourself silently or out loud in short phrases that start with
“I am
And don’t be afraid to say you are who you really want to be.
Repeat several times until you are able to clear your mind of anything but that particular affirmation.

Once you see and hear how it feels to be someone who has already reached their goal, you can use the same techniques to set and achieve easy short-term interim goals.
For instance if your goal is to become fit, you can start by visualizing and feeling yourself having exercised today and affirm with “I will exercise 5 minutes today”

As long as you have plausible expectations and don’t say stuff like I’m 6 feet tall when you’re 5’6, you can make amazing changes real.

“I am going to have the best year ever in 2012”. Happy New You”

Finding Fabulousity! By Mirabai Holland, MFA © 2011

My work has taken me on the road this past year so I’ve had to take a hiatus from my regular teaching schedule. I really missed my ladies,
So when I got to town, I invited a bunch of them out for tea and desert. I thought for a minute the desert part was a bad idea when a couple of them wouldn’t eat a piece of cake in front of me. But when I dug in, moderately of course, the party got started in earnest.
Ever the moderator, I asked them each to share things that were important in their lives over the past year.
As we went around the circle, they spoke of getting pregnant, daughter’s weddings, losing your job, becoming a gym rat, outliving heart disease, surviving menopause, the joy of grandchildren, and a trip to China.
Maybe because I was their host, the conversation drifted toward how getting fit had changed their lives.
They shared stories about feeling invisible, not sexy, not pretty, having no energy and feeling like a lump. One remembered showing up in my office, tearing her hair out saying my doctor told me I need to do something, I’ve got serious health issues, but I hate to exercise. What do I do?
She said, I told her “I’m going to give you exercise you can look forward to instead of dread.”
Most of my work is done with women who haven’t been active in a while. My coaching style is to start people wherever they may be physically and emotionally and get them moving, gently, and pleasantly. If the first experience is pleasant, you’ll want a second and the third and so on. Sustainability is the key to fitness success. And that’s what happened with these ladies. But something else remarkable happened too.

They told me getting fit had given them the self confidence to pursue things they would never have dared to try; that the change in their bodies had kindled a change in the way they saw themselves. Instead of feeling invisible they felt fabulous and that Fabulosity had spilled over into the rest of their lives. As much as I would love to take all the credit for this transformation, I think that it boils down to healthy body, healthy mind;
Getting fit was the key that unlocked the door to their potential.
Pretty cool huh?