The Empowerment Show

“My body is not me. Its mine.” Dahn Yoga

How are you treating the vessel carrying you around? Are you giving it love and care or are you filling it with no so good things?

In this episode we learn the importance of conscious eating and taking the time to cleanse our digestive system. Caring for our bodies also includes clearing our minds through meditation, using deep breathing for stress relief, releasing our monkey mind chatter, and acknowledging our emotions without judgment.

Robin Westen talks about having a respect for our bodies and learning how to care for it properly. Robin received an Emmy Award for the ABC health show FYI. She is currently the medical director for Thirdage.com, the largest health site for baby boomers on the web. She is the author of the Harvard Medical School Guide Getting Your Child To Eat (Almost) Anything, Ten Days to Detox, V is for Vagina (coauthored with Alyssa Dweck, MD), and her most recent books The Yoga-Body Cleanse: A 7-Day Ayurvedic Detox to Rejuvenate Your Body and Calm Your Mind and The 2-Day Superfood Cleanse: A Weekly Detox Program to Boost Energy, Lose Weight and Maintain Optimal Health. She’s written featured articles for dozens of national magazines including Glamour, Vegetarian Times, Psychology Today, SELF, Cosmopolitan, and others. Robin has been practicing yoga, meditation, and cleansing for over fifteen years.   

Listen in to this lively discussion of what it takes to be health mentally, physically, and emotionally.

At 26 Melissa Pettignano is launching her second book and her first album. She is a shining example of how a positive attitude and a deep faith can help us move mountains.

Learn more about author and performer Melissa Pettignano, the People of Distinction Humanitarian Award, and the charities she supports including the Homelessness Group and Persecution International Christian Concern.

What can you be inspired to do today?

Plain Jane: The Shockumentary is no normal documentary about a woman with disabilities. Because Jane Hash is no ordinary woman.

Jane was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a condition which is manifested by extremely brittle bones. At birth, Jane had twenty-six broken bones and was not expected to live three hours. By the time she was in high school, she had broken two hundred bones. But she doesn’t want your sympathy nor does she want praise for making it through her daily routine. As she says, “I don’t have a degree in sitting on my ass.” What Jane wants is for you to see those with disabilities differently. To see them as people first, not as a resource for what activist Stella Young calls “Inspirational Porn” or as weaklings who need to be rescued.

Listen in to this fun and thought-provoking interview. Then view Plain Jane: The Shockumentary for some eye-opening laughs.

Robin Marvel had a troubling childhood including domestic abuse, parental kidnappings, drug abuse, and homelessness. She never learned to have self-worth. Robin turned to alcohol and partying when she was fifteen years old to receive validation and attention. This led to a teenage pregnancy which motivated her to not be a statistic and to make a better life for her daughter. Because she was an adult too early between caring for her parents and then her own child, she fell back into drinking in her 20’s wanting to experience the freedom of childhood she didn’t have earlier. This relapse became her true wake-up call to make a change.  She said, “This is not how my story is going to change.”

Robin is the author of Life Check: 7 Steps to Balance Your Life joins the Empowerment Show to talk about choice, understanding, forgiving oneself and others, loving oneself, acknowledging self-worth, uncovering the lessons, and moving forward. As food pantries were very important in Robin’s youth, she and her husband started United Hands of Change which encourages people give them a hand-up not a handout.

Are you ready to break the cycle of abuse and alcoholism, release your victimhood, and make a real change in your life?

At one time in our life or another we feel like we don’t fit in. We feel like an outsider, like we don’t belong. We don’t feel understood and, even worse, we begin to feel like there is something wrong with us.

It does not matter if you feel excluded due to your ethnicity or religion, or if you feel outside society because you are lesbian, bi-sexual, gay, transgender, queer, kink, or polyamorous, the result is the same. You feel excluded by mainstream society. In addition to this you may not have the same rights and privileges as others.

Rami Henrich, LCSW, and Cindy Trawinski, Psy. D, of Lifeworks Psychotherapy in Chicago join The Empowerment Show to talk about ways we can accept others and ourselves on a deeper level. By fully seeing and embrace who we are, we can begin to move past our inner marginalization providing us with a platform to change societal marginalization.

Listen in to this discussion about marginalization between and within groups, inner marginalization, and how deep democracy may be able to help make a change to how we accept ourselves and others. By recognizing our underlying humanity, we can all start putting

Ever have someone walk into the room and you can feel their anger – or their joy?

Do you know people who seem to always have great opportunities just happen to them? And others who always get the short end of the stick?

Could your life be affected by what you are unconsciously projecting?

In Donna Scott-Nusrala’s new book, The Energy of Emotion, she shows how the emotion energy we project can affect our lives for better or worse and how we can reprogram our emotions to create a better life.

We broadcast energy through our emotions. This can be either positive or negative. The more positive energy we have the more we attract positive energy. Negative energy attracts those things we don’t necessarily want. Most of the time we are not aware of the emotional energy we are projecting and how that affects our life. But there is a way to change your broadcast and change your experience.

By acknowledging how your energy affects your life you can then be empowered to make a difference in your life. You do not have to be a victim of circumstances nor do you have to attack yourself for what you are unconsciously bringing to you. Once you accept that you have created unconsciously what you have in your life based on what you have learned and experienced in the past, you now have the power to make new choices and broadcast what you really want to receive.

Listen in to this eye-opening and life changing show.

Neil Findlay says he is just, “An ordinary person out there doing some stuff.” But he is so much more than that. Both Neil and his wife have dedicated some of their working years and now their “retirement” to helping children around the world.  They are both an inspiration for what we can all accomplish.

One of the groups Neil assists is Project Madagascar. The primary goal of Project Madagascar is to educate street children, starting at age 5, to help them out of the cycle of poverty. The children in this part of Madagascar have literally nothing and especially no hope, unless we can help. Project Madagascar organizes trips where you can learn about this interesting culture while helping those without.

Neil does not only help those in developing countries but also those who need his home country of Australian. Unfortunately there is a very large drug and alcohol abuse issue in Australia, especially with teens. Related to this is also depression, fatigue, violence and suicide. Like many of the underground issues in developed countries like the United States, these are they types of issues that don’t get media coverage.

There are many in the world in situations which are or feel hopeless. The question is, are you being called to help? Perhaps it is time to think about who you are? What do you value? Who are you outside of your job? Is it time to think bigger? Is it time to find out ways to make a difference in the world?

Learn how you can help with Project Madagascar, Red Frogs, and Metro Church Toowoomba. Learn more about Neil: website and The Mentor’s Diary.

What are things you can do locally and beyond to make a difference in someone’s life? 

As I was working on this show and post, a Sly & The Family Stone song came on the radio

There is a blue one who can’t accept the green one

For living with a fat one, trying to be a skinny one

And different strokes for different folks

At the same time I was alerted to an anti-Gay Christian group who is refusing letter with the Harvey Milk stamp.

Ah, we still have so much to learn about inclusion and diversity.

Check out this informative interview with Elizabeth Williams-Riley the President and CEO of the American Conference on Diversity. In this discussion we explore how implicit bias affects the way we relate to others and how our self-work on removing our prejudice can create a ripple effect in our community.

There are so many messages coming to us every day with blatant and subtle bias and assumptions about those who are different than us. It does not matter if the different is nationality, regionality, gender, sexual preference, disability, or socio-economic status there are implicit biases we all have consciously or unconsciously which affect how we act and react to others. By becoming aware of our implicit biases and how they affect our relationships we can decide if we want to keep them or if we want to learn a new way of being together.

Technology is also helping us as a society to become aware of our implicit biases. A recent instance of this is the Instagram post and audio recording of the racial remarks made by the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling. In the past comments such of these may have been made between a few individuals who have the same beliefs. Now the comments can be broadcast, commented on by people around the world, and hopefully used to help educate us as a society about our implicit biases.

Elizabeth says, "We've come a long way as far as people being disenfranchised, but we're not dealing with implicit bias." Listen in to learn how you can work on your own implicit bias, help the collective responsibility to make changes to our biases, and support school, community, and business programs which empower individuals to make changes around them.

You can learn more about these programs and become involved at www.AmericanConferenceonDiversity.org or by calling 732-745-9330

Together we can recover from bias and racism and learn to truly embrace our unique social identities while accepting those of others. 

Our current society is based on one and then the masses. There are rating systems, popularity contests, gurus and their followers. The culture has taught us to doubt ourselves and to look for answers and expertise outside of ourselves. We believe that there is just one top position and that is what we should strive and fight for. Our belief is that we need someone else to tell us how things work or that we are worthy. We have lost trust in our self and our self-knowledge.

Feminine Leadership is a style and a viewpoint. It is not anti-men. It is not part of any religion or belief system. Feminine Leadership is new, or actually, an old way to approach the world. Feminine Leadership teaches us to know our internal power release our need and desire for ratings. This style of leadership helps us to come back in touch with our strength, inherent power, and unique talents. In trusting ourselves and expressing our unique voice, we can then be a more collaborative society. We would stop competing on one aspect and would instead learn to recognize and respect our unique gifs and how they come together for the whole.

Eliana Gilad has been learning to trust her inherent power for more than 20 years. The columniation of her learnings will be a series of books called Miriam’s Secret based on the biblical figure who prophesized Moses’ birth. In the first book, Revealing the Ancient Wisdom of Feminine Leadership, Eliana explores what Feminine Leadership is and how all of us, men and women, can benefit from this point of view.

For years, Eliana has focused on Voices of Eden which is a living experiment to connect and express our inner voices. In uncovering, releasing, embracing, and sharing our unique voices we can come together. Through Voices of Eden and her books, Eliana helps us to reconnect with that inner knowing, with the intuition we were born with and to learn how to use it to make our lives more joyful and free.

Listen in to this eye-opening discussion and learn how it can change how you see the world. 

www.VoicesofEden.com          www.ElianaGilad.com

Breast cancer thriver, Sue Bock, joins The Empowerment Show to talk about how to make the most of life’s transitions. Sue supports people going through transitions like empty nesters, divorce, sandwich generation, and cancer survivors. What they all have in common is intense stress and feeling overwhelmed.

Sue shares her personal experience and how she learned the importance of sharing a serious illness. Many of us don’t want to bother or worry others with our challenges and problems, but it is important to ask for help. It is important because one needs support during a major illness because we can’t do what we used to. It is important to also ask for and receive help because providing a ride or a meal may be the only way for our loved ones to show how much they care. Receiving help is as important to the patient as it is for the giver.

“Breast cancer doesn’t define you. It frees you to arrive at different choices.” For Sue, breast cancer opened her eyes to a new way to be. She was no longer a nurse. She now had the title of patient. It was hard for her to lose professional role and didn’t know who she was without. It awakened her to the importance of not being defined by a role or situation. You are not your job title. You are not your role as parent or spouse. You are you. By removing the labels you can release yourself to be truly you. This is a great lesson for anyone going through a transition, including those who are in job transition, that we are not a label or a title.

Sue Bock offers a book specifically to help those who are on the path to being a cancer thriver, Life After Cancer Ebook

Be sure to listen until the end of this uplifting show for a special offer from Sue. To take advantage of the offer you can reach Sue at: 925-806-0316, [email protected]