Thrive with Cate Stillman Podcast

I talk today with Grace Edison, an enrollment coach here at Yogahealer and Yoga Health Coaching. We talk about setting the right goals for your next phase of growth (easier said than done, I know). People set goals, but they are often not the right goals.

It is really interesting how that happens. People either set goals that are way beyond their skill level, that are too challenging. Then they feel out of integrity with themselves, they feel awful, and they often don’t know why they didn’t hit their goals, they don’t take time to analyze that. Or people set the wrong goal, a goal that doesn’t build the right competencies to get to where they want to go next. Today we are going to talk about that process of building the right short-term goals that build toward the long-term goals.

I rap with Grace Edison about:

• Taking a realistic and regular look at what strengths you have, and what strengths you’ll need to leverage and build
• How to use awareness of time and habits to structure solid goals
• The importance of knowing how to use your community to help you get clear

What you’ll get out of tuning in:    

• Understand how to tell when the goal is too big, and how to adjust
• Insight onto how to use your relationships to get clear on what is realistic
• A ton of tips and tricks on how to re-train your awareness for realistic goals

Related podcasts:

• Perserverance + Investment on the Road to Holistic Career Success + Lifestyle Design

Show Highlights:

• 7:20 – Part of setting realistic goals is knowing how to take advantage of the strengths of the people in your inner circle
• 12:28 – Assessment of our movement towards are goals is like downward dog – we didn’t get it right at first, but we can keep refining
• 15:54 – We all have to make time-budgeting questions a key part of the process

Favorite Quotes:

• “Don’t worry about getting this right. You’ll get it more and more right each time you do it. It’s an organic, dynamic experience” – Cate Stillman
  
  
• “The first thing you do, is talk to people who have done it” – Cate Stillman
• “Before you increase your time and money investments, you want to really make sure it’s the right goal” – Cate Stillman

I’m here with Yogahealthcoach and Awake Living mentor Dana Skoglund and we are going to talk a little bit about what happens post holiday and how people have the opportunity to feel amazing but it’s usually not how they think, so what I want to talk about is a habit, the Earlier, Lighter Dinner habit that we have. It’s the first and the number one habit in Yogahealthcoaching and Body Thrive. After the holidays people have this desire to feel better! They want to lose weight, to get on track, to experience more energy, to dial in their self care and you very often hear: “This is the year I’m going to take care of myself” and often there is a disconnect and us yogahealthcoaches are really aware of this, how there is this disconnect in knowing how to do that in a way that gains traction over time with habit evolution and doing what is like a magazine or tabloid version of the latest fad diet. When you understand the habits of yogis it’s so much different because it’s less about what your eating and it’s so much more about the when and to some degree the how your eating.

Welcome to the dharma workshop, To Align Your Body and Your Life. I believe this is the 5th annual workshop. One of my values is to raise my own bar, align my own actions, and own my results. So whenever I do something again, which I do frequently, because as a curriculum creator and community-builder, I’m often asked to do the same thing again and again. So for my 5th time through this workshop, I think I did raise my own bar, aligned my actions, and owned my results, and I promise you, today’s workshop is my best thinking and my best effort in creating and offering this workshop on aligning your body, your dharma, and your life for the next phase of your growth.

Thank you so much to everyone who shared this workshop with their friends. There has been so much discussion on our Facebook group, Yogahealer. It is a private group, but you are welcome to ask for an invitation, and jump in to the conversation arising from this workshop.

I also want to say, for a workshop, one of the things I really love is a pad of paper, pen, and colored pens. So if you want to take a second before diving in to grab what materials will support you in this workshop, I invite you to do so, it’s a great way to access different ways of thinking.

• Digging in to questions important to the process of lifestyle design
• How to approach building a strategic mindset into the journey of dharma
• What I’ve learned along the way as I follow my dharma and study my own life as well as the lives of my students

• A space for yourself, to tap in to your deepest desires and begin to work through what is holding you back from achieving them
• An understanding of some of the skills you will need to build, to give yourself the tools to reach the next level
• Insights into how to begin to change your own mindset and awareness so that there is genuine growth

• Yogahealer Facebook

• 20:22 – It is possible to understand how to use clear sight and thinking to enter, maintain, and gain serious momentum on the flow state when certain principles are understood and applied.
• 30:07 – There is always a next level. And when we see that as innately okay, ease and efficiency come into play in terms of achieving our desires and alignment to the life we want.
• 47:38 – In asking yourself where you are going, you have to be deeply self-honest about your relationships.
• 57:24 – Ok, we’ve done our deep thinking and digestion, now it is time to build a strategy around our new awareness and vision

• “The biggest mistake I see people make is not investigating their lessons learned. They don’t investigate the challenges or critical issues--the deeper levels of it. They don’t investigate their strategy.” – Cate Stillman
• “Lessons learned are learned the hard way. If it’s an easy lesson learn, there’s probably another one to dig for.” – Cate Stillman
• “There is so much potential. You get to choose! You can opt out of your old habit patterns and opt in to growth.” – Cate Stillman
• “Some of these questions, you are going to want to give yourself an hour to really drill into and  think about.” – Cate Stillman

In today’s show I am thrilled to offer you Ana Forrest and her partner Jose Calarco. Many of you know Ana from her life’s work in yoga and her book, Fierce Medicine. For those of you who don’t know her life partner, Jose, he is a pioneer in world music, from Descendance Aboriginal Dance Theatre in Australia. These days, they are combining their work. They are combining their yoga and their music and the traditions from aboriginal tribes. They are inviting wisdom leaders from various cultures to come and do a ritualistic practice.

This is a super fun conversation. We go all over the place from ritual to diet to breath practices. I think for those of you who’ve followed Ana’s work, you’re really going to enjoy this conversation, and for those new to her and new to Jose, enjoy!

Ana Forrest’s New Book

In Fierce Medicine, Forrest tells her own story of healing from the scars of abuse and physical handicaps, and reveals the proven practices that enabled her to move beyond her past into a life committed to helping others reconnect with their bodies, cultivate balance, and start living in harmony with their Spirits.

In her unique, powerful, and inviting voice, Ana Forrest reveals how to:

• Learn to stalk fear and break free from it instead of running from it.
• Be attentive to your body, discovering its own inherent healing properties.
• Speak and act from a place of honesty and compassion.
• Cultivate an open heart that is feeling, responsive, and reflexive and able to embrace change.
• Harness your intuition and the courage to live in alignment with your Spirit.

I rap with Anna Forrest and Jose Calarco about:

• Their experiences creating a space for spirit to come to life in our lives through using music, yoga, and ceremony to connect to the “continuity of consciousness”
• The various ways we can use kinesthetic orientation to cleanse a space and experience so that clients can be ready to create their own healing
• The value of beginning a yoga class with sacred ritual--the value of blending spiritual exercise with physical exercise with emotional/mental exercise.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• Tap into a deeper understanding of the ability for rituals and yoga practices to breath life into our lives and open us to letting go of the toxic and embracing the beauty of life.
• Understand the value of experimenting with traditions and being open to what is possible so that we can better serve.
• Gain a sense of the power of ceremony and its tools – yoga, breath, music, ritual, sensory experience.

Links:

• Ana Forrest Yoga
• Fierce Medicine: Breakthrough Practices to Heal the Body and Ignite the Spirit

Show Highlights:

• 14:00 – From connecting with the first peoples such as aboriginals, we can re-learn how to live in balance with nature and gain maturity as individuals and as a people.
• 16:42 – There is a spiritual bereftness to people today. This can be changed through ritual, ceremony, and bringing alive ancient traditions.
• 19:41 – Tune in here for Jose’s drawing a connection between the “Aboriginal Dream Time” and Universal Consciousness and savasana.
• 26:58 – Ever wondered why rooms are smoked out with incense or other offerings?
• 30:52 – One of the most value parts of spiritual practices such as yoga and sacred ceremony is the development of deep focus that we can use to cleanse our systems and find freedom in how we direct our awareness in our lives.
• 40:06 – Ceremony reminds us to be on our best behavior...but how do we keep reconnecting to ceremony to make that deep change?

Favorite Quotes:

• “We are going back into the past of these ancient peoples and trying to bring the spiritual connection which is lost in this middle class nothingness” – Jose Calarco
• “We often start doing yoga from a superficial place, but all of a sudden, we start to wake up.” – Cate Stillman
• “It’s amazing to me how many of our people carry this deep, toxic belief system that’s poisoning them from the inside.” – Ana Forrest
• “We try to make it so people walk out with a sense of hope and a spring in their steps. And we do it religiously. Every time, we are trying to create that experience.” – Jose Calarco
• “With yoga, do it every day, it is your time to sit in ceremony, and that allows you to make deep changes in your life.” – Ana Forrest

BIO:

Ana Forrest has been changing people’s lives for nearly 40 years.  An internationally recognized pioneer in yoga and emotional healing, Ana created Forrest Yoga while working through her own healing from her life’s trauma and experience.  With thousands of licensed practitioners around the world, Forrest Yoga is renowned as an intensely physical, internally focused practice that emphasizes how to carry a transformative experience off the mat and into daily life.

By teaching asana, breath and an awareness of the movement of energy through the body, Ana teaches yoga from an intuitive and highly developed understanding of the human body and psyche.  With her meticulous guidance, Ana’s students cultivate an acute awareness of their own practice and life process, resulting in an exhilarating journey into self-discovery, cleansing and healing.  For Ana, this is her intent.  “In teaching Forrest Yoga, I am doing my part to mend the hoop of the people - to inspire people to clear through the stuff that hardens them and sickens their bodies so they can walk freely and lightly in a healing way, in a Beauty Way.”

Ana took her first yoga class at age 14 on a dare and became a certified instructor at age 18.  Her extensive study and clinical application of healing modalities, including homeopathic and naturopathic remedies, anatomy, reflexology, pressure point therapy, craniosacral therapies, Shiatsu, chiropractic, polarity and hands on healing, always informs her work.  In her life-long pursuit of becoming a better teacher and healer, Ana has undertaken intimate studies in Sweat Lodge, Pipe Ceremony, Vision Quest and Sundance with various Native American and African healers.

Ana is an ordained practitioner of Native American Medicine, a Reiki Master, a Certified Regression Therapist, and a graduate of Anthony Robbins Master University.   She is a Faculty Member at The University of Bridgeport College of Chiropractic and sits on the Boards of F.A.R.E. Play (Foundation for Athletic Research and Education) and Earth & Sky Circle (organization for Native American Ceremony).  She is the recipient of a Los Angeles Mayoral Commendation recognizing her outstanding teaching and healing work in the community, the first time a major U.S. city bestowed such an honor on a yogi or yogini.  Ana is a regular contributor to Yoga Journal and a consultant to the USAF 48th Fighter Wing (RAF Lakenheath, UK), Exalted Warrior Foundation (Tampa, FL) and hiwecanhelp.org (Newcastle, UK).

Ana has generated extensive worldwide media coverage.  She continues to teach throughout the year around the world.  Her book, Fierce Medicine: Breakthrough Practices to Heal the Body and Ignite the Spirit, (HarperOne) was released May 2011.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays! I chose to release this episode during the week we celebrate Christ’s birthday because there is a lot that goes into birthing a new human being. If you listen from a place of understanding your own conception story, your own preconception story, your own postpartum story - if you are a mother. If you go back through those experiences with every offspring that you’ve had, if you go through each of those stories, those experiences, then you are going to get so much out of this episode.

I talk with Grace Edison, a member of the Yogahealer Tribe, who talks with a lot of the tribe members. She’s got her finger on the pulse and she brings me these great questions from what is arising in the community. Again, happy holidays and I hope you enjoy the show.

Links:

• For Uttara Basti Recipes: Women's Power to Heal: Through Inner Medicine by Maya Tiwari
• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by  Jocko Willink + Leif Babin
• Self-Massage Tipsheet

I hope over the holidays you have time to tap into you, and your self care. Today, to inspire that, I talk with Shel Pink, who built the brand, Spa Ritual, a self-care product brand based in Ayurveda. She’s recently launched a book, Slow Beauty, which shares rituals and recipes to feed the body and nourish the soul. It’s a beautiful book, very inspiring, and very down to earth Ayurveda--it is very accessible to those who are not - yet - very into Ayurveda.

• Tune in to the ease, simplicity, and lack of barriers of an Ayurvedic self-care practice
• Understand how to build in the seasonal and fluid nature of self-care rhythms and rituals

• Slow Beauty as a form of meditation / The “Spiritualization of Beauty”
• “How To” – Slow Beauty mapping
• Daily/weekly/monthly rituals to form your slow beauty practice
• Anti-anti-aging – Holding youth rather than growing old

• 9:02 – Do you read the labels on your skin care products such as sunscreen?
•  12:53 – Self care is for everyone. Price should not be a barrier to self care and the philosophy behind Slow Beauty.
•  17:00 – Cate and Shel discuss mapping a seasonal and changing self-care practice.
•  21:12 – How do we deal with overwhelm as we try to align to the stately, slow beauty of self care in the high-paced modern world?

• SpaRitual
• Slow Beauty
• FREE WEBINAR: 
  Align Into the Next Level of Integrity in Body & Dharma for 2018 with Cate Stillman

• “I think people globally are feeling the pinch of stress, anxiety, depression, and entrepreneurs in the health and wellness fields are launching brands that speak to that need. And consumers are waking up and realizing that they can make purchasing decisions that meet their own needs.”  – Shel Pink
• “All for wellness, wellness for all. It is our birthright.” – Shel Pink
• “I really recommend a seasonal approach to self-care practice. To connect to nature and to realize the fluid and changing nature of reality.” – Shel Pink
• “It’s these slower practices that are going to help us reduce stress and anxiety.” – Shel Pink

What’s happening for people who are more awake and aligned heading toward the solstice? This time of the cycle for those in the northern hemisphere is about the deepest of reflections and planting of seeds, it’s not about doing, it’s about reflecting. It’s about mindful, deliberate selection of which seeds to plant. For those heading towards the summer solstice, it is a time for harvesting what was planted last winter.

Even though as a global culture, we’ve moved away from planet-based rhythms, and have habits and customs around that run counter to this, we can still find ways to align to the deeper rhythms and the abundance of nature.

I rap with Grace Edison about Aligning Your Solstice

• Agni during winter is at its deepest. Winter solstice is an incredibly powerful opportunity to reflect, digest, incorporate how the choices of the past year played out
• It takes work to stay aligned to our values when culture values are strong, such as around holidays, but doing so during winter plants powerful, powerful seeds that we will harvest in the coming year

What you’ll get out of tuning in:    

• Understand how to align to the stillness and reflective nature of winter solstice
• See how you can incorporate winter solstice reflection into your seasonal rhythm
• Understand the inner power and potential we develop when we stay aligned to our values and seek reflection during winter solstice

Related podcasts:

• Winter Solstice Rituals and Conversation about Depth of Connection with Kids and Teens with Jeanie Manchester

Show Highlights:

• 6:04 — Deep winter holds the deepest agni. It’s now that we can thoroughly metabolize the past year
• 10:18 — The power of reconciling, taking a deep look at our behavior and digesting it, is the solstice practice.
• 15:44 — Staying aligned to our values can be more challenging when cultural values are in peak states like during the holidays, but we have the capacity to stay aligned to ourselves and our values

Favorite Quotes:

• “There’s an absolute, undeniable opportunity this time of year to reconciling to the choices we’ve been making and ways we’ve been spending energy” - Cate Stillman
• “Winter solstice is the practice of using the dark to look at the light” - Cate Stillman
  
  

I had a great conversation with Elaine Taylor-Klaus, who has done an amazing job creating an online resource for parents raising kids with LD, anxiety, ADHD, and related challenges, ImpactADHD.com. Parents and coaches who work with complex kids often find themselves really loving her work.

Complex can mean a whole host of things, from Indigo children, to anxiety, to neurological issues, to you name it. What is important about supporting complex children (for that matter, all children) is figuring out how to meet them where they are.

I rap with Elaine Taylor-Klaus about:

• Adopting a coaching mindset for raising complex kids
• Mindset and perspective shifts for breaking the parenting mold
• The power to shift culture that comes from shifting our parenting to meeting children where they are

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• How to break your own parenting mold
• Naughty vs. Neurological behavior
• The Value of articulating your values

Links:

• Touch Stone Coaching

Related podcasts:

• Awake Modern Families with Child Mindfulness Expert Ian Hoge

Show Highlights:

• 3:42‒Tune in here for the differences between therapy and coaching
• 10:58‒Cate and Elaine explore how mindset and perspective can be used to break the parenting mold
• 12:42‒Is this behavior naughty, or neurological? Hop in here for the value of asking what’s really happening with my kid in this moment.
• 20:42‒Tune in here for a hit of the power to change the world from raising conscious children
• 28:58‒Elaine and Cate discuss the power of parenting confidence and family values

Favorite Quotes:

• “We often talk about parenting from a place of inspiration, not desperation” ‒Elaine Taylor-Klaus
• “What’s driving naughty behavior? What do they really want? Because kids don’t want to be ‘bad’”‒Elaine Taylor-Klaus
• “Where does this kid feel like they fit into the whole? Now that they’re connected, where are they able to connect and help the culture move forward?” ‒Cate Stillman
• “We are all born with values. We have thousands of values. We have a dozen or so ‘lead’ values. 9 times out of 10 what brings an adult to coaching is they are out of sync with their own values.” ‒Elaine Taylor-Klaus

BIO:

Elaine Taylor-Klaus, PCC, CPCC, and Diane Dempster MHSA, PCC, CPC, co-founders of ImpactADHD.com, an online resource for parents raising kids with LD, Anxiety, ADHD, and related challenges. Parent educators and certified coaches with 6 complex kids between two families, they are internationally recognized for their realistic and effective "coach-approach" to parenting complex kids. ImpactADHD's award-winning blog and programs teach Parent Management, providing training, coaching and support for parents to confidently raise independent & successful kids. Authors of Parenting ADHD Now: Easy Intervention Strategies to Empower Kids with ADHD, they help parents reduce stress and enjoy raising complex children.

I talk about what the energies of vata, pitta, and kapha are in the human system and how to put them to work for you. You can tap into your next level of rhythm, flow, and efficiency when you tap into your doshas. So if you’re wanting your doshas to work for your dharma, this show is for you.

Once we really understand how vata, pitta, and kapha work, then we can really tell when they are out of balance, then we can use our understanding of them to bring more balance and ease to our lives. For example, a person without a lot of ‘flow’ or water in their lives, needs to be mindful of that and build habits around flow. Dana Skoglund and I dive down into the founding ideas of Ayurveda for a practical take that you can begin to use right away.

I rap with Dana Skoglund  about:

• How to live in alignment with the energies of vata, pitta, and kapha: action, vision, and surrender
• The value of seeing and playing with the rhythms in our lives

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• See how living in alignment with doshic energies minimizes chaos, stress, and fear responses
• Understand how to test for rhythm efficiency to live a more fulfilled, and productive life

Related podcasts:

• How Your Doshas Support Your Dharma
• Doshas, Koshas, Chakras + Your Cellular Memory
• Does Your Career Work for Your Dosha?
• Unearth Your Dream with Cate Stillman
• The Wisdom of Rhythm, Integrity + Dharma with Acharya Shunya
• Productivity + Connectivity Tips for a Dharmic Life

Show Highlights:

• 10:59--Cate discusses the value of the iterative process of self-evolution and its vata nature
• 16:23--The return to rest and easefulness, the kapha nature of life, matters
• 19:54--Tune in here for the importance of studying nature and universal energy

Favorite Quotes:

• “Energy can move in energy direction, that’s vata, but we can start to see that certain channels are worth developing, and that’s empowering.” -Cate Stillman
• “The more I wanna tune that juice up--within its natural pulsation--all I have to do is refine the rhythm” -Cate Stillman
• “You have to earn this level of surrender and how you earn it is rhythm” -Cate Stillman
• “If you can’t cultivate that identity of, this is who I’m becoming, then the actions and behaviors won’t follow” -Dana Skoglund

As we wind down the year we are often in a place of reflecting on what went down in the past year. Today’s show is on persistence and timing. I talk a bit about what went down for me in 2017 and the power of persistence. Many of you might have read The Power of Grit, by Angela Duckworth, and one of my favorite quotes from that book is, “Enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare.” 2017 was all about endurance for me, and that is a lot of what I talk about in this episode.

I rap about:

• Angela Duckworth’s The Power of Grit, and the power of endurance and truly overcoming something
• The very real struggle that is working towards our dreams
• The importance of giving yourself permission to feel deeply into *whatever* is arising

What you’ll get out of tuning in: 

• Understand that in order to get what we want, we have to change
• Re-direct your beliefs and habits about your own success and orienting towards goals
• Understand the importance and practice of extreme ownership--owning everything that happens in your life

Links:

• Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
• William James: Habit
• Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Related podcasts:

• Conscious Daydreaming is How You Connect to Your Future with Summer McStravick
• JJ Virgin and the Miracle Mindset: Overcoming Life’s Hardest Lessons
• How Fear Disqualifies Us from Stepping into Potential: with Yoga Health Coach Grace Edison
• My Best 10 Career Tips to Grow Your Wellness Practice
• Get Out of Your Box & into Your Journey with Allie Van Fossen
• Exponential Growth + Collective Leadership: A conversation with Tracey Duncan
• The Wisdom of Rhythm, Integrity + Dharma with Acharya Shunya

Show Highlights:

• 4:23 - Cate discusses the need to embrace self change
• 14:20 - Tune in here for the discussion on ownership of one’s experience

Favorite Quotes:

• “Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.” - William James: Habit
• “Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”  ― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
  
• “Nobody wants to show you the hours and hours of becoming. They'd rather show the highlight of what they've become.”― Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
• “I learned a lesson I’d never forget. The lesson was that, when you have setbacks and failures, you can’t overreact to them.”― Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
• “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”― Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance