Settling in - yes. You're uncomfortable...good...now relax.

With grows/exploration/being creative, initially, there is resistance. Resistance to change. Resistance to the possibility of failure. --Successful people find ways to overcome this resistance.

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Here's some irony for you...I work in a great fitness facility and I am so busy, it is very hard for me to workout with any consistancy. So... I decided to start doing yoga in the mornings before work (stress management with the crazy holiday season coming up!)

After some initial bumps in creating a plan, this morning I did my first home yoga session. Have you ever tried to touch your toes at 5:30am before having coffee? I can assure you, every single muscle was soooo tight -- even the opening poses were difficult.

As I was struggling through the routine, a rememberance of an article about yoga popped into my head. Now...for those of you who don't know -- yoga is a whole lifestyle comprised of much more than just the poses you see on TV.

The idea behind yoga (or my paraphrased version, anyway) is that yoga poses put you into uncomfortable positions (positions that make muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints stretch) and ask you to relax into the discomfort. Yoga makes you stand in ways that make you very unstable with the goal of not falling down -- and be relaxed in your stance. Yoga asks you to challenge yourself so that you become less rigid, more flexible, better balanced and have greater understanding of your body. All of this for healthy growth.

Are you making the leap I'm leading you to?

Okay -- yoga is a metaphore for you mindful eating practice. Putting yourself in the uncomfortable (and sometimes scary) position of trusting your sensations of hunger and fullness and relaxing about the outcome.

In the beginning, is feels very foreign and unnatural -- how can you relax? You have been trained to be forever vigilant for the foods that are going to cause you to blow your diet!! But as you practice, as you start to link how you feel with what you do and what you do with how you feel. You become more adept at dealing with the discomfort of living by your own insights. You become better balanced with the amounts you eat. You become less rigid with your food rules and more flexible in your outlooks on eating.

All of this promotes personal growth --healthier patterns of eating and more joy with eating and non-eating times.