RawJoy--the lifestyle that heals and supports your body, mind and spirit

Last month we had a lunar eclipse, a solar eclipse and the Spring Equinox....all events that accompany profound personal and global changes in energy and experience. I am going to share with you one of the changes in my life that has raised my vibration and altered my experience in the most positive ways.

For almost a year now, I have been learning about and implementing a wonderful lifestyle change. I am eating a raw, vegan diet. Now, honestly a year ago this would have been unthinkable for me. All raw foods? Are you nuts? But personal evolution being what it is, and setting intentions for what I want, being an amazing and powerful process.....here I am eating all raw, vegan foods every day.

The transtion from cooked or what we refer to as SAD (Standard American Diet) took time. It's still in process actually, since from time to time--although very infrequently these days--I still will have a bite of cooked foods. See, I set my intention to be the most radiant, healthiest, most alive and joyful ME I could possibly be, and I was quickly led to this lifestyle. Over the course of several months I ate a higher and higher percentage of raw foods: fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. I learned about how to create delicious dishes that satisfied my palate and my stomach. I was having great fun with it.

Then I realized that I wasn't really losing much weight doing this and I found a website that promised fast weightloss using the principles of the raw food journey. It turned out that while I learned a lot of valuable information about manipulating my food for weight loss on this plan, it was not a good fit for me for a number of reasons. So I left and returned to my own unique evolving, joyful raw food lifestyle.

I have good friends who have chosen this lifestyle also, so we support each other, coach each other, and are making great progress: I've lost over 20 lbs to date and am losing more each week.

Besides weight loss, so many things are changing since I've begun this way of eating: all kinds of skin changes are taking place. Until I was 45 and my hormones began to change, my skin was beautiful, and then blemishes of all sizes and sorts started to appear. I was not happy about this. But eating raw foods, which the body is designed for and is able to use for healing and renewal, those changes amazingly, are reversing. Unatractive skin tags are falling off, pesky little moles disappearing, spider veins fading, skin glowing. And in addition, the achiness in my hips that came with my active lifestyle is gone, my shoulder impingement syndrome has healed and I am playing tennis again. The list of positive healing and changes is long and wonderful. If you do a bit of research you will find stories of healing and rejuvenation stemming from this lifestyle.

As time goes on, it has become easier and easier to eat in a way which I once thought impossible. It's now a pleasure to eat and not experience bloating, indigestion, fatigue, headaches, etc. I am eating like a queen, as my good friend is fond of saying, and I am loving it and feeling the abundance and joy of it on a daily basis. The emotional changes are profound too, steady, stable, and joyful is where I am the majority of the time. Focus and attention are improved....well, as I said, the list of positive changes is long and wonderful.

I learned most of what I know about the raw and living food lifestyle from Alissa Cohen's book, Living on Live Foods. You will find links to hers and other raw lifestyle sites on the Resources page of www.EveryDayJoy.com

I will be starting a separate blog called RawJoy to chronicle my raw journey, and am adding raw lifestyle coaching to my repetoire. I'm happy to share this wholesome,healing, joyful path with you!

Remember, "where your attention goes, the energy flows" so choose well where to place your emotional and mental attention to create your own Every Day Joy!! Focus on what you are wanting, what you desire, and the Universe will provide the "how" of it, just as it has for me in bringing me to this raw journey to health, radiance and even more Joy!

Warmly,
Jan

The most powerful turnaround

How much time do you spend focused on what you don't want? If you're like most people, probably a lot. It's how we're taught to change things: find what's wrong, put your attention on it, and work at changing it, reminding yourself along the way that whatever it is, is still not right.

Guess what? That strategy is totally and completely backwards, and will only succeed in getting you more of.....what you DON'T want!

What if I told you that I was going to offer you a f.ree mp3 file about accessing more joy on a daily basis? Would you focus on the fact that you didn't have it yet, or would you immediately begin to imagine what it would be like to download it and listen to it, and how that would positively impact your life? (PS I will be offering just that in the near future on my re-vamped website, so check back.)

What if I told you that I could tell you how to achieve safe, permanent, quick weight loss? Would you sit there focusing on how overweight you are, or would you start feeling excited about the possibilities for new health, atractiveness and well-being for yourself? (Yep, I'm going to be offering this too, so come back and visit.)

If any of you saw Dick Clark on the New Year's Rockin' Eve show, you saw that he's amazingly well recovered from his stroke. Do you think he achieved that recovery by keeping his attention on how he couldn't speak, or that he set a goal for himself of being able to speak and got energized and excited imagining himself on TV again?

You intuitively know the answers to all these questions. What we want more than anything is to feel good! And the easiest way to feel good is to focus on what you want, rather than what you don't want.

The point is that you will definitely get more of what you focus on, so choose your focus well. Put your attention on the things that you want, and keep bringing your attention back to those things, even --especially--when your mind wanders to the things you don't want. The train of your thoughts is just a habit which you can change.

And I promise, you will find your life beginning to change in remarkable ways.

This one seemingly small shift will have an amazing and wonderful impact on your life.

Try it and see!

Warmly,

Jan
The Every Day Joy Coach
www.EveryDayJoy.com

Getting excited about an old hobby of mine

I'm paying more attention to an old love of mine these days: photography! I've got a great digital camera which I've had for about a year now, and while the learning curve to use it has been steep, I'm taking some wonderful pictures with it. It is such a satisfying hobby for me.

I love the digital crispness of the pictures, browsing through the pictures on my computer, sharing them on the tv after a family event, printing the ones I love, and sharing them via email with friends and family.

Framing the world through a viewfinder (I still prefer the viewfinder to the LCD screen) is a way for me to focus intensely and passionately on things, people, places and experiences that bring me joy. It is such a visual pleasure, I love the creative aspect of framing, and choosing what to shoot, how and where. And I've always loved the feel of the camera in my hands, ever since I got my first little Kodak for Christmas when I was about eight.

I'm sure my love of photography began with my father and the pictures he was famous in our family for taking when I was a little girl. He photographed everyone in the family, developed his photographs in a darkroom in our basement, and hand colored some of the enlargements he made very artistically. I vividly recall the way the darkroom glowed dimly with the red lightbulb overhead, the smell of the chemicals in their trays, and the magic of the images appearing on the paper. Those were very special moments I had with my dad.

I've got some of Dad's wonderful photos of myself as a baby, my brothers, my mom, and other family members in my home. Looking at them makes me feel warm and cozy and very happy and connected.

So, there is that whole other aspect of photography for me: the sense of being connected to the world and people around me in a positive and loving way through the camera lens. I am, in a way, in love with what I photograph, whether it is a flower, an ocean, or a person.... and it most definitely raises my own JOY quotient!

Used to be, years ago, that I almost never went anywhere without my trusty manual Minolta SRT 102 35mm camera hanging off my left shoulder. I joked that a trip I took out West, to Utah and Idaho when my daughter was five years old, was a trip I experienced "through the lens of my camera"--- it was true, and I loved every minute of it and have fabulous photographs to show for it!

I loved that camera, and grieved when it failed and wasn't fixable. Of course it failed on a lifetime trip to Sicily and England! But that's another story...which taught me a lot about letting go! Then I went for several years without taking many pictures, but these days I'm finding that there are more and more moments when I wish I had my camera with me, so I'll be carrying it around a lot more.

All of the photos on the Inspiration page of this site are mine and I'm in the process of adding more.

In the very near future, my photographs will be available to purchase on the Every Day Joy site. You'll be able to order them with or without inspirational quotes, and framed or unframed, in various sizes.

I'm very excited about expanding my work in this direction and sharing it with you.

And I'll let you know as soon as they become available.

So what's your hobby? How does it connect you to life? And is it a source of Every Day Joy for you?

Do what you love! That's what I'm doing!

Warmly,

Jan
The Every Day Joy Coach
www.EveryDayJoy.com

Meet my friend, and check out her paintings.

I want to tell you about my young friend, Rebecca Schweiger. I've known her since she was about two years old, and the cutest little curly-top with a smile a mile wide. Her mom, Ingrid and I have been very close friends all this time. Becky is in her late twenties now, beautiful, a warm and wonderful person, and an artist of well-deserved international renown.

Becky majored in art in college, and is one of those gifted people who is able to express her deepest heart and soul in graphic images on canvas. What she creates is stunning! It has a maturity and depth that is surprising in such a young person,The scope, beauty and power of her work are phenomenal! I am moved and touched by her images and I'm betting you will be too.

Words can't do Rebecca's work justice, so I'll just give you her web address and encourage you to visit and view her latest paintings.

Also check out her art classes both in New York City, and more exotic venues, like Tuscany. She teaches her students to use artistic media to access and express their spiritual side. And she can do this because she knows how to do that herself.

I am happy to introduce you to her!

Check out www.rebeccarts.com

EnJOY!!

Warmly,

Jan
The Every Day Joy Coach
www.EveryDayJoy.com