creating a balanced lifestyle.

hey! i am on the beach. while i am gone, i have a series of guest posts lined up from many of my fabulous blogging friends. enjoy!

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Hi, I am Sarah Stevenson, a.k.a., The Tini Yogini. I am a Certified Yoga Instructor in Southern California.  I have a degree in Behavioral Psychology and teach yoga classes and life affirming workshops.  I also write for Beachbody, which provides effective and popular workout videos.

Today I am going to talk to you about creating a balanced lifestyle.

Creating a Balanced Lifestyle

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Have you ever met someone who’s brilliant to the point of sexy, yet severely lacking in the personal grooming department? Or maybe you’ve encountered someone with an irresistibly gorgeous physique, but as soon as they open their mouth, they’re as shallow as beer can backwash. Then there are those rare individuals who are so soulful that they’re no earthly good…they emanate a pure positive aura but live in their car because they spend 10 of their waking hours meditating. For most humans, one of these three things – intellect, body, or soul – comes naturally. But what about the other two? How do you balance them?

The first thing we need to identify is what comes most naturally for you. Personally, have no problem feeding the physical. I exercise 5 days a week, eat healthy and groom impeccably. So in order for me to be a balanced individual, I need to focus my attention each day on the intellect and the soul. To find out what comes most easily for you, spend the next few days documenting your activities. Figure out what you tend to feed the most and what may need a bit more attention.

Once you have determined what you need to work on, here are ways you can feed the Body, Mind and Soul each day:

Body

When you feed the body, you pay attention to your outer exterior-skin, hair, teeth, eyes, etc…as well as the interior- organs, muscles, bones, joints, etc. Find things that keep your body physically healthy. Exercise, grooming and eating healthy all fall under this category. Some days you’ll do 10 things for the body and others maybe just 2. You want to make sure that if you have 10 ways that you fed your body today, you also have 10 ways you fed the mind and 10 ways you fed the soul.

Mind

Research regarding the brain suggests that if you don’t use it you will lose it (1). It’s called “Brain Plasticity” and it involves stimulating your mind in a way that will wake up areas of the brain that were otherwise asleep. Make sure you’re continually learning new things. It can be as easy as reading, crossword puzzles, going to workshops and chess or as complex as going back to school and getting a degree in a new subject.

Soul

Without soul, we have no hope for meaningful life. Anything that inspires you can count as feeding your soul. Sometimes it’s just quieting the mind through meditation that can serve as soul food. Drumming, listening to music, spending time in nature, writing down your dreams are all activities that feed the soul. You can also spend time journaling, which helps identify an undercurrent of meaning and purpose that exist within your days. Feeding our soul makes life a richer more fulfilling experience.

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Bringing it all together

In order to make sure you’re maintaining balance, create a chart and check off activities that fulfill each of these categories. (As a bonus, make this chart counts as a “Mind” activity!)

My chart looks a lot like this:

Body	Mind	Soul
Oatmeal and green tea for breakfast	Chess game	Dream Journal
Hot Shower	Ted Talk YouTube Video	Meditate
5 mile walk	20 minutes of reading	Lunch with Best Friend
Reflexology Massage	Play a game of scrabble with friends	10 thousand steps in Nature

You will find that as you start to balance yourself out you will also start to attract more balanced individuals into your life. It makes like a lot easier when your body, mind and soul are all getting along nicely. Becoming a well-rounded, balanced individual can be as easy as 1, 2, 3. Try it out today; you will be pleasantly surprised how fulfilling life can be.

Thanks for reading!

Qs~

How do you maintain balance in your life?

Tagged as: balance