Browse published articles attributed to Abigail Steidley, with full-archive search.
Rest is one of those topics that we frequently forget to consider, and yet it is possibly the most important thing we can do for our souls and our bodies alike.
I get emails from clients like the sample below pretty much every week: Agh! I think something is terribly wrong with me! Oh no! I am crying a lot! I feel terrible! What should I do? I can’t live like this! What if I’m never happy again! To which I usually reply something like this: Yay! Soooo glad you are crying and feeling your emotions! Don’t worry – this won’t last forever. It’s what we’ve been hoping to accomplish. Remember when you said you wanted to stop stuffing your emotions and actually feel them? Well, this is the beginning!
A practical article connected into the broader SelfGrowth topic graph.
I’m typing this blog post in bed. I’ve got a nasty bug that has made my throat agonizingly sore, my head pound, and my body ache. I’m sporting the Rudolph nose at the moment. My voice is gone. My brain is fuzzy and all I can seem to contemplate is this soft, fuzzy blanket on my bed. There’s truly something amazing about soft, fuzzy blankets. I’m telling you. Snuggling under one is one of life’s best treats.
I’ve developed the theory that to be relaxed, healthy, confident, and joyful adults we must rediscover our natural brilliance from toddler-hood. I’m lucky enough to have two nieces who are currently sharing their brilliance with me. The youngest, who is twenty months old, has been coaching me lately simply by being herself.
In the Great School of Life, I just took a class on loss and change. No teacher is quite like life experience. I learned much from my recent journey through the grieving process, and I thought you might benefit from a few mind-body techniques and concepts around loss.
Right now, I have a group of coaches taking my Mind-Body Coach Training. They’ve been thrown into what I call The Mess as they experience the first part of the training. This just means that they are learning how to feel emotions, what to do with body tension and pain, and discovering that their minds have the ability to create a lot of extraneous stress.
One of the most common traits of people who suffer from pelvic pain syndrome: perfectionism. (I use the phrase pelvic pain syndrome as a blanket description for syndromes such as vulvodynia, interstitial cystitis, irritable bowel syndrome, vulvar vestibulitis, pelvic floor dysfunction, and others.) We are often perfectionists, overachievers, overly responsible, and burn-the-candle-at-both-ends people. Though I take a pause here to say that the labels aren’t really that important. They just help us see how we are being in the world right now – not how we are doomed to exist forever.
When was the last time you played like a five-year-old? If it was when you actually were five years old, then this is an emergency. Go get a box of crayons, stat! I have the luxury of enjoying the company of a five-year-old regularly. My niece, Emmy, is currently teaching me about living joyfully. She’s reminding me of all the things I forgot from my five-year-old days, and I have to say, I think these are really the essentials a person needs in life. Here’s a summary: 1) Play hard, then sleep hard. Preferably with your dog snuggled next to you.