Happy And Healthy Lifestyle

“Sometimes deciding who you are is deciding who you’ll never be again.” ~Anonymous May 13 th , 2011. I finally surrendered to the fact that I had a drinking problem and desperately needed help. The comments from acquaintances, the concern from friends, the complaints from my flatmates, the intensity of my depression, the conversations with my therapist—they all culminated in the decision that I had to break the chains from my liquid abuser. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, one that entailed waving goodbye to the life that I had led before and diving into a new one where I didn’t have any points of reference and safety handles to grasp. At that time, the only option I thought was available to me was AA, so I emailed their helpline on that Friday at 2:43 p.m. Only an hour later I received a response from someone who seemed to care and understood my turmoil and despair, who took the time to share some of her own story, which I could relate to. I began going to meeting...

TRIGGER WARNING: This post references sexual abuse and may be triggered to some people. “ The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” ~Steve Maraboli My family immigrated to the U.S. from India when I was sixteen. Being Indian, my traditional family expected me to have an arranged marriage. At twenty-two, as a graduate music student, I fell in love with an American man. When my family found out about our secret relationship, they took me back to India and put me under house arrest. For a year. That year of imprisonment and isolation was severely traumatizing. I shut down from my acute distress and pain. I dissociated from myself, my truth, my power, my body, my heart, and my sexuality. Two years after they let me out, I escaped to the US but was emotionally imprisoned by my past. I lived dissociated, afraid, and ashamed for eighteen years. Eventually, I bro...

“Trying to change ourselves does not work in the long run because we are resisting our own energy. Self-improvement can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.” ~ Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You In my late thirties, I was a yoga teacher and an avid practitioner. I lived by myself in a small but beautiful studio apartment in Tel Aviv, Israel, right next to the beach. Every morning I woke up in my large bed with a majestic white canopy and said a morning prayer. I meditated for an hour and practiced pranayama and yoga asana for another hour and a half. When I was done, I prepared myself a healthy breakfast and sat at the rectangular wooden dining table, facing a huge window and the row of ficus trees that kept me hidden from the world. I ate slowly and mindfully. Since then, my life has shifted. I found love, got married, had a child, started a new business, and moved to live in the US. I...

“Yesterday was heavy—put it down.” ~Unknown Death is still taboo in many parts of the world, yet I must confess that I’ve become fascinated with the art of dying well. I was thinking about the word “morbid” the other day, as I heard someone use it when berating her friend for his interest in better preparing for death. The word’s definition refers to “an unhealthy fixation on death and dying,” but who gets to define what’s healthy? And why are so many of us keen to avoid discussing the inevitable? We talk about death from time to time on our podcast, and it’s through this work that I’ve been contemplating the topic of regret. We all have a story, and they’re rarely fairy tales. As we doggedly plow through life’s box of chocolates, it’s not uncommon for us to say (or not say) and do (or not do) things that we later regret. However, if we motor on, never assessing or addressing the regretful moments from our past, could we hold onto remorse for years? In such cases, are we unconsci...

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” ~Jack Canfield Freezing in fear is something I have done since I was a child. My first home was an unsafe one, living with my alcoholic granddad. Once upon a time I didn’t know life without fear. I learned young to scan for danger. How were everyone’s moods? Were the adults okay today? I would freeze and be still and quiet in an attempt to keep myself safe and control an eruption. Unknown to me, between the ages of conception and seven years old my nervous system was being programmed. The house I grew up in was shaping how safe I felt in my body. Living in a house with domestic abuse and alcoholism and losing my beautiful grandmother who cared for me at five was enough to make that foundation within me shaky. I learned to be on high alert, scanning for danger always, and became incredibly hypervigilant and super sensitive to the moods of others. Sometimes this superpower of mine kept me safe as a child. My dad wouldn’t always ...

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” ~Richard Bach I have always wanted to create a family. As a child, I lovingly cared for my dolls and fell head over heels for my college boyfriend. Kneeling before me with a ring, he said, “I want you to be the mother of our children.” I swooned as we walked down the aisle at the tender age of twenty-two, convinced I was set for life. I had the husband, and I would have the family. I entered into our marriage with the expectation and security of certainty. We had vowed to be together for life, so I believed that was the truth. But I had another love besides my husband. I was in love with performing. After a childhood of classes in the arts, I was accepted into the BFA Musical Theater Program’s inaugural year at Penn State University. I soaked every minute up and graduated with summer work already booked and the plan to move to New York City with my new husband and dive into my career. Creating a f...

“I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.” ~Brené Brown A few years ago, when I began recovering from childhood trauma, the first thing I learned was that I needed to master the skill of self-awareness. However, becoming aware came with some pretty hard truths about who I was, what I did, and how I acted because of what had happened to me. Although I eventually found the courage to face some challenging experiences from my past, I wasn’t ready to forgive and accept myself. When I acknowledged the impact of my past trauma and abuse on my current life, I immediately started blaming myself. It was difficult to accept that I pleased people to gain validation and stayed in toxic relationships since I didn’t feel worthy or lovable. Therefore, I went straight for what I knew and was accustomed to—judgment, guilt, and shame. As Bessel van der Kolk explained in his book The Body Keeps the Score : “While we all wan...

“Emotion in itself is not unhappiness. Only emotion plus an unhappy story is unhappiness.” ~Eckhart Tolle When my mother told me, “Honey, you don’t understand; you can’t,” initially I felt like she was being condescending. It was Mother’s Day and, unbeknownst to me, the last time I’d see her before her final hospital visit. We’d spent that Saturday updating her computer, watching waves at the beach, and picking up seashells, then eating dinner at a popular local restaurant frequented by travelers, including famous musicians on tour buses because of its location off of the interstate. By early evening, we were lying on her bed talking mostly about nothing important. However, when she mentioned that she was organizing all her pictures in zip lock bags for her two sisters, my brother, and me, it sounded strange yet significant. “Why?” I asked. “I’m not going to live forever,” she said. “But you’re doing fine right now,” I responded referring to her health at the moment. Her health...