Cozy up with Spaciousness

Hoping this finds you in 

merry Spirits this weekend!

Knowing this can be a very busy time

for many, I want to share two simple tips

to stay calm, cool + collected 

this month.  

These tips

 involve your day to day 

presence and consciousness.

That's all. 

But, when embraced, they can be Life changing. 


This truly will be quick, as I know you are busy, 

so bear with me. 

No. 1 

When is the last time you stopped to feel your breath?

Like, really, really, feel it, as in...

From the tip of your tongue, and into your lungs....how your 

core expands and contracts, and, how your mind feels more 

fresh, asthe Air both nourishes, and detoxifies the cells in 

your body.

So many of us forget to breath. 

Yet, it is one of the most natural, and simple tools in which 

we can feed, and care for, our bodies. 



The act of five deep breathes can actually trick

 your mind, and, body into believing 

it is not stressed. 

True story. 


No. 2    Refining your cellphone etiquette isn't just for the 

person in front of you {in Real-Time Life}, it's for you.

By creating a few tiny boundaries between you, and your 

cellphone/camera/email machine/home office/beeper 

{yeah, remember those?}, 

you can *actually* allow yourself some of the downtime you 

are always dreaming about...or, maybe even wining about...

I know I do at times!

So, I'm asking you to turn that sucker off, or,

place it in a really inconvenient to reach space

for an extended period of time.

How long?

Long enough to make you

 a little uncomfortable. 

Really. 

Just try it. 

You may experience chills, or, hallucinations,

but, I promise, you will get through it.

Very likely, so will your friends, and children.

If you must, send a memo of momentary unavailability.

I know how hard it can be hard to allow yourself such  

permission, but, you really do deserve 

some simply "off the hook" time. 

I am willing to step out on a limb here, 

and say that, maybe, just maybe, 

biologically speaking, you actually need it. 

And, though the scientific studies have 

just begun, regarding our physical, emotional, 

and, mental health in relationship to cellphones,

 I personally think it will not be long 

before science recognizes the stress-inducing impact 

that being "on" all the time has,

 in regards to our health. 

Historically, we are social creatures. 

We thrive on connection.

Yet, it is wild to see how left out so many can feel

when the loyalty to a cellphone wins over 

a potential conversation,

a smile, or, greeting of eye contact.

Though, only a foot away, and completely 

engaged in our space, people can end up 

feeling a world away.

And so, his holiday season seems like the perfect time to 

begin a commitment of re-engagement.

If we don't set boundaries, we may find ourselves 

unknowingly hurting others, or, being hurt. 

We may find ourselves multitasking with

 our cellphones at the most inappropriate times... 

We may miss out on so many meaningful 

gifts, stories, and, new friendships to share.

So, this holiday, and year to come, 

I ask you to join me in becoming 

more proactive in your kindness, 

to turn up your respect, and, 

acknowledgement,

 of everyone  within your community.  

I ask you to take more time to breathe. 

While shipping among strangers, 

chatting with old friends, 

sharing libations with loved ones...

consider turning your loyalty to your cellphone down... 

...for the day, for the hour, and, for those 

precious moments we have to share. 

It will allow you more time to breath, and, 

more time to enjoy 

your In Real Life. Now. 

And, on that note, if you are feeling ambitious while reaching 

for your phone for the third time in five minutes...

instead of looking at the screen, 

take five deep breathes, 

and move along. 

Maybe even step outside for a brisk fix of fresh Air...


That's all I have for you today. 

I do wish you a Joy-filled holiday. 

I hope to hear from you soon, 

or, in the New Year.

If this speaks to you, 

Let me know how you hope to 

create spaciousness in your Life, 

and, into your community. 

Thank you for being you, 

for supporting the healing work at Nourish,

 and, for fostering Light in our community.


And, as always, gift certificates are available for purchase.

I have a scheduled batch of orders to ship out next week. 

Let me know by email, text or phone {below}, and I can ship

 some out to you as well, or, schedule a later date for pick up.

Plant Love + Light Hearts,

Nishaan Sandhu

      

 {Nourish} Body + Botanicals

   
  Mind, Body, Heart & Soul.

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                    Nourish, llc | Lexington KY | (502) 802-8036 

Living With The Fall Season: Inspiring Your Creative Voice. (part 3)

This is a re-post of my Living with the Seasons series from 2012

AUTUMN

{Living with the Fall Season Part 3}

Inspire your creative voice, honor your dreams, stay hydrated, and create.

Wow, it is already November! I can't believe it. We are beginning to wind down with the beginning of fall's whimsy as our energies deepen further into the ground. Before our out environment grows much more moist and cool, I would like to share some ways to help you to deal with the dryness that can ensue with fall. 

I will touch on the creative aspects of fall to inspire your breath of creativity and expand the energy of your voice.  As I have mentioned in the past, over the years I have noticed during the early fall months,

Your Body Journal 2: Creating A Journal That Is Uniquely You {Re-post from 2012}

Cultivating Body Awareness Through Your Journal Making It Your Own...

You know your body better than anyone else; 

it's time to ask,  listen,  and heal from within.

Part 2 of a 3 part series, on how you can use a journal to better recognize the needs of your body, mind and self. This post walks you through the many types of journals you can work with. Part 1, Listening to The Voice of Your Own Body, explain why it's so important to listen-in and Part 3, Sensing The Seasons, offers a seasonal journaling exercise you can use to deepen your body-awareness. 

Choosing Your Medium...

...Create A Journal That is Uniquely You!

Since I was a young child I have created piles, and piles of journals. My first journals were hard bound, colorful and complete; the gold-edged pages secured by a mini lock and key. By the time I was in my twenties my journals took on many incarnations; a scrappy spiral notebook disguised by a collage of magazine clippings, the classic black and white composition notebook, a hard covered drawing pad...a pile of scrap bank receipts tucked away in the back of my day timer...and my most recent; a giant floppy sketch pad with plenty of freedom to write and draw as big or little as I feel like doing in that very moment. The greatest thing I have learned over all these years is--anything goes--as long as it's you and true, you are on your way to journaling.

Recording your thoughts, feelings, dreams, memories, and observations can be highly therapeutic. It can be a way to record your life events, or maybe a way to find patterns of behavior in your life and the world around you. There are many ways of journaling--even more things to journal about--and, they don't all have to be written! 

Living With The Fall Season: Cultivate Body Awareness, Balance from the Outside In. (part 1)

Though, this series is from 2012, I loved writing it so much that I wanted to share it again this Autumn of 2014 <3

AUTUMN

{Living with the Fall Season Part 1}

From The Outside In: Cultivate Body Awareness, Shift With Seasonal Changes.

This is part 1 of a 4 part series on how to better live in harmony with the seasons.  

Does one season resonate with you more than others? Ever feel out of balance as the seasons change? Do you think I am crazy for even asking these questions? If you answer "yes" to any of the above, this blog post is for you ;)

This 'Living with Nature Autumn' series is made up of 4 Parts:

Part 1. From The Outside In: Cultivating Body Awareness, Shift With The Seasonal Changes.

Part 2.  Stay grounded and balanced: postural awareness, spiritual bathing, self care to avoid sinus infections and neck pain.

Part 3. Inspire your creative voice: honor your dreams, stay hydrated, and get crafty...

 Part 4. Harmony through proper food, meditation, and, movement therapies.

Photo by Nishaan Sandhu, Slade, Kentucky, 2009

AUTUMN

Living with the Seasons Part 1

When a sultry summer in Kentucky fades into Autumn, change, movement and an array of new sounds fill the air. It has always been my favorite change of season and one  of the things I most miss about living on the East coast. There, the fall always seems long, magical, crisp and colorful (well at least in my romanticized memories). Lucky for those of us in Kentucky who love fall, we have had an early one this year! Just in time to celebrate the Autumnal Equinox today.

On Fall

Autumn evokes a myriad of color and a downward swirling of energy that can rustle up a kaleidoscope of emotions. Some feel the wild stirrings of fall to be creative, inspiring, grounding, and free. While for others, the same autumnal changes feel heavy with fragile emotions, sensations of brittleness in the body and a mourning for the warmth that was summer. No matter what side of the season you fall on mentally, emotionally, or physically, there are ways to embrace the energy and inspire self-growth. While reading on, you may find some tools to help balance, inspire, harmonize and warm you up to the season. 

Questions to ask yourself: 

What side of the spectrum do you stand? How does your body and mind feel in the fall? Do you sense any drastic changes? Can you think of any "seasonal habits" that you tend towards subconsciously in order to support of your body and mind?

Feeling Our Way Through The Seasons

As a writer, Laraine Herring says, seasons are the "moods of mother earth". These moods of the earth shine onto us throughout the years; some light and some dark. Unless you choose to live somewhere that has an easy-breezy steady temperature year round, it is likely that you too may be affected by the earths moods. Some of us are more or less sensitive to the moodiness than others. We may have to work a little harder to maintain a sense of balance, but, it is possible and well worth the time. 

Just like all embodied emotions, we have a choice to work with these shifts in nature as a tool to better understand the (sometimes icky, sometimes lovely) depth that is ourselves.  

Barefoot, Almost Naked and Definitely Unabashed

That’s how I prefer my Summer to be clad.

I know, I am nearing my mid-thirties, and some may feel that’s totally inappropriate, but, all I have to say is…sorry for you.

It’s taken me decades to finally realize this AND feel comfortable embracing it…two factors that can sometimes feel like two different stories simply because our imaginations will not allow them to step into one reality.

So, maybe like many of you…I never let myself really wear shorts or skirts above the knee because I was embarrassed of the state of my legs. Yes, totally vain, I know. But, it’s true.

My whole life, even since childhood, I admired the sculpted knees of other younger girls, the narrowness of their thighs, oh, and you know that tendon that sometimes sticks out in the back? Totally jealous!

Okay…so like thirteen years after my first conscious attempt to “diet” {a word that makes me cringe, and a concept I gave up nearly a decade ago}, I am finally realizing that I am beautiful just the way that I am.

Looks are not everything, and I have a hell of a lot more to offer from my Heart, Soul, Mind and Spirit than my body would ever be able to bring forth!

And, that goes for you too!

Yeah, we need to live in our bodies, I mean, what a gift! So many gorgeous senses, so many magical experiences occur within our consciousness via our bodies.

So, Where am I Going with This….

I am sharing this because, if you are anything like me, sometimes you have to gain clarity by contrast.

 I really want to open up (or re-open) the notion or idea for you to try, just try, wearing something outside of your normal comfort zone if it makes you feel good.

And, you don’t just wear clothes. You, as a person, wear you…Mind, Heart, Body, Soul, Emotions, Spirit; it’s all you baby!

So here We are.

This week...I started small.

Ready?

I wore shorts.

These shorts are not baggy boy shorts that go down to my knees. They are not jeans rolled up just enough to hold all the heat in my pants, and, though I love em’ they are not a skirt.

They are a little bit too short for my taste short (not booty short, but, like mid thigh short), you know, the kind where you just begin to let all the flab hang out.

I did the very thing that I always considered a Nishaan-No-No and this is what I learned:

1.) I have been missing out for ages.

2.)  I may never go back to a short-less life.

3.)  I don’t really give a damn what anyone else thinks about it.

It all started after dressing for a morning walk to the park that never happened. Often, I would wear a skirt, but, Marty was wearing his totally cute short-shorts that are losing the very thread that hold them together and a t-shirt.

You know…sometimes it’s nice to match a little in casualty, so, I put the silk wrap skirt up and pulled out the only pear of shorts I own (aside from black stretchy ones, that I save for under skirts).

As I wore them, the feeling of sunshine and air on my legs was feeling pretty good.

Really, I kind of felt how I imagine a Dog feels with it’s head out the window on a car ride.

Only, I was still teetering that line of self-consciousness meets joyful.  

It was my day off so I decided to wear them to the bank where everybody knows your name. Yes, I was nearly embarrassed, and, yes, I know that is totally silly, but, I just have to be honest.

Some people wonder what others will think when they first try out their new car. I worried that people would see my legs and wonder how they got like that. 

But, I survived and didn’t receive any snickers. Or, well, I gave up on looking.

Step one: Give up the search for insecurity, scrutiny and judgment—if you look for it you’ll find it. Why stop yourself from growing outside convention?

I am all about self- reflection and growth, but, there comes a time when you’ve got to define the line that both divides and marries conscious personal evolution and just being yourself.

So, touting my big girl freedom shorts,  I made it to the local hardware store and by the time I got home I was like, “What the fuck. Why have I been holding my legs hostage from the sunshine my whole life? I am so sorry legs!”, followed by a deep feeling of not giving a shit if anyone is insulted by the sight of them.

No, they are not supple and soft, and yes, they are dimply, and, on some days, if I eat foods that help me retain water, they almost seem to hold that same chub that grace the stumpy legs of babies. 

But, whatever.

Yes, I would love to be more fit so that I can remain strong as I age, or, so that I can run *just in case* that proverbial Tiger really ever shows up. But, I am not going to hide my body simply because I have not yet gotten there.

If  you and I don’t take out health one day and one step at a time, we may never get there.

It is so easy, so easy, to feel paralyzed by guilt—be it over seeming laziness, tiredness, procrastination, boat jumping…the list goes on.

But, I think that if you begin to love yourself where you are, right now, you position yourself in a place where the love has room to proactively grow.

I can’t tell you how many friends and clients, (or pieces of me), have stalled out of forward moving self-care simply by dwelling on what they did not do, or can not do..

I can tell you that I have seem waaaayyyy more dramatic results when people actually embrace what they can do: They smile, that smile nourishes their Heart, lifts their Spirits and  from that conscious shift springs forth a will to love and take care of themselves. 

I kind of am beginning to feel like that is the very antithesis of looking around you and wondering what others may think.

I go on about my shorts story because I have heard people, even friends, make comments on how they, “can’t believe that girl thinks she can get away with that!?”, expecting me to laugh with them.

On a side note…it’s always the women who shouldn’t get away with it, isn’t it?

Anyhow, I don’t laugh when I hear another person make negative comments about other body types. I cringe inside and usually say something in passing like, “well, maybe they feel comfortable in it”. Other times I don’t say anything because I don’t want my friend to feel like an asshole. But, in Kentucky, silence is basically the native tongue for, “I don’t get you…Asshole…”, so, they usually get the point anyhow.

Today, as I was really enjoying just how good it feels to wear my damn-near freeing shorts, it came to me:

For all those people who think they know what who can wear: Maybe it’s about time that you increase your tolerance, maybe it’s time for you to upsize that frame you tout around and call beauty?

I assure you—if as a culture, we can develop a tolerance for war, violence, hatred and judgment as we have—(oh, and pay for!),

Surely. You can find it in your heart and intelligent brain to cultivate tolerance for big bellies, big thighs, leg hair, yes, even seemingly extra tiny frames, and cellulite….to name a few.

It’s real.

Get real.

Or, maybe just glue a movie screen to your face so you can continue to live in your fantasy world where all women should look like Megan Fox and all men look like Markie Mark, with the exception of those token actors and actresses whose whole characters are often developed purely around their “unconventional” physique (ie character development of non-conventional beauty looking human=goofy, smart or pained).

Oh, yeah. It makes me angry.

When I was around twelve or thirteen, (only about three years after my first “diet”),  I remember deliberately making an effort to not watch commercials. And, by the time I was eighteen, I literally hid my television in the closet.

I would have thrown it away, but, it was one of the last gifts my father gave me. About four moves and a decade later, I finally decided to recycle it. Lovingly.

Anyhow, my point is—television and the media, as we all know, can really take a toll on our self-esteem, and, it has become emotional fodder for our brains and self-esteem for way too long.

I know we may not be able to change this over night across our modern world.

But, what we can do, is allow ourselves to be comfortable in our own skin, because we are real. You and I are real. Just the way you are…so why not just…be…real…

Now, I am not trying to say that--those of you who are in peak physical shape or those who do fit some as semblance of conventional beauty—are not real.

That’s totally not where I am going at all. And, I am definitely not trying to state that there is anything wrong with anyone who strives for that.

I just think it is important to check in and to make sure that drive comes from a real place of health and love.

I am saying that no matter who you are, what you look like, or what you think you should look like…take that first one active step to liberate your full self—your full beauty.

Ask yourself, why do I mentally push myself to look something different than from what I naturally am? 

I feel daring to say that if you don’t allow yourself to grow more beautifully-you through action…you may never find your true beauty.

Ouch.

And, this really isn’t just about looks. It’s also about what you lay out on the table in your writing, your art work, or the ideas you share with your co-workers, or maybe even the moral issues that you feel no one will talk about—in fear of appearing ugly in some shape or form.

Imagine the world we could live in if we just stepped into our whole unabashed selves.

Imagine how good you would feel to live and love as you. 

Herbal Health 2014: Summer Workshops + Classes!

Hello friends!

I just wanted to share a quite note about a few herbal workshops that I will be leading this Summer:

7 Herbal Allies for Surviving the 21st Century
With Nishaan Sandhu, Herbal Health

1pm Sunday, July 13, 2014

Whippoorwhill Festival--Skills for Earth Friendly Living. This will be a super fun weekend, with tons of great workshops, so don't miss out!

Herbal Medicine Workshop
With Nishaan Sandhu, Herbal Health

5pm Saturday, July 26th, 2014
 Kentucky Heartwood Music Festival; another family event that you won't want to miss! Plus, you will be supporting all the efforts of Kentucky Heartwood, as they continue to help preserve the integrity and beauty of our Forests!

<3 Learn more about how to support Kentucky Heartwood here <3

Rosemary: A Warm Herbal Embrace to Melt Feelings of Cold and Depression

Rosemary {Rosmarinus officinalis} 

What a delightfully warming culinary herb suitable for cooking meals both sweet and savory!

Surprisingly, Rosemary also offers a yummy addition to teas....and tastes divine with starchy herbs, such as Marshmallow...

The aromatic leaves of Rosemary help to warm our blood and stimulate our circulation. And, Rosemary, (who I will continue to refer to her as she),  is one of my very favorite essential oils to incorporate into my self-care during the cooler months, from the beginning of Fall through the harshest times of Winter.

These warming and stimulating properties of Rosemary can also help bring light and life to cold hands/feet or dulled, foggy, sluggish mind.

I kind of like to think that Rosemary has the power to gently kick up in the butt when we need it most. 

Like many of you may experience, I too can get the Winter time blues...you know, the kind where you can't wrap your mind around pushing through your goals {such as leaving the house on your own accord, haha}, or when the snow and cold begins to feel wearing, slow, and even bleak...

Letting the Sunshine In

Okay, just in-case you are feeling a bit more bleak than before, lift your chin up. My message to you is one of hope and help :)

If sun isn't shining and you are ready for a move, sometimes you just have to bring it to you {in other clever little ways}. And, what better ways than through our senses?

I mean, we seem to rely on our minds so very much. However, in reality, our minds are one little piece of the community that makes the sum of all our parts.

If you can't get out of your mind through intellectual means, why no try relying on some of our other biologically genius parts of self?

Cultivating Space for The Winter Inside Of You

Nature calls out to us with a blank white slate, make space to do nothing...

Enjoy the little things as you embrace the slowness of hibernation. 

Pause. 

Take the time to go to bed early if your body so wishes. 

Do not allow yourself to feel guilty, as you notice, you may be getting fewer things done. 

Instead, enjoy this. 

This is Winter.

Nature joins and encourages us all to settle down. 

Sit in your thoughts and drink some hot tea as you stare out the window...or gaze towards your favorite wall. 

Even if for five minutes, allow yourself some space. Some quiet. Some stillness. 

Make a little nesting hole at home <3

Add a candle and nice smells if you like them.

Toss in a cozy blanket, maybe pick up a book....but, most importantly, feel comfortable to do nothing... 

...the Rhythm of Life calls you.