Browsing Tag

PWS

Guest Posts, Prader Willi Syndrome

Welcome to Holland

January 10, 2012

Welcome to Holland. Truly a post reading and sharing, Manifesters! A brilliant essay by Rachel Pastiloff on love and acceptance. BRILLIANT!

don’t listen to what anybody tells you that your child is capable of doing. What do they know. Children have spirits that are unmatched by anything I have ever seen in this world. Children can move mountains with their will and determination. I have been blessed to have an amazing doctor for Blaise who always tells me that he has and will continue to have a great life. ” Click here to read more.

Eating/Food, Guest Posts

Feeling Hungry

January 4, 2012

Feeling Hungry. (Today’s is a MUST READ, folks…. This blog was written on my nephew Blaise’s 5th birthday by my sister as she was fasting. Blaise has Prader Willi Syndrome which makes him feel hunger ALL THE TIME….

an excerpt~

“Today is day 2 of my juice fast. Today is also Blaise’s birthday. I am not going to lie, today was really hard. I was really hungry today. Worse than yesterday. Let’s not forget to add the massive headache and acne breakout in the mix.

Today I really understand what it is like for my son.

Today I understand what it is like to have Prader-Willi Syndrome.

Please read this one by clicking here.

Birthday, Delight, Prader Willi Syndrome

The Love of My Life Sings Me Happy Birthday.

December 12, 2011

Ok, ok, My hubby is also the love of my life but my nephew Blaise stole my heart when he was born. He has Prader Willi Syndrome. Please buy a Manifestation t-shirt by clicking here and support research.

My nephew Blaise and I at my wedding. Click on picture to buy a tee and support research for PWS

This video melted my heart. Enjoy. He is as sweet as they come. He gives the best hugs too.

[wpvideo 0DpFW3n2]

Guest Posts, Inspiration, Prader Willi Syndrome

Warrior.

November 23, 2011

Please watch this video my sister Rachel Pastiloff Owings made today. PWS Warrior Mom.

Which indeed she is.

You will gain a better understanding of what Prader Willi Syndrome is and what my nephew Blaise goes through on a daily basis. You will also understand why I am raising money for research. Buy a Manifestation t-shirt® to help us if you are so inspired. Click here to order. All proceeds go to research. The money will be split between PWS research and Tay Sachs research which my friend Emily’s baby Ronan has. We will ship you the t-shirt is you cannot pick it up.

Please share this far and wide.

Also, please click on the “LIKE” button on Youtube as it will help us get more views. We want to educate the world. Knowledge is power.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPJW87ILJL0&feature=share]

What does it mean to own a Manifestation t-shirt®? Well, click here to find out!

Please learn more about Prader Willi Syndrome so we can come together and find a cure. Visit www.fpwr.org or pwsausa.com. My sister also has a “fan page” on Facebook called ” I am a Fan of Somebody with Prader Willi Syndrome.” Join today. Support!

My nephew and best buddy Blaise who has Prader Willi Syndrome aka PWS

Keep manifesting your life,

One laugh at a time,

Jen (@manifestyogajen on twitter)

ps, I started an organization last year called GAMEyoga.org which provides free yoga for kids with special needs. Email me for more info. GAME= Gifts And Miracles Everyday!

Daily Manifestation Challenge

What Are You Manifesting? The DMC. & The Manifestation Tee Has Arrived!

November 16, 2011

They are here! The first round of my t-shirts. All money goes to charity. I will split it between Prader Willi Research (my nephew Blaise has PWS) and Tay Sachs research (my dear friend Emily’s baby has this fatal disease.)

Order one now because I only have 70 this round and half have been pre-ordered. I am so excited. They are white v-necks by American Apparel and I have small, medium and large. They shrink so I suggest getting them a bit bigger. They make great gifts! Order here. https://www.jenniferpastiloff.com/PayPal.html

They are $25 if you pick them up from me or one of my studios. There is a shipping & handling fee if you want it sent to you. Please take the time to find out about Prader Willi And Tay Sachs even if you are not buying a shirt.

Click on image to oder t-shirt via PayPal

So I ask you for today’s Daily Manifestation Challenge (DMC)….

WHAT ARE YOU MANIFESTING?

Share in the Comment Section Below. I cannot wait to read what you write!

( I am manifesting these t-shirts raising tons of money for these kids!)

(I am manifesting giving everyone in the Good Morning America audience a t-shirt when I am on the show!)

Click on image to order shirt via PayPal

Keep manifesting your life,

one laugh at a time.

ManifestYogajen 

Click on image to order t-shirt via PayPal

 

A huge thanks to Debbie Spears, my amazing Graphic Designer who has her own line of t-shirts that I am obsessed with. For Me Not You! I own 6 of them! Check them out here. ForMeNotYou.com.

Get Manifesting, Kids! Start writing down below

Tell us what you got brewin' and manifestin' below

Daily Manifestation Challenge

Daily Manifestation Challenge: Weekend Edition. FEAR.

October 22, 2011

“First you jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.”                                                                ― Ray Bradbury

Fear.

We all have it.

It helps us.

Sometimes.

When you’re in a dark alley and you see a man with a long trenchcoat running towards you with a big knife and your adrenaline kicks in and causes you to fly away as if you had wings. Totally helping you.

Good fear.

For many years of my life I lived under its guardianship. Fear watched over me. Helped me make my choices. Was my voice of reason.  Helped me stay in the same job for 13 years, live in the same apartment, eat the same foods over and over again. It helped me stay in a rut. It helped me stay depressed.

Bad fear. Cape Fear.

Lately the word fear has been popping up more than usual so I though I ought to pay it a visit.

I was in a yoga class last weekend with my mentor and teacher Annie Carpenter, and she had us all in navasana (boat pose) for a verrrrrrrrrry looong time. We all started to shake. I started to get angry. Then she started talking about fear. She asked us to identify a fear that we had previously had in our lives which we had conquered. Still in boat pose.

Then it hit me like a ton of navasanas. I had conquered my fear of gaining weight.

There I said it.

Of course, it was not simply a fear of just gaining weight, but to simplify it, I’ll call it that. I was, for many years, in the throes of a bad eating disorder.

Still in boat pose, I realized I had transcended the darkest, hardest years of my life. I felt like I could stay in navasana forever with this newfound realization.

Annie was saying how fear protects us at times but when it stops us from playing and living then it no longer serves us. Or something like that.  We were still in still in boat pose at this point…and here I was lost in my own newfound revelation, so I wasn’t exactly getting everything word for word.

 

I became severely anorexic when I was 17 years old after a doctor told me that if I wanted my breasts smaller, (they caused me a lot of unwanted attention and discomfort back then) I should just lose five pounds. (If I could go back in time and shake him uncontrollably for saying that, I would. Although I know it really wasn’t his fault. Even if it was a crappy thing to tell a teenage girl.) That was the exact moment I went home and made a list of all the foods I would and would not eat. Up until that point I had never exercised and I ate cheese steaks and TastyCakes. A lot. I’m from the Philly area. It’s what we do.

I quickly lost five pounds. Then 10. then 20.

Then I kept going.

Many years of my life were lived under a blanket of fear. I exercised four hours a day.  I was terrified to gain weight because I finally felt I could control what was happening around me and inside of me through my weight.

Cliché? I know.

I had a fear that people would stop asking me “Are you ill? ”  It made me feel like I stood out. Like I was special. When someone told me I looked “healthy,” I panicked. (I know that this is hard to believe for the people who know me now, especially my students. I am so at ease with my self these days. Most days.)

Well, here I am in boat pose still in Annie’s class last Sunday at Exhale in Venice, realizing all of this. I am at ease. I have released a huge debilitating fear. Finally. For the most part.

Of course, during times of stress, the eating disorder rears its ugly head. I never worry about what truly is the matter, such as, let’s say: getting married or letting go of a waitressing job I had for 13 years or my nephew having Prader Willi Syndrome. But rather, it becomes simply “I am fat.” My brain takes the path of least resistance, what it knows best. Much as the body will do. That is the old tape it knows.

This happens rarely these days.

I have, for the most part, conquered this thing that had such a clutch on me.

So here I am in boat pose, shaking like a dog, and I realize I have conquered this fear. This is huge. Finally we come out of the pose and I get a little teary-eyed. I start to feel sad for all the years I let this fear rule my life. What was the fear truly of?

It’s so dark and ugly. I mistakenly thought my self-worth was my appearance. Now, as a teacher of yoga, with so many beautiful young girls coming to me, I recognize the same thing in them. I know them immediately. Perhaps they recognize me as well. I somehow got programmed to believe that what I looked like signified who I was. Inside.

There is nothing farther from the truth. Nowadays, I feel such a deep love for who I am inside that it never even crosses my mind to think people even notice my weight or my face. How can it be so complicated? I am not, nor was I ever, a shallow person. I know better. And yet, for 15 years I battled this idea.

I was also terribly afraid to deal with life. With feeling or loss responsibility or death. When my stepfather died, 10 years after my father had passed away, I just ran. I went out to Cooper River Park in Pennsauken, New Jersey. and ran for over two hours straight. There, all better.

Not quite. It never works that way. Even if we want it to.

The pain and the feelings are still there, we have just distracted ourselves. Maybe fear is just a big distraction?

My sister said something savvy tonight. I love my sister. She said, “Ha. An article on fear? I could write that one in my sleep.”  (She could.)

As much as she has an innumerable amount of irrational fears, she is fearless when it comes to her son Blaise, who has Prader Willi Syndrome. She says that you find the courage somehow.

I get it. I have found courage through my own yoga practice, through my teaching yoga, through the amazing man I married, through my nephew Blaise.

I still have many fears and am working through them daily. Sometimes they feel so real, as if at any moment the fear will come true and I will be homeless, my family will perish, I will be without a job, people will hate me, that I will have to go back to waitressing. I will go completely deaf. A fear of the Future. The abnormal fears. They run the gamut.

But sometimes, when I am in navasana in Annie’s class, or teaching my own class, I look up at the sky and shake my fist and say “Eff you Fear! You ain’t real!”

And anyway, as the amazing Wayne Dyer says, worrying is like saying little prayers for the things you do not want.

And of course, in a sense, it is real. But as Martin Luther King Jr said…….

Normal fear protects us; abnormal fear paralyses us. Normal fear motivates us to improve our individual and collective welfare; abnormal fear constantly poisons and distorts our inner lives.

Our problem is not to be rid of fear but, rather to harness and master it.

This Weekend’s DMC (Daily Manifestation Challenge®): In the Comment Section Below write down a fear you have and then tell it to buzz off! Extra credit: add something you are FEARLESS about. Where is Fear Running Your Show?

WHAT ARE YOU SO SCARED OF, ANYWAY?

(This is a variation on an older post I wrote originally on Elephant Journal)

Beating Fear with a Stick

Fear: Is It Running Your Show?

September 19, 2011

Fear. We all have it.

It helps us. Sometimes. When you’re in a dark alley and you see a man with a long trenchcoat running towards you and your adrenaline kicks in and causes you to fly away. Totally helping you. Good fear.

For many years of my life I lived under its guardianship. Fear watched over me. Helped me make my choices. Was my voice of reason.  Helped me stay in the same job for 13 years, live in the same apartment, eat the same foods over and over again. It helped me stay in a rut. It helped me stay depressed. Bad fear. Cape Fear.

Lately the word fear has been popping up more than usual so I though I ought to pay it a visit.

I was in a yoga class last weekend with my mentor and teacher Annie Carpenter, and she had us all in navasana (boat pose) for a verrrrrrrrrry looong time. We all started to shake. I started to get angry. Then she started talking about fear. She asked us to identify a fear that we had previously had in our lives which we had conquered. Still in boat pose.

Then it hit me like a ton of navasanas. I had conquered my fear of gaining weight.

There I said it. Many people know this about me but I have never officially written about it or announced it on paper. Of course, it was not simply a fear of just gaining weight, but to simplify it, I’ll call it that. I was, for many years, in the throes of a bad eating disorder. Still in boat pose, I realized I had transcended the darkest, hardest years of my life. I felt like I could stay in navasana forever with this newfound realization.

Annie was saying how fear protects us at times but when it stops us from playing and living then it no longer serves us. Or something like that.  We were still in still in boat pose at this point…and here I was lost in my own newfound revelation, so I wasn’t exactly getting everything word for word.

My beloved teacher Annie Carpenter

I became severely anorexic when I was 17 years old after a doctor told me that if I wanted my breasts smaller, (they caused me a lot of unwanted attention and discomfort back then) I should just lose five pounds. (If I could go back in time and shake him uncontrollably for saying that, I would. Although I know it really wasn’t his fault. Even if it was a crappy thing to tell a teenage girl.) That was the exact moment I went home and made a list of all the foods I would and would not eat. Up until that point I had never exercised and I ate cheese steaks and TastyCakes. A lot. I’m from the Philly area. It’s what we do.

I quickly lost five pounds. Then 10. then 20.

Then I kept going.

Many years of my life were lived under a blanket of fear. I exercised four hours a day.  I was terrified to gain weight because I finally felt I could control what was happening around me and inside of me through my weight.

Cliché? I know.

I had a fear that people would stop asking me “Are you ill? ”  It made me feel like I stood out. Like I was special. When someone told me I looked “healthy,” I panicked. (I know that this is hard to believe for the people who know me now, especially my students. I am so at ease with my self these days. Most days.)

Well, here I am in boat pose still in Annie’s class last Sunday at Exhale in Venice, realizing all of this. I am at ease. I have released a huge debilitating fear. Finally. For the most part.

Of course, during times of stress, the eating disorder rears its ugly head. I never worry about what truly is the matter, such as, let’s say: getting married or letting go of a waitressing job I had for 13 years or my nephew having Prader Willi Syndrome. But rather, it becomes simply “I am fat.” My brain takes the path of least resistance, what it knows best. Much as the body will do. That is the old tape it knows.

This happens rarely these days.

I have, for the most part, conquered this thing that had such a clutch on me.

So here I am in boat pose, shaking like a dog, and I realize I have conquered this fear. This is huge. Finally we come out of the pose and I get a little teary-eyed. I start to feel sad for all the years I let this fear rule my life. What was the fear truly of?

It’s so dark and ugly. I mistakenly thought my self-worth was my appearance. Now, as a teacher of yoga, with so many beautiful young girls coming to me, I recognize the same thing in them. I know them immediately. Perhaps they recognize me as well. I somehow got programmed to believe that what I looked like signified who I was. Inside.

There is nothing farther from the truth. Nowadays, I feel such a deep love for who I am inside that it never even crosses my mind to think people even notice my weight or my face. How can it be so complicated? I am not, nor was I ever, a shallow person. I know better. And yet, for 15 years I battled this idea.

I was also terribly afraid to deal with life. With feeling or loss responsibility or death. When my stepfather died, 10 years after my father had passed away, I just ran. I went out to Cooper River Park in Pennsauken, New Jersey. and ran for over two hours straight. There, all better.

Not quite. It never works that way. Even if we want it to.

The pain and the feelings are still there, we have just distracted ourselves. Maybe fear is just a big distraction?

My sister said something savvy tonight. I love my sister. She said, “Ha. An article on fear? I could write that one in my sleep.”  (She could.)

As much as she has an innumerable amount of irrational fears, she is fearless when it comes to her son Blaise, who has Prader Willi Syndrome. She says that you find the courage somehow.

I get it. I have found courage through my own yoga practice, through my teaching yoga, through the amazing man I married, through my nephew Blaise.

I still have many fears and am working through them daily. Sometimes they feel so real, as if at any moment the fear will come true and I will be homeless, my family will perish, I will be without a job, people will hate me, that I will have to go back to waitressing. I will go completely deaf. A fear of the Future. The abnormal fears. They run the gamut.

But sometimes, when I am in navasana in Annie’s class, or teaching my own class, I look up at the sky and shake my fist and say “Eff you Fear! You ain’t real!”

Teaching for Lululemon

And anyway, as the amazing Wayne Dyer says, worrying is like saying little prayers for the things you do not want.

And of course, in a sense, it is real. But as Martin Luther King Jr said…….

Normal fear protects us; abnormal fear paralyses us. Normal fear motivates us to improve our individual and collective welfare; abnormal fear constantly poisons and distorts our inner lives.

Our problem is not to be rid of fear but, rather to harness and master it.

“First you jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.” ― Ray Bradbury

 

Gratitude

Attitude

September 9, 2011

Cop a Tude!

Be in the Attitude of Gratitude Today.

Add to the list please with either pictures or words!

My client/friend: actress Laura Donnelly bows in Gratitude

                                 A few random things/people I am grateful today for: 

My husband's film starring Luke Goss

Bring your heart closer to heaven in an act of Gratitude

—Grateful & honored to be teaching yoga to children with special needs.

—Grateful for my amazing sister/best-friend/hero Rachel Pastiloff!

I'm grateful for a good glass of vino

Jump for Joy/Gratitude/The Heck of It!

My awesome husband. Grateful beyond words.

My home studio in Philly and Dhyana/John Vitarelli. And the fact that I'll be teaching at Do Yoga Philly 3.0!

Limoncello in Florence !

Double Rainbows in Tuscany!

Kisses! So grateful for love and lots and lots of kisses!

My amazing mom aka assistant and life manager

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbutA0mLONY]

That I can actually GIVE a spot away at my retreat. That I ask people to tweet/share what they are #Manifesting and start the ripples of it out there into the Universe. Grateful for Veggieboomboom aka Krista Allen as well for being smitten with me. As I am with her.

This lovely friend: The one and only Sabrina Lloyd. And especially her inspiring blog Red Dirt Lattes. https://reddirtlattes.com/

Grateful for my awe-inspiring friend who brought the above friend into my world. He radiates joy, humility, grace and TALENT. Watch out world. Alimi Ballard!

London!

This cherry tree in Siena

Generous friends who have helped me along the way. And talented ones who inspire! (Actor and friend Holt Mccallany in "Light's Out). Get it on DVD if you missed it on FX!

That I did indeed have blonde hair at least once in my life!

To be able to eat ciliegias (Cherries) on an Italian beach during my own Italy yoga retreat which was my dream realized!

My Manifestation Workshops! This one was at the Yoga Collective (formerly Yogaco on the 3rd St Promenade in Santa Monica

Laughter

Gratitude Flowin'

Lululemon. And the fact that they sent me to Vancouver and Whistler. And that their clothes are the bomb. The company inspires me endlessly.

Samosas. Yes, I love them.

Brilliant photos like this. Love my nephews.

List a few things below that you are grateful for! Cop a tude!

Guest Posts

Today I’m Optimistic

September 7, 2011

Last night I went to my friend Mark Hobley’s art show and there was the painting. Yes, the one I am already thanking the universe for because it is hanging in my new house on the wall. It was made for me. Today I am Optimistic. Indeed!

Mark Hobley's painting

What are you optimistic about? Imagine if this was what you saw every morning upon rising?!

What are you thanking the Universe in advance for? Try waking up and saying Thank You immediately. Before coffee even. Before pulling the covers off. Before the I’m tired! Where’s the snooze button? Whisper it or yell it but say it! Thank You.

What are you optimistic about? 

Today I am optimistic:

~that there’s a cure in the near future for Prader Willi Syndrome (PWS) and I will contribute to that research with my fundraising via retreats/t-shirts.

~ That miracles will continue to happen in my life and in those lives around me.

~ That I will continue to fearlessly think things I’ve never thought before, say things I’ve never said before, and doing things I’ve never done before.

~ I am optimistic today that I will continue to live in my top 1% (thank you Alissa Finerman for this concept!) 

~ That I will continue to remember not to take things personally. That I am not the jerk whisperer.

~That my friends in the band Snow Patrol will rock the world with their newest album “Fallen Empires” and it will be the biggest hit they have ever experienced. And so it is!

~That LOVE like THIS will continue to inspire me and take over the planet. I wept at the video below. The mom in it inspires me. Doesn’t it make you feel optimistic about the human spirit and love? Imagine! And so it is. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy42USMUsvo]

~I’m optimistic that I’ll get to take many more vacations where I can do crow on a table in front of the ocean while my nephew watches with joy with or without floaties on his arms. I am optimistic that soon he will be the one on the table!

~Today I am optimistic because I have made it this far despite many many bumps in my road which not only could have thrown me off my horse, but potentially killed me. I am alive! I am very much alive! Indeed. Today I am optimistic.


Tanya-b clothes make me feel optimistic, inspired and ALIVE!

What are you optimistic about today?