Who Are You? Guest Post by Jennifer Pastiloff.
I guest posted on my sister’s ridiculously awesome blog about giving myself permission to say no. NO!
Have you done it lately?
Who Are You? Guest Post by Jennifer Pastiloff.
I guest posted on my sister’s ridiculously awesome blog about giving myself permission to say no. NO!
Have you done it lately?
You Can Imagine…Guest post by Emily Rapp on my sister Rachel’s blog!
Emily is a dear friend and you probably have heard me talk about her by now. Her son Ronan, who is almost two, has the fatal Tay-Sachs Disease.
Click here to read this gorgeous essay on the 3 Words For 365 blog!
Click to watch an amazing video and please share to help raise awareness for Prader Willi Syndrome as well as money for research! PWS WARRIOR MOM – YouTube.
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.
I had a crash course in, “HOW TO BE HAPPY WHEN YOUR LIFE TAKES A DETOUR!” ….
My family was hit hard by the economy. The financial stress was creating turmoil in our lives. Once we made the decision to downsize and do what was best for our family, our lives increased a hundred fold…..
Click below to read more of this amazing post
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….
“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 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.
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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!
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!
(by Rachel Pastiloff)
I was recently told a story by a friend of mine about his little brother who has Aspergers’ Syndrome. Everyday when his little brother goes to school the kids say to him, “What’s up Forrest Gump,” “Hey Forrest Gump,” and then the other slurs begin. I cried when I heard this.
What can you do?
Such a small little gesture went such a long way.
How many of you out there have a friend with a child with special needs, or have a family member with special needs? I bet a ton of you answered yes. If you answered yes, then please think about doing this.
I only ask this of you, always have empathy, always remember that every family looks different. Please don’t judge your friends or family or strangers on how you think they are raising their kids.
PLEASE ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS ONE LAST THING (I said it earlier)
As the parent of a child with special needs we are just trying to get through the day!
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.
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.
“First you jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.” ― Ray Bradbury
Cop a Tude!
Be in the Attitude of Gratitude Today.
Add to the list please with either pictures or words!
—Grateful & honored to be teaching yoga to children with special needs.
—Grateful for my amazing sister/best-friend/hero Rachel Pastiloff!
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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.
List a few things below that you are grateful for! Cop a tude!