Inspiration – Living Intuitively

WHAT IT ACTUALLY MEANS TO LIVE INTUITIVELY

February 5, 2021by Kayla ChristineLeave a Comment

The other day I was thinking – how are we already in the second month of the New Year?! It feels like time is just flying by and I realized, I’m here flying by with it. This thought brought me back to the intentions behind why I started this wellness blog in the first place:

To help inspire others through sharing my personal experiences that led me to actually start living intuitively
To hold myself accountable

What it means to live intuitively wasn’t something I learned overnight, it stemmed from various personal and unexpected life experiences. The commonality behind all of these boiled down to one thing: I was neglecting that little voice within myself. We all know what I’m talking about, the voice that knows the answer to 99.9% of the things we have yet to put words to… ya, that’s the one! So I had to ask myself, if I knew this existed within, why was I continuing to silence it?

For me, it stemmed from fear of not having control. I was always someone who was beyond worried about the outcome of any given situation that I figured as long as I can control whatever it was, then I would be happy. BOY WAS I SO WRONG. This fear led to numerous unhealthy habits in all aspects of my life and ultimately led me to neglecting my own physical and mental health. From the outside, I looked like what one would consider “healthy,” and that’s the scary part, you never know what is really going on internally with a person when you base the assumption off physical alone. And this is exactly why I am so incredibly passionate about starting your health journey from the inside out.

Living the life I live now didn’t come easy, but honestly, what worth having in life does? It’s hard work, it’s dedication and it takes the ability to become brutally honest with yourself. I’m a big visual learner and huge believer that when you write something down you’re that much more likely to retain it. So if you don’t know where you start, START WRITING 🙂 What are your goals? WRITE THEM DOWN. How do you feel when you wake up? When you go to bed? WRITE IT DOWN. How do you feel when you are alone? WRITE IT DOWN. What do you feel before you eat your favorite meal of the day? And how do you feel after it? WRITE IT DOWN.

Moral of the story is to start really listening to yourself. For some of us this may come easier than it will for others. If you’re like me and you’re reading this like, “well my mind says one thing in one moment then another in another moment, so what do I listen to,” my answer is this: always go with the first thing that comes to mind, because that right there is your intuition. The thoughts that follow, well that’s your mind, and I hate to break it to you, but it’s trying to play tricks on you darling.

I like to look at ones intuition as our bodies built in compass, because it provides direction when we don’t quite have the answer, and will continue to guide us through living the life we are truly meant to be living. Once I stopped trying to control the outcome of my life, and committed to being fully present and living intuitively, I’ve finally found this place of freedom, self-love, gratitude and overall balance. Remember, nothing changes if nothing changes (one of my favorite quotes btw), CONSISTENCY IS KEY and that’s why I live by the words –> PROGRESS OVER PERFECTION.

Comment below what living intuitively means to you and how you got there! ❤

Inspiration

WHY I DON’T MAKE NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS

December 31, 2020by Kayla Christine2 Comments

We all have that one friend or family member that goes into a new year with all sorts of resolutions. Whether that resolution is to lose weight, start working out more, or maybe it’s learning how to cook and eat out less. Whatever the resolution may be, let me ask you, did that person stick to it for the entire year? Or did it last just the month of January, maybe a little of February? If 2020 has taught us one thing, it is to not have expectations, as life as we know it can change within any given second.

A resolution by definition is the act of finding an answer to a conflict or problem, or a decision to do or not to do something. This is why I don’t make New Years Resolutions – because all of the answers we are looking for are already within us. By creating a New Years resolution, you are basically telling yourself that there is something that needs fixing or that you have been doing something wrong, and therefore now need to restrict whatever that one thing is. When we restrict anything, we are taking away something that is deemed “wrong.” And let’s be honest, who likes to be told that they are wrong? I know I sure don’t, and that’s why I’ve had to change my internal dialogue.

When we start to look for external factors to provide us with clarity or for a solution to a problem, we are creating a negative conversation with ourselves whether you can recognize it or not. No one likes to be told what to do or what not to do, yet we have normalized doing this to ourselves. We live in a culture thats been shaped around how we “should” be or “shouldn’t” be. The word should is another way of stating expectations. Restrictions and expectations are what leads to failure, and I don’t know about you, but I want to celebrate wins. No matter how big or how small.

I want you to ask yourself this: what would happen if you removed all of the expectations set out by society, by friends, by your family members, and most importantly by yourself? I can’t speak for everyone, but what I can tell you is this – the minute I stopped having expectations and removed the word “should,” I started to be able to actually hear my inner voice and live in alignment with my true self. By removing the expectations, we create room to get in touch with ourselves that ultimately allow us to follow our intuition for the direction.

I can’t promise you that the road will always be easy, but what I can promise you is this: you will never be misguided by following your inner voice. One of my biggest learning lessons this year was to stop blocking the power of my own intuition. Trust yourself…but like actually, trust your damn self, you are stronger and much more powerful than you probably give yourself credit for. You know those little butterfly feelings around certain topics that you feel from time to time? They are there for a reason, and a lot of the time, the reason stems from feelings of anxiety, or trauma that is surfacing. I challenge you in the new year to get in touch with those, figure out where they are coming from, what makes them present, and have a real internal conversation with yourself. Your intuition knows things before your mind wants to accept it. What’s the worst thing that can happen by finally living a life true to yourself? You learn a few hard lessons along the way? If you ask me, I think that is where the beauty in all of this is to be found.

To be truly happy with oneself is definitely an inside job – no amount of money, no person, no place, no one thing can bring it, it’s our job to ourself. So let’s ditch the resolutions together, and instead find gratitude for the things we already have within. The answers you’re looking for are already here.

Cheers to YOU, and Happy New Year!

Inspiration

How I Found Yoga

December 15, 2020December 18, 2020by Kayla ChristineLeave a Comment

Or should I say, “how yoga found me?”

I feel like there is so much to my journey behind finding yoga, so today, I’ll start with just the beginning. I remember taking my first yoga class, it was in June of 2019 at Corepower Yoga in Pasadena, CA. I wasn’t recommended to this studio by anyone, no one inspired me to try yoga, I simply was scrolling through Class Pass (a fitness app that allows you to access all different types of workout classes) on my lunch break and came across an evening class that just worked out for my schedule that day. So…I guess you can say yoga did actually find me…maybe I should just change the title of this post already, LOL!

Anyways, lets get back to it – I remember walking into the studio for the first time feeling something I never felt walking into any workout class. It was an intense sense of calmness that came over me, LITERALLY. For those of you that know me, “calmness” isn’t a personality trait most people would say I am. My brain is always going at the speed of light, and I am pretty much always doing something. So this was definitely weird for me – it’s as if somewhere within just knew I was about to receive a much needed change in my life. You can say my subconscious knew that in that moment my life was about to take a drastic shift (I will elaborate on that, don’t worry). There were two girls at the front desk who welcomed me to my first class, and I remember they had this energy about them that was just so inviting. It was extremely refreshing as a lot of other classes I had taken in the 8 years of living in LA, people are the furthest thing from welcoming. I begun to ask what I needed for class, and proceeded to tell them how I had never done yoga before and just thought to try it. Since I did gymnastics for 12 years, I assumed the class would be a piece of cake…boy was I wrong.

They directed me to where the class would take place, which was this heated, dimly lit room. It felt as I was walking into some secret escape – something about the energy was truly nothing I had experienced before. I placed my mat in the back of the room and waited for class to begin. Not even 5 minutes in, I realized, this is about to be the beginning of a deep healing journey, ultimately leading me to my life’s purpose. And then I thought to myself, “am I ready for this?” I didn’t quite have the answer yet, for a variety of different reasons. Somehow though, my car kept driving me to the yoga studio just about everyday following this first class.

What I learned in my first yoga class was this – sometimes our inner voice, aka our intuition, is so strong that it leads us to places our mind isn’t ready to go yet, or places our mind might know it needs to go, but won’t accept. Believe it or not, with all of this said, after my first class I wasn’t in love with the practice itself. Because let me make something clear, yoga with weights, in a 98 degree room (sometimes hotter) is hard AF and extremely challenging, both mentally and physically. My competitive nature, or ego as some may call it, was a driving factor to get great at this new hobby I had committed to. Outside of the obvious physical challenges, every class would awaken something inside me, which was another reason I wasn’t totally in love first. Each class brought about new thoughts to surface, that I otherwise would just neglect. You know all the uncomfortable things buried deep within that demand attention in order to work through? Ya…those are the things that were saying hello each. and. every. class.

Some days I really don’t know how I made it to the studio, it was like the magical force of my intuition just guided me there. What I did know was this – every time I made it to class and onto my mat, I felt as if another layer was being peeled back and bringing me that much closer to myself. Sh*t was HAPPENING guys, a major shift was occurring, and I was changing. I know, it sounds dramatic and quite ridiculous. I thought the same as I was living through it, I didn’t know what was happening half of the time, I just know today, I couldn’t be more grateful.

Without getting into too much detail (because there will definitely be another blog post on this), yoga saved my life. Yoga was the one constant that I had to hold my hand through what became the most traumatic, wildly chaotic and severely toxic relationship I found myself in at this exact time. The life I was living became my own personal hell on earth and I couldn’t control it. I didn’t even know how it got to the point it did. All I know is that I was emotionally exhausted, physically drained, and just completely disconnected from myself.

If you are going through a really hard time in your life right now, trust me when I say, there is a much greater reason for it. And although that reason doesn’t always appear right away, you must trust that it will.

… to be continued

Inspiration

Why Self-Discipline Matters

December 7, 2020December 24, 2020by Kayla ChristineLeave a Comment

Self-discipline equals self-love ~ So how do we stay disciplined in these unprecedented times? To say 2020 was one of the most unexpected years of many of our lives is putting it lightly. It’s crazy how fast this year has gone by, and to be entering a new calendar year with the state of the world remaining in a very unknown state can make us feel unmotivated. I’m here to tell you that this is OKAY! We are all feeling it. If this year has taught me (& I’m sure many of you!) one thing, it is how important SELF-DISCIPLINE is. So lets get into it!

We know that every new year brings about new goals for ourselves and everyone around us. Whether that is to get into the best shape of our lives, or maybe it’s learning to let go of toxic relationships you may be holding onto. Whatever the goal is – without self-discipline, your goal is just going to stare you back on the piece of paper you wrote it down on, or add unnecessary stress by replaying in your head constantly. Self-discipline is the key ingredient to executing the life we want. This past year I made a promise to myself to learn boundaries and finally put me first – in EVERYTHING. From my career (which is how this blog was born), to my health, and to my relationships with everyone in my life. Learning when to let go of things I was holding onto that were not serving me, and to trust my intuition is how I began to get clear on what I wanted, and ultimately take action. Theres a quote I love that goes, “how you do one thing, is how you do all things.” If we change the way we look at things, and change the thoughts we tell ourselves, we can indeed change our habits.

I am still on this journey of self-discipline/self-love, so I don’t have all the answers, but I wanted to share what has helped me get through one of the most challenging years of my life and I’m sure a lot of yours.

WRITE YOUR GOALS DOWN: Sit down, meditate, and get clear about what exactly you want to achieve. Think about what makes you truly happy, ask yourself how you feel when you are around the people you currently have in your life – really have a conversation with yourself. The most important conversations we can have our within ourselves, as these create our reality. Once you have a clear picture in your head, write it down! Writing it down is the first step to taking action. This will be you reference to go back to on a daily basis and see if your choices are in fact helping you get closer to your goal.

CREATE A PERSONAL SCHEDULE: How often do we hear those around us say they are “too busy” to do something they said they would do? All the freakin time right?! I used to be that person that would say no to things or cancel plans because I was just “too busy.” Reality is, the person who is too busy is actually just inefficient with their time. Creating a schedule for your day, the night before, or even a week in advance, is a game changer. Not only will it help you become more efficient, but it will also help you show up and be fully present in whatever your day entails.

TAKE ACTION: Once you have decided what you want, it’s time to get rid of the things that will not help you get there immediately. Do you want to cook more at home? Then you need to make time to go to the grocery store. Do you want to read more? Then you need to pick up a book that interests you and start. When it comes to changing habits, it’s important that we do so with a positive conversation. We can’t look at it as a restriction or you will be putting a constraint on yourself through that negative conversation. Remember – you are not losing anything here, you are gaining exactly what you said you want.

CHECK IN WITH YOURSELF, HONESTLY: I say honestly, because our mind will play tricks on us. Creating new habits is hard, but it is so possible! Our minds like to come up with excuses though, so if you notice this happening, be mindful and become present. Each week I like to return back to my goals I wrote down, and go through each of them and journal about what helped me get closer to them, or what may have set me back. Building the life you want, physically and mentally, really is as simple as just making choice by choice every single day.

Well, I hope this helps you on your journey to self-love. I would love to know in the comments any good tips that have worked for you!

Inspiration

3 SIMPLE STEPS TO A HEALTHIER MORNING

November 19, 2020December 16, 2020by Kayla ChristineLeave a Comment

A good self-care practice starts first thing in the morning as it sets the tone for your entire day. I consider my morning routine the backbone to the life I live today. Dedicating 30 minutes (or less!) of my morning helps me be more efficient, active and just simply happier. Here are 3 small steps that inspire me and I hope do the same for you to have a healthier morning!

Keep your phone out of reach

Reaching for our phones first thing in the morning primes our brains to be distracted and can cause stress levels to be heightened from the moment you wake up. Not to mention, the blue light from our screens plays tricks on our bodies into thinking it’s mid-day. Many of us use our phones as an alarm clock – I know I am definitely guilty of this! However, the moment my alarm goes off, I simply turn it off and leave it in my bedroom while I carry on with my morning routine. If you don’t have the will power to not check the notifications after turning your alarm off, my tip is purchasing an old school alarm and keeping your phone out of reach upon going to bed!

Journal

There is just something about putting what is in our minds onto paper. Studies have shown that you are more likely to remember and execute something if you have written it down. Each morning I journal for two specific reasons. One, to set an intention/goal for my day. This could be an affirmation to yourself, writing down something you have been putting off, or maybe a simple quote you want to lead the day with. My second reason is to practice gratitude. After I set my intention for the day, I then write down what I woke up feeling grateful for. By having these two things in writing, I’ve made a commitment to myself to start the day with.

Hydrate, then caffeinate

Caffeine dehydrates us – yet the majority starts their day with a coffee or tea prior to having any water. Naturally, we wake up dehydrated, so reaching for caffeine first thing is a recipe for why we feel a mid morning “crash.” To avoid this, I drink a full glass of water with a half of a lemon squeezed into it while my coffee is brewing and I am writing in my journal. Such a simple way to help you feel more awake and promote gut health!

What steps do you take in the morning to set the tone for your day? I would love to hear about your morning routine!