Feel Young Again |

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A couple of months ago I’d been talking to my friends and asking “What makes mums feel young again?”

For some they knew exactly what it takes, others had to think about.  Some were past the totally full on stage of babies and tiny tots and others were right in the middle of it all.  Is there a match here for what makes you feel young again?

Here are some of the comments:

“Playing tennis now makes me feel young again.  When I was about 10 years old and for years after I played tennis and had fun, so it brings back those feelings when I had time for me, for social fun, and no responsibilities.”

“Playing soccer with my son and rumbling with the kids makes me feel young again.  Participating in playing with them takes me back to how it feels to be a kid.”

“Spontaneously dancing with my young daughter and her friends, all giggling together, made me feel young again. I was a spontaneous fun loving girl again.”

“Sense of freedom now that my kids are mature enough and responsible enough for me to dash out for 10 minutes without needing to constantly check on them.  They enjoy feeling trusted and capable and I enjoy the short bursts of freedom.”

“Time to focus on doing things just for pleasure like playing tennis, glass of wine with friends, having my nails done.  It all gives me a lift so I feel excited again about being me and not just mum.”

“Having a girls night out with other mums, a meal and wine without having to constantly think about the children.  They are safe at home and we are free for at least the evening.”

“My son’s infectious laugh makes me laugh too.  That makes me feel young again.  Also music, and recalling when I first heard it takes me back to a younger time.  The smell of fresh cut grass takes me back to lazy Sunday afternoons when I had nothing to do as a child.  And I love the smell of my baby straight after a bath, all fresh and warm, soft and cuddly.”

“My dog needs daily walking to keep him out of mischief.  So now I am fitter and that makes me feel younger.” 

“Friends with a sense of humor make me feel lighter and younger.  I forget about any hassles and responsibilities for a while.”

“Sense of freedom since my girls are growing up and no longer so dependent makes me feel young again.  The freedom to jump on a plane, with my family this time, to enjoy traveling, reminds me of pre-children days as a travel agent.  Keeping my energy up with nutritional detox and replacing minerals my body needs.  Buying new handbags now that I don’t need a nappy bag to take everywhere with me.”

“Going to the beach makes me feel like I’ve been on a holiday. As a child our family holidays always involved the water in some form so a day at the beach brings back that feel.”

That’s just a few comments.  Now that Christmas Day has come and gone do you have more to add?  What makes you feel young again?

In the past, most mums were in their twenties; now days we’re seeing a change of trend to older mums.  In fact, about 50% of mums are having babies between the ages of 30 and 35 and one in ten births are to women over 35 according to Australian Bureau to Statistics. 

Many women are putting their tertiary education into practise, establishing their careers, and becoming financially secure, before starting a family.

Yet the strengths, abilities and confidence that older mums bring to their new role as a mother can take a battering when they find raising babies is completely different from the other successes they have experienced. Women who wait until later in their lives to start their family often have higher expectations of themselves.  Since they have been successful before having babies they can automatically assume they will be immediately successful as a mum, too.  New older mums can be surprised and sometimes even dismayed at the range of different skills and needs to adjust to, starting with surviving on very little sleep in the early days.  They soon discover being sleep deprived leads to feeling run down and exhausted and this really hampers the learning process.

And even as they focus on and master the art of caring for their babies and adjusting to the new life rhythm, some continue to crave the adult interaction and mental stimulation they enjoyed when in the middle of the action in the corporate world where they are able to see tangible and measurable results for their efforts. 

There is no right or wrong time to start a family.  There are just different kinds of benefits from doing so when you are younger and other benefits from waiting till later.  Older mums have some life experience behind them, tend to be more settled and are ready to give up the party scene when baby arrives. 

They are often aware of how great and lasting an impact they can have in the early phases of baby’s development so are prepared to educate themselves before hand to provide the best informed support they can.  Younger mums are more likely to learn as they go with less preparation and greater spontaneity.

Some people say older mums have less energy than younger moms, but I believe energy is more a result of how you take care of yourself rather than just related to your birthdate! To get our free report on older mums sign up to our list.

Some information on how I came to teach how to tuning into your body energy.

When I was in my twenties, I very stupidly injured my back.  Western medicine was not helping me overcome the pain I was in, and I was told to stay in bed for six weeks.  I didn’t see how this was helping, so I ended up doing some research on alternative therapies.

I went on a path of searching for what to do with my back, because I really had very bad sciatic pain. Eventually I did a massage course, and I guess that led me through to other alternate therapies. When I really looked at it, I found that in my family, for many generations, had done a lot of energy work – although it wasn’t specifically called that, it was essentially energy work.  So I had grown up knowing about body energies, and more environmental energies than body energies. Once I realized that there was a parallel between the two, and that my own body had its sort of own feng shui to it, as well, I guess I learned about that and then I started helping other people to learn about that.

When someone tries to get in tune with their body energy for the first time, usually they try too hard.  When you’re sitting there concentrating on “getting in tune”, you’re going to prevent it from actually happening.  Just be still and be quiet, and allow yourself to go into a peaceful state for a moment.  When you reach this stage you can then turn into what’s happening inside you, and feel the energy in your body.   The secret is not to try too hard!

Your body has an energy that can sometimes cause you pain or illness.  When you are tuned into those energies, you can actually work on releasing them.  Most people, when you move the energy, will feel better and lighter, even more flexible and free.  I have personally helped people of all ages, from infants to teenagers to parents and the elderly.  I’ve worked across many different illnesses from cancers to allergies and chronic pain and even illnesses I wasn’t aware of.  I work with the people to find out what their  is doing, and then we release it.

To tune into your own body energy, you should know that it changes constantly.  When you first begin to tune in you may feel some type of sensation - like tingling or movement or a lift of some sort, and it may be a bit scary at first.  That feeling is just the energy moving inside- the more you tune into your body energy, the easier and better you will become at it.

What is Kinesiology?

Kinesiology is a system of health care that uses muscle response testing to identify areas of distress in the body. Muscle response testing also indicates how best to balance the energy systems and body/brain communication so healing can proceed naturally. It works with the principle that the body is actually designed to be self healing given the appropriate internal conditions.  

Kinesiology was first introduced in 1964 by George Goodheart, a chiropractor, and later his student, John Thie, also a chiropractor, created Touch For Health Kinesiology for lay people based on these same principles.

I first became involved in kinesiology because I had a young child who was not thriving.  As a baby he cried for the first five months.  He often had a runny nose that would lead to earache and more crying.  The worst part was that he was constantly on antibiotics that left him susceptible to every bug going round.  His immune system just didn’t cope. 

When he turned four doctors’ advice was to remove his tonsils as they were often swollen and inflamed and contributed to earache.  As an inexperienced young mum I followed this advice and within weeks of tonsils being removed my son developed asthma.  The problem was no longer confined to ears, nose, and throat but went straight to his lungs.   He was now on much more medication on a daily basis, getting weaker and weaker.

I had to learn more than what I was learning from doctors and friends.  I believed there just had to be a way to strengthen my son’s immune system and improve his health.  I went in search for solutions and discovered natural therapies.  First I put myself through the various therapies to test them on myself before putting my son through anything new. 

Over time, I learned more about nutrition and food allergies, and how stress aggravates health problems.  I attended courses on herbs, massage, food combining and Touch For Health Kinesiology.  I discovered how kinesiology would allow me to take the guess work out of how to help my son.  I could test his muscle response to see what would really work for him, which foods would increase his energy and strengthened his immune system. 

This way I could avoid the foods that overloaded his digestive capacity and stressed his kidneys and lungs as this overload would lead to an asthma attack.  The thing is, each person is so unique that what works perfectly for one person may not work at all for another – and kinesiology is a way to recognize those differences in each of us and helps us find solutions that are right for us as an individual.

Kinesiology helped me understand how to tailor the food choices to what suited my son’s digestive system and increased his energy.  I could actually test which foods were strengthening him so progressively he could tolerate a broader range of foods based on applying that knowledge.

The most amazing part of kinesiology is that it makes it clear that your body is really set up to be self-healing. And we get in the way of that process at times, because the higher the stress levels, the harder it is for the body to do its job. So if we can set up the internal environment that is conducive for the body to function efficiently, it will just do what it has to do.

I learned step by step and bit by bit that even if the body starts out less than perfectly efficient at birth, that I can strengthen the communication between body and brain, and can actually work with and help my child, and show mums how to help their children too. 

Muscle response testing is communication that gives the brain a clearer idea of what’s going on in the body. Any miscommunication, any distorted message from the body to the brain means the brain can’t respond efficiently. It responds to the message it gets, even if that message is all confused or incomplete, so the results will match the message received.

Kinesiology is great for sorting out those distorted messages. Every time a muscle is tested you get a response from the nervous system after it has checked the brain program.  Just doing the muscle testing on its own I’ve found improved lots of people’s condition because the brain has an opportunity to review its programs and upgrade. Learning Touch For Health Kinesiology has been one of the most valuable things I have done for my son and his health.   Accurate body-brain communication is essential and the muscle response testing highlights and improves that communication.

It’s normal for mums to feel stressed so they need to learn actions that will help them get more energy and feel less stressed.
Mums are tired and whether they work outside the home or are home full time with the children – they are working twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.  The best thing a Mum can do to increase their energy level is to breathe.  It’s the most important thing for everyone, and yet no one teaches us to breathe correctly!

Secondly, I think it’s important for mums to learn how to visualize and learn how to move the energy in their bodies to create more of it.  Doing light meditation is like energetic first aid, and you can use it anytime, anywhere for an energy boost.

Many mums have heard this before, but don’t do anything with the knowledge because they think it will take too much time to learn.  So if you’re a mum and you want more energy – you need to simply take action.    If you get all hung up on actually “doing it” (learning to breathe correctly, flushing meridians or meditating, for example) you won’t get past the thought.  You can make all sorts of excuses about not having enough time, not knowing how, but that’s a vicious circle that has lead you to feel like you have no energy in the first place and so there is no improvement to be had.  You need to find some time and space for yourself, and create it if it doesn’t exist in your normal day to day routines.  Your body needs to be nurtured so you can rebuild yourself.

If you allow it to happen, if you give yourself the time and space to rejuvenate – you will have more energy because it will accumulate in your body the more you focus on yourself.  Doing this will actually generate a new cycle in your life – one that is not so vicious – of healing and energizing yourself! Try these tips to get more energy and feel less stressed.

Generally mothers-to-be prepare well in advance for the birth of their baby.  At least, we THINK we are prepared for it all!  I say that because no matter how well prepared you feel for your new role, you really can’t know beforehand the kind of changes that motherhood brings.

Till it happens you have no experienced of it yet, so can only know about it, and knowing about something is not the same as experiencing it.  So how can you possibly really know in advance how birth of your baby will change YOU personally?

For me, I thought I was fully prepared.  I was excited about having the baby.  After all - this baby was really wanted, the expression of the deep love and caring and connection that my husband and I had together.  How could I not be excited?  But when our baby was born, I discovered that I couldn’t anticipate the many changes that happened within me as a person. 

Somehow, before the baby was born I was completely focused on all that the baby would need, how to take care of the baby, all the practical things, making sure the baby’s bedroom was all set up and ready – but I overlooked the fact that having a baby was going to change me emotionally, mentally and physically.  I expected to be the same me just with a baby as well.  I was completely unprepared for how motherhood changed me as a person and I’m finding that many other moms feel the same way too.

Recently I’ve had time to read what science has discovered about the influence of hormones during pregnancy on the brain of a mum-to-be.  It’s really not surprising that motherhood completely changes us!  The female brain literally transforms once we become pregnant.  The brain circuitry breaks down.  Existing brain networks disintegrate progressively during the pregnancy so we can no longer think like an independent woman.  Then just before birth the brain starts to rebuild in a new way.  We are “growing” a “mum’s” brain and will continue to do so over the next six months or more. 

All through the pregnancy we are producing ever increasing levels of hormones that sustain the uterus and the baby through the growth process over nine months.  These same high levels of hormone are responsible for the disintegration of our “independent woman” brain networks to make way for the new “mothers” brain circuits. 

Many mums know that afterwards they don’t think or feel the same way about things like life and the future, and for most of us – we just don’t know to what extent this is going to happen until it happens, until we are mums.  You anticipate having your baby and becoming a mum, and expect that everything about yourself stays the same - but that’s just not the case.  Your focus becomes the baby, adjusting to your new family life, and you end up surprised at how much your values, priorities, interests and preferences are affected by the changes that motherhood brings.

Quite often, it is forgotten that relaxation for mums is important. All mums need time to relax, but it can be hard to fit into a hectic schedule. This is essential because it will rejuvenate you and ease your stressed out nerves.

Remember that old proverb - if mum’s not happy, no one is happy. Everyone realizes this is an accurate statement, because if mum is tired, annoyed or distressed the entire home is in turmoil.

In most households, it is mum’s job to make sure that the house is running well. Mums are excellent multi-taskers. Mums change diapers, cook the family meals, spend quality time with the children, and help with homework. They’re so self-sacrificing.

Try to reserve thirty minutes each day for yourself. Reading a book or magazine in a quiet place will get any frazzled mum back on track. A “do not disturb” sign is imperative.

This isn’t always easy, though it is not too hard if you have older children who can help out with the youngsters. Collect your thoughts by just sitting out on your porch relaxing or take a late evening walk around your neighborhood to help clear your mind.

If this doesn’t help relax you, a nice warm bubble bath with aroma therapy candles may do the trick. Sitting in a Jacuzzi tub is said to work much better than a bubble bath. If you have trouble finding time for your favorite hobby, schedule time for it into your week.

Have a meaningful adult conversation with a good friend. If you haven’t seen enough of your friends, make a date and go shopping!

Are the kids asleep? Enjoy some TV. Sit down, relax and have your favorite indulgence without having to worry about fat or calories. Just knowing that you’ll enjoy it all by yourself, for you, will make it even better. A journal is an excellent way to clear your mind by getting thoughts that are bugging you onto paper and out of your head.

The more time you take for yourself, the more you will realize how much stress you can eliminate from your daily life. You will be amazed at how easy it will be to think of some great ideas.

Relaxation for mums is essential!

Mums often get worn down, especially first time mums, and end up feeling older than their years. So how can tired mums feel young again?  Well, firstly, there are a few secrets to staying young for mums and the first step is that they need to avoid the most costly mistakes mums can inadvertently make.

It’s not intentional to get worn down.  It happens for the best reasons, to give your child the best start.  It’s all about trying to live up to an idealized standard.  And it’s a costly mistake.

Your baby starts life as a totally helpless human being and relies completely on someone else, mostly you, to take care of it till they can take care of themselves.  This can be anywhere from age 3 to 33 plus.  It depends on you.

As parents we grow up along with our children, hopefully.  We learn as we go just as they do.  And often by child number two or three we get the hang of it.  We soon find trying to mimic someone else doesn’t work.  Being real means sometimes we get it right and sometimes we get it wrong – whatever that means.  More accurately, some strategies get the results we aim at and some miss the mark.  So we have to decide what to aim for.

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