When I was in high school, girls used to come up to me and say, “You’re so skinny! I hate you!”  Believe it or not, I really didn’t get what they were talking about. I didn’t hang out with too many girls in my teens…I had a few girlfriends, but mainly associated with a group of boys. We were great at making jokes that were hilarious (to us, at least), and no one really talked about peoples’ appearances at all, much less their weight. I couldn’t imagine wasting the time or energy to envy someone for the looks or their weight.

 Well, just like people only talk about your “potential” for so long, people have also stopped “hating” me for my weight! Now that I’m forty-three, I realize that gravity, wrinkles, gray hair, a slower metabolism, stretch marks and excess weight also, incredibly, applies to me, too! Although I’m within the parameters of what the doctors say is a healthy weight, I’m not that satisfied. Frankly, I could lose twenty pounds and still be considered to be at a healthy weight! So I’ve been working at this, slowly but surely. I’ve made some progress on the scale and how my clothes fit and how my body looks, but the most amazing positive benefit I’ve noticed is that my energy levels have gone up, up, up!

 Part of this has to do with changing the foods I eat. For the past two weeks, I’ve been without food that contains a majority of refined sugar (I ignore all the sneaky sugar, like high fructose corn syrup, that you cannot get away from if you want to have any sort of a life outside the kitchen and the farmers’ market). I am also taking Alli, which blocks about 25% of the fat from being absorbed by your colon. After experiencing more than a few, er, “treatment effects,” I finally got the point and changed my ways. It’s working, and to boot, my allergies have gotten much better. I’m taking less ibuprofen for my aches, pains and headaches, and fewer antihistamines for my allergies. This is good for my liver, my brain, and my wallet!

 But really, dieting alone never does much for me. When I was in elementary school, I was quite the swimmer on the summer swim team in my neighborhood. I’ve started swimming with my psychic friend, Kit, two times a week, and three other days a week I go to the gym, and work on the treadmill, weight machines, free weights, and those wonderful giant balls one can sit and stretch on. Luxury! That’s a GIANT benefit of being a freelancer, by the way. I now really have the time and energy to put the time into my health. When I was working, those days were just completely blown off in terms of working out, and then I’d also blow off the following day, which I’d spend recovering from my day at work!

 Anyway, you’re probably not interested in my boring story about weight loss. A middle-aged woman trying to lose weight…this is not exactly “stop the presses!” type of news. The reason I bring it up is that I remember very clearly that both Betty Shine and Harry Edwards, two of my most favorite psychics and healers, wrote that physical exercise was a vital component of one’s psychic development. I never believed them, until I got moving again after years of inactivity. I know now that my head is clearer now, my outlook is more positive, and my ego is more gratified when I look in the mirror! This has also helped me to be even more encouraging to my clients, who struggle with similar issues.

 If you want to develop your psychic abilities, you do not have to necessarily do yoga, tai chi, qi gong, or other Indian or Eastern types of physical exercise. If you are interested in them, by all means, go ahead and start. But you can also benefit greatly from something as simple as a brisk walk done routinely. If you can do it in nature, fine, but if you are in a hostile environment where it is difficult to walk uninterrupted (e.g. in a crowded or unsafe city, or out in the desert where it’s 107 by nine in the morning, like where I live), a gym is fine, too. When I walk on the treadmill, sometimes I watch television, sometimes I listen to music, and sometimes I just look out the window and listen to my thoughts and my breath. Don’t strive for perfection–just strive to do something…anything!

 Enjoy your day!