WE Magazine Interview: Woman Helps Clients Live a Radiant Life

Meet Nicole Ohebshalom, owner/creatrix of Radiant Living Wellness in New York, NY

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do professionally.
I’m the founder of Radiance Living Wellness, coaching and supporting women who are ready to create health, feel wonderful in their bodies and honor their femininity. Through yoga/meditation, nutritional wisdom and coaching, I help women step onto their path of personal happiness, balance their relationship with eating and their body, and connect them to their inner balance and radiance.

2. What do you enjoy most about your profession and why did you choose it in the first place?
I love working with my clients and observing their changes while being their cheerleader.  I’ve been on this path since high school by always asking questions, being curious on how transformation occurs, and having fun trying everything I learn about!

3. Tell us about the organizations your company supports and why?
My organization supports women that want to be love leaders in their life.  They want to connect with their core balance to own their beauty, enjoy their meals, and re-ignite the pleasure in their life.  Many women who have health issues such as menstrual disorders, digestive disorders or emotional eating are needing to re-balance themselves through yoga/meditation, nutritional wisdom and coaching, but their isn’t any other program out their to provide them with this fun balancing educational experience.  By working in the hospital and my personal experiences I knew it was vital for women to have this program.

4. What is the biggest risk you ever took professionally and/or the biggest obstacle you have overcome?
The biggest risk was to begin my own company with no experience or knowledge of what an entrepreneur was.  What I did have was my strong passion and knowledge, which is the fire that inspires me and the people I work with.

5.  From where do you draw inspiration? Who have been your role models, mentors, etc?
The daily inspiration I draw upon is my clients that I meet to create a radical change in their life.  My mentor is also my mom, aunt, sister, Hari Kaur Khalsa and Karen Salmansohn.

6. How is the current economic situation affecting your company/organization?
It’s been wonderful because it has given me the chance to really dive into how I envision my practice in assisting women around the world.  I am in the works of many projects that will deliver daily useful information without leaving their home.

7. What one thing would you like to learn this year?
I want to learn how to fly a small plane! to be amongst the sky and breath in that beauty!

8. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
With a child, a PhD in psychology and having fun working with women and in my personal life!

9. What do you do for fun/relaxation/entertainment?
always yoga! reading, movies, laughing, dancing, painting, and cooking

For more information, visit: WEBSITE URL: www.RadiantLivingWellness

 

Thoughts from the Train

I’m writing to you from the train…I love the power we now have to communicate with a community. While sitting here I had a desire to share my thoughts on the disconnection (or some call it: negative) we hold with our body. As creatures in this world, we have a difficult time allowing others to notice our “flaws”, which leads us to live with a closed heart. Closing our hearts limits your power, holds back your emotional growth and limits relationships in your life. When you open your heart with yourself and in a community then you experience your beauty, strengthand radiance. You begin to love your body, create healthy eating habits and love your life!

Okay..time to get ready for my stop. Having lunch with my grandma!!! I’ll be back in the city soon so no worry if we have a session tonight I’ll be there!!

 

Undo the Knot in Your Gut

What’s that tight feeling in your gut really about? Why has your body suddenly flipped the switch and protested so you can’t eat your favorite meal? It feels like your body and food has become this big project that you detest and want to feed to the dogs. I’m going to get you to see how to begin to unravel and re-calibrate that flip switch within you and your gut.
During my experience with private clients, I’ve worked with a variety of women and men with different digestive disorders. I’ve become her/his last resort after years of trying every doctor and nutritionist. They’ve spent hours in the emergency room with no tangible answer to their questions and pains. Within weeks, my clients have experienced relief while understanding of their body and life. The stress of experiencing digestive disorder can create more stress, disconnection, imbalance, and heaviness within their body. Your gut pain is now causing more gut pain.

What does your inner-workings have to say about this? Your stomach is the harbor house of your hormones and for many people, the home base of their emotions. Your gut isn’t just digesting food (fyi: digestion process needs hormones) but is a major part of many other functions in your body including the stress response. With all the stress we have in life (and there is a variety) then our biochemistry changes. When we experience chronic stress in any level, our gut responds.

What’s Gut Stress? When you don’t speak up about your desires, when your not enjoying your meal, when you try ten different outfits in the morning, or when you close your inner-ear to your gut feeling. This is creation of turmoil in the gut.

Do you ever say: I followed my Gut? Then you got to pay attention and keep it healthy physically and emotionally. In yoga, below the belly button is life force and intuition that we work on building strength. Pay attention to what your gut is telling you and you will feel a juicy ease in your body and in life.

When clients stop listening to their gut and unconsciously creating habits that hurt their gut then emotional eating becomes a big part of their lives. Most times people become confused with what to eat or what lifestyle technique they will add into their daily life routine. My tip jar is a great place to begin and joining my next group coaching program: http://eatingforradiance.eventbrite.com

Nicole’s Inner-Gut Tip Jar:
1. What are you feeling? Try getting past the good and bad, or happy and sad comments. Really take a moment to see what emotion you are experiencing.
2. What do you need? Our desires are our life energy.
3. Use your voice by asking yourself or another person to meet your need.

The gut can experience more imbalance and stress for you during the holiday season. This group is to keep yourself on a healthy, easy, and fun path: http://eatingforradiance.eventbrite.com

 

A bit of “mmmm” and a whole lot of “oh yeah” to speed up your metabolism

Have you ever spent an evening seducing yourself? I’m not writing about the moment you got yourself feeling hot-and-sexy for a guy or girl.  I’m talking about enjoying the beauty and sensuality of being you.  Relishing you for yourself.  A moment (or thousands of them!) created by you filled to delight all your sensory pleasures.  I’m also talking to people married for 20 years.  The time you have with your partner doesn’t preclude the time you have with yourself, your femininity and your body.

I want to bring a taste of sensuality to your next meal.  Bringing pleasure to the plate is not only a vital element to your meal but also to life.  I believe a person’s relationship with eating is a mirror of their relationship with their life.  We either fear the pleasure of eating and create a battle with it or give in to food desires with little moderation.  Both containing a damaging effect to your physical and mental well-being.  Connecting with our sensuality and pleasure are elements that create a connection to our inner-core balance, allow us to enjoy a meal, and speeds up the metabolism.

The action of the chemical cholecystokinin (CCK) tells us the story of pleasure, sensuality, and metabolism.  CCK directly aids digestion, shuts down appetite, and stimulates the sensation of pleasure in the brain.  It has a big job!  The one chemical that controls metabolizing the meal is also telling us when it’s time to finish and creates an enjoyable experience.  This shows how pleasure, metabolism, and control of appetite are interwoven and enhanced by one another.

Want to re-active the pleasure hot button?  Let’s begins with connecting you to your physiologic relaxation state.  Pleasure loves slow and it thrives in a sensual space to bring us back into each moment.  Here is an guideline for your date:

1. Dress yourself with something that makes you feel powerful, gentle, and feminine.  Fix your hair, wear your jewels, spray some perfume, and doll your face up!  After all you’re going out with the hottest girl!!
2. Walk over to the mirror (slowly!)  Give a little wink and kiss to your hot self
3. What is your favorite food to eat? Steak, soufflé, potato chips, chicken marsalis…anything you want, you can have.  The only must is placing the dish on your favorite dish! If you don’t have a favorite china-set then get paper plates with a fun décor.
4. Time to create your atmosphere.  What will surround you? I love to have flowers next to me.  Which music will bring pleasure to you?  This is all about you, and not what you think would work best.  If you like rock music, chanting, or opera…then go for it!
5. Everything is now placed in front of you.  It’s time to enjoy the meal.  Breath in the beauty around yourself.  Look at all the color in your meal and your atmosphere.  Relax into your body and allow yourself to enjoy every drop and tasty chew.

Feel and know that this beauty and pleasure is part of you.  The sensual beauty you are feeling comes from you and is always around when you want to access it.  The infusion of pleasure using the senses with your food brings the feminine out of you.  Connecting with your lively awakening sensuality with your meal, switches the gear on your metabolism.

 

Eating for Radiance Group Coaching- the best holiday gift you can give yourself.

Keep yourself on a healthy, easy, and fun path this holiday season!

This group is for the modern women to take pleasure from food, love her body, decrease her weight- and change her life.  Many women know what they ‘should’ be doing to take charge of their weight and eating.  The challenge is implementing and finding a plan that can stick with a person’s unique lifestyle.  If you don’t address the reasons you are turning to food- the weight and emotional eating struggles aren’t going to end.  This group program teaches you how to identify and develop the tools and activities you will need to make your changes fun and lasting.  This group will consist of coaching, yoga/meditation, and nutrition.

 

During the month together, you will:

-       Own your beauty and take pleasure from your body

-       Feel your gentle power and radiance as a woman, inside and out

-       Learn what triggers your eating, identify strategies to take control of emotional eating and access your true body hunger

-       Toss away diets while feeling your balance, losing weight, and decreasing cravings

-       Create a lifestyle filled with pleasure, relaxation, and balance-uniquely for you!

-       Access your inner ease and pleasure in the face of life’s challenges

 

 

Date: Sundays- November 22 and December 6, 13, 20

Time: 6:30pm-8pm

Place: NYC- Live (will receive address once you sign-up)

World-Wide: we’re using Skype and Google Group

Price: $150

Sign-up: Nicole@RadiantLivingWellness.com  and http://eatingforradiance.eventbrite.com/?ref=esfb

 

Nicole Ohebshalom, founder of Radiance Living Wellness, coaches and supports women who are ready to create health, feel wonderful in their bodies and honor their femininity. Through yoga/meditation, nutritional wisdom and coaching, Nicole helps you step onto your path of personal happiness, balance your relationship with eating and your body, and connect you to your inner balance and radiance.  For more information about Nicole, please visit her website, www.RadiantLivingWellness.com.

She has daily motivational discussions at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/nicole.ohebshalom?ref=profile

 

Your New Immunity Booster

A women’s natural biology is wired for community. They feel their best physically and mentally when they are communicating with transparency and laughter. Even when women are confronted with stress, they produce oxytocin, the hormone associated with bonding. This response probably developed so a woman would protect her family instead of risking her life or abandoning them in dangerous situations. Nowadays, it means that when women are stressed, they seek out friendship. In nursing school, I worked with various communities, from city-hospital’s lock down unit to Burn ICU unit to Infertility and Endocrinology center. At this time, I realized the ability of how the inner workings of community can support or hinder a personal’s wellbeing. We are each involved in so many different communities of friendship that it’s up to us to see what supports our happiness and therefore, health and what does not work out for us.

Bella DePaulo, a visiting psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose work focuses on single people and friendships, notes that in many studies, friendship has an even greater effect on health than a spouse or family member. Feeling cared for and supported within a social network is particularly important for women in fostering self-care, such as healthier diet, exercise and sleep habits. People with stronger friendship networks feel like there is someone they can turn to.

According to research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., having close friends you can count on has far-reaching benefits for your physical and mental health. A strong social network can be critical to helping you through the stress of tough times, whether you’ve had a bad day at work or a year filled with loss or chronic illness. Friends help you face adverse events. They provide material aid, emotional support, and information that helps you deal with the stressors. Friends encourage you to take better care of yourself. The old adage that honesty is the best policy holds true for friendship. It is in a friend’s honesty that we often find the truth that can help us overcome, cope or heal. The healing friends are the ones who listen and who can make us laugh, often at ourselves.

The people with wider social networks are higher in self-esteem, and they feel they have more control over their lives. Other studies have shown that people with fewer friends tend to die sooner after having a heart attack than people with a strong social network. Having lots of friends may even reduce your chances of catching a cold.

I believe having a close friends and being there for them is the same health benefits as volunteering. When you give and support another person, you receive a immunity booster shot! I have seen hospital volunteers discuss their experience about helping others as feeling a warm glow that leaves them both calm and energized. When a person is giving with the heart that triggers endorphins, just like the runners high.

This leaves me to ask you: How do you define and value friendship? How do you want to be a friend to others? A true friends take us as we are. They accept us when we’re happy, when we’re grieving or when we’re so stressed we can’t remember our middle names. A true friend gives us our immunity booster shots!

 

What Your Emotions Have To Do With Eating

The process of exploring, restoring, and enjoying our natural relationship to feelings rests on our capacity to be present in our bodies.  Our bodies are the harbor house of our feelings.  We feel it in the knot in our neck, stomach pains, irregular menstrual cycles, and overall disconnection from the body.  Most of us expend a tremendous amount of energy pushing away some feelings and desiring others, getting so entangled in them that they become the main focus of our life.  We automatically contract and resist when the feelings that we label negative appear, and in the same way we are contracting in our desire for and in our attempt to hold onto the feelings we prefer, like happiness or calm.  There are many teachings that view feelings as distractions.  When I work with my clients experiencing emotional eating they experience when they ignore their feelings they begin to walk towards the vending machine.  Ignoring our feelings is like amputating an arm to say the person’s feelings need to go and that the person needs to feel less.  Anything your feelings is a clue into what your needing at that moment in your life and will keep you away from emotional eating.

At times when we ignore or push away our feelings we choose two different reactions.  We either dominate a situation or withdraw.  Either one of these options, your not feeling your emotions, being your true self or feeling relaxed in your own body. For your personal research, try being present within your body and connecting within to your gentle power.  Say how you feel and what you need in the situation.  Take a moment today or right now: feel these three reactions in your body.  What’s the difference in dominating, withdrawing and being in your gentle power?  What gives you more pleasure?  What creates a powerful effect in you that allows a connection to your true self?  How does this create a balance with your cravings and lifestyle?

 

Hide and Seek with Your Body

You’ve been playing hide and seek with your body.  I get it!  I’ve been there before and at times still find myself there.  What do I love to do when I don’t see the remarkable beauty of my body? I’m a girl that likes to make things fun especially with challenges so I take off all my clothes, look in the mirror and watch myself dancing to some really great tunes.  That just does it for me. I’m back falling deep in love with my glorious body and all the fun I can have with her in my life.  This might get some of you a bit upset.  I know, I was there before too.  I was angry.  I was in a state of completely out of touch with the beauty of my body and once puberty hit I was hiding her with a huge sweater in the mist of summer.  This relationship with my body, and with myself lead to emotional eating.  But then I started learning how to appreciate beauty in all things in life.  I was tired of hiding myself and wanted to live as a woman in this world with the highest joyfilled power.  I knew I could choose to become riveting, sexy, intoxicating, legendary, just by changing my habits.  It is just a habit.  And, it’s just a habit for you too.  It’s worth every scary adventurous step to create a life with your idea of beauty would have little restraint.  The women’s body, your body, is remarkable.  You can create a love affair with yourself, and build the confidence to create a life you always wanted.

Your body is your home.  The women’s body is remarkable to me.  Its beauty is always changing and expanding towards creating more in life.  We hit puberty and our hormones create our curvaceous hips, breasts, and connect us more to our deep intuitive knowledge of being a women.  Our body expands to create a new human life, which we nurture and love with our whole heart and body.  For many of you and your excited to take a deeper plunge into loving your body.  For others, this might sound fantastic (with a mixture of fear) but far away from anything that you care to learn more about or infuse into your life.  This is perfect!  However you feel at this moment is perfect and I want you to take a moment to write down how the feelings you have are ideal for this moment.  Your experience is only at this moment.

There could be many reasons we push away from accepting the beauty of our body so I’m going to touch on one.  An element of fearing our body is we fear our individual expression.  The theory the mass media holds on what woman should look and act like doesn’t bring pleasure and authentic self-acceptance.  I’m going to suggest that we as a collective group of fun women step outside of this box and create our own mass media, called Love Your Radiance (website coming soon!).  Allow yourself to express your authentic self with all the beauty you own.

What is your uniqueness? Celebrate it daily! Every morning I wake up dancing with my curves, giving thanks to the divine feminine and taking pleasure with everything I eat.  My body is created for pleasure and expression, not hatred or shame.  Believe in the love within yourself.

I want to hear: How are you riveting?  How you celebrate yourself?

 

4 Steps To Ending Emotional Eating Through Your Happiness Tolerance

One late night while working Boston’s needle exchange van I realized the early stages of drug addiction is no different than the sugar or coffee cycle many of us succumb to in our daily lives. This particular evening a young man walked into the van, and we talked about his drug use and life in the gay community. He had just come out about his sexual orientation without any support and used drugs to mask his fears.

As we spoke further, it surfaced that many of his fears were tied to him giving into his every temptation. He wanted to feel comfortable in his skin but had a certain pleasure tolerance that diminished any positive thoughts about himself. At this point, many of us look to the outside to heal and grow in life instead of looking and loving within ourselves. What happens at this point when we reach for a heroine needle or the cookie jar? We reach our pleasure tolerance, or our happiness quota and, the addiction cycle begins.

For many people food is an addiction, just like a drug. We receive the same cycle of highs, lows, and reasons for cravings. Many of you can relate to the subtlety of sugar cravings in the office setting. When stressed, you open up that drawer of hidden chocolate bars and the cycle begins.

Have you had a time in your life when you were eating very healthy and exercising? You’d think to yourself, “I’ve got this down!” then out of nowhere you grab a few cookies and weeks later you notice your healthy lifestyle has vanished! This is because the way we eat is the way we live. Our interaction with food is an interesting insight to how we live our lives.

We’re all born with a certain amount of happiness, but this is not our comfort zone because we aren’t always happy or comfortable with our life and ourselves. This has been keeping you from connecting to the love you want, enjoying the relaxing lifestyle you want, realizing your desires and inspiration, or savoring the yummy stimulation from a meal.

Guilt is a major quality that has been preventing you from enjoying your meals and life. We feel guilty for indulging in too much food, sex, power, and money. We can experience guilt when we’re going through change and becoming happier in life. But you shouldn’t feel guilty for having it all. It’s your moral prerogative to have it all and be happy about it. Give those self-conflicting voices about pleasure a rest.

When you let yourself feel good, you feel better about life and thereby are more open to connecting with yourself and feeling balanced. Creating a new way of enjoying eating can be intimidating because it’s new and requires courage and fearless love for yourself. Remember: change can be scary but it’s the only way to grow and achieve happiness. Ask yourself: What would it be like if you got on board with your eating or body changes? How can you celebrate them?

Follow these steps for increasing your happiness tolerance and end the cycle of emotional eating!

Step 1: Write down the reasons behind your emotional eating. Sometimes, just seeing them on paper makes it easier to get a handle on the problem. Take one week and keep a food journal. Write down absolutely everything that you eat, as well as making a note about your mood at that exact time. By taking this step, you’ll be able to target which foods you turn to when you are in different moods.

Step 2: Connect with your desires. Who do you want to be? What do you want in life? What do you enjoy and dislike in your daily life? Being in tune with your desires helps you understand your true self and optimize life satisfaction. Have you written down your desires? Be true to what opens your unique, fun, and happy heart. Embodying these desires by writing them down will allow you to connect to and trust yourself. Next time you think negative body or food thoughts, come back to your desires. Ask yourself what is your stand– what will create happiness in your life?

Step 3: Make a list of things you are grateful for while experiencing this change in food and body image mentality. Put it up on your fridge and look at it to remind you of all the wonderful things in your life. This will help you stay on track, even though the change might be difficult at first. Remember, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel!

For a Bonus: Say YES to something that you would not normally say yes too. See if you enjoy any activity that you normally would not include in your routine.

 

What Your Natural Biology Is Saying About Weight Loss

Imagine a relationship with food and your body that leaves you nourished and fulfilled each day. Imagine having the confidence to relax and enjoy the food you choose to eat. If you’ve tried all the diets to strengthen your metabolism but have not achieved success, there’s one basic reason why: You’re moving too fast.

Biologically, Stress Causes Cravings

In a state of stress, the body automatically shifts into the classic flight-or-fight response, also known as the sympathetic nervous system reaction. As a result, your digestive system shuts down to different degrees because your blood moves away from your midsection where digestion occurs. Instead, your blood flows to your legs, arms, and mind, so it can quickly react to a stressful situation.

Your stress hormones also activate, which can lead you to crave more calories. Cortisol, the main stress hormone involved here, plays a key role in this stress response. Cortisol stimulates a flood of hormonal signaling from the hypothalamus to adrenal glands to engage you in pleasure-seeking behavior. This causes you to consume high-energy/fat foods, such as foods filled with sucrose and lard.

So, it’s actually a hormone that sends a signal to your brain to seek these high-fat foods—it has nothing to do with self-control! We are so hard on ourselves when we have a craving, but really it’s your body asking you to relax— take a bath, ask for a hug, go dance! Your body is seeking the food to create a relaxing feeling for you, but what happens to many of us is we play the blame game.

The amount of pressure society and media put on body image and diet may explain why losing weight is notoriously difficult. Losing weight can be stressful, which can make you feel anxious. In this stress response, cortisol comes into full gear and creates high-energy food cravings. Eating high-energy food blunts the feeling of stress and makes you feel better, but this is short-lived. Stress will come around again, especially if you haven’t learned healthy de-stressing techniques, and the viscious cycle begins again.

Relax! Your Metabolism Depends on It

Relaxation begins with building self-awareness and positive thought processes into your life. Once this is established, you can find other ways to relax and organize your pleasure before the stress and cravings are full force.

When you are in a relaxed mode, your parasympathetic nervous system is activated. All the blood flows to your midsection to churn and assimilate the food and absorb all your nutrients. Your metabolism and digestion work in full speed.

Our body’s natural state is relaxation, and we are genetically programmed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. When we eat, we are seeking the pleasure of food and avoiding the pain of hunger. Therefore, adding pleasure to your food will metabolically optimize your meal. The chemical CCK (cholecystokinin) is produced in the body and has a number of functions in your parasympathetic nervous system. It aids in digestion, suppresses appetite, and stimulates a pleasure sensation in the cerebral cortex. This shows us how pleasure, metabolism, and a naturally controlled appetite are interwoven to the core. The same chemical reaction that metabolizes the meal also tells us when to finish the meal and makes us feel good about the entire experience.

The key to pleasure’s powerful effect in balancing your appetite is that it promotes a physiologic relaxation response. We overeat most when we’re anxious, stressed, or unaware. A relaxed, pleasured eater has natural control. A stressed eater produces more circulating cortisol. Because cortisol desensitizes us to pleasure in our day-to-day stressors, we need to eat more food to feel the same amount of pleasure as when we’re relaxed. Therefore, if you’re anxious about gaining weight or frightened to eat a dessert, you’ll generate more cortisol. This chemical will swim through your bloodstream, numb you to pleasure, and ironically create the very self-fulfilling prophecy you feared from the beginning: If you eat something fun, you wont be able to stop.

Take in All Your Senses During Your Next Meal

So how do you begin receiving pleasure with your next meal? Pay attention with your senses. Each time you take a bite, give yourself one mindful moment to check in. Use all your senses to really be in the experience.

Eyes: Chefs go to great lengths to prepare food attractively because they know it can add excitement and satisfaction to the experience. Take in your food’s shape and examine the color. Food’s appearance has a lot to do with how much we enjoy it.

Smell: Your sense of smell is tied to your sense of taste. You get to begin your enjoyment of the food’s flavor without eating it. Breathe in slowly, searching through the scents for a preview of what you’re about to eat.

Sound: Take a moment to listen to the sounds around you to be more in the experience of your environment and food. Listen to the sound of your breathing to assist you in relaxation.

Touch: The sense of touch gives us information on the texture, shape, and temperature of food. Begin to really notice the different textures in one mouthful of food. Describe the texture of the food to yourself in detail and take in the full pleasure of the experience. There are so many fun ways you can describe food—mushy, crunchy, soft, solid, oily, succulent, dry, juicy, sticky. Have fun with it! Temperature is also an important piece of information to the brain. Foods taste different depending on their temperature, and their textures change as well.

Taste: Flavor is perhaps the most powerfully sensual information we get from eating. The variations are endless and intriguing. Our taste buds (actually working with the sense of smell) can bring us great pleasure. When you have taken a bite of food, check in and see what flavors are there.