#let’s work to heal ourselves from our insecurities and pride

[derricklogan2]

Men it’s okay to be told no by a woman.

We’re not entitled to a yes just because she’s by herself or for any other reason.

The same energy we used to give those shoe cleaners in the mall is the same energy that women are on when they tell us no: they’re just not interested. And we don’t need to be salesmen.

We’re not entitled to an explanation either. And we don’t have to create our own narrative behind the no.

Accept the no and kindly move on. Another woman will say yes; just not her.

[cosmichighpriestess]

These people from our past think that it's personal that we're not talking to them anymore. It's not anymore, it used to be until we forgave them every single day and moved on happily free of the stress they added in our lives. We are simply not aligned anymore. It's not personal now, because there's no going back to someone not even on the same frequency as us. They are stuck in their lower dimensions because they couldn't stop giving in to their toxic cycles. They can't see through the illusions of their matrix realities. They couldn't stop their toxic ways for whatever reason they felt they needed to hold onto those things. They couldn't understand we weren't even on the same wavelength even when we were together with them. We never needed them, we only wanted them. They think it's a war, they think we think we're better than them. They think we're in competition with them and now they are trying to get even with us because they think we lost something by losing them.

No, we've gained ourselves back, we gained our energy back, we gained our power back, we gained our healed version of ourselves, we gained our self love, we gained what was rightfully ours to begin with that they were blocking from us receiving our blessings. God couldn't bless that mess. God couldn't bless us if they were still right there. They would've sabotaged it and used us for everything we deserved. We thought these people were perfect, and amazing then we saw the ugly truth and the lies they were hiding and said nope gotta go. We have humility but we are not stupid, we're just refusing to be disrespected. It was never about jealousy it's about respect. These people are still in denial of how many people they screwed over. They aren't even close to being deserving of you.

These people have perfect social medias, they have a lot materially, they seem flawless but not all that glitters is gold. We haven't looked back since. We haven't even checked their social media and they are out there in a competition by themselves while we're still focused on ourselves and still winning. See how we're not aligned anymore? We LOVE these people. If we were to run into them again, all the feelings would come rushing back and we'd probably hug them and wish them the best. Our natural selves, our inner child just exudes love until these people came in and tried to destroy us. But we're highly protected so that probably won't happen. They projected all the fears and insecurities they felt about themselves onto us, calling us all kinds of names that were lies. We still forgave them anyways, because we healed ourselves and learned how to love ourselves. It's the easiest route to take to finally let go and just forgive and stop holding onto grudges. You're literally anchoring yourself to the negative experience by not forgiving them. Forgive them but never forget why you left. They are over there throwing tantrums and cursing us, meanwhile unknowingly cursing themselves. Anything they sent us just bounced off of us and got sent back to sender. We have truly elevated and done the shadow work needed to heal from not just them but everyone else in our lives they were unaware were betraying us too.

That's why we feel so much compassion for them because we know they are hiding their pain from everyone. They can't get honest and real and apologize to us though. They have too much pride. We've already completely accepted that we may never get an apology. They want us to be the version of ourselves that they want. They will never acknowledge your worth. But they will continue stalking us, pulling on our energy draining us, and they will continue their karmic relationships that aren't real Love. They traded in real love for material objects, and status to serve their ego. Oh well. They'll never experience it again. They will search for you in everyone they meet and they will never find you. They could never love you the way you deserve because they love you with conditions. Real love is unconditional. That means NO conditions.Baby, their egos will never be satisfied because our ego is only one percent of what we are, even if they are filling up one hundred percent of that one percent they will still be starving for more. But we wish that they heal, become better people, and become aligned for their highest good. Remember, we attracted these people to learn a lesson through our triggers, so what did you learn about yourself that you needed to heal?

If you were to go back to these people you would be going back to an unhealed version of them that's even worse than before because now they are angry. Seeing you happy makes their skin crawl because we know how to be happy with nothing and no reason at all, they may never understand how we can be happy with nothing and staying single. They wouldn't know real love if it hit them in the face. They think love is someone with the same interests as them, someone who controls them and makes them look good for their fake life. You make them sick to their stomach when they think about you. Imagine how tormented their insides are. That must be hell. Forgive them, move on they are not coming with you, we are simply not aligned at all and they will forever regret treating you the way they did. Get on our level or get left behind period. They can't hurt you anymore, you're safe now. Not everyone is for you. You will find your people in Divine timing. Use your discernment. Connect with genuine people like you who deserve you. Stay connected to your heart center Divine One. You're doing such a great job and I'm so proud of you. You're deserving of peace and love just trust.

[scarletarosa]

The Luciferian Path

From being a Luciferian for the majority of my life, I’ve had the honour of being mentored by Lucifer and his wife, Lilith. Both of whom have transformed me in incredible ways and have helped me to overcome many of my greatest internal and external struggles. From this, I would like to share my insight and advice for those interested in starting or just curious about Luciferianism in general. 

When we accept to be mentored by Lucifer (or any other demon), we are embracing a path of trials so we may evolve, for every demon teaches through adversity. As Lucifer is the Light of creation who was born from darkness, he represents the light of wisdom that can be found in the depths of struggle. He has taught me that the only way one can be reborn and develop wisdom is to have themselves destroyed and gradually remade through healing and spiritual awakening. This is no easy procedure, but every birth is painful. Our path will lead us through the depths of Hell, facing all of our insecurities, negative habits, deepest fears, and false beliefs so they can be torn away to reveal our highest potential. It takes a truly courageous soul to do this, which is why Luciferianism is not for the faint of heart. This is the sort of religion that aims to turn us into warriors and sages, but in turn, it makes us outcasts from a world of people who do not seek higher knowledge and progress. 

Spiritual Evolution through Rebirth:

This is both the most important thing a person can do in life, but also the most difficult. From what I have learned, every planet with life is created in order to be a place of teaching, so the purpose of life is to evolve in knowledge and become more than ordinary beings. Once this happens and we become enlightened, we will not have to reincarnate again. It is however very tempting for most people to shun this sort of path so they can relax or focus on mundane things, but this ultimately gets us nowhere and will have no rewards in the end. 

Most importantly for Rebirth, we need to learn how to let go of unnecessary attachments, negative habits and thought-patterns, as well as fears. This is why shadow work is very helpful so we can analyze our traumatized self and heal them through understanding. Through embracing a path of suffering, we become stronger, more experienced, and also less afraid. It is the path of exposure that leads to the tower of wisdom, not the path of gentleness. Once we accept this and overcome our weaknesses, life becomes so much easier and we gain great pride in ourselves. Though do not think that this means those who do you harm are doing you a favour, it is how we view the negative situations that help us, not the people themselves. Additionally, suffering should not be sought after, only accepted and conquered when it arises. 

So when you say you wish to evolve as a person, remember the responsibilities and trials that come with it. You will have to face the long and cold night before the dawn rises, but when it comes, you will not be the same as who you were before. If you wish to shed your doubts and your insecurities, you will need to have the strength to destroy them and embrace whatever hardships come your way. So like the wise serpents, we must shed our old skin to become anew. It is due to this that adversity is the best of all teachers. So as one of my favourite quotes puts it, “holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.”

Learn Everything, Question Everything:

With Lucifer being a god of knowledge, it is by no surprise that this is something Luciferians hold very dear to their hearts. We are encouraged by him to learn anything and everything, constantly expanding ourselves, and being eternal students to truth-seeking. However, the worst thing about books and documents is that it is all too easy to portray a lie as truth and have people believe it in herds. We need to become independent critical thinkers who get into the habit of questioning nearly everything we read and seeking out as many resources as possible. Even historians are at times paid to hide certain revelations in history in order to hide dark truths, so even books you think you can trust can hold lies. Passive reception of knowledge creates slaves, and this is exactly what happens with the majority of people. 

Spend the majority of your time away from social media and read as much about history as possible, from many different sources and look up different topics in detail. Though do this with many other subjects as well, but history is extremely important to be well-read on. You will find that some things aren’t as simple as others would like you to believe, such as claiming that ancient civilizations were primitive when they were far more advanced than us in plenty of ways, yet the evidence tends to be buried. Progress is cyclical, not linear- yet much progress of the ancients was lost due to wars and great floods. The reason why most historians eagerly proclaim Atlantis to be a myth is because of how advanced they were, and simply because the possibility of such greatness during such a “primitive” time seems impossible to them, yet there is plenty of evidence that it did exist if one searches hard enough for information.

Choose to learn as much as you possibly can throughout your entire life and you will see how much you will change as a person; the rewards are endless, but it can also be a burden to understand the darker depths of this world’s history. With understanding, we become more than we are now and can assist in guiding others who are in need (but do not do everything for them so they can learn on their own and not become lazy). Ignorance is one of the greatest things we need to fight against as Luciferians, so truth-seeking in as many areas as possible is key. Again, this is not easy since we all will have to realize that many things we think to be truth are false beliefs, which can be painful at times. We even need to question our own spiritual beliefs and religions, or else we will never feel comfortable enough to ask the gods themselves for the truth of existence. Believe nothing to be true until it is fully proven, this is the key. 

Working with other demons in Luciferianism:

Many demons (especially the trusted military leaders of Lucifer, the majority of whom can be found in the Goetia) are excellent mentors towards Illumination, as well as Mother Lilith who is glorious in her wisdom. Just be cautious that no malevolent entities come and pretend to be them, so make sure astral protections are put up, or speak to them in your mind (like telepathy). A link to my posts on the infernal gods (demons) can be found here.

Conclusion:

Overall, Luciferians seek to expand their consciousness and then help to guide others if they are willing. This is an honourable path and all who walk it are sure to develop into magnificent people, as long as they remain diligent and courageous. Speak to Lucifer (or other demons) for guidance whenever needed, but also remember that they will not do everything for you since the purpose of this path is to grow stronger and wiser, not rely upon others. 

Additional posts on Lucifer: Values of Luciferianism, Ritual of Devotion, History of the Angels, Lucifer

[mr-gallows]

Astrological signs for Anakin Skywalker!

I mostly just focused on the signs and planets, not on the houses that they fell into, so there may be some inconsistencies! I might change these later the more I learn, but this is just for fun! Here is my take on Anakin! (with some minor Obi-Wan analysis for comparison!) Read Obi-Wan’s interpretation here. Edit: I changed Anakin’s moon!

Before I get into this, I want to explain the elements and the modes: Air = thoughts/intellect Earth = materialism/pragmatism Water = emotion/spiritualism Fire = Action/Instinct 

Cardinal = initiative Fixed = stability Mutable = adaptability

Anakin has mostly Fire and Water, making him active and emotional. He has just enough air to give him an unconventional intellect. He is also Cardinal and Fixed dominant, which gives him initiative and stability (not often a word you would describe Anakin with!). He has a beautifully intense chart, this boy belongs in a Gothic novel. Lord Byron would be proud.

Scorpio Ascendant: The ascendant is our mask or ‘filter’. It is the first layer of our personality, what we show to people before they truly know us. Anakin processes the world around him through the lens of a Scorpio; with high emotional intensity and an almost psychic perception. He is reserved with most people around him, he keeps his guard up like a Scorpio. Most of the time he keeps quiet, letting Obi-Wan do the talking with his more chatty Libra Ascendant. Scorpio Ascendants also look very intense, and may come across as cold to people. Unlike Obi-Wan’s airy Libra, Scorpio has a very heavy presence, because it’s a fixed sign. It has the intensity of a black hole. 

He’s not going to budge an inch, until he knows that he’s safe around you. 

This is probably why Anakin comes across as a loner most of the time, even though this boy is like ‘im so lonely please love me i’m so lonely’. When people get to know Anakin better, and he lets his guard down, they get a glimpse of his core Aries self (Obi-Wan is very familiar with this side). 

Aries Sun: The Sun is the ‘core’ part of the personality. Anakin is an Aries Sun, a fiery cardinal sign, making him highly action-oriented. Anakin seems to have a lot of trouble staying still, always needing to do something with his body or work with his hands. He needs to see the fruits of his labors right now dammit.

Anakin often gets typed as a Scorpio Sun, however I think Scorpio, for all of its emotional volatility, can be frighteningly calculating. Scorpio Sun likes to hide in the shadows, waiting patiently for the perfect opportunity to strike. Anakin broods like a Scorpio, but he has the impatience of an Aries, and carries out most of his actions like an Aries.

His Aries Sun is very active, always on the move, acting on its feelings almost without thought. Anakin seems to be flying by the seat of his pants in most areas of life. He’s also naturally pretty fiery and competitive, having no issue with showing off. Anakin is restless, he has an urge to push boundaries and to experience everything. He’s very open, and his moon blends in easily with this. It’s this fire and action-oriented cardinal energy that has given him drive to become a Jedi, and probably his Aquarius/Scorpio that gives him the follow-through. Cardinal energy wants to lead, and Anakin is a natural-born leader. It comes more naturally to him than to Obi-Wan’s mutable Virgo!

Moon in Sagittarius Leo: The moon is our vulnerabilities, our emotions, and our maternal instinct. It is the side of ourselves that comes out when we are most comfortable. I thought that Anakin was a Sagittarius moon, since he seems given to sensory experiences. The more I saw how he interacted with Ahsoka, however, I’m starting to think he is in fact a Leo Moon. His emotions are wrapped in his pride. I remember the idea that Anakin wants more than what a Jedi’s life offers, even though he shouldn’t. He has strong desires. There is a nobility to Leo, fiercely protective of what it claims as its own. The way he tells Ahsoka he would never let anyone hurt her makes me think of a lion protecting its cub. Anakin is so fiercely protective of her, he sneers at the mere implication that Asajj sees a part of herself in her. With Padme, he wants to express his love in grand, dramatic gestures, probably in ways that he wishes he could show the whole world, but he can’t. He wants to save people who are suffering and right wrongs in a very grandiose manner. It feels like a divine calling, a narrative in which he is the main character, it is his purpose in life. This is how Anakin mothers the people he loves. Extreme, devout protection and gestures of adoration. Just think of a Lion’s majesty and ferocity, and you’ve got Anakin’s moon. 

Mercury in Aquarius: Mercury is all about how we understand things, think, and communicate. Anakin’s Aquarius Mercury is having a hard time breathing with all these fire and water signs around it. This is where Anakin’s unconventional thought patterns come from. Anakin will come up with a solution to a problem that is very unexpected. Anakin’s action-driven Sun, his possibility-driven Moon, and his forward-thinking Aquarius Mercury combine to make him a very daring pilot. Honestly it makes him very daring in many areas. His Aquarius Mercury is fascinated by tech and creating new things with it. He also doesn’t care much for social etiquette, and may even be amused by saying something blunt. He has a taste for innovation. Him and Obi-Wan having Mercury signs in air makes me think that’s why their banter is so amusing. They are both quick witted in this regard.

Venus in Scorpio: Venus rules romance, aesthetics, and taste. Oh boy, this is a doozy. Where do I start?

Having a water-based Venus is compatible with Obi-Wan’s water-based Moon. Water signs are compatible with other water-signs. However, there is a problem: Obi-Wan’s moon only comes out when he feels completely comfortable to do so. That happens extremely rarely. 

Anakin’s Venus is pulling at Obi-Wan’s Moon, demanding that Obi-Wan share a part of himself that Obi-Wan only shows when he feels absolutely safe to do so. Unfortunately, being a Jedi, it’s never safe to do so. Scorpio probes, which might even feel parasitic to Obi-Wan.  Obi-Wan will block it out, because it’s sensitive, it hurts. Anakin interprets this as a rejection, and thinks that he did something wrong, when it’s really just not the way Obi-Wan expresses his love (most of the time). That said, the detail-orientation of Obi-Wan’s Venus and his emotionally-psychic moon are extremely precise in detecting Anakin’s mood-changes and feelings.

(Obi-Wan’s Moon/Venus: “I love you but I don’t know how to deal with this.”)

Anakin’s love is raw. It is an all-consuming type of love, it’s like an addiction, a drug. Anakin wants to know the depths of someone’s soul, he wants to know someone’s deepest traumas and demons, to accept them and love them for all that they are, because ultimately that is what he craves for himself.

This kind of love is extremely intimidating to Obi-Wan’s gentle Virgo Venus and sensitive Cancer Moon. I don’t think Padme really knows how to deal with it either. I don’t think he’s shown all of it to her.

Scorpio Venus, along with his Scorpio Ascendant, makes Anakin very possessive and stubborn. This doesn’t mean that Scorpio Venuses are bad, only that they have an urge to take things to an extremely intense depth that most others don’t feel comfortable going to. Not everyone sees that as love. A Scorpio Venus has to learn that not everything has to go that deep, and that boundaries need to be respected.

On the plus side, you can probably tell your deepest secrets and insecurities to Anakin, and he won’t tell a soul. He’ll probably feel closer to you. 

Suspecting rejection, Anakin thinks he has to prove how much he loves someone, so that they don’t let him go. I think of the scene where Anakin gives his lightsaber to Padme, as a symbol of his life and love (I also suspect that Padme is probably a Cancer Ascendant, which would explain Anakin being drawn to her because she has a mothering, caring energy that he wants in love). Anakin doesn’t realize that he doesn’t have to go to these extreme lengths to prove that he loves someone, he doesn’t see that they already love him. He feels wrong and broken, and he wants someone who can heal his soul, when he really needs to look inwards and heal himself.

A Scorpio Venus can also take things very personally and become wrathful. Scorpio has a divine wrath, it is complete and utter destruction. Anakin is fire and ice, he burns everything to ash and freezes it over.

(Anakin’s Leo Moon/Scorpio Venus: “Why are you leaving me? What did I do wrong?”)

Losing someone he loves is death itself to him. When he speaks to Master Unduli about not giving up on Ahsoka, the thought of losing her looks like it physically pains him. 

In short: Anakin not properly dealing with his Scorpio Venus/Leo Moon is probably the cause of his fall. 

Also: Scorpios like darkness and intensity. To them, it is the most real, the most deep. Explains why Anakin likes black, huh?

Mars in Aries Scorpio: Mars rules passion, war, instinct, and sexuality. An Scorpio Mars is a planet in the sign of its old rulership! It is not as potent as Aries, but I changed it because I examined the way Anakin goes to war. He is more likely, at least later on, to use underhanded and sneaking tactics. This is where he becomes very cold, calculating, unyielding. Having a third inner planet (Ascendant sort of counts as a planet) in Scorpio makes his personality slightly unbalanced. There’s a LOT of Scorpio here, a lot of intense emotions that he has difficulty understanding. He can never completely express himself, there is something he’s always holding back, and he doesn’t even know what it is that he’s holding back.  

When it comes to sexuality, this is another area where Anakin gets possessive. This is where not only his Mars, but his Scorpio Venus and Leo Moon all come out to play. The eroticism is ridiculous. It’s wild, uninhibited, dark, passionate, emotional, and probably loud. What a drama queen. He’s easily aroused and wants to give everything he can to his partner. Having Scorpio in the planets of love and sexuality makes his expressions of love tinged with darkness. He probably has a dominant edge and wants to explore dark taboos. He wants to utterly consume his partner and have them consume him in return. This is an intense sensory and emotional experience for him, and he wants the best. His ideal is a luxurious bed with candles, a beautiful moonlit view, and nobody else for miles. Leaving his partners exhausted and satisfied is what he strives for, and he’d wish they could do this forever. Aries/Leo/Scorpio make his head, back, and well...his genitals, his erogenous zones, respectively.

[3shag]

August 1

This month, I am hoping to learn on how to focus on myself. I badly need to focus on my review for the upcoming board exam. Also, I’m hoping that this month would be a healing month and a fresh start for myself since I’d been really busy focusing on my family this past few months.

I pray for knowledge and wisdom.

I pray that I’ll be able to discipline myself not to easily be distracted.

I pray for a productive day everyday.

At the end of this month, It’s a new me. All these things are for my better future. So help me God 🙏🏻

August 2

Actually, I don’t know. The month of July was filled with pain. Still, looking at the positive side of this month was that I’m thankful that I’d finally received my two diplomas.

August 3

What love taught me so far was to be brave enough to let go someone you really love and just continue life. It’s been 6 months since we’d broke up, less than month since my grandma, and our dog left. I can say that I’m not that fully recovered yet because I still recall all the heartbreaking days happened. But, I can also say that I’m fine and fearless enough to go on with life.

August 4

My favorite non-work activity I did this past month was to try workout in the morning, read a fictional book in Wattpad, and chill with family like netflix and drinking beer with them.

August 5

I’d read a fictional story from Wattpad entitled “Chasing in the Wilds”. It’s a love story of a CEO and a civil engineer. This story really inspired me to work hard in achieving my goals. How I needed to focus on my review, work for my family and future, and I know someday I’ll find my living fictional character that every girl would dreamed of.

August 6

I feel normal again. Not so sad, not so happy. Just the neutral feeling. I guess the best feeling I had these past few days was to feel motivated on the things I wanted to do or achieved. I feel so bad when I got nothing to do. It’s like everyday should be an improvement day. I guess, I’m already tired of doing nonsense. Maybe, Its time to focus more on myself.

August 7

Actually, I did nothing on this day since I am having a body pain. But, one thing that brought me a sense of joy was that I have this body pain because I really miss playing badminton and that made me happy that I played again despite of this pandemic.

August 8

The best memories I had when I was a child was that I am able to play outside the house with my childhood buddies. No gadgets, just the usual traditional 90’s games.

August 9

The biggest lesson I’ve learned so far from this week is that time is unstoppable, so, why waste time to nothing. Everyday should be a learning process day. Trying to have productive day and rest if I have to.

August 10

I can be present to someone if I am to hear or listen to all their rants/problems in life. I may not be present physically, but virtually I am trying my best to make them feel better.

August 11

I really don’t know actually. But, I think the plot twist happen in my life right now maybe the days I felt so broke. So lately, I am trying to be resourceful on the things that aren’t not going to be used but has value, so, I tried to sell it online. It’s just a temporary income, so, I probably need to save too and discipline myself. But I’m glad I am not that so broke anymore.

August 12

My past self was too busy on school. Less time on my family and close friends. I can tell now that I’m proud of myself because all those sacrifices I did before when I was on college we’re all worth it.

August 13

The grace I am receiving lately I think my extra income in shopee. At least this time I can now save money for my basic needs and be wise on spending for my wants.

August 14

That everything happening right now is just at the right time.

August 15

Lately, me and my sister have planned to have this “beaded accessories” business. So yeah, I enjoyed doing it and makes me forget my worries temporarily.

August 16

Calming and Relaxing. It made me feel like I’m not worrying anything.

August 17

I pushed myself so much today. I haven’t applied to rest for a while. Maybe because I didn’t prioritize all my task this day so I clutched up everything.

August 18

The moment that they pressured me on my review. I am already pressured by myself and the moment they pushes me even more, it’s totally suffocating. The only courageous words that I am holding onto is that everything happening in my life are just at the perfect time. Mistakes and delays are meant to happen. All these problems are preparing me for something good.

August 19

I am still breathing

I have complete and happy family

We are healthy

We have food to eat

Few close friends but the realest ones

Blessed to buy wants and needs

I graduated college

My family / relatives / friends are safe

Comfortable bed to sleep and rest on

God is always with me

August 20

In today’s situation, all the public servants, front-liners especially from hospitals, volunteers, food drivers or any public transportation drivers, and others who continues their businesses just to serve the needs of others. They are the ones who’s helping and sacrificing theirselves to our community. What I have learned from them was to take good care of ourselves and showing our kindness to them because seeing them tired was really heartbreaking.

August 21

When I didn’t hesitate to ask and comfort my auntie (Ate Lita). The moment I saw her crying while fixing her things, I felt how lonely she was in her life. Everything we’re going through right now, I wanted blame the pandemic. Everyone’s suffering from mental health. Yes, it’s safe being at home but It’s also not healthy anymore being stuck in a house.

August 22

Faith in God. Everything that is happening right now, I always trust in him. No matter how slow my progress is, I know everything’s planned.

Discipline. I always feel guilty when I didn’t review or waste my day to nothing. It’s a good thing because I know that I have a responsibility to do at the end of each day. It’s an add up routine for me to discipline myself to at least review per day. Also, it helped me minimize the use of social media accounts, use of phone, or watch netflix.

Strong. I know that I am strong because I am not giving up. Lately, I am being pressured on my review. I panicked and palpitated when I am stress. I cannot think properly. I know that my anxiety starts attacking me. I pray. I pray. I pray. And after that breakdown, the next day, It feels like I’m totally okay again.

Soft-hearted. I’m glad that I am still that kind of person. I don’t have that so much pride. I know that I am still humble and the kind person you still know.

August 23

1. To put God first in anything and everything.

2. To learn how to use your emotions to think.

3. To learn how to rest and treat myself.

4. Everything is just at the right time.

5. I deserved better. Don’t settle for less.

August 24

It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling. So much question on your head and a lot of insecurities on yourself. But you know what, you’re still growing. There’s so much things planned for you. Everything that you questioned about yourself, they’re all just temporary problems. Take it as a challenge for you to surpass. You still have so much things to be learned and you shouldn’t miss it. Just keep on moving forward because there’s a lot of opportunities ahead for you.

August 25

Trust is something that would take you for years to gain it and just a second of mistakes for you to ruined it. It’s one of my most important value in this world. Once I give you that trust, it means I am safe with you and I have no doubts for you. If you break it, I’ll always doubt in you and hard for you to have it back.

August 26

Yesterday. I’m not in a good mood. My body doesn’t want me to do anything. I feel guilty when I am not doing anything productive. But, its a recharged for me. Maybe, yes, I really need that rest for a while for me to think and relax my mind. Reminding myself to take good care of my mental health as well. Resting for a while is healthy, but too much chill can be unhealthy as well.

August 27

The positive changes that happened to me now would be my self-worth. It’s good to be single again. Less worries and problems. Maybe, God really planned this. He knows that I will carry much more pain when I am still in a relationship. This time, I’ll focus more on my personal problems firsts.

August 28

Recently, I am learning to plan all my tasks to do which truly a helpful for me to be more motivated to finish all my tasks. Also, I am reading an inspirational book before I start reviewing my lectures. It also helped me to be calm and inspired at the same time. It’s a slow progress yet it’s still a progress. Trying to not be so hard myself this time.

August 29

I am dreaming about acing that board exam.

I am dreaming about how my future would be.

I am dreaming about giving back to my parents.

I am dreaming about traveling to my dream places.

I am dreaming about buying all my wants.

I am dreaming about a contented life.

All I am dreaming is about my success. Success for me is something that I’ll overcome someday with all these present-day problems. It’s just all dreams but I know it’s not impossible to happen if I work hard and never give up no matter how life throws me curve.

August 30

Maybe, the new builded relationship with my sister. We are trying to start a small business which was her idea and I just support her. We don’t know how to grow and run a business, so, we have misunderstandings. But, we’re also happy on what we are doing because it’s something that you will not get bored or unproductive in a day. We both love arts, maybe someday, as we grow older, we’ll understand each other ever more.

August 31

I cannot believe that I made it. I am somehow healed on all that July heartbreaks. I can say that I’ve overcame all those previous problems because it’s all different now from all my current worries. I am now worrying about passing the board exam. This is what I wanted to happen, to be more focus on my review. I always have a productive day and I even learned to plan my duties to do at the end of each day.

~~~~~

Lord, Thank You. I know that you guided me. You helped me push myself to do better each day. There are downfalls, yes, but you never failed to be so good in me. It’s just a one month, but it truly helped me mold myself even more. I learned a lot from this month of August. I love you, Lord. Thank You for not leaving me.

[tordenvejr]

Inviting Joy

Exercise for increased happiness/fulfillment/excitement/feelings of love/peace, etc. and the workings of it.

Don’t skip healing and being with hurt in favor of overriding it with this, all parts of you deserve to feel the sun, accept and embrace pain and bring with you the parts that have or are experiencing it.

There’s a feeling bridge that is of course very complex and nuanced, but that generally goes something like shame, depression, fear, grief, apathy, powerlessness, passivity, insecurity, guilt, unworthiness, jealousy, hatred, revenge, anger, pride, discouragement, blame, worry, doubt, disappointment, overwhelmed, frustration, irritation, impatience, pessimism, boredom, contentment, hopeful, courage, neutrality, acceptance, hope, optimism, reason, purpose, enthusiasm, appreciation, passion, empowerment, freedom, joy, freedom, gratitude, love.

It is not the goal to change a feeling about something that hurts us to joy and gratitude /for/ that hurt, but rather to feel and embrace the hurt and hear its message or what it asks for and caringly give what that is to the part of us that hurts. And as all within that experience is brought to the light, move into peace or joy so that we can clearly see the changes that needs to be made, which boundaries need to be set or which cords need to be cut, to feel worthy of what is on the other side of our hurt (i.e. to put it simply, if we feel pain from being mistreated our heart is saying: “I do not wish to be mistreated,” and we can then find clarity for what is within our own power to do in working to honor that message) and to allow ourselves to have it.

To deny yourself your less pleasant emotional responses would be to deny yourself your complexity and wisdom. Emotions give awareness, they lead us to where we are sensitive, where we need change or healing and so on.

There is also nothing more righteous about forgiveness over hatred, but it is important to remember that hatred comes from experiencing a threat to what we love or deem important (and with that that love is hidden deep within the hate).

It is not in our best interest to aim to live a life only of happiness and never of any negative feelings and turn them away when they come, this will only distance us from ourselves and our truth. It serves us best to learn to meet ourselves and any and everything we may feel (pleasant or not) with a goal to understand and cultivate compassion and care for it and ourselves. It takes the willingness to hear and heal our wounds to live a life where joy and fulfillment are most prominent.

We’re capable of meeting our pain and to work with it when it comes and at the same time devote and deliberately fill our heart and bodies with warmth consistently, and have well being be where we live our lives.

When we fill ourselves with good-feeling feelings we get access to similar and even better feeling feelings, thoughts and ideas. We open to our higher excitements which ultimately are our gifts to the world and where our experience walking through life will be most fulfilling and joyous. Tending to yourself and bringing a smile to your heart is the biggest gift you can give to yourself and to the world.

The Exercise

• Pick a feeling (from contentment and on) on the list and set off time (a minute, 5, 10, more) to fill your body with it. You do this by asking: what does this feeling feel like? Where does it sit in the body?

It could be the heart, the shoulders, the knees. Does it warm, does it buzz, does it tickle?

It can be helpful to affirm: I invite and welcome (feeling) into my heart and being.

• Then sit in this feeling for as long as you set off for it, notice where it’s most apparent in your body, how it feels, what quality it holds and let it shower you and fill you. Let it extend from your body, fill the whole room if it wants, let it radiate from you and bring a smile to your lips.

I recommend doing this every day, as many times as you want. Notice the differences in your regular feelings and thoughts following.

Help for Getting Started on Feeling Feelings

Contentment: feels like ease, a lightness in the body, in the shoulders, the forehead, a pleasant increasing emptiness and openness, airy, accepting.

Courage: feels like if red were a color, feels like strength in the chest, like you get stronger just by your decision to be, feels like action, feels like determination, it fills the body with force and focus, goal.

Optimism: feels like hope, it feels like a seedling is sprouting in your heart, a bit tentative but excitement begins to shyly spark and grow, it feels like sun is in your head, fills the chest like a sunny spring day.

Purpose: feels like yellow and gold, feels like your joints tingles, like there’s a buzzing under your skin, it feels giddy, it feels like you were trying to walk in water before and now you’ve reached land, feels ease and feels like piercing focus, feels like belonging, like devotion, passion, excitement.

Freedom: feels like opportunity, expansion, possibility, resourcefulness, endless, liberation, it feels like your body is so light you’re one jump from flying to the sky, like abundance and being held by the universe, it feels like playing and lightheartedness, feels like breathing.

Gratitude: feels like a warmth and fondness in the chest, feels like presence, feels like all your surroundings light up with love, feels like wanting to take a moment to smile at everything, it feels like a sun radiating from your chest.

Joy: feels like being filled with a million colorful flowers, like you can’t help but smile to everyone you see like you want everyone to be filled with the same beaming happiness as you, like nothing can tear you down because you have an eye for all the joy within and around.

Love: feels like care, warmth, it feels like truth, like you become love in your seeing of another, of yourself, of the world, feels like coming home, feelings like everything is okay, everything is good, it feels like illusions fall away, it warms the body, it illuminated all that is beautiful and real, it beams from you when you hold it, it brings kindness and compassion, it lets everything be as it is and loves it while it does it.

If you’d like more help let yourself remember a memory where you held the feeling you’re focusing on.

It can set you up for brightness to take more feelings after each other!

If you feel far down the negative end of the list it can also be helpful to begin with that end and (in a minute or in a few days, whatever you feel called to is right for you) work yourself up the list. For example, if you feel frustrated it can be easier to ease the body into neutrality and then contentment at first, rather than try to bring yourself to the feeling of excitement or unconditional love right away.

If you’re experiencing intense sadness regularly I urge you to care for it, listen to it and what it tells you, find in it where the love for you is. If you feel powerless what does that discomfort tell you? That powerlessness is not your truth? That you want empowerment? What’s the next move towards empowerment?

Here, you can use the scale to first detect how you feel: misery. Then imagine it change form in your body to insecurity, then to unworthiness, then to anger, to worry, disappointment, overwhelm, impatience, etc. Feel how it gets lighter in the body. Continue as far up the scale as you feel like. Don’t overthink how you make the feelings change form and morph to the next, however you’re doing it is right.

Happy beaming, you’re doing great!

[riverrootstarot]

🍃✨🌔Wednesday Pick-A-Card Reveals🌔✨🍃

If you haven't had a chance to yet, take a moment to quiet your mind, maybe make some tea, take a breath, and choose a card that calls to you. (Original post is linked here.)

[ Image Description: Three tarot cards laid facedown on a purple and gold cloth. The card backs are a vertically mirrored image of a mask made from leaves, turtle shells, and vines with a border of intricate patterns all in a gold monochrome, the Mystic Faerie deck. Resting in the center of each card is a small natural treasure. The cards are labeled 1, 2, and 3 from left to right and the nature treasures are a small acorn, a snail shell, and a black and white butterfly wing, respectively. End ID. ]

And when you're ready...

🍃

✨

🌔

💚

🌌

💚

🌔

✨

🍃

Here are your messages...

1 | Nine of Swords: You're feeling trapped and helpless, like everything is slipping through your fingers and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Struggling will only make things worse, what you need to do now is calm down and assess your situation, then begin damage control where it's needed most. Ask for help, don't allow your own sense of pride or insecurity be what holds you back from taking care of yourself. Don't put too much stock on your worst case scenario. If it happens, it happens, and find the fortitude now to determine that if it does, you'll find a way to carry on. For some of you, this card warns of someone who will, perhaps unintentionally, take advantage of your kindness. Be on your guard or accept that sometimes helping someone going through a rough time means taking a few losses. 

[ Image Description: A tarot card laid on a purple and gold cloth with a small acorn laying beside it. The card depicts a faerie bound by thorny vines, watching helplessly as a bird flies off with a magickal rose. End ID. ]

2 | Five of Cups: You're deeply in your feelings right now, and while it's good and cleansing to let yourself cry and be open to your emotional self, be careful not to allow too much focus on things that upset you. It's easy to get so wrapped up in processing grief or sadness that we lose perspective on the good in our lives. The good doesn't negate the bad, we have every right to and are encouraged to let ourselves feel our pain so we can move and grow through it, but sometimes the intense sensation of sadness and the catharsis of crying can become almost addictive, our minds returning again and again to wounds we're still healing. Make sure to give yourself breaks and take stock of your joy, too. This Pisces moon can illuminate what truly matters to us, what we dream of, but for some of us that vision includes seeing everything that's held us back. Honor the truth of your journey in all its pain and glory, but choose to find the light. 

[ Image Description: A tarot card laid on a purple and gold cloth with a snail shell laying beside it. The card depicts a water faerie with a mermaid tail sitting among lily pads, their face in their hands as they cry. End ID. ]

3 | The Lovers: This card often evokes a feeling of heady romance, and surely that energy is there, but the emphasis with this reading is that relationships take work. A lot of us fantasize about that perfect moment of eyes meeting across a room and knowing suddenly that you've found a part of yourself, but even for star-crossed matches, effort and compromise is needed, is even key. What or who do you love most, makes you feel complete? Are you having a hard time finding that old spark? Around these Lovers is an apple tree in all stages of fruition, bud, bloom, and fruit. Maybe you're missing that honeymoon stage, the rush as you first fall in love or get swept up in inspiration (because for some of you this Lover is a hobby or craft) but there is more to love than butterflies in your stomach. Look back over the journey so far. What's changed? What's developed? Perhaps you fell in love with a delicate flower but now find yourself holding fruit. Explore it! Savor it! Like an apple tree, if your roots are strong, there will be blooms again soon enough.

[ Image Description: A tarot card laid on a purple and gold cloth with a black and white butterfly wing laying beside it. The card depicts two faeries holding one another tenderly, surrounded by apple buds and blossoms with a large apple at the bottom. End ID. ]

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I hope this finds whoever needs it. 🖤🔮

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🚫 this post, blog, and message are not for transphobes, homophobes, or racists 🚫

[aphrodicted]

Hi. I’d like to request a shell spread and will happily leave as much feedback as possible. Initials: GC, sun sign: Leo, question: I have a lot of confidence internally but I let some insecurities play over that, particularly in work settings. For example, I know that I am smart and hard working and yet I let insecurities shadow that and look for reassurance externally even when I don’t actually need it. What parts of me do I need to work on or change to get past this and let my confidence flow?

Hi, GC!

1. Who I think I am? Four of Pentacles (reversed), Four of Wands (reversed), Knight of Wands

You don’t describe yourself as a person at all happy today. I think this situation is making you something unhappy, since you can’t shine everything you should shine. Don’t worry, GC, this is a temporary situation that has a solution. I see you, also, celebrating very little with friends or family. Are you going out less with your friends or other people? I see you locked in yourself on some occasions. You aren’t too secluded, but neither do you lock yourself for too long.

Being a fire sign, you can be someone very impulsive and doesn’t plan what you want to do. You are someone passionate, although at the moment I don’t see so much passion in you, and you must have confidence in you. Especially, Leo you are people with a lot of perspective for the future if you are able to balance the ego. Balance those fears that are drowning your security, GC!

2. Who I really am? Two of Cups, Three of Swords, Ten of Swords

You are someone full of love. A person who wants to receive and deliver love from others. My cards consider you someone who is easy to make friends, meet people, partner with co-workers and/or studies… Have you had any kind of betrayal in the past that has marked you? It doesn’t have to be a romantic betrayal, but it can be a betrayal or disappointment by friends, family… The cards are very aware of some pain that has marked you a lot and there may be the core of all your insecurities. If you have not suffered any disappointment, the cards may be talking about yourself. At present you may be betraying yourself by not having security in yourself or in your abilities. Lastly, don’t worry, GC. The situation is temporary and the solution is in your hands, but you must find what to do to end it. You may feel somewhat tired of living this, but the happy ending is very close.

3. How others see me? Three of Wands, Five of Swords (reversed), The Hermit (reversed)

The others see in you a lot of learning ability, your desire to always know more, and you are someone intelligent who knows how to use the acquired knowledge. Also, those around you see you as a wise person and that you can give good advice. On the other hand, those around you think that you are a person who looks to the future and that, in addition, this future of yours is successful. The others view you as someone who doesn’t like fighting with others and doesn’t play dirty when yo want to get something.

4. What I contribute to others? The Tower, Five of Pentacles (reversed)

You are able to deliver success and recovery to others. I don’t know if you’re aware, but you can “heal” people. I don’t feel it is in an emotional way, but a social success or helping them achieve what they want. You are someone who creates opportunities for others. Getting to know you means new beginnings. You are someone who brings change or renewal in others. You “force” them to renew themselves and leave the past behind to make way for the future.

5. What should I accept about myself? The Star, The Chariot

Accept the moment you are living in this moment. I find you very insecure, unstable and you don’t see possible recovery to your situation. You may be believing that your life has stagnated and you don’t know how to get out of the moment you are. The first thing you should do is accept what you are living and not block the pain or insecurity you feel. It isn’t the same to accept and seek a solution to negative feelings or emotions that block them and make it appear that we don’t feel them. It will be useless to try to change if the inner transformation you must do is not sincere. 

Check what motivates you to do what you are doing right now: Are you happy? What you do makes you really happy? Would you change something of your life? It’s necessary to accept that everything changes, be filled with courage and patience and be guided by the signs of the universe. The instability that manifests you leads to fatigue, depression and stagnation. With which you cannot free yourself from fears and dependencies, nor achieve true realization. Therefore, you must accept instability and look for the solution to it.

6. What do I need to forgive myself? The Desire (reversed), Knight of Cups, The Emperor (reversed)

Don’t force yourself in those moments where you cannot become a leader or take the initiative. On some occasions we must respect our insecurities and look deeper into what motivates us to find ourselves in this situation. If you ask me what is causing this feeling in you, I think it’s a mixture between lack of leadership and self-confidence caused by the lack of passion in what you do. You must find a balance between logic and emotions. What do I mean? This problem cannot be solved only from logic, but you will need the use of emotions to accept the negativity around you and put an end to it. Don’t take this situation personally, but learn from what is happening. Therefore, forgive yourself for finding yourself so “weak” right now, and don’t be too hard on yourself.

7. What should I learn from the past? Nine of Wands

You must learn to heal the wounds of the past, GC. You still need strength and energy to overcome the struggles that await you in the future. The conflicts of the past can continue to appear in your present, and you must be alert to be able to put an appropriate end. However, don’t be too alert. Don’t believe that everyone approaches to fight or that everything that happens to you is to hurt you. It’s important to get rid of insecurities that were born in your past. The insecurities that persecute you now have their beginning in the past. You could have gone through a difficult situation that caused these insecurities. We must find what happened and solve these insecurities and limits that you provoke yourself. It could be a situation, a person… you are the only one who can know.

The cards recommend you balance your inner energy: meditate, pray, read, seek peace and quiet to find the answers inside. You have the strength to get what you want.

8. Positive points about myself? Ace of Cups, Six of Swords, Six of Wands

My cards see several positive points about you, GC! You are a person who carries success under his arm. Everything you intend to do you get, so you shouldn’t have any kind of insecurity when it comes to life. In the end, you are the only one who can create obstacles to achieve the happiness you want. You have the success within you and you must be the one who gives you permission to return to your life. Also, my girls represent you as a person capable of sacrificing you for what you love (both people and dreams). However, be careful, GC! Sacrifice is necessary to achieve success, but don’t sacrifice yourself too much. Just sacrifice for what you think is important. Finally, my cards tell me that you are someone capable of using your emotional side correctly. That emotional side can help you connect more deeply with others and with yourself. On the other hand, my girls recommend that you use that emotional side to create art. Let the imagination fly!

9. What should I improve on myself? The Moon, The Strenght, Four of Cups (reversed)

Pay attention to your dreams and their messages, so that you know or recognize your shadow and prepare for the necessary change. Sometimes it is very difficult, if not impossible, to decipher the messages of the unconscious, because we try to do so with the logic of the conscious side of the mind and both levels speak different languages. The unconscious may seem capricious or meaningless. It is expressed in images, emotions and feelings that belong to us, even if we do not recognize.

Do a creative, psychotherapeutic or mystical work to unleash what your subconscious mind wishes to reveal. Recognize the fears, resentments or pride that stop you or set you back. You are in an intensely emotional and sensitive period. You can feel receptive. You should not force anything in this cycle. Let things happen and watch. From your inner jurisdiction you will know when to act.

More than “physical strength”, we speak of “mental strength” and is the ability you have to manifest the mastery of reason, and even of the spirit, over the passions, emotions and thoughts that limit you and consume your energy. The Force reminds us that we achieve more with gentleness and prudence than with imposition and authoritarianism. The keys are in our inner clarity, decision, perseverance and authority.

10. How to become the person I want to be? Queen of Wands, Ten of Cups, Seven of Swords

Turn the skills of the Queen of Wands into yours. Trust yourself and be true to your emotions and convictions. That doesn’t mean that you don’t listen to the opinions of others, but that you defend your experiences with conviction and know how to get the good out of everything around you and help you grow.

Find what and who makes you happy and set aside everything that causes you otherwise. Don’t waste energy in living with people who don’t contribute anything or waste your time doing things that do not cause any feeling in you. You have a very strong attraction power and you should know how to take advantage of it: use the power of the law of attraction.

11. Advice: Ocean of eternal love: Healing, creativity, fertility.

It’s said that love conquers everything, and this is especially true for you right now. Something is resolved and healed thanks to love. What was once arid now becomes fertile. A seed is planted and you are the co-creator. The conditions are favorable, the weather is perfect, a new creation awaits you. The birth of something new gives you joy and excitement. The endless changes of this season of eternity turns its invisible wheel and a new cycle begins. A new image is born.

Love heals. Love brings determination. Love conquers. Love creates. Love is eternal

Good luck, GC!

Please consider leaving feedback to know whether or not my reading has resonated with you.

[pope-francis-quotes]

18th November >> Let us ask for the grace to open our eyes and hearts to the poor in order to hear their cry and recognize their needs. #WorldDayofthePoor @Pontifex 

Pope Francis

Messages

World Day of the Poor

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS

SECOND WORLD DAY OF THE POOR

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 18 November 2018

This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him

1. “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him” (Ps 34:6). The words of the Psalmist become our own whenever we are called to encounter the different conditions of suffering and marginalization experienced by so many of our brothers and sisters whom we are accustomed to label generically as “the poor”. The Psalmist is not alien to suffering; quite the contrary. He has a direct experience of poverty and yet transforms it into a song of praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. Psalm 34 allows us today, surrounded as we are by many different forms of poverty, to know those who are truly poor. It enables us to open our eyes to them, to hear their cry and to recognize their needs.

We are told, in the first place, that the Lord listens to the poor who cry out to him; he is good to those who seek refuge in him, whose hearts are broken by sadness, loneliness and exclusion. The Lord listens to those who, trampled in their dignity, still find the strength to look up to him for light and comfort. He listens to those persecuted in the name of a false justice, oppressed by policies unworthy of the name, and terrified by violence, yet know that God is their Saviour. What emerges from this prayer is above all the sense of abandonment and trust in a Father who can hear and understand. Along these same lines, we can better appreciate the meaning of Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:3).

This experience, unique and in many ways undeserved and inexpressible, makes us want to share it with others, especially those who, like the Psalmist, are poor, rejected and marginalized. No one should feel excluded from the Father’s love, especially in a world that often presents wealth as the highest goal and encourages self-centredness.

2. Psalm 34 uses three verbs to describe the poor man in his relationship with God. First of all, “to cry”. Poverty cannot be summed up in a word; it becomes a cry that rises to heaven and reaches God. What does the cry of the poor express, if not their suffering and their solitude, their disappointment and their hope? We can ask ourselves how their plea, which rises to the presence of God, can fail to reach our own ears, or leave us cold and indifferent. On this World Day of the Poor, we are called to make a serious examination of conscience, to see if we are truly capable of hearing the cry of the poor.

To hear their voice, what we need is the silence of people who are prepared to listen. If we speak too much ourselves, we will be unable to hear them. At times I fear that many initiatives, meritorious and necessary in themselves, are meant more to satisfy those who undertake them than to respond to the real cry of the poor. When this is the case, the cry of the poor resounds, but our reaction is inconsistent and we become unable to empathize with their condition. We are so trapped in a culture that induces us to look in the mirror and pamper ourselves, that we think that an altruistic gesture is enough, without the need to get directly involved.

3. The second verb is “to answer”. The Psalmist tells us that the Lord does not only listen to the cry of the poor, but responds. His answer, as seen in the entire history of salvation, is to share lovingly in the lot of the poor. So it was when Abram spoke to God of his desire for offspring, despite the fact that he and his wife Sarah were old in years and had no children (cf. Gen 15:1-6). So too when Moses, in front of a bush that burned without being consumed, received the revelation of God’s name and the mission to free his people from Egypt (Ex 3:1-15). This was also the case during Israel’s wandering in the desert, in the grip of hunger and thirst (cf. Ex 16:1-6; 17:1-7), and its falling into the worst kind of poverty, namely, infidelity to the covenant and idolatry (cf. Ex 32:1-14).

God’s answer to the poor is always a saving act that heals wounds of body and soul, restores justice and helps to live life anew in dignity. God’s answer is also a summons to those who believe in him to do likewise, within the limits of what is humanly possible. The World Day of the Poor wishes to be a small answer that the Church throughout the world gives to the poor of every kind and in every land, lest they think that their cry has gone unheard. It may well be like a drop of water in the desert of poverty, yet it can serve as a sign of sharing with those in need, and enable them to sense the active presence of a brother or a sister. The poor do not need intermediaries, but the personal involvement of all those who hear their cry. The concern of believers in their regard cannot be limited to a kind of assistance – as useful and as providential as this may be in the beginning – but requires a “loving attentiveness” (Evangelii Gaudium, 199) that honours the person as such and seeks out his or her best interests.

4. The third verb is “to free”. In the Bible, the poor live in the certainty that God intervenes on their behalf to restore their dignity. Poverty is not something that anyone desires, but is caused by selfishness, pride, greed and injustice. These are evils as old as the human race itself, but also sins in which the innocent are caught up, with tragic effects at the level of social life. God’s act of liberation is a saving act for those who lift up to him their sorrow and distress. The bondage of poverty is shattered by the power of God’s intervention. Many of the Psalms recount and celebrate this history of salvation mirrored in the personal life of the poor: “For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him” (Ps 22:24). The ability to see God’s face is a sign of his friendship, his closeness and his salvation. “You have seen my affliction, you have taken heed of my adversities… you have set my feet in a broad place” (Ps 31:7-8). To offer the poor a “broad space” is to set them free from the “snare of the fowler” (Ps 91:3); it is to free them from the trap hidden on their path, so that they can move forward with serenity on the path of life. God’s salvation is a hand held out to the poor, a hand that welcomes, protects and enables them to experience the friendship they need. From this concrete and tangible proximity, a genuine path of liberation emerges. “Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society. This demands that we be docile and attentive to the cry of the poor and to come to their aid” (Evangelii gaudium, 187).

5. I find it moving to know that many poor people identify with the blind beggar Bartimaeus mentioned by the evangelist Mark (cf. 10:46-52). Bartimaeus “was sitting by the roadside to beg” (v. 46); having heard that Jesus was passing by, “he began to cry out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me’” (v. 47). “Many rebuked him, telling him to be silent; but he cried out all the more” (v. 48). The Son of God heard his plea and said: “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “Master,let me receive my sight” (v. 51). This Gospel story makes visible what the Psalm proclaims as a promise. Bartimaeus is a poor person who finds himself lacking things as essential as sight and the ability to work for a living. How many people today feel in the same situation! Lack of basic means of subsistence, marginalization due to a reduced capacity for work, various forms of social enslavement, despite all our human progress… How many poor people today are like Bartimaeus, sitting on the roadside and looking for meaning in their lives! How many of them wonder why they have fallen so far and how they can escape! They are waiting for someone to come up to them and say: “Take heart; rise, he is calling you” (v. 49).

Sadly, the exact opposite often happens, and the poor hear voices scolding them, telling them to be quiet and to put up with their lot. These voices are harsh, often due to fear of the poor, who are considered not only destitute but also a source of insecurity and unrest, an unwelcome distraction from life as usual and needing to be rejected and kept afar. We tend to create a distance between them and us, without realizing that in this way we are distancing ourselves from the Lord Jesus, who does not reject the poor, but calls them to himself and comforts them. The words of the Prophet Isaiah telling believers how to conduct themselves are most apt in this case. They are “to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke… to share bread with the hungry and bring the homeless and poor into the house… to cover the naked” (58:6-7). Such deeds allow sin to be forgiven (cf. 1 Pet 4:8) and justice to take its course. They ensure that when we cry to the Lord, he will answer and say: “Here I am!” (cf. Is 58:9).

6. The poor are the first to recognize God’s presence and to testify to his closeness in their lives. God remains faithful to his promise; and even in the darkness of the night, he does not withhold the warmth of his love and consolation. However, for the poor to overcome their oppressive situation, they need to sense the presence of brothers and sisters who are concerned for them and, by opening the doors of their hearts and lives, make them feel like friends and family. Only in this way can the poor discover “the saving power at work in their lives” and “put them at the centre of the Church’s pilgrim way” (Evangelii Gaudium, 198).

On this World Day, we are asked to fulfil the words of the Psalm: “The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied” (Ps 22:26). We know that in the Temple of Jerusalem, after the rites of sacrifice, a banquet was held. It was this experience that, in many dioceses last year, enriched the celebration of the first World Day of the Poor. Many people encountered the warmth of a home, the joy of a festive meal and the solidarity of those who wished to sit together at table in simplicity and fraternity. I would like this year’s, and all future World Days, to be celebrated in a spirit of joy at the rediscovery of our capacity for togetherness. Praying together as a community and sharing a meal on Sunday is an experience that brings us back to the earliest Christian community, described by the evangelist Luke in all its primitive simplicity: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers… And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:42.44-45).

7. Countless initiatives are undertaken every day by the Christian community in order to offer closeness and a helping hand in the face of the many forms of poverty all around us. Often too, our cooperation with other initiatives inspired not by faith but by human solidarity, make it possible for us to provide help that otherwise we would have been unable to offer. The realization that in the face of so much poverty our capacity for action is limited, weak and insufficient, leads us to reach out to others so that, through mutual cooperation, we can attain our goals all the more effectively. We Christians are inspired by faith and by the imperative of charity, but we can also acknowledge other forms of assistance and solidarity that aim in part for the same goals, provided that we do not downplay our specific role, which is to lead everyone to God and to holiness. Dialogue between different experiences, and humility in offering our cooperation without seeking the limelight, is a fitting and completely evangelical response that we can give.

In the service of the poor, there is no room for competition. Rather, we should humbly recognize that the Spirit is the source of our actions that reveal God’s closeness and his answer to our prayers. When we find ways of drawing near to the poor, we know that the primacy belongs to God, who opens our eyes and hearts to conversion. The poor do not need self-promoters, but a love that knows how to remain hidden and not think about all the good it has been able to do. At the centre must always be the Lord and the poor. Anyone desirous of serving is an instrument in God’s hands, a means of manifesting his saving presence. Saint Paul recalled this when he wrote to the Christians in Corinth who competed for the more prestigious charisms: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Cor 12:21). Paul makes an important point when he notes that the apparently weaker parts of the body are in fact the most necessary (cf. v. 22), and that those “we think less honourable we invest with the greater honour, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require” (vv. 23-24). Paul offers the community a basic teaching about charisms, but also about the attitude it should have, in the light of the Gospel, towards its weaker and needier members. Far be it from Christ’s disciples to nurture feelings of disdain or pity towards the poor. Instead, we are called to honour the poor and to give them precedence, out of the conviction that they are a true presence of Jesus in our midst. “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40).

8. Here we can see how far our way of life must be from that of the world, which praises, pursues and imitates the rich and powerful, while neglecting the poor and deeming them useless and shameful. The words of the Apostle Paul invite us to a fully evangelical solidarity with the weaker and less gifted members of the body of Christ: “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together” (1 Cor 12:26). In his Letter to the Romans, Paul also tells us: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly” (12:15-16). This is the vocation of each of Christ’s followers; the ideal for which we must constantly strive is ever greater conformity to the “mind of Jesus Christ” (Phil 2:5).

9. Faith naturally inspires a message of hope. Often it is precisely the poor who can break through our indifference, born of a worldly and narrow view of life. The cry of the poor is also a cry of hope that reveals the certainty of future liberation. This hope is grounded in the love of God, who does not abandon those who put their trust in him (cf. Rom 8:31-39). As Saint Teresa of Avila writes in The Way of Perfection: “Poverty comprises many virtues. It is a vast domain. I tell you, whoever despises all earthly goods is master of them all” (2:5). It is in the measure in which we are able to discern authentic good that we become rich before God and wise in our own eyes and in those of others. It is truly so. To the extent that we come to understand the true meaning of riches, we grow in humanity and become capable of sharing.

10. I invite my brother bishops, priests, and especially deacons, who have received the laying on of hands for the service of the poor (cf. Acts 6:1-7), as well as religious and all those lay faithful – men and women – who in parishes, associations and ecclesial movements make tangible the Church’s response to the cry of the poor, to experience this World Day as a privileged moment of new evangelization. The poor evangelize us and help us each day to discover the beauty of the Gospel. Let us not squander this grace-filled opportunity. On this day, may all of us feel that we are in debt to the poor, because, in hands outstretched to one another, a salvific encounter can take place to strengthen our faith, inspire our charity and enable our hope to advance securely on our path towards the Lord who is to come.

From the Vatican, 13 June 2018

Memorial of Saint Anthony of Padua

Francis

[elane-in-the-shadows]

Red Queen Fan Fiction - Simple Lives

Find this on wattpad

A/N: Surprise! This is an Evane baby fic. You can pry this HC from my cold dead hands.

Evangeline POV

When dinner is served, the fork jumps into Rose’s hand. At first, she giggles in amazement. But I’m gasping, frozen in my seat. It takes Rose a second, then the same fright I feel shows on her face.

She puts the fork down. She looks at me, aghast and at loss.

Elane clears her throat. “Shall I cut the meat for you, Rosie?” she asks.

Rose nods. “Please, Mom,” she says, shoving her plate over to Elane because at not even three years old, she’s too young to handle a knife.

I didn’t anticipate how careful we were when we didn’t allow our daughter knives. What could’ve happened with a blade?

I look at my own hands, now worn from work. I can’t see any old scars, as the scars and wounds from my childhood were healed quickly. But I remember the pain and horror I felt at the three times I cut off one of my fingers. I was older than Rose is now, yet as unused to my powers. No magnetron is a stranger to lost digits, myself included. Back then I bore the pain with not exactly pride – I’d failed, after all – but grit.

And still, imagining my little Rose with her hands bleeding, fingers lost or even worse injuries due to inexperience, are pictures I cannot suffer. She’s a lovely, shy girl, who’s untouched by the grim drill of House Samos and she shall stay that way.

After all, skinhealers are hard to come by, here in Tiraxes. We were lucky to have one present at Rose’s birth which was difficult enough on its own.

Ironically, I thought I’d feel proud when my daughter would reveal her ability to be the same as mine. Now I hardly care about the legacy if only she stays whole and hale. The name Samos is gone, replaced by DeLeon, the name Elane and I made up for ourselves.

Elane knows how to cheer Rose up, and me as well. She chats about Rose’s already delightful taste for nice food and makes up stories about the roads the food has taken before it came to us. Rose focuses on her and smiles and when she turns to me again, I smile back, although a glimpse of insecurity remains in all three of us. This was the proof, only arriving exceptionally early. Rose couldn’t have not been a magnetron and now we’ll have to talk about this. Abilities are a serious topic that can’t be ignored but I’m uncertain about how I’ll train my daughter. I don’t want to instruct her in the same way as I was - although this wasn’t even possible, as my High House had resources I couldn’t dream of here.

I could ask other magnetrons, who’ve been in Tiraxes longer than me. There’re my colleagues at work but we aren’t close, nor have I been open to anyone about my family or private matters in general apart from the bare minimum, like mentioning I’m married. I work for the money, and magnetrons are welcome employees in Tiraxes’s growing industry. It pays well and I enjoy the mathematic aspects of the tasks, along with the chance to use my ability - but it’s not a dream of a profession. There’s no art in it, only logic and pragmatism. I could try to apply for a higher, more creative position but Silvers – and the rare Newbloods – are meant to put their abilities to use, for the good of the community. I’d have to explain myself, gain the favour of the right people, and introduce myself more thoroughly, and none of that is appealing. That Elane managed to find a job as an official, an art teacher, was risky enough, and I’m glad that so far, no one seems to wonder where we came from exactly. My private life consists of Rose, Elane and me and I don’t need more.

When I want to be creative, I built toys and decorations for Rose’s room. Before she was born, I topped all nails and pins on her cradle with roses, using many different metals, and made a mobile from the rest. Elane thought that almost funny. “I really didn’t think you have a maternal streak, love,” she said, although I was already six-months-pregnant at the time. Now she knows better and joins me in this; she’s the better painter anyway.

I pick at the food, hardly hungry although I cooked it myself. Elane and Rose enjoy the meal, laughing to each other. Rose is so different from me. She’s shy where I’m confident, and open where I’m reserved. Her black hair falls free and she doesn’t care while I have a need to always have mine fixed at least in a braid. The differences fascinate me, strengthening my resolve to see her grow up without restraints.

There’s her father, of course. I haven’t seen him in a while, and the only time he visited to see Rose was nigh on two years ago – so she doesn’t know him, although she resembles him with her black hair, brown eyes and bronze skin.

We have a good arrangement, all things considered. Rose's father is a magnetron I've met in another aluminium-producing company about four years ago. A loose acquaintance formed between him and me, but with a kind of understanding I haven't found with other people in Tiraxes. Even so understanding that I casually mentioned my wish for a child with my wife and he offered his service without asking for a trade-off. Elane and I know his address and name, Matt Pierce. So does Rose. She doesn’t ask about him and I thought it means we’re enough for her. That may be right, but it’s possible she doesn’t know how to ask, or is just too small to wonder for now.

I might contact him again, set up another visit if only to query him about magnetron training in Tiraxes. A good plea. Contact to Matt fell asleep after the two times he handed over his sperm that Elane inserted into me to make Rose. He claimed work for his move to the west afterwards, and I’ve begun to doubt that. I suspect, as our plan progressed into an actual child, he pulled away to give me the privacy to raise my child with my wife. I know I wouldn’t have demanded otherwise although I wonder about the friend he could’ve been.

I’d begun to want a child several months before I got to know Matt. It started in a small manner, as a formerly buried urge to leave something of me behind. Not only of me, but of the disbanded House Samos as well. I thought I’d abandoned the past along with the name I shed, but it seems the High Houses’ desire for progeny is a wish independent of the need for dynasties. Neither me, nor Rose, nor Elane will ever be a queen but crowns have stopped to matter in this world. I’ve loved the family I had, despite their … flaws, and I wanted to have that again, having lost all of them but Elane. And I love what we have now.

Rose clings to my leg as we clean the kitchen. Maybe she should rather go to bed instantly, as my nannies at the Rift would’ve insisted. I’m often unsure about such questions but I like her with me, as work kills enough of our time together. So, with my hand on her shoulder, she watches me letting the cutlery and pots fly into the sink.

“Isn’t Mommy fascinating, Rose?” Elane teases her. Rose nods, Elane sighs. “But it still doesn’t wash itself, does it, Eve?”

I grin. “It is how it is. The bad side having privacy is to have to do everything by oneself.” I look down to Rose. “This can be so much fun, Rosie. One day, you can do this as well.”

She leans closer against my leg, quite effectively inhibiting my capacity to walk. I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever enjoy such childish antics. “Now hurry, Elane, Rosie’s getting tired.”

“I’m not – “ Rose is interrupted by her own yawn and I pat her head.

Soon afterwards, I carry her to bed and Elane dims the room exactly to Rose’s preferred shade of darkness. I start to read her a story despite noticing she hardly pays attention. Once finished, I bend over for a last kiss and caress as she whispers, “Mother, I’m afraid.” She grabs my hand lingering on her small cheek.

I hesitate to answer, just holding on to her for moment. I merely give Elane the slightest glance. “That’s alright, Rose,” I say finally. “I was too, when I was as little as you.”

She seems doubtful.

“No, really,” I insist. “But I’ll take care of you. When you want to try out your ability, I promise I’ll always be with when you wish me to. Okay?”

“Okay,” she murmurs, still unsure.

“The same goes for me,” Elane adds. “Someone has to pay attention that your mother doesn’t reshape the whole house.”

Rose smiles, tightly, and this evening, I can’t bring myself to leave her before she falls asleep. Right before her eyes close, the copper horse in the mobile above her starts to dance.

 @clarafarleybarrow Thanks for the first opinion^^

Edit: Thanks to @inopinion for names ideas^^

@mareshmallow @lilyharvord @hannaharies @samanthaslytherin @inopinion @redqueenfandom @breebarrcw @mareenattitanos @queeniriscygnet @iris-cygnets @spookysamos @runexandra

[godly-habits011497]

Series: What healing do you need? [Spiritual Healing]

Today we will continue the series “What healing do you need?”, where through three reflections we will recall biblical stories of physical, emotional and spiritual healing, in which the Lord worked in favor of his children, showing once again his glory and infinite goodness.

In the last text we talked about emotional healing that has a high proximity with today’s subject, spiritual healing. Not all emotional healing is necessarily spiritual, but all spiritual healing is also emotional.

When we talk about deliverance we need to remember that this is a wide-ranging subject. But today we will focus on the freedom that Jesus talked about the most, that of being free to live God’s will for our lives. When we understand this, we will realize that what most imprisons us, especially spiritually, is sin.

The different spiritual cures

Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”. He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

-Matthew 17:19-21

In this episode, Jesus’ disciples were unable to minister spiritual healing to that boy. When Jesus did what they were unable to do, the question came, “Why could we not cast him out?”, and Jesus’ answer is that they did not know how to diagnose the situation. This was a different caste, a problem they had not yet faced.

It is no good administering headache medicine to someone with heartburn and expecting it to cure. You have to diagnose it correctly, to treat it in the right way. In this case, the disciples could slam words for hours against that demon, but the child would only be freed through prayer and fasting.

This is why it is so important to identify what spiritual healing someone or ourselves needs. Take, for example, depression or anxiety. They can have very different origins. Often, as we mentioned in the previous text, people suffer from anxiety or depression because of physical deficiencies in hormone production, or vitamin absorption. But when we find ourselves with these illnesses, we can find it very difficult to live God’s will for our lives.

However, depression and anxiety, like other illnesses, can have their origin in a spiritual oppression. We often hear from people who, even though they are not inhabited by evil spirits, are influenced by darkness, and this can cause different infirmities and disorders that prevent a person from living God’s will for their life.

In this case, deliverance must be ministered by rebuking, not the illness, but the spirit causing the illness, as Jesus did:

When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the impure spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”

-Mark 9:25

But many prisons that prevent us from living God’s will for our lives, may have another origin that is possibly the most common: the practice of sin. Jesus said: everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. This slavery to sin is one factor that keeps countless people far from what God envisioned for them, and that person maybe you, or someone very close to you.

Healing comes through truth

The Word of God is the truth that sets free, that heals. And in what way can it set us free? Paul explains:

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

-2 Corinthians 10:4-5

What are the attributes of God’s Word that are used to bring us deliverance? It is powerful in God. In Romans, we learn that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation, but here we learn that it is also the power of God for deliverance.

The Gospel destroys strongholds, which prevent the renewal of the mind. The Word is powerful to break down the strongholds of fear, insecurity, pride, and many other prisons we have in our minds. It nullifies sophistry, a type of complex, well-crafted lie that keeps people from the truth.

He nullifies all haughtiness, haughty is someone who sees things from the top down, including the Word of God. People who like one verse, because they agree with it, and reject another verse, because they disagree with it, are people who place themselves above the Word. What is the consequence? Sophism and strongholds that will take hold in their minds. But when we decide to put ourselves below the Word, it annuls our haughtiness and delivers us from the lies and strongholds!

It brings every captive thought into the obedience of Christ. Today we live in a world of accelerated thinking. We cannot give ourselves the right to stop. Everything must be fast and instantaneous. If we let ourselves be carried away by the rhythm of the world, of the apps and the social networks, what is the consequence of this? Our thoughts will become disordered.

True habit change, can only happen if it is the result of a change of mind. If you have struggles like those described above, look for someone who can confront and comfort you with the Truth. The church, for sure, is still imperfect, but it is the place where you will find someone who can make a correct diagnosis of your problem and minister deliverance in a proper way.

Finally, remember that the purpose of deliverance is not just to feel good or to lift yourself up. God can heal us and bring relief, but spiritual healing has one goal: that you live God’s will for your life, and He is glorified!

God bless you!

[ourkarlanicoleuniverse]

Sweet Nothing (MHA Staff AU Fanfiction)

Chapter 13

Warnings: None, Swf. Pretty Long, but all my chapters are long so nothing new with that. Contains use of flashbacks.

Aizawa x OC (Mai Montoya, Pro Hero Zion)

Chapter Synopsis: Counselor Mai Montoya focuses on preparing the students for their work study in this chapter. It also mentions a little more about her past in work study and mentions more about her relationship with her mom. Maybe some slight romantic moments with Aizawa...

If you want to read of the events before this chapter here is the Master List 😊

"Now, I don't know why you insist on healing you faster when I told you that you have two weeks left with a normal check-up." Recovery Girl stood up on the bed as she was checking Aizawa's injuries.

"I just want to be over with it. Plus, I'm tired of having Mai over." Ouch. Recovery Girl didn't look amused, so she smacked Aizawa in the shoulder, making him wince, "What the hell?"

"Don't be rude to my Mai. She didn't have to take care of you for this long." She then kissed him on the head, activating her healing quirk. "I'll heal the injuries on your face and make it so you can use your arms, but you have to promise me to keep them bandaged up. As for the rest of your injuries, your legs seem to be okay enough that you don't need my quirk. The same for your abdominal area." Recovery Girl then reached over for my hand for assistance when she wanted to get off the hospital bed. "You can't push yourself too much, Aizawa. Mai, sweetheart, can you help me with wrapping Aizawa up? The gauze is on the counter over there. I have to go check on a student."

The little old lady scurried off with her cane to check on a student that came in with symptoms of a cold. I stood up from the seat next to the bed to grab the gauze she pointed out to me. To be fair, I only think Aizawa was rushing to heal, so that way, his students didn't have to worry about him anymore. Either that or he just wanted to avoid the fact that he almost died, and his injuries are a reminder of that. I don't blame him; I would've been the same way. I went closer to Aizawa and motioned him to move his arms up. He stayed quiet as I moved to wrap the gauze around him. I tried to avoid caressing the bruises and scars littering his porcelain skin. That was all nothing compared to any mental pain he's endured. Every muscle, every scar, all came from hard work to improve himself as a hero. And that motivation came from losing the one person that embodied what it meant to be a hero. I remember Aizawa back when he was an insecure lanky string bean. A person who never thought he was good enough to be a hero because of his quirk.

Seeing that boy turn into this man before me struck me both with pride and worry. Aizawa clearly proved himself wrong and became a great, even selfless, hero. But he still held the burden that all of us did when Oboro died. So, it's not like he or any of us could really be happy with ourselves. I mean, he literally told Recovery Girl to heal him faster so he can go back to work properly instead of being held back by his injuries. Once I was done wrapping his abdomen, I told him to put his arms back down as I went to look at his head and face.

His grey tired eyes searched my face while I examined his head. It looked like Recovery Girl did what she said and healed whatever was left of his injuries in that area. I held his face in both of my hands while I observed it. Nothing out of the ordinary, he practically looked the same as he did before aside from this scar under his right eye. He was still as effortlessly pretty as always. Not even the scar could change that. We made eye contact, but no words were exchanged. I felt that same gravitational pull tugging at the two of us. It was specifically pulling at my heart because it was aching to have him hold it. But I ignored the pull. I moved my hand to move his hair out of his face pretending to check his forehead. "Well, it looks like the old lady did a good job with your head injuries; you're practically good as new."

I felt hands resting above my hips as the rumble sang through, "Practically?"

I went to caress the scar under his eye with my thumb, "Yeah, she left a scar. But I'm sure it's not a big deal to you. I'll just replace the gauzing on your arms, and you could go to the classroom."

I leaned over to grab more gauze and the scissors when Aizawa tightened his grip, "Make sure the students won't be able to see the gauze. I don't want them to know I'm not fully healed." I paused my movement and looked back at him. "I don't want them to worry. Or be reminded of the attack. So don't give me that face."

"Don't want them to be reminded of the attack. Are you sure it's just them?" I muttered.

"Mai."

"Aizawa."

"Call me, Shota." I sighed and started wrapping his left arm, avoiding eye contact. "You used to call me by Shota. What happened?"

"I'm trying to be formal. Not familiar. And I am a counselor, so I know when someone has unresolved issues. You could always just ask me for a therapy session."

"Okay. Well, I hate that you don't call me Shota." I gave him an irritated look. "You wanted me to talk. I'm talking. You let me call you, Mai."

"Because I'm American, I'm used to it." I stopped wrapping the gauze around once I got to his wrist. Hopefully, it wouldn't show as he wanted. "Plus, we haven't been close to each other enough for me to call you by Shota anymore. I only called you Shota because you never told me not to, especially when I needed to be comforted by a friend. But that's not our relationship currently, so I call you by Aizawa or Eraserhead." I felt the hands that were previously on my hips fall slowly, hesitantly, as if they didn't want to let go. I didn't want them to let go. "If you want me to call you Shota, I could start. I just won't during work hours."

"It's not that. It's just that... I notice you stop yourself from calling me by my name, so I just wanted you to know it was okay if you do." Aizawa averted his eyes from mine with slight embarrassment tinting his cheeks. I went to hold his hand and gave him a small smile.

"Thanks for letting me know that it's okay." He gave me a small genuine smile back. One of those rare Shota Aizawa smiles that didn't resemble the Joker's. And as always, those rare smiles made me feel nothing but warmth. Aizawa then handed me his other arm to wrap up.

"Alright, how are my two favorite students doing?" Recovery Girl came trotting in. "Aizawa treated you nicely, right?" She gave me a wink while poking Aizawa's knee.

We both nodded in response.

"Alright, good. Aizawa, please, as I said, take it easy. And please, Mai, make sure he does. Do whatever spell you have that gets him not to be his workaholic zombie self because the boy needs it." Recovery Girl then went to grab a bottle of over the counter pain medication. "When I'm done with you today, you should only be needing the over the counter stuff and not the prescribed medication you were given." She then looked over to me after handing him the medicine, "You can leave now, sweetie. I'll take care of him from here on out." I simply nodded and kneeled to give her a quick kiss on the cheek while ruffling Aizawa's hair on my way out.

On my way out, I ran into All Might as he headed towards the teacher's lounge. "Oh, Mai, I'm glad to run into you. I needed to talk to you about something."

I tried to slow down my steps for him to catch up, which didn't take him too long to do, "What did you need?"

"It's about the work-study the first years are doing. I was thinking maybe training Young Midoriya, but I wanted your advice on it since it might look like I'm being..."

"Biased? Playing favorites? Yeah, I wouldn't suggest having him work under you." I bluntly spoke as I looked over to the tall, muscular form of my former mentor.

"I trained you. And you turned out to be a great pro." He defended.

"It was still a biased situation. You had me intern under you after my incident with the yakuza and my grandfather. Where you saved me."

The man pouted, "I guess you're right. Maybe he can train under you?"

"I'm not on active duty, so I can't take him as a work-study student." I thought for a moment about Midoriya's training. He needed someone who understood how his quirk worked and will build his strength and work with his limitations. Someone who had experience in teaching. If he's truly to be All Might's successor, he needed someone who could handle teaching him. I was most definitely not that person. Especially right now, I can't let any of my students follow down that path with my suspension. Then one person came into mind that I thought was perfect. "What about Gran Torino? Do you know if he has his teaching license still? I talk to him from time to time, but I never ask."

The symbol of peace's face turned pale as his sunken eyes nearly popped out of his eye sockets. I couldn't help but look at him with a confused expression. "No. We are not calling Gran Torino to teach Midoriya."

"Oh, come on. He's not that bad. He was nothing but a sweet teacher to me. Have you not told him about Izuku Midoriya yet?" I brushed off his concerns. Clearly, he was overreacting.

"He was sweet to you but not to me! I highly doubt he would treat Midoriya the same way he treats you." The man visibly shivered at the thought of his old teacher training Midoriya.

"I'm sure Izuku Midoriya will handle whatever the old man throws at him. I'll send him a message asking if he's interested in teaching him." The symbol of peace choked up and coughed up a little. I had to go and make sure that he was okay while we were walking, "Honestly, I wished Recovery Girl, and I could've found a way to heal your injuries better so that way you wouldn't be slowly dying."

My old mentor chuckled and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. "With my recklessness, I highly doubt any more healing would've done anything." He patted my head, "It's not your responsibility to take care of me. You need to remember that." He said that, but I remember that day. It's hard to forget. It took everything in me to forget about it. It was my fault that he was injured so badly.

"You know that's not true. You're like a father to me! I take up the responsibility because you mean so much to me." I gave him a stern worrisome face while he sucked in a breath. Beads of sweat glistening from his forehead. Poor guy only masks being strong. I grabbed the tissue pack I kept in my bag, levitated myself to reach up to his height, and gently wiped his face. "You, Nezu, Gran Torino, even Nighteye, were all I had to raise me when I couldn't be with my mom. Taking care of all of you is the least I can do to repay you for all you did for me. I love you all." Toshinori just let out a large sigh and let the worry in his face fall to a relaxed one.

"Sometimes, it feels like I failed you as a mentor, so hearing you think of me as a father figure really impacts me. I might be the symbol of peace, but hearing what you think of me is my greatest achievement and honor, Mai." I couldn't help but smile brightly at him and gave him a small nod in reassurance.

"I'll definitely tell Gran Torino to train him the way he did me; otherwise, he could forget me sending him his favorite homemade desserts from me, so you don't have to worry about Midoriya." I gave the man a quick pat on the head before levitating back to the ground.

"What will you be doing while the students are in work-study?"

"I'll still be on-call to all my students. But with Aizawa not needing me anymore, I'll probably be going back to my apartment and finally finish unpacking." I scratched the back of my head sheepishly while Toshinori gave me a fake look of sternness. "I might also finally get back to my mom, she's been emailing me since the incident, but I've avoided responding."

"Why have you been avoiding talking to her?"

"Oh, the usual, don't want to hear how she expected differently from me with how I was brought up. Especially since all the emails involve her wanting me to move to I-Island with her and Uncle Dave." I shrugged while I noticed Toshinori grew rigged.

"I'm sure she's just worried and wants what is best for you. It's probably difficult to hear that your only child has been through so much hardship and not having any control over it." He grew defensive but still tried to be kind to me. "You're not the only one that had to endure trauma involving your grandparents. Your mother dealt with it longer."

I squinted my eyes in suspicion at him, "How would you know if my mom dealt with abuse from my grandparents. The only thing you knew about them was how obsessed they were with getting rid of quirks. I've never mentioned anything about my mom's relationship with them."

His sunken eyes widened slightly, "Uhh, I just assumed. It's hard to believe loving parents could make a switch as they did. But you're right. I don't know anything about your mother..." He bit his lip. Something told me that he knew more about her than he led on, but I didn't have the time to interrogate him about it. "Anyhoo, I am glad to hear that Aizawa is feeling better. How are you two doing?"

I accidentally let out a small groan.

"That bad..."

"No. It's not, I swear. I just get annoyed that that's all anyone asks me about when they bring him up. Recently, it didn't bother me too much because it was understandable. After all, he's injured, and I'm taking care of him. But when it comes to work, everyone asks how our dynamic is because of our past." I turned to him, "It's like everyone assumes that we can't be efficiently working together because we have a past."

"Well, he was your first real friend, and when you left, you didn't speak for about a decade. I can see why it's a little concerning."

"But we're fine. We pushed it aside and just... "

"Act like it didn't happen until it gets awkward."

"No.... maybe... I hate you sometimes. You know that?" Toshinori just laughed at me and pointed out that I still made my pouty disgruntled face that made me resemble a child. "All I ask is to bring up other things. I have other things going on. My life doesn't revolve around Aizawa!"

"Okay, okay, I get that. I'll make sure never to bring up you and Aizawa. But you do need to remember that half of the staff you hang around all were around you and him during your youth. So, it's natural for them to be curious."

"Stop being so wise. It's weird. I'm used to quirk himbo you." Toshinori just laughed at me again while I just huffed.

After both of the hero courses had their lessons and learned about their work studies, they all were left the rest of the day to review their offers and decide which pro to work under. Each of the students blew up my phone with messages and emails about wanting my help with their decisions. It was annoying the whole teacher lounge as my phone continued buzzing. I gave up and opened my phone and saw that my students were all waiting in their homeroom and the same with Class 1-B. I'll make sure to spend at least an hour with both of the classes and make time later while I take my stuff back to my apartment to handle any more questions they have. I got up from my desk and decided to make my way to Class 1-A, not bothering to take any stuff with me. I wanted to make this more casual talk with the students rather than me counseling them.

I scrolled through the messages as I walked over:

Mina: MS. MONTOYA SOS (btw Denki also needs help)

Bakugo: I know I normally don't message you, but I want your opinion on Best Jeanist.

Todoroki: Ms. Montoya... Should I work under my father or another pro?

Momo: Hello, Ms. Montoya. I have a list of high ranking female pros that I would like to review with you.

Iida: Hello, Mai. I don't really need help deciding who I want to work under, but I would like to talk to you about my decision to work under Manual in Hosu.

Midoriya: Hi, Ms. Montoya! I have some questions about finding work-study opportunities since I didn't have any offers.

Iida... Hosu... Why do I have a bad feeling about this? I walked in to see all my kids in the midst of having mental breakdowns. Like the first day I met them, they didn't automatically notice me right away, so it gave me the advantage to sneak around them to the podium. They were really loud, so I had no other choice but to raise my voice... with Mic's voice quirk.

"HELLO, CLASS!" Of course, I turned it down a bit to avoid blowing their eardrums up.

Nothing but a sea of eyes blinked at me. And then a roar of relief, cheers, and sighs erupted in the class. "Oh my god, Ms. Montoya, thank god you're here! We need your help!"

I simply chuckled at their cuteness. "Okay, okay, calm down. All of you take a deep breath and put your shoulders back." I demonstrated, and they all sat and followed my actions. "Now, exhale slowly and relax your shoulders." I opened my eyes to see my kids all calmed down now. "Okay, so how are we going to do this?"

Mina raised her hand, "Can you just tell us about your experience with work-study? I feel like hearing someone talk about what they did might help us a lot. Plus, we love hearing you talk about your life." She smiled brightly as her horns slightly wiggled... Her horns wiggle... adorable!

Wait, my experience with work-study... shit... that's not really the nicest story... I'm sure I can just mention the nicer sides of it. I gulped slightly before beginning to speak. "Alright, well, I transferred to UA late, so I didn't have any offers for work-study. But luckily, I made friends who recommended me to the pro they were working with, and they took me in."

"So, do you all understand the protocol, my little chickadees?" Aizawa, Oboro, and I were all standing in front of the Pro Hero His Purple Highness and Midnight as he explained how he ran his agency. To say this is the oddest thing to happen to me since my move to Japan is more an understatement. I still had the first day I met Oboro undressing in front of the whole class to beat that. "You think you'll be fine to catch up with us right, Montoya?"

I was a little nervous. It was all of our first work-study, so it wasn't something I was behind on experience-wise. But it was my first time outside of the school, outside of my dorm, and I had to use my quirk. Use it to help people, so it was a little unnerving. I didn't know if I was ready for it, but I had to rush myself to be whether I wanted to or not. I simply nodded in response.

"Good, I'm very excited to have another girl on my team to be paired with Midnight." His Purple Highness gave me a warm smirk, "Nemuri has mentioned that you have a lot of potential, and I hope your time here shows it."

Oboro gave me a small nudge and gave me a wink, "Look, you're already the favorite."

Aizawa simply gave me a small smile that didn't go unnoticed by His Purple Highness, "Oi, Aizawa. You see that smile you have right there. You must give that smile to every civilian you meet, so they know they will be okay." He then turned to me, "You too, Montoya. It is important to smile. Be friendly. You're all too cute not to be smiling." That comment made all three of us blush. Aizawa was practically a nervous peach. His smile faltered, and he looked mortified that the pro called him out. I couldn't help but reach my hand out to him and hold his left hand lightly, giving him a tiny smile, which he returned.

I continued to tell the students about my first day of work-study at the Purple Revolution Agency. The more I talked, the more they relaxed, and their excitement bloomed. I didn't go into full detail about all the other days of the work-study. I felt that the first day was the most important story to talk about. "And so, for me, it wasn't my choice to work at the Purple Revolution. But my experience there did help me grow as a hero and as a person. I didn't have a lot of experience with other people and my quirk, but I luckily got stuck with a good mentor to help me build a foundation. Heck, I never even smiled before working there. It really helped me a lot. So, I would make sure no matter who you work under, you take into consideration their teachings and thinking. You are meant to learn, after all. Also, make friends with whoever else is working at the agency with you. Think of it as an extended family."

"So you really did know Aizawa since you were kids. No wonder you guys work so well together!" Asuyu pointed out.

"It's hard to believe Aizawa showing any type of emotions..." Kaminari muttered.

"I think it's cute how close you guys were! It's almost like you guys had a crush on each other!" Mina said excitedly. Her eyes were practically heart-shaped.

"Did you guys listen to the point of my story?"

They all nodded, and Mina spoke out again, "Yes, but the way you talked about your friendship with Aizawa was also so interesting. So, am I right that you and Mr. Aizawa used to like each other? I'm assuming from your blushing that I am." She smiled proudly. "'Cause if so... Now I want to know more about what happened between you two?"

The rest of the class all looked intently at me, waiting for me to respond. I collected myself internally to avoid showing any embarrassment. "Nothing happened because we didn't like each other."

"Aw, why'd you have to break my heart, Ms. Montoya..." Mina pouted.

"I feel like she's lying. I've noticed that she and Mr. Aizawa linger around each other, whether through looking at each other when the other isn't noticing or simply by the way he always has her favorite coffee and breakfast ready for her when she comes to class. Or how she always makes sure to keep an extra bottle of eye drops for him." Everyone, including myself, all stared at Aoyama. The class switched their gaze between him and me.

I was heated in embarrassment. Damn, kids do notice things you don't. I went to look at the clock and then my phone. "Oh, look at the time. I need to get to talking to Class 1-B about their work-study as well. So I have to go. You guys can ask me more questions later. Love you all, good luck!" I practically ran out of the classroom... Despite the door being closed, I could still make out what they were talking about after I left.

"Aoyama is right. I mean, Ms. Montoya even took up the responsibility of taking care of him while he recovered. You can't tell me that they're just friends by that alone." Asuyu mentioned.

"They would be so cute if they got together. It's like the whole opposites attract thing." Mina gushed.

"It's kind of like, a love story where they could've been together when they were younger, but it never happened, but now that they're older and more mature, they can finally be together. Ugh, those are my favorite kind!" Momo admitted. Gah, I hate kids...

"Maybe we shouldn't be romanticizing our teacher and our counselor's friendship. Friends can do all of that too." Kirishima butted in. I always knew you were my favorite, Kirishima. Thank you.

I decided to compose myself and make my way over to Class 1-B. I already made them wait long enough. First, my friends, now my students are going to tease me about my old crush on Aizawa. Love that.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tag List: 

@inumorph​ @multifandoms916​ @thatgirlwithcamera​ @mel-sanch​

[strengthtocomprehend]

Hey angel 🥺 I was reading the reply to the anon you posted (not the same anon who sent it) but I just felt I wanted to message you about this! I’ve been a member of a church for a while now and at first, I felt like the people I made friends with were amazing and really helped me better than any of my non Christian friends but then as time went on it was almost like they started to leave me out of events or things I felt I could count on them for and I know that’s not Gods work but because of that, I felt like I was left behind my God when all I wanted was to feel like I was part of something special ~more importantly, be a part of spending time with God~

Hi 😊 thanks for sending this message and sorry it took me a while to get back to you, I had an intense few days.

Friendship is a beautiful thing when it is how God designed it to be. However, often it isn't, and we don't even realise it. I used to rely on friends a lot. I used to find my value in friendships, in being accepted and needed, and I did not realise this for a very long time. My friends were my world. And because of the value I put on friendships, whenever people would fail me my world would fall apart. Because it was built on their acceptance and being included in things and feeling that I was needed, trusted, special.

We all have these needs in us, but the problem is, people can never fully meet these needs. They were never meant to. There's a great saying "the only ones that can let you down are the ones you lean on." I went through a time in my life where I was bitter and "strong" and said to myself "I won't lean on anyone." That's pride, and it's dark and lonely there.

It took me a while to realise that I know someone who has never let me down, in fact never let anyone down ever. Jesus is the only one who loves you perfectly. You have his full attention all the time, he cannot wait to spend time with you, he is there for you always.

It may not be something you would like to hear, but we grow through what we go through. You have an opportunity to get to know Jesus as your friend. It is always our choice if we are willing to actually go through things and learn and grow or if we'd rather distract ourselves with something else, escape, pile whatever is at hand on top of that something we need to deal with. That doesn't make it go away. It will simply come back later.

I know it may feel uncomfortable at first trying to adjust and spend time with God instead of doing other things, but it's so worth it. It's so beautiful, so fulfilling, so eternal. Someone said "worship is the only ministry that will continue in heaven." Again, I know that sometimes we can feel like we need someone to give us a hug, tell us everything will be ok etc. I have come to learn that He gives the best hugs in the world. If only you listen, you will hear "I love you. I love you so much. I love you, my dear. I will carry you. I love you more than you can imagine." over and over again, every single day.

As if God's faithfulness alone wasn't enough, just simply spending time with him will heal your heart. His Presence and his word sets free from every insecurity, heals every pain, fills every void. You will see how with time you will begin to know who you are and become confident in who you are in him. You can truly love people when you know who you are, when the is no void on the inside, when you are secure in his love, when you are whole. Then there is no need to be loved, liked, admired in return, the King himself loves you. The King himself adores you.

I pray the Lord reveals himself to you as your best friend and that he gives you godly friends on earth who will point you to him always.

With love. If you have any more questions feel free to message me 🌺

[zjallove]

When I bring up stories of my past, it is because they are lessons to be learned from. They are memories and incidences which have shaped me, scarred me and forced me into a process of learning, forgiveness and healing. Although I have met way too many deceptive characters for my liking… When I speak my truth it is not about pointing fingers or getting revenge. Revenge is not up to me. I couldn’t care any less about those who have hurt me. They don’t exist. But the lessons remain as teaching tools forever. It’s not about exposing people, because fake people always end up exposing themselves. It is not about being fearful because I am not afraid, it is not about jealousy or insecurity because those traits are born out of lack of self worth and I know my worth because I’ve paid dearly for every fucking ounce of it. I know when I’m feeling weak, I am able to analyze myself, and pull myself up on my bull shit. I no longer worry about having to prove myself to anyone because I don’t need to. It kind of annoys me that Im even writing this to be honest. But oh well. Karma always does it’s work. Karma is real. Truth is always being revealed. I have faith in that. This is not about getting my emotions out or having to vent… I do not believe in online venting or expression before a situation is completely recognized, faced and healed from within first. I don’t believe in venting publicly before carefully and bravely deconstructing a situation with heavy self analysis in order to discover where it is causing our inner triggers resulting in the need to cleanse and heal our broken parts. Before throwing blame on others it is imperative we bring ourselves into account first and foremost.

My kind of venting is not for anyone else’s eyes, no one needs to see that. My kind of venting is putting on some gloves and attacking the boxing bag! And no one needs to see me writing words that could kill… because my purpose is peace… so I rip them up and release!

My writing isn’t ego driven and if it comes across that way, it is not my intention. Ego and Self worth are two opposing elements which seemingly come across in a similar tone when in writing. But they aren’t the same at all. Know the difference. I speak from self worth. Although at times I admit I do need to keep my ego and pride in check like I’m taming a wild beast. Because no one fucks with a Capricorn. See what I mean! Now I need to breathe deeply and smile…

The reason I choose to speak up is because I have the ability to, and I believe it is important for me to use my experiences in any way that I can to connect and reach others who may be being silenced by circumstances or situations where they can not speak up! Like I was!!! If I didn’t have the inspirational people I’ve had, or if I didn’t read a particular quote when I needed it online, or in a book, things would have been so much more difficult for me. It was in the identifying with others, knowing that I wasn’t alone that saved me in so many ways… So in a way I’m trying to pay it forward. Using my strengths in whatever way I can, in the hopes of easing someone else’s pain or struggle.

Not all experiences are pleasant and I admit I can come across as harsh sometimes. But believe me, as much as when I am angry my words can take a venomous streak or I can be vindictive or judgmental of those who have hurt me, that’s my animal protective and defensive instinct. Yet my love is a force more powerful than anything I’ve ever known and it always brings me back to recognizing my blessings, whether those blessings come in material form, spiritual form or human form I will always return to love. I am the Lioness. I am the Phoenix arisen from the ashes.

It just takes some time to get to a point of inner peace after being done wrong. Forgiveness is a superpower few have mastered and I believe forgiveness is an ongoing journey… but just as I have tasted what I perceived as defeat, through forgiveness I have also achieved victory.

So let whoever throw their poison, let whoever be and say whatever they want. The guilty know that they are guilty. The only ones who won’t like how my words taste are the ones who added the salt. I’m not here to deliberately defame or hurt anyone. This is just my life. If people wanted me to write warmly about them then they should have behaved better. My words are my truth and my truth is my treasure. Where I used words as a weapon I gained transparency as my armor. I have been broken and rebuilt more times than I desired, but it has transformed me into a force to be reckoned with. We all have an inner power yearning to be recognized and embraced. My tests have aligned me with my true self and connection to the divine. A journey which has put me in touch with some absolute earth angels. They do exist!

I don’t know what the outcome of my music will be… when one is authentic, it is not easy to belong to a world filled with facades and fuckery. I know I give everything to whatever I’m passionate about, I’m not built to do anything half assed and I try to stay focused on the “real”. I have tunnel vision to the garbage that the entertainment industry is suffocated in, (more to come on that another time). When you’re staying genuine, this journey is a “risk everything for the unknown” scenario or situation. But I believe I will be put where I am supposed to be and I believe my writing will have everything to do with what ever I’m destined for… So in my own small way, I hope this helps someone…

Thank you. Peace and Love.

[paleorecipecookbook]

RHR: The Importance of Strength Training—with Sal Di Stefano

In this episode we discuss:

How Sal’s interest in fitness and wellness evolved

Optimizing health versus performance

The most important type of exercise to combat sedentary lifestyle

Why taking calcium alone won’t build stronger bones

A little resistance training goes a long way

Learning to enjoy the process

The cost of over-training

How to get started with strength training

[smart_track_player url="http://ift.tt/2BgM8x0" title="RHR: The Importance of Strength Training--with Sal Di Stefano" artist="Chris Kresser" ]

Chris Kresser: Hey, everybody, it's Chris. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. This week, I'm happy to welcome Sal Di Stefano as a guest. I met Sal when I went on his podcast, the Mind Pump podcast, which is a fantastic fitness show. For anyone who's interested in that, I highly recommend checking it out. He co-hosts it with a couple other guys, and they're both hilarious and super knowledgeable about fitness, strength training and everything in that field. I definitely recommend listening to it if you're interested in that. I wanted Sal to come on this show to talk about the importance of strength training in a fitness program because I think that's under-recognized, and it's not something we've talked about a lot on this show or that I've written a lot about. And Sal has a lot of expertise in this area. He started strength training when he was just a teenager and was running gyms by the time he was 19. And by the time he was 22, he owned his own gym. So, he's been a personal trainer for 18 years, and he's really good at cutting through all of the hype and misunderstanding that exist in the fitness industry. And if you're in that industry or you followed it for any length of time, you know that it's considerable. There is so much bad information out there in the fitness world, so much schlocky and sleazy marketing, and frankly, a lot of information that is dangerous and has led to people getting hurt or overtraining and causing a lot of health problems, and I see that all the time in my practice. So, I wanted Sal to come on and set the record straight, to dispel some of the myths that you often hear about in terms of fitness and strength training, in particular, and then offer some helpful basic tips for people who want to get started with a fitness and strength training practice. So, let's dive in and talk to Sal. Chris: Okay. Sal, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show, thanks for joining us. Sal Di Stefano: Yeah, I really appreciate you having me on your podcast. You're one of the people that I looked up to years ago, when I first found some of your articles and blogs online, and you really get it when it comes to fitness and wellness. In your book Unconventional Medicine, you talked about allied professionals and I thought, that is such a good message because so many fitness professionals ... We have so many different perspectives, and if we can work together, I think, we can solve a lot of the health problems that people have. I had a wellness studio for years, and in my facility I had a nutritionist, I had a physical therapist, I had personal trainers, I had an acupuncturist, I had a massage therapist. And then we worked with chiropractors and general physicians and surgeons that were in the area. And I did that on purpose because I found the more people we could work with and learn from, and the more resources I had where I could send clients, the more successful we were. And we were quite successful with that approach. I really appreciate what you're doing, Chris, and some of the stuff you talk about.

Which type of exercise is best for weight loss? The answer might surprise you.

Chris: Yeah, that makes perfect sense, Sal. Your story is familiar in the sense that for so many of us, most of my listeners know my story and how I came to this, it started with some kind of health challenge. So tell us a little bit about how you came into this. We're going to talk more about exercise and fitness and your approach to that because I'm really curious to pick your brain and learn from you and your experience, because it's pretty vast in this field. But first, let's talk a little bit about how you even came to do this work. I know that you had some ... From our first conversation on your show, you had some health issues of your own.

How Sal’s interest in fitness and wellness evolved

Sal Di Stefano: I did. I started working out pretty consistently and just dived into the science of fitness at a really young age. I was 14 years old, and I have this personality where if I get into something, I tend to immerse myself in whatever it is I'm into. So I got into fitness, lifting weights in particular, a lot of the motivation was based on my insecurities. I was a skinny kid, growing up, I wasn't very athletic, and weight training was, I thought, just magic. I could do this thing and change my body and there was a science behind it, and that's how I started. And so I got into the fitness industry professionally at the age of 18 as a personal trainer. Very, very shortly after that I managed large health clubs and grand-opened gyms for 24 Hour Fitness. And I had teams working for me, and I would coach and train trainers on how they should train their clients. And I didn't really dive into the wellness side of fitness until much later. I was doing personal training early on. Back in those days, you were either into building muscle and burning body fat or you were into wellness. It was two separate camps. Chris: Right. Sal Di Stefano: You had your kind of meditating yogi person who was into food quality and finding ways to mitigate stress, and then on the other side, you had your hardcore, workout-real-hard, burn-body-fat, look-real-good, all-we-care-about-is-aesthetic side, and they never crossed. Although you see a lot of that crossing now, it wasn't like that back then. So a lot of my approach to fitness early on was very much that, that build-muscle, burn-body-fat model. And wellness wasn't something that I even considered until right around the age of 30, my body rebelled on me. All of a sudden, foods that I always could eat became an issue for me. I started having terrible symptoms, gut health issues, I was losing weight. I couldn't assimilate anything, obviously, losing strength, losing weight, which was challenging me tremendously because I had identified so much with being this muscular, strong trainer and nothing ... I thought I was eating healthy, my macros are in check, my calories are in check. I do my cardio, I do my weights, what is going on with my body? And luckily I had this wellness facility, with all these individuals that were working in there, and I had respected all of them, except, I kind of ignored that information for myself. This is very common with trainers, by the way, we tend to train our clients better than ourselves. Chris: Absolutely ... And doctors. [chuckle] Sal Di Stefano: Same thing, right. There were these two young ladies that worked with me who were very much so on the wellness side and were studying things in regards to gut health. So this was maybe eight to 10 years ago, when it wasn't super popular or common, and it was totally foreign to me. So out of desperation, I turned to these young ladies, and I said, "I need help, I don't know what's going on. I've gotten testing from my regular doctor, they can't figure it out, they're just giving me anti-diarrhea drugs, I don't seem to have a parasite. I don't know what's happening here." And I went through the process of doing an elimination diet, identifying food intolerances, changing my approach to supplementation. At the time, your muscle-building, fat-burning supplements, they were all artificially flavored, they were all super processed. None of them ... Chris: It's like all about GNC, right? That sort of thing. Sal Di Stefano: Yeah. Exactly, and I was a huge supplement consumer. And so I completely changed my approach, and it took about a year for me to fully heal, if you will. And I had a whole protocol with, again, avoiding food intolerances. I utilized intermittent fasting for the first time. Before that, I would eat six to eight meals a day, because I falsely believed, like many people still do, that eating every two hours is the ideal way to build muscle. It's not, by the way, it's totally false. But it also promotes, if you're in the context of inflammation, it's actually pro-inflammatory to constantly be feeding yourself. So I started doing fasting, I watched ... I eliminated common food intolerances, I made sure I got adequate sleep. Because up until that point, I had pride in the fact that I could sleep for four hours and outwork anybody. I thought that was, like, a badge of honor. I did all that. I also utilized cannabinoids, in particular, cannabidiol, which is a non-psychoactive cannabinoid found in marijuana, for its anti-inflammatory effects. Up until that point, I was never really a cannabis consumer. And I did this whole process for a year, completely changed my approach to fitness and health because I had experienced, now first-hand, what it really meant. And it really shaped me into who I am now, especially on my podcast with Mind Pump, where my approach now is very different. Much of the motivation behind fitness for a lot of people is based on a place of hating themselves, hating their bodies, hating the way they look. And that drives us to make decisions that aren't necessarily the best ones to make for ourselves versus the standpoint of caring for myself. I love my body, I love myself, I want to take care of myself, and those decisions tend to be better decisions. And the best part about this, Chris, the irony of all of this is, I take my eye off of, or my focus off of the cosmetic and place it on health and taking care of myself. And the irony is, I looked better than I ever did before, as a side effect.

Optimizing health versus performance

Chris: Yeah. That makes perfect sense to us now, and looking back on this. But I'm so curious to hear more about this dichotomy that you mentioned earlier, that was probably more common earlier in fitness, where the idea was you're either building muscle and maximizing performance or you're focusing on health, not both at the same time. Sal Di Stefano: Right. Right. And there's a little bit of truth in that. If you do extreme, extreme fitness, you're not optimal health. But most people just want to look good and feel good. And you don't need ... That message isn't true for everybody. Chris: Robb Wolf, you probably hear him talk about this, this triangle of performance, longevity, and health. And he says that you can't completely optimize for one without sacrificing the others, at least a little bit. But that's if you're talking about maximizing to the fullest possible potential. For example, if you want to do everything you can to extend life span, then you're going to ... If you eat a caloristic diet, you're going to be cold and miserable [chuckle] most of the time and not healthy. And then if you want to maximize for performance, like you just said, you're probably going to make some sacrifices in both the longevity and the health category. But seems to me, and I know you agree, from what you said, that if you optimize for health on that triangle, the performance and the longevity may not be at the absolute maximum, but that's the best way to get a balance on that triangle. Sal Di Stefano: Absolutely. Because there's ... Of course, there's how long you live, but there's also the quality of life. And quality of life ... I like to have a certain amount of strength and mobility and performance because it helps me enjoy my life. I also sometimes enjoy connecting with friends and family over a plate of lasagna and a glass of wine. That's not optimal for my health, physical health, but it does optimize maybe my emotional and mental health. So it's understanding this entire sphere that ... The message we try to convey on the show. And there's a lot you can learn from these different ... I hate to call them camps, but from these different camps of longevity, health, or maximum performance, you can learn a lot from them. Again, most people don't have the time to have to be extreme in any of them, they just want to have a good life, they want to look decent, they want to look fit. And really, health is the way to go. It's the best way to go. It also places you in a position where you start to enjoy the process, which when it comes to training people ... Most of my experiences in training people and training trainers, the success in fitness comes from understanding that fitness is not a destination, it's not an end goal, it's a process, a journey, if you will. And when you learn to enjoy that process, it becomes something that you do always. It's never a destination. It's never, "My goal is to lose 30 pounds and once I'm there, I met my goal and I'm happy." Because we all know what happens once you get to that goal. Why continue? Where is that motivation? Where is that drive to continue doing what you're doing versus enjoying the process?

The most important type of exercise to combat sedentary lifestyle

But like I was saying, there's a lot you can learn from the fitness side. One of the things that I love to communicate, is that when we look at all forms of exercise, whether it's yoga or cardiovascular training or structured-type of exercises like Pilates or classes like Orangetheory and resistance training, when you look at all of those forms of exercise, one of those forms of exercise is more valuable than the others. Now all of them are very valuable and ideally you want to be well rounded. You want to do lots of different things, because that seems to be best for the body. But one of them in particular combats the Western lifestyle condition. If we look at the ailments that happen as a result of the Western lifestyle, it's obesity, insulin resistance, mobility issues. I could take the average 30-year-old and they probably can't even sit in a squat, which is a basic human function. We look at hormone issues. We look at, of course, all the things that come from lack of activity, overconsumption of food, and overconsumption of highly palatable food in particular. And one form of exercise combats all those directly better than any other, and that's resistance training. And at the moment, the message that we're getting from Western medicine, or even that's being studied ... You know when we study exercise, what form of exercise do they typically look at? Vigorous cardiovascular. Chris: Cardio. Yeah, steady-state cardio training. Sal Di Stefano: We don't look at resistance training, which is terrible because all workouts produce different results, there's different demands on the body, and they call for different adaptations. Cardiovascular activity, or just moving, has got its own health benefits, definitely. Definitely got health benefits. However, when we're looking at the context of a lifestyle of general inactivity and overconsumption, what we want, is we want to find a way to get a person's metabolic rate to be higher. So if you're in the context of hunter–gatherer and food is scarce, you don't necessarily want to have the fastest metabolism, because that's not going to be good. Right? That's not a good adaptation. But if you live in America and you've got food at every corner and you have a desk job, it'll behoove you to amplify your metabolism. It's going to help you deal with regular life. It's going to increase insulin sensitivity, because we know muscle utilizes a lot of glycogen, a lot of that sugar that you may consume, or whatever your body produces. And we know that it speeds up your metabolism. It's a different adaptation. Cardiovascular activity actually in some ways does the opposite. When you're doing lots of cardio, you are burning calories manually during that cardiovascular activity, but what you're also doing is you're asking your body to adapt to become more efficient with its calorie burn. You're literally telling the body, "We're burning lots of calories manually because of all this activity. You need to become more efficient with how many calories you burn." And we see this. We see over time that cardio produces—especially if you do a lot of it on a consistent basis, it actually, you'll lower the rate of calories that you burn during activity because your body just gets good at it. Which by the way, your body evolved to do that. So it's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. And your body will actually slow itself down and burn less calories at rest. There's some interesting studies that have been done on modern hunter–gatherers. I can't remember the name of the tribe that they studied. I think it was ... H-A-D-Z-A. I believe that was the name of the tribe, Hadza. Chris: Hadza, Hadza, yeah. Sal Di Stefano: They did some interesting studies on them and they found that they weren't burning that many more calories than the average person in Western societies, even though they were way, way more active. But if you think in the context of evolution, it makes sense. The body learns to become efficient with food, especially if it's scarce. Resistance training does the opposite. Resistance training, weight training, and proper weight training, by the way ... I want to be clear, you can definitely work out with weights wrong, and there's a right way to do it. Chris: We're going to come back to that. I'd love to talk more about that. Sal Di Stefano: Absolutely. But if you do proper resistance training, the adaptation that you're asking of the body, the prioritized adaptation, is improved strength. Now in order for your body to get stronger, there's two main things that are happening, maybe three main things that are happening with the body. One is central nervous system adaptation. So this is where the central nervous system is firing your muscles more effectively. It's creating a favorable recruitment pattern. So if I do a barbell squat, and I get good at a barbell squat, I'm going to get stronger because I'm getting good at the barbell squat. So that's your central nervous system kind of adaptation. The other thing that happens is muscle fibers actually hypertrophy, or they grow. Larger muscle fibers contract harder and produce more force. This is not a shocking theory. This is something we've known for a very, very long time. And larger muscles consume more energy. They require more glycogen. They burn more calories. So lifting weights, the primary adaptation is getting stronger. The side effect of that is a metabolism that burns more calories. And when you place that in the context of typical Western lifestyle, that's the perfect thing. That's what you kind of want. Because again, we have food that's super plentiful. We don't move that much, as our normal life doesn't require that we move that much. So if we could get everybody's metabolism to burn 500 more calories a day, it doesn't sound like much, but believe me, it adds up, you're going to directly counter a lot of the problems that we have with our lifestyle. And then as far as mobility is concerned, lack of mobility is just a lack of control and strength. And proper resistance training provides that. As we age, which again, if we look at healthcare costs, they explode after ... I think after the age of 50 or 60 is when it really starts to take off. A lot of that is, we have health issues. A lot of is like, "I hurt my knee," or, "I broke my hip." And you look at the expense of that, it's all a lack of mobility which then causes other problems. You get people lifting weights in advanced age and they're independent for longer, they don't hurt themselves. And if they do, they recover much faster. And it's unfortunate that the moment resistance training is relegated to the meatheads and nobody's talking about it ... That is the way everybody should ... We should push that more than anything. The good news with that though, I'll tell you what, you don't need to do a lot of it. Two days a week of good resistance training, for the average person, you'll get plenty out of that. Chris: Yeah. I'm constantly talking to everybody, but especially my patients who are approaching older age because there's a saying in medicine, "Break your hip, die of pneumonia." Osteoporosis is a major cause, indirect cause of death for that reason. People break the hip or a bone, and then they end up being prone in the hospital, they develop a hospital-acquired infection, and they can die. So it's a very serious problem that goes beyond just what we're talking about now, which is overall health and strength and metabolic health, reducing the prevalence of diabetes and obesity. It can actually save your life to have stronger bones and muscles.

Why taking calcium alone won’t build stronger bones

Sal Di Stefano: And it's terrible, our approach to osteopenia and osteoporosis, our approach is "Hey ..." It used to be, "Hey, take more calcium," because ... Chris: Yeah, which is wrong. Sal Di Stefano: That's the building block of bone. It would be no different ... Literally Chris, it's no different than me saying to somebody, "Oh, you need more muscle. Let's just increase your protein intake," without sending a signal to build more muscle, just take more protein. It's not going to build muscle. Same thing with the calcium. So that was stupid. We all know that there's some potential negative side-effects of that. And then the other approach is medications that in many way are immunosuppressive, trying to fight osteoporosis like that. When the answer is simple, very, very simple. You build bone the same way you build muscle. You send a signal to the body that tells it, "We need stronger bones." A lot of this comes through sheer force being applied on bone, which is lifting weights. Like just lift weights and watch what happens. I've had countless clients that would come to me ... My old wellness facility was next to a hospital. And at one point, I was training probably up to 13 or 15 physicians and clients who were surgeons in that field, and they would start sending me a lot of their patients who are in advanced age, and many of which were either osteopenia or osteoporosis. And the change and the reversal, or being able to stop that process of bone loss and then reverse it, they were always shocked at how effective resistance training was. But it wasn't shocking to me. I could see their strength go up in the gym. Of course, it's not, 70-year-olds aren't squatting 300 pounds, but if I have a 70-year-old who could barely stand up out of a chair without assistance, all of a sudden be able to do 10, just body weight standing squats, that increase in strength, that tensile tension that now is being created on the bone, is going to send a signal to the body saying, "Hey, get the bone stronger." And it was obvious to me, and everybody was always shocked at how crazy the results were in that regard.

A little resistance training goes a long way

Chris: Yeah. I agree with you that there needs to be a lot more attention paid to this because it's really missing from the dialogue about exercise. And it's amazing how little that dialogue has changed in the past, really, half century. [chuckle] They've been talking about the importance of cardio exercise for the last 50 years, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But I think we've learned a lot in that interim period in terms of what can really make a difference. And certainly the idea that you have to go on a treadmill or go outside and jog for an hour, five times a week to be healthier, that that's even a good idea for most people has pretty thoroughly been debunked. And yet, that is still, I think, what most people think of when they think of exercise. If you ask someone "Are you exercising?" [chuckle] That's what comes to mind. And I think a lot of people, the ... One of the biggest issues with it, is that a lot of people who are sedentary are not exercising because that's what they think they have to do, in order to get the benefits of exercise. And so instead of doing that, they just do nothing. Whereas if they understood that they could do some ... That shifting from being sedentary to doing more non-exercise physical activity, like standing and walking and bicycling to work, and then adding some strength training even just three days a week, could make a huge difference in their health and longevity, I think a lot more people would actually make that switch. Sal Di Stefano: Oh, resistance training first and foremost, will change your body cosmetically faster than anything. So if you want to change how you look ... And I know that motivates people and so I want to make that point, if you want to change how you look and shape your body, nothing will do that like resistance training. And the second point I want to make with resistance training, is that if you do it properly (and it's very individualizable, of course, when it comes to resistance, whether it's weights or cables, machines, bands, or body weight, I can modify it and individualize it for anybody.. other forms of exercise aren't nearly as adjustable as resistance training) it balances out the hormones. If I have a client who's coming to me with symptoms of HPA axis dysfunction or fatigue or whatever, having them do a ton of a cardio is not a good idea. It many times will do the opposite. If you have a guy with low testosterone, symptoms of low testosterone, nothing is going to raise the testosterone like traditional resistance training. Now if I have him do tons and tons and tons of cardio, I may actually start to do the opposite and start to depress those anabolic hormones through the process. Resistance training balances out growth hormone, testosterone. In women it's been shown to have favorable effects on estrogen, progesterone. It's a very, very good way to move the body in the context of, like I said, Western lifestyle.

Learning to enjoy the process

I had a paradigm shift recently, that I quickly was able to make the connection to fitness. So bear with me as I tell the story. I promise it's all related. So my girlfriend, she's very much into decorating for the holidays. Huge fan of it. She gets the napkins, the Christmas napkins and the soap containers. The house is just ... It looks like ... Chris: Do you guys have like the full light show going on outside the house too? Sal Di Stefano: No. No, because that would be my job and I'm not super into it. Chris: Right. [laughter] It's indoor decorations. Got it. Sal Di Stefano: Like Rudolph exploded in my house. But anyway, she's super into it and she says, "Hey I want to go cut down a tree this weekend. We can take the kids and do the whole thing." And to me, I've always viewed decorating as ... It's cool but it really takes a long time just to get the end result, which is a tree with decorations on it. So my mentality around the whole thing was, "The reason why we're doing this is so that we can have a tree with decorations on it." So I'm talking about this and she says, "No, you idiot." She says, "It's not about having a tree with decorations. It's the process. It's going, driving up to the place with the kids, listening to Christmas music, it's getting out of the car, cutting the tree down, drinking hot cocoa, putting the tree on the car, driving back down, decorating it together." And a light bulb went off in my head. It was a paradigm shift, and all of a sudden, I was really looking forward to it because it wasn't about the end result. It was about the process. And I think part of the problem with fitness today, and the reason why most people or a lot of people don't have a fitness routine, if you will, as part of their life is because we're constantly bombarded and marketed to with “end result.” "Lose 30 pounds." "Lose 20 pounds." "Look like this." "Before and after." It's all about ... I used to have clients that I would work with, and they would motivate themselves by signing up for marathons. Like if they didn't have a marathon schedule, then they wouldn't work out. They had to have that thing scheduled. And of course, after the marathon, they'd lose this huge motivation. They wouldn't want to work out, or wouldn't want to run anymore until they sign up for the next one. And really it's about learning to enjoy the process of exercise. I don't know anybody who doesn't enjoy taking time for themselves. When they're doing something they enjoy, that they take some time ... And I don't care how busy you are, especially if you're busy. Especially if you have kids and you feel like you're just frazzled because you have no time, because you're spread so thin. Sometimes taking 20, 30 minutes to yourself, I mean it feels so good, like everybody wants to do that. That's how you should approach fitness. And I know I'm talking a lot about resistance training, but really at the end of the day, anything done consistently is going to be better than even the best program done inconsistently. If you like something, do it. And do it because you're enjoying it at the time that you're doing it. What you'll find is, you will become consistent. It's no longer about achieving a particular goal. It's all about, "Oh, I can't wait till later today. I have 30 minutes to myself to go on a hike, or I can go workout in the gym, put my headphones on, listen to my favorite podcast, listen to my favorite music, and just enjoy myself for about 30 minutes." And on the flip side of that, it makes you a more effective human being in everything else. You end up becoming more productive. It's that whole paradigm-shattering thing where ... When I first learned how to meditate, it was so hard for me to meditate because it felt like 30 minutes of wasted time. "I'm going to sit here and do nothing for 30 minutes. I have all these things to do." [chuckle] But then when I started applying it, I found that that 30 minutes of meditation turned into an extra hour of productivity throughout the day. At that point ... In marketing, they call it "trading dimes for quarters." I was like, "Wow. Okay, so if I'm doing 30 minutes of meditation and I'm far more productive throughout the day, it's not wasted time at all. This is helping everything." The same is true for a structured kind of fitness routine. You don't need to do a ton of it. You don't have to be a super athlete or Mr. Olympia. A few days a week of structured resistance training and increasing your daily activity through small things, like you said, standing and walking a little further, or whatever, and you're set. But learn to enjoy the process, and you'll never have to worry about this I'm-on-the-wagon-off-the-wagon thing. Start to realize there's no wagon. It's just the way I live.

The cost of over-training

Chris: Yeah. Let's talk about the flip side of that and tie it to something you said at the beginning of the conversation, about the historical focus on just building muscle at the expense of everything else, and then maybe the more recent analogue of that, which is perhaps the traditional CrossFit-style training, where people are doing WODs five days a week. What are some of the mistakes that maybe you made earlier on, and then you still see people making in terms of fitness training, particularly on the end of the scale of people doing too much? Because we've been talking ... Obviously, nationwide, [chuckle] the bigger problem is doing too little, we know that. But within the population of people that listen to these kind of shows, my show and your show, we also have the other problem. Sal Di Stefano: Right, right. Say it's the same thing, it's still not listening to your body. What we need to understand is that exercise itself ... If we didn't know anything about exercise, and we had a bunch of scientists, and we said, "Okay we're going to have this person lift these heavy objects for 45 minutes at a particular type of intensity and then we want you to monitor inflammatory markers, we want you to monitor the hormones, we want you to monitor markers of damage or whatever," at the end of that test, the scientists would all conclusively agree that exercising is damaging to the body and horrible, and we should never do it. [chuckle] Exercise itself is not doing ... What it's doing is, it's sending a signal to your body to adapt, that's it. All you want to do with your workout is send the right signal. If you send the wrong signal, then you're not going to get the most out of your workout routine. And the wrong signal can also be, and many times is, too much, especially in regards to intensity. There's many factors that you look at, when you're looking at a workout routine. You have your volume, so that's your total work load or how long you work out. You have the frequency, or how often you exercise. And you have the intensity, how hard you exercise. And the one that is glorified the most is intensity. Partially because it really serves the "I hate my body" mentality very, very well. If I ate a cheeseburger and a burrito yesterday and I'm feeling terrible about myself, I'm going to go to the gym and beat myself up. I'm going to go in and punish myself for making those "bad decisions" yesterday. Or if I don't like the way I look and I hate my body, well, I'm going to beat myself up today in the gym and I need to feel really sore, and I need to sweat like crazy, and I need to crawl out of the gym, and then I'll be satisfied because I think I've accomplished a lot. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you send the right signal, your body will change. Sometimes you need to have a certain amount of intensity, actually many times. But that intensity needs to be appropriate based on your ... Many factors, your current state, so how did you sleep last night, your current nutrition, did you work out yesterday, and your genetic ability for recovery, and your current state of fitness. If I use a different example of adaptation, if I use the signal that the sun sends the body to darken the skin, if I go outside and I expose my skin to UV rays, those UV rays are slightly damaging. My body receives that signal and it aims to adapt to that by darkening my skin so that next time the same insult doesn't produce the same damage. So if I want to get darker, I have to expose myself to longer amounts of sun or stronger amounts of UV rays to get a further adaptation. Same thing happens with the body with exercise. If you've been living in a basement for your entire life and you're as pale as an Irish ghost, [chuckle] then three minutes of sun exposure is going to elicit some change in your body. If I go outside and decide I want to get a tan this second, and I'm going to go out there and I'm going bake myself for the next hour, I'm not going to get a tan, I'm just going to get a sunburn, I'm just going to cause too much damage. Same thing is true with exercise. If I go to the gym and I apply the right intensity, my body will adapt and change. If I go and I apply too much intensity, all my body cares about is recovery. And this is a very important point to make that a lot of people need to hear. Recovery is not the same as adaptation. Now, many times they happen concurrently, many times they happen at the same time. So if I go to the gym and I cause some damage to my body through exercise, which is what exercise does, it's why your body adapts. My body wants to recover from that damage, but then it also wants to adapt so that next time the same exercise, the same intensity, same workout, doesn't produce the same damage. Now if I push it too hard, it just wants to heal. And many people get stuck in this trap where they go to the gym, they get really, really sore, they recover, they go back to the gym, they get really, really sore, they recover, but they're the same, there's no progress. They're not getting any stronger, their body is not changing, they're just basically getting a sunburn each time without any adaptations to their body. So it's important to understand that they are two separate things. And we know this now ... Scientific study will show that post-resistance training, muscle protein synthesis, which is a marker of adaptation, muscle protein synthesis shows that there's muscle-building going on, that that spikes at about between 24 and 72 hours post-exercise, and then it drops very quickly, regardless of recovery, regardless of how sore you are. So I could hammer my legs on Monday super, super hard, and I get this muscle-building signal that peaks on Wednesday or Tuesday and starts to drop very quickly, but I'm still sore and I'm still recovering. Now I can't work out because I'm super sore, but I've missed the opportunity to send another muscle-building signal. So too much intensity can cause that problem, not getting enough results. And of course, if you continue to push that, then you overcome your body's ability to even recover, and you start to go backwards. You start to have this elevated cortisol response to exercise. Your body starts to become very efficient with calories, like it would with cardio, so you start to burn less calories. Your body starts to want to store body fat because it feels like it's in a state that it needs to protect itself, and so body fat is one of those insurance plans that we tend to have, that we evolved to have. So it becomes very inefficient and ineffective, and now you've got somebody who's working out like crazy, getting very little results, or at least they plateaued really hard and their body stopped responding, and then, where do they go from there? Like harder? It can't go harder, so now what? Chris: Right, right. Sal Di Stefano: Your approach needs to be smart with exercise. The right intensity is the intensity that gets your body to adapt and change. Any more intensity is more than you need and will start to take away from your body's ability to adapt.

How to get started with strength training

Chris: I know some people listening to this might be a little overwhelmed, especially if they're not familiar with a lot of stuff that we've been talking about. Again, I think one of the reasons that people don't start exercising if they're sedentary, is it's just ... There's a lot of disagreement and lot of different options out there, and it can be all just too much. And so inertia is powerful and the easiest thing is just to keep not doing anything at all, and so that's what happens. And as you know, I think we talked about when I came on the Mind Pump show, I've been really interested in behavior change, and studying evidence-based principles of behavior change, and how can we help people to shift their behavior. It's not enough, we know now, just to tell people, "Eat healthy and exercise." If it was, we wouldn't be in the situation that we're in now. Sal Di Stefano: Absolutely. Chris: It's not an information problem, it's a behavior change problem, right? And I know you know this from your experience working with people in this capacity. So I know that you have developed a number of online fitness programs as a way of addressing this, which I'd love to talk a little bit about because I think that kind of support is really important for people to be able to be successful and sticking with a program. Not everyone has access to a really good trainer in a local gym. Not everyone is able to find that, or even knows how to interview someone and make sure that they're the real deal, and they know what they're doing and are not going to hurt them. Let's talk a little bit about the programs that you've created and who they're designed for and how they help address this behavior change problem. Sal Di Stefano: Absolutely. The first step, if you're getting into resistance training, you'll have a ton of experience doing it or you have no experience, is as a trainer, what I would do with a client is, step one is I would focus on correctional exercise. My goal is to produce favorable recruitment patterns in the muscle, so the muscles fire better. I want them to gain mobility so that they can get into a squat, so they can do a proper hip hinging movement, like a deadlift. So they can lift something overhead with full extension in their arms without having excessive arch in their back and they’ve got good, what's called scapular retraction, where the shoulder blades can come back, because we see a lot of forward shoulder in today's population. I'm going to focus on correctional exercise. That's always the first step. We have a program that we designed specifically for that. We have two of them. One is called MAPS Prime, and we designed it specifically because we understood that this was a huge missing piece in the fitness programming that's out there. There's a lot of workout programs out there, most of them, if not all of them, are designed to just get you to sweat and get you sore, because that's what sells. They're not super effective in terms of long-term results, but there's almost nothing that you can find that's going to help you correct imbalances with movement and gets your body to move better so that you can start doing the most effective exercises, like barbell squats and deadlifts and rows and overhead presses, and all these great movements that just yield the best results. Like, how do you get a person to get to be able to do those? And it was a difficult challenge for us to design something like that because we're designing a program that is for the masses, and muscle imbalances and how people move is very individual. I can have two people with completely different lifestyles—this person over here has an anterior pelvic tilt, this person has a posterior pelvic tilt. This person over here, when they do a squat, there's too much knee extension. This person is not getting good hip extension, whatever. How do we design something that allows people to individualize what their correctional exercise routine is going to look like? So it was a difficult problem. Luckily, I work with two of the best trainers that I've ever encountered. And the three of us sat down and we were able to come up with what we call the compass test. And this covers three basic movements, that if you're able to perform these well, with good control, good mobility, and according to how we describe it in the compass test ... There's different points you want to look at. Then that means that you probably get good function in this particular area of your body. And we came up with three movements, and what you do is, you do these three movements, you watch how we demonstrate it on the compass test, the videos in the program. You do these movements, and then based on how well or how bad you do these movements, those will direct you to exercises and workouts based on your individual body. So now you have your correctional workout that is programmed and prescribed for your individual body. You take that workout and you go to the gym and you do them, you do these exercises. Many of these exercises involve no weights whatsoever, because they're correctional. Some of them are body weights, some of them you can use bands, or like a broomstick for support or to give you feedback. And through following these movements you start to create better recruitment patterns. And from somebody who's completely sedentary, super deconditioned, it can take anywhere between 30 and 90 days to get to the point where then they can progress to a more traditional workout-type program, which we also have, many of which that we offer. We have MAPS Anabolic program, which is our foundational strength-building program. Then we have MAPS Performance, which is more for the athletic-minded people who want to be able to perform multiplanar movements and perform like a broad spectrum athlete. We have MAPS Aesthetic, which is advanced targeting more of the aesthetic-minded, maybe stage presentation-type individuals. But MAPS Prime is a great place to start if you're just getting into this. Now, if you're already into working out; you know what you're doing or you've been doing it for a while, then you can do the MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, or MAPS Aesthetic. And the way we program these routines ... And they come with videos and demos and blueprints, so it's all spelled out for you. But the way we program these is really based on how a majority of people's bodies are going to adapt and respond to exercise. So the old ... And we say “old” because finally the tide is starting to turn, but when we first came out with these programs, we were by ourselves and how we were preaching exercise. The old mentality with resistance training was to follow what's called the body part split. These are routines where you go to the gym and today's chest day, tomorrow's legs, the next day's back. And you isolate different areas of the body and then you do a lot of exercises for that one body part, or whatever. Working out with the split works fine if you're a genetically gifted, anabolically enhanced bodybuilder. But for the average person, it's nowhere near as effective as more of a full-body approach to training. Part of it's because of that muscle protein synthesis signal that I talked about, where it spikes after about 24 to 72 hours, so you want to be able to work out the whole body again. You don't have to wait a whole week before you hit that body part. And the second thing is from a functional standpoint, isolating muscles does have a place when it comes to correctional exercise, but when it comes to being functional, it's terrible. When you go lift something off the floor or when you're moving furniture, or you're doing somewhere around the house or whatever, you're not ... Chris: Using your biceps. Sal Di Stefano: Yeah, you're not like, "Okay, biceps ..." Chris: "I'm going to curl this up." Sal Di Stefano: No, it's the whole body working in unison, so it's just much more functional. And so our programs are kind of based on that approach. We also use a style of periodization called phasing. So just for your listeners, quick description: phasing your workouts or periodizing your workouts means we're going to focus on specific forms of adaptation for particular periods of time, and then we're going to shift our focus to another type of adaptation. So here's a real general basic example. For three weeks, we may have you focus on maximal strength. So this is where you're going to train with very low repetitions. You're training heavier movements, you're taking longer rests in between sets and we're trying to really get some good central nervous system adaptation. We're trying to get stronger in these low-rep ranges for particular movements. Then after doing that for a few weeks, because the body starts to adapt and ... It's really cool with strength training, the body is quite specific in how it adapts to strength training. So if I train in the five-rep range, I'll get really good at five reps, but I won't necessarily get super good at the 20-rep range. I'll have a little bit of carryover, but not much. And the body will start to plateau as it starts to get used to a particular style of training, your body will stop responding. So what we'll do with our programs is we phase them. So maybe for three weeks you're focusing on that maximal strength, then the next three weeks we're focusing in a little bit of a higher-rep range, more muscle hypertrophy; or we're focusing on actually building muscle fibers and less on maximal strength. And then maybe we'll focus on what is known as sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Sarcoplasm represents all of the non-muscle fiber structures within muscle. So glycogen, fluids, capillaries, everything that's not a muscle fiber within your muscle, which incidentally makes up something like 70 percent of your actual muscle. And that's a faster pace, it's higher reps, you're getting lots of blood to the muscle. You may notice or feel what's called a pump, and you build more endurance. And so that yields a particular result. And cycling through different phases gets the body to continuously adapt, you get better results, your body responds better. Mentally, it's more fun. You get to change up your workouts, you change the focus, whereas on... "This phase I'm trying to go a little faster with my workouts. This phase I'm trying to lift heavier and go slower. This phase I may be more controlled with my movements and trying to isolate certain parts of my body." And so our programs are really designed ... I mean they're designed by personal trainers with 15 to 20 years of experience. That's where integrity with the programming comes. It's not about, "Hey, let's sell this flashy workout that's going to get people real sore." It's like, "Okay. Let's do a program that's going to actually work long term. That's going to give people results and not hurt them and get their body to respond and get them healthy." And that's kind of what we did, but ... Chris: Yeah. That's so key, and I love ... I know you have a program, MAPS Anywhere, that's also for people who don't maybe have access to a gym or don't have time to go to the gym several times a week. And that's super important too, because I think that's another obstacle for a lot of folks in terms of starting resistance training. Sal Di Stefano: Oh, absolutely. Look, I work out at home. I have a garage and I have a real basic gym in my garage. And I love working out in there more than going anywhere else. It's convenient, it's right there. I'm on my own, nobody's around me. I can play my own music. I can work out with my shirt off, or I don't have to comb my hair or brush my teeth. I wake up and work out. [chuckle] Chris: Yeah. I do the same thing. Sal Di Stefano: Yeah. And I know a lot of people, specially if you're busy or you have kids and literally you carve out 30 minutes, 30 to 40 minutes, if that's all I have. Well, MAPS Anywhere, again, no equipment required. You pull up your program on your computer and you just do it right there in your living room, and again, we program that expertly like we do with the other program. So it's actually effective, it's not ... Again, a lot of the at-home workouts are just terrible. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Sal Di Stefano: They're just pushing you to the limit. It's high intensity, it's all it is. And they aren't very good long term. [chuckle] Chris: Yeah. For me, I'm pretty hardcore about it, and if you want to listen to the show, it's just about maintaining balance, spending time with my family and my meditation practice, doing the work that I need to do, having time to just chill and relax. Yeah, 30 or 40 minutes. And because we live way up in the Berkeley Hills, that is the time that it would take me to get to the gym and get back, and not do anything there. [chuckle] So working out at home, like you have a garage and some equipment, that's ... If I didn't have that, I wouldn't be doing it. So it makes a difference between doing it and not doing it. It's hugely important. Sal Di Stefano: "Hey, whatever fits your lifestyle." That's what I always tell people. Chris: Absolutely. And that can change. There was a time, a few years ago, where I had more time and I was going to the gym and I liked that. And there probably will come a time again when I do that. But you gotta adapt your routine for what's going on in your life. And having different tools to enable you to do that is really important. So that's why I'm happy to be talking to you about this. And like I said before, I have just come to believe now that people need way more support than they typically have when they embark upon any kind of diet or lifestyle or behavior change. And the reason people fail with weight loss or with exercise or even with things like sleep and stress management is not lack of information, it's lack of support. I'm 100 percent sure about it. And the research supports that. It's not not knowing what to do that's the problem. It's not having the support to put it into practice, and so I'm a big believer in programs like this that actually can just make it simple. You fire up the iPod or the computer, hit play, watch the video and just do it. And that makes all the difference in the world. I think mindpumpmedia.com is the website where they can find out about these programs. Sal Di Stefano: Yeah. You can find out about each one. We'll have information under each program. And then our podcast, Mind Pump, we talk about them as well. And then we have a YouTube channel for people who ... Because at the end of the day, our higher mission really is, we want to influence the fitness industry so that it becomes the answer to, or part of the answer to, the health epidemic. In the past, traditionally it hasn't been. It's been riddled with fads and poor information. It hasn't helped anybody. And our higher mission is to provide as much information as possible that's quality, that's the right message that gets people longevity with their workouts, long-term success. And we also have free videos on our YouTube channel, which is Mind Pump TV. You can go on there. It doesn't cost you anything. And we break down exercises. We talk about workout programming. We talk about nutrition. Even if you don't want to invest anything, you can just go to our YouTube channel and check out all the free information. We post a video ... Almost every single day there's a new video out there. Chris: Yeah. These guys are so fun to listen to and hang out with, when I went down there to record your shows, with Sal and talking to Noah and Adam and Justin, I had a blast. And so definitely check out their show, their podcast, and their YouTube channel because if you're going to learn fitness, you might as well have fun while you're doing it. That's why I like you. Your attitude's really ... There's just a lot of really kind of sleazy, cheesy stuff in the fitness industry. And I don't need to tell you that. You know that probably better than anybody. And for me it's always really important to cut through that and find people that I can recommend, that I know are approaching it from an evidence-based perspective and are doing it with integrity. Because particularly in the fitness industry, there are a lot of bogus claims being made. There's a lot of really kind of sleazy marketing-type of tactics and there's also the real potential to get hurt. That's true for diet, too. But you can really, really get hurt if you do this wrong. Sal Di Stefano: Oh, I'll tell you, because we've had the podcast for a few years now and we're relatively successful in the podcast space with fitness. We've gotten to meet ... The opportunity to meet some of these fitness influencers and a lot of them are putting out workout programs. We see their workout programs and we know that these people should not be putting out information. And we'll meet some of them and it's shocking. It's shocking. Many of these people look good and that's their credibility. Because I look good and put out a fitness program and tell people how to work out, and it's just terrible. It's horrible. [chuckle] Chris: Yeah, and it's not just a question of “this isn't going to work.” Like I said, it's a question of “this can actually hurt you.” I'm really glad you joined us, Sal. I'm really glad you have these programs available because we haven't actually ... Of course, I've talked a lot about physical activity and the importance of resistance training and increasing non-exercise physical activity. In my book, I wrote about more kind of the why and the what you need to be doing, but we haven't talked much about how, and so it's great now that we have this resource to refer people to. Are you guys doing anything locally now in San Jose or are you pretty much focusing on reaching a wider audience now through the online programs? Sal Di Stefano: Yes, online programs. We're always looking to create new ones that can help address different segments of the population, so we'll probably end up coming out with more programs in the future. But yeah, we're focused on media. We want to ... We had a meeting when we first started our company, and we talked about fighting fire with fire. In fitness, the people who get out the most information or who reach the most people are the ones that shouldn't. They're really good at marketing. They're really good at marketing, they're really good at media, they've got bad information. Then you've got these really smart people with really good evidence-based information and approaches, and nobody hears them because they're terrible at marketing. And so we're trying to get the good information but also fight fire with fire and produce entertaining podcasts and YouTube channels. Get people on our show like you, who can reach even more people through our audience. We've got great information, and so that's our goal. Our goal is to get out ... get as much information out there as possible, reach as many people as possible and hopefully influence others to be able to do the same. Chris: Great. Well, thanks again so much for joining us on. [chuckle] Thanks for fighting the good fight. Again, it's a relief that you guys are out there and getting your content out there in a big way so that people have a really reliable source of information and support to turn to. Sal Di Stefano: Thanks, Chris, I appreciate you having me on. Chris: All right, everybody, that's it. Remember to send in your questions to http://ift.tt/1DErq19, and we'll talk to you next time. All right. Thanks again, that was great.

Source: http://chriskresser.com December 20, 2017 at 03:09AM

[ms-m-astrologer]

Transiting Vesta Stations Direct

Timetable (current events in bold): Vesta enters retrograde zone: Friday, September 16, 2016, 20:07 Cancer Vesta into Leo: Wednesday, October 19, 2016 Vesta retrograde: Thursday, December 1, 2016, 5:42 Leo Vesta retrograde back into Cancer: Tuesday, January 10, 2017 Vesta direct: Wednesday, March 8, 2017 Vesta into Leo again: Tuesday, May 2, 2017 Vesta out of retrograde zone: Friday, May 19, 2017

In all the gas-giant/ice-giant/TNO Cardinal Sign Capital-D Drama over the past several months, with Ceres (Lady Asteroid) and Eris (big bad TNO) chipping in, something as quiet and, well, as private as Vesta retrograde is apt to be overlooked. This is par for Vesta’s course. She isn’t flashy or extreme, and prefers to stick close to hearth and home. Nevertheless, as she has approached her station-direct, she turned the “mere” cardinal t-square (Jupiter/Libra opposite Uranus-Eris/Aries, all squared by Pluto/Capricorn) into a bona fide cardinal grand cross. What’s up with that?

As a refresher, let’s see, first of all, what Martin Bulgerin (website link) writes about Vesta retrograde:

“Vesta rules over a core sense of identity and independence, a kind of faithfulness to yourself that allows no compromise or selling out. You are focused or centered in yourself, able to tap into the great powers of the self when you act out of truthfulness and integrity. When Vesta is in reverse, this fidelity to yourself is tested. Situations come up that force you to decide how much integrity really means to you and how much you'd rather ‘slide through life.’ She teaches us to be beholden to nobody, to stand up and be responsible for ourselves, to demand the best of every experience.”

Of course, during this entire Rx period we’ve seen the opposite of “truthfulness and integrity.” We have seen and heard people who really would rather “slide through life” team with an antiquated and unfair Electoral College to give us President Untruthful Corruption Petites-Mains. But in a sense, weren’t these vicious, malevolent people being true to themselves, too? Add the negative characteristics of Leo (pride, bombast, arrogance, egomania) to those of Cancer (insecurity, clannishness, timidity), and we get 2016.

Vesta has another association: sanctuary. In the wake of Bannon/Dolt 45’s assaults on everyone who isn’t a straight white Christofascist wealthy guy, the concept of sanctuary will increase in importance.

But, let’s focus on the first part of Vesta retracing her steps in Cancer for now. What can we do to redirect the insecure, clannish, timid, stuck in the past energy?  Considering that the antonyms of “insecurity, clannishness, and timidity” are the Leo traits of “confidence, friendliness, and bravery,” it won’t be enough (or appropriate, yet) to just do the opposite. We can do that after Vesta goes back into Leo.

With Vesta in Cancer, we’re going to focus on nurturing and comforting ourselves and each other. We have to create the “safe space” for the upcoming Vesta/Leo dramatics. There can be no exclusion, none - if Dolt 45 shows up on your doorstep wounded, you do the first aid! If we’re too focused on preserving what we have to give, for our own use, we’ll never stop worrying about having “enough.”

In Thomas Cahill’s words (from How the Irish Saved Civilization), “Perhaps history is always divided into Romans and Catholics - or better, catholics. The Romans are the rich and powerful who run things their way and must always accrue more because they instinctively believe that there will never be enough to go around; the catholics, as their name implies, are universalists who instinctively believe that all humanity makes one family, that every human being is an equal child of God, and that God will provide.”

Toward the end of Venus’ retrograde, she gets close to a trine to Vesta - but although the trine gets within one degree, it’s never exact. They WERE exactly trine back on January 28, at 25+ Pisces/Cancer. This was the day after Dolt 45 restricted travel and immigration from citizens of oil-rich countries with whom he and the Russians don’t have business ties. Sanctuary, remember? If we want to find it, we need to provide it to others.

Wednesday, March 8, Mercury/Pisces trine Vesta/Cancer, 20:07; Friday, March 10, Sun/Pisces trine Vesta/Cancer, 20:09

We certainly start Vesta’s direct motion with the best of intentions! High-minded and spiritually elevated, we want to understand (Merc) and embody (Sun) the notion that there is but one human family - walking it like we talk it, if you will. Whether or not our inner flame can continue to give light and warmth will be seen, as Vesta proceeds slowly to interact with most of the other cardinal grand cross planets (Pluto excepted).

Planets/Points affected lie between 19:07 and 21:09 of the yin signs Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn, and Pisces.

Sunday, March 19, Jupiter/Libra square Vesta/Cancer, 20:38

We need to reconcile our own self-focus and self-dedication with what “society” tells us we ought to do. Ms M wonders if most of us aren’t going to run headfirst into a brick wall called “Intersectionality,” because this sure as hell looks like it to her. We don’t have all the answers, and what “works” for us isn’t necessarily valid for somebody else! Give people the courtesy of their own experience.

Planets/Points affected lie between 19:38 and 21:38 of the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn; and between 4:38 and 6:38 of the mutable signs Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces.

Friday, March 24, Mercury/Aries square Vesta/Cancer, 21:15

First of three, with #3 occurring after both Mercury and Vesta have moved into the next sign. Mercury and Vesta have a lot in common (or maybe I just have them conjunct in my own chart), so this is almost certainly some kind of problem with communication &/or mental attitude. We don’t stop to think before we speak, and blurt out some nonsense that we don’t honestly ascribe to, anymore. We may also become aware of the need to get around, or overhaul, some habitual thought patterns.

Planets/Points affected lie between 20:15 and 22:15 of the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn; and between 5:15 and 7:15 of the mutable signs Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces.

Wednesday, April 5, Eris/Aries square Vesta/Cancer, 23:06

We’re called to put our money where our mouth is, with this square. If humanity is truly one big happy family, that includes Dolt 45 and Steve Bannon, right? It includes that homeless vet who doesn’t smell very “nice” and keeps muttering to herself, right? And the kid with Trisomy 18, the octogenarian with Alzheimer’s, the insurance salesperson who chose the “safe” path, the family who goes to Bible study three times a week. This square challenges you to own up to your less-than-savory “relatives.”

Planets/Points affected lie between 22:06 and 24:06 of the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn; and between 7:06 and 9:06 of the mutable signs Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces.

Tuesday, April 11, Uranus/Aries square Vesta/Cancer, 24:19

More challenges, with the emphasis on motivation. Do you really believe what you profess, or are you just trying to appear glamorous? Demetra George put it beautifully: “The resolution of these challenges lies in committing and dedicating oneself to a type of innovation and reform that promotes constructive and healing changes in the old order, or building functional structures of a new order.” The Moon in Libra might exacerbate “things” and make us wish for a balance when we can’t have one.

Planets/Points affected lie between 23:19 and 25:19 of the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn; and between 8:19 and 10:19 of the mutable signs Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces.

Thursday, April 13, Mars/Taurus sextile Vesta/Cancer, 24:50

Finally, something that isn’t challenging!! Yay! We are STRONGLY focused today and have tremendous amounts of practical energy at our disposal. It’s also pretty sexy - take care of your partner, and your partner will take care of you. Also a good omen for working in the yard/garden, which is (now that I think of it) the same principle as sex.

Planets/Points affected lie between 23:50 and 25:50 of the yin signs Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn, and Pisces.

Friday, April 14, Sun/Aries square Vesta/Cancer, 25:01

This can make us overly self-absorbed, directionless, and alienated. As Mufasa told Simba, “Remember who you are!” We’re challenged to keep on the “right” path for us, no matter how lonely it makes us, and no matter if we can’t see where we’ll end up. Create a purposeful vision of yourself, and align your energies with it.

Planets/Points affected lie between 24:01 and 26:01 of the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn; and between 9:01 and 11:01 of the mutable signs Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces.

Friday, April 21, Ceres/Taurus sextile Vesta/Cancer, 26:42; Saturday, April 22, Chiron/Pisces trine Vesta/Cancer, 26:52

Keep in mind that Venus/Pisces is “in there,” too, although her trine to Vesta never becomes exactly exact. April 22 is Earth Day. This whole setup screams “Get out in the garden” - at least get outside and as much into Mother Nature as you can manage. It’s therapeutic as hell, this weekend. Pick up trash as you walk; leave the earbuds at home and listen to the birds; absorb what’s going on with Mother Earth (unless there’s lightning). As it’s known in these premises, “ground and center.”

Planets/Points affected lie between 25:42 and 27:52 of the yin signs Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn, and Pisces.

Monday, April 24, Mercury Rx/Aries square Vesta/Cancer, 27:29

Second of three. If you spent Earth Weekend grounding and centering like I told you to, you’ll have an easier time finding all the mental traps and habitual patterns of thought that hold you back. At this point Mercury is “Promethean Retrograde,” and its being in Aries, is a double emphasis on finding new ways to learn, think, reason, and communicate.

Planets/Points affected lie between 26:29 and 28:29 of the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn; and between 11:29 and 13:29 of the mutable signs Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces.