What comfort food is your guilty pleasure?

Do you have certain foods that you can’t help yourself around?

When you feel sad, stressed or anxious, do you crave certain unhealthy foods to distract you from the discomfort?

Many of us - in first-world countries - stuff ourselves with food to hide from uncomfortable and negative emotions.

And entrepreneurs in particular tend to eat emotionally to crowd out the feelings of stress and overwhelm they endure keeping up with increasing and erratic amounts of work.

Watch this week's love letter on Food Self-Sabotage, which is part 2 of our 5-week deep dive series on self-care versus self-sabotage.

"When I'm anxious, I know eat food that's not good for me."

This week is week two of five. Our five week deep dive into that interplay between self care and self sabotage. That we dance. We dance across that line as empaths every single day.

Source has really pushed me to raise awareness around this because you have got to shine your light better.

Brighter, bigger, we need you, baby. So whatever it takes, we're gonna raise awareness, where you may be standing between you and your light shining at it's brightest and we just wanna honor that.

Not to make you feel wrong or beat yourself over the head for doing things that way, but instead just honoring that, that's coming up.

This week in particular, for week two out of five, the guides have requested us to talk about food. Oh man. Food, food and emotional stuffing. Alright, let's go there.

What kinds of foods do you eat? When you experience the feelings that are like the following. The following feelings of anxiety, worry, emptiness, boredom, anger, grief.

As I even just say those words, what kind of foods does your body want to ... You start getting cravings for. Is it for another diet soda? Is it for potato chips? Is it for cookies and chocolates and ... Or could it be for cheeseburgers just fill me to the brim, right? Or pizza? All of these stuffing foods versus fuel and clarity foods.

Now, a lot of my private clients, there's certain point in our sessions where we come to this one philosophy that I've said I don't know how many times, but there's two kinds of people in the world.

There's two kinds of people. You could tell by what's driving them.

People who desire clarity, and people who desire comfort. See where I'm going with this? Food.

People who desire clarity, they're going to confront the issue because they just want to clear the air, they're gonna take personal responsibility because that's empowering and it fosters more clarity. It spreads light.

They're going to take a stand and voice their opinion because we're looking for clarity. They're searching for truth.

But people who are desiring comfort are going to blame. It's easier to place blame on others or other events or things that happen in the past or imagines situations.

We're gonna place blame if we want comfort. We're going to feel more tired, we're gonna wanna rest more, we're gonna complain.

Whatever we can do to shirk responsibility and hot potato that off of us.

We're not going to express our opinion or rock the boat because if you rock the boat you'll get spanked. That's what happened in my childhood. So maybe that happened to you, or maybe you'll get denied love.

What did you learn in your childhood when you were really vocal? Were you acknowledged and held or were you punished?

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Know this: Most people's behaviors are motivated by a desire for Clarity or Comfort. You can tell by what’s on their plate.

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This affects our emotional relationship with food because food essentially represents nourishment for our bodies. How you nourish yourself.

Do you nourish yourself for comfort, or do you nourish yourself for clarity? What types of foods are you craving? Maybe even right now.

Be kind to yourself. This is not a beat yourself up question, this is simply an awareness question.

What types of foods do you eat or especially reach for when you're under extra stress? Or you're feeling anxiety? Or you're feeling worried? Or you're lover or the person that you love is not acknowledging you, or acknowledging your feelings?

Or the government is not acknowledging your emotions and your feelings? What do you consume? What do you nourish yourself with? Is it food that increases your clarity or increases your comfort?

Now, be kind to yourself because if it's increasing just your comfort and not your clarity, if you're falling asleep after eating something, that's a sign that you're clarity is not increasing.

You're actually taxing yourself. That's called emotional stuffing.

We're stuffing down the feelings of emptiness in particular, such as loneliness, worry, fear, anxiety, anger. That hole, we're trying to stuff the hole full.

So many empaths do this. So you're not alone, I've done this. Remember my previous video, I lived on Twix.

Talk about stuffing, that stuff probably made out of sugar and cardboard. Who knows? Maybe some corn syrup thrown in for good measure, maybe for a little bit of nutrition. Terrible.

No wonder my body at the time was horridly inflamed, and constipated, and tight, and in pain. That's years in the past now. Thank God. But be kind to yourself if you're stuffing. You're emotionally stuffing.

The alternative would be instead to eat foods that cleanse you or increase your clarity. Last month, we talked about going on a cleanse and honoring that as a form of grounding, to clear your energetic system.

Do you drink water filled foods such as foods that require the sun in order for them to be created? Fill in the blank. I don't need to know what comes up for you around foods that require the sun in order to be created and foods that are filled with water. Use your thinking cap.

What comes up for you around that? But the alternative would be to have food that comes into your body with more photons, more nutrients, dense with light energy so you can shine brighter rather than stuff down.

Now, the oracle cards that are coming forward, this week in particular, are the romance angels. I don't know if this is backwards on camera. But this is ... Now I think we have 20 decks, 20 or 21. I just got another donation of a deck. Thank you. Thank you Paula. Yay. So good.

If you want to donate to the dojo, we are always open to receiving more decks because the tribe, the whole tribe uses all the different oracle cards that we have here.

Romance angels, emotional food stuffing. Most notorious of all. We need to know about our relationship with food and love. New love. Oh my, new love.

A new person has stirred your romantic feelings. What are you gonna do with that? There's so many things that can stimulate desire and many of the ways that we shame ourselves, self sabotage, being receptive to desire and new affection. A new stimulation is we stuff it down.

"Nope, I am not lovable, let me eat that cake. Let me eat that Smarties. Let me stuff that down." Be kind to yourself if that's what's coming up for you.

If you're afraid of rejection or even afraid of being seen, to all my entrepreneurs out there. How much do we eat to stuff down our visibility, our fear of being seen? Be kind to yourself if that's coming up for you.

So how can we begin eating foods that increase our clarity as oppose to just our comfort? Comment below, send me an email back. Let me know what's coming up for you, what foods are you craving?

By the way, let me see if I can pull this book out here. Doreen Virtue has a book that changed my life, The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children.

In here, she actually has a chart of what food means what emotionally. For example, craving chocolate is a desire for romance and love. Craving beer is the desire to shut out anxiety, wanting more love, fun, and appreciation.

You can deepen your healing journey by getting and reading this book, specifically in your relationship between self sabotage and "self care," the dark side of self care in our relationship with food.

Curious to hear if you're gonna get the book. Let me know what you think of it if you have read it. Did this book change your life too? It sure did mine. Alright. I will see you next week for week three of five and get ready for it. Bye.

VictoriaWhitfield.com
Facebook.com/SenseiVictoriaWhitfield

Just for Today...

Become aware of why you are eating the type of food you are eating during the day.

Ask yourself: "Am I eating this because I want to nourish myself, or am I eating this because I want to numb myself?"

Notice how you feel at that moment - you're already healing!

-

Hello there. I am Sensei Victoria Whitfield, your business reiki master. And it's my joy to get to support empathic entrepreneurs and business owners like you in getting and staying grounded and clear in mind, body and business.

Welcome back to another installment of your weekly love letter from the dojo at naturalintuition.com and victoriawhitfield.com, my blog. These are your sources for channeled holistic stress management techniques and guidance for developing your natural intuition. Whether you're looking to improve the quality of your personal and professional life, let this love letter be your reminder that you are not alone and that together we can make that happen.

Let's schedule a chat, and see how I can help you...

The post Love Letters | Food Self Sabotage – Part 2 of 5 appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.

Fighting with sugar cravings?

Known for your sweet tooth?

Find yourself eating more sweets when you're stressed?

It's quite common for sensitive, empathic people to struggle with sugar addiction.

Emotional eating not only affects our weight but also it has a big impact on our sense of spiritual clarity.

Watch this week's 7-minute Love Letter to understand the spiritual meaning of having a sugar addiction.

"I'm feeling overloaded and need to shut down."

This week Source has sent through a message about sugar in particular.

So we want to ask you: Do you feel addicted to sugar?

How much sugar do you feel compelled to eat on a daily basis – or are you even aware of how much sugar you're consuming?

Oftentimes when we are empaths and spiritual beings, we get a lot of sensation and a lot of information from the spiritual energy and the emotional energy that is around us.

Being empathic means you can pick up on other peoples' energy, the energy of different situations and environments around you.

And it can be a bit overwhelming.

One of the ways, we as empaths, lightworkers and energyworkers can, at our lower vibrational state, try and deal with that energetic overexposure is through suppression.

One of the suppression modes that we go for, oftentimes, is through food.

I personally as well have had a life-long interaction with and journey with food from an emotional standpoint.

If this message isn't for you, cool, great, but this is for all those in my TRIBE who do have more of an emotional relationship with food. Maybe you are a bit more of an emotional eater.

In the energy, Spirit wants to send a message through, and it's this:

If your sugar consumption has gone up recently, and the weight, perhaps, is expressing up alongside that, the reason and the spiritual lesson behind that is because your self-care has gone down recently.

There has been a decrease in the activities that bring you a sense of fun, joy, pleasure, and fullness.

Know this: Sweets produce an artificial state of emotional fullness. But don't be fooled; it's a temporary illusion. #sugar @SenseiWhitfield

Fullness, in the grounded sense, is stable – it's a feeling of solid, lasting fullness.

In order to reproduce that sense of emotional fullness, we reach for sweets that can artificially generate that.

Not only that, but as empaths, we also use sweets to block it out – we block out the overexposure to negativity, emotional energy drama, stress as well.

We will use sugar not only to artificially create that sense of emotional and spiritual fullness, Source is saying, but also to block out any overexposure to lower vibrational energies.

This week, The Oracle card deck that's coming through is in the Angel Tarot Cards deck from Doreen Virtue. The spirits are saying that they would really like to send us some guidance from this deck in particular.

“The World” oracle card with Archangel Michael is coming through.

Here’s the reading:

A job well done! Joy, contentment, and gratitude. The path toward enlightenment.

Source is saying that She's sending this card in particular as we're talking about sugar because the spiritual need for increasing your joy and increasing your sense of fulfillment in life is why your relationship with sugar may be on a bit of the addictive side right now.

The anecdote then is to find really fulfilling – as in, spiritually and emotionally fulfilling – ways to experience joy, contentment and gratitude.

My question to you this week then is this:

How do you feel joyful, or do you know what it feels like to feel joyful and content?

Post below, comment back to me, and say what are the things in your life that make you feel joyful, fun-filled, content, fulfilled in your life, and how often do you get to experience them.

Maybe we're not really getting to experience the things that have brought us contentment and a sense of fulfillment, and that’s why we’re reaching for sugar: to generate those feelings artificially.

Or if you can't really come up with something that brings you fulfillment right now, comment below or email me back and tell me, what would you imagine you would feel like if you were content and fulfilled? What would you be like, what would you be doing, how would your body feel? Et cetera.

Sending you so much love!

See you next time. Bye!

In Love and Light,

Victoria.

VictoriaWhitfield.com
Facebook.com/SenseiVictoriaWhitfield

Just for Today...

Honor your anger by engaging Her in a healthy way.

Dance, run or scream it off, tear up old papers and magazines, or take a kickboxing class.

Notice how you feel at that moment - you're already healing!

SHARE THIS! You’d be surprised how many people you know right now are in desperate need of healing and could use this information to change their life. If you can read this, you know someone who needs this Love Letter!

Want spiritual support on your healing journey but don't know where to start? Tell me!

Click the grey button below to book your complimentary 30-minute Share Your Story Call  to start your healing journey, today!

The post Love Letters | Empath Sugar Addicts appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.

Reaching for coffee and sweets for a "pick me up" lately?

Always find yourself feeling sluggish in the middle of the afternoon?

Or perhaps you're having trouble feeling fueled on your vegan-vegetarian diet?

Everyone knows that if they want to be more healthy, they should eat more fruits and vegetables.

But what about eating not just to be healthy, but instead eating for increased energy?

Watch this week's 8-minute love letter to learn about eating "light", literally, to supercharge your energy!

"I have such low energy lately."

This week Source's really interesting message for you and it's about your level of self-care of your physical body. You ready for it?

Eat More Photons.

What!? What in the world? Eat more photons.

It's often times throughout the year we tend to want to get on a health kick or it's time to try a new diet or take of our body and make sure that she's feeling robust and full and well fueled, etc., but the guides came forward this week in particular about your energy.

You may have been asking or you may be asking for this week in particular, "I really need help. I'm feeling kind of low energy. What in the world do I do," etc., etc.

They're saying eat more photons. Now, Dr. Mercola, he talks about bio-photons and he's interviewed his mentor on it and spoken at length, so there's more on that from him. He's a wonderful resource. If you haven't learned about Dr. Mercola, go check him out about the health of your body.

My guides in particular, rather than saying bio-photons, they're saying photons, so all my scientists out there, let's talk. What are photons?

Photons are particles of light energy, so if you've been feeling tired or exhausted or maybe it's that time of the day, you know, what's it 2:00, 3:00 pm around where you're at and you just feel exhausted, ready to reach for a coffee, etc. before you reach for that extra sugary or caffeinated something to give you a boost, tell yourself, "I need to eat more photons."

Are there photons in your coffee or are there photons in your cookie? Here's how you can tell. Photons are particles of light, right? They're the energetic way of describing what light is made out of. Tiny little photons of light energy.

Photons, if they are light then, have to be found inside of things that have interacted with light, aka, who's our main light source? Big guy in the sky. The sun.

It's easy to say, "Eat more fruits and vegetables or etc.," and that's great. However, when you cook one of those, people, their photons leave. That has a escape out. It's captured within the raw foods, so when you feel tired, rather than grabbing a coffee, which has no photons in it or rather than grabbing a cookie or a candy, which of course, has no photons in it, or rather than eating some cooked greens or soup, etc., that's keeping very, very healthy.

Remember that it's energy that your body is looking for. This is how she powers herself is light. You are actually made of light, so when you feel that energy dip, this week in particular, guides are telling me to ask you try eating something that has more photons in it and see how your body responds.

This doesn't mean go on a raw foods diet. I've been in and out of eating raw food and in and out of being vegan and in and out of ... This is something that, if you try to tend towards perfection, you're going to max yourself out.

Be kind to yourself. Just run an experiment this week in particular. Try it. See how your body responds to when you feed her light versus when you feed her jut calories.

The oracle cards deck, of course, is Archangel Raphael. Is the Archangel of healing. Let's see, my good man, what in the world do we need to know this week in particular, about eating more photons.

What's coming up? They said don't shuffle any farther. That's pretty straight forward.

Improving health.

Who would've thought and of course, he's out there, out in nature with everybody who are eating solar energy, right, and capturing the photons.

Dear Archangel Raphael, Thank you for comforting reassurance about this situation. This is really important that this card is about bringing up comfort.

For those of you who think, "I don't like it. I don't want to have to do another thing, etc."

This is not meant to put another thing on you that you have to do. This is about loving and healing your body. It's an opportunity to raise the vibration of how you care for yourself.

Another thing that's coming through in the energy around comfort, comforting yourself, is to talk to someone else who is having this experience. How do they engage their energy level at that time in the day when it dips, when they're exhausted? What do they do? What's been their experience?

Let's come together around eating more photons.

Engage them. It's a pretty bizarre thing to ask. Like, "Have you gotten your photons yet today?" I double dare you to ask them that. Let's comfort each other and connect along this issue.

Comment below. Post below. Let me know if you've asked someone. What was their reaction? Did they laugh or get confused? I'd love to hear it.

All right. I'm sending you so much light energy.

Make sure that you subscribe on Youtube, so you get your love letters first every week. I'm sending you big hugs. See you soon.

Know this: You are actually made of light.

In Love and Light,

Victoria.

VictoriaWhitfield.com
Facebook.com/SenseiVictoriaWhitfield

Just for Today...

Try eating photon-rich food like raw fruit or vegetables.

Specifically eat some when you are tired and feeling low energy, BEFORE you reach for that sweet or drink or cooked food.

Notice how you feel at that moment - you're already healing!

SHARE THIS! You’d be surprised how many people you know right now are in desperate need of healing and could use this information to change their life. If you can read this, you know someone who needs this Love Letter!

Want spiritual support on your healing journey but don't know where to start? Tell me!

Click the grey button below to book your complimentary 30-minute Share Your Story Call  to start your healing journey, today!

The post Love Letters | Eat More Photons appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.

Fighting with sugar cravings?

Known for your sweet tooth?

Find yourself eating more sweets when you're stressed?

It's quite common for sensitive, empathic people to struggle with sugar addiction.

Emotional eating not only affects our weight but also it has a big impact on our sense of spiritual clarity.

Watch this week's 7-minute Love Letter to understand the spiritual meaning of having a sugar addiction.

"I'm feeling overloaded and need to shut down."

This week Source has sent through a message about sugar in particular.

So we want to ask you: Do you feel addicted to sugar?

How much sugar do you feel compelled to eat on a daily basis – or are you even aware of how much sugar you're consuming?

Oftentimes when we are empaths and spiritual beings, we get a lot of sensation and a lot of information from the spiritual energy and the emotional energy that is around us.

Being empathic means you can pick up on other peoples' energy, the energy of different situations and environments around you.

And it can be a bit overwhelming.

One of the ways, we as empaths, lightworkers and energyworkers can, at our lower vibrational state, try and deal with that energetic overexposure is through suppression.

One of the suppression modes that we go for, oftentimes, is through food.

I personally as well have had a life-long interaction with and journey with food from an emotional standpoint.

If this message isn't for you, cool, great, but this is for all those in my TRIBE who do have more of an emotional relationship with food. Maybe you are a bit more of an emotional eater.

In the energy, Spirit wants to send a message through, and it's this:

If your sugar consumption has gone up recently, and the weight, perhaps, is expressing up alongside that, the reason and the spiritual lesson behind that is because your self-care has gone down recently.

There has been a decrease in the activities that bring you a sense of fun, joy, pleasure, and fullness.

Know this: Sweets produce an artificial state of emotional fullness. But don't be fooled; it's a temporary illusion. #sugar @SenseiWhitfield

Fullness, in the grounded sense, is stable – it's a feeling of solid, lasting fullness.

In order to reproduce that sense of emotional fullness, we reach for sweets that can artificially generate that.

Not only that, but as empaths, we also use sweets to block it out – we block out the overexposure to negativity, emotional energy drama, stress as well.

We will use sugar not only to artificially create that sense of emotional and spiritual fullness, Source is saying, but also to block out any overexposure to lower vibrational energies.

This week, The Oracle card deck that's coming through is in the Angel Tarot Cards deck from Doreen Virtue. The spirits are saying that they would really like to send us some guidance from this deck in particular.

 

This weeks Oracle card is: The World. "A job well done! Joy, contentment, and gratitude. The path toward enlightenment." ????Source says this is the week for you to focus on finding your joy instead of eating sweets that make you artificially feel happy for the moment.????✨ #tbt #letgo #selfcare #healing #reiki #doreenvirtue #channel #tarot ????????Watch the full reading on #YouTube at: http://youtu.be/ll8ZpE5VaQg

A photo posted by Sensei Victoria Whitfield (@senseiwhitfield) on Feb 1, 2016 at 6:17am PST

“The World” oracle card with Archangel Michael is coming through.

Here’s the reading:

A job well done! Joy, contentment, and gratitude. The path toward enlightenment.

Source is saying that She's sending this card in particular as we're talking about sugar because the spiritual need for increasing your joy and increasing your sense of fulfillment in life is why your relationship with sugar may be on a bit of the addictive side right now.

The anecdote then is to find really fulfilling – as in, spiritually and emotionally fulfilling – ways to experience joy, contentment and gratitude.

My question to you this week then is this:

How do you feel joyful, or do you know what it feels like to feel joyful and content?

Post below, comment back to me, and say what are the things in your life that make you feel joyful, fun-filled, content, fulfilled in your life, and how often do you get to experience them.

Maybe we're not really getting to experience the things that have brought us contentment and a sense of fulfillment, and that’s why we’re reaching for sugar: to generate those feelings artificially.

Or if you can't really come up with something that brings you fulfillment right now, comment below or email me back and tell me, what would you imagine you would feel like if you were content and fulfilled? What would you be like, what would you be doing, how would your body feel? Et cetera.

That's this week's message. By all means, please go to victoriawhitfield.com/freegift and make sure that you subscribe so that you're getting your weekly Love Letters if you haven’t already.

And on YouTube hit that Subscribe button, wherever she is on your screen, so that you get your weekly Love Letters as soon as their uploaded.

Sending you so much love!

See you next time. Bye!

In Love and Light,

Victoria.

VictoriaWhitfield.com
Facebook.com/SenseiVictoriaWhitfield

Just for Today...

Make a list of at least 2 times when you've felt joyful and content in your life.

SHARE THIS! You’d be surprised how many people you know right now are in desperate need of healing and could use this information to change their life. If you can read this, you know someone who needs this Love Letter!

Want to de-stress and clear your energy but don't know where to start? Tell me!

Give me a call at +1 (732) 903-8573 or click on the blue BOOK NOW button to start your healing journey, today!

The post Love Letters | Empath Sugar Addicts appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.

Feeling tired and low energy lately?

Need to lose some weight and improve your nutrition?

Struggling with addiction and always finding yourself craving more sweets, cigarettes, alcohol, etc.?

Did you know you can raise the vibration of your food and drink right now for FREE? You can!

There is a natural way to bring more positive energy and love to your relationship with food and your body, and it doesn't entail counting calories: Energy "Chi" Balls!

Watch the above video to learn to create an Energy Ball and use it to supercharge your food!

Wake up, sleepy head!

Can you feel it? Every day, there is a dip in the energy worldwide between 2:00PM and 4:00PM -- the infamous Afternoon Slump.

So, to respond to that slump, most of us end up reaching for foods and drinks we tend to have a bit of an addiction to: sweets, salty snacks, crunchy chips, sodas, and coffee.

We all do it, so be kind to yourself. It's a collective habit; a coping mechanism we all share.

Because we are feeling low-vibe, we are attracted to and reach for low-vibe fuel.

And since we have a habit of taking in low-vibe fuel, we find ourselves feeling tired, lacking motivation and struggling to keep our physical and emotional health, and even our sleep schedules, in balance. Sound familiar?

But it doesn't have to be this way.

As you read this blog, all around you right now is ambient, free-floating energy. It's not for sale, it has no calories or rules of any kind; it's just energy. The Chinese call this energy "chi," the Japanese call it "ki" and the Hindus call it "prana," but it's basically all the same thing: energy.

You see, Nature is abundant; in fact, her default state is abundance.

Once you understand this, you'll see that you are also a part of Nature, too.

Therefore: your natural state is that of abundance.

Right now, you have access to an infinite amount of energy. Every bit of potential energy you could possibly need -- to grow, to be "successful" as a natural being -- is actually floating around you, waiting to be activated.

All you have to do is just reach out and take it! But how do you start to do that?

Practicing forming and using Energy or "Chi" Balls.

This technique for harnessing and directing ambient energy is fun and quite easy.

Anyone can do it, at any age or stage of development. All it takes is practice!

An added bonus to forming chi balls is that is also a great centering meditation and it really helps you "empty your mind" and focus. The more you focus on the energy between your hands, the less you focus on annoying, stressful and negative thoughts -- not because you are trying, but just because!

Know this: Your natural state is abundance. Claim your power. #chi #energy #reiki

Here's the thing though: you have to do the work.

If you choose to practice this technique, you will already feel connected to the energy around you. However, if you choose to not only practice this technique, but also apply it to your food and body, you will feel a shift in your energy.

It all comes down to implementation and application.

As always, if you don't do the work, you won't get the benefit! Duh!

So, I encourage you stop, put down your things, and join me in this week's Love Letter video exercise, so you can connect to and feel the energy for yourself.

Watch this week's video for the Oracle Card of the Week, which reveals the spiritual issues weighing down your energy!

In Love and Light,

Victoria.

VictoriaWhitfield.com
Facebook.com/SenseiVictoriaWhitfield

Just for Today...

Try forming an energy ball.

Give yourself a good 5-10 minutes to really feel into the energy between your hands, and then once you do, close your eyes and bring your hands to your heart.

Notice how you feel at that moment - you're already healing!

SHARE THIS! You’d be surprised how many people you know right now are in desperate need of healing and could use this information to change their life. If you can read this, you know someone who needs this Love Letter!

Want to learn to increase your energy naturally?

Give me a call at 732-903-8573 or click on the blue BOOK NOW button to start your healing journey, today!

The post Love Letters | Supercharge Your Food with Energy Balls appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.

Awww... The holidays are the times when we come together as friends and family and do two things:

• Stuff ourselves sick with sugary, fatty and greasy food.
• Whine and get into fights because now's our chance!

Right? EW! I wish I could be warm and fuzzy, but for some of us the holidays and celebration gatherings of any kind are a hot mess.

Let's face the problem head on, rather than just dreading and building up our anxiety and blood pressure leading up to the event - or even using drinking more wine or stuffing with more food or watching a TV or whatever to distract us during the party.

Gatherings are powerful energywork, and when used correctly, you can exponentially increase your vibration and even increase your manifestation techniques. But that has to be on the agenda in order for that to happen!

In the previous post, I gave 7 Strategies for Not Getting Stuffed at Holiday Gatherings. This post will continue the healing process by showing you other awesome things you can do that do NOT involve stuffing yourself, but DO involve experiencing more love and more connection. Group hug!

And that's what we really want during the holidays, right?

So here goes:

1. Looking through photo albums and telling the stories of each picture. (Can also be showing cellphone pictures, but only if you know how to put the phone down and pay attention to people!)
2. Writing "Thank You" or "Happy Holidays" cards to your list of people that you are grateful for as a group and having a "card party."
3. Taking pictures as a family (professional ones are nice, but also doing disposable ones too are fun because it's a surprise! and the candids are much more emotionally satisfying to look at)
4. Writing "Happy Holidays" or  "Thank You" or "Wish You Well" notes to your neighbors AND walking them to their mailboxes to put in. BONUS: knocking on their door and saying to their face that you wish them and their family health and happiness in person
5. Starting your own dance party. BONUS: having a dance battle or Soul Train Line
6. Having a sing along or jam session
7. Playing silly old games like Telephone, Mad Libs, Charades, Taboo, Jenga, Simon Says, Red Light Green Light or Marry Kiss Kill
8. Calling people and telling them you love them or that you were just thinking of them and wish them well as a group
9. Planning your next vacation as a group
10. Watch an old home movie
11. Watch your favorite comedy movie (skip the food or alcohol or sugary drinks and have Tea instead. pretend you're british!)
12. Pick a charity to donate to like Heifer International or The Unstoppable Foundation
13. Rather than going around the table and saying what you are thankful for, go around the table and have Rampages of Appreciation for each other (and loved ones who are more than alive) where you say what you love about each person there
14. Have everyone tell stories about your ancestors' accomplishments and the stories of your family's heritage
15. Do a group verbal vision board and brainstorm, going around the room saying "wouldn't it be cool if we did..." and then the next person builds on that saying "yeah and wouldn't it be even better if we did..."
16. Go around the group and say what's your New Year's Resolution or a big goal you're working toward
17. Increase you Law of Attraction energy by everyone saying what they want more of (affection, appreciation, health, a new job, etc) Ask and ye shall receive!
18. Also go around the group and say what you may need help with or are working on to make it a group mastermind
19. Raise your vibration by going around the group and each person recounting all the accomplishments you've made in the last week, month, quarter and/or year, and then make sure everyone in the group claps loudly and celebrates. What you celebrate, you attract more of!
20. Have a car trunk treasure hunt where you have a list of items that everyone needs to find in their trunk, and whoever finds the most items on the list, wins
21. Have a clothing donation competition where you fill garbage bags of clothes you want to donate and whoever has the most clothes, wins
22. Go for a group walk around the block or in a local park to appreciate nature if the weather permits, or even plant a tree as a group to commemorate the day
23. Visit and clean a family gravesite as a group and remember the love that family member brought into your lives
24. Call or visit people who are in the hospital, in jail or are abroad and let them know you care and are thinking of them as a group
25. Do a group doodle mural where everyone draws and writes on a big piece of paper to commemorate the day
26. Go around the group and say where you want to be in 5 years and where you want to see the family / your friends / your company in 5 years
27. Go around the group and have everyone say their birthdate, astrological sign, favorite color, favorite food, and what was the most fun they ever had or the craziest/funniest thing they ever did/heard/saw

There you have it! 27 ways to celebrate and enjoy the love and communal energy of group gatherings.

Did you come up with more ways that aren't listed here? Leave a comment below and share the ideas so we can all learn to live more love-filled and quality lives with the people we care about!

SHARE THIS! You'd be surprised how many people you know right now are in desperate need of healing and could use this information to change their life. If you can read this, you know someone who needs this Love Letter!

The post 27 Non-Food Love and Bliss Raising Activities for Holiday Gatherings appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.

Whether it's a birthday, anniversary, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the 4th of July, an office party, or Mother's or Father's Day - most of our celebrations these days are food-focused.

In a previous article I explained how we associate food with love and that is why we tend to stuff ourselves, especially at Thanksgiving.

However Spirit spoke to me this morning and said that it's not just love, but we also associate food with appreciation and celebration. Any holiday or celebration therefore is a severe trigger for those of us who struggle with Emotional Eating and Emotional Stuffing Behaviors. So what on earth do we do about this?

I had a few downloads today about how to heal our relationship with food during Celebrations and Holiday Gatherings. Some of them may surprise you, others may seem pedestrian.

Either way, I encourage you to TRY THEM OUT (at least 3) this Thursday for Thanksgiving, and let me know how it goes for you.

It's all about making sure you're not the stuffed turkey at Thanksgiving this year!

I myself will be attempting to engage in all 7, and I'll let you know what happened for me. Usually I stuff myself sick during the holidays to show I am present and participating, but this time, I personally want to be present to myself and my health WHILE participating with experiencing Love with family and friends.

So here they are:

1. Reframe The Meaning of Cravings. We stuff ourselves during holidays and celebrations because we conflate eating food or drinking with Love. Guess what? There's more ways to give, receive and experience love than stuffing yourself. When you next feel the urge to eat more, reframe that urge as a need to experience more Love in that moment - which means, challenge yourself to hug someone, express appreciation, donate something, be affectionate, give a gift, do a random act of kindness or service, tell someone how much they mean to you, pat the cat or the dog, go outside and just appreciate nature for 10 minutes with someone or call someone up to say you were thinking of them.
2. Tupperware. We overeat during holiday celebrations because our eyes are bigger than our stomach, and portions go crazy. Bring a no more than 3 cup / 24 oz / 710 ml tupperware to the party and make it your goal to eat only what will fit in that tupperware and it can close. That way you know exactly how much will be going inside you.
3. Hijack Your Smell & Salivation Response. We often overeat during the holidays because things smell so good. Bring non-food and non-appetizing things to smell to combat cravings and overeating, such the following oil or candles to sniff: lavender, tea tree, eucalyptus, roses, lilies, jasmine, gardenia, or even vick's vapor rub!
4. Managing Seconds, Thirds, and so on. We overeat because it's socially acceptable to keep going back for more food. So to make sure you can have more of something that tasted good but just at a later time, bring extra tupperware containers to put your seconds and thirds to take home later and put them in the FREEZER during your stay, AND into your own freezer when you get home.
5. Conscious Display. We overeat because we see the buffet open and easy to access. So, cover up foods with opaque (not see through) covers when not in use. Out of sight, out of mind!
6. Taste & Pleasure Binge. We overeat because everything just tasted so good and we just want to repeat the sensual pleasure of it. To counteract this, do an ACV Bomb! Drop a shot of Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar into a tall glass of water and drink it down. It's great for digestion and can shut down cravings! Or, if it's really bad, just take an ACV shot straight. You may scream, but hey, desperate times call for desperate measures! 🙂
7. Plan Out the Event Activities. We often overeat because the only thing to do is eat at a party. How BORING! So instead, have a set time where you and your family / guests move away from the dinner table to engage in non-food, non-drink, and non-eating activities that raise your love vibration higher and higher. And when you raise your vibration, you attract more positive things into your life!

Lacking ideas on what to do other than eat? The following post will be a list of over 27 Non-Food Love and Bliss Raising Activities for Holiday Gatherings. Click here to read it and plan your next holiday party consciously!

SHARE THIS! You'd be surprised how many people you know right now are in desperate need of healing and could use this information to change their life. If you can read this, you know someone who needs this Love Letter!

The post Love Letter: 7 Strategies to Not Get Stuffed at Holiday Gatherings appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.

Frustrated with your weight and dislike how you look in the mirror?

Struggling to keep to a diet and exercise routine, but do you find yourself getting nowhere or starting strong and petering out?

Wish someone could just show you what's wrong with you?

This week's video is an intimate look into how I personally lost 30 pounds and kept the weight off.

And no, the it's not about diet OR exercise...

Know this: Weight loss? It's not about pounds on the scale. Never has been, never will be. It's about learning to Love yourself enough to BE your true self. #H2LYS

Back in 2012 I began my weight loss journey. Yes, 2012, the year when the year was supposed to end and all that good stuff! For me, I experienced a shift in my consciousness that catapulted a new relationship with my body.

You see, I have struggled with my weight all my life - it's been up and down and back again. At that time I had been the heaviest I've ever been, 160 pounds on my 5'3" frame, and I was tired, bloated and wondering what's wrong with me.

Spoiler: THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU.

What inspired me to look beyond comparing myself to others (friends, magazines, blah blah blah) was 2 books in particular: "The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children" by Doreen Virtue and "The pH Miracle for Weight Loss" by Robert O. Young.

What Doreen's book helped me realize was that my emotional eating was not just "out of control" or a "problem" but moreover it was an unconscious but calculated habit to deal with being a highly sensitive individual.

Her work showed me how I was using food to shut down my sensitivity so I could cope with empathic overwhelm.

Robert's book continued to build on this, showing me the science of what happens when you put certain things in your body, and how you can communicate better with your body by clearing it out.

So for New Year's 2013, I began a 3-month psyllium husks cleanse, committed to detox from all the negative energy my body was holding so I can receive nutrients better and receive the gut feelings Spirit was sending me with greater clarity. (Email me if you want to know the exact cleanse at senseivictoriawhitfield@gmail.com).

But here's the thing - you need to know WHY I did this, moreso than the HOW.

The how gets boring, old and wears off with time, but if you have a WHY that is bigger than your desire to stay at a certain weight, you can make sustainable and lasting change. So here's why I did it:

I realized that I need to Love myself more.

That's just it.

Love.

I started to see inner self and my body as a defenseless baby crying for attention and in need of help. Rather than stuffing a baconator in her mouth to shut her up because she's to bloated and exhausted to cry any more, I decided to listen to her and tend to her cries.

It's about learning to listen with Love to yourself and your body. That means feeling and learning about how your body responds to different foods, exercise, behaviors, habits, environments and people you have in your life and that you expose it to. And taking action accordingly to protect and nurture her, as you would with a defenseless baby.

So that's how I did it.

The diet, the exercise, the programs, etc. were all an extension of my Big WHY.

Love. Following Love will always bring healing.

This Sunday, we will go more in depth at the Food Energywork: Enlightened Eating for Empaths Retreat.

But I want you to know that all you need to do is start with Loving yourself enough to BE your True Self. Rather than stuffing it down. Leave a comment below or send me an email back at senseivictoriawhitfield@gmail.com with what you think.

In Love and Light,

The post Love Letter: How I Lost 30 Pounds appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.

Hello my loves!

It's the holiday season again and you know what that means - FOOD!

So I just want to take a moment and write to you about Thanksgiving; whether or not you celebrate it, the emotionally-charged energy of food and binging is very strong now - it's just plain hard to avoid.

Thanksgiving is never just a little food, it's an explosion of fatty, salty, sugary, heavy comfort foods. But also, it's a time for family, friends, vacation and relaxation - or on the flipside, it's a time for confrontation and arguments, long lines at the stores, crazy traffic and good ol' fashioned STRESS. 🙂 Sound familiar? Painful, right? Ugh.

Yeah.

I have to say, this is a strange holiday. We all force ourselves to sit around a table and gorge past the point of exhaustion, usually on "comfort foods" to feel all warm and cozy - very few of us health nuts will binge on just healthy foods. Either way, there is this sense of a ritual saturnalian "stuffing" that has been attached to the holiday.

My question is this, though: why does being thankful and appreciating all the blessings or wonderful people in our lives have to equate to stuffing our face, our stomachs and our colons dangerously full of food?

Well, I received an unexpected answer from Spirit just now as I'm writing this...

It's because we equate food with Love.

And we all need Love, in fact, we crave it.

Especially this time of year. The weather is getting colder, most businesses and schools are in full tilt, pushing for the end of year deadlines, and also, the holidays remind us the most of relationships - loved ones we've lost, draining partnerships, or the pain of loneliness.

But what happened? Why do we equate food with Love?

The Energy is telling me it's for several reasons:

• The act of eating is sensually pleasing - taste, texture, smell, sound, looks. It appeals to and massages all 5 senses
• As children, our parents often rewarded us with ice cream, sweets or some other tasty treat
• Because cooking is an Art, we associate certain dishes with our loved ones as their Artwork, so preparing and eating the dish invokes that person's energy
• Social conventions of giving food to show one cares - Valentine's Day chocolates, soup for the grieving, etc.
• And last, but not least, food is understood to be one of the basic, primal human needs for physiological function and survival

Ok, that's nice so why do we gorge and binge on food, and how can we break free of this cycle?

Well, this question and others are the exact things that this month's retreat at the dojo will be about:

Food Energywork: Enlightened Eating for Empaths

Sunday, November 23rd

10:00am - 3:00pm

• Topics Covered at this Retreat:
• Sacred Body Image
• The Healing Purpose of Fat
• Emotional Un-Stuffing
• Empathic Decision-Making Technique
• Food Feng Shui
• And More!

Click on the red button below for a full description and to reserve your spot at the retreat.

EARLYBIRD DISCOUNT: Register by 11:59pm this Sunday and save $100 off admission!

See you there,

Victoria

Sensei Victoria Whitfield is a holistic stress management expert; she teaches emotionally overwhelmed professionals how to continue to serve the people they need to while taking care of themselves, first. A Certified Master-Teacher of Usui-Tibetan Reiki and Holy Fire Karuna Reiki, she regularly teaches Reiki and Meditation classes at her private dojo space in Westfield, NJ. Like her on Facebook.com/SenseiVictoriaWhitfield and follow on Instagram @senseiwhitfield

The post Happy Thanksgiving Binge! appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.

Join me at The Juice House in Garwood Tuesdays at 7:00PM October 7th - November 18th for a brand-new 7-week workshop series on Chakra Juicing!

Learn to balance the seven chakra centers of the body, one week at a time, through the power of yoga, reiki meditation and fresh juice!

Visit ChakraJuicing.com for more information and to join us!

The post Chakra Juicing Workshop in Garwood appeared first on Sensei Victoria Whitfield.