It was July 2005. After a few years of living in the UK, we decided that it was time for a change.
We realised that all the attempts we made to start a new life (literally!) were not successful: we would try to buy a house and I would be made redundant; I would try to find a new job and would ...It was July 2005. After a few years of living in the UK, we decided that it was time for a change.
We realised that all the attempts we made to start a new life (literally!) were not successful: we would try to buy a house and I would be made redundant; I would try to find a new job and would be dismissed at the… 4th interview!; I would have a go at my Coaching business and… somehow it seemed that people couldn’t see me!
Sometimes in life it happens that things are a bit of a struggle and you can accept this when there is a purpose behind it. You know you are moving forward but perhaps the obstacles are teaching you necessary lessons.
But other times in life it happens that there is only struggle and no movement forward. And it is at these crossroads that I need to search deeply into my heart to find the answer. And the answer, that October 2004, was to go. And we chose South Africa because my loved one is from Cape Town.
They say life starts at 40 and I was 40 at the time, so I made the point of totally starting my life from scratch. I would take my favourite clothing items and necessary gadgets with me, I would take all the many learning experiences I had gathered over the 17 years I spent in the UK, but I would create a new mindset in which gathering or storing light was be the prime objective.
And so we arrived and things were much harder than we envisaged due to family and work issues. But we soldiered on. And parallel to everything else, I focused my mind on one thought: I needed to raise the vibration of my body if I wanted to conceive at the beginning of January 2006. This is one of the goals that I had in mind when I originally was called to move.
You must understand: this is not something I think. This is something that Spirit instructs me as my next stage of development. How do I know the difference, you may ask? The answer comes as a call from the heart. It is powerful and has the energy to carry you through any difficulties. It is not a mind-thing where you will reality to happen but it is a spiritual and energetic thing where it wills you to happen!
The secret is to listen and follow the guidance you receive, no matter how crazy is sounds! (In fact, I will say that the more others consider it to be crazy, the more on target you are!).
I had battled to lose weight in the UK. Not that I was fat, but I felt sluggish. It is as if my energetic system wasn’t up to scratch. And it is not to do with the amount of food or the quantity of exercise I did, although, of course, that also counts. But what I mean is that it doesn’t come from willing specific amounts of calories down my throat or counting the minutes in the gym but it comes from aligning myself with some kind of inner guidance in order to reach a level of balance and harmony that allows me to experience inner peace.
It is a bit difficult to explain and I bet it is even more difficult to believe!
My partner got a job in Johannesburg for the first three months so I was at home by myself during that time. I took this opportunity to read great amount of spiritual literature, meditate on the information, dissect it, analyze it and transform it into understanding or wisdom that could be used in practical terms (this is my idea of spiritual growth!). Every week I could sense massive shifts in my perspective about life. Every week I could feel more strength inside me. There was motivation and energy to go and do yoga and long walks. There was motivation and energy to shift my eating patterns into eating clean food and particularly smoothies (fruits and yoghourt liquidified together). This doesn’t mean I wasn’t having my dutiful coffee and biscuits or chocolate in the afternoon! But of course, we are not talking about a whole box here…
Before I knew and without realising, not only I lost the 2 kilos I wanted to lose in order to feel good about myself, but I felt stronger and I lost a total of… 6 kilos in 3 months!
But this wasn’t a diet in the sense of the word: this was my body dictating to me what to eat, when to eat it and me not resisting its guidance. And because the focus wasn’t on the food but on my spiritual growth, my body and mind were ready to make this change since there was alignment of mind/body/spirit.
You see, as you shift your emotional blocks, your body naturally gets ready to hold more light and it raises your level of light – it is as if your energy becomes cleaner. Your body guides you to the foodstuff that matches its new vibration and so it feels that rather than making a sacrifice, you actually carry out the enjoyable practice of going with the flow of this new state of being!
As I said, not so easy to explain and maybe quite difficult to believe!
This is what I call the Liberation Diet (which I will write about shortly!) – and which is nothing to do with a diet and all to do with learning to love and accept oneself! Funny, eh?
The test came when I went to Europe for Christmas.
I went to the UK for one week to see my old friends, then I went to Spain for 4 weeks to see my family. I thought that I would fall into my old eating patterns. After all, it is almost impossible not to put weight on when you go to Spain, even if it is for one week! Normally I would put on about 5 pounds to half stone. Food is so great there and my mum is such a good cook!
To my surprise, I was able to eat the food that was available but I wasn’t as ravenously hungry as I used to be in the past. I realised that 5 months had been enough time for my body to adapt to its new status. If I would have a massive meal at lunch time, then I wouldn’t be hungry during the evening and I would just want a snack! And another thing, while in the past I had huge sugar cravings and swinging moods (I feel I was becoming diabetic!) I was now able to spend a few hours without eating and no food cravings would hit me! All I had to do is carry with me a small bottle of water and some nuts in my handbag when I could see that food time was a few hours away! Massive discovery!
I came back to South Africa with the same body weight that I left with… and I had managed to enjoy every big meal that had gone on! I couldn’t stop wondering what was going on.
Then it hit me: I believe that our physical body is an energy system made up of a mind, body, spiritual and emotional bodies (there are some other layers but I will focus on these main four ones). Whatever affects one of these bodies affects the others. There must be an alignment and balance of them in order to be in harmony so that the pendulum of the emotions doesn’t swing wildly from side to side.
When you work with your emotional blocks, you actually liberate your physical body and mind: the energy hidden in an e-motion (energy in motion) can then be used to accept or allow more light. The cells, which have a blue print of your original and perfect state (and which they strive for) and which also have an inner intelligence of their own, are able to function to this highest specification. This is because the light that has been stored in your body and which activates your main glands (e.g. thymus, pituitary, etc) reminds them continuously of this highest potential. And so, it seems that, no matter what you eat or do, once you have liberated your body-energy-system from the lead or dead weight of old emotions, once you have liberated yourself from stifling patterns, one you have shifted memories, expectations, guilt, un-forgiveness, un-love, un-truth, self-defeating, self-deprecation… your body is able to do its main job of maintaining health rather than fighting insurmountable obstacles and wasting vast amounts of energy trying to achieve its ideal blueprint.
When you are thinking of conceiving a baby, I feel that the most important thing, beyond anything else, is a healthy body, a peaceful heart, a balanced mind and a clean energy system. Very much like… clean fuel allows your car a much higher performance!
What will happen is that, without being hard on yourself, your body will find its natural balance and it will become a clean board for you to write whatever your focus on: a trip to a far away land, a new level of well-being, a change in your life…
So look inside your heart and ask yourself… what is my highest vision of myself?
And I am not talking career here…
Ana Garcia has a master’s degree in Education and Languages and a Bachelor’s in Metaphysical Sciences, part of her current PhD candidacy. She is a Coach U CTP graduated Life and Business Coach and has a management qualification with the British Institute of Management.
Ana is a Reiki Master and a Spiritual Mentor. She has studied the Metamorphic Technique Universal Principles with its founder, Gaston St. Pierre and holds qualifications in Character Analysis and Graphology with the British School of Yoga and Nutrition with the School of Natural Health Sciences (UK).
In 2007, Ana was awarded CTM (Toastmasters Competent Communicator Certificate) and she is currently working on her advance manuals pursuing her dream of becoming a motivational speaker. She is the Vice-president of Education of the Peninsula Toastmasters Chapter in Cape Town.
Ana is a freelance writer: she regularly contributes to magazines such as Vibrations, Odyssey and Renaissance, and to several Ezines. Her Animal Strategy series are currently being published in the Renaissance magazine since 2007.
Ana’s passion is to inspire others to claim their own power, clarify their dreams and create strategies to succeed.