Supernatural Botanicals

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What Gossip Girl’s Kelly Rutherford is buzzing about now:  Brantley Active Enzymes Plus ($30 from BrantleyCure.com).  “I take these every day to nix bloating.”

Quote of the Day:  “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”  Kate Moss on being skinny. 

“Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got and fifty percent what people think you’ve got.”  Sophia Loren on sex appeal.

Sex-Kitten-ism:   According to Wikipedia, Sex-kitten is a term that typically refers to a woman who goes around with a sexually provocative approach.  It also refers to women with abundant sexual aggression. The term originated circa 1958, and was used to describe French starlet Brigitte Bardot, though a term similar has been used as early as in ancient Egypt when people would refer to their partners as kittens.

What is it that makes one a sex-kitten?  Is it a look?  An attitude?  Provocation?  Long hair?  ….long hair? Yes, long hair.  If you are wondering if it makes a difference, let’s do a clinical observation with our resident sex-kitten Kim Kardashian.

This is Kim K. with short hair and long hair.  Which do you like?  Do you think she makes a different “first appearance” with short hair versus long?  Did it completely zap her of all her sex-kitten-ism….or spark it up?

What do you think?

So you’ve mastered Downward Facing Dog pose in yoga, let’s keep going!  This is Dolphin pose.  This is a super-deep stretch that opens up your shoulders and digs deeper into stretching those hamstrings and glutes.

Benefits of Dolphin pose are:

Benefits

• Calms the brain and helps relieve stress and mild depression
• Stretches the shoulders, hamstrings, calves, and arches
• Strengthens the arms and legs
• Helps relieve the symptoms of menopause
• Relieves menstrual discomfort when done with head supported
• Helps prevent osteoporosis
• Improves digestion
• Relieves headache, insomnia, back pain, and fatigue
• Therapeutic for high blood pressure, asthma, flat feet, sciatica

So the next time your head is pounding from a stress headache, forgo the Tylenol and center yourself with some postures to relieve tightness from the neck and shoulders.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1.  Come onto the floor on your hands and knees. Set your knees directly below your hips and your forearms on the floor with your shoulders directly above your wrists. Firmly press your palms together and your forearms into the floor.

2.  Curl your toes under, then exhale and lift your knees away from the floor. At first keep the knees slightly bent and the heels lifted away from the floor. Lengthen your tailbone away from the back of your pelvis and press it lightly toward the pubis. Against this resistance, lift the sitting bones toward the ceiling, and from your inner ankles draw the inner legs up into the groins.

3.  Continue to press the forearms actively into the floor. Firm your shoulder blades against your back, then widen them away from the spine and draw them toward the tailbone. Hold your head between the upper arms; don’t let it hang or press heavily against the floor.

4.  You can straighten your knees if you like, but if your upper back rounds it’s best to keep them bent. Continue to lengthen your tailbone away from the pelvis and lift the top of your sternum away from the floor.

5.  Stay between 30 seconds to one minute. Then release your knees to the floor with an exhale.

Looking for more great yoga stretches?  Head over to Yoga Journal and find 117 more moves just like this.

“I’m not ugly, but my beauty is a total creation.”  Tyra Banks

    One of my favorite authors, Stephanie Klein, has written a hysterical, yet touching, book called Moose, a memoir of fat camp.  It chronicles her horrific experience dealing with being the “fat kid.”  But the book is mainly about rejection.  Whether or not you can relate to the fat part is one thing, but everyone has dealt with rejection.  In actuality, I’ve never wore larger than a size 7 in my whole life….and that was on the way home from the hospital after delivering an 8.5 pound perfect baby boy.   I wore a size 5 most of my life until the last five years.  I now wear a size 2, and while I’m very proud of that fact, it doesn’t come for free.  I’m not as proud of the actual number, size 2, as I am about the dedication it takes to achieve it.  I have to work my tail off to maintain that.  I’ve found, there are no free rides in life.  But I’ve also found, as I mature, that it’s not all about the number, it’s more about maintaining health and feeling good every day.  For me, this realization didn’t manifest it’s way into my psyche until the age of 34….when I woke up in the morning and my bones were hurting from inactivity.  I grew to love all the collateral benefits of working out shortly thereafter……losing weight, gaining muscle, wearing a smaller size, looking sexier, constant compliments, and skyrocketed libido (yay), etc. 

 I first learned about Stephanie with her first book, Straight Up And Dirty.  This chronicles her young adult life while living in New York.   It has a Sex and the City-vibe to it.  It was a great read.  After reading that book (twice!), I found her wildly popular blog, Greek Tragedy.   The Greek Tragedy comes from yet another rejection….not being picked to be in a sorority. 

 You look at Stephanie now and just can’t imagine she was ever the fat kid or the unpopular kid.  She has scads of appeal, tons of crazy stories and experiences, and is a super talent with both writing and photography.  She’s so fun!  And for the record, she’s a skinny, popular girl now.  She’s more of a Greek Success than a Greek Tragedy! 

You can visit Steph’s blog, as I do weekly, at http://www.stephanieklein.com/