Would you travel to a foreign country without any preparation or without doing any research? Most probably your answer will be “of course not”. Yet, most people embarking on a spiritual journey or quest of some sort are poorly prepared for what awaits them.

Today I spoke to Mena Baines who has travelled many different paths herself and found that one of the most important things is to “find our confidence”. Once we found our confidence we can explore different concepts, join different groups or follow particular teachers in relative safety. Deep down we will know what is right or wrong for us, what suits us and what just doesn’t fit with our beliefs. Having confidence will enable us to question, research and work out what best suits us.

Mena raised the following points:

• Body, Mind and Spirit often are not treated wholistically
• The body is relegated to the “bottom rung” – yet profound learning or spiritual information is received through the body
• Confidence is very important when embarking on spiritual development – things can occur that might be frightening, might seem absurd, or simply are unbelievable – it takes strength and confidence not to let fear take over
• it takes confidence to embark on any journey – some people never do simply because it is too stressful – they stay in familiar terrain

Mena runs a number of workshops to help people develop confidence to they can embark on their journeys in a safe manner.

The are three core workshops:

1. Chakra Spinach – Body and Soul
2. Chakra Spinach – Start Where You Are
3. Chakra Spinach – Living in a Conscious Universe

Visit Mena’s website today.

Mena is also a psychic medium and a gifted Venusian astrologer. As a special offer for our listeners she will do an astrology reading for the special price of $50 (normally they are $80).

She is also prepared to do a psychic reading online for our listeners for $50 (instead of $80).

Both of the above offers are only valid during April 2010 and you need to mention the Stretch Your Mind and Body Blog Talk Radio Show when contacting Mena. Visit her website today.

Listen to this fascinating  interview by pressing the button on the player below:

The fear of public speaking – people’s biggest fear, often quoted as being more powerful than the fear of death – can be overcome. In today’s world a lot of careers include public speaking of some sort. There are lots of books and courses that teach how to present a “winning presentation” or deliver a “dynamic speech” and the majority of them focus on how to organise and deliver great content. Some might also teach you how to “dress for success”.

Saskia Shakin has been a coach for the past 30 years teaching people how to become an exciting keynote speaker. Her clients have worked in the White House; appeared before Congress; run global corporations; written Broadway plays;managed prestigious law firms; and held chairs at major universities.

She shared some great insights with us during our interview. Especially when you are an expert in your field and spend a lot of time within your area of expertise or your area of knowledge is very technical you need to consider the following points:

• start from square one (beware: what you consider square one might be square 5 for your audience)
• get crystal clear on what you want to get across to your audience – define your message and your mission
• separate any “fluff” from your “mission”
• treat your audience with respect and ensure that they feel smart
• when you try and show off your knowledge you may come across as arrogant
• make sure you have fun when delivering your talk – your audience will have fun too
• remember that your audience only retains about 7% of what you say but 93% of your non verbal messages
• your non verbal messages are extremely powerful and include things like body language, tone of your voice, attitude etc.
• you may not be aware or conscious of your non verbal messages
• your words and your body language have to “mesh”, in other words be congruent

All of the above points are crucial when you want to become a successful and sought after keynote speaker. You need to know your content really well so you can become relaxed with your audience. When you are relaxed you can relate to your audience and think about connecting and not lecturing.

Saskia shared a lot more insights with us, click on the player below to listen to the interview.

Saskia’s book “More Than Words Can Say: The Making of Inspired Speakers” is a collection of stories and wisdom taken from her vast experience as a coach to speakers in positions of leadership. It will not only help you to become a better speaker but also a better communicator in general.
You may want to look at her book today.

One final thought: Remember that everything that comes from you – you can control. We create our world by the way we speak and think. Anyone can become a great speaker – if you can speak to one person you can speak to 100. It is all about how you view yourself and the expectations you hold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sound Therapy is a very powerful tool and healing modality for a huge variety of seemingly unrelated problems. The beauty of sound therapy is that it has been evolving and growing over the past 25 years or so. Therefore a large amount of testimonials and empirical evidence is available that show its effectiveness. A lot of the original work was done by Dr. Tomatis and you may have heard about the Tomatis Method.

Rafaele Joudry is one of the world’s experts on sound therapy. She has been involved with sound therapy and studied it over the past 20 years. You can find her at:

www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/soundtherapy

It all started many years ago in Paris when she met one of the doctors who studied under Dr. Tomatis.

Rafael’s mother had problems hearing in a crowded room and was extremely sensitive to noise. When sound therapy was established in Canada her mother was one of the first clients and had great results.

Most of us are what is called “right ear dominant” because the sound travels faster along that pathway than from the left ear (the heart is “in the way” so to speak).

Left ear dominance leads to all sorts of auditory processing problems. This difficulty in processing or making sense of sounds and what is being said leads to things like stuttering, difficulty expressing thoughts or feelings, dyslexia and it also seems to play a role in Asperger’s syndrome and autism.

Due to some technical difficulties we only spent half our call with Rafaele. She has a lot more to share and we have invited her back.

The first half of the call is a discussion amongst Charly, Lenore from www.outrageouslyhealthy.com , Liz from www.thewaytoblissnow.com and myself about mindset, how to get it right, what works for managing our emotional state and how to stay in control even when things are not going so well.

The second half of the show is our interview with Rafaele Joudry. Click on the player below to listen.

You find Rafaele at:

www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/soundtherapy

Make-up, perfume, lip stick, shampoo, bubble bath – we all have our favourites and most of these small items make us feel happy, give us a sense of indulgence and boost our self confidence as we step out into the world. They are also guilt free as we don’t put on weight using them unlike chocolate!

Unfortunately most of the commercially available cosmetic items contain “nasties”, a vast array of chemicals that should never touch our skin. Remember – whatever touches your skin will eventually end up in your blood stream and find its way into all the nooks and crannies of your body.

Robin Adler has made it her mission to educate whoever is willing to listen about the dangers of chemical ingredients in beauty products. Go to www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/beautifynaturally to get Robin’s free ebook “Beautify Naturally: 10 Non-Toxic Ways to a More Beautiful You.

Toxic ingredients on cosmetics are nothing new. In ancient Egypt lead was used as an ingredient. It made the colours look more vibrant and had an added bonus – it protected the user from particular eye, nose and ear infections which were very common and problematic.

Nowadays the use of toxic chemicals usually is due to commercial reasons – they are cheap, easy to produce and give the product the desired quality. We are conditioned to expect particular qualities – like lots of foam when shampooing our hair, lots of lather from our soaps and detergents, lots of bubbles from our bubble baths.

Natural products do not necessarily act the same – they still do the job they are designed to do but they may not be as frothy or bubbly.

The list of toxic chemicals used in cosmetics is long – to find out more abolut the products you are using right now and better alternatives you might want to visit www.cosmeticsdatabase.com

Luckily for us, lots of organic and much healthier products are available nowadays. Robin has some great recommendations on her site www.toxicbeauty.com

To find out more and listen to our interview with Robin click on the player below: