Why not honor your mom all while toasting all women? On behalf of WomenHeart and Clos du Bois Winery, and in support of the site, www.ToastToWomen.com, Blisstree is offering a fun, heart-healthy giveaway!

Valued at $150, the winner of this giveaway will take home:

• A portable pedometer to keep track of her movement
• A personal yoga mat to keep her flexible
• A durable water bottle to keep her hydrated
• An MP3 player to keep her toes tapping
• A plush gym towel to keep her dry

This giveaway is one of the ways to support www.ToastToWomen.com, a site created by WomenHeart and Clos du Bois Winery to help support women’s heart disease awareness and prevention. This Mother’s Day was the kick-off day to National Women’s Health Week (May 10-16). Part of a year-long campaign, the site will raise $100,000 to benefit women with heart disease, and offers helpful eating tips, festive menu ideas from the WomenHeart’s ALL HEART Family Cookbook and the opportunity to send free, personalized e-cards to the special women in their lives. For every e-card sent, Clos du Bois will donate $1 to WomenHeart.

This giveaway is CLOSED.

Congrats to Sharold F!

Another exercise in our better-sex-through yoga series!

Thanks so much to Lesley Hobbs for mapping out these awesome practices for us.

Check it out:

Eka Pada Kapotasana (Pigeon Pose)

Inhale and bring right knee to between the hands, allowing the foot to come towards the center.

Slide left leg back so both hips face the floor. Use a block under the left buttock if necessary.

Bend left knee and hold ankle for quad release. Use strap as shown, if needed. Hold 5-10 breaths.

Release left ankle, lengthen the spine and rest over the bent right knee. Hold 5-10 breaths.

Repeat on other side.
Images: Lesley Hobbs

Today, I interviewed Lesley Hobbs - she has practiced yoga for 12 years and taught for over 3.

Says Lesley: “I realized only recently how much of a positive impact yoga can have on your sex life. From a strictly practical point, yoga keeps the body limber and allows you to get into those exciting positions (like flinging your legs over your partner’s shoulders). From an emotional/mental perspective, yoga reduces your stress, calms the mind and often improves self confidence and self esteem.”

Lesley was awesome enough to offer a short yoga practice full of exercise that will get you sex life revved up in no time. Check it out!

Cat/Cow

On hands and knees, inhale, heart moves forward, head lifts, shoulder blades pull together and work towards the hips.

On the exhale, head drops, stomach lifts towards spine, back rounds.

Repeat with the breath 5-10 times.

This is just the first exercise - Lesley provided a selection. I’ll share more as the week progresses to ease you into the sexier new you!

Images: Lesley Hobbs

I’m so excited to give away 5 bottles of Natures Inventory Oils.

When I had a health issue I used to go to my doctor first.

Thousands of dollars in copays later I would end up at the health food store and what they would give me would out-perform the prescriptions.

Now I’ve learned the cheapest and most effective thing to do is hit the health food store first.

I’m going to try Natures Inventory’s Allergy Relief Wellness Oil, a completely organic 100% natural oil to reduce congestion and itching eyes. Check my Sinus Wash Miracle Cure for more great uses of oils.

I’m excited to try the Body Ache Relief.

I meditate a lot and want to see if this Meditate Wellness Oil will help me keep my mind from wandering to dark or trivial things during yoga and morning and evening meditations.

I’m tempted to try the Skin Lightening Formula Wellness Oil - even after treating my liver condition there are some brown spots left.

Or the Liver Support Wellness Oil to help my hemochromatosis.

And an oil for happiness? Sign me up!

How are you going to pick just 5? How am I?

Leave a comment saying which oils you’re most interested in trying and you are entered to win. Subscribe to the Blog Fabulous RSS feed or an email subscription and I’ll make sure to share my results with you.

More giveaways at the Bloggy Giveaways Quarterly Carnival!

Last week I said there was one thing I wanted to give everyone I know. I’m trying to devise a strategy where I can put $20 a week towards this for the people in my life who cause me worry.

There, I admit. It’s totally selfish. I want to give them my gift because I hate worrying about them. Mostly they are people in my life with health issues.

It’s the same reason I want Universal Healthcare. I do not like to watch people suffer. I have no stomach for it. It’s bad when they suffer because they are sick. It’s sickening when they suffer needlessly because they are poor and don’t have access to health insurance.

It’s also frustrating when they suffer from self-defeating habits (Hello, Me).

Yoga is the kindest thing I have ever done for myself.

10 things Yoga has done for me:

1. Quiet my mind.

2. Develop patience with my self.

3. Developed mental discipline, helping me stay in the NOW.

4. Cure chronic back pain. (Yeah, I said CURE.)

5. End depression. (No meds here.)

6. Teach me to meditate.

7. Strengthened my sense of personal power.

8. Made my body strong.

9. Tune in to my body, mind, heart & soul.

10. Make friends with my body.

10 people who should try Hillary’s Yoga DVD

1. People with chronic illnesses.

2. Women & girls who have body image issues.

3. Stressed out, busy, anxious and angry people. Make time.

4. People with weak backs and weak muscles - weakness causes pain.

5. Those with a “sinners complex,” otherwise known as self-loathing.

6. People who take anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds.

7. Circular negative thinking sufferers.

8. People who are trying to grow spiritually.

9. Those who don’t know how to meditate or pray.

10. Everyone else.

This is the best yoga DVD for beginners I’ve ever seen. Hillary is a real yogi.

I can’t do yoga, I have . . .

Save your excuses. Hillary was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She does yoga because she is healing her own body. It’s very inspiring.

In one of the options, she gives really detailed instructions on how to get into the poses properly. I watched it and learned a few things about my form. Watch this one first.

In the other section she’ll take you through an easy flow.

There’s no getting bored either. Once you’ve mastered this DVD and feel like doing something else she has a website, Hillary’s Yoga Practice Free Online Yoga Podcast Classes with 60 podcast recordings. That’s how I found her. I’ve been doing yoga on my itunes and I like that most of her classes can be done in under an hour.

The winner of this DVD is . . . CAMI

If you didn’t win - you can still give yourself or someone else this gift of kindness & self-love - Yoga Foundations with Hillary Rubin by buying the video.

So, I’m sad and depressed today because my gym membership is gone.

The main reason is that it’s overpriced at $70 per month.

Our next goal is to buy a home and that $70 needs to go to a mortgage payment. That’s my sacrifice.

The other practical reason is that my whole family needs exercise. I’ve written before about my 5-year-old’s warning about her red zone BMI. If I’ve worked out for 1.5 hrs alone at the gym by myself, I’m not likely to go on a walk or bike ride with her.

But, I can’t help but feel like I might be sacrificing too much. Like that yoga class and the eliptical machine was the only thing keeping me on this side of sanity.

Since having my last baby a year ago I’ve taken up yoga. The gym I joined offers classes 3 times a week and watches my kids while I take them. My original motivation was the scale. Post-baby I wasn’t dropping the weight as I had expected, but was watching the scale creep dangerously close to 200 lbs. That was a boundary I didn’t want to cross for fear of never returning to a normal body weight. Here are 10 unexpected benefits I have personally enjoyed as a result of practicing yoga.

1. Lose weight. Yoga is exercise, pure and simple. You will be mystified by how much you sweat considering there is absolutely no jumping around. There is nothing aerobic about yoga. Yet, you will be dripping in sweat. You build muscle in yoga and muscle eats fat.

2. Mental Rest. Perhaps you can relate to me and my mental habits. If I allow it, my mind will run round and round things that should have happened or things that I don’t think should have happened. Sometimes I’ll rehearse things I should say or do in my relationships. I’ll resolved to do or say something different in the future and will rehearse it over and over in my head. Frankly, this is exhausting. But, pre-yoga I felt like I just couldn’t turn my brain off. I would lay awake for hours at night with this mental tally running around in my head. I could never get any real rest.

3. Mental Focus. Even if I’m not focusing on past or future fictions in my brain, I’m usually trying hard to remember appointments and check things off my responsibility list. If you’re a woman, especially a mom, you know that I have a lot on my mind every second of the day. It’s easy to become overwhelmed. But, it’s hard to focus on what I am actually doing and stay in the moment with the responsibility circus performing tricks in my head all day long. I’ll be working with my daughter on her numbers and be thinking about balancing the household budget. Thisnasty mental habit is not allowing me to enjoy working with my daughter and it’s not getting the budget done any faster. Yoga has really taught me how to tame the circus freaks running around and helped me learn to focus on my present experience.

4. Positive Attitude. One of the things I try to do during my hour-and-a-half yoga classes is speak kindly to myself. You’re supposed to think of nothing. But, I have yet to master this skill. So, instead I have a rule that I am only allowing empowering things about myself to go on in my head during yoga. No self-flagellation or doubt or loathing allowed. Pure forgiveness of me, pure acceptance of me. Pure compliments to my body. It’s really quite nice and this practice has helped improve my self image and self esteem tremendously. I also do a lot of praying and forgiving of others during this quiet time.

5. Insomnia. Do to the fact that my mind is at a gallop most of the time it is difficult for me to turn it off. Especially if I am mad about something or ticked off at someone. So I used to lay awake for hours until I took sleeping pills. Or I would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep. Which made me frustrated and irritable the next day. Since starting yoga I go to sleep easily and sleep all the way through the night. In turn, I feel better in the mornings and throughout the day.

6. Challenging. I used to want to avoid challenging myself physically. Frankly, I have never, ever exercised in my life. I was simply too lazy and wanted to relax. With yoga classes though I can see improvement and it makes me feel accomplished and empowered about my physical body. Moves that I could barely do for a second - like plank, basically a push-up - left me pathetically exhausted. But, I feel so proud of myself now that I can hang out in plank for a few minutes and can see the improvement I’ve made in my core strength.

7. Strength. Can I just say I have a 25 pound baby? It takes a lot of physical labor to haul that kid around 24 hours a day. Yoga has built my muscles more than I thought possible. My whole body - muscles I never would have worked on in a weight room - is stronger. Turns out I really love being strong. I love feeling capable. I love being able to see definition in my arms and calves. I feel sexier when I look at my muscles than I thought I would.

8. Flexibility and Limberness. I’m only in my 30s and already I’m noticing that I have aches and pains that weren’t there when I was younger. Like my akelis heals are tight and hurt a little unless Istretch them out in the mornings. Downward Facing Dog has really helped this problem. 

9. Back health. For many years I have had chronic back pain. MDs just wanted to prescribe medication that makes me drowsy and loopy all the time. Finally, I found a chiropractor and started spending some money on ergonomic work chairs and mattresses and that helped a lot. Still, I would have a bit of pain and be afraid to do anything to hurt my back. Since yoga I can not tell you how nice it is to have ZERO back pain. Really, I don’t ever think about my back anymore. Because it is strong and I have great support in my core to hold my back up properly.

10. Rest. When I grew up Sunday was the Day of Rest. Rather than take a nap on Sunday afternoons I take an extremely challenging yoga class. No kidding, it is more restful than sleep. It is so peaceful and calm with the lights low and slow flowing movements that I feel like rested jello when I am finished.

Yoga is the single kindest thing I do for myself. I encourage you to try it, you deserve to be kind to yourself.

Sunday Calendar

• Get up and get self and family ready for neice’s dedication at church.
• Go to church. Runs way longer than expected, get called out to feed hungry baby in the nursery.
• Buy a paper. Go through open house listings and circle a few.
• Eat some lunch.
• Drive around looking at two or three houses. No potential.
• Race home to drop husband and daughter off.
• Race to gym for hour and a half yoga class. This is the part of the day where I can feel spiritually connected to my mind and body.
• Race home to pick up husband and daughter.
• Go to grandma’s house for weekly home cooked Southern cooking. Devine.
• Finally, go home and sit on the couch.

Really, Sunday is about the busiest day of my week. I’m so exhausted by the end of it that I can’t wait until Monday when I might get a minute to sit down and rest a little.