Revitalize Your Relationship Coaching

Do you wake up every day, look at your partner and think "I am so grateful to be with you"? or do you wake up, look at your partner and think something a little less wonderful? Coupling with another human can be a challenge for many people and as the years go by, if you aren't paying attention it is easy to let your relationship with your spouse land on the back burner or worse, it deteriorates to the point were you don't feel like you have a partner anymore but instead an adversary. No one starts out wanting to feel that way and if you feel your relationship going down that road, I want to offer you a tool that might change the whole thing. This might be exactly what you need to save yourself from becoming disillusioned in your marriage. Read More

This past weekend it was my fourth anniversary. Steve and I had two weddings and we celebrate them both because both occasions were so meaningful to our lives and it's another excuse to eat a beautiful meal (I even managed to make a chai cake while he was out with the kids for a little while). I also think it is important, at least for us, to have these moments to reflect on our lives in one another's orbit especially after having children because there are some days when we get to spend about five minutes together total all day and we use it to figure out the logistics of the next day. The Problem Sometimes I feel like I won the lottery when I married Steve. He is a kind, fun, intelligent and supportive partner and an engaged loving parent too. If you don't know much about him, check this out and you will get a sense of him. Our relationship works but not just because Steve is amazing. I think the reason that some relationships flourish when children are added to the mix and others seems to shrivel has a lot to do with the learned parameters we have of what a relationship "should" look like and the checklist of expectations we hold over our partners. From "Love Langauge's" to Couples Retreat's, the search for connection with your partner in the midst of nurturing your career and raising children can be a challenging one (often made more challenging if you feel embarrassed about your relationship trouble). If this resonates, it might be because you were taught directly or indirectly that what your partner does has an impact on you. You probably believe, like many do, that your spouse should do things they know you will make you happy and never do anything that might upset you. The Manual In Life Coaching, we call this The Manual.

A few months ago I completed an incredible training to up-level the work I am able to do with my clients and students. Teaching yoga has been a powerful tool, but for many people it opens the door to a physical and spiritual awakening that we may not have the support to investigate further. For many people yoga is a way to "tune in" to what they are thinking and feeling and meet a whole different part of themselves. Not bad for just unrolling your mat right?! I wanted to be able to meet more of my students in that space through my work as a Life Coach because self-inquiry is another transformational branch on the tree of Yoga. And since opening up more space in my day to work with people I have noticed that many of my clients are saying the same things. The new mother who doesn't want to put her health, happiness and big goals on the back-burner for the next 20 years while she raises her kids. The entrepreneur who is juggling the pursuit of her passion, her relationship and trying to maintain an intensive spiritual/ yoga practice. The manager who can't seem to figure out how to close his computer and leave his work at work. Their lives look different, but they all tell me the same thing. "There just isn't enough time in the day." With a business of my own, two kids under three, a partner I love spending time with and a daily spiritual practice you might imagine I would be nodding along in agreement with my clients. But I am not, because an unexpected thing happened when I had kids.

When it comes to sticking to your commitments to yourself, are you any good at it?

Before the summer ends, I have a project I want to get finished. And because I am all about supporting other people live with purpose, I decided to open up my process and share it with all of you in a free Off the Backburner Challenge. The premise of this challenge is literally the key to how I get a lot done in a very short period of time. I have two kids who require most of my time and energy so the days of going to the gym for an hour, doing a full length yoga class or spending countless hours writing or working on my business are not in the cards for me right now. Not because I don't have the freedom to do those things, but because I actually believe I need 2 hours at the gym each day or a 40 hour work week to get the same results I can get by taking consistent baby steps. But as those of you who are part of the Off the Backburner Challenge (if you aren't you can join us totally free here) are probably starting to notice, 15 minutes a day spent on something sounds easy, but it is actually just as easy to talk yourself out of that time you aren't paying attention.  What is Really Going On Here? When the novelty of your new daily commitment to yoga, meditation, exercise, reading, a creative or work project starts to wear off, you might notice yourself having thoughts like: "it's just a short period of time anyway, it doesn't  matter if I skip just one day" "I really don't feel like doing this today" or my personal go to: "I can just skip today and double up tomorrow" They seem like fairly innocent thoughts don't they? You might even convince yourself that you have to feel like doing something in order to actually do it. 

If you have read my blog or listened to the Alive With Purpose Podcast, then you know I am very into self-care. Since becoming a parent, I think it is twice as important now in my life since the mental load of caring for children can be very overwhelming if you aren't paying attention. But as valuable self-care time is for me now, I also know I have to be more creative with how I make that space in my life than I did when I was single and didn't have kids. I recorded an entire podcast for you on my current self-care must haves which you can listen to on iTunes here (Get Episode 22 now). You don't have to be a parent to love these self-care rituals. I also made you a free cheat sheet where I have put everything together for you in one place. Head over to my show notes and click the magic pop over to get my favourite cookbooks, food blogs, my new fitness obsession, my daily face care ritual and more.

At the beginning of last month, there was a day I was awake for nearly 24 hours straight.  You might read that and think, "Gee, Erin why would you admit that while you are trying to teach me about self-care?" Well don't stop reading just yet. I wasn't staying up late to meet a deadline, or missing a night of sleep worried about something, I was travelling with my family to Hawaii where we spent a month together. The way it all worked out, we left our home at 8am and arrived at our hotel about 22 hours later. The weather, the land and the people are incredible and I feel so lucky that we were able to go back to one of our very favourite places on earth with both of our kids. As one would expect Hawaii to be, it was magical. We had beautiful days on the beach all together and I was able to carve out solo time to attend amazing classes and get some much needed mental space to think about how I want to shape the next few years of my life with my beautiful husband and children. But there is another side to the rosy picture here I need to highlight; Self-care takes work. Between home and the beach are about ten thousand practical details. A few times I caught myself joking to friends that, "After all the planning and travel back and forth I will need a month in Hawaii alone to recover". An epic trip like this takes careful planning and we spent many hours researching, booking places to stay, packing and unpacking everything a family of four needs into a single suitcase and a few backpacks. Then there is the reality of traveling with two kids under three years old.

Sometimes the warring yoga factions out there make my head spin. While I understand the passion some yogis feel when they find a practice philosophy that resonates with them, I find it hard to watch if that turns into disrespect for other schools of practice. I wrote this after watching one such "debate" turn into a full blown yogi feud about how one type of yoga was a magical cure and another illegitimate fluff. When I first began my practice I often read things in the more "revered" yoga texts like "The cure for x (disease or disorder) is to hold y (usually an advanced) pose for 25 breaths." Maybe it happened to work for someone out there, but so far I haven't come across any school or method that has the power to cure. Yoga is not a cure afterall.

  The holiday season is here and chances are right about now you are freaking out about what to give someone special in your life. Personally, I love to give gifts but in recent years I have shifted my approach to both giving and receiving. With two little one's in our lives, Steve and I have become much more discerning about what we bring into our home, trying to avoid a wasteland of toys our kids never play with or impractical clothing they never wear. I talk about it a little bit in my podcast this week. In our relationship too, we have new standard for exchanging presents. For me the ideal gift is some combination of: functional (aka. something that we needed or makes our lives easier) beautiful (aka. art or something that looks nice in my home or on me) experiential (concert tickets, spa treatments, a full night of sleep) These things need not be expensive but certainly call for a bit more creativity. And when I speak to other yogi's I hear that many of them feel the same. So here are a few ideas for the different yogi's in your life from my personal shopping list this year

Join me for some extreme self-care this January. Get the details here. Less than two weeks ago, I gave birth to my second child. Julian Bronson Aquin-Haase (sorry kid, about that long and impossible last name) joined our family on November 14 after a few sleepless days of back and forth to the hospital. After a long recovery for me and a big adjustment to our lives when Audrey was born two years ago, Steve and I decided "winging" our first few weeks as a four person family might not be wise. We did a LOT around our place to make it feel more comfortable. We turned our storage room into an artroom so Audrey would have a fun spot to play in, we decluttered a full carload of stuff, we asked my mother come and stay with us for a few weeks (thanks mom, you are a true saint) and I made the decision not to teach or do much work until January. I told myself that after months of insomnia, heartburn and general pregnancy malaise I would use these first few weeks to rest and embrace any of the physical aftermath of labour as a chance to hang out with this new little person. In short, I was going to be the postpartum self-care queen. The thing is, this time around was different.