Why is it when we reach a really happy place that little voice inside often tries to jeopardise it all? The little voice that says “I don’t deserve this”, “I am not worthy of this”, “This is too good to be true”…or any countless number of things to try to sabotage our happiness.

In the season three launch episode of Offspring Nina Proudman struggles with this very thing. Nina is in a beautiful, happy, loved-up place in her relationship with Patrick and she starts to freak out because it’s too good to be true. Needless to say that she ends up manifesting disaster in her life – her apartment burns down and she finds out her father isn’t her biological dad. Whilst this is rather dramatic, it illustrates perfectly how we can allow our ego, fear and doubt to take over and sabotage our happy experiences.

I was listening to a radio interview with A Thousand Years singer Christina Perri recently and she said that she is most inspired to write about love; all aspects of love. She said that one of the reasons why she believes her fans connect with her is that her songs resonate note only with their positive feelings and experiences of love, but also with their insecurities and the feelings of unworthiness that can arise when love enters their lives. It is a natural human experience to feel fear and self-doubt when we open our hearts to another, for with love come feelings of vulnerability.

Falling in love can be amazingly beautiful and yet, too often we may allow our ego, the relentless little voice in our head, to plant seeds of doubt. At best this can put a dampener on a beautiful experience and at worst, sabotage the whole relationship. That little voice of ego can seem so real and so persistent. The ego loves to maintain a sense of control. It loves to feel safe. Yet when we fall in love there are no guarantees. The ego can’t stand this!

…and so it tries to regain its sense of control. For some people this may mean becoming overly clingy or insecure, trying to control the behaviour of their significant other, which may ultimately push their significant other away. For others it may mean allowing the ego to convince them that the relationship or their significant other is flawed in some way and therefore must be ended.  They may nit-pick or convince themselves that it would never work.  They unconsciously choose the heartache of a relationship ending over the vulnerability of being in love. …thus returning a sense of control to their fear-driven ego.

That’s not to say that some relationships may simply not be right. What is important is to learn to differentiate between the voice of fear and ego, and the voice of truth. I personally find that when I get disconnected from my true self, the voice of ego gets louder, to the point where I start to believe it’s truth. I end up caught in a swirling cacophony of conflicting feelings, thoughts and messages, with no idea which way is up.

In my experience the best way to quieten the voice of ego is to develop and maintain a beautiful, loving, nurturing, soulful connection with myself.  For me, this can be cultivated through time alone, walks in nature, meditation, yoga, taking a long hot bubble bath, having a facial or massage, reading a soulful book or writing in my journal. Ironically though, in a new relationship, when it’s so important to maintain a connection to and a love for one’s self in order to keep the voice of ego at bay, these are the things that can slide as we become swept up in the romance of it all and allow everything else to fall away.

My connection with self can also be broken by putting myself in energy-sapping environments, around energy-sapping people, being constantly busy, or by relying on things (activities, people, food, alcohol, possessions etc) outside of myself as my source of fulfillment. This can of course, include new love interests. In a new relationship we can get so swept up in the euphoria of being in love that the feeling become like a drug; something we can’t live without.  The feelings of being in love can be amazing, beautiful and extremely nurturing. Being addicted to those feelings of love and craving them for a sense of happiness and fulfillment can be counter-productive as the addiction breaks the loving connection with self.  This opens the door to the voice of fear and ego.

I know when I have lost the connection with my authentic self as a start to notice a feeling of emptiness and often feel the strong desire to eat chocolate, drink champagne or indulge in retail therapy!  …basically looking for substitutes for to fill the hole which starts to emerge when the loving connection with my soul is lost. These are my telltale signs that I need to take a step back and re-establish my connection with my authentic self, to ensure that I maintain balance and perspective in my relationships and in life in general. Without this balance, without this loving connection with myself, all hell can break loose in my mind and ultimately my life! As I reconnect to myself an inner peace, love and calm washes away the fear and doubt, creating a beautiful space for truly soulful relationships, connections and experiences.

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, Inner Beauty Stylist and inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

Do you have any friends, family or colleagues that might like reading the Aprelo Blog?  If so, please forward this link to them and encourage them to subscribe.

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, whether single, married or other, it provides a great opportunity to reflect on our love relationships.

To quote author Thomas Dreier, “The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly and helpful to you. The world is what you are.”

What if this has some truth for our love relationships? Perhaps we get back what we give out. If this were true, what does it say about you?

Sometimes we get so caught up in our own “stuff” (meeting that all important work deadline, doing the grocery shopping, fitting in exercise, taking the kids to swimming classes, getting an MBA, making it through the day… or whatever life might look like) that we don’t stop to think about what we’re projecting out into the world; what we’re projecting onto our partner or potential suitors.  …and we wonder why our relationship has gone off the rails, or we can’t find a partner.

Sometimes it can be helpful to take a step back and reflect on the relationship we have with ourselves; ask ourselves, “Am I the person I would love to be?” Or am I just being pulled along by life?” “Am I living my values?” “Am I someone I would love to be with?”

I saw a movie over the weekend, I Don’t Know How She Does It. Sarah Jessica Parker’s character Kate falls into the trap of being a slave to her hectic schedule, juggling the roles of partner, mother and business woman. She is so busy trying to get everything done that her life becomes a serious of transactions and her relationships with her husband and her children begin to suffer.  It’s not until she takes a step back and realises that at some point she crossed the line; at some point she became a woman she didn’t want to be, that she was able to re-balance her life and as a result, her relationship with her husband and children blossomed.

Sometimes a little life re-balancing might be all that’s required. Other times we might need to really stare into the mirror, blackheads and all, and take a deeper look at ourselves. Chances are our romantic relationships are a reflection of the amount of love we feel for ourselves. What’s one thing you can to today to be the person you would love to love?

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, Inner Beauty Stylist and inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

Do you have any friends, family or colleagues that might like reading the Aprelo Blog?  If so, please forward this link to them and encourage them to subscribe.

Many of us at some point in our lives have probably felt, or at least hoped, that we would meet ‘the one’ and live happily ever after. So is the concept of ‘the one’ just a fairy tale, or can it be a reality?

I’ve been reading a book recently, Spirit Junkie by Gabrielle Bernstein, which puts a very good spin on ‘the one’.  Many of the concepts Bernstein presents in her book are based on another book, A Course in Miracles. To quote A Course in Miracles, “The special love relationship is the ego’s chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven.” In other words, we convince ourselves that we need to find ‘the one’ to be truly happy. We can put so much hope on the dream of finding ‘the one’, that we in actual fact, take out selves further away from true fulfillment and happiness. We continue to look external to ourselves for our happiness, always searching for ‘the one’ who will make us truly happy.

To quote Bernstein, “When your source of happiness lives in the arms of another human being, you’re totally screwed. The ego convinces us that all the love we need is in one “special” person.”  Bernstein and A Course in Miracles suggest, “This kind of relationship differs from your other relationships in that you become to believe you need this person to be complete. The special love relationship is exclusive, and it makes that one special person better than you and everyone else.”

We convince ourselves that in the arms of ‘the one’, our lives will be complete and we will be able to live happily ever after. This kind of thinking is likely to keep us away from our true source of inner love. To quote Bernstein, “there is no way that special love can ever work. No one person can be your source of happiness. But without knowing where to find that true source, one will keep searching for it in all kinds of people, hoping to find ‘the one’.”

We enter into new relationships with optimism, hoping that this next partner will be ‘the one’.  We build our new love interest up to be amazing and project all kinds of ideals about who our new partner is.  The reality is that our partner is only human. He has strengths and weaknesses. He has imperfections. If we put him up on a pedestal, looking to him as the sole source of happiness, we are likely to be disappointed.

…and when it doesn’t work out we may tell ourselves he wasn’t ‘the one’ after all; that ‘the one’ must still be out there somewhere. We continue our search for yet another ‘special love’. We feel constant pressure to have a “special’ partner in order to be truly happy, when in actual it fact it is not true at all.  By thinking that we need to find ‘the one’ in order to be happy we give away our power; we are no longer responsible for our own happiness. Our happiness rests on us finding ‘the one’. We might think, “when I meet the one I’ll be happy and complete,” or ‘when I have a ring on my finger I’ll be happy.”

The reality is that if we’re not happy before we meet that special someone; if we don’t accept responsibility for creating our own happiness by learning to appreciate and love ourselves; by fulfilling our own physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs; chances are that at some point in the relationship we will start to feel unfulfilled again. We may start to look elsewhere for the elusive ‘one’, when in reality the partner we had could have been a great match for us.

Pressure to have a ‘special’ partner can cause us not only to look externally to ourselves for our happiness, but also to stay in unhealthy or co-dependent relationships. When we think we’ve found ‘the one’ we can have a tendency to do whatever it takes to keep our partner happy, even if that means compromising ourselves. We might put the needs of our partner above our own, and deny our own true feelings and desires. That may make our partner, and us, happy in the short term. However lack of authenticity, an eagerness to please even at the expense of one’s self and an underlying neediness often ends up turning our partner off. Yet another ‘one’ is likely to slip through our fingers.

I don’t want to sound cynical, as I am a romantic at heart. My point here is that while ever we are searching for that ‘one’ person to complete us and make us happy, we are likely to be disappointed. There is no one person in the world that can complete us; no one person that can make us whole; no one person who can give us lasting fulfillment; no one person other than us ourselves. We are 100% responsible for creating our own happiness. Sure a new relationship can give us that ‘rush’, an initial sense of bliss, and ongoing happiness. However, if we look to our love relationship as our only source of fulfillment we’re likely to be disappointed.

I believe that in reality there are many potential ‘ones’; that at different points in our life different partners can help nurture and develop us on our life journey. We may choose to spend our lives with one person, however that doesn’t guarantee happiness. By connecting with, nurturing and celebrating our inner beauty we become fulfilled from within and more attractive to potential suitors or current partners alike; we no longer rely on someone else to complete us, but are empowered to give the best of ourselves in an equal and mutually rewarding relationship.

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, Inner Beauty Stylist and inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

Do you have any friends, family or colleagues that might like reading the Aprelo Blog?  If so, please forward this link to them and encourage them to subscribe.

With the change in season there’s no better time to clean out the wardrobe and dispose of any pieces that are too last season or no longer our style.  It’s so refreshing to de-clutter and make way for the new season’s hottest looks.  For me, it’s also such a great feeling to open the cupboard door and feel happy with what I see, rather than bored and uninspired.  I love to have a wardrobe full of pieces that are a beautiful reflection of who I am today, rather than a reflection of who I was yesterday.   By holding on to pieces that we no longer wear, our wardrobe becomes cluttered and there’s limited space for fresh, new styles.

The same can be said for our inner “closets”.  Just as it’s cleansing and invigorating to overhaul our fashion wardrobe from season to season, so too is it essential to clean out our inner closet.  We’ve all heard about the proverbial skeleton in the closet.  Funnily enough, many of us prefer to go through life with the skeleton hanging on the rack right next to our little black dress, above our Jimmy Choo shoes!  Well girls, not a good idea!

It’s time to get those skeletons out of the closet and it doesn’t have to be as tough a process as you may think.  By clearing our limiting beliefs, cleansing ourselves of past emotional scars and removing patterns that are no longer serving us, we’re much more empowered to connect with, nurture and celebrate our inherent inner beauty and shine our light brightly.

Just as our fashion wardrobe has some trusted staple pieces that stay with us season after season, so too does our inner wardrobe.  It houses the foundation of who we truly are; our true essence.  As we overhaul our inner wardrobe by removing all of those items that have been cluttering our true essence, we create the space for our inner beauty to shine as brightly as it possibly can.

As we start to overhaul our inner wardrobe it can be helpful to look at different aspects of our lives and ask ourselves a few simple questions.  This can help us determine the areas that may need the biggest clean out.

1) Relationships

What beliefs do I have about relationships that may not be serving me?  Are these thoughts really true or do I just believe them to be?

Some examples of limiting beliefs relating to relationships are: “I’m not worthy of love”, “I don’t deserve to be happy”, “I am unlovable”, “Relationships cause will cause me pain”, “I don’t deserve to be treated with love and respect”, “There are no good single guys”, “I will never meet someone”….  Whether these beliefs are conscious or unconscious they can directly influence our experiences in life.  What we believe we receive.

Am I letting my ego (fear, insecurity, self-doubt, anger, resentment, greed, jealousy, laziness) get in the way of fulfilling relationships?  How can I move out of ego and trust that I deserve fulfilling relationships in my life?

Are there any people in my life that are not a positive influence on me? How can I put more distance between them and myself?

2) Finances

What beliefs do I have about finances that may not be serving me? Are these thoughts really true or do I just believe them to be?

Some examples of limiting beliefs relating to finances are: “Money doesn’t grow on trees”, “Money is hard to come by”, “I need to work hard for my money”, “I am poor”, “I don’t deserve to be financially abundant”, “Money is the root of all evil”, “Money is not important”…  Once again, whether these beliefs are conscious or unconscious they can directly influence our experiences in life.  What we believe we receive.

Am I letting my ego (fear, insecurity, self-doubt, anger, resentment, greed, jealousy, laziness) get in the way of financial abundance?  How can I move out of ego and trust that I deserve financial abundance in my life?

3) Health and Wellbeing

What beliefs do I have about my health and wellbeing that may not be serving me? Are these thoughts really true or do I just believe them to be?

Some examples of limiting beliefs relating to health are: “I am not in control of my health”, “I don’t deserve to be happy and healthy”, “Poor health is means for getting attention”, “I am not good enough as I am”, “I need to punish myself”, “Being skinny is more important than being healthy”, “My health is in the hands of the doctors, there is nothing I can do to improve it”, “Stress is a part of life in this day and age”, “My thoughts, emotions and behaviour do not impact my health”…

Am I letting my ego (fear, insecurity, self-doubt, anger, resentment, greed, jealousy, laziness) get in the way of optimal health?  How can I move out of ego and trust that I deserve to live in optimal health?

4) Career

What beliefs do I have about my career that may not be serving me? Are these thoughts really true or do I just believe them to be?

Some examples of limiting beliefs relating to career are: “I am not good enough to get this job/promotion”, “There’s no such thing as a job I love”, “Work is not fun”, “I need to work long hours to do a good job”, “I don’t have what it takes”…

Am I letting my ego (fear, insecurity, self-doubt, anger, resentment, greed, jealousy, laziness) get in the way of a fulfilling career?  How can I move out of ego and trust that I deserve to have a rewarding job?

Sometimes we can answer these questions ourselves and simply creating an awareness of our belief patterns is enough to dissolve the belief.  Other times we may need some assistance to identify and eliminate beliefs that are not serving us well.  Just as we may appoint a stylist to help overhaul our fashion wardrobe, so too is it at times helpful to appoint an inner beauty stylist to help overhaul our inner wardrobe.  After all, we all deserve both inner beauty and outer style! My belief is that you can’t have one without the other.  Our inner is a reflection of our outer and our outer is a reflection of our inner.

We all owe it to ourselves to revamp our inner wardrobe from time-to-time.  As we do this we create the space for new and exciting opportunities to flow into our lives and allow our inner beauty to shine as brightly as possible.

What is the state of your fashion wardrobe?  Is this a reflection of the state of your inner wardrobe?  Are there any areas of your inner wardrobe that could do with some styling?

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, Inner Beauty Stylist and inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

Do you have any friends, family or colleagues that might like reading the Aprelo Blog?  If so, please forward this link to them and encourage them to subscribe.

Australia has certainly seen its fair share of natural disasters recently, from the southeast Queensland floods, to the north Queensland cyclone, to the Victorian floods, to the Western Australian bushfires.  A thing that becomes very apparent in times of disaster is peoples’ willingness to band together to support each other through; not just family and friends, but neighbours, communities and even complete strangers.

In the midst of the turmoil of disaster we can observe something very beautiful indeed.  Through the depths of anguish, fear and despair blossoms an intense sense of love, care and concern.  People go above and beyond to help those in need, often at the expense of attending to their own needs.  It is amazing to watch and amazing to be part of.  I caught a glimpse of this first hand when my own neighbourhood was impacted by flash flooding just last week.  The sense of community concern and support was so powerful.

Most of us have heard the biblical quote from Leviticus 19:18,”Love thy neighbour as thyself.”  Over the recent weeks I have witnessed amazing neighbourly love both in person and through the media, from the volunteers offering their support, to individuals and communities lending a helping hand.   Why is it that it sometimes takes a natural disaster to act as a catalyst for this kind of widespread love and community support?

Many of us today get so caught up in the craziness of our day-to-day that we sometimes forget to take a step back; to smell the roses; to lend a helping hand or do something nice for someone else for no other reason than to make them feel special, supported or appreciated.  In actual fact, often we’re so concerned with getting ourselves out of bed, getting the kids up, dressed and out the door, getting to work, squeezing 20 hours of work into 10, doing the grocery shopping, chopping the veggies for dinner, doing the washing…  that we don’t even have the time or energy to do something nice for ourselves.  In the midst of everyday life many of us don’t love ourselves let alone our neighbours!  If we’re lucky we might squeeze in a workout although often that can just add to the time pressures of our already busy day!

Unless we make a conscious choice to do something nice for ourselves each day and something nice for another it’s likely we will continue on in robot mode, feeling tired and stressed, until our own personal natural disaster occurs.  Perhaps it could be a bout of the flu, or perhaps something more serious that makes us stop and take notice in a similar way to a natural disaster such as a flood.

Whilst Mother Nature may be a little more difficult to control, at least we can take some small steps each day to help prevent our own personal natural disaster and promote happy, healthy, loving living!  …and the good thing is that most of these principles can easily be squeezed in to even the busiest of schedules.  By applying these wellbeing principles we not only love ourselves, we put ourselves in a much more empowered place to offer love and support to others.

1)   Do one random act of kindness everyday each day – it could be something as simple as smiling at a stranger or as involved as helping a family sandbag their house in a flood

2)   Get fresh air and sunshine each day – get outside, even if it’s just for 15 minutes

3)   Drink 2+ litres of fresh water

4)   Eat fresh, organic wholefoods where possible, rather than highly processed packaged foods – you can easily get organic fruit and veg delivered to your home or workplace

5)   Surround yourself with people who you enjoy being around rather than those who bring you down physically, emotionally and/or energetically

6)   Follow your passion in work and/or in life – do things you love!

7)   Do 30-45 minutes of exercise each day – this includes incidental exercise which you can build into your daily routine

8)   Get 7+ hours of quality sleep

9)   Think positive thoughts of Aprelo (appreciation, respect and love inwardly and outwardly).

It doesn’t take a lot of extra time to incorporate the above practices into our daily life, just a little focus and attention.  Doing this can have a big impact on the quality of our lives and empower us to give the best of ourselves to our family, friends, neighbours, workplace and community, hopefully without a natural disaster of the personal or climatic kind.

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, Inner Beauty Stylist and inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

Do you have any friends, family or colleagues that might like reading the Aprelo Blog?  If so, please forward this link to them and encourage them to subscribe.

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Aprelo & Ingrid Arna present The Bodylove Project – Life changing rituals for healthy, happy & sexy living!

Join us for this transformational workshop in Melbourne on Saturday 26 February, 9am – 5pm, at the Ohana Wellness Centre, Albert Park.  Places are limited so register now!

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From body hate to Bodylove – How illness brought me home to beauty, love and rocking health.

Once upon a time, I was a model and an aspiring actress. Everyone told me I was beautiful. But I didn’t think so. At twenty years of age I moved to New York City in 1995 to pursue my acting and modeling career but before long I was popping a serious amount of diet pills, which is basically legalised speed, in a desperate attempt to get super thin. It was the height of the Kate Moss waif era and the lifeless grunge look was all the rage. Before long the weight fell off and I was skinny. At five foot five I became a petite model and spent most days going to castings and auditioning for acting roles. Existing pretty much on coffee, diet coke, sorbet and a handful of Gummi bears for weeks on end, my daily diet pill addiction kept me speeding along. Within nine months I had gone from the new kid on the block and the life of the party to a sick, miserable and disillusioned young woman.

I vividly remember my agent, Dorian, taking me to bustling Fifth Avenue late one afternoon. Dorian, a crack addict, was a bigger mess than I was. The consummate self–promoter, Dorian claimed to be Claudia Schiffer’s booker at the start of her career. I didn’t trust him but I willingly let him manage my life. Dorian drew me close and with animated exuberance shouted, ‘Ingrid look up at that model on the billboard. That is going to be you one day. You’re going to be a star!’ But his predication was so very wrong. I did not become the next Kate Moss but rather just some wannabe who was literally dying to keep up.

The truth was I had lost my sparkle by trying to fit into a world that I didn’t belong to. I had run away from my problems in Australia and, rather than deal with them, I put all my focus on attaining beauty on the outside whilst suffocating on the inside. The pills kept me buzzing all night long. The insomnia and stabbing hunger pains drove me nutty but I kept habitually repeating the same regime in a desperate attempt to be thin, happy and successful. All I got was thin for a brief moment. Happiness and success eluded me. What made my situation more precarious was that, like so many young girls, I had blindly entered into the drama of crazy diets at twelve. If we do the math, I had been on this rollercoaster ride for thirteen years already. My body was freaking out and so was I!

On my twenty-fourth birthday, I headed home to Australia to discover that I had uterine cancer – or so the doctors told me. After several surgeries, I found out it was something else – not a terminal condi­tion, but serious and life-changing nonetheless. My health problems were linked to my dark emotions, my grief, rage and trauma, as I later learned when I decided to walk away from my past. This was my mega wake up call and I was forced to listen.

The word Bodylove came to me in a vision during this difficult time when I went to the darkest depth of pain. I knew that if I felt such excruciating torment then other women did too. It was at my lowest point that I had this vision. I vowed to find a new way of living that would free me from critical judgment and paralysing fear. I was over struggling. I had to find a way of living that was based on pleasure, peace and love. As I healed, I felt compelled to share the Bodylove philosophy.

After seeing doctors and therapists, who did little to support my recovery, I was left feeling even more helpless and alone. I pleaded with God to rescue me from such torment. After a very difficult surgery and in the midst of family chaos, I knew the only person who was going to help me was myself and something greater than me. I literally got down on my hands and knees and prayed to the creator of all that is to help me find my way home.

Bodylove became my mantra and I started to contemplate what a life without body hate would be like. Desire and imagination started to flood my mind and slowly the heavy emotions started to subside. From that moment, I was lead to study mind–body healing. I became fascinated by how our feelings and beliefs shape our health. Unfortunately many women internalise feelings of anger, rage, guilt and insecurity, leaving the body and mind in a perpetual state of emotional anarchy. It makes us sick. That was me!

I grew up in a drama-filled home with lots of dysfunction. I felt unloved and worthless, which drove me to punish myself in a variety of ways. Everything was so out of control and I used eating, starving, binge­ing and purging, as in a vain attempt to control my body. I was overwhelmed, scared, and confused. I felt like I was dying inside. At times, when all seemed hopeless, I wanted life to end. What I truly wanted was the roller coaster ride of excruciating fear to be over.

The path of Bodylove has completely transformed by life and the way I view myself and the world! I live in a constant state of joy that does not depreciate if I can’t fit into my skinny jeans! To eat with passion, to feel sexy, and radiant and to believe in myself and my destiny has made me happier than I thought I ever could be.

It is exhilarating and liberating for me to live in a world where I have no self hatred. To appreciate, respect and love myself as I am has influenced every area of my life: my career, relationships, health, sex life, creativity and life purpose. Feeling confident in my choices has allowed me to trust my life and my body. Being able to listen and hear my inner voice, which has come from learning to love and honor my body at any shape, has made my self worth unbreakable! No one controls my self worth or the way I treat myself except me. Whatever size my body transforms into – I appreciate, respect and love it. Because I have learnt to love myself, loving and appreciating my body is just an extension of self – love.

Bodylove is like discovering that one true gorgeous loving partner who devours your loins with such an appetite of appreciation that you feel like you’re in a constant state of bliss – only what you have found is your own true self and the magic of learning to love your body with absolute conviction and gratitude.

The process of Bodylove has had many stages of healing and transformation for me and has freed me from judgment, internal torment, and from living a life that was totally immersed in body hate. After years of study, prayer and healing, I am now ready to share my truth and the healing miracle of love.

I now feel the magnificence of love and pure potential beaming from every cell in my body. I have learnt to control my mind and release old beliefs, replacing them with new affirming behaviors and attitudes. Over the past ten years, I have created a system to support others! My intention is to share and guide women from all around the world to reclaim, reconnect and renew our relationship with ourselves and our precious bodies.

It is time to end the drama, end the struggle and fall in love with who you are, lumps, bumps, wrinkles and all. By taking control of the monkey mind that keeps us locked in pain and by releasing sabo­taging thinking, we can create powerful peaceful abundant lives for ourselves, inspiring everyone we come into contact with. Like a trickle effect, as each women gains the courage to appreciate, respect and love herself right now without needing to fix anything, we will change the way we view the world and then how we are viewed. When we expect more for ourselves we will attract more. Radical change is upon us and lives within you.  I know that each of us has a choice to make. Do we want to live in beauty, peace and power or not? At the end of the day, healing is possible for each of us and it doesn’t have to be some arduous journey home to self love. Our health and happiness and joy I believe, is possible for all of us, if we can step into a new way of living that honors the spirit.

We are all beauty that is the essence of who everyone is. To be disconnected to that truth is like ripping the soul and body into shreds. it doesn’t make sense and no wonder the body cries out in illness and emotional discord. The body and spirit can’t stand it! The only thing that is true is to love thyself then we will be truly free.

Are you ready to join the revolution where we come together as a collective group to heal ourselves and the world around us? Are you ready to end the drama and to enter into a flowing dance with life? Now, let the transformation commence!

Much Bodylove!

This blog post was written by Ingrid Arna.  Endorsed by numerous celebrities from Kate Winslet to Camryn Manhiem,  Ingrid is a mind-body ninja, holistic health expert and Bodylove activist. This an excerpt from Ingrid Arna’s  upcoming book: My Bodylove Revolution – Life changing steps for sexy, healthy and happy living, on sale June 2011. For more blog posts written by Ingrid visit http://www.mybodyloveblog.com

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Aprelo & Ingrid Arna present The Bodylove Project – Life changing rituals for healthy, happy & sexy living!

Join us for this transformational workshop in Melbourne on Saturday 26 February, 9am – 5pm, at the Ohana Wellness Centre, Albert Park.  Places are limited so register now!

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“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.” St. Augustine

I have been thinking a lot lately about the meaning of love.  For me the above quote from Capatin Corelli’s Mandolin captures the essence perfectly.  It’s very easy to get swept up in the excitement and chemistry of a new relationship.  Sure we all love romance and I absolutely feel it’s important to invest time and energy in cultivating romance in any intimate relationship, especially after the “temporary madness” subsides.  But does this represent the heart of love?

I don’t believe it does.  I feel passionately that true love grows from within; that lasting love begins first with love of the self.  We’ve all heard the saying, “You must love yourself before you can love another”, and most of us would acknowledge its truth.  But how many of us actually truly live it?  How many of us actually look to the words, affection and actions of others – especially those of our intimate partner – to endorse our sense of self-worth?  How many of us feel insecure and unhappy when we don’t get such endorsements?  As the intense passion starts to dwindle, as it inevitably does in any relationship, if there’s not that underlying sense of self-worth on both sides then one or both parties may end up feeling like they’re not attractive enough or good enough.  As like attracts like, insecurity can very easily start to attract reason to feel insecure.  …and so the downward spiral may begin!

To quote St. Augustine again, “”Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.”  By connecting with, nurturing and celebrating our authentic selves and cultivating love from within, our inner beauty starts to blossom. We no longer need the words of endorsement or excitement of a passionate relationship to make us feel beautiful.  That’s just an added bonus when it comes along!

By first growing love within, we connect with the true essence of our soul.  We gain a deeper understanding of who we are at a soul level.  We learn the ways in which our soul best likes to express itself; what our strengths and values are; what our true purpose in life is. We radiate love and beauty from the inside out and as like attracts like, we are likely to find that we attract a richer, deeper, more beautiful soul love into our lives.  We are likely to attract a partner who complements our strengths and values and are less likely to stand for anything less.  …and until we do, we know we’re okay alone and that the most important thing is the true expression of our soul.

If we find ourselves in a relationship before we’ve done this inner reflecting, this is okay too.  We may be fortunate enough to be with a partner who evolves in a complementary direction as we connect to and express our soul’s essence.  Other times as we connect to our authentic selves, it may trigger the closing of a relationship door to pave the way for the next chapter.  Often it may even work the other way around; through the ongoing challenges in a relationship or even the ending of a relationship we may be triggered to go within.  The process can be different for everyone.

I believe that in love, what’s most important is that we are true to ourselves.  That we share our lives with a partner that allows us to express our soul’s essence and encourages it to grow and shine; that empowers us to be who we really are; that respects, cherishes and complements our inner beauty.  For me, these are the things that enable roots to entwine; the things that are most important when being in love has burned away.  As St. Augustine said, “this is both an art and a fortunate accident”.

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

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Just last night, I found myself in yet another argument with my partner!  Don’t you just love it?!  You look so forward to the weekend as you’ve been so busy throughout the week that you haven’t had time to properly savour your most loved ones, and wouldn’t you know it, just at the time you do have to enjoy each other, “the sh*t hits the fan”, as my delightful father would say!

Of course I probably wouldn’t be so keen to share this information with you in the relatively recent past.  We are conditioned as humans to put on a happy front and always appear as though you have it together.

This year though, I realised that the thing I love most about life, people, things and myself, is authenticity!  There is so much available to learn when you are open to seeing the whole of something – a person, place, situation, thing and yes, yourself…

In the past, I know I was addicted to the positive, feel-good side of life and people. I wanted to live there all the time.  This actually made life quite tough as in reality there is two sides to everything.  It meant too, that I lived in denial a lot of the time and quite often could not see the forest for the trees in certain situations, people included.  Quite a dangerous way to navigate life!

I have since learnt that life – and people (myself included) – is/are much more rewarding, enriching, beautiful and fulfilling when you choose to embrace and see the whole picture.  There is just as much beauty, wonder and richness in the “dark” as there is the “light“, and the truth is, it is only us and our conditioning that will label and judge something as good/bad/right/wrong/etc in the first place!

Anyway, back to my original point…

So, my partner and I were arguing and I was frustrated!  Majorly! It just seemed like we were on totally different planes, speaking languages that the other just did not comprehend. I could see blatantly a whole lot of blame, justification and excuses being bandied around and it was really frustrating me!

Instead of yelling and screaming like I used to, I have learnt a brilliant way of life this year that is much less about reaction and more about reflection. It is also about learning to communicate authentically from the heart…

So instead of chucking my ego into the equation, as I know exactly how that would play out and end, I found some weird inner voice emerge from me that I have never quite experienced before.  It was that voice of truth that lives inside of me, however stays within the protective bounds of my inner sacred self as it seems so precious that to risk it being damaged is just way too scary to contemplate.

So without any thought, out came this voice….  It spoke automatically, clearly, calmly, with pure love and pure truth.  It was amazing!  The atmosphere change was immediate and my partner’s energy shifted instantly.  He sat still, softening and transfixed to the spot.

I shared with my partner in that moment, the absolute truth of who I am and what I truly believe about life.  It seems incredulous that the person who is meant to be the closest to you may not know this information, however if you have never shared it – openly, unedited, clearly and from love – how can they possibly get it/us?!!

Furthermore, I think last night, I learnt a lot about me that until that point, I had not consciously acknowledged to myself.  Of course then, it makes sense that my partner could not have known!!

Last night was a true turning point for me, and our relationship, as I discovered a deeper level of truth that I didn’t realised had not yet been penetrated.

I learnt a few things from last night’s squabble…

• Learning to communicate with authenticity, from our hearts and without any sign of ego is an invaluable skill that will only ever lead to an enriched experience of life and relationships, even though it may mean temporary pain.
• Many of us automatically and unconsciously assume that our partner gets us.  We get frustrated and annoyed when they don’t and hardly ever take the time to consider how we play 50% of the role in miscommunication, misunderstanding and in creating hurtful experiences.
• I have a perspective on life that is incredibly unique and something I need to talk about much more as it is a truly valuable and life-shifting gift that many others take a lifetime to learn, or sadly, never learn. Until last night I took this perspective for granted and didn’t realise just how much it determines why I truly am so happy and could happily die at any moment and have no regrets!

I know that my partner was truly captured when I shared with him my absolute truth on how I think, feel and interact with life.

What is your absolute truth?  Do those closest to you understand who you truly are?  How can you open up to them more and communicate authentically from your heart rather than jumping into ego, fear, guilt or blame?

This post was written by Food, Body, Lifestyle Guru Bridget Jane Thompson of New Leaf Nutrition. For more posts written by Bridget Jane please visit Bridget Jane’s Blog.

Do you have any friends, family or colleagues that might like reading the Aprelo Blog?  If so, please forward this link to them and encourage them to subscribe.

Why is it that since the day we were born we have been made to feel that it’s uncool to love yourself?  How many times in the schoolyard did you hear, or even use, lines like “She’s so up herself, she totally loves herself”, as if it’s the worst atrocity in the world?

Well I’m a passionate believer that it’s not only cool to love ourselves, but totally necessary if we want to kick-ass, achieve our dreams and live a fabulous life filled with wellbeing and happiness.  Now who doesn’t want to do that?!!

…so it’s time to get up yourself and fabulous!  Of course, I use the term “up yourself” somewhat tongue in cheek.  What I mean by “up yourself” is the cultivation of a deep, inner sense of self-appreciation, respect and love.  I certainly don’t suggest it’s cool to be an ego-driven maniac who walks around thinking they’re better than everyone else and wanting to dominate the world.  The former comes from a place of love and light and is totally desirable.  The latter comes from a place of fear and greed and is totally uncool.

Introducing Aprelo – The Key to Being Up Yourself and Fabulous

I believe that the greatest gift we can give ourselves and the world is appreciation, respect and love inwardly and outwardly (also known as “Aprelo” – derived from the first two letters of each word).  Yet this seems to go against everything we grew up to believe.

By appreciating, respecting and loving inwardly and outwardly, ie living with Aprelo, we are more likely to feel fulfilled and are more empowered to implement positive changes across all aspects of our lives, from career, to relationships, finances, health and wellbeing.  In actual fact, if we do only one thing to improve our personal wellbeing, I would suggest that learning to appreciate, respect and love ourselves has the potential to make the single biggest difference to our health and happiness.  Without Aprelo as a foundation, other steps to improve our wellbeing, such as changes to diet or keeping fit can only help so much.

With self-appreciation, respect and love we are much more empowered to give our best to others and attract appreciation, respect and love back. Many people think that focussing on themselves is selfish and something to feel guilty about.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  Living with Aprelo = fabulous.  Self-sacrifice and self-criticism = unfabulous.  It is my belief and experience that until we learn to truly appreciate, respect and love ourselves we’re not only selling ourselves way short, but we’re also doing a big disservice to others in our lives.   Living with Aprelo is one of the least selfish things we can do.

Our negative thoughts and self-talk can be extremely destructive to our overall wellbeing, especially if we are repeating them over and over to ourselves many times a day as we go about our daily life.  If you’re anything like I was, you may be continually giving yourself a hard time for feeling like you are letting others down, making mistakes at work, eating the wrong foods, not going to the gym, feeling fat or ugly, feeling stupid, spending too much money, not having enough money or any number of other things in day to day life.  We can be so hard on ourselves and are often our own worst critics.  Especially as women, it’s almost second nature to us.

It is a universal law that what we focus our attention on we attract more of.  By focusing on the negatives about ourselves and the things we’re doing wrong, all we’re doing is attracting more of them into our lives.  Similarly, if we replace these negative, self-destructive thoughts with positive, self-appreciating ones, we are likely to find we start to attract more positive events and experiences into our lives.

Through the thoughts we think and the feelings we feel we have the power to directly influence our life experiences.  This is an extremely empowering realisation and it puts us back in control of our lives.  If we think of ourselves as a fabulous person who is worthy of living a fabulous life filled with health, wealth, love and happiness we will most likely find that events start to happen that enhance our lives in these areas and that we are compelled to act in ways that enhance our health, finances, relationships and happiness.

Just by changing the messages we give to ourselves and the feelings we have about our self-worth and what we deserve in life, we can have a significant and lasting positive impact on our:

• Health
• Finances
• Relationships
• Career
• Overall happiness and outlook on life.

I’m not suggesting Aprelo is the panacea for personal wellbeing and success.  It does however, lay a very solid foundation on which to build a fabulous life filled with wellbeing, happiness and dreams come true.  With Aprelo everything else flows into our lives much more freely.  I really believe it is an essential pre-requisite for true and long-lasting health, wealth, love, happiness and fulfilment and there is a lot of other literature that supports this.

You may wonder what authority I have to give you advice and guidance on how to live a fabulous life filled with wellbeing and happiness.  That is a very good and valid question!!  I have spent more than ten years researching and applying personal development principles in my own life.  I am also a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner, meaning that I am formally trained to coach people using tools, techniques and methodologies that work on both a conscious and unconscious level, to help them succeed in life.  Most importantly though, it is my personal journey of learning to appreciate, respect and love myself that is most valuable.  When I consciously set about living with Aprelo, my life began to transform in amazing and positive ways, bringing more wellbeing and happiness.

I certainly don’t proclaim to be perfect or super-human.  I am far from it!  I am a real person on a real life journey. I have my faults, that’s for certain – just ask those who are close to me! I have ups and downs, everybody does.  This is the natural flow of life.  I do however have a lot more ups than downs and feel much more content and fulfilled, and much better equipped to handle the inevitable tough situations that arise in life.

My journey is ongoing; there is always more to learn about life, love, wellbeing and happiness.  My absolute passion is to share my personal life learnings, knowledge and experience in the hope that it may inspire others to embrace Aprelo on their own journeys, and empower more people to live fabulous lives filled with wellbeing and happiness.

Take the journey and see for yourself.  Take notice of the messages you give yourself about yourself.  Make a personal pledge to think only thoughts of Aprelo about yourself, think and imagine them often and your life is likely to transform in magical ways.  It’s time to celebrate being up yourself and fabulous!

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

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What kind of relationships do you attract into your life?  Think about your romantic relationships, your friendships and your professional relationships.  Are they nurturing, loving, respectful relationships?  Or do they seem to drain your energy and make you feel inadequate?

Many of us have a tendency to want to be in any relationship than no relationship at all.  We adopt the “something’s better than nothing” mentality.  We would much rather have a romantic partner than be single.  We would rather have a job than be unemployed or face the riskiness of self-employment.  And we would rather have friends to hang out with than be alone.  …but what if these relationships are not serving us well?

Staying in an unhealthy relationship of any kind can be absolutely soul destroying.  In actual fact, it can be a lot more than soul destroying.  Being in the wrong relationships has the potential to be just as detrimental to our health, wellbeing and longevity as an unhealthy lifestyle of poor nutrition, lack of exercise and/or substance abuse, whether this be our professional relationships, romantic relationships, platonic relationships or all of the above.

According to an article by Mark Stibich, Ph.D. about the impact of relationships on aging, longevity and health, “relationships are an essential part of health” and “insecure relationships can likely reduce the effectiveness of the immune system through increased stress”.  This is supported by the Whitehall II Study which showed that “individuals who experienced negative aspects of close relationships had a higher risk of incident coronary events”.  It is also supported by numerous other studies, such as a study on social relationships and health which states that “scientific work has established a theoretical basis and strong empirical evidence for a causal impact of social relationships on health”.  This study states that scientific research consistently shows that there is increased risk of death amongst people with low quality and/or quantity of relationships.

The bottom line? It can be detrimental to our personal wellbeing to have few or no relationships, and it can be equally or potentially even more detrimental to our wellbeing to have destructive relationships.  When we think of what constitutes a destructive relationship, often we think of a physically abusive relationship.  Yes, physically abusive relationships are absolutely destructive and a terrible experience to endure, but a relationship does not have to be physically harmful to be unhealthy.  An unhealthy relationship may be one that’s emotionally abusive, or just plain unsupportive or one-sided.  If we’re feeling drained, taken advantage of, unappreciated, or disrespected this is a good indicator that the relationship is not serving us well.

Absolutely everyone deserves to be in relationships in which they feel appreciated, respected and loved.  The choice is 100% ours.  Either we can choose to be in relationships that nurture and support us and make us feel good about ourselves.  Or we can choose to stay in relationships that make us feel unappreciated, unloved and disrespected.

The difficult part is that often we’re innately attracted to what’s not necessarily good for us, particularly when it comes to romantic encounters. Alison Armstrong, an amazing woman who has dedicated her life to “altering society’s culture by transforming the way women relate to men” suggests that the stronger the chemical attraction between two people, the more toxic the relationship is likely to be.  She says that as a species we’re instinctively attracted to mates that will create good babies and see the continuation of our genes, however, these connections based on chemistry usually do not fulfill us in the ways that we would like a romantic partnership to.

Alison suggests that one of the main reasons for this is that when we feel strong physical chemistry with someone we are so mesmerised we will often do “anything” to nab them.  We are likely to false advertise; to become the person we think they would find most attractive rather than just being ourselves.  As a consequence they fall in love with our false persona, putting us in an awful pickle!  Either we keep up the act for the foreseeable future (exhausting!) or we introduce them to our true selves and risk rejection (very scary and highly likely given we aren’t really what they were looking for!).   Hands up who at some point, has been guilty of false advertising and then wondering why their relationships didn’t work.  Me!!

According to Alison, and based on my more recent relationship experience I wholeheartedly agree, a much better way to attract a nurturing, loving mutually respectful partnership is to ignore our animalistic instinct of chasing chemistry.  In actual fact, Alison’s recommendation is that if we are serious about finding a healthy, fulfilling partnership we should actively avoid pursuing anyone with whom we have chemistry that scores a 7 or more out of 10.  Her advice is to look for the 6’s; those that we find engaging and enchanting, rather than those whose clothes we want to rip off!  This means shifting our focus to connection of spirit rather than connection of chemistry.  When can only connect at a spiritual level when both parties are being totally authentic and true to themselves.  This provides a very solid base for a healthy, nurturing, long-term relationship.

This approach to dating as our true selves takes strength!  So often we feel that we have to behave in a certain way or say certain things so as to not scare our mate off.  This is particularly true of women who have a natural tendency to want to please others.  For example, we may feel that on date one we can’t say we’re interested in getting married and having babies, as that will make him run a mile.  As Alison says, if he’s not interested in getting married and having babies and we are, isn’t it better that he does run a mile after date one?!!  It would certainly save us a lot of time and heartache!

The most important thing is that we start by appreciating, respecting and loving ourselves.  When we learn to do this we put ourselves in a position of strength. We are much more likely to engage with others on a mutually authentic level and we won’t stand for being treated with anything but appreciation, respect and love.  This lays a strong foundation for nurturing relationships, both personally and professionally.

Are there any relationships in your life that are unhealthy or no longer serving you?

This blog post was written by Gabrielle Aitken, inspirer of Appreciation, Respect and Love (a.k.a. Aprelo).

Do you have any friends, family or colleagues that might like reading the Aprelo Blog?  If so, please forward this link to them and encourage them to subscribe.