With more than a billion active Facebook users, chances are you are one of them. Facebook makes it easy and fun to converse with old friends, share pictures and see what your extended family is up to. Have you ever taken the time to check out your own page? There’s an icon at the top of your home page with your name on it, that you can click on to see everything you’ve ever posted.

I highly recommend doing this, as it can be quite revealing. Look at it as though you were looking through a stranger’s eyes. What does your page say about you? Is there a common theme to your posts? Overall, is it positive or negative? Does it show your best traits? Do you feel good about what you’re putting out to the world?

Your outer world (the things around you, including Facebook) is a reflection of your inner world (your deep beliefs) and your inner world is a reflection of your outer world. Chances are, the healthier, more positive your Facebook page is, the healthier and more positive you will be. If you change one, the other will change as well.

If you don’t like the answers to the questions above, I recommend deleting the posts that don’t suit you, and start posting things that make you feel good about what you’re putting out to the world. If you’re already proud of what your page looks like, good for you!

When you read friend’s posts that you disagree with, there are positive options for how to handle it. You can ignore them, remembering that it’s not important to agree with everything everyone says. You can attempt to kindly and politely enlighten the situation, or, if the “friend” continually writes offensive posts, you can block that person so you don’t see them. One of the beauties of Facebook is that you can easily control who your friends are, and what you see.

Each time you go to post something, think of someone you highly respect: Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey, Mohandas Gandhi, John Wooden, your grandmother, etc., and ask yourself if they would approve. If the answer is no, consider either skipping a comment, or finding a kind way to rephrase your idea.

Almost everything can be phrased kindly. Here’s an example of changing a negative statement to positive. One day, years ago, I tried on a skirt. Before I thought it through, I asked my husband that horrible question that every man fears: “Does this skirt make me look fat?” As I heard these words exit my mouth, I felt sorry for my husband. I knew the truth, and there was no good response. Instead of blurting out the harsh truth in a hurtful way, he came up with a brilliant answer. “Well,” he said, “you are much thinner than that skirt makes you look.” I was so impressed with his comment, I wondered if we could patent the phrase and sell it to men all over the world. I figured we could make millions! Dash it all! We can’t, so I share it with you. Feel free to share it on your Facebook page. If people start using that phrase, it may improve relationships all over the world! That’s something healthy, worth posting!

If you’re like me, you’ve spent the last few weeks excessively indulging in the wrong kinds of food and drink.  It’s fun while it lasts, but the holidays are over and  it’s time to get back to the business of taking care of ourselves.  After weeks of centering our lives around food and parties, it’s not easy!  At least not for me.

So how do we shed the extra pounds that so easily accumulated through the holidays?  Well, I know the secret for how to lose weight.  I’ve shared this secret with the students in my weight loss classes, my exercise and yoga classes and personal training students.  The secret is..... drum roll, please... 

The secret is, there is no secret!  It all comes down to diet and exercise.  I’m sorry if this disappoints you.  When you expend more calories than you eat, you lose weight, and when you eat more calories than you expend, you gain weight.  

Of course we all have a different constitution, so diet and exercise affect each of us differently.  Every person has a different metabolic rate, gut size, and amount of bacteria in the gut.  Bacteria in the gut helps break down foods, using calories to do so.  Some bacteria are so efficient, that they don’t require much energy to do their job.  In other words, some people use more calories than others, simply digesting food.

Regardless of how your metabolism and digestion compare to someone else, if you want to lose weight, expend more calories than you take in.  You can do this by decreasing your calorie intake, increasing your exercise, or both.  

My generic suggestion for losing weight is to exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes/day, and eat more organic vegetables than you do currently.  Don’t worry about putting small amounts of condiments on them so they taste better.  It increases the chance of you eating them.  Keep in mind that raw veggies take more calories to digest than cooked ones, but as long as you’re eating them, you’re good.

The diet I’m going with for the next few days is allowing myself to eat all the vegetables and quinoa I want, some fruit to curb my sweet tooth, and a couple of hard boiled eggs to satiate me.  Notice I didn’t discuss the things I won’t be eating.  As soon as I think about what I can’t have, I crave it.  Also notice that I’m allowing myself to eat as much as I want.  I don’t like feeling hungry.  It makes me uncomfortable and lethargic, it makes it difficult for me to think straight, and I wind up overeating.  Of course I’ll also get back to my regular exercise routine.

If you choose to be on a special diet, focus on nutrition and think only about what you can eat.  If you eat something that wasn’t on your diet, forgive yourself and simply start again.  Remember, the goal of weight loss is to be healthy, so you look and feel your best.

One of the beauties of yoga is that it resembles life. Moving through the poses teaches us how to transition through life’s various situations, calmly and gracefully.

Balancing poses, for example, are analogous to leading a balanced life, which keeps us from becoming over-worked, stressed out, uninformed, lonely, etc. It also gives us a feeling of fulfillment — physically, mentally and spiritually.

Balancing the body on one foot, the head, or hands, provides an opportunity to become highly aware of the muscle movements that naturally occur in order to remain stable. The muscles constantly adjust to keep the body from falling. Noticing this can create an understanding that a balanced life is not something you achieve and then you’re done. Maintaining a balanced life requires constant adjustments and prioritizing of the things you do, the people you see, and places you go.

Learning this at a deep, physical level can help you understand that adjustments are a normal part of life. It’s OK to change what and how we deal with things that come up. It’s OK to put rest as highest priority when it’s needed. It’s OK to put a friendly phone call at the top of your to do list. It’s OK to work hard.

Sometimes, when working hard in a pose, you fall. Sometimes it’s easy to catch yourself, other times we make a spectacle of ourselves by waving our arms around as we struggle to stay upright, and sometimes there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves, and we fall. Isn’t this something we can all relate to in life?

When someone falls in my class, I praise them. It’s not sarcastic. I truly feel happy for them for working hard, pushing to improve, giving it their all. They’re doing their best, which is wonderful! I know they’ll get up and going again. They always do.

In some yoga poses our bodies feel like we’re twisted like a pretzel. Isn’t it the same with life? Sometimes life puts us into unexpected situations that feel strange, or uncomfortable, as if our lives have somehow become twisted, backward or upside down.

Yoga teaches us to breathe through these challenging times, as it helps us find comfort in the discomfort, and brings us back to homeostasis. We practice breath work on the mat, so that when we’re off the mat, we can more easily remember, and come back to it.

Yoga always ends with a period of rest, called savasana. This brings the balance of relaxation to the work. Even thousands of years ago, when yoga was developed, the yoga masters understood the importance of balance.

We hear so much about cutting-edge science and technology, that learning the lessons of the ancient wise ones is one of the best things we can do for ourselves, to balance out our knowledge. It’s another step toward creating a more balanced life.