Message from Tamara

Just 5 years ago, you would never have believed that I would be giving women the tools to find balance in their lives. In fact, back then I was the National Director of Marketing and Publicity for a French media company, flying back and forth from Paris to LA and travelling all across the U.S., living out of suitcases half the time. A workaholic, single woman living in Los Angeles, I had thrived on keeping every hour of the day filled with activity. The closest that I ever came to achieving any sense of calm  was when I drank a glass or two of wine at night in order to settle down from the constant busyness and caffeine overload from the day. Never in a million years could I have imagined that I would soon be a married woman with a daughter successfully balancing motherhood, marriage and a career.

Today, I call myself a Yogi with a French Twist. Why? First of all, the story of my journey to balance was greatly influenced by my obsession with all things French. This fascination with the culture is what led me to live in Paris for a year and study at the Sorbonne as well as major in French at UCLA. Ultimately, my background ended up leading me to a pretty exotic job at TV5MONDE, the French TV network, for 6 years.  With all this immersion in the French culture and with Frenchies in the flesh, I started to notice a trend among French women and the culture in general. First, I noticed that French women were very balanced. Second, they lived from their heart and were very passionate about life. Third, they were present. I started to realize that there must be something in the culture that was dictating this and I started to observe and analyze.

Their secret was to disengage their attention from objects of distraction and focus on one thing at a time. If a French woman is eating, she is only eating. If she is making love and feeling sensual, she is only in that state! By the power of the mind used in concentration, you can accomplish anything and also guard your boundaries against anyone or anything that will cause failure.

Most American women find themselves running around in circles on a treadmill powered by distraction.  I was no different. As I started to enter into my thirties, I grew more and more restless with my lifestyle of work, work and work. I was scattered and distracted. Then, something happened that changed me forever. In February 2007, my mom was diagnosed with breast and stomach cancer.  This news hit me like a 33 magnum revolver shooting a bullet right in my heart.

Unfortunately, not long after her diagnosis, my mom passed away and it was then that I decided to get really serious about finding balance in my own life since at that point; I was completely dissatisfied with how I’d been operating it. It became painfully clear to me that life is too short to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off from one bad relationship to another, one boring and meaningless social function to another, one career to another, etc. I think you get the picture.  The first thing I did was I signed up for a 200 hour training course to be a yoga instructor. Because I figured if anyone’s the poster child for balance, it’s the yogis, right? That’s where my life started to take a turn as I learned about the chakras (ancient Sanskrit word for energy centers) that rest along our spinal column and correspond to the endocrine glands. What seemed like common sense to me (in terms of recharging CHI) actually had a name that was given to it by the ancient yogis of India. I was fascinated to hear there were actual words for something that I just intuitively felt where areas which we needed to energize in order to feel fulfilled instead of depleted.

The ancient yogis knew that in order to disconnect our senses from giving input to the mind (and consequently triggering disturbing memories, thoughts and feelings) one needs to calm the heart in order to concentrate and meditate without distraction. Because, the heart acts as the telephone operator for the senses. And who as a people focus most on concentrating from a place of passion (heart centered)? The French!  I started to put two and two together and notice that French women had developed their concentration expertly and that the culture itself intuitively promotes chakra balance without knowing it.

Becoming a yogi ended up proving to be very useful in my career at the French TV network as well. I used breathing techniques to calm and center myself in what had used to be stressful situations. This newfound approach to business calls, marketing planning meetings and my overall job responsibilities was not only getting me more recognition and accolades from the big boss in Paris but I was noticing the difference myself.  Really, the main thing that had changed was that I was now living from my heart and was less distracted. This state of being was also instrumental in attracting the love of my life whom I’m happy to say is now my husband.  Who knew that all it took to finding my true love was gaining clarity?

After I met my soon to be husband, a publicist friend of mine started calling me a genie and remarked on how effortlessly I seemed to start attracting things in my life. I attributed it to my newfound peace and felt that my restless energy had shifted. I noticed that I had become extremely sensitive to energy and I could read a person’s energy levels as if reading a book. I felt in my own body and started to see images of what was holding them back in their lives. And I was able to give them specific information on what steps they needed to take in order to get over their blockages.

The first time I ever tried this was at a dinner party at this publicist friend’s house.  The woman across from me was a publicist also and other than that I knew nothing about her. But, she reached out her hand to me to see if I could read her. Instantly, feelings started to flood over from me from her hand as I received information from her subconscious mind that she had had a job interview that morning with a woman who’s name started with an S and I saw that she was going to get this “said” job if she called the woman to say thank you for the interview and if she displayed a more edgy attitude of confidence because that’s what the S lady was looking for. After I was finished relaying the information to this woman, I opened my eyes and dropped her hand. The look on her face was unforgettable. Her jaw was literally dropped and her eyes were as wide as if she’d seen a ghost as she emphatically squealed that everything I just said was 100% right on and that she was going to call this lady right away and do what I said. The next day, she got the job! My friend then started sending me her clients and I started a new side business of releasing their energy blockages and giving tools for energy enhancement.

I met with over 200 clients in less than 1 year. My clients were celebrities, media execs, housewives, business professionals, etc. The commonality I found among everyone was that they were all desperately seeking balance in their lives and didn’t have a clue how to start. Around this time, I was also approached by organizations such as the PATRICK DEMPSEY CENTER FOR CANCER HOPE AND HEALING and BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF MARIN AND SOUTHERN SONOMA COUNTIES as well as TV/Film actress Kristin Kreuk and her partner Kendra Voth to create TIMEOUT RETREATS as fundraisers for their causes.  Incidentally, the retreat I co-produced with Kristin and Kendra (called TIMEOUT FOR TEENS) particularly touched my heart profoundly in that the 30 teen girls who participated said that they left the weekend a new person. How great is it to learn the tools for balance as a teenager?!

Every TIMEOUT RETREAT focused on energizing the 7 chakras. The success of these retreats showed me that there is an immense need for others to learn tools for self-care, balance and relaxation. And this is my motivation for writing this book (incidentally during the writing of this book, I got proposed to, married and gave birth to a daughter!).

The results of my life caused many friends and family members to ask me what it was that I was doing that they weren’t.  In fact, my decision to write this book was determined after I started seeing how quickly my coaching clients’ lives were changing after learning the tools to implement energizing exercises that stimulate the relaxation response.  Clients were finding the love they had always dreamed of. One client got his dream job and found the love of his life within a matter of days after a session.  Since major changes were manifesting for them in a domino effect, they started sending me their best friends, moms, significant others and colleagues. It started to become clear to me that these individual sessions were empowering them in a way that my clients had sought for years in therapy and in self-help books.  So, I decided to package all the tools and homework that I was doling out and place it all in a book format so that anybody anywhere could benefit from the “magic.” I call it magic because that’s what it feels like for me to see with my own eyes how destinies unfold like a beautiful musical piece. All we have to do is make harmonious music by directing our chi and tuning the guitar strings of our bodies which are called chakras. 

Yoga is the science of the mind and the generation of energy in our mind and body.  Western society never taught us about energy in elementary school. Instead we were left to fend for our own and figure out energy balance ourselves. For most of us, that task either doesn’t get accomplished until faced with a midlife crisis or if we experience a traumatic event like the death of a loved one. Some of us never even learn the art of balance at all in our lifetime.

Yoga is also all about the movement of energy and the removal of fear.  On a physical level, fear manifests as “fight or flight” response in the body. On a mental level, it is known as worry. And on an emotional level, the result is hatred or anger.  This book will teach you that balance in life begins with having balanced energy within yourself first. And that happiness and peace are ultimately what we all strive for in the end and the reason behind our need to juggle so much on our plates at one time.  My goal is to show you the path to a life full of ease and love, where truly profound happiness becomes your brass ring in this culture plagued with the question, “Can we have it all”?

NOTE:The 7 DAYS TO BALANCE Guide (located in chapter 4 of the eBook) can be considered the sandwich meat of this book. The preceding chapters leading up to that section are meant to serve as the bread that supports the meat and holds everything together. These chapters are crucial since they will give you a broader understanding of what you are attempting to accomplish with the 7 DAYS TO BALANCE Guide so please don’t skip ahead to the Guide thinking you don’t need to read the other parts. The guide is designed to get you to focus on each of the 7 energy vortexes (chakras) in your body and get you to intuitively make the adjustments you need to make in order to de clutter your body, mind and spirit. Clearing these fear blockages will result in you gaining a balanced energy system that will help you to “concentrate” your way to balance and to your dreams. What I am proposing to do with this book is offer you instant techniques to clear out the clutter (the more you have the more stagnant energy it attracts), switch your energy, to break through dark, negative and heavy energy and experience the lighter energies of joy. You can discover and guide your own way by sensing the energy in your body and mind while discriminating what feels good and brings you into balance. Through this experiential book, you will effortlessly absorb the exact steps to access the awareness of being “present” and balanced in just 7 days.

 At the atomic level, the human body is composed of different levels of vibrating energy, 7 to be exact.

• First Chakra (Root) Red: Linked to survival and anchors ourselves in the present moment

• Second Chakra (Sacral) Orange: Governs our well being, sense of deserving a good life, promotes our ability to enjoy life in physical ways

• Third Chakra (Solar Plexus) Yellow: Related to self-esteem, confidence and boundaries

• Fourth Chakra (Heart) Green: Related to our ability to love others and accept love in our lives

• Fifth Chakra (Throat) Blue: Directs energy toward creativity, self-expression, speaking our truth and controls our ability to communicate effectively

• Sixth Chakra (Third-eye) Indigo: Related to intuition and the seeking of meaning and truth

• Seventh Chakra (Crown) Purple: Allows us to connect with the source of spirituality and is the center of bliss

In the east, the energy running through the body is called prana by the yogis. You may have heard of it being called chi if you have ever had a session with an acupuncturist or Mana if you ever studied the Hawaiian concept of “energy flow”.  When prana flows freely, we are healthy and balanced. When it becomes blocked due to stress or injury, the result is a deficiency in some areas or an excess in others. Stress causes the energy in the body to stagnate. For purposes of this book, when I talk of energy, I will be calling it chi.  In the traditional Chinese culture, qi (chi) is an active principle forming part of every living thing.

 My deepest wish from the bottom of my heart is that you keep in mind that we cannot look for and find peace or happiness in the externals. Nothing is magically going to “happen” to us. Rather, I hope that you walk away with the tools you need to create the state of joy/calm within you. Once you do, the externals will fall into place! Trust me! I am living proof that this is true. I hope that you benefit from this information as much as I did (and still do) and apply it as soon as you can so that you may walk away empowered with the feelings of balance, healing, love and calm. Ultimately, these are the true markers of “having it all!”

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