How to Cultivate Calm with Amber Chalus

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Amber Chalus talks about How to Cultivate Calm.

Amber is the founder and creator of The Liberated Woman. She is a Free-Spirited Explorer, Holistic Health Coach, Yoga Teacher and Podcast Host. Her mission is To empower women to Escape the Ordinary, Discover Their Bliss & Find Freedom Within. She believes that every woman deserves to feel connected to her body, radiate with confidence and live the life of her dreams.

Main Questions Asked:

Now more than ever, women are becoming busier and busier. What are some ways that they can reconnect with their inner sense of calm amidst all the chaos?
We all know the importance of exercise in order to stay balanced and healthy in our bodies, but you like to remind women of the importance of meaningful movement, can you explain more about that for us?
Self-love is super important – especially when it comes to creating lasting change in our lives, but you think there is a missing ingredient in the self-love equation. What is it and what is the first step to getting there?
Many women feel so disconnected from their bodies and their sense of personal power. How can we learn to balance our lives and reconnect with our inner wisdom?
Could you tell us more about the Liberated Woman Movement and the Liberated Woman Podcast and why it has meaning for you?
You have a new e-book that was just released, Cultivating Calm: A modern woman’s guide to finding peace in the middle of a crazy busy world. Tell us where we can learn more about it and how we can get a copy?
How can our listeners find out more about you?

Key Points Made by Amber Chalus:

I like to recommend that women take time every single day to just get still. I’m talking about just sitting with your cup of tea and looking out the window for 10 minutes, or just taking a walk. I want you to step away from all of the chaos so that you can connect with your body. This is how to cultivate calm.
When you get still, you can actually feel what’s happening inside of yourself, so you can hear the voice within your body that’s saying, hey, I could really use a break or, you know what? I don’t feel comfortable saying yes to this, this and this. You start to actually hear what’s going on and you make better decisions when you learn how to cultivate calm.
Getting calm and still and listening to that voice is going to change your life in the long term because you’re not moving in the wrong direction when you step forward, because now you know how to cultivate calm.
I have a lot of compassion for women and the busyness they have in their lives. But I also know that we often look to other women who are really successful, or they seem to have it all together, or they seem to really know how to cultivate calm and we think – how can they do it?
Here’s the thing – a lot of it has to do with priorities.
The priority thing is such an amazing shift of focus, because, yes, what we do, what we do, is important, however, we’ve become so accustomed with what we achieve as being our value, it’s become like our golden badge, our badge of honour, it’s like, if I can be busier, I have more value in this world, and I’m here to challenge that.
I’m here to say – It’s not what you do, it’s who you are, it’s who you’re being in every moment.
I love that we see on-line people promoting self-love, there’s all these women who are promoting love your body, be good with who you are, stop trying to please other people, right, that achieving syndrome, but what I’ve noticed with women that I work with, and even myself, is that you tell someone to love who they are, when they don’t even know who they are, they don’t know how to cultivate calm.
They started out a child, knowing, but as we get older, we’re convinced by other people, our teachers, our parents, our siblings, our friends, the newspaper, magazines, this is who you need to be in order to have value in society, so you change, you morph yourself according to other people’s standards.
The body is such an amazing kind of route towards the self-discovery, but what I’ve noticed, and it’s really interesting, we reflect in our exercise what we’re doing in the outside world, which is I need to achieve more, I need to push harder, I need to look like these fitness models that I see, it’s an exterior example of fitness.
I totally disagree with this way of moving your body because, yes, exercise is important, but what’s more important is how you feel when you’re doing it and it will empower you and strengthen you, even if you’re not lifting a massive amount of weight, and you’re not working out 10 times a week for 2 hours.
For some women, they just need to walk more…to just take a walk and move their body that way and just maybe try a yoga class.
I’m talking about stepping back and just going to a beginner yoga class or going to a fitness class that has dance involved, something that you can have fun doing, and lets you stay connected with how you feel in your body.
I want you to treat it like you did when you were a child – play/ It has to be something that feels good, that you can enjoy. If you like being with other people, going to a class because you like being with other people. It’s about going to the gym and maybe having a trainer that you love spending time with, and working out ‘cuz it makes you feel good.
You should move your body, but do it the way you did when you were little – because you enjoy it.
I really recommend, I know this is going to be really difficult for a lot of people, but I’m going to ask you this – if you don’t make any changes, if you don’t do any of the things that we talk about, and you listen to Dr. Carri, and you don’t do anything, what is your life going to look like a year from now? Is it going to look the same, is it going to look better or is it going to look worse.
Most people are going to say, if I don’t do anything differently, it’s probably going to be worse or it’s going to be the same.
You need to look at your schedule and notice where you’re placing your time and start to carve out time just for yourself. I just want you to return back to you so that you’re actually moving in the right direction – so time allocated just to being instead of achieving things for other people. This is how to cultivate calm.
I have a new e-book called Cultivating Calm: A Modern Woman’s Guide to Finding Peace in the Middle of a Crazy, Busy World.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people aren’t taught the strategies they need to feel calm, to feel relaxed, so I created this e-book so that you literally had a list of things that would bring you back to that center. It’s 21 beautiful rituals and practices that you can use and you can just flip to a page, you can randomly choose a page, you can read through the whole thing, but it’s bringing you back to that place, that centre.
I have my own podcast called The Liberated Woman, which is just an interview show that I do chatting with amazing, incredible women who are living a life of freedom.
To find that, just search The Liberated Woman on iTunes, and you can also access it and everything about me at my website: AmberChalus.com which is also the place where you can access the book and the free mini course that comes with it.
I love Instagram. I’m on Facebook, just search my name, Amber Chalus, and I would love to connect with you. You can email me, you can tweet at me – I would love to hear back from all of you.