Most people do not have a vision of vitality. Myself included. I used to gauge the bare minimum to look and feel at a “standard” I used to keep for myself. When I was younger, I had a naturally lean disposition. I couldn’t eat very much. Later I learned there is a biological reason for this. I am an outlier in some ways that I have a good sense of when I am full before I am full, so I can self-regulate my body to include sweets, which if you know me, I really love dessert.
My Back Story.
You see, I used to be a pastry chef in fine dining. That was the beginning of a lot of bad habits around food. Going to work at 4 in the morning before the sun’s rising meant that I was up too early for my body’s disposition and best work. I rise right before sun’s rising, and no matter what time of year it was in Seattle, 4am is still too early for me to be on my game and perform fabulously. Cooking is a performance requiring some energetic reserves to draw from when problem-solving on the fly. More than “work”, making food is energetic activity in that my energy goes into the food for others to eat. This requires of symphony of activity to create a beautiful outcome of a cake that looks and tastes energetically delicious.
Back to the routine. This routine schedule was tough for me to sustain in a natural living way. I used coffee as a crutch. Wine in the evening was a way to get to bed early. It wasn’t sustainable.
During this time, we had a toddler who still needed a lot. I was a mess and put my ego of doing this job in front of my personal and family’s health. It was a lot of fun and a feather in my cap after private chefing for years after culinary school. However, there was a cost. I was depleted every day from vital energy stores in my body. Over time, it created mood swings from poor sleep habits around this job. The weekends were tough with normalizing for a few days, and then doing the “opossum” schedule of getting up at 3:30AM and walking down to the restaurant. Many mornings I was cross paths with opossums. It felt strange and wrong. I also lived near a graveyard and walked by it everyday to the restaurant. Walking by there in what felt like the night, my mindset became a little dark and began thinking about the graveyard on the way to work. It served as a gentle reminder of the end game of life and I found it depressing.
Image by: https://unsplash.com/@carrier_lost
I was not in a good space.
Then I got pregnant. When I was pregnant and finishing up my time doing desserts, breads, and crackers, I was climbing up tall ladders to gather ingredients, hauling flour into bins, and making small batch desserts like layered ice creams bombes, sorbets, sliceable layer cakes, chocolate shavings, sables, tuiles, sauces, and seasonal desserts. It was a lot to do in the time that I had full reign of the kitchen for about 4 – 5 hours. It was good form to be finished before the prep cooks arrived. There wasn’t much room for all of the overlap of dishes I was prepping which included so many components for plating. I miss that job. It was so fun!
But it took a toll on my body. I literally couldn’t work that way anymore. My “standards” have gone up for what I will tolerate in a physical job. It doesn’t include getting up at 3:30AM.
I had let go of my job by this point. This shirt was given to me. 😆
To be fair, 3:30AM is about the time of day that the monks of Thai Forest Tradition, a Buddhist sect that began in the 1900s, is all about sleeping close to nature and getting only 5 hours or so of sleep. I have often wondered if part of this has to do with being energized by the trees? I need to study more about this. I learned about the Thai Forest Tradition during a few years that I was in a Buddhist meditation group when the kids were little. I had the pleasure of hearing a Thai Forest Tradition monk speak and share his story about the love and interest in the empirical effectiveness of meditation practice, the individual’s development, and the use of skill in their practice and living. This is deeply aligned with the Ayurveda traditions. I have never explored if there is some overlap with Ayurveda, I wonder if there is!
Creating a Vitality Vision
Within this personal exploration above, I share with you the idea to begin looking back on your life. In the past 15 years, did you make some changes in how you are living? Did you adapt to a lifestyle with a vision of vitality as your “standard”? Unlike my old ways of doing just enough for a certain “standard”, I now do not have the forgiving nature of a youthful body to hide behind within my personal “standard”.
You see, I have a standard that I will maintain a weight that is healthy for someone my height, which is 5′ 1″. I keep a weight at around 120 pounds. This weight is my max. I actually feel my best when I am ten pounds lighter than this. However, at this point, I have good blood work and am able to wear all of my clothes that I own with style, so I tend to hover at around 118 – 120 pounds. My dominant dosha is kapha. I have thick hair and it turns wavy when I let it air dry. Kapha dosha folks are made solid and sometimes veer on a higher weight within their height bracket. It is ok, I feel healthy.
I am able to maintain this with walking, yoga, and meditation everyday. I currently do not lift weights, as I do so much work around the house that is weight bearing that I feel that is plenty. I feel sculpted and am focused on relaxing my neck muscles more. For many years, I did a lot of weight training. It did a number on my neck, which is one of the main reasons I began exploring face yoga: to relieve tension in my neck and jaw. I have the tendency to strain my neck and this creates a shorter-looking neck. Think about all of the gymnasts in the world… they most always have short necks. Now think about the ballet dancers of the world, they almost always have long necks. This is all related to their daily activity of dance.
image credit: https://unsplash.com/@gettyimages
The same goes for me! So to counter the physical labor of grocery hauling, dog handling, home cleaning, laundry, and all of the gardening I love doing, I take it easy on the weights and focus on elongating my body with yoga and pilates exercise.
Making a promise to your vitality vision.
What about you, what is your “standard” for health and beauty? Do you think about these kinds of things? If not consciously, I dare say that your unconscious self is always using some internal barometer to bring a state of stability into your body. Take your reading this as an invitation to return to your body for a moment and think about your “standards”. Do they need an update? Are they the standards that will guide you to your own unique vitality? If you think that maybe you need to reconsider your health and beauty right now and create a vitality vision, I want to cheer you on!
A few things to help you make a promise to your vitality vision:
Understand your “standard”. What is your baseline for health. This is a standard for what you expect to sustain in your body’s health and beauty over time. This is your baseline.
Then deduce what it will take to sustain your standard baseline for health and beauty. Break it down in a journal. Take a moment to really consider this and you will be offering a renewed sense greatness to your future self!
After establishing what steps you need to take to sustain your baseline, what do you need to do to expand your experience to be that of vitality. What would that look like to expand your standard? Would you do more structured exercise? Eat less meat? Drink less alcohol or sugary drinks? Would it look like adapting to a clean way of eating?
Upholding your vitality vision.
Journaling is key. If you are a DIY kind of person, use a journal to sort out the feelings you have about why you want to expand your standard to be another way. This is creating a bit of tension in your life to become a new person who is striving toward something. This may all read to be so simple. However, in working with hundreds of yoga students, wellness clients, and face yoginis, I see that the simplest activities for people to do like keeping a journal are the most difficult in a modern world.
It is the simple things that get lost in the names of modernity, tech, and innovation.
"Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity and not a threat." - Steve Jobs
While innovation can be leveraged for change, don’t let the concept of innovation deter you from simply getting a notebook or creating a digital journal in an app or on your notes section of your phone and explore yourself through writing down your vision. When we scribe our thoughts, we have a new perspective from our sense of vision. This vision is a literal act of seeing the words that you write and engaging with them in an internal dialogue. This fosters self-expression and is something that is generally subverted in our culture with human activity being directed culturally for consuming.
Therefore it is my directive to share with you that to create a vision of vitality with journaling is to counter our culture around consumption of food, exercise routines, podcasts about vitality, and to just turn into your own thoughts. Add what you know to your toolbelt of vitality activities and draw out what you want to do within what you already know to be true about your becoming a vision of vitality!
You have a lot of wisdom. Over the past four years of beng a yoga certified yoga teacher, I understand that everyone I teach holds a lifetime of learnings from their own background in one of the wealthiest societies on the planet. Each of you have enough teachings inside of you from past learnings and experiences to guide yourself to vitality. With this in mind, this is my personal recipe for creating a lifestyle that helps me create my vitality vision for myself:
Journal. Figure out your vitality vision for yourself.
Create a system to exceed your standard.
Do the system.
Reflect on the system and tweak it to your unique needs.
Adjust as needed. Re-create to exceed your current future standard.
⤴️ This is the way to create a vitality vision. ⤴️
If you need help getting started with your vitality vision…
I am a lifestyle coach. I also know others who may be better suited to work with you, depending upon your needs. I love coaching people within different variances of their personal vitality vision. This can be as fussy as you want with high-performance coaching for those of you who want to overhaul your health or get a “six-pack abs” standard for yourself. This can also be an easy check in by messenger and chit chats by phone.
If you are just getting started in thinking about a cleanse for the new year, I want to invite you to my cleanse that is starting in early January. This is a unique cleanse that enables you minimize bloating, lose pounds, and even reset your routines to foster vitality ongoing. You also get a free season of a subscription to my Beautify Evolution Substack Subscription that is designed to get you to a state of balance with the five key elements of establishing a wellness lifestyle evolution with positive daily:
Mindset
Movement
Nourishment
Face Yoga
Integration
You are warmly invited to be a part of this cleanse and the Evolution! Reach out to me below to learn more about how to onboard for this 10 day cleanse. It’s so simple and organized, it’s like the clif-notes for resetting your health in 2025! I am doing this myself, so join and do it with me!
Find your new “standard”
Explore a new reset point for your vision of vitality in 2025! Join me for this group cleanse in 2025 that is centered aroud deep nourishment as you drink and eat with a vision of vitality and a new “standard” for yourself.
Angela Rosoff is a lifestyle coach and shares the vision of vitality to her clients through the modalities of Ayurveda, face yoga, and body yoga. Alignment is at the cornerstone of her work of guiding women to a vision of vitality with her Beautify online courses, bespoke 1:1 consultations, and Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Yoga Teaching program. Angela is considered an expert in Face Yoga and is featured in a myriad of media outlets. Angela does consulting work for online app companies.
I am a mom, health and beauty advocate, and love serving women over 40 to help them with Ayurveda lifestyle practices like yoga and face yoga to help them beautify from the inside out!
