Spring is in the air

Mo: I want to celebrate the fact that spring is in the air! I have no idea exactly how I know, but there is that particular smell to the evening air and a touch of reddish pink over the evening clouds and the sun sort of glows its last rays of the day in a special way and it makes me feel vibrant, energetic and completely alive.
How I look forward to this feeling every year and every dark, moody winter!

When I left for Stockholm last Thursday (at 6am in the morning!), there was that peculiar bluish, morning light that made me think of summer nights spent clubbing and arriving outside the club at 4-5am in the morning....with the sea gulls going crazy and the city still asleep. I cannot say that I miss clubbing (and I particularly don´t miss the hang overs that normally followed), but I do miss the feeling of walking the streets one of those warm, hazy, un-Christly early mornings, being one of very few people awake in a deserted, quiet city.

Maybe I´ll do it again this summer. Preferably in Barcelona, London or Florens... I´ll keep you posted.

Plastic Fantastic?

One of my newly found trendy cloth bags that you will see me around town with.

Mo: You could be forgiven to think it´s the arrival of the newly born star, Daisy, that has got me to think in these terms, but ask the people around me and they will tell you it started a while back.
I have begun a personal vocation which consists of saying No To Plastic Bags. And it´s amazing what an amount of bags that you get offered daily!

"Every year, more than 500 billion plastic bags are distributed, and less than 3% of those bags are recycled. They are typically made of polyethylene and can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade in landfills that emit harmful greenhouse gases. Reducing your contribution to plastic-bag pollution is as simple as using a cloth bag (or one made of biodegradable plant-based materials) instead of wasting plastic ones. For your next trip to the grocery store, BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag)."

Also consider:

• As polyethylene breaks down, toxic substances leach into the soil and enter the food chain
• Approximately 1 billion seabirds and mammals die per year by ingesting plastic bags
• Plastic bags are often mistaken as food by marine mammals. 100,000 marine mammals die yearly by eating plastic bags.
• These animals suffer a painful death, the plastic wraps around their intestines or they choke to death

Every little thing and act can help.
What footprint would You like to leave on this planet?

WELCOME DAISY!

"Sötnos" - born 7.07am, 29 March, 2008, at Varberg´s Maternity Ward.
3.4kg and 51cm tall... Welcome Daisy! Ps. Check out the HAIR! Phenomenal.

Perfect feet and hairy legs! You go, girl!

Daisy getting to know Auntie Mo... Lovely.

Full body blow out

Mo: No baby yet. For sis that is. She has been back and forth to the hospital twice now. Last time I spoke to her, she was going back to Varberg´s maternity ward to stay until the baby is delivered, then she changed her mind when the midwife told her that she can go days with 10 minutes between labour pains, without actually going into labour...so now she´s back at home - waiting and hoping that things will move on, quite soon...(minus the pizza).

Let´s see how I get along with this thread...last time I tried to blog whilst on X2000, I almost threw up all over my neighbour because of motion sickness...

Pictured above are the 20 strong people who joined the kettlebell course. A fun group with people from all over Sweden. It was lovely to meet Evelina and Karin again, who both joined the Functional Tour in Luleå and Umeå, respectively. Look at the 3rd woman from the left, wearing a pink top. Louise is 6 months pregnant and she kicked our asses in the strength-endurance competition we did before lunch: Highest number of swing-rack-overhead press repetitions with highest weight for 90 seconds. She did over 25 reps with 12kg x 2KBs.

My arms were shaking after my 21 reps with the same weight. I´m glad I lost against Christer Södergren who went on to win the whole competition by blowing the old record away. (29 reps with 32kg x 2KBs, was it?)

Thanks Walter, for a great course! Evelina, thank you for an inspirational partnership throughout the 2 days. Good luck with the spinning, Marco, I hope you get to bring in KBs to you PT-circle at SATS Stadion. Andreas, go home and add more stretching and cardio to your weekly workout schedule! :) Good luck to Ian and Fredrik, who are joining super-macho Pavel (I´d prefer to call him Pavlov) in his Kettlebell course in Copenhagen in May... Let me know how you guys got on!

You want more Kettlebell-training in your life? Check out www.eleikoeducation.se

(...and by the way, I didn´t even need my slippers! ;) )

Go, sis, Go!

Mo: Forget that I´m in Stockholm doing a 2 day kettlebell certification. Forget that I finally got to meet the absolutely lovely and normal guy who is going to marry our future queen. Forget that I´m lodged in an airport hotel, far, far away from any civilization with aeroplanes thundering back and forth, just a few hundred meters above the hotel roof....

SISTER IS FINALLY HAVING THE BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She and M left for Varberg around lunchtime and haven´t been heard from since! Well, actually, can you believe who just called??? Yes, it was sis. It is still too long between any labour pains, so she is going home to eat pizza and wait! My sister is the coolest!

Within maximum 3 days I will be an auntie - Welcome Daisy (or Milo)!

Just a normal working week

Yes folks, it´s actually a giant piercing growing out of my hands....

Mo: I´m off to Stockholm tomorrow. At 6am - the red eye. I´m there for 2 days to take part in Eleiko´s kettlebell course at Balance, since I might be starting KB-courses for group training instructors in the autumn. You have to go and see the club next time you´re in the big city, if you have a chance. It´s beautiful. Sort of empty, but beautiful.

From what I remember their air conditioning is fierce, so I´ve brought my fleece (and I would have taken my sheep skin slippers as well, if it wasn´t for the fact that we´re actually doing some physical work....and I´m not too sure if I would get away with slippers on a training course...even if the place is freezing...).

I can already feel the muscle soreness my body will go through on Saturday/Sunday, when I´m teaching a 2 day InCycle-certification course + presenting a class at the Sportlife Inspiration Day....

Sometimes I just wish I was normal...

Checkmate

Mo: We are small and insignificant in the big scheme of things. When we think we know, when we think we have control, when our picture of the world and how it works is, just sort of arranged in the right place, nature hits back and puts us in our place.

How much snow can fall less than 1 week before April? Obviously more snow than we´ve seen this year in this part of the world. And suddenly we are being pieces on a chess board. And all we can talk about is...the weather. It´s quite wonderful. It brings us to now. It makes us slow down. It forces us to do things just a little bit different from yesterday. Wonderful. Remember, our attitude towards unpredictable things is just that - attitude -...and values, our label on things. Who can change it? Who can make a situation into a positive instead of a negative? You know the answer to that question. The key holder and the question maker is the same person.

Movie of the week

Mo: Daniel Day-Lewis did one of the best acceptance speeches at this year´s Oscars when he won Best Actor for his role as Daniel Plainview in "There will be blood"... Day-Lewis seems to possess an intelligent, beautiful, artistic mind with a vocabulary that sounds like poetic rhyming.

"There will be blood" is a story about family, greed, religion and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business.

The soundtrack is one of the most fascinating, disturbing pieces of work I´ve ever come across in a movie. It gives you creepy chills throughout the film and there is never a single doubt that the end will be anything but dark, moody and raw...

Daniel Day-Lewis does a tremendous job. He really is a phenomenal actor... and the rest of the acting is also first class. (Not one single lead role for a woman. I guess we were too busy having kids and tending the house in the early 20th century...) Expectations were sky high though and as a whole the movie gets a 3.5 out of 5. I prefer the violent and equally dark "No country for old men", which is just a tad less depressing...

Happy holidays

Mo: Does more salt liquorice help when you have over eaten? I´m soooo full...
Happy Easter and happy holidays! (I will try not to be to bitter and twisted as Mango leaves for the Maldives today and Febs is going to Brazil on Monday...)
By the way, we won´t be buying that house in the countryside, it was mouldy, damp and horrendously neglected. It must mean that I can be immature for a little while longer?... :)

Jo - on the cover on this month´s "Fitness Magazine"!

Mo: She is sweet as candy, with a spiritual soul and a heart full of Gold. She is a sexy M.F, determined like few, strong as an ox with back bends to die for. She is smart, she is beautiful and she is terrible at falling asleep at a descent hour when you share her room. She is intelligent, she is sensitive and she is secretive (so secretive that even I, Mo, didn´t know about this cover!!!). She is strong, she is cute and she can shake some seriously tight booty.

She is LOVELY, STUNNING and our JO to the MO:JO!

Love you, Jojo!

My Easter Boys

Jo: This man is amazing, he makes me feel warm, he makes me smile when I thought I had no smile inside of me!

Actually this MAN is really two men, or more now that I think of it!

Yesterday one of them turned my tears into sweat, today the other one turned them into a big childish laughter and for the first time I look forward to easter!

Thank you M n N

"Förvårkvällen börjar puffa upp sina kuddar. Jag har världens största påskägg och ska titta på Guillermo Del Toros "Devils backbone". Mitt påskägg är så stort att muslimer vallfärdar hit för att gå runt det och tillbe det. Mitt påskägg är så stort att Svensson sms:röstar på mitt påskägg. Mitt påskägg är så stort att Reinfeldt måste avstå från tre livvakter så att mitt påskägg kan känna sig tryggt. Jag har flera sidor med skämt om hur stort påskägg jag har men pizzan kallnar vänner."

True balance

Mo: How do you find true balance in your life? What is the secret of knowing how much is too much and how little is too little?

I read an article in GP this morning about the theory that chaos is actually good for you. The scientist in the article was critical towards mindfulness and its implications and she meant that chaos is creative, chaos is necessary and chaos is life...(please pardon my free interpretation of this scientist´s studies...)...she then went on to say that we are simplifying matters in the debate about burn out and people´s ways of handling stress if we think that taking it easy and focusing are the only solutions. (Actually exactly what I would accuse her of doing, dividing the issue into strictly black or white.)

What about a combination of the two? Shouldn´t life contain both up and down, fast and slow, chaos and order, focus and wide eyed-perspectives to be full?

In my humble opinion you need to figure out what kind of personality you are, so that you will know what you need more of in your life. Build up what you lack and learn to restrain what you already have in abundance.

Know where you are to know where you are going.

Taijitu, the traditional symbol representing the forces of yin (dark, passive, feminine, negative, downward-seeking, consuming and corresponds to the night) and yang (light, active, masculine, positive, upward-seeking, producing and corresponds to the daytime).

Call a doctor!....

Mo: I´m looking at houses. In the country side. Far, far away from the closest coffee shop and even further away from a decent shoe shop... 41km away from my favorite Espresso House to be exact. I must be sick. Do I have a temperature? A rash? Did I get punched in the head? Did I eat contaminated meat? Have I suddenly become a vegan?

Somebody call a doctor! (actually, just let me go and get my insurance card first...)
HELP!

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Mo: I wouldn´t call myself vain. I hardly have the energy to put make up on more than 2-3days a week. Why should I? I spend most of my working hours in front of a computer or sweating my face off anyway...

Until the age of 30 I hardly had any "beauty routine" to talk about... Then by chance, I decided I needed to do something about my eye brows. I was (sort of ) plucking them myself, but I was smart enough to understand that I wasn´t doing a great job. So what to do? I walked into the first beauty salon that caught my eye and asked if someone was free to "do" my eyebrows.

And that´s how I met A.

Since then I´ve learned about my skin type, about hair removal, sun protection, waxing, plucking and all sorts of things that I had only read about before, but never felt inclined to try out. (I was 30 the first time I had my legs waxed. No, and I didn´t shave them until then either. . .and I still don´t... I´m Oriental for God´s sakes, get over it.)

A is my beauty guru. She is awesome, she makes me feel beautiful, sexy, womanly and adorable - in my own skin. I never put any make up on for days after I´ve been to A´s since my skin is absolutely glowing.

A uses "threading" to get rid of the small hairs in my face. (I didn´t even know I had any small hairs in my face before I went to A´s.) A is from Iran. In Iran the women knows one or two things about hair and hair removal. It took about 3 visits and then A very kindly told me: " You know, you got a lot of small hairs in your face...it would make a huge difference if we got rid of those hairs...." Me: "...ohh, do I?.....hmmmm...ok, what do you suggest?" A: "Well, most Swedish women choose waxing...." Me: "You mean there´s another way of doing it?" A: "Yes, but it hurts. A lot. And most Swedes find it too painful....but it´s very, very effective...." (Like a red flag in front of a bull...) Me: "Bring it on!"

Threading is done with a... thread. The thread is rolled over the skin of the face, so that your tiny little facial hairs can roll themselves around the thread and get pulled out, roots and all.
It H.U.R.T.S LIKE HELL!!! Actually, the first few times I had it done, my nails dug so deep into my palms, I almost started to bleed. There were tears in the corners of my eyes. But I never let out as much as a wimper. (Over my dead body....) And I had to admit-it really, really worked! My face was more smooth than a baby´s bottom and I looked about 10yrs younger! Voilá! (Or as the Swedish saying goes: "Om man vill vara fin får man lida pin!" If you want to be beautiful then you have to suffer...)

This was the start of a long and fruitful relationship and I have been a regular costumer with A since then and I have nooo idea what I would do if she decided to leave town. Her eye brow shaping works better than a face lift+botox put together (not that I have tried such terrifying stuff) and her facials bring your skin back in time - to your late teens (sans pimples!). I have shared the secret of beauty goddess A with some of my friends and as soon as she opens up her new beauty palace in April (in the center of Gothenburg) I will let you all know!

Until then, I´ll share the three essentials of my beauty routine: For everyday use: Aromessence Neroli oil+Vitaroma and after traveling every weekend: Hydra Floral Facial Mask - youthful skin here I come!

It´s a tough job, but someone´s got to do it...

Mo: After a not so energetic Friday, tired after my Norwegian adventure, we had sister and sister´s husband around for dinner. Always nice, always great company. She is so big now, less than 1 week before the arrival date of "Daisy". (That´s the baby´s "work-name", or as my sister puts it: "After feeling like shit for 9 months, having whooping cough, constant nausea, water retention from hell and still throwing up when it´s just over one week to go, I´ll put the baby back inside if it´s not a girl!" - you can sort of tell she wants a baby girl...whereas husband would love a boy... :) - great stuff!)

It´s a daunting experience for us baby-less couples to follow the initiated. Fascinating and daunting. To be honest, I´m quite pleased that my li´l sis´is doing hers first. That way I might be used to holding a new born, changing diapers and just sort of...knowing what to do-when my time comes! As it is right now, I haven´t got a clue! I´ve never been interested in babies, pregnancy, motherhood, etc. It wasn´t really until about 1yr ago that I even got used to the idea that I might be a mother one day. Which really amuses my closest friends since they know my previous standpoint on the issue.

Anyway, back to the original idea of this thread. After a great dinner of home made elk-hamburgers (my P makes some ass-kickin´ burgers!), we had chocolate tasting on the menu. For the record: sis and sis´s husband owns a chocolate shop. P adores chocolate and I-I have sort of learned to appreciate chocolate, but I´m far from being a chocolate fan... (I know some of you are probably ready to strangle me now...)

I tipped my sister off about an Italian chocolate brand, Streglio, in December, and the Italians had finally got their act together and sent some samples over. So we did chocolate tasting and we gave grades. 1-5 points.... And the Italian chocolate was loved - it got 4-5 points all over - which is impressive. GREAT chocolate! Even I thought so.

A regular Friday night at Mo´s...

Keep your eyes open - Streglio will be available in an ICA near you - or in Belgiska Pralinboden - shortly.

Morgon Stund har Guld i Mund

Jo: On the contrary to Mo, I miss India! I miss the mornings after my 10-Day Vipassana, when I walked the 2ks up the mountain for my morning meditation. Sat quiet, meditating in a room for 1hour, relaxing afterwards with a chai and brown tibetan bread with the other meditatiors before I walked down meeting the sun rising over the amazing Himalayas with Alanis Morisette in my Ipod! Those mornings were magical!
I have signed up for my second Vipassana, this time in Sweden www.dhamma.org



Now, lets make this morning something to remember!
OM SHANTI

Norway...again!

Mo: Hi honeys, just a quick good morning to tell you I´m off to Norway - again! This time to Treningskompaniet i Brummundal... A town name that will make most Swedes (born in the 70s) smile and think of a particular Norwegian children´s program about the Dahl brothers...

Will be teaching 2 spinning classes back to back tonight and fly home tomorrow morning.
Should be fun!

Sound of Music (in Åre)

Jo: Good Morning Sweden!!!

In May last year I worked at a fitness convention named WORKOUT ÅRE, in yeah you got it ÅRE.

Sitting on the airplane to Östersund I could not belive my eyes as I was struck by the beauty of our country. It was 1030pm, the sun was setting like a red juicy orange over the green treetops.
This is something you do not want to miss. Åre might be a town you visit wintertime for skiing but my GOD it is beautiful in May! Clear water, fresh air, greener hills then Sound of Music and you get to combine that with worldclass fitness classes, mornig runs, midnight spinning, evening disco dancing and wake me up yoga!

WORKOUT ÅRE is on again 24-25 May
Will you meest me there?!

And now something to make you SMILE

FIX YOU

If one apple a day keeps the amateur away...

Mo: I had a meeting with an insurance company this morning after my yoga class. I´m always suspicious towards insurance salesmen since it´s a bizarre business: cashing in on people´s fears and worries...

This meeting was long overdue, though...I´ve had a couple of people in my closest circle of friends and family that has been forced to seek medical help during the last year. The "help" that they have received has been scandalous, horrendous and absolutely disgraceful!

How some people attain their medical degree is a complete mystery!

How can they live with themselves, when after 3 minutes of talking (doing very bad at listening, indeed), they decide what is wrong with the patient, without even doing a proper examination?!

Do medical students spend a whole term perfecting the "stretching- out- for - the - prescription - pad"- gesture? At least that´s what I believe.

My sister saw 6 different doctors during the first 16 weeks of her pregnancy because of throwing up all over the place from coughing (+ the fact that she was pregnant of course, but the cough was out of this world). She went without sleeping for more than 3 months and had 6 different diagnoses. She was told she had astma, no astma, a virus, not a virus, an infection, no infection to end up being diagnosed with whooping cough - a children´s disease which she hadn´t been vaccinated against...but in the end not even that was a clear diagnose since her body eventually managed to heal itself.

So the point of the meeting with the insurance company: I want to find a good medical health care insurance. And I think I did. I will shop around a little bit more, but for less than 200SEK/month, I will have private health care at my finger tips. Luckily enough, I´m VERY rarely sick or ill, but if and when it happens, next time I will not have to spend anymore time with the nut cases "allmänläkare", anymore. Send me to a specialist, please-and within a week.

Movie of the week

Mo: Saw "Rendition" tonight. Great movie. I´ve loved Jake Gyllenhaal since "Donnie Darko" - God, I must admit I loved that quirky movie...and hello, Omar Metwally! We like :)
Meryl Streep makes a kick ass bitch and it was nice to see Reese Witherspoon doing something else but annoyingly cute (extra + for the gorgeous black Mulberry bag... )

Functional training part 2

Mo: On the train, leaving Stockholm for Gothenburg. Tour date number 4 of 6 is accomplished. :)

Had a great day at FriskisoSvettis Karolinska, with a very positive, fun group of instructors of all ages. Cannot believe that we only have 2 dates left - and our last two days will take place just a few days after Mango comes back from the... Maldives. Maybe I will bite the bullet and do my second visit to a spray tanning salon after all... Although I just have to think back to that oily feeling that didn´t leave my skin for a week...or that patchy sort of dirty skin look that I sported after about 3h at a spinning convention in Italy, to realize I will have to be the pale one in April.

Top 3 things with the weekend:

1. Spending another working weekend with buddy and extremely professional Mango

2. Having participants that loved tough, simple training

3. Being able to deal with the situation when, on Saturday morning, we realize that there are no kettle bells and by 13.30 having 29 kbs in "da house".

Jez, have to stop writing now, before I throw up all over the seat. X2000 makes me so incredibly motion-sick!!!

Healthy eating and silicone

Relaxing in our hotel room in Oslo

Mo: I SO wanted to give you two photographs with this thread (...and here they are a couple of days later...:)) One of Mango and me lying on our hotel bed, looking all hot and sexy and one of Mango´s foot bathing in silicone-... (No! Not that type of silicone...He´s wearing yogi toes... and yogi toes cannot be described - they have to be seen!...)...just slightly less sexy....

...see what I mean????...
the man, the foot, the legend...

We arrived in Oslo after about 4hrs on the train. Mango, my hero, had brought almonds, gojji beeries, walnuts and avacados for us. I seem to be surrounded by men who loves to feed me - I must be blessed. :)

Mango has (since our Luleå/Umeå weekend) requested suggestions on "What-healthy-eatable-things-to-bring-when-you-are-on-the-road"-list, so here goes:

Healthy eating on the road, according to Mango:

1. Avacados

2. Nuts

3. Freshly squeezed juice

4. Gojji beeries

5. ...and for worst case senarios, such as missed/delayed flights, miserable check-in staff, cancelled trains and bad weather: chocolate!

Tomorrow we´ll bring our Functional tour to Domus Atletica, here in Oslo and it´s sold out - ab fab!

Worst case senario

Mo: ...But then, if I´m still a bit down, I can always think "it could be worse, I could be living in INDIA!" Yieeks! Bloody nightmare! The country where the men/boys are oogling women as if we´re Martians and where they let rooms in which the previous tenant obviously was murdered?....

Never, ever tell me I´m spoilt and/or high maintenance...

Top 3 reasons to go to India for 1 month:

1. The sun
2. The Osho Ashram
3. To go home

Upside down you turn me...

Mo: Sometimes you have no idea what life will throw at you. In those moments, what grounds you? what holds you down? what soothes you? what keeps you sane? When the world is spinning (...& not in a good way...) and you are cut up by sorrow, grief, sadness, anger, despair, loneliness, where do you turn?
It´s in these moments that your partner, friends and family will gather around you and provide shelter, love and compassion. It´s in these moments that you will feel, rather than know that somehow it will be alright. One day it will be alright and you will feel good again. It might not be today or tomorrow, but one day. Not today. Today there´s only questions.

F..ck the Pain Away no 2

Good afternoon!

Jo: I am well aware of that my latest posts at this blog have perhaps made some of u puke with disgust, (Buddha and flower pictures, correct pepping quotes about seizing the day, catching the moment, yeah yeah blah blah!). But in my defense, or NO, I do not need to defend any of my cheesy blog posts!

So here's another one!

Suck it in friends!

etadapi gamishyati

Translates into english as, "this too shall pass," one of the only universal truths that exist in life.
Everything is fleeting, ephemeral, and changes from moment to moment... this is a reminder for me to practice non-attachment with everything and everyone...

PRECIOUS

This moment
This day
Is very precious

Death, love, sleep and meditation all have something in common
- You have to dissolve!

Thats why people are afraid of all of them.
If you are afraid of death you will be afraid of sleep, love and meditation.
That means you're missing out on a lot of life!

Eternity

0 + 0 = 8

8 = Eternity


This is one of my favorite pieces of art! I love it and think it is brilliant!
With this palindrome NOTHING becomes INFINITE!
(Click on 0+0=8 to read about the artist and click on Eternity to hear another amazing artist!)

" Nothing really matters"
- Queen

"Among the great things which are found among us the existence of Nothing is the greatest"
- Leonardo Da Vinci

The problems facing anyone thinking about Nothing are not unlike those that face anyone contemplating Infinity. They are problems because we stand firmly and finitely between the two extremes marked by zero and infinity.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangel of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
-Rumi

Dedicated to Berndt

Body beautiful Part 2

Mo: When I was 17, I started the day on the scales. Like a ritual: get out of bed, stumble into the laundry room where the scales was kept and stare at the numbers. The first line in my diary contained my weight in kilos, hektos and grams - every day for about 3 years... If I had lost a couple hg´s it was a good day. If I, on the other hand had put anything on from the previous day it was a miserable, sad day. It would affect my mood, my thoughts, my whole life during that period. I would think about it breakfast, lunch and dinner.

It would take up an awful amount of time and worry and it would consume sooo much energy.

I went through a vegetarian phase (1yr), excluding cheese period (6months), not eating anything sweet (6months-1 yr), by the age of 18 I had tried the "air hostess"-diet, the "egg and spinach"-diet (oouuch), Viktväktarna, the "soup"-diet and every other popular diet around that time. Some days I tried to get by on an apple and some tea.

The only thing that saved me from sinking into a full blown eating disorder was my love for movement, sports and life. And somewhere deep inside - a deep rooted love for my body, despite the torture I put it through. Although I desperately wanted to loose about 6-10kg, I lacked that more serious self hate that a lot of anorexia victims experience.

Around the age of 20 it all started to change. Why? I´m not really sure why. Getting out of college certainly helped. I hated that time of insecurity and daily comparison with people I didn´t even want to compare myself to. And suddenly, when I slowly grew to accept myself fully and wholly, I came to love every piece of my body - and lost almost 10kg in 1-2 years - without even trying.

If it is something I try to do regularly since then on a daily basis, it´s to celebrate my body and all that it can do. It carries me through life: runs, skips, lunges, hops, stretches, pushes and takes on every challenge I give it-and very rarely complains. I devote it. I adore it. And I´ve decided I will keep on doing so until the day it is time to move on from this world...

Stand in front of a mirror. Naked. Watch your body and I mean:really take a good look at it. From top to toe. Every single inch. With love. With a kind smile (not a crooked, sarcastic one). Thank it. (Then bow for your neighbors if you have forgotten to close the curtains...) Can you do that?
If not, how can you expect other people to do so?

Love is in the air..dududu dududu

Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull of what you really love.

- RUMI

Halmstad my love!

Working on a Sunday might not be on the top of everyone’s wish list, and perhaps it wasn't on my top five this morning but I am glad, oh so glad that this day became what it did!
Spring was in the air when as I strolled down to Centralstationen, the Chai was perfect, I was in time for the train (this time the RIGHT train, yesterday I took the wrong train and ended up chasing MY train in a yellow cab, more about that and my breakfast with the King later!) and my Ipod buzzing Black Box Body Jam 44 in my ears, mmm! Why, what happened today? Spring I say :)

Springtime - when ecstasy seems the natural way to be and any other out of tune with the season of soul growth. Song, airy silence, a lively conversation between plants. No urgency about what’s get said or not said. We feel part of some hilarious nub pulling through the surface into light. The weather of Spring in Sweden is all one long extravagant absorption with ground and sky, the fragrances and what unfolds from within.

I guess it was all this that gave me the guts to ask a stranger on the street to take my pic on the fountain (believe it or not, but we became good friends and went for a coffee :)






The weekends quarterlies has been great (taught Body Balance and Body Jam in Karlstad and Halmstad), I love meeting other Les Mills instructors in Sweden, we do really have a great crew.

Kia Kaha!!!

Millennium Exclusive

Mo: Matt, you rock - the inner athlete is within you, always. Love Mo.