Dear Friend,

This week I am finishing up a month of travel for TV interviews. I have visited states all over the nation, including California, Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, and Arizona. This week I am finishing the tour with a trip to Seattle and then San Diego. It is so exciting to be spreading the word about the Beauty Revolution, helping people break free from Negative Body Obsession, learn to love themselves, and live with abundance, joy, and beauty in their lives.

When I returned home from my travels for a few days, I received a copy of O, Oprah′s magazine. The front cover exclaimed, "We’re Starting a Beauty Revolution! Say bye-bye to feeling bad about your looks." I love the energy and passion behind revolution. Yes, that is what we are doing: we are revolutionizing the way we feel about our bodies and ourselves. Please join me as we become the leaders of the beauty revolution!

This week′s article is the first in a long series teaching you how to break free from Negative Body Obsession and start living with joy. In this edition, you will learn about my 5-step process for breaking free. In the coming weeks I will be exploring each step in detail, fleshing out exercises and visualizations to help you create the body, beauty, and life you deserve.

The great thing about this 5-step process is that it can be used for anything you are struggling with – it doesn′t need to be limited to the body. Once you become familiar with the steps, you can begin to use them to overcome stress, anxiety, depression, insecurity, and many other difficulties.

Remember, if you know someone who might find this information helpful, please forward it along!

In abundant Peace, Love, and Beauty,

Sarah Maria
Leading the Beauty Revolution

Are you ready to get naked?

Summer is almost here and warmer temperatures mean less clothing. That′s right – it′s time to trade in your overcoat for your bathing suit and shorts.

This transition to showing more skin can evoke anxiety in even the most confident of women. Studies show that 80-90 percent of women, and a growing number of men, dislike their bodies. As long as our bodies are cloaked in layers, we can often ignore any nagging feelings of insecurity. But once bathing suit season is in full-swing we are forced to face our near-naked bodies.

For many, the physical body is a source of shame, embarrassment, and discomfort. In this culture, if women aren’t a size 2, and if men don’t have six-pack abs, they often consider themselves to be lacking in the category of physical attractiveness. In a culture where physical beauty reigns supreme, body dissatisfaction is rampant, contributing to everything from acute eating disorders to mild depression and anxiety.  The diet and plastic surgery industries feed off these feelings of inadequacy, netting billions of dollars annually as people seek to shape, tone, nip, tuck, slice, and dice their physical bodies into perceived perfection.

The fact is you can begin loving your body today, whatever its size and shape. It is from this place of self-love and self-acceptance that you can begin to make healthy changes that will support your body, mind, and spirit.

If you are like most people, you dislike the body you live in. You might dislike it a little or dislike it a lot, and at the very least there are substantial areas that you wish were different. You may live constantly in the too-old, too-fat, too-flabby, too-flat-chested, too-short, too-tall, too-whatever-else, believing that the body you are born with and the body you have developed is just not that great.

As long as you live with this mentality, the ability to make healthy choices often eludes you. You live in a silent war with yourself: either making healthy choices and not getting the results you want, or making unhealthy choices and berating yourself for your poor decisions. Whichever camp you fall into on any given day, your relationship with your body is characterized by frustration and angst instead of peace and love. The refusal to accept the present moment and condition you find yourself in makes it impossible to create the future you want.

What many people don′t know is that the path to healthy, beautiful bodies begins with love. It is only when you accept the body you have that you can create the body you want, a body that is strong and healthy, a body that will serve you well throughout your life. The prevailing myth in this culture is that when you have the beautiful body, then you can be happy and satisfied. Instead, the opposite is true: when you accept and enjoy your body, then you can begin to make healthy choices and create the body that will serve you well.

This doesn′t mean that you can or should create the waif-like body that is plastered on magazine covers; rather it means you can create the healthy body that is right for you given your genetics, lifestyle, activity-level, and dietary preferences. It means that you can develop a loving, nurturing relationship with your own body that will allow you to become the glorious and beautiful person you are meant to be. The fact is you are intrinsically beautiful and your body a living miracle. Sadly, your judgments prevent you from experiencing this.

Here is a five-step process to help you begin loving the body you have today:

Step 1: Be willing to change

This is an essential ingredient to discovering your beauty: be willing to learn to love your body. You might not know how, but you must be willing to explore the terrain.

Step 2: Identify and detach from your negative thoughts

Our negative thoughts keep us trapped in suffering. We tell ourselves we are not thin enough, tall enough, young enough, fit enough. Learn to identify these thoughts; notice when you speak to yourself in negative ways. Once you begin to notice these negative thoughts, you can begin to detach from them and create more constructive thoughts that will heal your body and your mind.

Step 3: Connect with your inner silence

Learn that you are not your thoughts. When you learn to connect with your inner silence you discover that you are not your thoughts, rather you are the thinker of your thoughts. When you connect to this inner silence you will begin to experience the joy, love, abundance, and beauty that you deserve.

Step 4: Befriend your body

Your body is a living miracle. It lives always and only to support you in your life’s quest. Your body has an innate intelligence that allows your heart to beat, your skin to rejuvenate, and your hair to grow without any thought on your part. Cultivating gratitude toward your body is an essential component of healing.

Step 5: Live your purpose

We are all here for purpose and on purpose. Negative thoughts about not being good enough often keep us stuck in negativity, dwelling on inadequacy. This drains our energy and prevents us from living our purpose and destiny. Learn to love your body and befriend it as your greatest ally in your exploration of your life. Refuse to settle for mediocrity – learn to love your body and live your dreams! From the place of love and acceptance true healing can and will occur.

Note: In the coming weeks we will be exploring each of these steps in detail, including exercises and specific ways that you can implement this into your life on a daily basis.

Exciting News

There are some really exciting things happening around here! Here are some of the highlights:

• I am in the process of signing a book deal with a publishing company so that more people can learn to love their bodies and themselves.
  


• I am going to be conducting a 5-part teleseminar series with a colleague of mine, Clare Mann, an existential psychologist and conscious leader. The series is titled, Stunning on the Inside, Dying on the Outside. It will explore the ways that we, individually and as a culture, focus on being perfect on the outside while suffering and dying on the inside. We will also talk about how to change this so you can become stunning on the outside and inside!  The first teleclass will be on Wednesday June 18th at 7 pm and will be each Wednesday for 5 weeks – more details to follow!

I want to start scheduling my seminar and retreat schedule for the New Year and need your help!

Please tell me:

How long of a seminar would you like to see? A one-day workshop? A weekend?
Where are you located and where would you be willing to travel?
What would be your total budget, including air and hotel accommodations for the event?
Would you commit to attending an event if it met the above requirements?

With your help, we can get some amazing seminars and retreats scheduled in the next few months!

There are so many amazing books out there! I always find myself reading multiple books at the same time…

There are two that I read recently that I highly recommend:

Inspiration by Dr. Wayne Dyer – if you haven’t read this book yet, I highly recommend it. Dr. Dyer talks a lot about beauty as an essential component of our existence…the book itself is truly inspiration. I found it a bit difficult to get into, but once I started I could not put it down!

The Spontaneous Healing of Belief by Gregg Braden – this book is mind-bending. He talks about the world as a giant computer and how though changing are beliefs we can change the “code” we send to the universe and thus change our lives. This book will get you thinking in brand new ways!

Upcoming June Special

Okay – I promised that as my subscribers you would be entitled to exclusive specials and discounts on my products and services. Next month we have a special that you won′t want to miss!

For the month of June you can purchase a copy of my CD and receive one hour of one-on-one coaching with me for $100. That′s right – for just $100. Normally, my CD costs $37 and I charge $500 per hour for coaching (and I rarely offer coaching in hour-long increments, but rather in 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month packages). That is a $537 value for $100! Talk about an incredible discount!

June marks the beginning of summer and it is the time that many of us may be moving your winter clothes into the closet and pulling out shorts, tank tops and even bathing suits. The summer season can be a difficult time for our body image as we lose the comfort of layers of clothing. If you need some extra support during this time, my individual coaching can help!

This offer is just for you, my dedicated subscribers. I am so grateful for your ongoing support and encouragement – together we will revolutionize beauty so that everyone realizes and lives their beauty and their glory.

To take advantage of this offer, please just visit: www.breakfreebeauty.com/specials/June.

Sarah Maria is leading the Beauty Revolution. She is a body-image coach who teaches people to love their bodies no matter what shape, size, age, or ethnicity. She leads workshops internationally, speaks around the world, and conducts coaching with individuals and couples, empowering them to love themselves and live their dreams.
Before launching Break Free Beauty, Sarah Maria earned a BA in Theology, graduating summa cum laude, and then earned her MIA in International Affairs from Columbia University. She later earned her law degree from Stanford University.

But woven into her outstanding achievements academically, Sarah Maria experienced an intense hatred of her body. Starting at age 14, she began a vicious cycle of 500 calorie diets, bingeing, and purging. The pain of this cycle motivated her to investigate holistic healing and spirituality. As with everything she does, Sarah Maria pursued these disciplines with a passion.

While pursuing her academic career, she studied and practiced yoga, earned a diploma in Ayurvedic Lifestyle Counseling as well as certification as a Chopra Center Meditation instructor. After graduating from law school, Sarah Maria opened a healing business, Ananda Healing Arts, offering yoga instruction, Ayurvedic and nutritional counseling, and massage therapy. After seeing how many people were controlled by self-hatred and discontent with their physical appearance, she founded Break Free Beauty, a company committed to teaching self-love.

Sarah Maria has developed a concrete and practical approach to helping people love their bodies. She teaches a five-step program that takes people from self-loathing to self-love.  Her passion is sharing this signature system with others so that everyone, no matter what their body looks like, can learn to love and cherish themselves. She helps clients love their bodies, connect with the soul, and live their dreams.