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phenomeNEWS:
We have with us one of Canada’s most dynamic fitness experts and
motivational speakers. Her strength and spirit are all-consuming and her
proven 15-year track record of being a fitness model, health club owner,
personal trainer to the stars and mother of two attest to her success.
She has new a book out by our friends at Hay House, called Simply…Woman!
It has a fabulous cover, she looks so healthy and wonderful that you
just want to do whatever she’s doing so you can look like she does. Hi,
Crystal. Crystal Andrus:
Hello, ladies.
How are you doing?
I’m fantastic. Soon, I won’t just be
Canada’s fitness expert, I’m coming down here to the States.
Excellent, absolutely!
Well, you come from Toronto. Of course, that got me because I’m a big
Anne Murray fan. Since you’re a fitness expert to the stars, has Annie
ever been to see you? No, no,
but you know what? I do have a connection with Anne Murray. I tell you,
when I first got started... my little journey, about 10 years ago, I had
gained a lot of weight. It was in my pregnancies and so, you know the
journey, where it takes you and when you get to a point in your life.
And I had one of those kind of “ah, ha” moments.
One day, I was sitting in my rocking
chair, nursing my youngest daughter. I started to break down. Just where
was I going, what was I doing? There I was, sitting at 200 pounds and
thinking, “You know what, I’m not living life the way I want to be
living it.” And that’s how this whole program got started.
The next morning, I got up and went for
a run. That was pretty funny. After about three houses, I said,
“Running’s not going to be happening.” But I went for a walk and at the
end of the walk, I came home and sat down and started to write. Little
did I know, no dream ever in my life, that I was going to write a book.
But I started to write where I was in my life and what got me there and
how I was feeling. It started pouring out. At the time, I went through
this transformation, it is in Week 9, where I talk about detoxing, in
the program. I had a house weeding sale. I was living just outside of
Toronto. I was married with two daughters and I said, “You know what,
we’ve got to make a move.” I was really searching for serenity, for my
place and where I wanted to be in life, I opened up my doors. I sold
everything that I owned. Sold my house. Took my Golden Retriever and two
little girls and I went across country to Vancouver. And in Vancouver,
wouldn’t you know, that Anne Murray’s publicist happened to work out of
Vancouver. Marlene Palmer. Funny.
If she reads this, she’ll smile. And I, at the time, had just done this
program. I thought, “I need to work with women.” I didn’t know where I
was going with it. But I said, “I want to create this program. I want to
do something.” And she was a publicist. This is where you talk about
“face your fears” and “I can do it.” Here I was, this little Mom and I
needed to find a publicist. I got on the phone and the next thing I knew
I was sitting, having lunch with Marlene Palmer, who is Anne Murray’s
publicist. And she said, “We need to get you a TV show. We should put
all your writing into a 12-week series for the women’s network in
Canada.” But there’s my connection to Anne Murray. So I ended up going a
different route, self-publishing and making it into a 12-week program.
Wow! Fabulous! And you
started with Week 9? No. What
I was saying is that part of Week 9 was getting clean. Cleaning out your
life. Detoxing?
Not just the toxins. This program is body,
mind, soul. So it’s toxins of the body. We start to detoxify all the
garbage of all the years that are built up in your body. For me it was
that I‘d accumulated so much stuff over my lifetime, that you think
matters, that defines you. You know how many of us drive cars and have
things that we think define us? The most humbling and most incredible
experience that I ever did was just getting rid of it, not that I’m
telling people to go and do that. Believe you me, it’s not in the
program. But I was just sharing that, for me. What I did, I went around
my house and I gathered up the things that were most important to me,
that really mattered. You’ll start to find the things are pictures of
people that you love. One little piece of jewelry that somebody gave to
you, but not all the drawers full of jewelry, the 17,000 tubes of red
lipstick and 18,000 bottles of nail polish. I just said, “You know what?
Why? All these magazines, because I read them but I can’t part with
them? Somebody else can read this magazine now.” So I gathered up
magazines and brought them to health clubs so all the women in health
clubs would have magazines to read. I actually put signs out, all down
my street and in my newspaper, that said I’m not just having a garage
sale. I’m having an open house. Come through. Take the plates from my
cupboard. I can’t believe I’m telling this story! Do you know, I’ve
never shared that story with anyone before.
Really, because you know,
we would have been there, the first ones!
And you know, I was so crazy, I just ended
up giving stuff away. “This is for you.” It didn’t matter, though. It
was all about freeing the self.
How freeing!
It was the most freeing thing I did. And
now, it’s funny, because now I only buy something that I feel like… not
need it, but love it. I really would love it and want to bring it into
my life. And if I don’t and you can walk away from a store, then you’re
not meant to buy it. If it’s not
screaming at you, let it go. Because you know what? Don’t we all have
the same three jackets we like? And the same two pairs of shoes?
But then we buy more because they’re on
sale. But what for?
It’s in the closet with
the tag on it. Yes or you
just wear it once or twice and then you stop.
I moved last June, only
half of my stuff. And you
really don’t need the other half...
I haven’t missed the
half that I left there. I go there and it still looks like I’m still
living there. Then you’re
meant to have an open house sale.
I think I am. I think your
message was for me. Gerri’s going to transfer it over to her house!
(laughter) You can do amazing
things. It’s very freeing.
Yes, it is freeing. You
know, what we love about your book is that you make it very simple and
you have simple exercises. You say, don’t go on to the next exercise
until you have completed the last one and if you need to go back and
reread it and really get it and do it. Just be gentle and kind on
yourself. It is so well written and practical.
I decided I wanted to become a
nutritionist and I would read things that were so baffling and I’d
think, “How can anybody get this if I can barely get it?” So I thought,
I don’t need to put all this research information in this book. Don’t
get me wrong. We need the books with the studies and we need people who
need to know why they should be taking that essential fatty acid. It’s
what works. I’ve worked with enough women to know what works. And I need
to write this with really simple analogies so you can just open it up
and read it and not feel belittled. I just needed to read something that
said, “This makes sense,” and to build one step off of the next. I have
some women who say, “This is my 12-month program.”
When you get attached to outcome, you
could have done so phenomenally at the end of 12 weeks, but if you have
this idea in your head of where you’re supposed to be in 12 weeks, then
somehow you failed yourself. So I
say, release attachment to all outcomes. Have no expectation where
you’re supposed to be at the end of this program. Just know you’re
supposed to be in a place that you’re not right now. And wherever that
place is, it is absolutely perfect. Then continue your journey and keep
working.
The other thing, of anything that I
have ever done, (aside from having my two daughters) that I am the most
excited about is that I have a message board on my website.
A lot of people put message boards on
their websites, but they’re not actively on them. Wel, I go on it every
day and chat with my women. I call them my women because we’re like a
big sisterhood. We have women from Mexico to North Carolina to
Vancouver, to Toronto to little tiny rural towns in Indiana, all over.
We go online and we really share the truth. I want to keep it real and
know what real women want. I need to be talking every day with real
women asking, “What was the part that you loved about the program? What
didn’t work for you? What was helping you? What was hurting you?”
There’s so much more if you get on the website, which is
www.simplywoman.com. There’s
all these stories.
It’s a support system.
It’s an incredible support system – it’s
my life. Truly I can say that. I go on there myself and probably, once a
day, sit with tears streaming down my face for some woman who shared
something that was so profound or that was so hurtful in her past or
something they’ve finally come to grips with because we’re all the same.
It’s funny. I went for a massage last
night. Because I honor myself now, I do things like that. I used to
think if you went for a massage that meant you were vain or you were
self-indulgent. But I got there and I thought, you know what, for me to
really be in a place where I want to be for this weekend, I want to put
myself into that mode. And that’s what we need to do all the time in our
lives. So I went for a massage. The girl that massaged me said, “Well
you know, American women, they’re really different than Canadian women.
American women are really strong.” And I smiled to myself because I
thought, “You know what? We are all the same.”
Before I came to the States, I would
think to myself, “Everybody here gets it, because we’re all the same.”
And then you venture out of your little city and then you might do a
talk in a province because we have provinces, not states and, “Wow!
We’re all the same!” Then you suddenly start venturing out to different
places in the world and you realize we’re all the same. We all have the
same fears, the same worrie, the same issues and the same things we
think about. And when you realize that, that’s when you actually make
huge progress together. We come together as a group. We come together as
women. And that’s why the book is called Simply… Woman! It’s just about
being a woman, no matter where you are at. No matter what age. No matter
what race. You
said we’re all the same. This brought to mind our travels in
Switzerland, France and Germany. We said, “Look at the French cows,”
then started thinking, “A cow is a cow.” We got to see the
interconnectedness of all life.
You know, that’s how most people live.
They think, “Those are the Germans and those are the French.” And we’re
the Americans or the Canadians.
You’re labeled.
Do you live in an igloo? I don’t get that
any more. We all want love. And we all want to be loved. And we all want
our Mom to love us and we all want our kids love us. We all want the
same things. And when you to get
that, then you start to think, “So what’s this really all about?” And
taking it to that whole weight thing – and that’s one of the things that
has come up so much on the message forum. I’m not saying it’s exclusive,
but researchers are now saying there’s a link between obesity and a lot
of illnesses. But I’m going to use the obesity, with taking it back to
your childhood. There is just that commonality that we’re starting to
see. There’s a lot of pain and for a lot of the women I chat with, we
get on there and say, “Is this really about broccoli?” This isn’t about
broccoli. This isn’t about leg lifts. This isn’t about counting
calories. This is about something so much deeper. And it’s the way that
it plays itself out in your body. It’s the same thing with me. I share
very openly the struggles that I went through and never to say about my
family, because my family is like all of us, just doing what they knew.
Just doing what they could do. And it wasn’t until I realized, “So my
Mom only did what her Mom taught her.” But you know what? You come to
that place as women, when you realize all the good in my mother and all
the good in my grandmother and the good in my great grandmother and on
and on. They’re all in me. So when I learn how to embrace all the
wonderful parts of my family, I suddenly embrace the wonder of me.
All that other stuff is
not essential. It actually
leaves you. So that’s the whole point. And even the connection of women.
Your fears and your worries and your thoughts and your hopes and your
dreams are me. So now, I can look at you and say, “We’re so connected.”
That’s what the message forum does. That’s what the book is all about. I
get asked sometimes to do photo shoots and fitness photo shoots. I was
doing them a while ago because I can show that I have muscles. And
that’s not an issue. I don’t think it should be an issue. On the other
hand, I started thinking that. I don’t want women to gauge their success
against me as the barometer. And we all do it. We all pick up those
magazines and we look at the covers and we look at the women. So that’s
success. And that’s a big part of what I’m trying now to say. We are not
competitors. We’re soul sisters! Your strength makes me stronger. Your
success makes me more successful. The stronger you are, the stronger I
am. And that’s what it’s all about.
Hallelujah, sister!
Somebody say Amen!
You give us simple
tips in the book. Like Week Seven, eat the majority of your carbs before
3 pm How did you start this? What was the first chapter?
I started because I thought to myself,
“Every week…” Here’s the best way to think of it. Think of your life as
a temple. And you think about the ground floor and the foundation. I
don’t want to make it about thin thighs, I don‘t want to make it about
broccoli. I use an analogy I think about in my own life. Let’s say I
were to wake up in the morning and I were to give myself 15 minutes to
have a shower, get dressed, have breakfast, to leave for work. So I
start my day that way and I pound back a cup of coffee, I rush out the
door stressed and I take off for the day. I haven’t packed myself a
lunch. I don’t have any fruit. I don’t have any vegetables. So it’s
about energy. And we know we’re all energy. In the States it’s all
called a calorie. A calorie is just a form of energy. It’s a unit of
energy. When you eat food and it goes down into your body, it’s broken
down into energy. So the energy is either going to be dynamic, rich
bio-energetic foods and it’s going to make you feel, “Wow, I feel great!
I have energy.” Or it’s going to be food that’s going to go in and make
you feel tired, low, heavy, just like energy.
Lethargic.
Lethargic. So let’s not even worry about
guilt-free or guilt-ridden foods. Take that out of it. Just let’s think
about, you were to start your day and give yourself two hours in the
morning. You would wake up and say, “I’m going to go for a walk.” Not
because I’m self-punishing. Not because I hate the way I look in the
mirror. Not because I hate my body. Because I want energy. I want to
feel great. So you go for a nice power walk. I’m going to let the sun
shine on my face. I’m going to listen to some birds sing. I’m going to
breathe it all in and I’m going to get home and I’m going to run a
bubble bath, cause I’ve given myself that time in the morning. So I’m
going to have a nice bubble bath. I’m going to take 10 minutes in there.
I’m going to light a candle around the tub. I’ve given myself more
energy. And I’m going to have a power drink that’s filled with fruits
and vegetables. There’s a drink I have, called “green spa.” I don’t know
if it’s here in the States. It’s an amazing super green drink. I have my
green spa drink in the morning. I have energy. I pack my bottles of
water with me. I get my lunch for the day. I say a little prayer. If you
have time to meditate five minutes. “Where am I going with my day today?
Where do I want to be?” I started my day to be energized. So, that’s a
different way. It’s not about self-punishing. It’s to honor who you are.
So you’re empowering
yourself every morning instead of guilt tripping.
That’s right. Take the guilt out of it and
empower yourself. Honor who you are.
If you do the guilt thing,
you don’t even feel good about doing it. We’ve gotten into that
scenario. This feels good.
And that’s what I say to women. We all have it. A lot of authors call it
the ego. We have that little mind-made self that talks to us all the
time. It tells us how we should look. You should be taller because look
at her. She’s pretty. That’s that voice all the time telling you what
you should be and what you should do.
So it starts with the body. Listen, if
you can’t get through 3 o’clock in the afternoon without a coffee and a
chocolate bar, how do you have the mental strength to suppress that
voice, to learn how to still that voice? How do you have the strength to
get through your day without screaming at your kids, wanting to leave
your husband? We’re up and down, we’re on a roller coaster, but we don’t
realize that food is a drug.
So let’s start by stabilizing our blood
sugar levels. It’s called stabilizing for a reason. I makes you feel
stable. And once you start to feel stable, then you start to say, “OK,
so I’m giving my body all these deficiencies.” Most of us are deficient
in vitamins and essential fatty acids. So let’s just get things stable,
so that you have the mental capacity to say “OK, so I’m not a raving
lunatic.” We don’t realize that if we’re drinking coffee all day, we’re
not giving ourselves water, we’re not getting essential fatty acids,
we’re not getting fruit, anti-oxidants, phytochemicals. Our body is
actually going, “What are you doing to me right now? How do you expect
me to be this temple?” Start with that. And then as you start to feel
stronger, you’re moving and you’re walking… and yes, isn’t it great that
you’re starting to drop in your dress size? Then you feel more
confident. Then you’re feeling, “If I can do this, I can do anything. I
have energy and I’m liking who I am. And I’m honoring who I am.” Then
you start tackling the mind. As you tackle the mind, you start to still
that voice, Ah, ha! What do you start to hear? The soul. Suddenly now
the body’s getting stronger. You’re stilling that mind. And now the soul
is being revealed. And when the soul is revealed, that’s when you shine.
And really that’s what it’s about. It’s about letting the soul be
revealed. But so many times, we
don’t even know how to remove those layers. It’s like peeling back the
layers of an onion. So it’s all peeling back the layers until finally
the soul is revealed and that’s when you shine. But how do you shine
when you feel like your energy is low and you’re literally dark, heavy
and that darkness and that heaviness comes from what you put in? It
comes from what you surround yourself with, not just food. We know it.
If you surround yourself with incredible people, the energy, the
synergy, you feel stronger. Your light is brighter. But is also works
with food and it works with exercise. It works with having a hot bath.
It works with lighting a candle. It works with honoring yourself.
Beautifully said. This
is a fabulous book. Tell us about the DVD that is in the back of the
book. You’ll love the DVD.
There’s no music, it’s all done to the sounds of nature. It’s all about
honoring who you are. And also, the muscle imbalances in our bodies.
Because here’s another thing. I don’t what to make it about thin thighs,
but if you’re back is killing you all the time, yes, I absolutely
believe it could be that you’re not moving forward. You’re afraid to
move forward in your life and it could be your charkas are off. It could
be those things. Absolutely. But what if you have a muscle imbalance? So
why not say, “I’m going to make the body as strong as I can make it. I’m
going to make the soul be revealed. I’m going to work on those energy
systems so they’re flowing through my body. I’m going to put wonderful
food in. I’m going to tackle every one of those things so that now I’m
as strong and as vibrant and as vital as I can be.”
You’re in charge of it.
Yes. That’s the whole thing about
surrendering. That’s actually when you have faith. You know why I have
faith now? It’s because, here’s a funny thing. Nobody can see this, but
there’s a tiny cold sore on my lip. Can you see this?
No.
No, you can’t see it. I’m going to tell
you why you can’t see it. Because the body is this miraculous
self-healing machine. So I had fear. It doesn’t matter where you are in
your life. I don’t think I’m afraid. I’m thinking, I’m coming to the I
Can Do It Conference. I’m coming to the States. This is my first big
talk in the States.” But deep, deep down inside there must have been
that, “What if they don’t like you? What if nobody shows up? What if
your words fail you?” And I woke up in the morning with this cold sore
starting. And that’s the way the body is the manifestation. Just like
weight gain, just like ulcers, just like… so if you patch it over and
you think, “I’m just going to put cream on my cold sore.” Let’s figure
out what I’m really afraid of. So, talking about surrendering, just like
we can do with our bodies. Just like we can do with any of our problems.
So I surrendered this and I started to pray. And I said, “You know,
what’s this? Why is it happening? I don’t want to be afraid.” And I
said, “God just don’t let my words fail me.” And in that moment –
because the lip, is that the metaphor? It would happen on my lips
because I’m afraid my words would fail me. In that moment, I had a
moment of complete surrender where I realized my words could never fail
me, because they’re not my words. And suddenly… a cold sore usually
erupts and stays about two weeks... it stopped. In one day! So yesterday
I had the cold sore. It will be gone tomorrow. Surrender it. That’s what
it’s all about.
You are incredible! The
name of the book is Simply….Woman! We hope to see a lot more of you in
the States. I’m coming and
working on another book, too.
We’re so thrilled to meet
you and bask in your beautiful, loving energy.
Thank you.
If you had a last word of
wisdom you’d like to leave with our readers, what would that be?
Just listen to that absolutely beautiful
voice within you that will guide you perfectly. That voice comes
somewhere deep within and it’s not that mind-made self. It’s not that
voice in your head that’s always telling you what you should do, what
you should have done, what you could have done, what you shouldn’t be
like, what you should look like. Honor who you are. What I’ve come to
realize is that you don’t look into the mirror one day and say, “I’m
finally there, I’m beautiful.” That never happens. What comes first is
knowing you’re beautiful. So you stop trying. You don’t have to try.
Just be. Claim it. Just be.
You already are and it
will happen on the outside.
It all just starts to fall into place.
Thank you so much.
Crystal’s web site is
www.simplywoman.com
We’re looking forward to more fabulous
stuff coming in the future. |
