Posts tagged with “exercise”

Why We All Need to Pause More Often and How to Do It

By Muwafica

“Taking time to do nothing often brings everything into perspective.” ~Doe Zantamata

I have always been that person who just cannot seem to slow down. An overachiever? That’s putting it mildly. In every aspect of my life—work, relationships, personal goals—I have always pushed myself to the absolute limit. It is like I have this internal drive that just won’t quit.

At work, I am always the first one in and the last to leave. Deadlines? I would meet them days early. Projects? I would volunteer for extra ones, even when my plate was already full. And don’t even get me …

The Epiphany That Freed Me from My Body Obsession

By Ryan Sheridan

“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear or see the word fitness? Do you think of an Olympic power lifting athlete, gymnast, or swimmer? The way we interpret and respond to the word fitness is a driver of physical health, but also our mental health.

From a young age I associated health with fitness, which, to me, meant fitter is better. Society fed me the image of perfection. And so the chase of fitness became a moving target that …

Forever Healing: 4 Things I Now Prioritize After Cancer

By Harriet Cabelly

“I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” ~Audre Lorde

I’m a year out after completing chemo treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and on my healing journey. Cancer is a nasty little thing and can rear its ugly head at any time again. So, to minimize those recurrent chances and to feel like I’m doing all that’s in my control, I’ve accepted that this healing path will be for the rest of my life.

I originally thought I’d be spending this first year rebuilding myself. And I have. …

How I Am Learning to Trust My Body More and Control It Less

By Teresa Towey

“I’m a beautiful mess of contradiction, a chaotic display of imperfection.” ~Sai Marie Johnson

I don’t identify as having an eating disorder. I don’t struggle with anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating. Yet I exercise precise control of my weight, down to the pound. If I gain a mere two pounds, I can feel it. First in my stomach. Then in my face.

That’s when the self-loathing kicks in.

I beat myself up for gaining those two pounds.

I wear a shirt to sleep at night, instead of being naked like I am when I am two pounds lighter.

I …

5 Ways to Use Movement (Not Exercise) to Support Your Mental Health

By Erica Hornthal

“Nothing is more revealing than movement.” ~Martha Graham

It seems like only yesterday that I was at home with a newborn, a kindergartener, two dogs, and a husband who, just like me, was working from home, when we were thrown into the unthinkable COVID19 pandemic.

It didn’t take long for the stress and tension to build in my body. The feeling of instability, uncertainty, and fear, not to mention the post-partum anxiety, took its toll on my body as it became more rigid, bound, immobile, and frozen.

All the ways I had relied on movement as exercise were taken away, …

5 Simple Yet Essential Self-Care Tips That Can Change Your Life

By Jade Nguyen

“Never be ashamed to say, ‘I’m worn out. I’ve had enough. I need some time for myself.’ That isn’t being selfish. That isn’t being weak. That’s being human.” ~Topher Kearby

Years ago, my extended family, who I am very close with, migrated from Vietnam to America as permanent residents. Four separate families had a couple of kids in each family. They are nice, kind, and loving people, and their kids were super cute and respectful.

My relationship with my extended family has taught me a lot of lessons throughout my life so far, but this was one of the most …

30 Self-Care Tips: How to Avoid Sickness, Burnout, and Exhaustion

By Timothy James

“Remember, you are your own best investment. Invest in yourself and your lifestyle. Quality of life is a key component in finding joy and maintaining self-confidence.” ~Akiroq Brost

Do you ever sacrifice your own well-being to take care of others? If this sounds like you, chances are you are doing more harm than good.

Think about when you get on an airplane. What’s the first thing they tell you?

“In case of a loss of cabin pressure, please put your own oxygen mask on first and then assist your children or other passengers.”

They tell you this because if …

Why Fibromyalgia Is the Greatest Gift of My Life

By Fari Gonzaque

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” ~Rumi

TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains discussions of difficult topics, including suicidal depression and a fatal car accident.

I’ve always been an active, athletic person. In my twenties I was huge in tennis, squash, and swimming, and I began every morning with an intense workout that cleared my head and let me confront the day’s challenges with a relaxed, positive attitude. So, when I started experiencing mysterious pains and fatigue that didn’t go away no matter how much sleep I got, my life was turned upside down.

After two years …

The Areas of Our Lives We Need to Balance to Find Peace and Contentment

By Rachael Sternhagen

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” ~Thomas Merton

Balance is everything and is really what we are striving to find in life. Balancing work and play. Balancing food and exercise. Balancing a social life and solitude. Balancing being and doing. Finding balance is finding freedom.

Once I was truly able to comprehend this it was a game changer on my healing journey. Any suffering you experience in life can be attributed to a lack of balance.

What is balance? The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu speaks of The Dao, which …

Discovering Pleasure in Movement Instead of Exercising from Fear

By Meg Tinsley

“The choice that frees or imprisons us is the choice of love or fear. Love liberates. Fear imprisons.” ~Gary Zukav

I come from a family of runners. When I was a young girl, my father would rouse us out of bed on the weekends to run the three-mile par-course at the local park, competing with my siblings for who could do the most sit-ups at the stations along the route. We would end the event with a bunch of chocolate eclairs from the local 7-11 as a reward.

As benign as this story may be, it describes a pattern of …

Movement, Stillness, and Insight: My 3 Daily Non-Negotiables for a Busy World

By Carl Phillips

“Put yourself at the top of your to-do list every single day and the rest will fall into place.” ~Unknown

We live in a busy world. There is always something, or someone, fighting for our attention. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to lose the time we need for ourselves. The white space in our days is often the first thing to get squeezed out as demands on our time escalate.

To combat this pull to overwhelm, I decided to create a list of daily non-negotiables.

Having a list of non-negotiables means I get to control at least a …

How I Overcame My Debilitating Gut Issues by Digesting My Emotions

By Amy Love Tomasso

“I do not fix problems. I fix my thinking. Then problems fix themselves.” ~Louise Hay

Here’s my secret: In order to fully heal over a decade of debilitating digestive disorders, I had to stop trying to heal. Instead, I had to do nothing. What, do nothing? Yes, that’s exactly right—I had to let go of the search for the perfect cure. Let me explain.

I developed chronic gut problems at age fourteen—such a precious age! After being dismissed by doctors (“It’s all in your head; it’s a girl problem”), overprescribed antibiotics for years on end, or just given hopelessly …

The Surprising Strategy I Used to Stop Bingeing (and Why It Worked)

By Roni Davis

“Sometimes the thing you’re most afraid of doing, is the very thing that will set you free.” ~Robert Tew

I recovered from binge eating and bulimia by giving myself permission to binge. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

My decades-long weight and food war started in my teens, immediately after reading my first diet book, about Atkins, to be exact. I spent the following two decades trying to lose weight (only to keep gaining) and struggling with food.

By my early thirties, I’d finally managed to lose weight, but it hadn’t end the war, it had just started a new one. The …

Freedom from Food – This Time for Good!

By Sharon Shahaf

“Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe.” ~Eckhart Tolle

I cannot say that I didn’t struggle in my life. But there’s one area in which I have overcome the challenges I was facing with hardly an effort: letting go of the eating disorder I was suffering from, getting rid of the extra weight I was carrying, and maintaining the results easily for twenty-eight years.

How Did I Do That?

In a minute I’ll tell you exactly how I did that and how you can do it too. But first let me take a moment to explain …

Being Skinny Doesn’t Make You Fit or Healthy

By Alexandra Davis

“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha

As a 5’4″ petite, half-Asian, people have always assumed that I’m fit. However, my slender figure hid the sins of a poor diet and exercise routine for a decade.

The truth is, being skinny doesn’t make you healthy. There are many hidden dangers of being so-called “skinny fat.” (Though this is a commonly used term for unhealthy skinny people, it’s worth noting that bigger doesn’t always mean unhealthy. So perhaps a more accurate term would be “skinny unhealthy.”)

Skinny fat, also known as “normal …

The Skills You Need to Survive Stress When It Hits

By Rosemary Bointon

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” ~William James

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt your world was ending? When the stress was overwhelming and you were so miserable, all you wanted to do was wallow in it and growl at the world from underneath the bed covers?

Or maybe you worry about things that might happen in the future. Do you see a minor accident on the road and have those flashes of imagining that your partner or your child died in a car crash?

Does your imagination …

How Mother Nature and I Manage My Depression

By Amie Gabriel

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” ~John Burroughs

I sat on the front stoop sobbing, unable to move. Hunched over like a heaving dog hugging my knees and clutching a wad of decomposing tissues. About fifteen minutes before, I’d managed to get myself off the couch where I’d been parked, withered and absent, for the fourth consecutive day, and had made it through the front door.

Once there, I tried to stay upright, but like cool syrup I slid down the side of the wrought iron railing and down …

5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Trying to Lose Weight

By Timothy James

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

I struggled to maintain a healthy weight for a large part of my life.

Had I known these five things before my weight-loss journey, I would have had a much easier time shedding the pounds and would have realized that weight loss isn’t a magic fix-all solution to my issues.

If you’re trying to lose weight, perhaps some of my lessons will be helpful to you.

Here we go…

1. This has to be for you, not someone else.

Growing up as a closeted …

How to Get in Shape When You Feel Lazy and Unmotivated

By Timothy James

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” ~Jin Ryun

Can I be brutally honest with you for a moment?

I was the “fat kid” growing up, and I’ve struggled to find the motivation to lose weight and lead a healthy lifestyle my whole life.

I first realized I was fat when the teacher asked for a volunteer to play Santa in the third grade Christmas play, and Aaron Valadez loudly blurted out, “Tim would be perfect for the role since he’s already got the belly!”

I literally died right there. Mortified.

This was the …