Realize. Intention.
I've always been one for a snappy New Year's Challenge. This year more than ever, I feel like I mean it. Whether by chance or the coercion of life's circumstances, I've spent the past year really examining my life. This is not something I enjoy necessarily but when you're whole body aches every day and happiness feels like a distant cousin you have a particular fondness towards but can't, for the life of you, remember his face, life is suggesting reflection is in order.
Also not really by coincidence, I signed up for this strength/health/mind online "challenge" about a month ago because it seemed just up my alley. You see, the best way to usher in change is to dive into the deep end of the self-help pool which I have enthusiastically done. No looking back. If only by osmosis, change will come. Anyhow, one of the steps of this challenge was something I particularly took to: come up with a mantra for the new year.
It didn't take me long to settle on "realize"--as I explained in the dedicated facebook group, because I have at least 20 good ideas a day and I rarely make good on any of them. I want to spend the whole next year learning how to realize even a handful. But just today I added "intention." Because there's something about my movement patterns that isn't right.
I stumbled on this idea when, literally, YouTube surfed me to a channel I had never seen before and it was a physical therapist and trainer talking about the importance of moving with intention as opposed to "killing it in the gym" six days a week. Both said that if we were better about doing what we do movement-wise with intention and not quantity, if we focused on perfect technique when we're doing any movement, we would be so much happier and in less pain because our bodies would be moving the way the were designed to move. Even sitting down, they said, she be chosen intentionally and mindfully--if we practice that we end up NOT sitting for 8 hours a day and emasculating our glutes in the process. If we choose to walk more, we honor the intention of our build.
In other words, our bodies are happier when we use them for what they're for: moveming.
This is one of the fresher ideas I've heard recently. This was exactly what I needed to hear to solve my recent conundrum of being so sluggish and slothish. Movement is a self-respecting action when we employ it intentionally and do it because we want our bodies and selves to be functioning at their highest level at that which they were meant to do.
And I got off the couch and did yoga.
And godammit if I'm not happier.
Also not really by coincidence, I signed up for this strength/health/mind online "challenge" about a month ago because it seemed just up my alley. You see, the best way to usher in change is to dive into the deep end of the self-help pool which I have enthusiastically done. No looking back. If only by osmosis, change will come. Anyhow, one of the steps of this challenge was something I particularly took to: come up with a mantra for the new year.
It didn't take me long to settle on "realize"--as I explained in the dedicated facebook group, because I have at least 20 good ideas a day and I rarely make good on any of them. I want to spend the whole next year learning how to realize even a handful. But just today I added "intention." Because there's something about my movement patterns that isn't right.
I stumbled on this idea when, literally, YouTube surfed me to a channel I had never seen before and it was a physical therapist and trainer talking about the importance of moving with intention as opposed to "killing it in the gym" six days a week. Both said that if we were better about doing what we do movement-wise with intention and not quantity, if we focused on perfect technique when we're doing any movement, we would be so much happier and in less pain because our bodies would be moving the way the were designed to move. Even sitting down, they said, she be chosen intentionally and mindfully--if we practice that we end up NOT sitting for 8 hours a day and emasculating our glutes in the process. If we choose to walk more, we honor the intention of our build.
In other words, our bodies are happier when we use them for what they're for: moveming.
This is one of the fresher ideas I've heard recently. This was exactly what I needed to hear to solve my recent conundrum of being so sluggish and slothish. Movement is a self-respecting action when we employ it intentionally and do it because we want our bodies and selves to be functioning at their highest level at that which they were meant to do.
And I got off the couch and did yoga.
And godammit if I'm not happier.
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