Thoughts on core EFFORT. An all caps explosion!

I have had some thoughts these past few weeks about the EFFORT we put into Pilates and other movement practices. I have probably described this feeling to many of you: when I first started practicing Pilates (I was a teen when I began taking classes) I remember my first understanding of how to feel an exercise. I believe it was the first moment I learned how to use INTERCEPTION: listening to cues that happen within the body. (Versus PROPRIOCEPTION, which is feeling your body in the space around you). 

And in Pilates there is this special thing that happens. You FEEL the movement working but it also feels more EFFORTLESS than the way you may have been doing it. It’s like at the same time it is harder than what you were doing but it’s also easier. HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?

So what I want to talk about is EASE within the EFFORT. A great example is using your deep transverse abdominals. Those are the muscles we train to get stronger in Pilates. We train to learn how to FEEL and LOCATE the abdominal muscles so we can use them more often through our days (are y’all enjoying my ALL CAPS trend for this post?)

Your deep abdominal really only work to about 60% effort. There are studies. Here is one if you like to read studies.

Try this with me:

Make a fist and squeeze. Now squeeze it to what feels like 100% effort to you. Maybe you start shaking a little. Maybe you can’t hold it for very long. It makes me feel a little yucky. 

Now back off that effort. Can you estimate what a 50% squeeze feels like? How about 10%? 

So now let’s translate that to your core muscles.

Take a deep breath in and imagine filling your belly with air first, then feel your ribs expand. Everything fills in 3 dimensions, the front, sides and back of your body expand. Even your pelvic floor is widening. 

Now exhale and imagine you are blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Slowly let that air out. Now there is one TRICK CANDLE. Continue to exhale out your air and try to blow out that last candle. It’s like you could blow out past empty.

Do you feel what happens as you empty your breath? You should feel some tensioning in your abdomen. Around your waist it should feel like it’s getting smaller inside your pants. Your ribs should feel like they are “closing.” 

Careful not to tension so much that your neck and shoulders and jaw get involved. That’s more in the 100% range. That just right amount of tensioning in your core is truly about 60% effort.

THIS MEANS THAT PILATES IS AWESOME FOR YOUR ABS!

But you already knew that because you read this newsletter. The better news is that it’s this lower level training is really important for your core needs. Weight training is having a moment and I am HERE FOR IT. Especially that I am seeing more women willing to get into the gym and begin to lift heavy.

BUT WE STILL NEED PILATES.

We need body weight or spring tensioned work to access our core in a way that we can bring into the weight room, or into your favorite sport, your walking habit, your bike ride, lifting and holding your kiddos or grandkiddos, geeez even a heavy load of laundry! 

And if you don’t lift, please don’t feel bad. Pilates helps you in all the ways you love to move! (But lifting really is also really good for you). 

If you just want to MOVE MORE, join one of my group classes on Tuesday or Thursdays at 5:30pm!

A Belated New Year's Post!

I hope this finds everyone RECOVERED from the holiday hustle and bustle. I personally did a lot of driving during the holidays which makes me pretty sore. I made sure I took some time for myself to get outside on a walk (even if it was a quick one) or do a little stretch here and there. I even put in my toe spreaders to relax and watch a movie at home. You know what I did not do? Work out. And you know what else I did? Eat all the cookies. 

But here is the thing: I did not feel bad about it. I did not beat myself up about it. It was my choice what I ate. BUT I made sure to always have a smoothie or salad in my day which helped me feel FULL so I didn’t turn into a full on cookie monster. 

No matter what choices you made this holiday season, I am here to tell you this: 

Don’t beat yourself up! 

I encourage you to try to stop feeling like you have been “derailed” if you didn’t workout. Or that the holidays “got you off track” because of all the sweets. Or you need a “start fresh” for the New Year. One week of time with family or friends does not automatically mean we are starting from zero. It also means we got to spend precious time with loved ones and that can be fulfilling in all sorts of ways.

So I challenge you this year, when you hear that negative self talk creeping into your head to remind yourself of what you have done that is GOOD for yourself. Every day we make choices about what it is we do, how we move, when we might add in a stretch, a veggie, a walk, or have one less drink. All the little things we are doing that are GOOD for ourselves is what matters. Those choice add up in the week. Did you walk the loop at the mall or get on your treadmill on a rainy day? That’s extra movement you maybe would not have taken otherwise! Did you drink an extra glass of water? Did you add an extra veggie to your plate? Are you getting in bed a little early? Take time to celebrate those small wins instead of getting stuck on what you should be doing better!

I promise the more you focus on the good stuff you are doing and how it makes you feel, the more likely you are to DO the good stuff!

Finding Rest

NOTE: Scroll to the bottom of this post to find a very simple but important breathing practice you can try RIGHT NOW!

Last month I took a week off work for a couple of online continuing education workshops. In the same week, Sean and I decided to do an Ayurvedic Cleanse. We did it right around the Spring Equinox.

The Ayurvedic Cleanse we do is one I learned from a former yoga teacher and friend. We have done it almost every year for about 6 years . I have a packet and took a workshop on HOW to do the cleanse because it’s not necessarily a traditional diet. It’s not about losing weight. It’s a rest for your gut. IMPORTANT NOTE: I would NOT recommend doing this type of cleanse on your own without an Ayurveda trained professional guiding you through your first experience.

To prepare, you have to begin to ween yourself off caffeine. There is NO caffeine allowed for the 5+ days you do the cleanse. And I will tell you, when you ween yourself off, you realize what an addiction feels like on the VERY smallest of teeniest levels. It’s difficult and you can feel VERY sick if you do it cold turkey. Trust me I felt like I had the flu the first time I tried going without caffeine for longer than a couple of days. The cleanse itself is 5 days but you really need a full 10-12 days mapped out between preparing for the cleanse, doing the cleanse, and then coming back into your regular habits.

The cleanse is truly a gut reset. You eat the SAME THING for 5 days in a row. You use the SAME spices, even in your digestive tea. You can eat as much as you want, but there is NOTHING exciting about eating the same meal for 12 meals. Breakfast is a little different and even less exciting than lunch and dinner. All the spices and the food you eat is easy on the digestive track. You eat basmati rice and mung beans, always soaked overnight to make it even easier to digest. You drink a tea of cumin, coriander, and fennel seeds. You know you are deep in the cleanse when your entire house smells of cumin.

All this description is to tell you that when you do this cleanse, you should plan to REST. It’s low calorie. And the only movement you will probably even WANT to do is an easy walk, or some short restorative yoga poses that concentrate on digestion and relaxation. When you eat, you are full but not SATISFIED. That is the interesting thing about a monodiet. You get to eat, but the flavors are subtle. It’s low in salt. There is no sugar. Only a little honey and lemon in a cilantro chutney. For dinner you make dark leafy greens sauteed in coconut oil, turmeric, cumin seed (surprise!) and salt. It’s the most VIBRANT thing you will eat!

There is a struggle in eating without satisfaction. In eating to just nourish the body. I think it’s a worthy experience. I think of all the religions of the world that practice fasting. That practice is here with the Ayurvedic cleanse as well. When you eat, it is not for selfish reasons but for a journey back into appreciating our world, celebrating life, and slowing down from the everyday. It’s a rest.

I ended up resting my body for probably a full 10-14 days. I don’t usually do that. I love to move. It is my life-force. Before the cleanse I was fortunate to attend a workshop all about resetting the body’s nervous system. It was three days of practicing how to find conscious relaxation taught by Jill Miller of Tune Up Fitness®. The course, called Breath and Bliss®, was an exploration in how our BREATH is a true barometer of the state of our physical and mental body. Learning tools to help our breath turn down our sympathetic nervous system, when needed, and turn up our body’s ability to relax and rest.

Over the course of about 2 weeks, I gave my body permission to relax, I believe, because I had turned DOWN my sympathetic (flight or flight) system. I could truly enjoy resting because I was not feeling stressed about NOT working out. My body was already tuned into a more calm state. (Ok I had a few pouty days on the cleanse where I was REAL hungry, but I think that’s to be expected. By the last day I was fine).

We must rest. We must be able to hear when our bodies say it’s time to rest. We must get more sleep, we must say no to over scheduling, to jamming our days FULL. Rest can come in small ways. Like getting in bed in a little earlier, or saying I’ll take a walk today and enjoy the weather. Sometimes rest can be self massage, or a nice bath. A little yoga or a simple breathing practice. Maybe it’s a week at a beach or in the mountains, or just an afternoon on your porch without your phone in your hand. Take a few days off social media. (I promise nothing will happen while you are gone. LOL!)

NOW! Try this:

Taking away some of the noise of our lives can have a huge effect on our bodies. Simply stopping to breathe slowly for a few minutes a day is helpful.

Here is a simple breath practice you can do right now:

Find a comfortable position where you feel relaxed and silence your tech devices.

Try breathing in for 5 seconds, then breathing out for 5 seconds.

Practice this breath in and out through your nose.

Repeat this for 2 minutes.

You can keep your eyes open and gaze soft or close your eyes. Whatever feels most comfortable to you.

This breath pattern is probably slower than you breath normally. And we NEED to breath less. We breath too much. Breathing too much can put us in a stressed out state. Let’s not be so stressed!!! Maybe you breath through your mouth and don’t realize it. So catch yourself and close your lips lightly. Practice nasal breathing more and more through your day. It gets easier the more you practice. Just like anything in life! And be gentle with yourself as you practice!

Let me know how it goes and thank YOURSELF for taking a few minutes to take care of YOU!

Want to learn more techniques to help quiet the business inside you, calm your nervous system, and take some time to let go?

Sign up for my workshop R&R: Release and Relax, April 25, 2021 at 3pm EST!

Click below to sign up

Snow Joy

I don't know about you but I have felt cooped up. I tend to feel like this every February. And during a pandemic I think we all feel even more cooped up. I am thankful that I have not had to endure even a quarter of the hardships others are facing due to losing jobs, closing businesses, working and caring for kids at the same time, etc. And my heart goes out to everyone in Texas right now dealing with the extreme weather conditions and loss of power and water. Needless to say, t's an EXTRA TOUGH February for many right now.

For me, how I get out of that cooped up feeling is to walk. It's my meditation. It's my quiet place. It's what makes me happy. This happy place is different for everyone, but just that feeling of getting outside, for me, can completely change my mood.

My usual route has been completely covered in ice and snow. Sean had been telling me how icy the path has been, as he walks it every day. When I finally took time for myself and walked it, I began the walk by telling myself:
Oh, this is going to be hard.
This is going to take me longer than usual.
Maybe I'll turn back half way.
I don't like this.
I am too cold to walk.

And yes, it felt like all those things.

Then suddenly, once I had began to warm up and get comfortable with my pace, I paused and felt a moment of pure joy. The trail was beautiful. The sun was hitting the snow and making it sparkle. I was alone with just me and the birds chirping. People were sledding. It looked like a Bruegel Painting.

So I bring you back to what I was thinking at first and then what I suddenly realized as I was walking. I felt pure joy of the beauty around me. And when I realized that is what I felt, and what inspired me, my walk completely changed. My entire being changed. I felt lighter and happier. My slower walk helped me enjoy the scenery more. It was easier to walk because my thoughts didn't revolved around the negative but what was positive about this experience.

I will probably share more with you about the power of positive imagery in movement. But for now here is a little exercise you can try right now:

1. Lift your arm up and down.
2. Lift your arm up and think to your self: "My arm feels heavy like lead. I don't like doing this. This is boring."
3. Now lift your arm and think, my arm is as light as a cloud. This feels fluid and easy. My arm is floating up and down. I feel good."

Do you notice any difference?
How can you find a little joy this week?

"Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters and Bird Trap" -Bruegel

Community Golf Course with Sledders -S. Honer

Sitting, why we should do it more, but not on the couch.

This week I heard a great interview with Daniel Lieberman on his new book, Exercised, which is about why humans did not evolve to exercise but nonetheless it is healthy for us to do. The interview is about 30 minutes and he brings up great stuff on movement, why treadmills are kind of weird and not a natural way to walk, sitting and when chairs started to have backs on them and how that is linked to back pain. His years of research is congruent to many of the same concepts I talk to all of you about and what many of my own teachers have taught me.

My two cents on sitting. Dr. Lieberman gives an interesting history on when chair backs became a household item and a point he makes is that in indigenous cultures where he has done research, many of these people sit as long as we might. What he does NOT talk about is HOW these indigenous groups sit and WHAT they sit on. Most likely these people don't have access to our cushy couches and recliners. (In fact, as I write this, I just changed my position from writing on my couch to sitting on the floor with my laptop on the coffee table).

Anyway. HOW you sit for 6-8 hours can significantly affect your body. Seat backs allow us to RELAX out back muscles. Sitting without a seat back makes us USE our back muscles more. (Lieberman does a great explanation of back pain you can hear in the podcast. What I assume about these cultures Lieberman studies in remote parts of the world, is that they are sitting on the ground, maybe with pillows or the like for cushioning. What sitting on the ground does is make us MOVE more. Here in the states, we might sit for 6-8 hours and barely change positions because we are so cushioned and padded in our comfortable chairs. But think about times you have sat on the ground. Do you notice how "fidgety" you get? Sitting on the ground in fact STRENGTHENS our joints and muscles because we have to USE them to sit there and we have use to them to get up and down off the ground.

In his book Muscles and Meridians, Philip Beach writes that "Erecting ourselves from the floor is an essential tonic exercise that is a direct challenge to gravity." Beach writes that we spent our childhood learning to stand up against gravity. In our current lives, with our comfy chairs, our beds, and all the objects where we now find repose, we are only ever about halfway down to the ground. So we lose that extra strength it would have taken us to get up and down off the ground all day long, before these comforts were added to our lives.

Now I am not saying GET RID OF ALL YOUR FURNITURE AND SLEEP ON THE FLOOR! But if you are interested in transition to that type of lifestyle, Katy Bowman and Nutritious Movement have you covered. Much of what she teaches, and what I am trying to say here, is that just getting up out of our chairs, opting for sitting on the ground for a little while (use pillows and blankets and things! Doesn't have to just be sitting on the ground without padding), or practicing getting up and down off the ground (or even just practicing getting up and down from a chair, using the strength in your legs, if the floor seems too intimidating) is essential to keeping our bodies strong. Taking off our shoes, wiggling our toes more so our feet can FEEL the floor can help our entire body get stronger so we can FEEL more underneath us.

It's those little decisions throughout the day that can help us start to feel a little better, and start to help us feel stronger. So this week, if you find yourself sitting for a long time, just simply chose to get up more often, do that stretch you know you need, if the floor is accessible, sit on the floor, with pillows and things for a little while. You don't need to get rid of your furniture. We just have to chose to find new postures throughout our day.

On top of that, I don't want you to feel intimidated or bad about your own choices at home. What I hope we all can do is find ways to move that make us happy and not hurt so much. I hope that our work together can help you continue to do the things that make you happy. And choosing to wiggle around at home is a great way for us to continue to move and stay healthy!

If you want to start a transition to being able to sit on the ground more (and get back up off the ground), I can help you with techniques to get that to happen!

(Ps, now I’m on the floor on my stomach with a pillow, under my hips propped on my elbows typing). ;)

Listen to Podcast HERE