What is Pain?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines pain as,  “An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder.”  Of course, there are many different kinds of pain, physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual.  We will cover each of these individually in an upcoming series, but for the purpose of this article I would like to discuss chronic physical pain.

Chronic pain is one of the most costly and least understood problems in all of medical science.  An estimated 50 million Americans live with chronic pain caused by disease, disorder or accident.

An additional 25 million people suffer acute pain resulting from surgery.  Approximately two thirds of these individuals have been living with this pain for more than five years…

Grow Your Brain Cells

In the wildly popular brain science book called Spark: The revolutionary science of exercise and the brain , we are shown with a neurological map, how exercise directly affects the physical structure of the brain.  Medical doctor and brain researcher John Ratey, MD says,

“In addition to priming our state of mind, exercise influences learning directly, at the cellular level, improving the brain’s potential to log in and process new information.

Darwin taught us that learning is the survival mechanism we use to adapt to constantly changing environments.  Inside the microenvironment of the brain, that means forging new connections between cells to relay information.

When we learn something, whether it’s a French word or salsa step, cells morph in order to encode that information; the memory physically becomes part of the brain…

Emotion (Day 8 exercise)

Noticing the connection between emotions and sensations in the body is a beautiful thing. The image that got stuck in my mind was of time spent planting the “babies” I started from seed in the garden this past Spring. The sensation wasn’t strongly connected to anywhere in my body, it was more a sensation of ease and lightness throughout my body though it was felt in the heart center. This wouldn’t be labeled a blockage though. I would be surprised to find much blockage though since I have spent much time clearing my emotional self through Metta Meditation as well as listening to Tara Brach’s Dharma talks.
This is a exercise many people should spend time with to bring themselves more happiness.

What I’ve Learned so Far

The surprising thing I have learned about my body in the past 5 days is that I am in better shape than I thought I was. Since I don’t tend to do exercise in chunks of 30-60 minutes I thought I would get my bum handed to me. What I have found is my cardiovascular system is excellent even though I am “allergic” to the idea of running or doing traditional cardio workouts. I guess the mini workout bursts during the day that I tend to do up until this program are pretty good. A example is holding plank for a minute three times a day, tossing in some squats and lots of stall work on the ball. I will do this in between my massage or yoga sessions to fit it on my crazy busy days. So tossing in 40 minutes of Body Juggling a day will add to my cardiovascular health I am sure. Loving the awareness Body Juggling brings to my breath and mind when I am on the ball. You must be calm and present and not just going through the motions.
The picture is from the website www.bodyrock.tv where I get a ton of inspiration on fun approaches to movement.

Promises to myself

By the time I finish this program, I want to be in the best shape that I’ve ever been in my life. I think it was an unfortunate realization of just how out of shape I have let myself become when I could barely walk the day after the second session. It was harsh, but it was good… I had used muscles that obviously hadn’t been used in a very long time – if ever in that way. It must have triggered something with my hip also, because with the two combined, all I wanted to do was lay on a heating pad.

I am making a promise that I will push myself harder than I ever have before – I am so incredibly lucky to have the physical ability to do these things, and sometimes I forget that not everyone is that fortunate. I am not going to lie… A huge part of me wants the best outcome to be the improvement of how my body looks – shape up the love handles, tighten the belly, etc. It will be a huge benefit of completing this, but I think just the feeling of accomplishment will be by far the best.

second go round…

SaTek, I apologize for being a little bit behind on this… my hip is feeling much better tonight, so I’m about to start on the third & fourth day sessions.

Cross posted from my page -

The second session made me aware of my physical weaknesses. I pushed myself to work through every step, but even the ones I couldn’t finish, I still did SOMETHING – even if there was only 15-20 seconds left in the workout, I still did crunches on the ball, side lunges, worked on balance, etc until SaTek had completed the step. I think this is the biggest part of why I want to do this – I need to work through all of my physical weaknesses. Not stopping at working through them, but going above and beyond them. Not only physical, but mental weakness can have a huge affect on your outlook. I am a huge believer that whatever energy you put out into this world, you get it back. I am going to start putting out more positive physical energy to the earth, as well as mental energy for myself.

SaTek – I really loved that when you knew the hard parts were happening for us, you’d throw out little words of encouragement. Bringin’ home the bacon… or working off the bacon

My Biggest Challenges

It looks as though I am overcoming the challenges that have stood in my way in the past of finishing tasks. It’s all about ones mindset and having supportive people around you. I am surprised to see that I am preferring a set time each day. Mornings won’t ever happen but 8:30 in the evening is ideal for my lifestyle right now. It is my time to recharge from the day. This way all the things that need to be done during the day have been attended to and I can fully focus on me and the ball.

What is Fitness Anyway?

The study of exercise physiology is to understand how the body responds to the various demands placed on it by exercise and life in general. Even within the health and fitness industries the term “fitness” is not universally defined. For this practice, we define physical fitness as the capacity of the heart, blood vessels, lungs, and muscles to function at a high level of efficiency through out daily life and recreational activities. Are we living life through energetic vitality or are we drudging along from one coffee pot to the next?…

Promises to Myself

Promises to myself during this program.

1. Commit to the daily workout and time on the ball. Good for the body and good for releasing tension from the day.
2. Not to take myself so seriously and not be pissy because I did the workout at a different time each day. I am not a morning person so afternoons/evenings will work far better.
3. Pick books that I will read from front to back and not bounce around. This is because of the fact that I have so many fabulous books and I want to read them all but tend to not have the time to commit so this will get added to the time I have carved out each day for Body Juggling.
4. Get bodywork every other week. This is important because it recharges me and makes the quality of my massages that I give to others far better. Planning ahead is the way to go about this task. Somehow the days pass and all of a sudden I realize that I need a rubdown and forgot to schedule one. I have taken care of this and have the next three already booked and on the appointment book.

Where am I going?

What I would desire to accomplish with this BodyJuggling program is to tone up and shed a few pounds. Also, would like to follow through and stick with something to the end not allowing life to sidetrack me with other projects. There are many demands on my time but this I will follow through with and once this is complete I will move on to another project that is incomplete and create a beautiful habit of completing tasks at hand before starting new ones whether it is home improvement projects or business related projects. They will no longer drain my energy when I glance at them.