5 Simple ways to cleanse negative energy in 5 minutes

Post holiday functions with family can leave us feeling a little discombobulated. Maybe memories arise on a cellular level and we are left remembering things we thought we had let go of.

Or maybe the holidays brought change like a break up and partner moved out of a joint home.

Or maybe you want to leave behind many things in 2012 that were tough and transition into 2013 feeling lighter.

Simple rituals can be an excellent way to set a clear intention with ourselves and the universe that we intend to shed things we don't need anymore or to remove memories or energies from our home or work environments.

Whether any of the things I'm suggesting work in any real way is irrelevant. The intention and desire we put behind our behaviours are what is truly important. By taking time to engage in a structured activity that sets our intentions in motions helps convince us that our intentions will be the truth.

Burning Sage:

Often times people walk into Urbanfitt wondering if someone has been smoking herb but, in fact, it's just the smell of burnt sage. Sage is my go to cleansing tool for work and home. As I burn it I got through all corners of my space and hold positive energy and thoughts in my mind and heart. You can buy sage sticks or loose sage at most health food stores! I love it's earthy smell!

Singing Bowl:

My partner just bought me a stunning singing bowl for Christmas. I've used it at the beginning or end of a meditation or at the end of a training or Reiki session with clients in the past few days and love how the purity of the sound resonates through my own body. When I've used it at home, I feel like the vibration of the sound is kind of like a reboot for the space as well. Not to mention the beauty of the sound making me feel so at peace in the moment.

Crank Hard Core Music

A Shiatsu therapist shared this technique with me. If you just crank heavy metal hard core music, the sound will shake the energy up in a space. Again, like a reboot with sound waves but a bit more aggressive than a singing bowl! I like Rage Against the Machine for this! Add a little crazy dancing around and you have a space filled with new energy! And you have a little fun and get your heart rate up too :)

Repressed Anger workout

Sometimes we are the thing carrying negative energy around. Check out my blog post "Exercising Anger Out of the Body". Taking a slam ball or a set of heavy ropes and pounding them can help release negative energy into the earth and help you let it out of the body!

Epsom salts bath

We can unconsciously absorb other people's shit without even knowing we did until a moment of stillness and we wonder why we aren't feeling that great after spending time with someone. A great way to cleanse toxicity that we hold onto physically on a cellular level in our tissues is the good old Epsom salts bath. Although this isn't my cleansing method of choice, many people swear by this technique and even just 5 minutes can help!

"In hydrotherapy, a hot Epsom Salts Bath is called a Cleansing Bath because it assists in speeding the removal of waste products from the soft tissues and cleanses the tissues of these irritants. It is a rather simple process, whereby the Epsom Salts make the water hypertonic - that is to say, there is a greater concentration of solute in the bath water than in your body. When you soak in this bath, it has the effect of drawing the waste products out of your tissues - it speeds the removal of irritating waste products from your body. Essentially, it makes you sweat , and sweating is one of the main ways the body gets rid of waste products."

Read more.

Just remember, our intentions hold more power than anything and cementing our intentions with some type of action or ritual is very powerful regardless of your spirituality or belief system! All the best for starting 2013 with more light and peace. Happy 2013!

Rehab for people who rush

This holiday season I ran into a couple people I hadn't seen in a while. My
interactions with them reminded me of how far I've come to rehabbing my rushing around do do do mentality. One person had mentioned how I hadn't been around as much, out and about (insert Canadain accent). She chalked it up to me being in a new relationship the past 18 months.

And I realized that me not being out and about as much had to do much more with me learning to spend more time slowing down. I think I CREATED this on-the-go reality so that I could avoid a deeper more quiet part of myself where I can observe my thoughts, attitudes and things that might be keeping me stuck. I know that I was overly busy in the past because I wanted to avoid a painful sense of loneliness when my daughter was with her dad. Or avoid the fear of being without family in a big city with no safety net to catch me if I fell as a business owner. I also didn't like spending too much time alone at home with a child and to get her out with other people socializing. I was afraid I wasn't really enough for her.

Now, I stay in when I'm tired. I cook more meals at home and actually enjoy doing so. I don't over schedule myself socially. I'm scheduling fewer clients in and letting go of work commitments that under pay me or aren't aligned with my core values.

But this change is in sharp contrast to the way I've been living my life for years. In fact, I still fight with sometimes nagging guilt that I should be doing more, find ways to be more productive or even keep trying to grow my vision for a bigger business. I think I might be fighting the fear that my world will fall apart if I'm not doing a lot to make sure everything will keep being ok.

I can tell you that now that I've slowed down a bit with much more to shift in this direction, I have a lot of rehabbing my body and mind. Old habits die hard. I can feel that my body needs time to restore it's energetic stores, that I need to learn to take on less emotionally from other people and that I'm actually a way more chilled out person than I used to believe.

Last night, I cooked a turkey dinner for 12 and it was awesome or so they all said :). I prepped a lot the day before so that I wouldn't have to be stressed the day so that all the dishes were timed just right and all the food was hot when placed on the table and not overcooked etc.

It's come to be my understanding that the more gaps I leave in my schedule, the more I have time to prep for things coming instead of always trying to catch up. I realized that to live a life that doesn't require a lot of rushing around, it takes time. We have to prepare for living life this way. Sound contradictory? I don't think so. I'm just getting better at not expecting so much of myself all the time. Sometimes people don't really get how to interface with this newish attitude.

We live in a world where the current to always be 'doing' something can sweep us up and take us away further from our true natures.
Now when I spend time with loved ones who are still caught up in rushing through life and aren't desirous of a different way of being that is more present, it's starting to feel incongruous.

“Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something.” – Carl G. Jung

What's the right type of exercise for you?

Very simply, the right type of exercise for you is the type that you want to repeat.

People spend a lot of time talking about the new hottest fitness trend that is the newest best way to get fit fast.

But the reality is that trends don't really matter in the big picture because people are most likely to repeat something they enjoy either during or after.

We all have very different reasons for liking different types of exercise and no one can really tell you what's best for you.

I can advise clients as to what type of exercise is most likely to help them achieve their goals. Achieving goals can be very motivating for sure. But unless you get more from your exercise than just fitness, then you aren't likely to stick with it.

When I work with clients, I always try to make a compromise between what people like and what I think is best for their bodies. Most of the time, these two things intersect!

Whatever brings you joy and peace during or after a workout is normally an excellent sign that you're on the right track. Sometimes even just an environment can be the determinant of this joy and peace.

So follow your inner guru and do what you love to do because you're most likely to feel great and get fit repeating repeating repeating and staying consistent with some type of movement.

Possible reasons why you can't get 'unstuck'

We teach what we need to learn. So this post comes from a humble place of knowing how hard it can be to get unstuck in different areas in our lives. My work has been about helping people get unstuck when it comes to exercise and self-care. My personal work has been about learning to let go of the past and replace negative coping strategies with more positive ones that are true to who I truly am.

Today in my master level of Reiki training, we talked a bit about why some people can make shifts when we work on them and why others can't. Some people seem more stuck then others. And in some areas of my own life, I feel more stuck then others.

But what I realize is that when we get so focused on our struggles and less focused on building a true sense of who we really are, we can start BECOMING our struggles. Our identities become intertwined with what our struggles have been.

We can become a number of things that we can confuse with our true essence. Our pain and our struggles are NOT who we are. They are what have shaped us, helped us grow or made us feel pain and suffering but they are not who we truly are. We each have our unique essence and gifts we come into this world with that will always be a part of us. And we can use the things that have happened in our lives to either break us and define us or to help us learn about who we really are: our strengths, our ability to overcome, our ability to love and feel compassion for self and others.

We can start to refer to ourselves with labels that can confuse this fact. I know all too well!

We can start defining ourselves by what we have survived instead. We can let our suffering start to become our identity instead of experiences we have gone through.

In doing so, we don't stay open to the possibilities that something is truly behind us. We keep ourselves stuck in defining our identity based on these struggles. We are so much more than that, each of us. We are capable of so much love and the human spirit is so strong that we don't need these experiences to become who we are. I don't negate the need to heal from these experiences and to face them head on, but I think it's important to let go when it's time to let go.

THE TRICKY PART IS THAT IF WE'VE LET OUR SELF IDENTITY BECOME WHAT OUR TRAUMA OR STRUGGLES HAVE BEEN, THEN WE CAN UNCONSCIOUSLY FEAR THAT WE WILL BE LEFT WITH NO SELF IDENTITY AT ALL. WITHOUT OUR STRUGGLES FILLING THE SPACE WHERE A TRUE SELF IDENTITY SHOULD BE, WE MIGHT BE AFRAID OF BEING LEFT NOT KNOWING HOW TO DEFINE OURSELVES.

If you are stuck thinking you are someone who struggles with weight and always has, you might be locking yourself into the belief that this is indeed who you are instead of realizing that the experiences that drove you to overeat no longer exist.

If you are stuck thinking that you are a workaholic that can't find time to take care of yourself, then this will always be the truth until you realize that this has just been a coping strategy or unhealthy choice that is not you, but merely a behaviour.

If you believe you are damaged from your inadequate parenting or from suffering abuse, you don't leave the possibility that this is what happened to you and that you are not in fact doomed to be damaged the rest of your life.

I could go on and on.

Peace to everyone who needs help letting go and getting unstuck. I'm sure everyone can relate to this feeling. Believe you are more than what has happened to you!

The sure fire way to gain weight over the holidays

I would say that manifesting something we really don't want in our lives is really about becoming unconscious, falling asleep at the wheel, dialing down our self-awareness and letting negative coping behaviours replace healthier ones.

Gaining weight over the holidays isn't really about how much food there is around. It's about using the holidays as an excuse to throw self-care out the window. Often times, people drop any fitness routines they might have in place and sometimes even overeat to the point of self-disgust.

Why?

Yes it's a busier time of year for many people but that would imply we have less time to put stuff in our mouths. The real issue is that we have been programmed to think the holidays are a beautiful time filled with joy, abundance, meaningful time with family and friends. And when we are faced with the truth that the holidays can often be a complicated or mixed emotional time for anyone with inadequate parenting or living in complicated family make ups or even with teenagers in the house, we reach for some type of comfort.

I'm not saying this is the case for everyone but I've generally found that people who turn to food for comfort are using food as a tool to repress something. For those who had wonderful childhoods and just like to overeat over the holidays, this blog post might not be for you. Unless of course, you haven't embraced the fact that no one's life is without struggle and no childhood is 'perfect'.

Like many of you, I have very mixed memories of Christmas. Some wonderful and some not so wonderful. I remember noticing that my parents became particularly more stressed over the holidays and there were more emotional outbursts which I didn't really 'get' as a child. It's like Christmas can bring back to life these times in my childhood.

When routines are thrown out the window, it can be more difficult trying to stay on track with what is truly important to us like perhaps not gaining weight again over the holidays.

But I do think we can practice getting better at taking really good care of ourselves despite the holidays!

We can enjoy treats but not to excess. We can rejoice in the abundance of food and drink but we need to know when we start using these two things like any other addictive substance.

So if you don't want to gain weight over the holidays, try to stay wide awake! In so doing, we can enjoy the joyful moment more fully and let those emotions fill us up and we can also face any memories that need a more objective view, from a place of self-compassion and love.

Maybe this is the time in your life you can start with those few minutes of daily meditation you've been meaning to do. Those few minutes can go a long way into keeping you conscious!

Changing your self-improvement paradigm

For most of my adult life, I've equated moving forward in my life with taking action. I always thought that if I was taking action of some sort to improve my life, then chances were that things were going to get better all the time. As I live through more life experience, I see that this isn't always the case.

I'm an action oriented person and find it hard to procrastinate or, as I like to see it now, fight an impulse to be the way I've always been hummingbird like in my energy.

The whole paradigm of thinking we should always be focused on improving ourselves and moving forward can in fact take us in the exact opposite direction because we are losing site of the bigger picture. Self improvement may start feeling like another 'job' instead of a joy and nothing inside of us has really shifted. We might even approach self-improvement with the same type A mentality that got us into trouble in the first place.

One thing I've noticed about people who find it hard to fit in self-care including regular exercise are in a state of constant busy-ness. They are so busy doing something that they don't even notice the proverbial hamster wheel they are on. They are in the constant state of having to do something that they build blinders that stop them from having any perspective and take them away from experiencing the beauty in life as it happens.

For example, "I'm in a constant state of doing but is this even the way I want my life to be?"

Or, "I'm so busy all the time, am I even experiencing my life as it unfolds or am I waiting to start experience all the riches in life until a later date when I'm not so busy?"

The tragedy of it all is that life is so fragile. We don't know when it will be our time to go. And we all will have regrets. But right at this moment we can start to live like we have a short time to live and this will make us slow down, taste our food, snuggle our kids, love our loved ones even more and make time for precious friends.

And I've noticed that this busy-ness approach to life extends into most people's paradigms about self improvement. We can get really busy trying to make ourselves better or create new opportunities or get fit or whatever it is we think we should do to improve our lives.

What I've found (and I'm not suggesting I've mastered it at all!) is that the more I find ways to slow down, stop rushing everywhere and focus on the fact I've got a finite amount of time on this planet, I am making more progress in improving my life than I ever have before in the same amount of time.

If we don't make space for new things in our lives because our lives are just so jammed, then the universe can't send it to us. If we don't have any time to let new thoughts or realizations into our beings, then we will stay stuck in our never ending hamster wheel.

Authenticity with self and others: how to start making changes within to manifest changes in our bodies

Without knowing and accepting where we are now, it's very hard to start shifting our states. Sometimes this means accepting our imperfect selves as we are at any given moment. Trying to deny pain, struggle and disappointment with our life circumstances or our internal worlds will stifle true lasting change. How do you know where you're going if you don't know where you're starting point is?

In order to move forward, we need to be brutally honest with ourselves about where we are right now.

No glossing over of anything.

I try to create an environment at Urbanfitt where people can just be. Either feeling like shite or feeling stuck or frustrated or exhausted or whatever it may be. Too much of our lives are spent denying how we truly are feeling and this creates a state of tension in us. Getting to a state of relaxation and peace means letting go of resistance of the way we are in the moment. We can strengthen our ability to be authentic with ourselves in small ways every day.

For example, how many times has someone asked you how you're doing and you straight out lie about having a shitty day or week or struggling with relationship challenges or your kids etc. This denial or lie moves you away from the possibility for transforming your current state.

So often, people come in for a training session or now Reiki session feeling low energy or stuck or blah. When they admit how they are truly feeling we have our starting point. We can decide together what might help move them from this state into a more energetically elevated state. But if my clients pretended that they were feeling great or even ok when they weren't, a barrier or defense would go up in them turning them into a fortress of protected energy.

We are better prepared to find strategies or choose behaviours to help ourselves shift into a more positive state when we fully embrace where we currently are. Not always an easy thing to do when we are just trying to get everything we need to get done in a day.

But our chosen actions that arise out of being authentic with ourselves will be a more specific 'treatment' so to speak to move us out of low vibration.

So next time someone who truly cares about you asks how you're doing, keep it real. Together in our interdependence we can help each other feel better.

The more we practice this authenticity with ourselves, the more we learn to give our bodies and beings what they need to get into a more positive space. Over time, the more we learn to feed our bodies with what they authentically need, the less we will tend to struggle with obesity, illness and just plain blahs.

Repairing holes in our containers

As we mature emotionally, train to build Chi, and learn to listen to our inner most truths, we can strengthen our containers, that is, our ability to handle a lot of different stuff in a centered and healthy way.

But there are times when anyone can feel like they are leaking out energy. Little things that normally wouldn't annoy us affect us more. We can find there are days we are more emotionally reactive and then create more suffering for ourselves as a result. It's like we have a hole in our container. Our ability to hold and deal with all the things life throws at us feels impaired.

I see many clients on days like this, when they are just trying to get through the day, get everything they need to get done done and are like raw nerves.

We are energetically depleted on these days and need to find some immediate tools for repairing our containers so we don't make things that might be hard even harder. But should we exercise on these days?

Yes!

But instead of working out in a traditional way, we need to use movement like medicine to repair the leak in our energetic field and for those of you who don't buy into this energy stuff, you can look at it as getting back into physical and emotional balance.

When we feel more vulnerable, exercise or movement that leaves us more depleted creates more leakage and less balance.

My advice to help repair?

Start your workout with joint mobility exercises that let you feel where you might be unusually tight particularly in the upper body shoulder neck area. Use this time to bring your breath down into your belly and start tuning in to your being with deep breathing.

Pick a first exercise that forces you to balance and centre your energy. BOSU standing exercises, yoga balance postures, anything that forces you to come into the present and find your balance. If you can't find your balance when you normally can even after trying for a few minutes, then you should do a more restorative workout for that day. Take it easy. Work on core, postural, prehab, rehab exercises.

If you can easily find your balance, then standing full body compound exercises that require keen concentration and coordination are a great way to build chi and balance your energy. For example, walking lunges with overhead press, reverse lunges with a wood chop, cable rotational exercises, single leg deadlifts. You get the drift.

Whatever you choose to do, you should observe your energy while working out. If you feel a lightness and buoyant feeling overcoming you, you're on the right track! If you feel more exhausted and spaced out, then ease up and come back to your breathing, get yourself grounded again.

Finish your workout with your go-to restorative things like rolling, stretching etc. and then maybe try a 3 minute grounding meditation. Sit cross legged or in a chair and place your hands face down on your legs. Feel yourself sinking into the earth, feel gravity holding you there. For a few minutes, just feel your connection to earth.

So when you feel you have a leaky container, movement can be the best medicine for repairing a leak. But don't do exercise that allows you to tune out or turn your brain off. No auto-pilot exercise.

The difference between fitness for health vs. fitness for vanity

Can't say I've ever wanted to work in a studio that focuses on marketing their services towards making people look better above anything else, where the culture of the place is lacking in true substance. Although I've been guilty of trying to tap into this market at more desperate times with slogans like "want to look good naked", I found such practice always led me away from my true purpose.

The difference between fitness for health vs. fitness for vanity is pretty simple:

In training for health, we use exercise like medicine. We exercise in a way on any given day with a flexible approach so that we are giving our bodies exactly what they need in the moment. Exercise is not depleting and works to make our immune systems stronger, our sleep better quality, calms our nervous system and helps us also find a state of relaxation and peace of mind. We expect to feel energized after a workout, not like crashing on a couch. We look at exercise as a way to build chi, not a way to look better. If we have the energy to push ourselves harder than usual and our intuition is pointing us in this direction we go for it. If we feel depleted and our body feels leaden and heavier than usual, we let go of plans for an intense workout and work in a more restorative way. And in so doing, we will improve our vitality which will improve the way we look in the end anyway. It's easier to stay the course when choosing to focus on health because their is no end goal. It is a way of being. Focusing on physical appearance while ignoring the spiritual and emotional issues we struggle with is not about health and is dysfunctional.

In training for vanity we set goals based on an external appearance. A certain size waist, bicep circumference, dress size. The underlying focus is that "life will be better when I achieve these goals". I find that people who pursue fitness from this perspective don't stay the course because they aren't moving in a conscious way in alignment with their deepest selves. There's a shorter term end goal. Once someone achieves this goal, then what? Will they ever be happy with the way they look? Or will there be something else to work on. We might find ourselves ignoring signals from our bodies to tell us to change course. Injuries, over training, constant colds or illnesses might hit us but we ignore our body telling us we aren't helping it and instead, stay they course with an original plan that isn't actually making us healthier. The typical way men train for vanity is in overdoing chest work to compromise upper body structural balance possibly leading to shoulder injury. The typical way women train for vanity is in avoiding muscle building activities or going on heavily restrictive diets that are nutritionally insufficient. I could name a plethora of fitness gurus who tap into people's desire for this type of fitness but will bite my tongue.

So just some thoughts I thought I'd share. I've been in both camps and have decided to choose the first option for both myself, for the type of messaging I want to put out into the universe and for the way I want to work with my clients.

Daylight savings reboot with Philips Light Therapy Products and a free yoga class!

I am a strong believer in the wellness benefits of using light therapy products. Heck I even hosted this same event last year and am a spokesperson for Philips Light Therapy products. So when they asked me to attend this event and be available to talk to people about how I think light therapy fits into a healthy lifestyle, I said fo sho!

A fitness pro named Brent Bishop is running a free yoga class this Monday at 8am at 225 King Street West in the lower level of the Metro Centre (Media is invited at 7am - 9am).

You can win great fitness related gifts including a light therapy product. Light breakfast if provided too. Plus every act of fitness and health love you engage in helps solidifies your commitment to turning a new leaf or just staying the course towards vitality!


Daylight savings can throw off our internal clocks. Philips Vitalight invites you to attend a free yoga fitness class to get your internal clock back on track. Fitness guru Brent Bishop will lead the 30 minute class perfect for all ages.

Yoga mat and water bottle available for first 50 attendees, prizes to be won and complimentary light breakfast available!


WHY: Daylight savings can be difficult to adjust to. Including light therapy and a healthy lifestyle can help improve general well-being.

To confirm attendance RSVP to RSVP@onevoiceteam.com.

Please feel free to share invite through your networks.

You're sick? When and how you should work out

This week I've been fighting off a cold. It started in my sinuses and moved to my chest. In the past, I would have worked out regardless and have possibly prolonged my sickness. You see, working out can be a bit of a compulsion for many fitness pros regardless of the impact on our health and wellness. I've learned over the years and much experience with my health that sometimes staying well means doing less and engaging in restorative activities. After all, the fastest way to get out of shape is to get seriously injured or sick. The best thing we can do when trying to get over a cold or flu is to give our immune system what it needs to repair our bodies.

So here are my rules for working out when you're sick.

DON'T Workout at all and ONLY stretch, meditate and use a physio roll to release tension if:

1) You have a fever. You're at the height of your body's fight and contagious!

2) Have a chest infection that requires medication
3) Are sick and seriously sleep deprived
4) Are at all barfy from a stomach virus.
5) Have a sinus infection and pain in your sinuses.

IF YOU HAVE A SMALL COLD ABOVE THE NECK ONLY AND YOU'RE NOT REALLY SNOTTY:

1) Go easy on cardio and only get your heart rate up to an endurance pace.
2) Don't do activities that make you sweat heavily or run out of breath.
3) Don't lift heavy weights or do challenging full body exercises that make your heart work hard.
4) Do strength work that is focused on alignment and smaller core or postural muscles.
5) Yoga is fine too if it's low key, not macho at all. Use child's pose whenever you feel tapped out energetically.
6) Pilates work that doesn't shoot your heart rate into anaerobic zone (i.e. out of breath) is fine too.

If it's the first two days of a sickness, take it really easy and rest. Anyone can stretch and roll on a physio roller even if you're sick so don't stop moving all together. You might be able to fight off a virus early with rest, rest and more rest. You don't know what you're dealing with yet. Going to a gym to spread God knows what germs you're fighting can get lots of other people sick. Taking a couple days off of working out if you're regularly hitting your workouts can be a great thing. If you're training regularly and getting sick often, you might be missing the big picture. It's easy to get into over training mode when you're not well rested, well fed and dealing with adrenal fatigue.

The biggest thing when fighting off a virus is to workout in a way that gives you energy (builds chi) and doesn't leave you feeling depleted. Your focus should be on sleep hygiene and healthy food and hydration. If you're really sick and can't seem to take time off working out, time to look at if you're really working out for health or if it's an unhealthy obsession!

ELDOA and myofascial stretching - a new way to heal back pain

Years ago, I had a trainer come working for me who introduced me to ELDOA (Longitudinal Osteoarticular Decoaptation Stretches, is taken from the French Etirements Longitudinaux avec Decoaptation Osteo-Articulaire). He offered an ELDOA workshop at Urbanfitt years ago. Since then, I've been including myofascial stretching in my training and added to my knowledge of myofascial stretching in the Fascial Stretch Therapy I became certified in.

Then the next time I heard about ELDOA again was last week when a trainer I share space with had learned some stretches from his Osteopath. Then I also heard about an ELDOA class a friend signed up for at Sphinx Pilates on College Street offered by a very skilled instructor, Petra. I thought it was time to write a bit about it since it seems to be taking off as a new more mainstream trend in back health.

ELDOA was developed by a french Osteopath named Guy Voyer. Although Guy Voyer is known internationally for his osteopathic expertise, he considers himself first and foremost a trainer who wants to pass on his skills to the next generation.

Guy developed an ELDOA exercise for every articulation in the spine starting at the base of the skull and ending with the sacro-illiac joint. Disc compression existing at any level of the spine can be addressed through a specific ELDOA exercise.

The goal of each ELDOA exercise is to create fascial tension above and below the joint or disc that one is trying to "open up" or decompress.

The benefits include:

Reduced vertebral compression
Improved circulation
Spinal disc re-hydration
Increased muscle tone and awareness

Disc hydration is an important and misunderstood factor in spinal health. Our discs are like sponges; when the area is properly hydrated and the discs are not compressed they draw water in. This hydration is necessary to maintain the suppleness that is present in a healthy disc. If the disc is dehydrated and compressed it will dry out and become brittle. It is in this state that nerve compression and inflammation are more likely to occur.
http://koupstrength.com/ELDOA.htm

Why should you consider it? If you're finding that your back problems aren't going away despite concerted efforts to heal, then maybe ELDOA will be your answer. Most osteopaths are focused on fascia in their healing process. Don't resign yourself to back pain and instead, maybe try seeking out alternative care you haven't yet tried.

Exercising anger out of the body

There are many occasions when we experience anger and can't express it to the person that triggered it in us. Or maybe we are angry at ourselves and don't know how to deal with this energy. Many people don't believe anger is an actual emotion and much more a bi-product of another (i.e. hurt, pain) but regardless, the energy of anger is VERY real and if left to fester in our bodies and minds, can lead to extreme toxicity.

Perhaps anger IS pointing to something deeper and it's important to acknowledge anger when we feel it because it can provide clues for something deeper going on. In suggesting we find a way to exercise it out of our bodies, I by no means suggest dismissing it or infer that it's a bad thing unto itself. I only think anger repressed is toxic because it's low vibrational dense energy that can make us sick in the long run if we DON'T deal with it.

One way to start releasing anger so that we can get to the deeper meaning behind it is to use movement to get it the fook out of our physical beings. By getting it out of our physical beings, we have a better opportunity to access our higher selves in dealing with the root cause of the anger. Staying stuck in anger can be the start of dis-ease.

Many alternative health practitioners believe that stuck, overly active, dense energy is the beginning of physical illness. Stuck energy can block the flow of healthy high vibrational energy, slow blood flow to an area and keep us from transcending an emotional or spiritual deficit.

So what to do?

Engage in Yang type exercise that releases the trapped energy.

This week, I had a client come in who didn't even know that her emotional disturbance that day was anger until we chatted for a few minutes. Then as I discovered that she was freakin' pissed about something that struck at the chord of her value system, I started getting her to do things that would challenge her to release the anger.

I got her throwing a 20lbs sandbag across the room, pounding the ground with heavy ropes, kneeing a stability ball, all done in quick succession. By the time we went through these exercises a few times, she was able to talk about why what happened was so hurtful to her.

After a calming fasical stretch, deep breathing, mysofascial release, she left laughing and lit up like the divine spirit she is.

So when you want to try releasing anger:
1) Choose big explosive exercises that use your whole body and make you want to grunt to get 'em done.
2) Put your all into what you're doing (safely) by not holding back effort.
3) If you're a runner pound the ground by doing some hard core sprints to get the shit out.
4) Try throwing something heavy (not at anyone of course) and yell if you need to while you do it. This can provide a cathartic release.

Or come see me and I'll show you how to do it!

NEW! Chi Strength Small Group Class

CHI STRENGTH: Muscle and energy strength and healing class

Jane brings her years of experience as a fitness expert together with her training in Reiki to offer a 6 week pre-registered strength training and energy healing class where you will focus on building deep strength in muscles surrounding important energetic centres in the body. Learn how to tune into your physical and energetic body, build lasting supported vital strength and access your inner wisdom through increased physical awareness.

Tuesdays at 12-1 starting Oct 23rd

$149 for 6 classes

Max 4 people

When addiction to exercise turns ugly

Sometimes more is just not better when it comes to exercise. Although, the majority of people in Canada barely get enough exercise to sustain optimal health, there is a small portion of the population that takes fitness too far to the point of harming themselves.

These people have a disorder of sorts. Either it's an eating disorder coupled with an exercise compulsion. Over exercise when coupled with an eating disorder becomes about something completely apart from health.

Then there are the people who can't stop themselves from over training despite the effects on their joints or overall health. To me, I wonder what are these people running from.

Having spent much of my adulthood immersed in an industry apparently promoting health, I have come to find that many fitness professionals suffer from exercise compulsion to the point of over training. I know this first hand. I have been engaged in a cycle of over exercise at different points in the my life thinking that clocking more time sweating somehow equated to being more fit all the while missing the big picture. In my late teens I was also in a less severe but not healthy cycle of severely limiting my calories while clocking over 2 hours of exercise a day. This behaviour, I can attest, was not about health.

People who have an unhealthy addiction to exercise (these are some signs, not hard and fast rules):

1) will exercise despite injury only to do more harm

2) will push themselves during workouts despite illness or fatigue

3) see themselves as more productive than most people who are less active

4) feel very very guilty to the point of distraction for taking time off of working out

5) are afraid they'll gain weight if they miss a couple workouts

6) potentially suffer body dismorphic disorder, seeing an entirely different body in the mirror than actually exists

7) severely restrict calories or binge eat and feel a need to 'work off the calories' from a binge

8) don't see the need to focus on restorative activities in order to maintain health

9) sometimes can't concentrate on other things because he or she is always thinking about exercise

10) skip special events and activities in order to exercise

11) find it difficult to exercise with other people in order to not disrupt routines

And I feel for people stuck in this cycle because society rewards people in this situation because they might seem to have it more together. Yhey are so 'disciplined', often look fit yet they suffer in silence because like any other addiction, they are using exercise to chase away pain.

Like any other addiction, people who are ignoring their health and exercising out of a compulsion need to get help in facing their demons.

There is hope to find balance, to find a way to use exercise to enhance health and vitality and to embark on a new chapter of healing, rest and peace.

My heart goes out to anyone reading this who can't seem to stop. I understand where you are. Your compulsion is occupying too much of your life and thoughts. You deserve to heal.

Peace.
Jane

First step in weightloss - get rid of the shit

Today I saw a client who said "I know I haven't lost that much weight but I feel lighter inside." We started talking about how she felt about what's she's experiencing and it became clear to me that the work we were doing together was helping her get unstuck. When she came to me a month ago, it was clear to me she had lost her MOJO, her sense of vitality. She's in her mid 50s and she works hard as an accountant. Her career has taken front stage in her life for many years while she single handedly raised her two daughters. She told me that she had to make sure her daughters knew she could handle anything like a super hero single mama. They've both left home and now she was spending more time alone with herself. She wanted to feel better like most of us would like to feel in some way shape or form.

Although she hasn't been attuned to the energy in her body, she knew it was time to make a permanent change. She's spent much of her life on yoyo diets gaining up to 40 lbs a year and then successfully losing weight only to put it back on again. She sought me out because she wanted to find a way to stop this cycle.

It is true that 80% of weight loss is about what you put in your mouth. And it is also true that diets will work if followed to a T. Another truth? Most people who struggle with weight use food for comfort or as a way to stuff emotions down. Eating is a joyous experience in many ways when approached with a healthy attitude towards what we put in our mouth. Sometimes approaching a change like weight loss can leave us feeling stuck. The normal go to strategy is an extreme and short lived change. My approach in working with people is to stop a life long cycle that leaves people feeling like they have failed themselves when they gain the weight back.

What I love seeing in my clients is the life and hope back in their eyes. It's like an awakening when people start moving in a way that is personally designed to give their bodies just what it needs, starting where they are and respecting the change process that needs to evolve in a individual way for them.

My assessment of Sarah's experience feeling lighter? We have effectively moved dense dark energy out of her body and helped remove energetic blockages she has stored up over time from the cycle she has been stuck in. I've been practicing Reiki with her, using fascial stretch therapy and some myofascial release to work on her scar tissue catalogued into her body due to stress and repressed emotions in addition to working her butt off having fun and sweating her 'shit' out. It's so much more than just working out and watching what you eat if you want to make lasting change and feel more present in our lives. We've got to get the blocks out of our bodies both energetically and in our tissues.

She has changed her negative self talk and instead replaced it with a patient voice that tells her it's ok not to get this process 'right' every moment of every day. She has learned to look at her weightloss in a different way and sees this current experience as the start of something new, something healing and something very permanent. There is no finish line in her mind any more. But instead she sees this as a new way of approaching healing her past dieting experiencing with increased awareness, self compassion and self love.

Today is the kind of day that makes me feel so grateful to be doing what I'm doing. Feeling vital again does leave us with a feeling of being lighter, more buoyant and hopeful. It's taken me years of doing what I do and years of working with my own energy to really 'get it'. I know I have more to learn and always will!

My advice to anyone who's been stuck on the yoyo weight gain weight loss cycle? Try a different approach that focuses on healing your relationship with food and with your body but also taking a closer look at what role coping mechanisms have played in your life and that you probably don't need them the way you did in the past.

Top six reasons to sit still every day

About ten years ago I hired a life coach to help me maximize my life and with the idea that I wanted to achieve more. We did remote phone coaching as he was based on Vancouver. He gave me some homework. Actually, it was like the opposite of homework to me at the time and I just didn't get it. In fact, I cuffawed it.

My homework was to sit still on a park bench every day for ten minutes and do nothing.

At the time I was thinking "I'm so busy. Why would I want to do nothing? What exactly am I going to accomplish sitting on a park bench?".

It took me almost ten years to really really really understand the value of the homework I was given. And sadly, I can say I missed a lot of beauty in the last ten years that passed me by in my addiction to being busy (and my need to be busy to 'survive'). I was caught in the idea that being productive and efficient and ambitious was what was going to make my life better. I learned a lot over the last ten years but I also wish I could have taken a bit more of a short cut to get to this point. I might have found value in the simpler things that passed me by. One thing I know is that my daughter only has one childhood. I wish I go back and experience her younger years with the awareness I have now.

When I say sitting still every day I don't mean sitting at your computer on Facebook or sitting in front of the TV. I mean sitting still in quiet filled with a sense of calm and peace. This might mean mindful meditation to some people. This is what it means to me. And I'm not saying that I'm sooooo great at sitting still. It is a constant struggle for me to make the time but, finally, I need this stillness and peace in my spirit like I need water.

I'm not trying to get all Eckhart Tolle on you. I just think hearing from a fitness 'pro' about the need for stillness carries more weight than coming from some other people because fitness people are the doers, the movers, the people who buzz like humming birds and need motion to get back to stasis. We are the more wound up ones who like pushing ourselves physically more than most people. So after my long history working in this kooky industry of mine, I have journeyed a vast distance to get to where I am now.

Some people think they are mastering this stillness thing too. But sometimes we can even approach this simple task of getting better at stillness with the energy of a type A personality. Go to a packed yoga class and check everyone out. See who is there for the stillness and peace and who is there because it's another should on a long list of shoulds. Normally the chatty ones that buzz at the beginning of class are the type As in disguise. So beware of turning this mastering of stillness into yet another thing on your long check list of what will make you a better person and instead let yourself let go.

These are my top six reasons for sitting still every day:

1) After a long period of stress and sleep issues, I have suffered from adrenal fatigue to varying degrees for years. Calming the nervous system with activities that promote a sense of being grounded and peaceful are a very important part of healing the adrenals.

2) I can't listen to myself if I'm always distracted. Sitting still every day lets me hear what my wisdom wants to tell me. I can't run away from myself. You can tune into what your body needs to be in balance with this stillness too. Listen up. Your body is always talking to you.

3) We can start experiencing our true essence in this still place and might start to shift our consciousness by tuning into the present. We might even find it more possible to tune into the present in the rest of our lives gradually as we practice more stillness. This translates into more enjoyment of the smallest things that matter the most in life.

4) Sitting in stillness allows new creative ideas to come in. It creates space for new energy to enter into our beings.

5) Creating stillness in us also balances out our culture's constant focus on productivity and helps us not get swept in in the tidal wave of busy-ness that surrounds us. It's a way to stay disciplined from getting caught up in the current.

6) If you are on your own hamster wheel and don't know how to get off, the only place to start is with a little change every day. If you only have 5 minutes to sit still every day, it's a start towards a larger transformation. You don't need to do a complete facelift to set change in motion.

Nobody likes homework but...

I see many clients who suffer from chronic back pain, joint pain or have other injuries that require a lot of TLC. The funny thing is that most people would rather find a way to pay someone else take care of their issues through passive treatment AKA chiropractor, massage therapist, whomever instead of realizing that to see benefit from said treatment, they need to do lots of their own homework.

It never fails to frustrate me when someone comes in for a session and almost every time complains about the same thing over and over and over again without actually taking my advice or doing something about it. Plus it's totally unrealistic to expect 1 to 2 hours per week of strength training and mobility work to 'cure' long festering issues.

Sometimes, it is clear to me that someone's core is imbalanced and their posture all off. When I'm unsure, I always send clients to someone qualified to tell me what's up exactly. The homework I give people is very simple and can do no harm to them. Perhaps of set of 3 core training exercises to start coupled with a couple stretches and maybe a bit of self massage on a physio roller. I'm not unrealistic about what is doable in terms of fitting fitness in. I get it. I'm not expecting people restructure their day in order to take care of themselves. Thus the KISS principle.

Recently, I had to stop working with a client because her pain was getting worse and she wasn't going to get a diagnosis or treatment and not doing any regular and sound core training homework. It saddened me greatly because I get too invested in affecting change in people. It's like a reflex I can't seem to shut off even in my private life. This impulse to help. Sometimes I just can't help my clients either perhaps because they don't buy into my advice or because they don't have the will to help themselves. Because if people really believe something is going to make their lives better, they will generally tend to do it (there are exceptions to the rule I know). So my personal work is to stop trying so hard all the time and let people go on their own journeys.

Sometimes the really shitty part is that people will blame me for repetitive strain injuries even when I've warned them they need to get a diagnosis, treatment or do simple things to prevent issues from getting worse. But somehow the 1 hour a week or maybe two they spend with me has been the cause of their repetitive strain injury.

So sometimes I have to cut people loose when I realize I might be the fall guy. And it sucks because it's my reputation. But at the very least, us personal trainers can't do harm to our clients. As a basic principle in life, we should aim to not do harm to others.

So next time something goes awry in your life, including something with your body, maybe it's time to look in the mirror and see who needs to take responsibility.

Now for a little workout to pick up my dampened spirits.

Jane

The Link Between Emotional Challenges and Chronic Pain

I've become more and more interested in somatization as I try to unravel people's physical issues. Before I continue, here's a bit more info.

Somatization disorder is a long-term (chronic) condition in which a person has physical symptoms that involve more than one part of the body, but no physical cause can be found.

The pain and other symptoms people with this disorder feel are real, and are not created or faked on purpose (malingering).
Causes

The disorder usually begins before age 30 and occurs more often in women than in men. The disorder is more common in people with irritable bowel syndrome and chronic pain.

In the past, this disorder was thought to be related to emotional stress. The pain was dismissed as being "all in their head."

However, patients who have a somatization disorder seem to experience pain or other symptoms in a way that increases the level of pain. Pain and worry create a cycle that is hard to break.

People who have a history of physical or sexual abuse are more likely to have this disorder. However, not every person with a somatization disorder has a history of abuse.

As researchers study the connections between the brain and body, there is more evidence that emotional well-being affects the way in which people perceive pain and other symptoms.

In my limited sample size of clients, friends and family, I believe that everyone somatizes to various degrees. Stress is obviously a major cause of somatization. I also believe that prolonged stress will tax the nervous system (AKA keep us in fight or flight mode for way too long) to the point that people's physical and mental health will deteriorate and may even develop more serious illness potentially even life threatening.

My interest in somatization is also very personal. We teach what we need to learn. I go in and out of suffering from irritable bowel syndrome. My body will reflect exactly what I'm going through emotionally and spiritually. My achilles heal is my tummy and my head. When I'm depleted and trying to do too much, I get head aches, stomach aches and have even faced a life threatening illness years ago I believe in part due to prolonged stress and physically stored trauma.

More specifically, I've noticed that many of my clients prone to lower back pain will always have a flare up of pain when they are under prolonged stress or struggling with inner conflict. Often these clients are hyperfunctioning. They can't slow down. They have a problem saying no to more work or career opportunities, or they have convinced themselves that they need to operate the way they are in order to hold their house of cards together.

I also work with people with auto-immune issues and have found that in times of hyperfunctioning or prolonged stress, their disease will flare up. Same thing goes for people with shoulder injuries, chronic neck pain, head aches like I get. Just about any physical vulnerability will act up in times of stress or in times when we are overdoing it.

I'm pretty open minded about these things. I studied Reiki this summer and know that there is no way to compartmentalize the physical, mental or spiritual. And as we get older, our physical selves start warning us louder and louder that we are going off our path, or ignoring what we really need. We just start vibrating at a lower level for too long. Reiki is a form of vibrational medicine as is exercise in my mind.

Exercise when done in a way that is designed to improve the flow of chi in the body, move stale energy or blockages out, improve posture and alignment, reduce tension and calm the nervous system will help people move away from somatization. Exercise and conscious movement is an excellent way to help people learn to listen to their bodies more so that they can avoid manifesting issues as physical symptoms. The more conscious we are on the physical level, the sooner we can hear the warning signs that we need to refocus, shift gears, learn to practice stillness or even take action in some way.

But I don't have a recipe that can be rolled out across the general population. It is truly an individual process that is best facilitated by someone very attuned to the power of movement in healing. I know that movement is an essential component in the process of pain management and true healing. Exercising in a conscious, thoughtful way is essential in my life. Sometimes my body is asking me to lift heavy weights. Sometimes it's asking me to meditate more, do more self massage on a roller. Or sometimes my body craves yoga or more balance oriented exercises that centre my energy. And even sometimes I feel like I need to bang the heavy ropes on the ground or punch a bag to release pent up anger or frustration or emotional pain.

My advice? Sit still for five minutes in meditation position. See if you can ask your body what it needs. Maybe images of the type of movement you need will pop into your head. Don't judge it. There is such a wealth of inner wisdom in all of us just waiting to be accessed.

Diets will work in helping you lose weight but...

Last night, I had a dear friend over for dinner who asked me my opinion about another diet she was going to try. She struggles with weight gain mainly because she eats unconsciously and snacks and nibbles too much when her life gets busy. Portion control has always been a struggle as well. Like all of us, she struggles with an addictive behaviour that kicks in at different times in her life. Her response has traditionally been to tighten up the ropes on her wagon in an effort to regain a sense of control. She says she does well when she doesn't have to think about what she eats but instead follows a very structured plan.

What I told her about what I thought of her new diet was this:

"Every diet will help you lose weight. The very act of restricting food groups or portion sizes and following a rigid eating plan will always help people lose weight but it won't address how you got to this point again. Plus most people have taken the grazing idea of eating way too far. We still have to wait to eat until we feel hunger. We have to feel what our body needs and let ourselves feel what hunger is and what being satisfied is. We have to become more conscious in our bodies to know what our bodies need on any given day."

What I believe helps people get to a healthy body weight in the long run is healing the underlying cause of why we behave in ways that make us feel crummy about ourselves. It's the only way most of us can change our coping mechanisms. Working towards becoming more conscious in our mind, body and soul is the only path to true healing in my opinion and my personal experience.

But a woman I respect says it way better than me. Dr. Marcia Sirota at the Ruthless Compassion Institute and author of Emotional Over=eating: Know the Triggers, Heal Your Mind and Never Diet Again, tells it like it is:

"Diets don't work because they create unbearable feelings of deprivation as well as physiological withdrawal. In a recent study, diets were shown to provide short-term weight loss, but everyone eventually put the weight back on & up to 2/3 of dieters were heavier at follow-up than before they started the diet. The way to deal with compulsive overeating is not to put yourself on a diet. It's to deal with the emotional issues driving you to overeat & hold on to the weight, & to let go of your charged relationship with food and weight. It's to pursue the things that bring meaning & true fulfillment in your life. When you've dealt with the real issues driving overeating, & have found real sources of meaning, purpose, connection & fulfillment, the pounds will melt away."

I've lost clients because I won't train people when they come in dizzy or depleted because they are on very restrictive diets like say Dr. Bernstein (700 calories a day!)or carb free diets meant to put people in ketosis. I don't hide my opinions about the harm something like that can do to their bodies and minds. At the very least, my job is to do no harm to my clients!

Also, I don't want to become a part of another failed attempt for someone to truly transform their health and fitness by condoning something that will ultimately reinforce a negative self image. Because diets do work in helping people lose weight but they also normally lead to someone gaining more weight back afterwards leaving that person with a reinforced sense of personal failure. Diets just solidify a cycle that has existed for quite some time, the on again and off again of the proverbial wagon syndrome. There is no wagon at all in my mind. Ditch diets and the wagon at the same time and take it one meal, one choice at a time.

Get off the hamster wheel already

Most people in our society are in a constant state of tension, wanting to move forward in some way. Even our rounded forward posture and common structural imbalances reflect this constant forward motion in the way we move through the world.

What we aren't so good at is sitting still. But when we sit still we actually can hear ourselves, our thoughts, our hopes, our fears and our true selves. The wisdom that we miss out on in this constant hamster wheel phenomenon not to mention the way this constant go go go mentality affects us physically, emotionally and spiritually cannot be underestimated.

What many people in the fitness industry do only exacerbate this issue further by getting people to continue with this thinking when it comes to their health. Goal setting can be a wonderful tool for helping people transform their lives but when this goal setting is merely focused on making people 'better' in some way it is an extension of the hamster wheel we live in. In my honest opinion, those fitness industry folks who are obsessed with more and more training, lifting more all the time, running further all the time and continually improving their 'fitness' are missing the big picture. They all need to chill a bit.

The issue with most people's health is that we don't stop. We don't sit still. We are focused on continual improvement or feeling guilty for not improving. The affect of stress hormones, the chemicals necessary to keep us in the constant running to only get nowhere state, create sleep deprivation, early wear and tear on all our tissues and and inability to learn. Our brain chemistry can become severely altered blocking the ability to change unhealthy thought patterns which translate into unhealthy behaviours.

The self help industry including the fitness industry are guilty of the idea that people need to focus on making themselves better. More is not always better. In fact, we need a lot less of work, a lot less of reaching for more money, a lot less stuff and a lot less of constant busyness.

We need to shed a lot of shitty ideas about what it means to be in the world, what life should be like and find a way to get back to our true selves. The selves that find joy in the simplest things. The selves that have open hearts and open minds.

Maybe many people in the fitness industry are just too young to get the necessity of slowing down for true personal evolution to happen. It's just too bad that so many regular people caught on the hamster wheel seek help from fitness professionals who can't see that they themselves are on their own wheel, one just as out of balance and going nowhere as everyone else's. And sometimes fitness pros will actually preach that their wheel is the one to be on.

FREE Osteopathic Treatment for Women with Lymphedema

I met a super smart, intuitive healer named Kerri-Lynn LaPointe at a Reiki workshop I was in over the long weekend. We discovered that we both have an interest in working with women during and after cancer treatment. She is offering FREE Osteopathic Treatment for women with Upper Extremity Lymphedema after Breast Cancer Treatment.

Lymphedema can seem like something women just have to live with and deal with BUT there are emerging treatments that can be very very helpful and Kerri-Lynn would be a true gift to have on your health team.

Here are the specifics of her offer:


Recruiting female volunteers to participate in a research study for upper extremity lymphedema that began after treatment for breast cancer. All assessments and treatments will be provided free of charge. Research is to be conducted at 465 St. Johns Rd, Toronto, ON. Study date: Fall/Winter 2012.

You may qualify if you meet the following criteria:

1. The symptoms of lymphedema appeared after medical treatment for breast cancer
(mastectomy, radiation, and/or lymph node dissection.)
2. The lymphedema is unilateral (one-sided.)
3. You have been experiencing symptoms of lymphedema for 6 months to 5 years.
4. You are a female between the ages of 40-65.
5. You have received no previous osteopathic treatment for lymphedema.
6. You are able to commit to 7 appointments within a 10 week timeframe.

Kerri-Lynn LaPointe, ND is a Naturopathic Doctor practicing in Toronto. She has successfully completed 5 years of training at the Canadian College of Osteopathy, and is performing this research study to complete her Diploma of Osteopathic Manual Practice (DOMP.)

Osteopathy is a hands-on system of diagnosis and treatment that focuses on restoring proper movement and function to the entire body. Rather than focusing on the symptoms, the underlying causes of dysfunction are treated: physical injury, poor posture, trauma, emotional stress, etc. The position, mobility, and quality of the tissues (bones, muscles, and internal organs) are assessed, and focus is placed on the body’s natural ability to self-regulate and self-heal. The main premise is that structure governs function: any abnormality of structure will create disease.

If you're interested, you can reach her at:
healthkerri.com info@healthkerri.com

6 Super Simple Ways to Clean up Your Diet or Lose Weight Right Now

Losing weight or cleaning up your diet really isn't rocket surgery. It's more about knowing where to start sometimes and realizing it doesn't have to be a painful experience. Sometimes starting with the lowest hanging fruit so to speak is the way to succeed with any change.

So here are my top six tips:

1) No more liquid calories (with the exception of a glass of red wine a day)

2) No starchy carbohydrates after lunch (corn, rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, cous cous, quinoa)

3) Fill half your plate with veggies always.

4) If you don't understand the ingredients listed on a package, don't eat it.

5) Try to choose food your great grandparents would have eaten.

6) Avoid white stuff.

Sounds way too simple right? Well it kind of is. But the hard part is really putting new habits into practice. Ongoing consistent moderation is what's it's all about.

The truth about children's health in the big smoke (For Doug Holyday)

Doug Holyday is just plain ignorant about the suburbs being a healthier place for kids.

He said, “Where will these children play? On King St.?” Holyday said in reaction to a push to have a condo developer include family-friendly, three-bedroom units in a proposed 47-storey tower at King and John Sts. “I mean, I could just see now: ‘Where’s little Ginny?’ ‘Well, she’s downstairs playing in the traffic on her way to the park!’ ”

Well guess what Doug? There's research that shows kids raised in the burbs are more likely to be overweight.

Taken from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Position Statement
Built Environment, physical activity, heart disease and strokeCOMMUNITY DESIGN, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, HEART DISEASE AND STROKE:

1) The risk of obesity has been shown to decline by 4.8% for each additional kilometre walked per day and can increase by 6% for each hour spent in a car per day.

2) A recent study compared rates of active transportation with obesity in Europe, North America and Australia and found that generally, the countries with higher rates of active transportation had lower levels of obesity.

3) Across Canada, only about 12% of trips to the grocery store, work, the library or school are made on foot or by bicycle. While this is higher than the 7% rate in the United States, it is much lower than in the Netherlands (46%) and Denmark (41%)

4) In major urban centres, 34% of residents report walking, biking, or taking public transit to get to work, while in smaller Canadian communities, this figure is 18%.7

5) In urban areas, neighbourhoods that have good street lighting, availability of continuous sidewalks, and a greater density and variety of shops, services, parks, schools and workplaces within walking distance of homes are often called “walkable” neighbourhoods. Canadian studies have shown that adolescents are more likely to walk or bike to school if the journey is short and takes place in a walkable environment with a variety of land uses and a high density of street trees.

6) A number of studies in the United States and Canada have shown that people who live in moderate to high density areas and in more walkable neighbourhoods make more trips on foot or by bicycle, spend less time driving, and are more likely to meet recommended levels of physical activity. 9,,10 People living in more walkable neighbourhoods are less likely to be overweight or obese than those living in rural areas or low density areas with a lack of shops, services and other amenities close by.

7) Users of public transit tend to have higher levels of physical activity.


Plus, even wikipedia states that:

The study found people that live in cities (Census Metropolitan Areas) had significantly lower obesity rates in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia.

THE ONTARIO COLLEGE OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS, in their position paper "The Health Impacts of Urban Sprawl, Volume III" state the following

Spread-out suburban communities make car travel the fastest, most convenient, and sometimes the only, way to get around. The design of most sprawling communities makes it difficult for residents to walk or ride their bikes to carry out even the most basic errands, such as buying milk at a local store. The lack of daily physical activity is a factor in the growing rate of obesity among adults, teenagers and children across Canada. Obesity has been linked to serious health problems, including:

• diabetes
• high blood pressure
• heart disease
• some cancers
• osteoarthritis

Obesity is a growing public health crisis, so much so that it is often referred to as the “new tobacco”. The number of deaths in Canada related to obesity has almost doubled over the past 15 years, from 2,514 in 1985 to 4,321 in 2000.

I could spend the next few hours getting more statements or statistics from respectable organizations. But I won't. That's all the time in my life Doug Holyday deserves.

Top 5 workout mistakes

Ever wonder why you've been putting in all this time at the gym, pounding the pavement in your sneaks, or spinning away on a bike, lifting weights and you're not seeing results? Chances are you're not choosing the right type of exercise or you're choosing the right type of exercise but just doing it wrong.

I'd say these are the top five mistakes I see people making when trying to shed pounds, change their body composition or generally just improve their fitness level.

1) People don't change their diet and think exercise will change their body alone. In fact, some people use exercise as a way to increase caloric intake. It's largely a numbers game in terms of weight loss.

2) People think too much about how much time they spend exercising instead of to what intensity. The classic example of this is the old school cardio equipment fanatic reading a magazine. If you're only working out a few times a week, make it count.

Clocking time at a gym has no correlation with results. Effort in = results out.

3) People don't know how to strength train and try to go it alone. If you finish a set and still can do more, you WILL NOT see results. If you think you can spot reduce a problem area, you're in denial. Our bodies only adapt if we force them to. Doing the same strength exercises over and over again without working to fatigue (not being able to do one more repetition with proper form) will mean you stay the same. Plus if you're reconditioned, don't let me see you doing bicep curls! Work with compound movements that hit several large muscle groups at a time.

4) People do too many repetitions. The best rep range for strength training is around 10 -12 reps. Consistently doing high reps as a way to avoid getting big is just foolishness. You aren't going to get big unless you eat a lot more and change your hormone levels too!

5) People give up too easily. It takes about 3-4 weeks to start feeling different and 3 months for other people to really see a difference. If you're constantly stopping and starting an exercise program, you will not see results. It's better to consistently do 2 full body strength workouts a week and watch what you eat without being to insane then it is to do short spurts of bootcamp like workouts and crash diets. You're just cruising for a crash in eating and likely an injury. Slow and steady always wins!

The death of personal training or the rebirth of something new?

I have to be totally honest. I really don't like many many things about my industry. I think many high level experts and/or big fitness businesses might be confused about their alignment: the pursuit of profit or the pursuit of helping people. They don't always co-exist. I also find my industry intensely misogynistic. The fitness gurus getting most of the clout are often the most elite minded, the most judgmental and the least open minded about the variety of ways people can find transformation. AKA if it's not their way, it can't be right.

I'm not saying every influential person in my industry is that way. I'm just not finding that I want to be identified with the mainstream. I like to learn from people who not only know their stuff, but live life with a goal to increase their capacity for compassion and with the knowledge that the more we learn, the more we find out we DON'T know.

So what are people's options if they are looking for a more evolved approached to movement and health with more socially progressive, compassionate people. Often times, we can find this type of supportive vibe at Yoga or Pilates studios. But where do people find help getting stronger by lifting weights or doing traditional resistance training? Certainly not big gyms that pressure sell you as soon as you walk through the door. And any environment oozing testosterone is a sure fire miss.

I think this is where the personal training industry is dying a slow death. Regular people don't want to go to harsh, judgmental, rigid and obsessive compulsive personal trainers who are primarily jocks. How can these people without outside interests relate to people juggling so many different things? If you're lucky, you will find a balanced personal trainer. But if you're not lucky, like so many new clients I meet, you will run into someone who just can't understand your challenges. If they can do it, why can't you?

Because change doesn't happen that way. Where do I think the personal training industry is going to go? I'm not sure, but I know I want to create a path that includes compassion while maintaining personal accountability, that focuses on relational coaching, and explores that opportunity to heal through movement on a very deep level, not just look better in jeans, or be able to lift more and more weight, run further and further, feeding a compulsion to always be reaching instead of allowing ourselves to just be and rest sometimes. Something we do so poorly as a culture, to just be content whenever we can!

I like my little bubble at the studio and I love that I share space with two very balanced trainers who bring in regular clients who struggle like we all do.

Why We Need to Get Over Public Nudity

Here's an excerpt from my most recent iVillage Canada column.

Last weekend I was quoted in an article for the Globe and Mail titled, “Why I have ‘tude about being nude”. The author sourced me as someone with an opinion about the change in the nudity at Body Blitz spa, a women’s only water spa in Toronto. I’ve been going there on and off since 2005, but when I visited the spa a few weeks ago, I noticed a sharp decrease in the number of people who went nude. Nudity used to be the norm at Body Blitz.

After reading some of the 370 comments online and hearing all the discussion that ensued within my own community, I’ve accepted that everyone has their own theory about the current attitude about nudity. I think it's more of a Malcolm Gladwell "Tipping Point" phenomenon, so many things are coming together to change a cultural norm.

Read more to find out what major factors I believe have contributed to issues with being nude at an all women's spa. Plus I even provide some tips for easing into going in the buff.

Internal alignment leads to external alignment

Last week I took a Tuesday off work and gave myself permission to have a 'me' day, not an easy thing for a traditionally busy sometimes frantic person like me. Since moving my studio at the end of April, I've had breathing space both for my physical, mental and spiritual self. I've been working like mad for the past six years to pay my bills at work and at home. And now without the extreme pressure hanging over my head, I went to a yoga class in the middle of the day at Octopus Garden Yoga in Toronto. Scott Davis, a gifted healer and yoga teacher, was leading the class.

Scott's class was the best lesson I've ever experienced in breathing through movement and physical effort. We focused on maximizing each breath for almost 90 minutes. Scott's mantra was to bring our attention to our breath and internal alignment and our external alignment in postures would flow from that.

INTERNAL ALIGNMENT WILL BRING EXTERNAL ALIGNMENT!

What joy to my ears. I focus on helping people find alignment in their bodies and know I have so much to learn about how to accomplish this. This extends beyond better posture and muscular balance. This extends right down to aligning with how our bodies feel on any given day. Maybe we planned a high intensity workout but find ourselves dreading the idea of pushing our limits when we approach a workout. Aligning internally means RESPECTING what our bodies need so that they can get back to their happy place, where we aren't further draining our empty reserves comparable to swimming up stream against a strong current that will take us if we learn to flow with it. Training properly has so much more to do with given our bodies exactly what they need from exactly where we are at on any given day.

I hear some trainers cuffaw the idea that training for better alignment is overrated. I guess they aren't working with the same population I do. Most regular folks have something going on that needs to be taken into consideration when designing a personal approach for helping someone become healthier in a meaningful way. It could be feeling emotionally depleted, or maybe being hunched over because of desk work or defeated by the challenges in life or coming out of an illness or having negative past experiences with working out or even depression or anxiety. The list goes on and on. Training for alignment is so much more than balancing our bodies out on a muscular level.

I cringe at macho or superficial approaches to training. Like engaging in a high intensity workout when our muscles already ache or thinking that rest is overrated when it comes to building strength. People in the fitness industry are known for over training their bodies getting caught up in the more is always better mentality. Or doing exercises with improper form for that sake of pushing more reps out or lifting more weight or working out despite an injury just to make things worse.

I just don't get how it serves regular folks just trying to feel and look better. Because internal alignment will always lead to external alignment.

Alignment occurs on so many levels from what Scott taught with breath.
To alignment with what type of workout our bodies need on a specific day.
To alignment with a training paradigm that gets our bodies back to their anatomically correct position.
To aligning with an approach to health that restores vitality, not to look a certain way. The physical changes will always appear when we listen and align.
To aligning with what is truly most important to us in the way we work and be with those we love.
To aligning with larger principles of how we would like to contribute to the world around us.
Right up to aligning with spiritual principles that are about love and compassion.

It starts quite simply doesn't it. It's a path I've seen work with many people. It's the domino effect that will inevitably lead to better big picture alignment.

I feel so passionate about getting better at living in the here and now being true to how I would like to align with the universe.

I've never written anything using the word align so many times.

Next time you go to workout, think less about how you want to look or how you can prove something to yourself about how tough you are and think more about what your body needs. As Olivia Newton John once said, "Let me hear your body talk".