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