Bodies Love Challenge! 

Seriously, when you challenge your body, it thrives! 

Think about going for a run, it challenges your lungs and heart, and they become stronger. When you lift weights or do body-weight exercise, it challenges your muscles, and they become stronger. 

Some Ideas: 

• Get your blood pumping. Make your heart and lungs strong like the superheroes they really are! It also helps you think. 
  • Go for a jog, sprint, or bike ride up hills. 
  • Dance in your front room. 
  • Do jumping jacks in your yard.
  • Play tag with your family or roommates. 
  • Run in place or on a treadmill. 
  • Do a fast body-weight exercise circuit.

• Strength train. As an added bonus, when your body feels strong and engaged, your mood and confidence will improve. 
  • If you have weights at home, use them. There are loads of free videos online to show you how. Just pay attention to your body. If something hurts, back off! 
  • If you don’t have weights, use your own body. Find videos for calisthenics. 

• Stretch and Mobilize. This helps prevent injuries because your body is better able to handle physical stress when it’s “springy”. 

• Hydrotherapy. When you take a shower, during the last minute or so, slowly lower the water temperature until it gets really cold, then count to 20 and breath as you let the cold cascade over you. 
  • This challenges your circulatory and lymphatic systems, (that is, blood flow and waste removal), and that improves your immune system.
  • It also builds your tolerance to discomfort which will serve you in many situations. 

• Fast. That is, eat no food for a period of time. Just water, tea and/or coffee. No sugar though. Start off with a window of 16 hours or so, and work your way up to 36 or 48 hours. (Sleep hours count!) 
  • This challenges your body to use its nutrient resources efficiently and to tap into your fat stores. 
  • You will have hunger pangs, but they will be out of habit more than actually needing food. 
  • You may be irritable at first (do not take this out on other people!) but your body will regulate itself with practice. 
  • I recommend reading The Complete Guide To Fasting

• Breathe Deeply. This helps your nervous system calm down, especially when you are worried, stressed or upset. 
  • Fill your lower belly and try to push your ribs out to your sides and toward your back as you breathe in. 
  • Hold it a few seconds and see if you can feel a stretch below your ribs and in your middle back. 

Being inactive and sedentary causes disease and pain. Don’t do it!

In my 13 years of doing massage for pain reduction, I’ve seen (mostly with my hands) the negative effects of lack of movement. 

Your body will develop tight and tense muscles when you sit around all day and don’t challenge it. Especially back and core strength. In our society, we sit many, many hours of the day, and the chair does the work for our core and back. Bad news bears! 

Additionally, when you don’t move enough, it’s harder for your blood to move through your body bringing fresh oxygen and nutrients and flushing out toxins. When this happens, the organs and tissues become inflamed and damaged. Also bad news bears! 

Lastly, when you don’t move your body, you become apathetic and lethargic, your mind doesn’t work as well. You’ll have a harder time learning and remembering things, and you’ll be more prone to depression. 

You are the captain of your ship! 

No-body else can take care of your body, mind, emotions and spirit for you. That is your job, and yours alone, and when you practice taking excellent care of yourself every day, you will feel empowered, healthy and happy.

For a fun video on this topic, check this out Spaceship You by CPG Grey

You’ve got this! 

-Adinah Barlow May 5th, 2020