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6 Tips to Help You Meet Your Fitness and Health Goals
September 5, 2011 by Donnella
Hello to all and welcome to my first monthly newsletter focused on movement and health!
In these newsletters I'll give you my thoughts on issues that are near and dear to me. And, I would love to see the BodyWise blog as a tool for all of you to share your thoughts, feelings and ideas about these topics. This is a community space for sharing and learning. This month I offer you6 Tips to Help You Meet Your Fitness and Health Goals.
I know moving my body regularly is just what I need to help me feel more energized and meet life’s challenges in a more grounded way. Practicing intelligent movement regularly helps us develop healthy ways of moving and reduces injury and supports us in feeling more psychologically sound. And yet, like so many of us, I have a hard time making my practice consistent.
So how do we cultivate a regular fitness practice - one that feeds us and makes us want to show up?
From working with clients for over 15 years, I know everyone is wired differently. What motivates one client doesn’t work for another. The suggestions below are gathered from multiple sources: books, personal experiences, clients, family, and web searches. As you read them see what resonates with you. (As someone who has been a striver for much of her life, I no longer want to have only focus on getting to the goal. I want to enjoy the process of getting there).
Liberating Herself from Trauma: A Client Tells Her Story
May 8, 2010 by Donnella Wood
When I first saw Donnella Wood, I was having problems with my back. My allopathic physician had diagnosed the persistent pain, grinding, and popping noise in my back as "arthritis." I had tried traditional physical therapy, acupuncture, chiropractors, yoga, and large daily doses of ibuprofen, but it just seemed to keep getting worse. I had also been diagnosed with depression, attention deficit disorder, and anxiety. I was taking daily medications to manage these disorders. Unfortunately, the side effects of the medications left me feeling detached from myself. I was also dealing with panic attacks, insomnia, and flashbacks as the result of past trauma.
My sessions with Donnella started out very exercise-based, but they evolved into something more. Through my movement therapy sessions I have come to see how the pain in my body and the ruminations in my brain are intricately connected; how my past emotional trauma is held in my body and affects the thoughts that are produced in my brain. Through these sessions, I have learned to trust the signals that my body gives me and to pay attention to fear, panic, and pain as sources of valuable information. I have learned to trust myself and my instincts. (Instead of thinking of myself as having Attention Deficit Disorder, I see how my varying interests all fit into a pattern of things I'm drawn to that interest me, that nourish me and give me energy.)
I also have learned how to pay attention and stay with the sensations that I feel when an old trauma is triggered. I've learned that if I pay close attention to what and where the feeling is in my body, if I pay attention to the energy associated with it and watch how it moves and changes, if I just stay with it and don't try to change it, don't try to make up a story about it, don't try to "fix" it, the energy associated with the emotion is able to move through my nervous system and not get stuck. My nervous system seems to learn to integrate the energy, my body relaxes and physically settles, and my thoughts automatically change. The emotional charge associated with the energy dissipates and I feel physically lighter, and emotionally more open. My thoughts change automatically, and I feel as if I'm able to be my authentic self.
Through my Movement Therapy sessions, I have learned how to pay attention to, trust, and work with my body's signals. As a result, my nervous system is much less reactive. People and social situations that used to trigger physical sensations of panic no longer do. I no longer take any psychoactive medications. I no longer wake up at 3am with flashback nightmares. When I am triggered, I have the ability to recognize what is going on, both emotionally and physically, and I now have some skills that help me work with the situation in a way that doesn't increase my pain and suffering. Thanks to the work I have been doing with Donnella, I now move through my life with a much greater sense of ease.
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Putting Mothers on the Podium
May 8, 2010 by Donnella Wood
It is the night that Apolo Ohno is competing for his seventh medal and I'm in the checkout line with my four-month old son at the Seven Corners New Season's Grocery Store. "I remember that time," a woman next to me says pointing to my son. My son is chewing contently on his toy giraffe as I reply with a sigh, "This is the most physical job I have ever done and I feel like I deserve a medal." The woman busts out laughing as I chatter on about how she probably deserves 100 plus medals for having a 10 and thirteen year old. As much as this may seem like a funny antidote to her, the truth is I have been considering this medal metaphor since my first trimester when I was dead tired and depressed.
Being a mother is one physically demanding endeavor. We fall down a lot and keep going when we are exhausted. We often lack coaches or sponsors. We may feel victorious and defeated within the same hour. At the beginning of our mothering journey our post-partum bodies have compromised cores, pelvic floors, and ligaments and still they manufacture milk day and night, carry, comfort, and change babies all with inadequate amount of rest. Often our bodies are changed for life and still we carry on because there is no getting off of this track. And unlike Apolo Ohno we don't have heats that last minutes; our event last 24/7 without time for training.
Maybe you haven't stopped to consider that being a mother is an athletic event; if you haven't I encourage you to do so and this Mothers' Day join me in paying reverence to all mothers out there. Today, I'm sending all mothers virtual medals to honor their "inner Olympian" and the way they look in their daily uniform. I honor the stamina it takes to continue to show up for family and self. I honor the ever changing nature of the sport and how it calls upon multiple dimensions of ourselves. As a new member of the Mother Team, I proudly share the podium with mothers from all nations and as a big fan I cheer you on.
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