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).

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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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When I took you on that walk at 6pm

up to Mt. Tabor, I assumed you might

sleep in the stroller.

Instead like an alarm clock

you announced your discontent at 7pm

as you do when it is bedtime.

Walking down the hillside,

I hold you in one arm

the handle of the stroller in the other.

Your 17 pound body testing the strength of my bicep

not to mention my patience.

I am questioning now why I brought you out on this warm spring night.

I was thinking the trees would tease you with their blossoms

and the warm air would lull you to sleep.

I romanticized breastfeeding you under green branches

as the young man with the beard played folk songs on his guitar.

It is evident that we might not make it home for hours as my wrist is sore

and the stroller keeps veering off the path, once taking a tumble.

Tears are streaming down your face.

You have just finished chewing on your elephant shoe.

Now one foot is bare and you are unhappy.

I hold you against my chest

my forearm swooped under your butt.

Your Addidas sweatshirt rides high revealing your belly.

We are 19 blocks from home.

There is snot on my jacket.

I take a deep breath as I often do now

settling into the surprises that you offer each day.

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Color like a loud speaker

announces iteself in bursts.

Today I linger in the pink dogwoods

the black center of tulips

the white cherry blossoms sprinkled in cracks of concrete

and the backdrop of blue sky

saying yes.

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Poetry Attack

They come in packs

ready to pounce on  prey.

Weapons of words

stashed in their small pockets

they fight

full of phrases

strike with stanzas

run with rhymes.

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If you ask them why they do it over and over again

they talk about fumes saturated in love.

Like kids drawn to the glue bottle

they are slave to sniffing

One may argue

a snapped synapse

a busted brain

a festering phantom

but I know the intimate intoxication.

Tonight you wail and whine

clawing me with your nails

grasping and griping as you suckle

puncturing my breast with bite.

You push my patience

and I dream of hatching eggs

holding a haven for life.

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Tonight the Buddha's eyes

appear heavier

and his lotus leaf

a cauldron for contents of limp lids.

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Like fog covering coastline

my mind is midst

lulled by wind warped waters

magnetized by moisture.

There is a porch

with one rocking chair

that views a sandy shoreline.

I come to this place

where simplicity is seen

in a single clothes line

a white wooden house

a garden left wild to winter winds

and I am alone.

Solitude found at the end of a dirt road

where frogs can be heard

and owls offer surprise visits.

Here, I have the companionship of chaos

those things untethered by function or form

where the blackberry babble meets tall grasses

and the storm lies heavy on the horizon.

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Like a firefly in a jar

energy expires in slow intervals

leaving only an exhale and

the memory of light.

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