Philosophy

Apr

2023

New Year, New… Blue?

It’s the dawn of a new year. The internet is flooded with articles about how to make this year your best yet - how to achieve all of those goals that you’ve had in the back of your mind for years, and how to finally break free of negative habits and feel complete in yourself.

Now, I don’t know how you feel at this time of year, but I know that for me, all of this pressure to suddenly self – actualize can paralyse me into doing absolutely nothing. Then, I feel awful about it.

I struggle in January. The days are gloomy, it’s cold, and all I want to do is curl up with a good book and drink hot chocolate. I’m a personal trainer, yes, but I’m also human. Personal trainers go through cycles of motivation too! And I know how challenging these cycles can be to handle.

I used to beat myself up terribly during winter, because I struggled to get myself going with ANYTHING, let alone kickstart an ambitious training regime, or the pursuit of a lifelong dream. As I grow older and hopefully wiser, I’ve realised that just because the world is telling me that it’s the right time to set goals and achieve them, it may not be the case. You are an individual, and what works for you will be unique to you and where you are in your life.

It’s important to accept where you are at all times. Sometimes you are ready to take on the world, to set goals, and to achieve them. Sometimes, you need to rest and take a break. Taking a break doesn't have to mean complete inaction, though. There are actions that you can take if you are finding that your energy is at a low ebb, in preparation for when you are ready to take things further. Here are a few gentle ideas for gradually preparing yourself for more energised times.

Scribble out what you want to achieve

This is a simple way of kicking off a goal setting process, but without putting any pressure on it. You can sit down with a pen and paper, get comfortable, put on some relaxing music, and simply scribble out what it is that you want to do in the future. There’s no right or wrong way of doing this – you just let yourself be truthful, and scribble out absolutely everything that comes to mind. No one will ever see this, it’s a process purely for you, so let yourself be completely honest about what you want. It can be a really cleansing experience, allowing yourself to really consider what you want to be, or do. Enjoy the process and remember, there’s no pressure on it!

Scribble out what you feel frustrated with

This is the opposite to the above in some ways. The method is the same, sit down with a pen and paper, make sure you’re alone and have some headspace, and scribble out whatever comes to mind, but this time focus on what is really frustrating you. This could be things that you feel get in the way of you achieving what you want (this could be lack of time, too many other priorities, a specific person or responsibility), or frustrations that you may have with yourself (do you feel that you just can’t get going, that you have too far to go, that you don’t know what to do?). Just anything at all that makes you feel frustrated, because once it’s on the page, it’s out of you, and you’ll feel better for it.

Stretch, stretch, stretch!

So many people neglect stretching, because it can feel like “light” work that isn’t going to have any major effect. The fact is, stretching is ESSENTIAL if you want to have a well trained, functional body. Flexibility allows you to perform far more effectively when you are ready to do more intensive training, so use the downtime to work on gentle stretching work to get those limbs ready for a more high energy period of training. I personally advocate a mindful approach to training, where you focus in on your body and breath with no distractions, but, if it gets you moving, do some stretching in front of the TV! You will feel brilliant for it, and you won’t get bored!

Learn to Rest

This is a tough one, sometimes. It’s a skill to be able to rest in a way that is recuperative. I still struggle with this, because even when I’m on “holiday”, I’m often still beating myself up about what I should be doing, and making plans for how to do better once my holiday has finished. Perhaps you spend evenings sitting watching Netflix, enjoying chocolate biscuits and feeling guilty – or you spend time feeling anxious about not getting enough done, or an incomplete to-do list that you are pressuring yourself to complete. None of those things are resting. Your mind and body are in a state of turmoil and you will gradually wear yourself down and then feel terrible that you don’t have a great deal of energy to do the things that you want to do so much!

Spend some time learning to really rest. It’s easier said than done, I know, but learn to be kind to yourself, and develop this essential skill. If you’re relaxing with a TV programme, really go with it. If you’re logged off work and your brain needs to decompress, let it happen! If you combine rest with the brainstorming above, you’ll be doing plenty to help yourself to prepare for a more active process of setting and achieving your fitness goals when you’re ready.

Trust yourself

Finally, I can testify, from personal experience, that slow and steady is the way to achieve lifelong, sustainable change. I’ve been letting myself grow and develop new, healthy habits for years, and now, winter isn’t a time for my health and fitness to fall by the wayside. Exercise is a way of life, and I don’t need to kickstart anything in the cold, dark of winter. It’s part of the day to day, business as usual, because I do the hard work of making change and improving at a different time of the year – a time that works well for me and my personal rhythm. You will find your way – trust yourself!

So, there you go! That’s my alternative take on how to take advantage of the dawn of a new year. Take it easy on yourself. January may be peak time for your productivity, or it may not – just listen to your own body and work with it. There’s no forcing long term change, so believe in yourself and the process of preparing the ground for the time that you are ready to take the next steps to achieving all of your health and fitness goals 🙂

Mar

2023

Three things I’ve learned from children about movement

On my fitness journey, I’ve had the privilege of learning from many wonderful people. I am often surprised by the wealth of wisdom and knowledge that we hold, and can share with one another. Nothing, however, surprised me more than what fantastic teachers children are, in the art of movement and body confidence.

Here are 3 key lessons that children have taught me so far!

It’s not about how the body LOOKS

When a baby is developing the core strength to hold themselves up, or a toddler is using all available furniture to climb up to a tin of biscuits, or a 5 year old is climbing up a huge wall using a rope, they are NOT concerned with how their body LOOKS. Nor are they motivated by whether that particular motion will tone a specific part of their body. They are completely focused on what they want their body to DO, and they put all of their physical energy into achieving it. There is absolutely no concept of making themselves ‘look’ better, and this enables freedom and abandon as they explore the world.

To a child, the body is a vessel, one that is fun to explore with, and to USE. Somehow we lose that sense as we get older. The body becomes about the external, the aesthetic. We forget how to embrace it’s power to learn, how to appreciate the way that it deepens our experiences, and how to live through it. Seeing the relationship that a child has with their body is a wonderful lesson in how to embrace being alive through physicality.

If at first you don’t succeed….Try again. And Again. And Again!

One of the things I admire about really young babies is their ability to keep on trying the same thing, over and over. For example, when my daughter was tiny and learning to crawl, she would go through an entire lifetime of emotions in a few minutes. She’d be focused, then frustrated, then exhausted. Hopeful, inconsolable, and most of all.. TENACIOUS. She wouldn’t give up! She would ride the wave of emotion rather than fight it and the rewards are clear. She is now a walking, talking, running, climbing, tantrumming toddler!

As adults, we tend to want to get things ‘right’ first time. We are brought up on the notion that perfection is aspirational. If you can be ‘perfect’ quickly, you’re somehow innately talented. You’re superior to someone who has to toil to learn something. The truth is, if we had those egotistical ideas as babies, none of us would get anywhere. We’d paralyse ourselves into inaction with self criticism, because there isn’t a baby on Earth who is born and gets up and just starts walking!

There is a wealth of positive experience, and reward, in the PROCESS of learning. Kids remind me of that every day.

Our bodies are FUN

Have you ever been around a baby who spends AGES lying on a playmat, trying to hit the singing cloud that’s hanging down? Or a toddler who will NOT sit down because they keep on trying to climb up onto a chair to reach something that they want? Or a 5 year old who climbs up the same rope ladder 10 times without a rest and won’t stop? Kids appreciate the enjoyment that their bodies give them. They don’t mind being out of breath, or taking a risk, or experimenting. They get frustrated when they can’t do something, but they don’t let it stop them. They find it too damn tempting to get up and try again because it feels so GOOD to move!

Kids appreciate their bodies and know how to love them. They USE them, rather than judge them.

Disclaimer

So, there you have it! 3 lessons that I’ve learned from hanging out with kids. As a disclaimer, though, I’m not suggesting for a minute that it isn’t kind of annoying when you want to settle down with a Netflix show after a long day and your toddler wants to play the ‘I’m going to climb something REALLY dangerous’ game 😊 But, they do have a lot to show and teach us about how to really enjoy and use our bodies, in a way that we seem to have forgotten. I'm very grateful for having a little human being around as a free movement teacher!

To your body confidence!

Feb

2019

Why Shouldn’t I Weigh Myself?

Quite simply, it’s not a proper measure of your fitness, wellness, or health. Weight loss is one of the most common aspirations that I come across, but I actively encourage my clients to avoid the scale. Here are three reasons why.

1. Lighter isn’t always healthier

It’s really simple. Dropping pounds on the scale is NOT a sign that you are getting fitter. The measure of your progress is how you feel, the quality of the choices that you’re making, and the power that you are giving yourself to become the person that you want to be by digging deep. It is not whether you sit at a certain level on the BMI scale.

2. There is no such thing as an “ideal” weight.

So many people want to reach a particular weight, or lose a certain amount, because somehow that will mean that they suddenly feel better about themselves. The simple fact is, you can lose lots of weight taking unhealthy measures, such as not eating, or drinking juice all day every day, but you will not feel good in yourself for it. Before you know it, you will put the weight back on, and you will feel terrible for letting yourself gain weight.

There is nothing to gain from obsessing over reaching an “ideal” weight. There is no such thing. Life just isn’t that simple. YOU aren’t that simple!

3. Weight doesn’t account for natural fluctuations

Your body is going through a raft of fluctuations on a regular basis. Women are continually going through hormonal changes that cause water retention, bloating, and general dips in particular neurotransmitters in some cases, and these can all lead to weight fluctuation on the scale. You can immediately set your confidence back by weighing yourself on a day where your hormones are changing, or you are retaining water from a meal. Equally, if you haven’t pooped…. It will make a difference!

There are plenty of ways to measure your progress that don’t involve the scales. Taking measurements is a good way to keep track of real changes in your body shape. As you get fitter and healthier, it’s very likely that you will drop clothes size, and having an item of clothing that you can try on every 6 weeks can also be a good way to enjoy tangible change.

The key thing is how you FEEL. Feeling that you are making the right choices for both your mind and body. Feeling that you are proud of who you are; someone who makes a decision to make positive change, and bravely sees that journey through. Feeling that you are the person that you want to be.

Free yourself from the scale! It isn't the measure of your worth!

To your success 🙂

Jan

2019

Why forget about how my body looks?

Now, I'm not advocating a complete lack of pride in your appearance. I'm suggesting that there is a level of appreciation that your body deserves, that it is probably not receiving. In fact, your body is probably taking continual abuse from the person it is working so hard to keep alive. You.

We have forgotten how wonderful our bodies are. How miraculous. Every second of every day, our bodies work to keep us alive. We breathe, move, live, through our bodies, but we tend to take them for granted. How often do you stand in front of the mirror and shame your body, saying that you wish it was different? That it looks horrible? That you hate it? Now, think about how often you look in the mirror and applaud your body, thank it for keeping you alive, for allowing you to experience life through your senses, for enabling you to do the things you enjoy.

For most of us, there is a major imbalance between the first and second scenario.

It's to be expected, in some ways. Many industries rely on that internal bully that we all have, telling us that we aren't good enough, because that bully is what allows the media to convince you that product a, b or c is going to make you perfect. So you'll buy it, and when you are still looking at yourself, shaming yourself, bullying your body, you'll buy something else to numb the pain for a while.

It's time for a change. It's time to love your body and be grateful for it. To nurture it, and stop bullying it. Experiment with different activities and see what FEELS good, not what someone tells you is a miracle fix for a false aspiration based on how the world tells you you SHOULD look.

Enjoy the life that your body enables you to lead. And forget about what the world is telling you you "should" be. You are you, and you ROCK!

Jul

2018

Dare to be different

In today’s world, we’re born into an inescapable social system where judging the human body is the norm. We are a society obsessed with how our bodies look. Social media has created a platform for us to judge each other and pass comment, and actively encourages us to broadcast ourselves and measure our self worth in terms of how many likes we get on Facebook in response to our latest profile picture, or how many followers we have on Instagram. It takes a lot of courage and strength to dare to be different, and to refrain from negative self judgement, or the judgement of others.

From the moment that we come into being, we observe and absorb the stimuli surrounding us on both a conscious and subliminal level. On one hand, this is a wonderful thing; the capacity to learn and absorb so much through our senses is part of what makes us the amazing creatures that we are. But, if what we are taking in is riddled with negative imagery and messages that encourage unrealistic expectations of ourselves, it can lead to negative outcomes.

Nowhere is this more apparent, in my view, than in our confused ideals around our bodies.

We are encouraged to look at our bodies as manifestations of our social worth in the world. The value of the body is often reduced to the external. The prevalent questions we ask ourselves are not around the issue of how well our bodies function and move, or how we can look after them, but how well they match up to the images that you see in the popular media.

“If only I had a body like that”, we say, looking wistfully at the imagery of so – called perfection that we see on the cover of the latest magazines, or on our Facebook feed, “I would love my body. My life would be wonderful.”

Except, it wouldn’t be. You wouldn’t feel better about yourself. As soon as another fabricated “ideal” of the perfect body is created by the media, you will feel completely inadequate again. And, here’s news for you – that “perfect” model you were looking at so wistfully? They will be feeling inadequate too, because their spell in the artificial warmth of the media sun has ended, and their body is no longer beautiful enough. It’s tragic. The whole system is designed to make sure that we all feel rubbish about our bodies, so that we’ll keep aspiring to something else. We’re rarely encouraged to truly step back, develop a relationship with our bodies, and to love them. There are fringe movements, claiming that they are all about empowerment, but even these can be purely based on the aesthetic. Proponents of a well intentioned “Love Your Body” movement can still be advertising their 6 pack abs and defined biceps in carefully angled photos posted on Instagram, potentially making others feel inadequate in comparison. It’s a difficult system to escape.

Our bodies ARE beautiful, yes, and exercise can help us to maximise our natural, aesthetic gifts, but far more importantly, our bodies are incredible vessels which allow us to do wondrous things. Things that we have come to take for granted. They allow us to experience the wonders that nature offers us. They allow us to play. To dance. To LIVE. How often are we encouraged to stop and really thank our bodies for keeping us alive? For working tirelessly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for decades to keep our hearts beating? For allowing us to experience life through our senses? In contrast, how often are we encouraged to shame ourselves, to subject our bodies to a barrage of experiments testing cosmetic products, fad diets, and punishing exercise regimes just so that we will conform to some arbitrary ideal of human beauty? Try watching an advert break and really pay attention to the messages that each advert is sending you. I’m positive that you won’t see a single one that encourages you to simply appreciate yourself. Why would you? That’s not a product. It doesn’t make money. If you were happy with your skin, your face, your hair, your body, your life, you wouldn’t need to buy anything to make you feel better about it. The first step to selling is to make you feel like you don’t match up to an ideal so that you'll consider buying whatever is being sold to get you closer. It’s cruel.

When the barrage of media stimulation that surrounds us is so relentless, it is challenging to take a step back and consider what our bodies actually are. We are taught from a worryingly young age that the value of the body in society is based more on how the body looks, than what it does.

The body allows us to experience life through our senses. Everything we feel, we feel through our bodies. When we embrace that, appreciating it for that rather than simply focusing on how it looks, and develop our relationship with our physicality in a loving, nurturing way, we begin to radiate beauty. True beauty, that shines from the inside out. Beauty that will stand the test of time, and the ever changing fads of fashion, because it’s not about what anyone else has ordained as beautiful. It’s your true beauty, and no one else’s.

It’s hard work, undoing old ways of looking at yourself and creating a new relationship with your body, but you will be stunned by the liberation that you experience when you are free of old habits, and learn to appreciate your body for the wondrous miracle that it is.

Your worth is not defined by what apps, adverts, or mob movements spread via social media decide. Your worth is decided by YOU. Next time you stand in front of the mirror and speak to yourself negatively, remind yourself of how hard your body is working for you, and dare to appreciate yourself. Dare to love yourself enough to make a change, to develop your relationship with your body through balanced eating and nurturing exercise, and discover your beauty. Yours. No one else’s.

Dare to be different.

Jun

2018

The importance of goal setting

You hear it all the time. It’s important to set goals if you want to achieve what you want in life. It’s absolutely true. Setting goals is creating a roadmap for yourself – if you don’t know where you want to go, you won’t ever feel that rewarding sense of going in the right direction. If you don’t have that assured sense that you are moving towards where you want to be, you will flounder quickly, and fall back into old habits.

Here is the truth of it. Setting goals is hard work. I would argue that the process of setting goals is the toughest part of making any kind of life change, because you actually have to sit down and dare to believe that you can do it. That you can transform into the person that you want to be. I am firmly of the belief that the thing that makes it difficult to make changes in our lifestyle is not a lack of ability, but the challenge of letting ourselves believe that we can do better. That we are better.

It sounds so simple. Sit down and think of what you want to achieve. Then, write down how you are going to do it. Then, get it done! Easy! In a style typical of the age we live in, the process of setting goals is sold as being the fast bit. The bit that you can get done quickly, before the hard work begins.

I don’t agree with this. I believe that you must give the process of goal setting your fullest effort and attention. Your journey has begun when you sit down to visualize where you want to be, what you want to be, and begin the process of allowing yourself to believe that you can do anything. This process of self analysis, this test of self belief, this challenging task of really daring to imagine who you can be if you trust and believe in yourself, is the foundation of your success.

If you spend the time you need to really set your goals, to go through the process of formulating them with precision, belief, and intention, you have made it through the first stage of a lifelong change that will enrich the rest of your life.

Today, let yourself begin to consider what your goals may be. Notice any mental blocks that you encounter. Do you find yourself talking to yourself negatively? Telling yourself that a goal is ridiculous and unachievable? Do you get bored and switch off when you begin thinking of what your aims may be?

Really pay attention to your processes; they are an important part of your journey and the key to overcoming your obstacles. Getting to know yourself, understanding yourself, and gently working to overcome any processes that stand between you and the person that you want to be is an essential part of reviving your confidence and unlocking a long term, healthy you.

Philosophy

New Year, New… Blue?

Scribble out what you want to achieve

Scribble out what you feel frustrated with

Stretch, stretch, stretch!

Learn to Rest

Trust yourself

Three things I’ve learned from children about movement

Three things I've learned from children about movement

It’s not about how the body LOOKS

If at first you don’t succeed….Try again. And Again. And Again!

Our bodies are FUN

Disclaimer

Why Shouldn’t I Weigh Myself?

Why Shouldn't I Weigh Myself?

1. Lighter isn’t always healthier

2. There is no such thing as an “ideal” weight.

3. Weight doesn’t account for natural fluctuations

Why forget about how my body looks?

Why forget about how my body looks?

Many industries rely on that internal bully that we all have, telling us that we aren't good enough, because that bully is what allows the media to convince you that product a, b or c is going to make you perfect.

Dare to be different

Dare to be different - love yourself

The importance of goal setting

The importance of goal setting

"If you spend the time you need to really set your goals, to go through the process of formulating them with precision, belief, and intention, you have made it through the first stage of a lifelong change that will enrich the rest of your life."

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