They say yoga poses don’t begin until you want to quit. That is true for everything in health and wellness. If we want to be strong, healthy and well beyond the false sense of security that comes with mainstream medical health markers we need to do hard things. We need to ask our body for more and stop quitting on ourselves before we get there. Today on the Work IN we’re looking at how to leverage the body’s adaptation pathways through exercise and nutrition for lasting physical mental and emotional health that don’t come in a bottle.

When a child is emotionally dysregulated we call it a temper tantrum, a phase and these days “big feelings”. When an adult is emotionally dysregulated we call it mental illness. What is it that happens or doesn’t happen between childhood and adulthood that paves the way for the long list of disorders now associated with emotional dysregulation and what can we do differently? That’s the topic for today’s Work IN.

People are wired for connection. It’s an evolutionary survival mechanism innate in even the most introverted of us. And it’s repeated from our cultural community and tribal tendencies all the way down to a cellular level in the body. Connection in the context of health and wellness can look like mindfulness practices, building self awareness through meditation and journaling, setting healthy boundaries, improving work life balance, strengthening relationships with family and friends, getting involved in your community, building your own communication and leadership skills, tapping into hobbies and activities that bring you joy.

On the surface those things might not seem as critical to our health as getting our blood pressure under control or lowering our cholesterol and losing weight. But it’s precisely BECAUSE those things are critical that we need to acknowledge the influence that our connection to ourselves and our community has on those more measurable health outcomes. Today we’re discussing the internal and external connections that matter when we’re making changes to our health.

We are working our way through 5 categories of health with our Cat 5 challenge and today we’re diving into category 4 the nervous system. Last week we discussed the overlap of the nervous system and sleep and how we’re looking for ways to help the body feel safe enough to be able to relax into that parasympathetic so we can rest and be close to other people. Today I want to discuss how playing it safe ALL the time can actually keep you in a state of protection, hypervigilance and anxiety.

We spend a lot of time in the fitness industry learning skills. We learn how to do particular poses and exercises, what order to put them in, what to look for in alignment, how to do calorie calculations or figure out 1 rep max or calculate macros. Anyone can learn those skills. I don’t know that any fit pro would consider what we do art. But maybe we should. There’s a certain level of creativity, artistry, in how we communicate and structure and teach those skills to others. There’s artistry in excellence. Excellence comes through practice and refinement.

Today we’re talking about 3 ways to refine our skills as instructors and coaches for a mindset shift that can transform a hobby into a career.

Today let’s limit our discussion to how the stress and obligations of this time of year can affect our exercise and nutrition patterns. Here are 3 ways we can use awareness, boundaries and connection to help maintain a healthy balance with movement, nutrition and sleep through the holidays even for sugar addicts like me.