Feb 4, 2022: Check out what I've been doing for body, mind, and spirit.
We are already one month into the new year. How are you doing post-holiday season? I am hopeful that this newsletter finds you well and energized to improve in all areas of your life. I am very excited to share with you what I'm working on. Enjoy!
Body
There are many people I train or talk to who have knee pain. This can be very debilitating and often leads to surgery. So I was very excited when I listened to a podcast with Ben Patrick. He is known as the "knees over toes guy". He has fixed his own knee issues and helped hundreds of people by strengthening and lengthening muscles and tendons that support the knee.
I'm doing his program and having my clients do these exercises as well. Part of the program entails walking backward. Yes, you read that right, walking backwards. You don't need equipment to do that but if you have access to it that would be great.
My backwards walking is done on a treadmill or "deadmill" (not turned on), walking backward with a sled and attachment to waist, or walking backward with the Prowler (looks like a sled, NFL players train with this equipment).
When you look at the angle of the knee when it goes over toes, it closely relates to going down the stairs (falling going down stairs is a leading cause of death in elderly). Walking backwards is a good place to start if you, as Patrick explains, are in a more fragile state.
There are other parts to the program that I will share in future newsletters. If you don't want to wait until then, check out his YouTube video
Mind
As a long time practitioner of meditation, I was interested to find out more benefits that have been discovered. The study examines how meditation helps the brain detect and respond to mistakes. The findings suggest that open-monitoring meditation enhances the brain's capacity to detect and pay attention to mistakes, potentially reducing the number of errors a person makes.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick explains the study:
Meditation is a form of mental training geared toward improving a person’s core neurocognitive functions, such as regulation of attention and emotion. Open-monitoring meditation, often referred to as “being present,” trains a person to engage in non-judgmental attention to present-moment experienc
es.
Findings from a 2019 study suggest that open-monitoring meditation improves a neurocognitive function called error monitoring. Error monitoring is the process by which the brain detects and responds to mistakes. It reflects core cognitive control processes that underlie emotional and behavioral regulation and plays key roles in learning, academic achievement, and work performance.
Spirit
Recently sidelined with illness, I had to stay home for awhile as I recuperated. Even my self quantification device, the Oura Ring told me to go into “rest” mode. I felt the need to "get things done" but just did not have the energy to do so. Instead, I gave myself permission to "be" and not "do". That helped clear my head space and reminded me of Ryan Holiday's, Stillness is the Key which I wrote about here
Life can get busy and get us caught up in the doing. Allow yourself time to just be still.
To our reflection,
Lisa Schaffer
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See my last newsletter Body, Mind & Spirit…
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