The opposite of love is contraction. I know this doesn’t seem like it has anything to do with fitness, but it has everything to do with fitness. I must preface this by saying contraction is great when it’s on our terms. When we intentionally contract like during a crunch or a biceps curl. Contraction is not-so-great when it happens without us wanting it – like when we experience stress, grief, fright, worry, or when we...
Kundalini yoga expert, Amy Allen, is back with an awesome outside-the-box video fit tip, called Yoga Technique For Clearing Negativity. (Now available online at Ellen Barrett Mindful Movement.) Just in the nick of time, right? Everyday, these days, I know I could use some clearing! The main thing I want to emphasize in regards to Amy’s 4minute video is the very obvious mind/body connection. It illustrates how movement effects everything…not just the body. My son’s school has...
For as long as I can remember, I’ve collected rocks. After time spent at the beach and elsewhere, I’d return home with my pockets filled with stones and pebbles. I was always very drawn to them. Then, my senior year in college, I took “Rocks For Jocks,” a geology class that focused on gemstones. We went out into the woods with little shovels as the professor pointed out the various rock formations and their mineral compositions. We found...
It’s been a little over a year since I dyed my hair. Having a two-toned head has been awkward, but I would not change a thing about my grey hair journey. It taught me something really significant. The first part of the lesson learned was that I was covering up my true self with hair dye, and I was doing it because “everyone else was doing it” – just following the herd. I was also doing...
In the darkness of last night’s new moon, my family and I experienced a powerful storm. We heard the rain beating hard against our windows and felt the wind shake our house. It was exactly 5:55am when I stepped outside, the dawn light just barely peaking through the trees, and surveyed the scene. Grateful to report, nothing was damaged, things were just moved around. (I had to go looking for our patio furniture, and found...
I am not in denial. 2020 has been the strangest – and most trying – year of my life, but I’m still smiling because I choose faith over fear. How is that possible when fear is practically oozing out of our laptops?!? I’ve narrowed it down to two simple steps. Step One is to take it day by day. I sit with my daily planner (it’s paper, not digital) in the morning and come up...
Are you someone who wakes up behind the eight ball, rushing around in the morning? Do you take your coffee or breakfast on the go and speed off to work feeling frazzled from the get-go? Even though I am an early bird, I used to be this “rushing around” person. But I’ve changed. A few years ago, I had a realization that rushing is rarely circumstance, it’s a mindset. It’s feeling like you are in a race against time. It’s...
All of a sudden, the term lifestyle medicine is everywhere. I even heard it on the radio this morning while taking my son to school. I like the term – it’s a hipper way of saying healthy living, and it’s so true – the ways in which you live your life are ultimately good for you or bad for you. Lifestyle medicine is about choosing the good for you variation more often than not! Now, there’s big lifestyle medicine and then...
I know the common idea surrounding dressing for success is work-related, being neat, “put together” and looking professional. To me, however, dressing for success has another connotation: it’s about wellness, productivity and feeling authentically good. First thing is footwear. Is your footwear inhibiting movement? Does it slow you down? Does it hurt? If you answer yes to any of these questions take those bad influences off your feet immediately! I’m not kidding around when it...
Drishti is a Sanskrit word meaning focused gaze. It’s about where you are physically looking, but it’s also where you place your attention, even when your eyes are shut. A yoga pose, like Warrior II, has a very specific physical drishti, vital to doing the pose correctly. As you can see from the above photo, the drishti is laser-like, directed to the tip of one’s middle finger. This is by design, as a means of fine-tuning alignment, developing concentration, and heightening a sense of self-awareness. When...
