Interview: Jayne Gumpel, LCSW of Access Mindfulness and Mindful Harlem

Jayne Gumpel, LCSW is a co-founder of Mindful Harlem, a non-profit organization offering Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction courses as well drop-and-sit meditation sessions which are open to the public.  Jayne is also the founder, along with her son David, of Access Mindfulness, a nonprofit organization bringing mindfulness education and awareness to schools and other youth-centered organizations. Jayne points out that the youth are not the sole beneficiaries of mindfulness practices. Access Mindfulness offers free orientations and consulting in an industry where half of teachers burn out and leave teaching  after five years. Empowering teachers with the skills to facilitate their classrooms mindfully provides educators and students alike with a solid support for the challenges of day to day life.

Full disclosure: I love Jayne.

I came to know Jayne when she accepted me as an intern for Access Mindfulness (formerly Mindful Schools NYC) and over the course of the year that I worked with her, I came to understand my practice not just as a lifeline to cope with perceived emergency after perceived emergency in my life but as a way of approaching my existence in all of its moments—joyful, mundane or terrifying. Jayne is the embodiment of mindfulness as life, and here she was kind enough to share her perspectives on mindful parenting, a more diverse mindfulness movement, and the one thing she wishes everyone in the world knew. Spoiler alert: we bond over Pema Chodron.    

Well & Kind: Hi Jayne.  My first question for you is why mindfulness and why Harlem? What led you to this path?

Jayne Gumpel: I got exposed to meditation when I was nineteen or twenty. I had read Autobiography of the Yogi which blew my mind growing up in a working class Long Island neighborhood. When I was sixteen, I spent half my school day working at the world’s largest psychiatric hospital, and I had tremendous compassion for the people who were residents there. I found that meditation and mindfulness, at least my rudimentary understanding of it at that time, helped me sustain my capacity for being compassionate but at the same time it kept me balanced. It’s a rough road for caregivers; who helps the helper? Who heals the healer? So I’ve always been interested in how to stay present and at the same time give to other people.

It wasn’t until after I got married and had kids that I became much more serious as a meditator and about looking into becoming an MBSR teacher. Parenting—especially single parenting, I got separated when my youngest was two and half—is tough. I had to really look at parenting as a spiritual practice, and not from the perspective of a reactive person. I had a child with a lot of special needs, and I got a divorce, and in the midst of all of this I reached out to the MBSR community to take the class and then started to work through what I needed to do to become a teacher. It worked out really well for me to have that structure; I needed the community, the sangha that came along with it. That was really important to me.

WK: I love the way you call parenting a ’spiritual practice’. I’m a new mom, and for me there is something transcendent about spending your days with a person so small, who doesn’t live in the past or in the future.

JG: Absolutely. And I think parenting is the most important place in to be mindful in our lives, to not be parents who are unconsciously, unintentionally wounding our children, is critical because our world is crazy right now. I think viewing parenting as a spiritual practice is enormously helpful because you’re feeling so alone in that moment, especially as a single parent, where there is absolutely no validation for what you’re doing. You have to live a path of nonviolence in the way you talk to them, and to yourself. I tell my kids that they are just on loan to me through their tender years, and it’s my job to nurture them through it to be sure that I am guiding them and not hurting them unintentionally.

WK: That’s a phenomenal parenting perspecitve. Imagine if everyone took that view of childrearing. How much kinder would our world be?

JG: Well, that fact is often lost on children so you have to view it as your own personal spiritual practice— it’s not about getting any kind of accolades or acknowledgement from our children, that’s just gravy on the potatoes. It’s about me wanting to be the best I can be, so I benefit from that.

WK: And with that mindset, you can stay anchored in your sense of self for when your child does achieve that independence.

JG: ..Or when they self harm or take drugs. If I internalized those events as being a direct result of my parenting, I would be so overwhelmed, and I would take that out on my kid. So if I continue to regard it as a spiritual practice, to raise them as best I can, it’s okay. If you have a child who will never be able to express understanding of the sacrifices that you have made for them, you have to know that your spiritual practice was the best that you could do for them and for yourself.

WK: That’s mindfulness right? Sitting with yourself through the muck, even when it’s not birds singing and sunshine.

JG: Right, and it’s often not. It’s choosing to come to the present moment with my heart and mind open even though it’s very challenging and difficult. That’s not to say there’s not a lot of beauty, but it helps you also compartmentalize. Parenting really opened my eyes to the benefits of mindfulness and meditation for myself and for the people around me. I think anybody who chooses a nonviolent or spiritual path, that’s a gift to the people in their life.

WK: But the way that wellness is marketed, it doesn’t acknowledge that dark component, it’s marketed with an eye to brighter, cleaner, richer, thinner. Wellness seems very expensive, and not very diverse.

JG: Well that’s why I felt compelled to go up to Harlem, I was born into privilege because I was born white. I have always felt ashamed of the blatant racism and segregation and social injustice on every level in our country. And at the last retreat I was at, five or six years ago, I looked around and said to my colleague Adrian, there’s something wrong here. All I see are upper class white women. I decided that I was going to put my efforts toward exposing more individuals, especially kids in public schools, to mindfulness. So we started behind Adrian’s restaurant sitting with just a few people who dropped in to sit, and more and more came, and I think we were pretty successful with that. Now I’m focusing my efforts in the schools.

WK: Why was the retreat you went to not more diverse?

JG: We need more teachers from minority communities to teach mindfulness, but it’s the more affluent schools that have the budget to bring in people and instruct them. There needs to be fewer barriers for young people of color to be able to learn mindfulness and then go back into the communities they live in, to say hey, I have this thing that can help social and emotional learning.

WK: Are there initiatives that you know of in the States aside from Access Mindfulness that is working to train more people of color to teach MBSR?

JG: Insight Meditation Society just started a full-time, two-year program to train instructors of deeper meditation practice, and it is mostly geared toward people of color. They are offering scholarships to as well. We have to continue to work to find opportunities for people who are inspired by this to go out and learn it.

WK: What would you say is a good first step to get started for people who are not from a background that is open to mindfulness? What is something that people can do to being to cultivate a mindfulness practice or just lead a more peaceful life?

JG:  Now we have these wonderful apps like Headspace and Insight Timer. We have Drop & Sit Sessions at Mindful Harlem, that’s up at Frederick Douglass and 119th [in New York City] on Saturday’s. There’s also the Tibet House, Insight Meditation Society. There are now yoga studios that offer a mindfulness practice; so there are ways if people are interested in it, they can just stick their toe in it now.

WK: So there are a lot of ways that people in our area can get involved, but what would you say to people out in rural Indiana who feel like something’s missing but the idea of meditation is not at the forefront in their communities?

JG: Well, now there’s MBSR online (which is not my preferred method but it’s better than nothing) and there are now people who are doing MBSR in real time online as well. If I lived in rural Indiana, an app like Headspace is a good way to start. They’ve got 5- to 45-minute guided meditations. That’s great, because the bottom line is, it’s all about the practice In order to understand what mindfulness really is. You can talk about it till the cows come but you’re never going to get it if you’re not sitting regularly.

WK: With all of your years of experience as a meditator, a parent, a social worker, an entrepreneur, a resident of the earth, that you wish everyone knew?

JG:  That we’re all connected and that separation is an illusion. And, you know, learn how to value and respect your own voice, which can be tethered to loving kindness. Everybody has the inherent capacity to be a compassionate person, even though we’re all wounded. We haven’t evolved yet as a species to not wound each other, to not wound our own children—even with the best intentions, parents wound their children because of the way we interpret reality. If we could all recognize who we were, and that we actualize ourselves through the practice of loving-kindness, we wouldn’t be so harmful to others, or to ourselves.

I would also turn the world on to Pema Chodron’s books.

WK: Absolutely, yes. I have annotated my copy of When Things Fall Apart until it is the thing that’s fallen apart.

JG: She’s a beautiful human being. Her books can inspire people to open the door to their own soul—to meditation, to self-actualization.

WK: Where can people get in touch with you and your organizations?

JG: If people are interested in bringing MBSR to their youth-centered organization, whether that’s a school, after-school program, treatment center, really anywhere that serves youth, if they want a free orientation or consultation they should call us. They can reach us at groupworks@aol.com or go to the Access Mindfulness website here.

WK: I appreciate you Jayne. Thank you.

Interview: Eric Chessen of Autism Fitness

Eric Chessen is the visionary behind Autism Fitness, making athletes out of individuals on the autism spectrum in the New York Metro area. As someone who is looking at wellness through a more inclusive lens, Eric does not hand out trophies for showing up. Instead, he elicits participation from every athlete and nurtures growth over the long-term relationship s he’s built with his clients. He was kind enough to allow me to interview him for the Well & Kind blog. Check it out below, and if you’re a trainer, therapist, educator, or professional, be sure to read on to the end to find out how to become certified in the methodology that Eric has perfected over the last decade.

W & K: How did you end up specializing in training individuals with autism?

E.C: I started as a personal trainer. I was a kid who was active and playing sports until sports got too high level for my skill set, and then I became overweight and didn’t have sports as an outlet. One day junior year of high school I just decided I was going to walk into the weight room, having no idea what I was doing. I found through weight training I was really able to capitalize on what was there for me for self-esteem and self-empowerment. There was always that self-actualization that drove me to be a part of this field.

While I was doing my graduate work in general psychology, my program had a heavy emphasis on behavioral analysis. I was already a personal trainer, and I knew I wanted to do something in fitness and something in psychology. I had a classmate who was working in Manhattan who needed someone to develop a fitness program in a program for autistic teens. Those teens are now 30 year old adults. That’s been a recurring theme throughout my practice. A lot of my 8, 10, 12 year old athletes are now teenagers.

What level of functioning does an individual on the Autism Spectrum need to have to begin fitness training?

The programming I’ve developed is for any athlete from those with highly challenging behaviors to high functioning individuals. Something that had an influence on my developing a curriculum was that I did not and would not cherry pick my athletes. The majority of my athletes are between  18-24. I have one athlete who is 57. This methodology is for the whole of the autistic population.

How do you work with clients who have trouble interacting or participating? 

A question that I often address is what happens when you have an individual who is often off-task or doesn’t “like exercise.”  One potential strategy  I might use is to take a medicine ball and just hand it to an individual. Have you ever seen a radio station with an on-air button? When you hand someone a medicine ball, you’re seeing that on-air button light up. 
You always have a starting point and from that starting point, there is always success to be found. We have to create an environment in which it’s impossible to fail. 
Most individuals will  be able to do a squat at some level, an overhead press at some level. When we are given manageable steps, we see success relatively quickly, and the quicker we get success, the more reinforcing  an activity is going to be. We don’t like doing things that we suck at. Falling over and over again isn’t motivating. We have to set the stage for success. We have to manage expectations all across the board. I’m not telling people that if you’re not doing a forty-five minute session every day they’re failing. When I look at two sessions three years apart, we see progress when we’ve started with managing expectations and then consistently implemented good programming.

What does good programming look like from the Autism Fitness perspective?

In really good strength and conditioning programs, everything in scalable. Everyone can be doing the same meaningful movement just with differing volume and intensity. Some athletes engage in a lot of stereotypical movement patterns like flapping, or spinning—it’s purposeful, but it’s not meaningful. Walking is purposeful, but unless we’re increasing our capacity, we’re not going to benefit enormously from it. If we do something like hurdle steps, it’s going to be a greater challenge that comes with a new benefit, increasing our physical capacity—that’s meaningful.
 

If you’re the parent of someone who is autistic, what’s the benefit of athletic training over a group setting like team sports?

 I’m focusing on strength, stability and motor planning, the major deficits we see in the autism population. With sports programs, when we look at the most common deficits- motivation to participate, motivation to move, the abstract constructs of rules and points-- these are all difficult concepts for the autism population. From a physical perspective, if they don’t have the skills to be successful, they’re not going to be able to participate to a meaningful degree. Even in the neurotypical population, if we just put a kid in a football jersey and they stand there, is that playing football? Is that participating? 
Adaptive P.E. programs are much the same—they’re not scalable for kids with the kinds of needs that we’re talking about. In a class of twenty-five kids, who’s going to participate? The kids who are already good. But you will still hear, ‘Oh, we played soccer today,’ when in fact, only a few kids saw the benefit of that. Instead, in a general fitness program, we can individualize the program to every athlete so that they all gain something.

So why do we accept the idea of giving our special needs kids a jersey and calling it a day? Why is the sports-by-association good enough for some of our schools and families? 

Because we put sports on a pedestal. Read ‘The Most Expensive Game in Town’ by Mark Hyman. We have an almost religious relationship with sports, so that kind of trickles down to younger people. If we care so much about sports at an adult level, of course youth should care about it. But where’s the room for play, for creativity? You only have a small minority of kids with the skill set and the desire to play  organized sports by the time we get to middle school-high school. For every kid or young adult who makes it to the Olympics and starts training at 4 years old, you don’t hear about the hundreds of other kids who burned out or got injured or for whatever reason were just done. We only concentrate on success stories for a moment in time.

So to address the need for individualized programming, Autism Fitness now certifies trainers and other professionals, is that right?

Right. People can go to the Certified Practitioner section of the Autism Fitness website to find a Certified Pro There are currently 53 Autism Fitness Certified Pros across North America. A lot of them are specializing in inclusive P.E. programs that work with the needs of students who are all over the board with their physical and cognitive needs. The next Level  I Certification Seminar is in St. Louis June 30th-July 1st, 2018.

Finally, with all of your years of experience in training special needs populations, what is one thing you wish that everyone knew? 

That fitness is a gateway toward optimizing all other parts of life. When we move, our brains are primed for learning. We are much more apt to have more useful language when we’ve moved a little bit. Fitness is a necessity that acts as a luxury. There’s no shortage of programming information out there. But we’re still in a society that’s plagued by inactivity, why?
 I think it starts in schools, where everything is compartmentalized. When you get into the real world, you realize nothing is separate-- everything is interconnected. The two most marginalized programs are art and P.E. Later in life and education, we create these levels of entry to both subjects that are so exclusive. We’re using professional athletes to tell kids that they need to get moving. How does that make sense? The kids who are already good at sports are the only ones who are going to be encouraged.

I think it starts with the educational system, that’s where systemic change can be made. Ideally, fitness would be viewed with no less importance than academic skills and social skills. This can have a significant impact on any individual if it’s done right. And we know how to do it right. It just has to be more of an imperative.

Eric Chessen, MS is a certified personal trainer and the founder of Autism Fitness. You can find him online at AutismFitness.com and connect on social media by searching Facebook, YouTube and Instagram for the Autism Fitness Workout. Be sure to check out his EBooks Autism Fitness in My Classroom for adaptive P.E. teachers and special educators; Bike to the Future- a parent’s guide to teaching an athlete with autism how to ride a bike; and the general Autism Fitness e-book.

On grief and wellness

Of all of life’s inevitabilities, loss is the most frightening and final. There is no getting around the fact that people we love will die. When this happens, we are set on an emotional journey that at times comes rushing toward us, then downshifts to play out with agonizing slowness. In any case, the way that we experience our grief and the amount of time it takes until it burns itself down to a smolder under the rubble in our hearts is wholly out of our control.

As it turns out, when grief has knocked your legs out from under you, it is not just your heart and soul that are suffering. Research has shown that your body’s neutrophil activity declines, leaving you more susceptible to infection. Immunizations are less effective. Stress hormones, blood pressure, and risk for heart attack and stroke increase. When your well-meaning neighbor, coworker or therapist reminds you to take good self-care, their inability to imagine the spiral you are in now also includes an imperative to do the unthinkable: nurse yourself back to health after total emotional and physical devastation.

While the pain of mourning never subsides, I am told by those intimately familiar with it that grief eventually retreats to a part of your brain that gives you some respite during your waking hours. The blinding day-to-day glare of the hurt, powerlessness, and regret that can follow the loss of someone we love does shape-shift. We get a reprieve when it metamorphoses from bright white pain to dark waves that, while just as debilitating as their previous form, come crashing through with decreasing frequency over time.

If you have a chronic health issue, here are some ways to maintain your health as you find your way through grief, old or new:

1.      Continue to take prescribed medications. Even twenty-four hours without medications for high blood pressure, diabetes, or blood clots, for example, can cause serious consequences. One can have no symptoms while walking around with a dangerously high blood pressure, blood sugar, or irregular blood-clotting time, leading to serious consequences like stroke, heart attack and organ damage without warning.
 

2.      Drink water. When your appetite is nonexistent, your body can go a surprising amount of time without food. Hydration, on the other hand, is non-negotiable, and plays into the health issues above in a big way. If your blood sugar is high from stress, drinking water helps lower it. If your blood pressure is high from fluid retention, drinking water actually helps you rid your body of excess fluid, and if you are well hydrated, you are not as likely to form a dangerous blood clot. How much water to drink is still up for debate, but it’s a good rule of thumb to drink enough water so that your urine appears light yellow to clear in color.
 

3.      Fight the urge to isolate yourself-- alright, this one is easier said than done, but hear me out. Loneliness is a proven cause of disease and premature death. All of us want to feel understood, regardless of whether or not we are in mourning. For many of us, feeling isolated and lonely is a lifelong struggle, and our feelings are only confirmed when someone we do have a close connection to is torn away from us. The outside world takes on a coarseness when we are expected to go on with our everyday lives despite the massive loss we have suffered. The checker at the grocery store continues to ring people up, people cut one another off in traffic, newscasters beam brightly at us—can’t they understand?  No, of course they can’t. And this inspires in us the understandable urge to shield ourselves, to stay hidden away with our memories of our loved one.
The truth is that the loss that you have suffered is yours alone, even among others that your lost loved one touched. And that is your treasured knowledge as you navigate maintaining your body and mind through your grief: while others cannot empathize well with those of us who are struck by a loss, no one can empathize at all with someone they do not know is suffering. Food, water, sunlight, and empathy—these are the ingredients necessary for our survival.
Let someone in. Do not suffer alone. If friends and family are not available, seek a support group. If a support group makes you cringe, perhaps seek out a friend of your loved one, even if you did not know them well before. If these things are unbearable now, bookmark them for later, and seek the immediate presence and love of someone nonjudgmental and always available for you—a support pet, someone who has written on grief and loss in a way that you find relatable, or someone who has suffered your same kind of loss.
 

There are no promises in mourning. There are no rules about grief. But our hearts and souls need a sound body to be housed in as we trudge through the hardest parts of our journeys on this earth. I hope if you are in the midst of grief you find some practical help here on keeping your health intact, and I hope that brings you a little bit of peace.

If you are in the midst of an emotional crisis, please remember that you are not alone. Call 911 if you feel unsafe. If you need immediate support any time of day, call 1-800-273-TALK. Parents who have lost a child and don’t know where to start can reach out to Compassionate Friends, at (630) 990-0010 during business hours, Central Time, or go to https://www.compassionatefriends.org/.

Challenging our stories to move past obstacles

Changing our approach to our bodies’ health is unlike any other change we might set about to make. As adults with agency over our lives, there is little oversight to keep us accountable. We may be beholding to a concerned loved one, or an involved medical team, but their reach extends only as far as we allow it into our lives. Many of us find ourselves compulsively acting against our own best interests—binge eating, drinking too much alcohol or caffeine, skipping medication dosages or abusing the medications we do take-- even when we know our behaviors to be harmful to our bodies, our minds and those who care about us. Why does this dichotomy exist, and what can we do about?

There are multiple reasons from a neurobiological and psychological standpoint for self-harm (see: Capture by Dr. David Kessler) and if your actions are putting you or others in danger or feel out of your control, mindfulness should be part of a deeper, root-cause address of your suffering with a psychologist, psychiatrist, or treatment center. (See also: this article in Tricycle magazine; although mindfulness is approached from a secular standpoint in Well & Kind’s curriculum and health coaching, the information found here still applies and should be given serious consideration when you are embarking on a mindfulness practice.)  Once these caveats have been acknowledged, an often straightforward reason for our inability to adhere our health goals lies in our allegiance to the stories that we believe about ourselves. These stories are an imprint from our pasts.

When we continually relive traumatic experiences and regrets from our pasts, we tell ourselves that characteristics attributed to us in these situations are true. We tell ourselves, over and over again, a story about who we are  (fat, lazy, not serious, flighty, incapable of change, loser, unable to make it on your own, etc.) when we let our perceptions of the past remain in our present lives. This is incompatible with reaching new health goals, as we need space to make a change. One cannot make a three point turn from a single parking stall with cars parked alongside them; there needs to be some room to back out, to see where we are going, to cut our wheels, and to change our direction entirely. Sticking to the stories that we, or others, have repeated over and over in the past serves only to keep us head-in, trapped between other vehicles with no room to maneuver.

When you are certain that you cannot manage diabetes because you need certain foods to feel happy; when you cannot start a walking regimen because you are embarrassed to be seen exercising at your current weight; when you cannot bear the shame of waking up from another night of out of control drinking or eating; when you cancel another doctor’s appointment because you are gutted at the thought of hearing the results of your most recent tests; these are stories that have highjacked the truth about you: that you are capable of change. That you are deserving of what you want.

When the dark feelings around another supposed ‘failure’ start to bubble up in you, liberate yourself by asking one question: Who says?

Who says I can’t live without a certain food?

Who says my body shape dictates where and when I get to walk?

Who says I don’t deserve treatment for my addictive behaviors? Who says I cannot learn to change my behaviors?

Who says my test results are a reflection of my worth as a person?

We can only answer the question in two ways: ‘They say,’ or ‘I say.’

Good news if your answer is ‘They’: ‘They’ don’t matter, only you do.

Good news if your answer is ‘I’:  You’re in charge here. It’s your job to flip the script.

When you question the validity of past stories that others have told you or that you have told yourself, a world of possibilities opens up. When you find yourself leaning into behaviors that you don’t want for your health, when you avoid the things that you know you must do to make meaningful change, ask yourself, ‘Who says?’  Be ruthless with your answer, be ruthless with your liberation from the past stories that keep you boxed in and unable to turn around. You’re in charge here, today.

Troubleshooting blood glucose readings: A checklist

If you are someone who must monitor your blood sugar readings daily, you will start to get a feel for your patterns—what your blood sugar typically runs when you live the life that is normal for you. However, there will be times when what you see on the meter seems too high or too low to fit into your typical patterns.  Remember that your blood sugar will not be perfectly on target every day, but if you start to see numbers that are a little suspect, here’s a checklist to go through when you need to troubleshoot why your readings might seem ‘off.’
              

Evaluate how your day might have been different than it usually is:

Did you eat more than you usually eat?
Did you forget to eat or skip a meal?
Did you eat different foods than usual due to eating out or at an event?
Did you exercise more or less than usual in the last 24 hours?
Did you experience an unusual amount of stress?
Did you wake up much earlier or later than usual? 
Did you forget your medication or mix up your dose?

 Was your blood glucose test accurate? Think about the following:

Did you use a large enough blood sample?
Did you prick yourself in area with swelling or peripheral neuropathy (numbness/tingling)? 
Were your strips left open and exposed to water or too much light?
Was your meter left in a very hot or very cold car?
Is your meter more than 4 years old?
Were your hands clean and dry when you tested? (Food residue could cause a false high.)
Have you run a control test on your meter (your control solution would come from the pharmacy)?
Are you using the same meter you always use?
Are you comparing two tests done back-to-back and are suspicious because they differ from one another? Remember that your blood glucose measured at any one moment is going to vary by as much as 15-20% as a test taken immediately afterward on another finger.
If you have a meter that requires a code-chip be changed for each new bottle of strips that you use, does your chip in your meter match the strips you are using?
              

 If you have looked at this list and there is no reason why your blood sugar may be out of range, check with your provider’s office. They may want you to come in and compare your readings against their office glucometer, or check for other problems you may be having. Your nurse or Certified Diabetes Educator can assist you with going back to basics, as it never hurts to re-learn the steps for measuring your blood sugar correctly. Remember, the more that you act like a scientist studying yourself—writing down measurements, taking readings, and recording how you feel—and share this information with your care team, the more successful you will be.

Stress, weight and goals

When we feel ready to make a change, one approach that many find comforting is to dive headlong into that change. Some undertake a punishing exercise routine and stick to it until they get derailed. Others count calories obsessively with online nutrition trackers. These approaches are comforting in part because they distract us from those aspects of our lives that have gotten us here in the first place, but they can introduce additional stress that is counter to our goals.

Stress is the body’s chemical reaction to threats in its environment. The adrenal glands atop your kidneys, as well as the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland in your brain, work together to time the release of chemicals known as hormones. Hormones change the body’s functions to react to stressors in its environment. Previously, stressors were things like panthers trying to eat us and our families. In present day, our stressors are more subtle: watching the news, worrying about our families and commuting to work all have a more low-key but very real effect on our bodies. Everyday activities like these set off  a cascade of hormones when we feel threatened, fearful, or anxious, followed by additional hormones to set us right again as we recover.

Cortisol is one such stress hormone. The effects of cortisol are felt all over the body, but current research shows that cortisol affects insulin levels in the body, drives our urge to eat, and encourages fat storage, especially around the abdomen. This type of ‘visceral fat’ correlates with increased rates of heart disease and death. Family turmoil, work conflict, battling traffic, sleep deprivation, alcohol consumption and caffeine intake all increase cortisol. If your doctor has told you to lose weight and you are thinking about it obsessively, working out without properly recovering, and trying to ignore the other stressors in your life, it might feel like you’re fighting a losing battle—and that’s because you are.

When we pursue health goals by throwing ourselves into them without attending to our mental health and acknowledging the aspects of our lives that call for improvement, it is like swimming against a rip current: the harder we fight, the further we get pulled out to sea, away from the shore that we are trying so earnestly to reach. Letting go just a bit and drifting with the current is necessary to get to where we need to go. If you have found yourself floundering despite hard work, try the following:

1)      Give yourself a mental break. Allow a day, a week, a month, or a season without making your goal your primary focus. Train your sites instead on things that engage and enrich you, whatever those are (being in nature, experiencing art, books, music or movies, spending time with people you love, etc.)
 

2)      Examine what is serving you and what is not. We don’t all have the luxury of changing jobs or changing our scenery, but we can at any time choose to change our minds. The media that we consume, the conversations that we have, the alcohol, caffeine, sugar and salt that ingest—all of these things change the lens through which we experience life.
 

3)      Prioritize sleep. If you are not responsible for the care of another person during the night, make 7-8 hours of sleep your priority above all else. If 7-8 hours of sleep is not possible, consider a nap on your day off, and make your waking hours in the night as low stimulus and meditative as possible. Prioritizing your sleep for just 48 hours can have amazing benefits for your body and mind.

Your goals should motivate you, not deplete you. Take a look around and ask how you can be kinder to yourself today. It may be just the push you need to break away from stressors and make that swim to the shore.

W&K Interview: Jon Kalnas, trainer at Critical Mass NJ

Well & Kind believes in wellness for all of us, including and especially those of us with unique needs. Our April interview is with Jon Kalnas, a personal trainer and sports performance coach at Critical Mass NJ, a cutting edge gym Shrewsbury, NJ. Jon coaches athletes and motivated individuals from school age through senior-citizenhood, imparting the wisdom he’s gained through his years as an All-American university-level track and field athlete, certified weight lifting coach, and mentor to dozens of athletes who have gone on to compete at the college level. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology, which gives him a unique insight into his clients’ needs and motivations to meet the challenges that training presents.

Anyone who has been around the Jersey health scene knows that the guys at Critical Mass NJ aren’t messing around—the owners eat, sleep and breathe their dedication to performance of the whole person, mind and body. Jon brings this philosophy to the group of teens and young adults he trains weekly at Critical Mass. Everyone in the group has unique abilities ranging from genetic disorders to being on the Autism Spectrum, but to Jon, every person who walks in the door is an athlete in training. Here’s our conversation from April 3rd, 2018:

Well & Kind: What’s your health and wellness philosophy?

Jon Kalnas: Preparation predicts outcome. If you eat and sleep properly, you’ll be less stressed and be able to perform better. You have to be ready to deal with an adrenaline rush and know how to react if something goes down.

W&K: If something goes down—can you elaborate on that?

JK: The September 11th attacks got me thinking about what we can do when something unexpected happens. Now, especially as a parent, I’m always looking around me, assessing for threats. Survival is our number one job along with protecting our tribes, our families. When you train, you prepare yourself physically to face stressors. If you stress yourself in the gym, you’re better prepared for stress outside the gym. If you’re not eating a nourishing diet, you’re not going to be able to prepare yourself physically. You’re an athlete in life and what you’re doing now is going to protect you in the future, whether that’s protecting yourself from danger or from disease.

W&K: I know that you train a range of body types and abilities at Critical Mass. Tell me about the group that you train on Wednesday afternoons.

JK: I train a group of 16 to 29 year old’s with different disabilities. I have clients with Down Syndrome, Angel Man’s Syndrome, Autism. During those times we try to keep the gym lower stimulus [Side note—there’s a disco ball in the gym, but that’s a post for another day] and we are very consistent with what we do. Repetition from week to week is very important. We’ll go through a routine of ten exercises and might only change one part of that routine from week to week.

W&K: How do you warm up if the kids are hesitant to get started?

JK: We’ll do an exercise to get everyone aware of themselves. I’ll have the group sitting down and I’ll help them focus their attention by calling out something, like a color, and if it’s something that they’re wearing, they have to get up as quickly as possible.

W&K: What would you say to individuals with unique needs or their families whose everyday life feels like an act of survival? Why would they want to add the stress of a workout regimen to an already stressful day? Sometimes getting dressed, or eating, or getting out of the house, or using transportation takes a heavy physical and mental toll.

JK: I get that. I’m the dad of a baby and a toddler, I know that families and the athletes themselves are drained by day to day life. I at least have downtime when my kids are sleeping, some of the kids I train haven’t slept more than two hours in a row since they were born—and they’re teenagers. Think about that.

W&K: That sounds completely overwhelming, so why add the complication of going to the gym?

JK: Because movement is medicine. The parents I work with are very engaged and determined to be active. The kids don’t complain about it being tiresome—kids want to move, whether they’re in a wheelchair, or have other issues, it’s essential for all of us to be physical. You have to try to do something every day that allows your body to move in different ways.

W&K: What’s your advice for people who want to get started have unique needs or care for someone with unique needs?

JK: Look online for someone who is a specialist, don’t be afraid. Search. There’s plenty of people out there doing what I’m doing. Ask for word of mouth referrals. Just get out there.

W&K: In all of your years of experience as an athlete, coach and trainer, what is one thing that you wish everyone knew?

JK: No matter what your physical limitations are, there are great levels that every person can achieve. You’re going to get that dopamine rush when you achieve something physical, and once kids get into a program and get that, they will be addicted to an active lifestyle. And kids have to have a cheering section. If you have a kid who's got people standing behind them, and they feel good about what they’re achieving, their life is going to be positive. They’ll be happy, and that’s what’s going to make for the best lifestyle for them overall.

To schedule with Jon or check out the full range of services at Critical Mass, New Jersey, you can visit the gym’s website at https://criticalmassnj.com or find Jon and the rest of the Critical Mass team on Instagram  @CriticalMassNJ or Twitter @Criticalmassnj.

.

A mini meditation to begin your week

If you own a bell or a singing bowl, these can make excellent tools for beginning and ending your meditations. If you don't, I recommend that you download Insight Timer--start by setting the timer for just five minutes a day. This is how I built a meditation practice that I have used most days of my life for the last few years.

To start your week, here is a mini mindfulness exercise you can do: settle back in your chair and close your eyes. If you prefer, lower your gaze to the floor just in front of you. Take a deep breath in and feel the air as it moves from your nose down into your body. Envision yourself in your best health. Feel the weight of the week start to lighten as you breathe out.  Take another deep breath in and feel the air leaving your chest. Now just quietly focus on your breath. IF you need a mantra, try 'cool air in, warm air out.'

  With a deep breath in, feel your body fill with excitement and promise for the week ahead of you. Blow this breath out releasing any tension or worry. Again, breathe in deeply. When you breathe out, imagine that your breath is a strong wind carrying kindness to those you know, and those you don't.

Ring your meditation bell or wait for the bell to ding on your app. Try to listen until you can’t hear it anymore, then open your eyes. 

Have a wonderful week.

Mindfulness is not a trend or a gimmick. It is an age-old practice for strengthening the resilience of your psyche, as exercise strengthens the muscles and bones, loving relationships strengthen the spirit and curiosity strengthens the mind. It is free, it is already in you; it just needs to be brought into focus and granted a minute of your time. Here are twenty ways to start being mindful today, right at home, doing things that you already do:

1. While washing dishes, focus on the sensation of water running over your hands.
    
2. When folding laundry, breathe deeply and experience the scents of the clothes in front of you and the environment around you.
    
3. Slowly savor the food that you are eating.
    
4. Take time to notice morning light shining through a window, or the the dust particles that it illuminates.
    
5. Sit near an open door or window and experience the sounds of outside. Attend to each of them and try to pull them apart from the other noises you hear, like picking out an instrument in a symphony.
    
6. Take your time lathering soap between your fingers and over your palms to notice the different sensations of cleaning and drying your hands.
    
7. Before getting out of bed in the morning, breathe deeply through your nose and out of your mouth. Let the morning air deep into your lungs; watch your belly rise with each in breath and fall with each out breath.
    
8. Notice the sensation of bristles on your gums when you brush your teeth. Not thinking about the work ahead of you or yesterday’s events, simply brush your teeth aware of textures and temperature inside of your mouth.
    
9. Drink your morning beverage mindfully. Notice the temperature as it moves through your body. What do you enjoy about your morning ritual? Give into it fully.
    
10. Walk mindfully. Make contact with the ground; listen to the sounds of your footsteps; breathe in rhythm with your pace. 
     
11. Perform yoga in your home. You do not need to have any special ability to do yoga, there are free mindful yoga videos on YouTube that can be done seated or standing.
     
12. Watch wildlife. Quietly sit and observe the movements of a pet or any creatures that happen to be outside.
     
13. Experience your mail. While sorting through bills and junk mail, notice the different textures of paper and cellophane address windows, the sounds they make when you fold, tear or crinkle them; the taste of gum on an envelope when you lick it to seal it shut.
     
14. Sit in the dark. To experience your breath more fully, eliminate any visual stimulus by closing your eyes or sitting in a completely darkened room as you focus on your breath.
     
15. Cook mindfully. Look at the bright colors on produce and package, experience the smells, sounds and textures that arise while you chop, sauté, boil or sear. You can even microwave mindfully. While you do, ask yourself: where did this food originate? What will happen to it inside of my body?
     
16. Sweep or mop mindfully. With each stroke breathe in, with each step breathe out.
     
17. Plant or garden mindfully. If you don’t have an outdoor space, see if you can adopt a tiny plot in a community garden, or get yourself a houseplant and transfer it from one container to another. Feel the soil on your fingers, smell the dirt when it is dry and again when it is damp. Consider the life cycle of this plant. Where did it come from? What is the origin of its seed?
     
18. Converse mindfully. Have an interaction with whomever you share a home, hallway, block, neighborhood, town or city with, and allow yourself to be fully immersed in the moment, hearing the other person’s words, seeing their expressions and allowing their existence to be the sole focus of your attention for the duration of that interaction. 
     
19. Dress mindfully. Before you put it on your body, hold a t-shirt or pair of jeans between your hands and feel its fabric as if feeling it for the first time in your life. Look at it closely and observe the tiny stitches that hold it together. Notice its color and any variations. As you dress, notice the way that the clothing confirms to your body. Consider why you only notice it’s interaction with your skin during this exercise.
     
20. End your day mindfully. At nighttime, breathe in deeply and exhale. With each new breath, notice a part of your body. Moving from head to toe, tighten and then relax each of your muscle groups. Notice where there is tension, soreness or pain. Breathe deeply into these areas. 

How do you practice mindfulness? Share it on Facebook or Instagram and use the hashtag #wellandkind.

Easy, instant ways to improve your diet without going broke

Here are some ways to make your meals healthier, without making them cost more: 

Instead of white rice, try half rice, half riced-cauliflower

Instead of frying, grill, bake or broil your meat or fish

Instead of flavoring with drippings, fat, or salt, season your food with herbs, garlic, lemon or spices

Instead of noodles, try shredded cabbage or broccoli or spiralized zucchini or carrots

Try rinsing canned vegetables or beans or buy the low-sodium version

Eat half as much mashed potato and make up the rest with mashed cauliflower, turnips or parsnips  

Make all of your grains whole grains. That means the first word on the ingredients list should be ‘whole.’ Instead of white rice, brown rice. Instead of white bread, whole grain or whole wheat bread. Try whole wheat tortillas, or plain oatmeal that you can sweeten yourself with cinnamon or fresh fruit. 

Read the labels on your dressings and sauces and see how many grams of sugar there are--choose the ketchup, tomato sauce or salad dressing with the fewest grams of sugar.

Be aware of what you drink. Sometimes the biggest source of sugar in our diets is from soda, coffees, juice and energy drinks. Why drink all of your calories and carbs when you could have a little more food to eat, that you can actually chew and enjoy?

Instead of soda, try seltzer water with slices of fresh fruit.

 Instead of juice, try half juice and half water.

Try unsweetened tea, and eat an actual piece of fruit with more fiber and vitamins.

If you drink alcohol, skip the fruity drinks and measure your portion sizes.

Water is the best drink of all to keep you hydrated and feeling good. If it sounds boring to stop drinking sugary soda, keep in mind that once you start eating less sugar, you will crave it less and less, and you may find that your energy level stays more constant throughout the day. 

Insulin lowers your blood sugar when your own body is unable to, and for some people, this is the only way to prevent the problems that come with high blood sugar. Many people with diabetes use more than one type of insulin. This is because there are different types of insulin—some insulins work fast, some work slowly, and some work in-between. In addition to taking pills, your doctor might have you try taking an insulin shot before meals, or one at bedtime and in the morning. Maybe you will do all of the above. The only way to know what regimen is right for you is by taking your medications the same way every day, writing down your blood sugar readings, and reporting back to your doctor. Then he or she knows what changes to make to keep you feeling good. 
 
 

If you are taking insulin or caring for someone who does, let’s talk about the four types of insulin that people with diabetes use: Rapid acting insulin, regular or ‘short-acting’ insulin, intermediate-acting insulin, and long-acting insulin.

Rapid-acting insulin is usually taken right before a meal, as it begins to work about 15 minutes after injection. It is most effective in about 1 hour, and works in the bloodstream for 2 to 4 hours. Apidra, Humalog, and Novolog are all rapid-acting insulin brands that might be used three to five times per day, depending on how many meals you eat.

Regular or Short-acting insulin is also used before meals, but usually takes effect within 30 minutes. It has its highest effect after 2-3 hours, and keeps working for up to 6-12 hours. Humulin R and Novolin R are both (think ‘R’ for ‘regular’) are both short-acting insulins.

Intermediate-acting insulin can cover for high blood sugars in between meals. They become effective in 2 to 4 hours, and are most effective in four to twelve hours. They can last for more than 12-16 hours in the bloodstream. This type of insulin is known as ‘NPH’; its two examples are Humulin N and Novolin N.  

Long-acting insulin takes effect slowly and gently over the course of a 24-hour period. Lantus and Levemir are both long-acting insulins to keep your blood sugar steady for the full day, and when you are sleeping.  

If your doctor has discussed insulin as a possibility for you in the future, you are well within the norm if you are fearful of the idea of starting daily injections. However, most people don’t consider the alternative to taking insulin or oral diabetes medications: blindness, kidney failure, sexual dysfunction, amputations and early death. Be realistic and do a cost-benefit analysis if your provider has broached the topic of insulin with you. Your provider’s office should be able to refer you to a nurse or diabetes educator to help you understand all of the in’s and out’s of using insulin as well as managing your diabetes with nutrition and exercise. Ask as many questions as you have. In all healthcare, but especially in the case of diabetes, knowledge is power.

Asking 'Why': A simple tool to fight fear

Most of us cite lack of time and lack of energy as the biggest obstacles to achieving our health goals. Money can be another barrier that we perceive as holding us back. Sometimes, though, when we dig a little deeper there is something more complex at the root of our struggles: fear. Our fears are both universal and unique. Fear shows up in our lives in many different ways and often looks nothing like fear at all, at least from the outside: laziness, stubbornness, and isolation are some of its disguises. While it is a common response to the need for change in our lives, fear can be totally paralyzing and trap us in a cycle of inaction. Let’s discuss some common manifestations and causes of fear as it relates to your health and wellness, as well as one simple trick to zapping some of the power that fear holds over our lives.

When there is something pressing that I need to do, such as making a phone call to an insurance company or scheduling a doctor’s appointment, I will sometimes put it off for weeks—even months—until it weighs on my peace of mind so much that I finally get it done. Many patients that I work with as a registered nurse will stretch what should be a doctor’s visit every three months into once yearly, missing 75% of their recommended care. Others arrive to their appointment and announce that they have decided to discontinue their diabetes medication. From the outside, the examples seem ludicrous—make the call, reschedule the appointment, take the medication, how hard can it be?—but all of us who have experienced fear (and that is all of us) know that it is not that simple.

Am I inherently lazy or somehow incapable because I avoid making a phone call? Is a patient who cancels their appointments against their doctor’s advice unconcerned with their health? Does someone who does not want to take medication not want to have a healthy body? The answer to all three of these questions is no, of course not. But fear is one of the oldest and most powerful drivers of the human mind, such a fundamental part of our will to survive that it drives our activities without us even noticing. I may be fearful that I will be told that I am responsible for a bill that I cannot pay, and so I do not call the insurance company. A patient may be fearful of the doctor’s response to how they have maintained their health at home, so they do not come in. Others may have seen or heard about frightening side effects of the medications that they are prescribed so they do not take them. Is this a personality flaw? No, it’s human nature functioning exactly as it’s supposed to.

We run into problems when our avoidance of what we fear has more dire consequences than the action that we fear taking. If I speak with an insurance company, inform them that I cannot pay, and am placed on a monthly payment plan or am referred to a patient assistance program, my needs and the insurance company’s needs are addressed. If I avoid the phone call entirely, and my account is eventually referred to a collections agency, my credit may suffer, and I may not be able to get the home loan that I need to move out of an unsafe neighborhood. If I visit my doctor and inform them that I have had trouble sticking with the nutrition or medications they have prescribed for me at home, they are able to refer me to a nutritionist, a nurse educator, or a community support group. If I avoid coming to my appointments entirely, my condition might have worsened over time but not be addressed until I finally arrive to an appointment that is months overdue. I might end up hospitalized, or with irreversible damage to my body, which could have been avoided if it was caught earlier at my recommended check-up.

Oftentimes, we know instinctively what is at the heart of our inability to do something that we have been compelled to do. But when you find yourself bothered by reminders and requests to do something that you are avoiding, the most powerful tool that you have is asking ‘why?’ Continually asking, ‘but why?’ of yourself-- before asking it of others-- can unravel the tight coil of anxiety that keeps many of us on edge when it comes to our health and wellness. Fear loses its power when we drag it out into the light of day to see what it is really made of. Often, it is made of stories we have told ourselves, or have been told, that have no basis in reality. Asking yourself, ‘But why am I avoiding..’ until you have exhausted your own answers and arrived at an answer that involves someone else, such as a physician, pharmacist, or insurance company, is the best place to start. Once you arrive at a ‘but why..’ question with an answer like, ‘because the doctor told me to..’, it is time to discuss your avoidance with the doctor.

Open communication with any other person or entity that is involved in your fear is necessary for reclaiming your independence from fear, as well as your health. Medical providers may be overscheduled, but they have sworn an oath to care for you with your absolute best interest at heart. If an open discussion about your needs is met with hostility, you may need to find another provider who is right for you. I can tell you, though, as a nurse who has worked with literally hundreds of physicians in my career, I can think of perhaps one or two who were flatly uninterested in anyone’s input but their own. The rest were open, eager, and waiting for their patients’ input to design a plan that set them on the course to a longer, healthier life, with as little fear of the known or unknown as possible. You are deserving of your best health. When that seems out of reach, you can start by wondering if fear is the culprit. Take your fears seriously and keep asking ‘Why?’ You want to feel better, so why not?

The Secret to Achieving Your Goals (Part 3 of 3)

Today marks the third and final installment of our Goals series. If you haven’t read the first two posts, you can check them out below.

                                                                                   *
When you have liberated yourself from the stress and frustration of unreachable goals, you are free to channel your mental energy toward goals that actually serve you. However, well-crafted goals are not a guarantee of success. The problem lies in sticking with your goals long enough to build habits, and creating habits that self-sustain. Self-sustaining habits are the turning cogs behind the facade of your ultimate objective. They are the mechanism that allow you to exist and just be, rather than continually investing mental energy into planning and doing.

 The birth and growth of habits that self-sustain is a complex process of trial, correction and reflection. This is best achieved with the guidance of an impartial party, such as a health coach or other professional relevant to your goals. That being said, you will always be the ultimate expert on you, and the primary tool that is needed in the habit-forming phase is self-coaching. Self-coaching is the process of mindfully experiencing intentional change in your life curiously, consistently and compassionately.

When we ask ourselves whether we feel better or worse, exhausted or invigorated, frustrated or inspired with every small lifestyle change we implement, we are self-coaching. When acting on our goals brings a measure of discomfort, rather than distract ourselves with the comfort of old habits we must peer into what the discomfort truly is. Why are we uncomfortable? Is it a discomfort that might lessen with time? We must discern the positive discomfort that comes with growth from the negative discomfort of a goal that is aligned with values that someone else has assigned to you, not the values that are native to your heart.

This curiosity must be applied to every goal that we try on, every success we celebrate, every priority that we downgrade and ignore, and every attempt at changes that leaves us without the desired outcome. Consistency in the analysis of our own behavior is often more exhausting than the changes that we execute due to the mental energy it requires. In large part, this mental energy comes in the form of frustration at our wired patterns. We know how to do better and we want to do better, so why don’t we just do better?

Negative self-talk gets in the way here, and we must be vigilantly and radically compassionate with ourselves in order to break through to the changed behavior that we want. Mindfulness allows us  to be aware of our physical and emotional reactions to our experiences, and also allows us to release those reactions without allowing them to take the reins and sabotage the remainder of the journey to our principle objective.

The curious, consistent and compassionate approach to our attempts at behavior change really boils down to just one question: Is what I am doing sustainable?

You should be asking yourself this question at every turn in your journey. When things are clicking, when things are not clicking, when you are on a high or when you are feeling totally depleted: is what I am doing sustainable?  For the lucky among us, life is long. The habits we forge are meaningless if they cannot be adapted to our life at every stage. No matter the level of success you are having with your goals, it is meaningless if the actions required to achieve them are not sustainable.

Be honest with yourself about whether you can you see yourself performing a behavior (once it has been mastered) for a prolonged period without it wearing down your body, mind, soul, or loved ones, and be kind to yourself when the answer is ‘no.’ Seek out support to rethink your approach before you have time to second-guess the entire journey. If your goals were well-designed to begin with, course correction is often just a conversation away.

This concludes our three-part series on goal-setting. If you have health and wellness goals that you are ready to pursue, head over to my contact page for a complimentary phone session to see what health coaching could do for you. If you haven’t already liked my Facebook page, what are you waiting for? It’s right here. Thank you for your support.

Goal-setting (Part 2 of 3)

If you haven’t read part one of this three-part series, just scroll down and give it a look. It’s a quick read, and will set the stage for confidence when you’re enacting your goals.

Once you have explored your past experience with goal-setting and are ready to move forward, it’s time to design the first action you will take to get where you want to go.

Envision yourself where you want to be and work backward from there. What is the very first step, no matter how small, to getting to your end goal? This will be your first mini-goal in your journey.

To make sure that the goal you have crafted will stand up the task you’ve set for yourself, there’s an acronym that we use in health coaching. You’ve probably seen this acronym before if you work in Human Resources or project management: it’s SMART. 

To evaluate your goal, check to make sure that each of these applies. Your goal should be..

Specific- There is no question as to what should be executed, when, and how.

Measurable- The outcome of the goal is not open to interpretation. Any bystander could evaluate whether or not it was accomplished.

Attainable- It can be achieved with respect to safety, sanity and sustainability.

Relevant- The goal is part of a logical progression of steps leading you to your ultimate objective. It does not sidetrack or derail you.

Time-oriented- There is a finite start and stop period for this goal; it is not open-ended.

 If a goal has all of the above features, it is far more likely to be achieved. More importantly, SMART goals progress in intensity and workload, and set a solid foundation for the accomplishment of your ultimate objective.

Health coaching provides structure and guided goal design when you are ready to make lasting changes to your lifestyle. Use the ‘Let’s do this’ page to fill out a request for your complimentary goals assessment.

Goal-Setting (Part 1 of 3)

Today we begin a three-part series on goals. I have worked with many adults who initially felt silly writing down their goals for better health and wellness. ‘The doctor says I need to lower my blood pressure, so just tell me what I’ve gotta do,’ they’d say. All my talk about goal-setting gets in the way of their, well, goals.

When I explain that it’s a step-wise process, and that once you understand the health condition you are addressing you can then begin to design very small goals toward that end, some clients are still impatient with the process. Luckily, though, people are kind and sometimes they humor me. And then a funny thing happens: once they started seeing results, they realize that goal-setting isn’t a gimmick, it’s a tool for anyone who has a serious objective in mind. 

One of the reasons that so many of us come to the health coaching desk with skepticism—or don’t come at all—is our frustration with past efforts to change our health. Health goals in a media-driven culture are largely unrealistic and not based in healthy practices at all. Goals that are based on product advertising masquerading as a health message, are not achievable or sustainable. 

Instinctively we know this, since so many of us have tried and failed to achieve the standards set for us on TV, social media and magazines. Yet we continue to strive for an elusive body type or lifestyle and seek immediate satisfaction in these efforts because we are continually bombarded with messages that we are inferior if we don’t. We are subtlety nudged out of the mainstream through marketing, pricing and services if our values don’t align with those that we see in the media.

And so of course we come to our health journey with a sense of exhaustion—a sense that we are doomed from the start. But it doesn’t have to be this way. By following a process that uncovers the values that you hold for yourself—not that advertising has forced on you—you can begin to cut your path toward what you want for your personal health and wellness.

When they are custom designed with realistic expectations, goals are the rungs on the ladder to where you want to go. In the next post, we will go over the exact formula for setting goals that you can actually achieve. We will wrap up the series in our third post with the secret ingredient to tie it all together—the one question that we must continually ask ourselves to maintain and build upon our success. 

If you like what you read here, head over to the Well & Kind Facebook page and let’s continue the discussion there. Be sure to Like & Follow so you don’t miss out on new downloadable tools that are coming this spring.

Want to make meditation a part of your every day life, but having trouble figuring out how to make it stick? There's an app for that! Learning to meditate and making it a habit is a lonely pursuit, and I struggled for years figure out how to make meditation a part of my everyday life. It wasn’t until I started to integrate my meditation journey with my phone, a tool I already used every day, that I was able to forge a meditation habit for good.

Insight Timer is my favorite app for meditation for a number of reasons. It’s free, so you don’t have much to lose by trying it, but I want to tell you the main reasons that I’ve found it useful as I built my daily meditation practice over the last five years.

1.      The variety of guided meditations from nearly 2,000 contributors is a feast for the ears. The differing rhythms, accents, and subject matter of Insight Timer’s guided meditations gives a comforting selection to beginning meditators who may feel overwhelmed at the start of their journey, or isolated by their life experiences with grief, mental illness, or chronic disease.

2.      The timer function helps you grow your practice, allowing you to customize the duration of your meditation as you are able to sit for longer and longer periods. It also enables you to choose bells to ring at intervals to help you stay oriented, and the selection of background noises is top-notch.

3.      Finally, Insight Timer encourages continuity, letting you know your ‘streak’ when you have meditated for an uninterrupted period of consecutive days, and congratulating you each time you finish a meditation. It lets you know who else meditated at the same time as you, all over the world, to help alleviate some of that loneliness that is inherent to building a practice.

With its customizability, orientation toward uninterrupted periods of use, and diverse array of contributors, Insight Timer has outperformed other meditation apps for me when it comes to getting down to a daily practice consistently. I highly recommend you download this app, wherever you are in this journey. [Insight Timer did not pay me for this post and is not a sponsor of Well & Kind.]

Whether it bores you, kills your knees, or takes up way too much time with the sweat-shower-repeat cycle, hating exercise does not make you a monster.

The American Heart Association recommends 30 minutes, five times a week of ‘moderate’ physical activity—basically anything that gets your heart pumping—but you can get away with less if you go hard. Two days per week is sufficient for good heart health if you are breaking a sweat for a longer period of time. If you are just starting out, don't let this intimidate you: any amount of exercise that is an increase from what you were doing previously is an improvement. 

But wait, you hate exercise, right? So let's take that on. Here are three ways to overcome the 'I hate exercise' hump when you need to get moving:
 

1.      Think about what you already like to do. If you hate running in the dead of summer or absorbing someone else’s sweat on a Thigh Master, good news: you don’t have to. Maybe your dislike of exercise stems from your belief that you must go to a gym or be miserable in order to get fit. Your body won’t change if you don’t break a sweat, but if you like to dance, wander through malls, work in your garden, tickle your kiddos, clean your house, swim, bowl, talk on the phone, or watch TV, all of these can be parlayed into exercise. More of this in next week’s post.
 

2.      Be kind to your body. Have you consistently taken the time to warm and cool down properly? Jumping right into movement puts you at high risk for an injury, and can leave you with soreness that turns you off of exercise entirely. Warm up and cool down is not optional, and should add at least ten minutes to the beginning and ten minutes to the end of your workout; more if you're very out of shape.
 

3.      Stop calling it exercise. If you don’t like ‘exercise’, don’t ‘exercise,’ just move.  Anything that brings you joy and gets your heart working harder than it usually does is helping you on your way to a more fit body. The part about it bringing you joy is nonnegotiable—this is what will keep you coming back for more.

A big part of the health journey is taking time to ask whether the stories you have told yourself (or been told by others) are actually true. Do you truly hate moving your body? Are you not allowed to leave your house after dinner to go for a walk? Are you destined to have the body type that you have now forever? This story is yours. You get to rewrite the ending any time you want to.

March Interview: Dr. Judson Brewer, MD, Ph.D.

Well & Kind’s mission is to cut through the hype and bring you evidence-based holistic wellness. To that end, the Well and Kind blog will feature monthly interviews with wellness innovators—people who are doing the hard work to figure out how we can live a happier and healthier life, and bring that information straight from the source to you.

 Our first wellness innovator is Dr. Judson Brewer. Dr. Brewer is a psychiatrist by training. He is Director of Research at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness, associate professor in medicine and psychiatry at the U of Mass Medical School, professor of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, and a research affiliate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.

In short, there is absolutely no reason why Dr. Brewer should have agreed to be interviewed on this blog.

In addition to his dozens of peer-reviewed articles and his best-selling book, The Craving Mind, Dr. Brewer has also got pop-culture cred: he’s been featured in Businessweek, Time magazine, the BBC, NPR, 60 Minutes, Forbes, and a TED talk that has garnered more than nine million views.

Again, why did he drop by Well & Kind?

Some might attribute it to the multiple requests I sent. But some might also attribute it to the fact that Dr. Brewer and I share a common bond over what he calls guerilla wellness. It’s bucking the status quo of seeing the doctor once a year and leaving the wellness part of the equation up to chance. The Well & Kind philosophy is that wellness arises from self-kindness—we are all empowered to be well. Dr. Brewer’s research proves that this is possible, whether you are curbing an addiction, managing your stress, or losing weight. Mindfulness, the powerful science underpinning Dr. Brewer’s research, is a powerful way of reclaiming our health for ourselves instead of chasing trends until we are exhausted and give up on the idea of better health.

Here is our discussion from March 11th, 2018:

Well & Kind: Did you grow up in a setting that was conducive to what you do now?  Did you grow up around mindfulness?

Dr. Judson Brewer: (Laughs) No, I grew up in rural Indiana with my mom raising a bunch of kids..mindfulness wasn’t really a part of that. I did know plenty of suffering, though. That sort of prepared me for a career in mindfulness.

 [Dr. Brewer studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Princeton University before going on to the Medical Scientist Training Program at Washington University, where he completed an MD with his Ph.D. focused in Immunology. He completed his residency in psychiatry at Yale, and went on to become a post-doctoral researcher in neuroscience research. He completed his fellowship in substance abuse at the Yale University School of Medicine and earned his board certification in psychiatry the following year.]

WK: The evidence is pretty clear: mindfulness works. So why don’t we hear about it when we go to the doctor’s office? Why isn’t it more mainstream?

JB: Are you ready for this? It takes seventeen years once efficacy has been proven for CMS to allow for a therapy to be reimbursed. We’re doing all of this guerilla right now; I’m working with a startup company that is developing treatments and my lab is testing their efficacy. For example, with our eating program, people are seeing a 40% reduction in food cravings; I don’t know of any pill that can do that. [Check out Dr. Brewer’s three web-based programs, targeting emotional eating, smoking, and anxiety .]

WK: What is one take away piece of advice that you would want the average person to know, from all of your experience and research?

JB: I wish people would learn how their minds work. Once you’ve mastered your mind, you can master what needs to be done. You can do anything you want to do.

To delve further into Dr. Brewer’s research on mind mastery and how it applies to all of us, view his TED talk here.

If you want better eating habits, the first step is to simplify your approach. There’s no need to overhaul your diet all at once--you don’t have to go gluten-free, low carb/high fat or vegan right now.  Instead, consider changing how you eat before you try to change what you eat.

Here are three ways to lay a foundation for a better diet, without having to buy wheat grass. 

1. Before you eat anything, ask yourself: am I hungry? Am I truly, physically, in need of food? If the answer is ‘yes,’ move on to the next question: ‘how will what I am about to eat make me feel?’ Don’t think about the first five seconds that you spend tasting your food; think about twenty minutes from now when your body will start to register the physical effects of what you’ve eaten. Will the food or drink you've chosen leave you satisfied, or still hungry? Will you feel sluggish, or wired? Keep track of what you choose and when; your mind will start to register any patterns you notice.
    
2. Take an inventory of the most joyful and the most peaceful parts of your day. Do you have fewer than you desire? Is food a crucial part of those moments? Food might be filling a void where other, more fulfilling pursuits are missing. Start to ask yourself if food is standing in for something (or someone) else. Perhaps you crave more intellectual stimulation, emotional connection, physical activity, sunshine and fresh air, or creative expression. This is difficult mental terrain to explore, but this was a radical eye-opener when I started to ask myself (and honestly answer) these questions. 
    
3. How do you experience your food? Do you regularly rush through your meals, or eat on the go? Do you graze constantly? Do you only eat once a day?    Become aware of your patterns. It is through awareness that we begin to change.
   
   Once you have been mindful of these questions for a few weeks, you will have an idea of where to begin to focus your efforts for healthier eating. Chances are, you know what healthier nutrition choices look like for you. Take time to discover what kinder nutrition choices would look like as well.

Rooted in Eastern philosophy, mindfulness has been practiced for millennia by Buddhists and laymen. It is a purposeful way of experiencing life, in which we pay attention only to the moment at hand. We are unencumbered by a focus on the past, the future, or our ceaseless inner dialogue.

Here are three ways to be mindful today, without shaving your head or moving to the mountains. (That doesn’t sound bad though, does it?)

1.      When you are in transit somewhere—walking down the street, riding in an elevator, peddling a bicycle—notice the feeling of your body as it contacts a surface. This could be your shoe soles slapping the asphalt, your hand gliding along a bannister, or your legs pumping up and down to crank your pedals. Give your full attention over to these sensations and let other thoughts go as they pop into your mind.
 

2.      When you begin your day, pause to breathe. Sit at the edge of your bed, and bear in mind that that there is no urgency in this current moment. Let your gaze fall to the floor just in front of you and breathe in deeply through your nose, allowing your belly to rise with your breath. Breathe fully out of your mouth. Repeat.
 

3.      When you greet a person whom you love, do so mindfully. If you have a small child, experience the smell of their hair and the feeling of their tiny limbs wrapped around you. If you have an elderly parent, know the crevasses of their hands when you clasp them. When you hug your partner, lean into them and tune into their breathing: the rising and falling that gives your loved one life.

Mindfulness is the underpinning of Well & Kind, because when we are able to shed the doubt, worry, distraction and numbness of day to day life, we can find our way to wellness. If you are interested in mindfulness-based health coaching for health, wellness, or disease management, reach out to me.