Pay Attention, Reap The Rewards

This article from Patch.com was shared with me today and struck a chord. I’ve been a student of spiritual growth for the past 20+ years, and my interest in living a more peaceful, purposeful life was a major factor in my changing careers in 1998, from corporate accounting management to owning a small, local fitness business.

The irony of the term spiritual growth is that most teachers I am drawn to would actually define spiritual living as less of a growth process, and more of a “stripping away” of the unnecessary distractions, obstacles, beliefs and triggers that prompt patterned reactive, mostly negative behaviors. These behaviors, while intended to “protect” us from perceived threats, nearly always fuel and strengthen the instinct to combat the imagined danger. That impulse then creates energy that produces exactly the same response of the object toward which it’s directed, reinforcing and frequently intensifying the original hostile environment.

So what does this all have to do with exercise and healthy eating?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. First, let’s consider a very common attitude many bring into their workouts. Go into any gym and you’ll be surrounded by revved- up exercisers blasting through a cardio class or attacking their treadmill or rowing machine. This is often done with little concern about how the body is designed for controlled, balanced intensity in an inverse relationship between the level of difficulty and the accumulated time the body can log in said difficulty. The long-term effect is diminishing returns, and often burn-out.

As for strength training, strained joints and backs are common among exercisers more concerned about reps and loads than producing a safe, efficient progression of balanced, usable muscle capacity. And that’s a large majority of gym goers.

Ah, but the body has its compensating responses cued up, in the ready for those unconcerned about long-term consequences of short-term, ill-advised behaviors. The most prominent of which include injury and, of course, the inescapable effects of aging.

On the eating side, we tend to follow a few familiar patterns that not only ignore the basic tenants of nourishment (the main reason for eating in the first place, in case that slipped your mind), but actually directly counter the fitter body’s demand for a heightened quality of nourishment and calorie make-up. It’s quite popular to, as we get older, make more money and naturally move less than we did in high school and college, eat more calories, with fewer nutrients, and load up later in the day. Indigestion, fluctuating blood sugar levels (sluggish, bloated sensation when piling on the calories; dips and “crashes” when insulin counters the blood sugar spike with the ferocity with which it was created), irregular elimination patterns and a general sense of lower vitality are the inevitable but completely avoidable by-products, as is compounded weight (fat) gain.

Add to that a trend toward getting fewer hours of sleep and less restful sleep, uneven and often inadequate hydration habits and ever-present stress from the concept that we never have enough time or can never quite do or be everything we want to be, and you have a recipe for an eventual train wreck.

So where do we start to re-program our approach to these critically important health practices? We start with attention. Not with a conceptual framework that we analyze, argue with and ultimately toss aside. Not with a judgmental edge that finds us already sub-par or unworthy of success. Not with the habitual reversion to subordinating time and energy toward oneself after an enthusiastic start because we just have “too much to do and to think about”.

No, we start with attention to how we feel.

Take a breath, nice and deep. Do you feel how your body lets go of a constant, subtle contraction of almost every muscle? No? Try it again. But this time, really commit! Have fun with it. Drop your shoulders back and lengthen your spine by pulling your crown up on the out-breath. There. Doesn’t that feel better?

And this is where we start. Try it with a glass of water or tea. Bring your full attention and focus to the taste, temperature and wetness of the beverage. See what you’ve been missing, slamming it down mindlessly?

The foundation of these two simple acts can be expanded on into an extraordinarily effective exercise and eating practice, as well as stress reduction rituals and the release of unnecessary upsets we carry around each day.

In the next few weeks, I’ll cover some of these practices in order to bring a deeper awareness and quality to your health regimen.

Until then, Namaste.

(Dan's web-based, medically endorsed healthy eating coaching program starts Monday, May 1. This short video explains why success lies in attention to your body's signals and a practice of working with, rather than against them.)

Dan Taylor, ACE, NASM-CPT, is owner and head trainer at Pleasanton-based Tri Valley Trainer. They offer personal training and small group fitness solutions and an innovative, medically endorsed web-based group healthy eating coaching program.