Body Lesson #1
|Isn’t it funny how our belief in the strength and capability of the body waxes and wanes? How in those waning times we don’t trust our body’s resilience, or we forget our need for movement, and veggies for that matter? And at the peak of our strongest we know this is what the body is made for and our positive connection with our rebounding selves continues to grow.
Isn’t it easy to let the messiness of life – the stress, schedules, anger and frustrations – keep us from being healthy? All those negative triggers push us towards choosing the easiest route to a quick fix be it sugar/salt/fat based junk foods, alcohol or drugs. And here’s the kicker, our brains remember what we chose when feeling stressed and when in the same situation down the road, that’s what it will trigger as a remedy to ease our discomfort. Yes, our big brains don’t care if what we choose is unhealthy it just remembers those “fixes” created a feeling that ameliorated the problem.
To break that brain-induced bad habit to dealing with what life throws at us takes a lot of hard work – yes, sorry, nothing worthwhile is easy – yeah yeah yeah… I find it helps to remember just what it is that I want this body to be capable of everyday. For me the best lesson I’ve learned through running is that I like my body better when it’s strong.
A few years back when I was in the harrowing process of changing from full-time job to full-time school my anxious mind left me in a big-time funk. One day while walking up the stairs, a young woman blew by me, running up two at a time. “Wish I had the energy to do that,” I thought. Now, after running many miles I can do the same as that young chick. I love my strong thighs, bum, back and core. All I can hope for is that I don’t forget that feeling.