Welcome to Week 3 of The New Year’s Phase 1 Challenge.
In the last two weeks we focused on establishing a healthy diet and exercise routine. If you missed out on any of the posts or need to refer back, you can use this link to access all of the posts.
Moving forward now, we will focus on the third key input into building a healthy body: a balance of stress and rest.
One of the most significant problems with the modern world is two-fold:
- we are over-stressed mentally
- we are under-stressed physically
It is common to face heavy workloads, parental responsibilities, making payments, technology and social media, and a whole host of other life stressors. Meanwhile, we do not take the time to push ourselves physically, leading to dysfunction and breakdown of the systems supporting the body.
Consequently, to make up for our over-worked lives, we often have a tendency to push ourselves harder than we should be every time we go the gym. We began speaking about this last week, here, when we walked through how we can exercise wisely to optimize for specific health outcomes.
This week, we will continue to work with these concepts and layer in practices aimed at de-stressing our lives.
Here’s what to expect:
Tomorrow, I will introduce some basic principles regarding how the body is wired to improve with a balance of stressful signals, along with the flip-side, the consequences of an unbalanced lifestyle.
Then, we’ll spend the rest of the week discussing specific practices to help optimize for a healthy balance of stress and rest.
Eager to get started right now? Here’s a short practice you can do.
Get off your phone/computer, put away all of the distractions, and either sit or go walk – just you, yourself, with your thoughts.
As you take your walk or simply sit in a comfortable position with zero distractions, do the following:
- Breathe
- Witness your thoughts. Don’t judge them. Don’t engage with them. Just witness them.
- Breathe
And that’s it. Take however long you want (although I would recommend at least 5-10 minutes).
How do you feel?
- More relaxed? More motivated?
- Do you have more energy?
Take a moment to check in with yourself, noting any wins from this brief session. Then, check in each day to access each practice as we move through the week.