Monthly Archives: June 2011

Mindfulness

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Life presents us with challenges day in day out. Pain is one of those challenges we all get presented with at some point.

Pain and feeling physically limited increases the stress we perceive. It feels as if we have no control over our life, our pain, and we want to close down, become small. When that happens, our world and life become smaller, but it does not help reduce the stress, or give us more control.

If we keep looking outside ourselves for a solution, waiting for somebody to present us with the answers to our problems, or handing us the magic pill, we are not going to find it. Only when we look within ourselves will we find the answers. We all have the potential to help ourselves.

Mindfulness is an inner discipline, a tool to help you face and overcome the challenges in your life with awareness. Mindfulness helps us to open and expand when we want to close down and become small. Mindfulness helps us understand the connection between emotions and pain. We start accepting our emotions for what they are, without judgment, and we realize with the acceptance the pain and stress will ease.

Understanding and accepting that our physical body is connected to our mental and emotional mind is the key. It is widely accepted that stress causes ulcers, high blood pressure or even heart disease. Even though the mechanisms are not clear yet–how emotions can cause pain and illness–it would be an oversight not to include the possibility that you are dealing with not just a body but a mind as well.  Excluding the mind from finding a cause for pain, especially chronic pain, would be an oversight.

I highly recommend reading more about this if you are interested. Mindfulness based stress reduction is a scientifically based program to help deal with stress, pain and life’s challenges.
Recommended books:

Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat Zinn
Healing Backpain by John E. Sarno

 

Coming soon to the Welcome Back Centre in Kamloops: Mindfulness Based Moving.

Keep walking

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Older adults can decrease their risk of disability and increase their likelihood of maintaining independence by participating in a walking exercise program.

A study, which appeared in an issue of the Journal of Geriatric Physical Therapy, also found that walking program participants increased their peak aerobic capacity by 19 percent when compared to a control group and increased their physical function by 25 percent.
(ScienceDaily, July 22, 2008)

By increasing aerobic capacity, the walking group was better able to perform daily tasks and had more energy left over for recreational activities, like going out dancing.

The researchers found that physical function increased by 25 percent in the walking exercise group, compared to a decrease of 1 percent in the control group. And while the control group saw their risk of disability increase over the four-month period, the walking exercise group saw their disability risk go from 66 percent to 25 percent – a decrease of 41 percent in just four months.

Walking is good for you, but too many people still aren’t doing it. This study shows that just walking on a regular basis can make a huge impact on quality of life.

Start out slow and easy. Just walk out the door 5 minutes, and walk back. If this was easy for you, add one minute until you find you are walking as long as you are able. Then progress 2 minutes weekly.

Join me soon for a walk. Walk safe, walk strong, better your balance, better your health. Please contact me if you are interested in joining my group.