Tag: mental recovery

Boosting Your Yoga Practice on a Budget
Healthy Living, Mental Health, Personal Wellness

Flexible and Financially Savvy: Boosting Your Yoga Practice on a Budget

Yoga is one of those sports you just fall in love with. Equal parts physical activity and meditative practice, it’s the perfect exercise for those looking to strengthen their bodies, improve their flexibility, and increase their mind-body connection. For many, once you fall for yoga, the drive to improve your practice becomes inescapable.

For those of us on a budget, however, this drive can be a little disconcerting. After all, extra classes, equipment, and training can all cost a pretty penny. So, how can you improve your yoga practice without breaking the bank? Here’s a look at several budget-friendly yoga tips.

Set Goals and Track Progress

Having solid, achievable, trackable goals is a necessary step toward improving. It’s one of the simplest things you can do, but it will make a massive difference. There’s a straightforward reason for this: when you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve, getting there is much easier. Make your goal as specific as possible. “I want to practice three times a week” is better than “I want to practice more.” Find ways to quantify your goals so you can know for certain whether or not you’ve achieved them.

Once you’ve set your goals, you need a way to track them. You can use a journal, phone app, or another device to visualize your progress. An Apple Watch, for example, is a great device for tracking fitness goals. However, they can be pretty pricey — look for online deals and an Apple promo code on refurbished devices to save money if you decide to get one. Whichever way you track your goals, make sure you review your progress to see how far you’ve come. This will encourage you to keep moving forward.

Focus on Meditation 

One of the most beneficial parts of practicing yoga is coming to develop a better understanding of your own body. Mindfulness is an essential part of yoga, and making an effort to focus on it will pay off. Not only will it improve your confidence during flows and reduce your risk of injury, but it will also have lasting effects on your mood.

Studies have shown that regular mindfulness practice reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety. It can also lower blood pressure and improve your energy levels. By learning how to focus on the moment, you can let go of stress-inducing intrusive thoughts. This is a completely free way to turn inward, improve your practice, and boost your health.

Release the Urge to Compare 

In today’s social-media-driven world, we are given plenty of chances to compare ourselves to others. However, little to no good can come of this practice. When you compare yourself with others, you’re almost always going to come up short. This is because our brains are very good at finding the best in others and the worst in ourselves. This means you’ll come to conclusions that are neither fair nor a true representation of the world. Moreover, it can cost you money by driving you toward buying unnecessary stuff in pursuit of being like another person.

Even if we could see others and ourselves completely objectively, however, there’s still little to gain from comparing. After all, someone else’s success does not invalidate your progress. If your friend started yoga after you and is nailing more challenging poses, that doesn’t mean anything bad about you; they’re just progressing at a different rate.

Improving your yoga practice takes time and dedication. But yoga is about so much more than finding balance in a pose or moving confidently through a flow. The journey toward mindfulness, body awareness, and inner peace is the true benefit.


Blog post courtesy of Sheila Johnson @ Well Sheila

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Mental Health

Recovering Mentally From an Injury

When you get injured, there are two parts of recovering- physical, and mental. A lot of times, people forget they need to recover mentally from the ways their injury affected their mental state– and that healing goes far beyond just physical.

Why is it important to mentally recover from an injury?

Failing to properly recover mentally from your physical injury can have lasting effects. When you are physically recovered you may be afraid of re-injury, or may have post-traumatic stress when exercising from when you were initially injured. A few other effects it may have is insomnia, anger, and changes in appetite. When you exercise, endorphins get released in your brain and it gives you a bit of a high. If you are injured and aren’t getting the same amount of exercise, you can easily become irritable, depressed, and have changes in appetite where you either stop eating, or eat very unhealthy foods, oftentimes leading to unexpected weight gain, and in extreme cases, eating disorders. 

How can you mentally recover from injury?

Once you suffer an injury, you are normally limited in what types of activities you can do. There are a number of ways to stay positive, and mentally recover from your injury while you are physically healing.

1. Practice gratitude. While coping with an injury is hard, it gives you some time to think about what has it allowed you to do you weren’t able to do before? Such as get a break from work, read a good book, catch up on a show, or watch movies you have been meaning to watch.

2. Change your perspective. Put the time and energy that you would normally use to workout to recover, and remember that just because you are resting does not mean you are not being productive. Resting allows you to heal, which is productive.

3. Keep a journal. If you find yourself worried about injury or re-injury when you get aches and pains, keep a diary of them, and then log the result of how they turned out. Did it go away? How long did it take? What did you do to get it to heal? This strategy can work to give you more confidence in your body that you are unlikely to have a serious injury from exercising.

4. Start goal-setting. Set new, smaller goals for yourself. If you set yourself smaller goals when it comes to your recovery you will be happy when you put the work in and begin meeting your goals.

5. Focus on the things you can control. Control your diet. Drink more water and eat healthier foods to help compensate for not exercising as much. Depending on the injury you can find alternatives ways to exercise as well. If you have an arm injury, try and do more leg work such as body weight squats.If you injure your leg, try and work your arms. Doing these couple things still allows you to get some sort of exercise or to not lose all of the work you did by gaining weight, and that keeps your mentality positive.

6. Find a hobby. Redirect your energy into something else you enjoy such as cooking, work, or anything that you enjoy that can keep you occupied.

7. Meditate. If you find yourself stressing about not being able to recover as fast as you want, take the time to meditate. Sitting still and concentrating on breathing calms the nervous system and reduces stress.

8. Stick to the rehab program. Doing more rehab than recommended does not make you heal faster, and doing less than recommended slows your recovery, or you do not fully recover.

9. Do not isolate yourself. Try and stick to your normal social routine as much as possible. If you are still regularly communicating and socializing with family and friends you will not feel as down about being injured.

10. Stay positive. Remember that you will get better and not continue to be injured. If you do the recommended recovery and do not rush yourself to heal, eventually you will no longer be injured and can go back to all your normal activities.

 

Sources:

https://www.outsideonline.com/2184916/how-mentally-come-back-injury

https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/what-physical-injury-taught-me-about-my-mental-health-ncna811166

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/201512/psychological-rehab-after-sports-injury

omenshealthmag.com/fitness/a19940231/mentally-heal-from-injury/

http://www.ncaa.org/sport-science-institute/mind-body-and-sport-how-being-injured-affects-mental-health

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