Self Guided Healing
The last few months I didn’t do much working out. Every time I did I had crazy symptoms pop up.
If you knew me in the past then you know that this is very unlike me. I don’t remember the exact age when I started running but I was pretty young. Maybe 13 ish? I’d do 2 miles with my favorite music playing on my iPod Touch. Speaking of, I will definitely have to find that little guy and see what tunes are on it.
A total side note, but I can’t resist. Don’t you miss the days of owning your music? Having your cd collection that you grew by spending hours in FYE and making playlists to burn off of Limewire onto cds or your iPod? The convenience of having everything on our phones (which is actually such a weird way to categorize the mini computers glued to our hands because how often do we actually use it as a phone compared to other things?) is nice, and maybe I’m steeping in nostalgia, but the thought of going back to perusing Facebook on a desktop (or better yet, myspace) and running with an iPod is something special.
Anyways, back to running. I was a runner for years. I loved it. I don’t really remember why I stopped. Maybe it was the mold? I’m sure it was something health related. And the more that I dove into the obsessiveness that oftentimes comes along with the health and wellness industry, the less I desired running because I thought that it would be bad for me.
If you read last weeks post, then you know that this has shifted and I want to go a bit deeper into that today.
Moral of the story, I did some major mindset work around all of this.
To start, I reflected on what type of content I was consuming. So many people in the holistic space hate on different movement practices such as cardio, HIIT, etc., especially for women with references to cycle syncing and healing. I hated on them for a while too. I mean, to an extent it all makes sense and I’m sure it’s helped some people out there. But thats not the path for me. I did it for a long time, long enough to realize that it didn’t serve me. I had to throw that belief away, which is easier said than done. But now, I’m running again.
I was asked the other day how to prepare for #75hard. You don’t prepare. You just decide to do it and you do it. We make things harder than they need to be. That’s not to say that 75 Hard isn’t hard, but I would say that at the same time it’s relatively simple. You get up every day and you check off the boxes for the same tasks. Rinse and repeat. Now of course, those tasks bring challenge, but if you already decided that you’re doing the program, then you’re doing the program. It doesn’t matter if you want to do a second workout or not. The decision to do the program was made, and so the doing just has to happen. If you’re not eating sugar and it’s Christmas, you don’t eat the cookies. It’s consistency and discipline at its core. Consistency and discipline are the path to true freedom and happiness.
I started 75 Hard in May 2021 while healing from mold. The advice given to me by various practitioners from the start was to rest. I rested until I started 75 Hard and the greatest shift happened when I did the opposite. It happened when I moved my body and pushed myself physically. Yes, rest is a crucial part of health and healing but I didn’t need excess rest even though that’s what doctors were telling me. I needed movement to connect to my physical self after months of feeling disconnected. I needed a challenge to see what was physically possible. I needed something different than what is advised.
Thats often the case. Blanket advice is preached when it comes to health. We see it everywhere. It’s in the celery juice, keto diet, 10,000 steps a day, do x, y, z exercises to grow a butt, and every other trend that we see on Instagram. We follow this advice and then we wonder why we’re not feeling amazing. Often, it’s because we’re following what worked for someone else and not creating an individualized approach.
No one else out there has the same experiences or perceptions as you which means that you are your own individual Self with unique needs. Of course, some advice will work for you, but mimicking how others live or tell you that you need to live to be healthy usually creates the opposite.
That’s why I’ve begun to throw it all away. I have thrown away all of the health advice and I’m starting fresh. I’m following things that interest me. Right now that means exploring eating less meat, running, and practicing a specific form of yoga. Maybe for you that looks like eating more meat, only working out 2 times a week, and going to a sound bath every Friday night.
So often we want to fit in and be like everyone else. The less attention and judgment for potentially being weird or different, the better. But where’s the freedom in that? Where’s the room for growth? Where’s the room for individuality? Each of us has our own unique birth chart, physical body, personality, and essence. None are the same. I believe that it’s time to step into that uniqueness and embody it instead of running from it. If not now, then when? Did you ever think that maybe the fact that we run from our True Self could be a root to health issues or not living our dream lives? I think that it’s so intimately connected.
And so, only you can determine what is your medicine. Only you know what uplifts you. Only you know how to take yourself to the next level. It might not be 75 Hard or running. It might be rest. Whatever it is, remember that you alone know what is best.
