Getting Past the Barriers to Fitness to Improve Your Mental Health

Corbin Bednarik from Elate Fitness emailed me today with an interesting idea and I wanted to post it here because I thought it could be helpful for anyone trying to improve their mental health by, in part, improving their physical health.

Corbin wrote:

My name is Corbin, I am a Clinical Exercise Physiologist and Kinesiologist in Victoria BC. Three years ago, my sister died by suicide after silently battling depression.

This life-changing event was the catalyst for the start-up of Elate Fitness; to offer more support and accountability to help individuals get started and continue exercising.

I know firsthand how significant counselling can be and how important good physical health is for our mental well-being.

Elate Fitness Mission: To educate people on the impact of physical health on our mental health. To help give more people access to physical activity and to remove the barriers.

There is a disconnect between health professionals recommending exercise and individuals doing it.  We work to target the barriers: lack of motivation, anxiety, not knowing what to do, and not having any help with guidance or accountability.

We work directly with clients through our app.

1. Providing education on the physiological and psychological changes, to motivate and inspire exercise.

2. Offering online exercise training, including descriptive videos, specifically designed to improve mental well-being.

3. Creating accountability. Working with and monitoring everything entered in our app and checking in regularly with direct messaging.

We plan to be fully operating by August 2020.

We are in the start-up phase and currently running a crowdfunding campaign with a video explaining my mission:https://igg.me/at/elatefitness/x/22891004#/     

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Resources for Better Sleep and Grounding

Good sleep patterns are strongly connected to a sense of happiness and empowerment. If we feel well rested we have more energy and a sense of calm that helps us think well and get things done. When we have a belief that we can readily take care of the business of our daily lives we feel confident.

These are probably fairly obvious ideas but it occurred to me that many people hold this idea while simultaneously choosing not to prioritize sleep in their lives. In my opinion everything else in life flows from the ability of the machine of our body to master the life around us. For this reason prioritizing sleep is at the top of my list in my healthcare plan.

Many people struggle to get a good night’s sleep and for many reasons. I am sharing a bunch of links today that give information about how to get a better night’s sleep. My links will include how to feel calmer throughout the day by being more mindful. Being mindful and maintaining a more grounded state throughout the day contribute to making better decisions through the day and have a more creative mind. And, of course of of the things are the antidotes to depression. Depression is a complicated issue but if you think about it you will likely agree that feeling rested, energetic, creative and empowered to tackle any problem life gives you with motivation and confidence is the opposite to depression. So, good emotional self regulation (ability to be grounded more often) and having a full gas tank will be significant contributors to reliving depression.

Enjoy these links:

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Harnessing you’re unconscious to create what you believe

 

As a counsellor you learn that the core beliefs that people carry create the outcomes in their lives. If you believe you’re not good at something, you usually won’t be. Part of my job is to help people create effective beliefs in their lives to help them go where they want to go and do it they want to do.  Frequently people adopt believes in their childhood based on their experiences that keep them in bad habits and hold them back from achieving what they would like to.

There are many ways to get out this including cognitive behavioural therapy, narrative therapy, bibliotherapy,  hypnosis,  Gestalt therapy and manifestation.  I’m sure others could list more ways to get at the changing of our deeper beliefs.

Experts say that 90 to 95% of our brain use is unconscious rather than conscious and it is that place that we need to get to to create neurological change that produces different outcomes.

In researching this I came upon this very brief but to the point explanation of how that part of our brain works.  This particular look includes a kind of manifestation approach but I think if you read it you can see how the other approaches I have listed also fit here.

Reticular activating system

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The Connections Between Sleep and Anxiety

I came across an interesting article (Sleep and Anxiety)  showing the many connections between sleep quality and anxiety. It has been put together by a mattress company but has a lot of valuable information. It touches on many aspects of anxiety from social anxiety to Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and both natural sleep aids and prescription medication.

I would like to mention that medications are often used to induce sleep as mentioned in this article but, in my opinion, using natural methods to bring the body into the sleep zone are more useful in the long run and avoid the dependence that so frequently occurs when a person starts using sleep medication.

I am a firm believer that prioritizing an effective sleep routine for ones-self will have huge health benefits and lead to a happier life.

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One Effective Answer to the School Shooting Crisis

For all of negatives we can attribute to social media it’s ability to transmit useful  information to the masses is not one of them  . A friend of mine posted this link on Facebook and I had to share it. There are some specific and enlightened ideas about how any of us can work to end this crisis.

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Brene Brown on Vulnerability – Ted Talk

One of my favourite Ted Talks of all time. Brene Brown is inspirational in her down to earth way of explaining her learning path around the power of vulnerability.

YouTube link

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Will Smith on Fault vs. Responsibility

 

YouTube link for video clip of Will Smith speaking on the idea of Fault vs. Responsibility.

 

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Recovering From Infidelity

Recovering from any kind of betrayal can be one of the most challenging tasks for any human being. We are programmed to navigate our world by using our ability to ally ourselves with people we trust and steer clear of anyone we haven’t built a sense of trust with. Without the ability to feel we can read people we feel in danger and alone.

Being in a room of people you have never met before would likely have most of us on a higher sense of alert than lounging on the couch with our partner watching Netflix, right? In reality, most of us only have a small circle of friends and/or family that we consider truly trustworthy, people we find we can completely relax with. So, then imagine you have built trust with a partner based on thousands of experiences with that person, a process whereby your brain gathers information day after day that says this person does what they say they are going to do. Now, imagine this person does something that is way, way out of alignment with the understanding you have in your relationship with them. Its so far from what you thought they were capable of that is blows your mind and makes you question the world as you have envisioned it. Your sense of safety that lies, at least partly, in the belief that you have the ability to predict this person’s behaviours. Now you find that you were wrong, or at least it seems that way, you didn’t have that ability after all. This is extremely destabilizing for the majority of people and makes their world suddenly feel unsafe.

I am including some links with ideas about how we might start moving toward healing but there is a lot of information out there to choose from so don’t hesitate to “google” whatever questions come to your mind.

Can I Get Over an Affair

15 Powerful Steps for Surviving an Affair in Your Relationship

Saving Your Marriage After an Affair

How to Survive Infidelity – a collection of articles

 

On the topic of forgiveness:

I generally ask my clients to do a little research on the topic before deciding if forgiveness fits for them. There is a fair bit of research that suggests that forgiveness is correlated with increased happiness.”Higher levels of forgiveness correlated with better health habits, lower anxiety, lower anger, lower depression, and more task coping. In addition, people with higher levels of forgiveness had lower hematocrit levels, lower white blood cell counts, and higher TxPA levels. Lower forgiveness levels were correlated with higher T-helper/cytotoxic cell ratios. In general, results supported the hypothesis that forgiveness is positively associated with indices of good health”. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Physiological and psychological correlates of forgiveness. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232490793_Physiological_and_psychological_correlates_of_forgiveness [accessed Nov 17 2017].

Having said that, forgiveness is not always a good fit for everyone so I am including some links to a few articles that might be helpful in deciding whether or not it would be possible for you.

Forgiveness

7 Rules of Forgiveness

How Do You Forgive When it Feels Impossible 

Should You Forgive Someone for Cheating

Ultimately the healing that comes after the betrayal of infidelity will happen differently for each person. In my experience an important piece that I have taken away from helping couples and supported friends through this is to remember that this type of pain is one of the most intense a human being can feel and it will take time to feel better whether the couple decides to stay together or not.

 

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Perfectionism

I came across this article today. I have read it before and may have even posted it but I want to post it again because it really touches on a series of important ideas about perfectionism that goes too far. When perfectionism becomes exaggerated or unrealistic it truly diminishes the life of the person wrapped up in it.

This article from DanceSprit says it all and although the backdrop of the perfectionism here is the life of a dancer, other athletes, students and career followers also experience this type of thinking.

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8 Things Emotionally Intelligent People Avoid

Ahh.. David Wolfe, we share so many of the same values. Thank you for having a voice.

8 Things Emotionally Intelligent People Avoid

 

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