The Work IN to move out of stress, tension & anxiety

Hypervigilance in the body, whether from chronic pain or previous injury or our beliefs about our health can break our faith in our body and its capabilities. Mobility is the pathway back to body faith and freedom of movement. Basically it’s reconnecting with all of the things we took for granted when we were younger. Strength, stamina, balance and coordination. That’s our work IN today we’re look...

One of the biggest myths about movement is that if it hurts you shouldn’t do it.  And if we’re talking about an acute injury like a broken arm or torn acl then yes that’s true. In the acute phase of an injury we need to hit pause. But what if the source of our pain isn’t known, or the treatment isn’t knowable. I’m talking about the kind of chronic pain that our medical professionals can’t find a r...

Racing thoughts, rumination, wired and tired. All of these are top complaints about sleep disturbances. Have you been there? Physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted and yet incapable of shutting down the racing thoughts in order to get to sleep. It’s not your fault but it is within your control. And that’s our Work IN today. We’re going to explore top down and bottom up tools to win the rac...

Ep 218 Eating yourself well: Low hanging fruit for quickstart results I, like many of you, have tried a lot of diets over the years and been increasingly frustrated by the shifting rules of healthy eating coming from so-called experts with questionable conflicts of interest. Today on The Work IN I am highlighting the low hanging fruit when it comes to eating yourself well. If you’re looking for a...

Exercise is a classic lever to reduce stress. That’s what they tell us anyway. But rarely is there any guidance given about how or why it works let alone how to make it work for you. That’s what our Work IN is today. I will be giving you a more practical understanding of the mind body connection to exercise for stress reduction and how to harness different intensities to build long lasting buffers...

Once you decide that yes you CAN make yourself healthy again, it’s time to get started in a  place that will give you a strong foundation and quick win. But where? There’s a story Debra Adele tells in her book The Yamas and Niyamas about a helpful monkey who grabs a fish out of the water and takes him up into the tree. As the fish dies the monkey laments, “But I saved you from drowning!” Sometimes...

There’s no doubt undoing generations of misinformation about what is healthy and stopping the progression of our self induced chronic disease pandemic is going to take time. And while changes at the macro level of health policy are important, what matters more is that we take back personal freedom and control to influence our own physical, mental and emotional health. That’s our Work IN today. We’...

Whether you are a sub or a regular instructor you never know who is going to walk into your room. Last week we talked about how integrating trauma-informed principles in fitness can help you hold space for you and your students to get the results they want out of your classes. Today we are taking that one step further with the practical application of those skills. Our work IN today are 3 next lev...

You’re subbing and there you’re at the front of the room. Finally you get a chance to show what you can do. The music’s rockin’, you’ve got your sequence ready to go, and you know it’s gonna be a tough workout. Not just tough but killer, like anyone who comes to this class is gonna get their ass kicked. And isn’t that what everyone wants out of fitness?  And then the unthinkable happens.  Someone...

5 minutes can make or break the results for your workout. You can do everything “right”: dial in your macros, hit your heart rate zones, get your hydration and vitamin D and still struggle to find the results you’re looking for. In fact you may be doing more harm than good if your movement plan excludes time for your body to integrate and recover. Our work IN today is about how we can magnify mind...

5 Hard earned truths that make or break a fit pro career Congratulations! Getting that certification in the mail is exciting. You earned it. You deserve to be proud of yourself for the work it took to get those official credentials. Now what? Getting any fitness professional certification is like being handed a recipe. And we all know that there’s a big difference between following that recipe to...

For new fit pros fresh off certification it can be very scary building a student base from scratch. Most certs don’t teach you how to do that. So a lot of us end up working for someone else and getting churned and burned out of the industry because it’s almost impossible to make a living wage from only instructor hourly pay from big box gyms. Not to say it can’t be done. But let’s just say that’s...

Group exercise prescription has become the faceless assembly line of the fitness industry. Branded plug and play format companies have taken the place of creative freestyle instructors in pursuit of a baseline of quality control. Instructors don’t even get to choose their music. So instead of connection, customization and results, students get performance choreography and instructors risk overuse...

Last week we mentioned using beta testing as a way to find direction and course correct when we’re learning how to price our services in the fitness industry. Today our work in we’re breaking down the mighty beta for fitness professionals. I’m going to share how to use 5 beta launch lessons to build your fitness business from the ground up. Even if you aren’t a fit pro this is interesting because...

Knowing the value of what you offer and how to price it in the fitness industry is probably the most challenging thing to figure out as a fitness professional. And that’s today’s Work IN. We are pulling back the curtain on how to price fitness services to attract clients AND so that you can avoid the 3 most common mistakes fit pros make: Under pricing, over pricing and NOT pricing their services....

5 tips to master the art of saying NO Many women have been conditioned from an early age to override that inner voice that says “no”. That gut feeling that this is wrong, we don’t want this. Our intuition. That conditioning infuses us with the culturally acceptable boundaries for who we are as women in our families, in business and in the world. We are all complicit in our own limitations. At some...

We’re shifting gears a bit over the next few weeks as we take a look at some essentials for fit pro success. Now I know not all of us are fitness professionals. But we all are fitness and wellness consumers. And because of that I want to take some time to share some of the qualities that make good instructors better and great instructors great. These are things we can all look for when shopping fo...

Time to flex!  Myth busting muscle through menopause. It's not the end ... So what I hope for today's discussion is that you will leave here with a better understanding of some of the tools at your disposal and confidence to be able to have a deeper discussion of some of these things with your health care provider from the standpoint of the only expert in the room in your body and experi...

A good night's sleep is the holy grail for many of us, especially women because it’s so responsive to our hormone fluctuations. In our modern society in general, men and women, on average, are lucky to get 6 hours of sleep a night, despite recommendations of 7-9. 73% of Americans get less than 7 hours of sleep a night according to a 2023 Gallup poll. They say we sleep ⅓ of our life. Sleep is...

So often at the beginning of the year we feel a push change. A push towards healthy eating choices and a pull towards familiar habit patterns. When both happen at the same time we get stuck in the middle. The body is a complicated system of networks and they all communicate and work with each other, pushing and pulling to some kind of balance. Understanding the push and pull can set us up for succ...

Motivation is an unsustainable myth. At least in the sense that most of us understand it. The idea that we need to feel some kind of way in order to take action toward our goals is BS. We shouldn’t be reliant on a fleeting sensation for anything, especially not our health and fitness. It’s time to be the grown-up in this mind-body relationship. That’s our work IN this week. We’re looking at why we...

Ep 200 8 essentials to make any health change last a lifetime Nothing changes until something changes. Welcome back to The Work IN podcast. At the time of this recording it is a brand new year. 2025. And just like every year  there are a lot of “New year new you” challenges kicking off. Are you bored with them yet? Frankly what I want to know is why do we offer the same thing every year? Why not f...

Hey there, welcome back. Today marks the episode 199 of The Work IN podcast and as we are set to enter 2025, and celebrate our 5th season. I can’t even believe that. I didn't even think I  wanted to do a podcast! But here I am looking ahead and wondering what’s next? As we approach the new year, many of us are setting goals for next year. Or trying to. I don’t do resolutions any more and my g...

Welcome back to our series on the koshas.  We've discussed Annamaya, our physical body layer, pranamaya kosha our energetic/breath layer, manomaya kosha our mental layer and last week we discussed Vijnanamaya kosha. Our wisdom layer. That objective witness to everything in and around us. Today we wrap up this series with the 5th and innermost kosha, Anandamaya kosha. This layer is described a...

We continue our exploration of the koshas this week with the 4th kosha. Vijnanamaya kosha is our wisdom body. The seat of our intellect. We strive for both wisdom and intellect and yet struggle to define them in practical ways. That’s our Work IN today. We’ll look at simple ways to tap into this wisdom layer of our selves to build awareness and resilience on our journey into our true self. Welcome...