Mindful Exercising

Happy New Year! And if you’re anything like me, I have already made some New Year’s Resolutions and have made them again…in January. Its not easy to make a commitment and keep it. Things are hectic, schedules are packed, and there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. Then when things get busy my new commitments sometimes fall by the wayside. Anything that feels like “extra” is not priority the way it started in the beginning of the year. Most of the time I don’t even notice I’m letting go of my new commitments. It is usually a slow process. One “oh I’ll do it tomorrow” after another or a “I’ll do it later” and then later doesn’t always come. That’s why mindfulness has been a huge help to me!

            Let’s start with what mindfulness is. Mindfulness is the ability to be in the moment and not overwhelmed or reactive to what is happening around us. The goal of mindfulness is just to activate our awareness of our mental, emotional and physical process. For many, exercise is a common New Year’s Resolution and it has great benefits for our mental health, but it also feels like something else on the checklist if we are not mindful even within our exercising.

Livestrong has done some research on mindful exercising and some of the benefits. When you exercise mindfully you can increase your ability to concentrate and decrease their obsessing and overthinking thought patterns. Through using mindfulness during your workouts you can even increase your enjoyment of the workout, and we could all use more of that! The more we can learn to be present in the moment the more we are able to make every exercise the most effective and can help reduce your chances of getting hurt.

There are a few ways to exercise mindfully:

Low Intensity Interval Training- forces you to slow down and build strength

Body Scanning – becoming aware of how your body is feeling is important to be able to exercise mindfully

Visualizing – think about doing your workout before you start, about how you will do in your workout, what you will do in your workout is a good visualization practice too.

Taking time to practice and learn to workout mindfully will help you reach your physical or exercise goals but more than anything will keep you in tune to how your body is responding to daily life and its stressors. When you can learn to be mindful in one area that will continue on into others also.

Let’s continue reaching our goals this New Year!

Written By: Brandi Hatter