Curiouser and curiouser

I think the best thing I have done to for myself over the last few years is become curious about my personal wellness. It has shifted my mindset around moving my body and how I fuel my life. I have much more fun than I ever have in the past when I experiment with movement and explore how I feel after eating.  It has helped me remove the judgement I often used to have for myself when I made a “bad” food choice or decided to skip a workout. This idea about approaching wellness through curiosity was sparked by two things. One, parenting my girls, and two, practicing yoga.

Kids are curious about everything.

As I watch my kids every day, they are naturally curious about the world around them. They learn from their curiosity. From taking their first steps, to trying different foods, to pushing the limits.  They are little sponges for learning how to live life and what feels good and safe in their bodies. Watching them learn through making mistakes, has been a gift. It is expected for children to try and fail. No baby ever has entered this world knowing how to walk. They progress from a crawl to pulling up on things, to standing independently and then taking those first steps. And we applaud them and support them as they go. Celebrating their failures, knowing that falling down is inevitable, and their successes, when they finally achieve whatever goal they have been working on. And at the core of this, is curiosity. They are trying to see what their body can do. They are trying to reach an object across the room that they want to know more about.

Yoga is called practice for a reason.

I’ve practiced yoga for years. Starting out originally with the intention of toning up and following the trendy people around me who were going to hot yoga.  I began to understand the power of yoga though when I met Erin Schifferli (https://erinschifferli.com/ ), who at the time was located near me and offered prenatal yoga classes.  She taught me so much over the years through yoga and as my doula for the birth of my 2^nd daughter, but at the core, she demonstrated to me how yoga can be part of life if I let it be.  One of the books she recommended along my yoga studies was “Living Your Yoga” by Judith Hanson Lasater, Ph. D., P.T. (Available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/41Ul8Mi). Right in the introduction of the book, she has a section titled “Practicing to live, living to practice.” And those words jumped off the page at me. Practice is the perfect word for living more curiously. If life is practice, just like yoga is practice, I can try new things any time. I can play and experiment as I practice living every day.

When did I stop being curious?

From these observations, I realized that I still have the same ability to operate in a state of curiosity should I choose it. I stopped at some point in my 20s I think, assuming that my nutrition and movement practices would essentially remain the same for the rest of my life. Often as adults, I’ve noticed that we stop being curious about our bodies, often saying things like, “well, that’s just the way I am,” I know my body has changed massively over the last 5 years in terms of needs! I gave birth to two beautiful babies. I breastfed them both for the first year plus some.  I am learning to respect these changes and get curious about what my body needs, right now, in this stage of life that I’m in.  And it makes it so much more fun! 

How am I living more “curiously”?

I used to love HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts.  Now that my back is questionable somedays for jumping movements, I rarely do these. So, I mixed it up. But it took trying and being curious about other options before finding the right movement options for me every day. I’ve discovered that I enjoy Barre workouts when I’m feeling a bit more feminine (not every day, but somedays). I’ve found that I enjoy running 10K or less. I can push myself to train for a half marathon, but right now, 6ish miles is my sweet spot, and that’s ok!  Asking my body every day what movement it is craving rather than following a set calendar or training plan has helped me fall in love with movement again.

For nutrition, I’m exploring a new way of eating for me.  This month I have decided to cut out gluten, dairy, and alcohol and follow a specific plan. As you know from my past blog posts, the scale hasn’t moved at all. And while I am ok with this because I am seeing my body improve in other ways, it is a bit strange for me to not see any change in my weight when I consistently move my body.  So I am following my intuition to see what I am eating that might be triggering bloat and inflammation in my body.  I’m also excited to see if any of these items are triggers for my migraines.

I encourage you to get curious about your wellness too and see where it parallels to other parts of your life! Here a few journaling prompts to help you reflect:

1. Am I enjoying the movement practice that I choose every day?
2. How did my food choices yesterday make my body feel?
3. Is my intuition telling me to try anything new today?
4. Where else in my life do I want to get curious about why I do things the way I do?

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