Exploring the art of creative expression through movement
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
The Ego in Aerial
In one of my Facebook subscriber groups, I came across a post about the ego. This post was a focus of the day post where the writer talked about their internal battle with their own ego during a yoga class. Yoga classes can often place us into a mindset where we believe everyone around us is watching. This is something my husband struggles with and why he will not go to a yoga class alone (or basically without me.) He also hates working out at the gym because he feels like people are watching him. I try to assure him that no one is paying any attention to him and they are all too busy focusing on themselves and what they are doing. But as I ponder into the internal struggles with the ego, it reminds me that some of my time on the mat has been an experience where I suddenly feel compelled to strive for being the best and fall into competition with my fellow classmates. Am I truly paying attention to what and how they are doing on their mats? Yes and no. I may glimpse and see someone performing a move far better than I am capable physically due to anatomical limitations or for body readiness reasons. So yes, I do slightly pay attention to others but when doing this, I am viewing this comparison in relation to my own self. My ego checks in. This example of discussing the ego in yoga really got me thinking about how prevalent this need to compete with our peers is very noticeable and a huge part of the pole dancing and aerial circus arts/fitness world.
Social media is where a lot of us in aerial apparatus fitness connect and draw inspiration for our movement. Social media can be a positive attribute for the movement arts in this regard. However, social media can also cause one to internalize what they are seeing and focus more on what everyone else is doing and what we are not doing for whatever reason. The dictionary defines the ego as a person's self esteem or self importance. Our ego can have greater expectations for our physical abilities than we are ready or have trained for. This is an important concept to self realize. Know you are doing well regardless of your ability to perform amazing jaw dropping movements on your chosen apparatus. Give yourself credit for your achievements and your determination for your goals. Try to put your ego into check and ponder more on these feelings of inadequacy when they arise. Mind mapping these feelings can help you develop a plan to work towards your goals. Remember, it's about the journey, not the destination. Once you check off another item on your list, there will always be another goal to strive for. Be patient and be kind to yourself. Some solid advice I think we all need to be reminded of time and time again.
Social media is where a lot of us in aerial apparatus fitness connect and draw inspiration for our movement. Social media can be a positive attribute for the movement arts in this regard. However, social media can also cause one to internalize what they are seeing and focus more on what everyone else is doing and what we are not doing for whatever reason. The dictionary defines the ego as a person's self esteem or self importance. Our ego can have greater expectations for our physical abilities than we are ready or have trained for. This is an important concept to self realize. Know you are doing well regardless of your ability to perform amazing jaw dropping movements on your chosen apparatus. Give yourself credit for your achievements and your determination for your goals. Try to put your ego into check and ponder more on these feelings of inadequacy when they arise. Mind mapping these feelings can help you develop a plan to work towards your goals. Remember, it's about the journey, not the destination. Once you check off another item on your list, there will always be another goal to strive for. Be patient and be kind to yourself. Some solid advice I think we all need to be reminded of time and time again.
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Vacation Aerial: Destin Pilates and Aerial Center
Last month for Fall Break I took a week vacation to Destin, Florida. It was a lovely trip where I spent my days lounging on the beach, drinking some wine, coloring mandalas with my colored pencils, and throwing down some tarot cards. Amongst some of my lazy day shenanigans, when I remembered what day it was, I did make sure to get in some daily workouts. I put together a plan for staying active during my travels by incorporating some of the ideas I came up with in my May 2017 blog post: Staying on Track with Fitness During Travel. This trip I packed up my yoga mat, laptop for DoYogaWithme.com classes, mini stability ball for my current Pinterest Fitness series I was working on, and my Workout Labs exercise cards. I decided I wanted to take a class and as I always do, I searched for pole studios in the area. Unfortunately, there weren't any local pole studios but to my surprise, there were some aerial classes right down the street from my beach house! I immediately signed up for a class via my mindbodyonline app. (Okay as much as I hated MBO as a business owner, I am really starting to love it as a customer.)
I signed up for a Beginner/Intermediate Aerial Silks class with Destin Pilates and Aerial Center. The studio was located in a City Market shopping complex. The outside of the studio was very clean and the signage was easily visible from the street. I used Google maps to find it and had no problems arriving to my destination. Inside the studio I walked into an open space that had privacy partitions placed to allow customers/students privacy while they work out on the various pilates reformers or while attending a pilates or aerial class. The front of the studio had reformers while the back area was an open space. For the aerial silks class, there were three rigging points with three mats below them. The silks are tied up and hung along the wall to keep the open space free of the fabric for the non-aerial classes. When I arrived I introduced myself to the classmates and instructor. I told the instructor that it was not my first class and I currently teach classes and was visiting their studio on my vacation.
Upon arrival, the other students were on the floor stretching and conducting dynamic warmup moves. I took this as the cue that our class was not going to have an instructor lead warmup. Once everyone stated to the instructor that they felt they were ready, class began. We first started with a shoulder stretch that I typically refer to as the twizzler stretch. We then moved on to climbs. Some of the students were working on a new inverted style climb so they incorporated that climb once they completed a few of their basic climbs. After our climbs we moved on to egg inverts or what I call the ball. I did my ball upright then inverted repeatedly without tapping out for 4 in a row. After climbing, it was evident that my endurance was lacking and I decided once I got home I was going to have to start participating in my own classes a little more than I had been. After our conditioning portion, we broke up into groups and those of us that were a little more advanced went to our own silk while the instructor mainly focused her attention on the beginner students. I was fine with this as I said previously, I was actually out of breath and surprised my endurance was as poor as it was. My group then began to work on tying a knot with the feet in the air. A move I had recently seen one of our instructors at the gym I work at working on. Funny how with the distance between our two aerial facilities that everyone seems to be working on the same skills at the same time. I attribute that to a social media win for the day- HAH! 😂 So I some-what learned how to tie the knot with my feet- going to have to work on that one. I then started to pay attention to some of the beginners as terminology peaked my interest. I learned that they call the splits roll up from a double footlock a rotisserie chicken (I let spell check take care of that one, I can't spell rotisserie.) After being amused by the food reference, my group proceeded to work on whatever we could think of. After failing miserably at my attempt to demonstrate a skin the cat flip from a cross back straddle pull up, I decided to take my tired self down and stick to hip keys- which they term fan kicks. I watched one of the students in my group do a mind boggling twisty flip thing and decided it was too much for my body and brain to grasp. I did do a few progressions from hip key and my favorite cyclone/tornado spin from hip key. By the time we worked some more with the beginner students and having them try to master their hip keys, it was time to cool down and head home.
I really enjoyed my class at Destin Pilates and Aerial. Everyone was so nice and easy to get along with. The locals even had cute southern accents. (I'm pretty sure I had an accent to them as well.) My husband and I really enjoyed the vacation destination and have decided we will be returning for future trips. I look forward to returning to more aerial classes on future trips as I felt the studio was a very warm and welcoming environment.
I signed up for a Beginner/Intermediate Aerial Silks class with Destin Pilates and Aerial Center. The studio was located in a City Market shopping complex. The outside of the studio was very clean and the signage was easily visible from the street. I used Google maps to find it and had no problems arriving to my destination. Inside the studio I walked into an open space that had privacy partitions placed to allow customers/students privacy while they work out on the various pilates reformers or while attending a pilates or aerial class. The front of the studio had reformers while the back area was an open space. For the aerial silks class, there were three rigging points with three mats below them. The silks are tied up and hung along the wall to keep the open space free of the fabric for the non-aerial classes. When I arrived I introduced myself to the classmates and instructor. I told the instructor that it was not my first class and I currently teach classes and was visiting their studio on my vacation.
Upon arrival, the other students were on the floor stretching and conducting dynamic warmup moves. I took this as the cue that our class was not going to have an instructor lead warmup. Once everyone stated to the instructor that they felt they were ready, class began. We first started with a shoulder stretch that I typically refer to as the twizzler stretch. We then moved on to climbs. Some of the students were working on a new inverted style climb so they incorporated that climb once they completed a few of their basic climbs. After our climbs we moved on to egg inverts or what I call the ball. I did my ball upright then inverted repeatedly without tapping out for 4 in a row. After climbing, it was evident that my endurance was lacking and I decided once I got home I was going to have to start participating in my own classes a little more than I had been. After our conditioning portion, we broke up into groups and those of us that were a little more advanced went to our own silk while the instructor mainly focused her attention on the beginner students. I was fine with this as I said previously, I was actually out of breath and surprised my endurance was as poor as it was. My group then began to work on tying a knot with the feet in the air. A move I had recently seen one of our instructors at the gym I work at working on. Funny how with the distance between our two aerial facilities that everyone seems to be working on the same skills at the same time. I attribute that to a social media win for the day- HAH! 😂 So I some-what learned how to tie the knot with my feet- going to have to work on that one. I then started to pay attention to some of the beginners as terminology peaked my interest. I learned that they call the splits roll up from a double footlock a rotisserie chicken (I let spell check take care of that one, I can't spell rotisserie.) After being amused by the food reference, my group proceeded to work on whatever we could think of. After failing miserably at my attempt to demonstrate a skin the cat flip from a cross back straddle pull up, I decided to take my tired self down and stick to hip keys- which they term fan kicks. I watched one of the students in my group do a mind boggling twisty flip thing and decided it was too much for my body and brain to grasp. I did do a few progressions from hip key and my favorite cyclone/tornado spin from hip key. By the time we worked some more with the beginner students and having them try to master their hip keys, it was time to cool down and head home.
I really enjoyed my class at Destin Pilates and Aerial. Everyone was so nice and easy to get along with. The locals even had cute southern accents. (I'm pretty sure I had an accent to them as well.) My husband and I really enjoyed the vacation destination and have decided we will be returning for future trips. I look forward to returning to more aerial classes on future trips as I felt the studio was a very warm and welcoming environment.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Kindara Wink Thermometer Review
Hello lovelies! I am back with the promised review of the Kindara Wink basal body temperature thermometer. I recently introduced to my readers that I had purchased the Wink thermometer in my blog about Castor Oil Packs, a holistic approach to women's health. The Wink thermometer was developed for use with the Kindara app, a comprehensive tool for women to track their monthly cycles and reproductive health by adhering to the Fertility Awareness Method system. As a long time devoted user of the Kindara app, the new Wink thermometer has been very much appreciated in the even of me having to remember to enter my daily temperatures. The Wink thermometer also has some features that I have found to be much more appealing compared to my old thermometer which I will discuss more in detail.
First off, what is Fertility Awareness Method? Kindara has a quick description on their website depicting the science of the system. There are numerous resources available online for learning more about the FAM system as well as reputable texts including the highly recommended book by Toni Weschler, Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Basically, FAM is a system of charting your monthly cycle to determine the optimal time for achieving or avoiding pregnancy. Most women begin using the FAM system as a means of natural birth control or as a supplement to additional non-hormonal birth control. As those women's lives progress, they may decide they are ready to begin their family and having the knowledge base of the FAM system, they find their ability to conceive much easier and less stressful. Or if they have found cycle abnormalities by the use of FAM, they have that information at their disposal to present to the appropriate doctors for treatment measures. Learning FAM can be overwhelming at first, especially if you have never been taught the fundamental concepts regarding the female body. After learning and using the system, it constantly surprises me that as a woman, I was never taught these very basic concepts about my own body. It's a shame our society does not place an importance on this very natural and healthy way of how a woman's body functions. A little education for developing young girls can go a long way.
I've been taking my temperature every morning upon waking for about five or six years now. I got a thermometer from Amazon and have used it religiously. I loved this thermometer and never thought to change it. It had it's own case for travel, was easy to clean, would beep when the temperature was ready, had a light up screen to view the temperature, and overall worked pretty well for me. As I got into the habit of temping, I sometimes would neglect charting my temps into the Kindara app and once my thermometer exceeded it's daily records amount in it's memory function, it would cease to save temps. This often lead to me missing temps in my chart. Another downfall was when I first wake up, it's often because I have to urinate. This thermometer could easily take three to five minutes before it would beep signally my temp was done being taken. Sitting in bed and waiting for a thermometer when you have to pee is not the best feeling. Despite the fact my old trusty thermometer did the job, it was time to move on.
The Wink thermometer enticed me because it synced the temperatures into the app without me having to manually enter them. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth technology. While the thermometer was much more pricey compared to my Amazon purchased thermometer, it has proven to be quite the investment. The following list are reasons why I am loving this thermometer and why I would recommend the Wink thermometer:
1. Portability. Small and discreet. It actually looks like a makeup item which made it very easy to throw into my makeup bag when traveling.
2. Battery charging capability. My previous thermometer required me to get out some screw drivers and take apart the back panel of the thermometer to replace the battery. The Wink thermometer allows you to charge up via USB. The Kindara app also enables you to view the battery life on the Wink thermometer easily.
3. Syncs temps to Kindara. I don't have to remember to log my temps daily for fear of losing the data if I don't. The thermometer syncs my temps into my chart for me.
4. Quicker temps. This little device is so much faster. It takes about 30 seconds or less to acquire my temp.
5. Silent temp notification. The thermometer vibrates to alert you the temp is complete. This is nice for those who co-sleep with spouses or others that would be easily awakened by a beep.
Overall, I am LOVING my Wink thermometer. It does what its supposed to and does it well. I have been more consistent in taking and recording my temps now that I have this thermometer. It has certainly added a convenience factor to this daily task of being responsible in my reproductive health. For more information about Kindara's Wink thermometer, check out their website at https://www.kindara.com/wink
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