Cha,Cha,Cha Chia seeds, they are as old as, well, dirt.

5 Reasons to add Chia Seeds to your diet:

• Chia Seeds are high in Omega 3 – 1 oz of Chia Seeds has 4915mg of Omega 3. Omega 3 fatty acids are loaded with protein which is great for healthy skin, hair, and nails
• As a source of protein, the Chia, after ingestion, is digested and absorbed very easily.  This results in rapid transport to the tissue and utilization by the cells.
• Another unique quality if the Chia seed is its high oil content, and the richest vegetables source for the essential omega-3 fatty acid.  It has approximately three to ten times the oil concentrations of most grains and one and a half to two times the protein concentrations of other grains.  These oils, unsaturated fatty acids, are the essential oils your body needs to help emulsify and absorb the fat soluble vitamins, A, D, E, & K.
• Chia Seeds are high in fiber and help digestion. Chia is good for the digestive system because it is a hydrophillic colloid.
• Chia Seeds are great for workouts. Prior to a run or athletic event which you need to hydrate,  Chia Seeds in a bottle of water will help you hydrate. They will also help with protein to do the event without cramping up.

It’s easy to make the Chia gel:

Put water in a sealable plastic container and slowly pour seed into water while briskly mixing with a wire whisk.

This process will avoid any clumping of the seed.

Wait a couple of minutes, whisk again and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes.

Whisk again before using or storing in refrigerator (Gel will keep up to 2 weeks).

You can add this mix to jams, jellies, hot or cold cereals, yogurts, mustard, catsup, tarter sauce, BBQ sauce, etc…

Here’s a short video I made showing you how to make the Chia gel.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sure, the shirtless guy has got it but if was that first follower who showed others how to do it.

Although this is great entertainment and a good learn in creating your own movement, it is more a lesson in leading.

We are all leaders…we can all teach each other that crazy, unstructured movement is creative, playful, and it downright feels good!

Now, get moving!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Your Posture Is Your Story

(The book begins with a passage describing the posture problems faced by a young woman named Carmen. The author, watching Carmen at work behind a check-out counter in a Target store, reflects on numerous possible causes for the low back pain the woman is complaining about.)

Our culture’s assumption about getting older is that posture will deteriorate and the body will become a burden. If this is our belief, it is no wonder that we’d rather not think about caring for our bodies.
Aging happens to us all, however, and knowing how to use your body well will make a huge difference in how you experience the process. Carmen, if she does not change her habitual way of doing things, will find herself at age fifty with hunched shoulders, a forward head, a thickened waist, and a protruding belly. She’ll try to straighten up but will find that holding herself erect demands too much effort. Added to her back pain will be a host of other symptoms: headaches, a sore shoulder, digestive problems, and, although she won’t like to talk about it, urinary incontinence. She’ll find it hard to enjoy the kind of things she now loves to do, like salsa dancing on Friday nights.
Such a picture is not an unfamiliar one, but it does not have to be true once you understand how to manage your body in harmony with the principles set forth in this book. You can have a body that stands gracefully and moves effortlessly throughout life when you learn to use it the way it is designed to be used. It is never too soon, or too late, to create healthier posture.
Most people think about posture as the body’s alignment or position when sitting or standing still. Good posture is commonly defined in terms of the contours of the upper body-the chest, shoulders, spine and neck. Although people may be aware that balance over the feet has something to do with good posture, this usually is not what they consider first.
If this is your definition, I’d like to help you to expand it. I see posture not as how you hold your body when you’re still but as how you carry it while you’re moving. This distinction reveals posture to be a dynamic activity rather than a static attitude. Your posture is generated by your movement–by the way you carry yourself as you proceed through your life.
___________________
We cannot separate posture from movement or activity from how we stabilize our bodies in order to act. How we stabilize ourselves determines our posture and the freedom, efficiency, and grace with which we move. The essence of posture, then, is the unique way in which each of us negotiates between moving and holding still in relationship to gravity.

(a thanks to Mary Bond whose mission as a writer, teacher and bodyworker, is to help people further that understanding and respect. She believes that becoming more attuned to our physical experience affects the choices we make in relation to ourselves, to our fellow human beings, our environment and to our planet. Her mission is to contribute to humanity’s deeper embodiment.)

I couldn’t agree more!

Now, Go Strike a Pose~

Ouch, this is so true…have found myself in this when unsure on how to proceed with pending projects.  Good humor & real truth.

An investigative and exploratory hands-on gloves-off study into the practice of putting things ‘off”. Sometimes the only way to get something done is to do two dozen other things first.

How are you excusing yourself from moving more today?

and…how can you get out of your own way & get on with it?

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

By: Don Joseph Goewey

Back in the 1980’s, the Dalai Lama asked a group of world class neuroscientists if the mind could change the brain. It is a critical question. Does the brain direct us, or do we direct the brain? Are we genuinely free? Or are we stuck with the way genetics and early childhood wired our brains, with no real potential in our makeup for personal growth and spiritual transformation. The latter is the answer the scientists gave the Dalai Lama. They said the mind cannot change the brain. Nothing can.

Science Was Wrong
Happily, the scientists were wrong. Breakthroughs in research have now proved that the brain responds to the mind. Mental practice can take a small village of high level neurons and build it into a humming metropolis, providing you with the brain power to produce optimal results in whatever you pursue. The term given to this wonderful neurological property is neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity just might be a human being’s most powerful asset. It’s analogous to the mustard seed from the Bible, “the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter.” Neuroplasticity is the mechanism that builds the brain structure for something as simple as the dexterity a monkey uses to retrieve food from a tight spot and something as advanced as our capacity to master an art form.

It Even Works Through Imagination
Neuroplasticity even works through imagination to learn, build, and strengthen difficult skill-sets, such as playing the piano. In 1995 a neuroscientist at Harvard instructed subjects to play a five-finger piano exercise two hours every day for five days. At the end of each practice session, he measured the motor cortex of the brain that controls precise finger movement. Within five days, the amount of motor cortex devoted to the finger movements had spread, taking over surrounding areas of the brain. At the same time, the researcher had another group simply think about practicing the five-finger piano exercise. They played the simple piece over and over in their minds, keeping their fingers still and simply imagining how their fingers would move if actually playing the piano. The results were astonishing. The area of motor cortex had expanded in the imaginary players in the same way it had in subjects who had actually played the piano. The finding: the mind can change the brain.

You Can Teach Old Dogs New Tricks
The adage that you can’t teach old dogs new tricks does not apply to the brain. The brain is quick to organize around changes we want to affect when we practice consistently. When we do, neuroplasticity makes changes quickly. As just discussed, it takes less than one week of mentally practicing a five-finger piano exercise for the motor cortex to expand in support of the new skill. It takes:

• Ten days of constraint induced therapy to rebuild the motor cortex in stroke victims and restore significant use of an arm that physicians once thought was irrevocably damaged. (Pidikiti, Taub, and Uswatte, 1999)
• Ten weeks for mindfulness therapy to change the brain in obsessive compulsive disorder (Schwartz, 1995)
• Eight weeks of cognitive therapy to change the brain in depression (Segal, Mayberg, 2002)
• Eight weeks of mindfulness-based stress reduction to shift the prefrontal cortical activity from right to left (shifting the dominant attitude from negative to positive) in highly stressed workers in a biotech firm (Davidson, Kabat-Zinn, 2003)

Some of these problems, such as stroke damage and obsessive-compulsive disorder, were once considered incurable. Yet the power of neuroplasticity generated significant change in these cases and in a relatively short period of time. If neuroplasticity is this effective in extreme situations, how much more can it do to transform a brain wired for stress? It all comes back to practice. Through practice, we can construct a new autopilot that is wired for a calmer, clearer, more fiercely alive intelligence that can do anything we set our minds to.

About the Author

Don Joseph Goewey has worked in some of the most stressful places on Earth – from cancer wards to refugee camps to corporate offices – helping people transcend stress and fear to reach a higher potential. He co-founded a human performance firm, ProAttitude, to end stress in the workplace.

(ArticlesBase SC #1855877)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – The Neuroplastic Fantastic: The Power Of The Mind To Change The Brain

On my way home one day, I stopped to watch a Little League base ball game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the first-base line, I asked one of  the boys what the score was, “We’re behind 14 to nothing,” he answered, with a  smile.

“Really? I have to say you don’t look very discouraged.”

“Discouraged?” the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face… “Why should we be discouraged?  We haven’t even been up to bat yet.”

(thank you MP for the share to pass along http://networkedblogs.com/p25079979)

(from a recent talk to an open minded group of boomers)

     I had a little of a tough time choosing what to bring to you this evening at this talk because there is so much to expand on with regards to the industry that I am involved in which is under the catagory of health & fitness.  I am going to propose a bit of a paradigm shift for this New Year as part of what I’d like to share with you. The shift begins with the word choice to describe what it is that I am so passionate about and the idea that I’m here to share. If there is one there is only one thing that I’d like you to remember about tonight from this let it be this:

Healthy bodies create better solutions for their future and, the whole idea of wellness is feeling good about yourself and doing well for the self in many dimensions. 

The one proven natural, dynamic piece that statistically shows to create positive changes in how we feel physically, emotionally, mentally and how we fit into the spirit of this world really is MOVEMENT. And that is where the shift begins with that word….because every single system in our body benefits from this…not just the information that you are bombarded with over and over about ‘getting in shape’. My objective is to open up the ‘fitness scope’ a little wider and share with you what it means to move more today and every day that has nothing to do with “exercise”.

The state of the fitness industry from the view that I share with other like minded professionals in this broad industry, is blown beyond proportion of what the roots of health, wellness and physical education actually are and can be for you.

At this time of the year especially, we are hearing the same repeated stuff, the same buzz, telling you what you need to do and showing those apparently ‘glamorous results’. We are flooded with advice, articles, ‘new studies’, formulas, & solutions from many sources including personal trainers that supposedly get you results, rather than you getting your own. 

The end product of promoting movement that includes feeling good about yourself, your body and successfully aging is that you as a healthy and aware body emerge from a relationship with your environment, not as a separate thing that you do to the body.

A large step toward creating this future is bringing awareness and mindfulness and meaningfulness into what you are choosing to do with regards to creating a sustainable future of health & wellness..

What would be so pleasing and a great take away for all of you is to remember that movement, free-form play and the relationship of how you include this in your life is your key to health, wellness and longevity.

 The way that I have chosen to open up the fitness scope is to share with you the idea of what it may look like from the inside of your body if you have developed any sort of relationship with your couch… the attached is what I call ‘the body swamp’.  Virtual swamp 2010   This is a depiction of what it may be close to when we are not mindful of the importance of integrating regular movement.   From a biologist point of view the word ‘fitness’ actually means your relationship with the environment. Looking at this depiction, it would even go insofar as your internal environment. Perhaps the primary reason that exercise is so powerfully therapeutic is simply b/c it moves our metabolic juices. It’s kind of like using our muscles to pump the system, our system(s) to keep it juiced and fresh.

Without being at all technical, the swamp depiction applies to 5 major systems that we refer to often:

1. Immune/Lymphatic system: protect me and help cleanse me.
2. Neuro-Muscular System: controls and directs movement
3. Musculo-Skeletal System: provides form, stability & movement
4. Cardio-Vascular System: the pump & its circulation
5. Digestive & Elimination System: absorbing what we need and getting out the waste.

There was a recent article in the WSJ called “the Hidden Benefits of Exercise”…proposing that even moderate exercise can boost the immune system and protect against chronic disease.

Well, I’ll be darned. This is not new. It is just material that they can put in print in January to get you to see it…again.  The same stuff. No matter what personal trainers, or articles from the WSJ or NYTimes or even the Journal of the American Medical Association or The American College of Sports Medicine or any supportive material that I could have brought with me tonight all tell you what you should do, what you need to do, what ‘works’ based on yet another study.

Some larger organizations are beginning to refocus the national message on PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, which truly can have a much larger impact than getting fit to lose weight or for aesthetic reasons.

We are born with bodies to move and along the way we often times stop or lessen our activity or go completely gangbusters and compete in all sorts of contests.

Whatever happened to the ‘middle distance’ or the middle ground?

 What do you want to do with your body in this lifetime?

What strength do you need to keep you sharp? 

Having well- established, simple endurance allows you to stay in the experience of life more successfully.

 And that brings me to the point that: Success can be measured, not by the results but rather by the interaction.

What is your relationship with that interaction and with your environment?

One of the most practical solutions to fitness is to find your middle ground and become an adaptable being.  This alone provides 2 things:

1)      the wearing away at one end is less likely = you won’t suffer in the swamp from being a couch potato and  your super human workout addiction will less likely lead to an pained body from over doing it often.

2)      For the sake of your health, you’ll become a more resilient person as you seek the middle.  Recilency is huge.

We as Americans strongly believe that we need our health in order to do things.  Clotaire Rapaille does a brilliant job in bringing this to light in his book, “The Culture Code”.  So, it stands to reason that if we are strong enough to act, then we are healthy. We want to be able to complete our mission which involves some sort of action. Truly, there is more to health and wellness than not being sick.

And here we are back to that word: MOVEMENT.

MOVEMENT confirms that we are alive and that makes us feel healthy.

Let’s approach that from its opposing end: loss of movement.  Losing our ability to move makes a huge statement about our health and it allows that possibility to creep in that we may experience a permanent change towards being less mobile and that our health many never return.

I felt the need to go down that path because it makes a very dramatic statement about that frightening possibility that could doom us, and yet so many of us choose to simply not move.

Opening up the fitness scope from the point of view from what I want to share as a physical educator is about changing the culture of fitness.  Reduced to the ridiculous it is simply said like this:

STOP doing what makes you stuck, stressed, drained and sick and…

START doing what nourishes, strengthens, cleans and encourages the body to do what does best!

…take this Inoculate Self and put it somewhere simple to remind yourself of that simplicity.

Movement/exercise/fitness if I may use all of those words together in one lump sum is not a separate thing that you do to your body. Our health is beyond the body.  Our health is about the relationship and the engagement and the meaningfulness of this conversation.

We have taken the word ‘exercise’ to a level that sometimes sits on the same shelf as paying taxes= you do it but, you don’t really want to, or dislike the fact that you have to, or you cheat and find ways to get around it to pay less, IF you make it look right.

We have extracted exercise and ripped it from its natural place in our life, which really is all about the movement- we have taken it out of context and made it either a grueling have to, or addiction, competition, an answer, a solution, a promise.

How about if…

You think about it as a way to inoculate yourself….use exercise and movement to help prevent disease and give yourself a fitness vaccination.  Many people are readily available for that shot of chemicals that will vaccinate them from the flu…it’s passive, they need not do anything, and they’re told it will help.

BUT… how about if you exposed your body to all sorts of movements that are every which way but tight and boring?  And then later, when that sort of exercise or memory of movement comes up your body has ‘seen it’ and you have a better chance of moving through it; rather than it biting you. 

THAT is the adaptable body.

 THAT is the middle ground

And, that could be the antidote to what we need in our life.

If you Build Your Reserves and Act Now you may very well Save Yourself Later.

The shift here in using the idea of movement is that we can make large advances if we view what we do with ourselves with regards to movement in a bottom up build; rather than a top down system. 

The bottom up refers to the reserves that you build over a period of time that accumulate towards your total health & wellness NOW and longevity in your future. 

Verses…

A top down system that says ‘this is what I have to do b/c they say that it is good for me and it will help me to lose weight and protect me from becoming diseased… I will schedule a time for it…I’ll count the minutes, and check it off the list’.

I tend to scribble outside the lines and in the last few years I have taken a huge turn in the way that I impart the message of movement to the folks that come into the studio.  It started as an idea…as anything does, yet the idea began to ring louder of sensibility, practicality, fitting into the functionality of living, and the realization that health is not something to be pounded into the body with desperate haste.

It ought to be something that can be lived throughout life, every day, as we take our time and we integrate this aliveness into all of our experiences.

It really is about being involved in the process itself.

That is where I believe that the fitness industry is quite out of order.  Rewards and punishments are distractions that take us away from that real transformation — it is better to set your sites on the journey. And therefore as I have learned from Exuberant Animal, there are no sticks, there are no carrots here in the idea that I am sharing with regards to movement.

For sure, these days, we are saturated with high tech, digital devices that can make things faster, easier, done for us and delivered yesterday.  Even as so far as the machines that we are inundated with in the health clubs or sold on QVC, or the smaller devices that we wear on our wrists and help us keep track of our progress, really  lead us away from being in our experience.

The message here again is Unplug, Disconnect, Open the door and Get out.  Even if it is too cold and unpleasant for you to go outside, still disconnect and find ways to move that you can integrate into your daily life. I have included this as well 25 ways to move more everyday!

And,  the idea of being random, asymmetrical and unbalanced make it even more of an integrative learn.  t is a chance to explore a different relationship with our body, each other and our environment. Rarely if ever do we move in real life like the machines that we use or the countless number of repetitions and sets and personal best records that we set for ourselves.

I encourage you to include all crazy sorts of mismatched movements into your life for the purposes of creating something that is different, something that adds to the positive-ness of your daily routine… and, include playful ways of being open ended in your movement; be spontaneous and change things around often without reason.

All of these ideas will surely add another dimension in helping you create better solutions for your future in terms of health/fitness and wellness.

You are the only one that can bring that about for yourself. You have a choice to change the culture of your fitness and engage with your world in a whole new way.  When you change our bodies, we change the world and how we live in it.

Are you kidding me?  This is a ‘fitness routine that works’?  And many people, including the person that gave this article to me look at this as great information. Why? Maybe it gives the appearance of being useful because the author has chosen to include all buzz words  to get your attention and fool you into believing that these great  things will WORK…balancing on beam, rather than the boring floor; the reliable dreadmill; the Pilates ring; medicine balls and stability balls; she trained her biceps with hammer curls twice; works her obliques  and does lots of core work.  Oh, and let’s not forget about that intellectual, scientific term that spreading like wildfire in the gyms ‘muscle confusion’….it’s so….physiological, isn’t it? 

It seems that the buzz is the hook that grabs desperate people. Perhaps there is nothing bad about what Martha does, and it may even serve some folks that need some inspiration, even from Martha.  The phrase that gets me is how it is called ‘A fitness routine that works’.  For who?  How does this work I question? January is gaa-gaa month in the fitness industry.  Typically, every year there is nothing new yet, those out of a desperate plea for help we fall into the trap of inspiration by those who apparently do great things and tell us about it. There really is nothing great here from Martha. Sorry, trainer, Mary.   

Sometimes the only confusion is understanding why information like this is one that supposedly works.  Buzz creates the confusion in your head and all that your muscles do is what they are supposed to do.  It’s you that gets confused with a proposition like the one above. You are smarter than that…

It is quite a curious wonder at how many apparent solutions have been exploited to the advantage of those who can capitalize on the weakness of the questioners and seekers. It is what I call ‘net-catchers’. It begins with the hook.   They want it now, the solution…do you have it? Good.  How can I get it? Make it easy, done for me and delivered yesterday and I’ll buy it.  Seven seconds?  That’s what we got to impress…and catch in the net. Quicker, easier, smaller, and portable and you’ve got a gold mine. Yaaa-hoo.  Sometimes we can giggle when we realize that we’re hooked.  Why do we giggle? Is it the fact that exploitation feels good because what is going to feel better if only temporarily is a solution?  We give in, cause it feels soooo good.  We have weaved our way to wander for the answer. Out there.  Out there has expanded so much that ‘out there’ can be as close as your keyboard. 

The answer is YES. Most likely hidden in plain sight is the key to your success.  How about if formulas, solutions, programs, tickets, blueprints, methods, and the like were really just distorted images of the already known answer dumbed down, divided into the square root of its least common denominator , and multiplied by its mirror image?  That makes about as much sense as what we typically find our American selves doing on a Saturday.

Check out your big bag of answers.  Chances are you’ve got one in there for what you need now. And I don’t mean other people’s answers…those in the formulas and blueprints. Your answers may require a new set of questions beyond ‘how?’… because ‘how?’ will only delay you and life is waiting.

Ahead of you may be a profoundly different way of acting and moving forward….if you simply select another question and then change the ‘how?’ to YES.