Paradox, double-edged sword, blessing and curse combined, mobile devices have made our lives easier and more stressful at the same time. I remember the feeling of relief the day I finally got my calendar synched on my work/home computer, my laptop and my smartphone. Now I could be in a conversation with someone at a conference and set an appointment seamlessly. It helped tremendously using a GPS navigating app to help find a tricky destination. I absolutely love using the travel app “Tripit” to track all my business travel arrangements. Connecting with others is easier than everWhile we can benefit from technology in so many ways, we are also seeing a “dark side” rising far too fast. The accessible anytime and anywhere nature of smartphones, wi-fi enabled tablets, etc. is causing a shift in workplace norms and, sadly, a shift in in the quality of our personal lives as well. A recent cover story in USA Today reveals how the so-called digital lifestyle and work-style may be seriously damaging our health and well-being. “Nearly two-thirds of full-time workers own smartphones, up from 48% just two years ago, according to the Pew Research Center. One-third own a tablet, up from 12%.  The exploding use of these devices — and connected employees never calling it a day — has created a workplace domino effect: If one person answers the boss’s e-mail after hours, others feel compelled to as well.”

When people are under stress for performance it is so easy to create a sense of digital vigilance that never lets down. Our notification alert signal is on full volume 24/7 so we don’t miss that opportunity that just might be calling. As we get more anxious it becomes more common to even get downright obsessive about our need to be accessible.

Some companies are realizing the price they pay in stress and health and are instituting policies to “leave it at the office”. The need for some ground rules is becoming apparent as the demands on the digitally connected worker increase. “Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, employees entitled to overtime pay must receive it when they work beyond a maximum number of hours, such as a 40-hour workweek. The constant technological tether to work is testing what constitutes the standard workweek, and lawsuits are challenging this new world.” Salaried employees have no such limits.

The self-employed have to set their own limits and often don’t. Fear of missing that opportunity for a sale by not responding at light speed keeps the smartphone charged and within easy grasp. The infectious sense of urgency in society is hard to be immune to.

The whistle never blows in this world of Access Excess. There are no natural breaks. Time off has disappeared. This of course runs in total opposition to how our mind/body system works. We are wired to deal with stress, but can survive only if we also have what the authors of The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working call “sufficient volume and intensity of recovery”.

Wellness coaching clients almost always list stress as a barrier to them living a healthier life in almost all dimensions of wellness. Coaches can help their clients to consciously work on their fears, communicate and create agreements at work that are healthier. We can also help our clients to determine if their work environment can be changed for the better or if looking for work in a healthier environment is final solution. We can help our clients create experiments to help them see just how digitally healthy they really can be by being less “wired”. We can help them increase awareness of how much they are allowing fear and anxiety to rule them and work consciously on this issue.

Boundary setting is so much harder when it insidiously has become weakened by cultural norms. “Access Excess” has become a norm that no one ever agreed to. Let’s create agreements at work and at home that allow us to make times to be “unplugged” and healthier!

Question?  Is the man in the picture below able to be free to be at this relaxing lake because he can still be connected, or is he there and stressed because he is allowing himself to be connected?

-By Michael Arloski, from Real Balance Wellness

The post Access Excess: Always Wired Makes Us Tired and Less Productive appeared first on The Wellness Report.

Really, how many of you have a doctor who gives you more than 5 minutes to discuss the situation de jour? Once you’ve chatted about that weird mole on your back or the fact that your right kidney seems to be asleep, you’re supposed to yell at the M.D.’s quickly disappearing backside, “Do you think I can safely do the Bollywood Bootylicious Bounce for Beginners?”

Unless your doctor happens to also be a fitness enthusiast, chances are he or she knows less about exercise than your pet groomer, hairdresser, or plumber. In fact, I’m fairly certain you can better fitness advice from a 12-year-old nerdy boy who never leaves his mom’s basement. At least he knows how to play Wii tennis.

I was once married to an overweight man who went to the doctor a lot with issues that were all clearly related to being overweight (bad back, bad knees, high blood pressure especially when weighing himself, permanent impression in the mattress because he never left bed except under threat of no food or sex). I regularly accompanied my ex on medical appointments because he tended to have anger issues (yes, he was a peach; thanks for that). Not once in five years of visits to multiple practitioners did any of them say, “Just get off your fat ass and get some damn exercise!” Which made me look like a bad guy when I said it.

Most doctors learn everything they know about exercise from watching Dr. Oz and The Biggest Loser. This does not make them an expert in the field any more than my watching Private Practice means I am qualified to deliver a breach baby or sleep with everyone in the office.

I understand that exercise video people are just trying to cover their Spandex behinds in case you keel over and die while kick-boxing in your living room. I think we’d all be safer if they changed their warning to: “Consult yourself before beginning a new exercise program. And remember: we have lawyers on retainer.”

From Leigh Anne Jasheway’s blog, accidentalcomic.

The post Don’t Ask Your Doctor appeared first on The Wellness Report.

What’s your strategy for the healthiest holidays ever?

The fear of adding those holiday-midwinter pounds often drives people to the bookstore for yet another dieting best-seller. The desire for quick results is understandable and nothing delivers like a low-calorie diet. The infomercials promise miracles and we keep on seeking a solution that we know sounds too good to be true. Of course those same low-calorie diets are impossible to sustain us for the rest of our lives. The pounds usually come back. Our bodies just need more energy.

The truth is, diets don’t work. What does? Sustainable lifestyle improvement. Sorry, we can’t promise that this approach will be fast, but it will work, and it will last.

“Let’s face facts. We’ve lost the war on obesity. Fighting fat hasn’t made the fat go away. And being thinner, even if we knew how to successfully accomplish it, will not necessarily make us healthier or happier.” These words introduce you to the website http://www.haescommunity.org for an organization and an entire movement known as “Health At Every (or Any) Size”. Linda Bacon, a nutritionist at the University of California, Davis, says this new approach came about “to halt “the collateral damage” — food and body preoccupation, self-hatred and eating disorders — that has resulted from the failed war on obesity. H.A.E.S. is based on the idea that “the best way to improve health is to honor your body,” and it supports the adoption of good health habits simply for the sake of health and well-being rather than weight control. (http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/health-at-every-size/)

Teaming up with Lucy Aphramor, a National Health Service specialist dietitian of Coventry University in England, they reviewed over 200 studies on weight loss and concluded that the evidence just isn’t there that dieting helps us attain and maintain healthy weights or healthy lives.

Perhaps our notion of our own “healthy weight” needs a total makeover. Instead of focusing only on what the scales tell us, how about looking at our overall wellbeing? “Bacon and Aphramor insist that adjusting lifestyle habits with an eye toward improving markers of well-being like reduced blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels, reduced stress, increased energy and improved self-esteem — independent of any weight loss at all — is a far more desirable goal for people of all sizes to pursue.”

Pursuing being as healthy and vibrant as possible with physical vigor and mental and emotional peace of mind may be what trumps every diet out there. Weight obsession needs to be replaced with both individual awareness of what truly nourishes us on many levels, and the science that focuses on real wellness.

The Coach Approach

When a wellness coaching client tells me “I want to lose 30 lbs.” The first questions I ask are “What will your life be like when you succeed at losing that weight? What will your life look like? What will you be doing and enjoying that you’re not doing now?”

Far too often clients get into self-defeating thinking by seeing the “goal” as the number on the scales, and its easy for coaches to simply fall in line with this simple goal-setting approach. Until the magic number is attained it’s too easy for the client to minimize their weight loss accomplishments with a “Yes, but…” attitude. I will only be successful when I lose all the weight I’m trying to lose. Internal barriers to change are every bit as powerful as external. It’s time to explore better outcome indicators.

Explore with your client the best markers of improved health and well-being would look like for them. Would tracking improvements in the markers Bacon and Aphramor referred to above be smarter? Get an agreement from your client about what they would like to see improve and tie it to their motivation to be well. Help your client notice the richly motivating unforeseen benefits that show up as they make progress. Celebrate improvements such as reduced pain in the knees, better sleep, more energy, etc.

When someone who has struggled to live at a weight that is healthy for them is told that weight loss is simply “calories in and calories out” it is insulting and dismissive of them as a person. We human beings are wonderfully complex and our life journeys are fascinating. Embrace your whole-client, just as you urge them to embrace themselves.

Dr. Michael Arloski is a psychologist, certified wellness coach and a certified wellness practitioner who is the founder and Dean of The Wellness Coach Training Institute where the very best in Wellness & Health Coach Certification Training can be found. http://www.realbalance.com

The post Healthy At Any Size: Coaching Weight Loss Clients To Be Fit and Healthy appeared first on The Wellness Report.

Most women know what it’s like to be attracted to a bad boy — despite your brain screaming, “He’ll break your heart and probably roll you down a mountain in his Jeep,” other parts of you smile knowingly and think, “Oh, but the ride will soooo be worth it!” Even when you’re hanging by your seat belt, upside down and teetering over a cliff, that bad boy will still weave his magic spell over you.

Sugar is just like that.

I’ve read all the articles about how sugar causes… well, every disease known to man and probably a few we haven’t yet discovered. I know from personal experience last month that inhaling four gingerbread men, three rum balls, two caramel turtles, and a pecan pie while standing next to a pear tree can make me feel more bloated than a PMSing gray whale.

And yet, I want more.

I tried swearing off sugar completely, thinking that as with any bad boy, the best technique is to break up and never look back. But three days later, I called sugar up late at night. “Maybe I was too hasty,” I said breathlessly. “One more roll in the, uh, pantry couldn’t hurt, right?” I oozed chocolate from my pores on that walk of shame.

Now I’m trying a new approach, cutting way back on my addiction, but not going cold tofurkey (, I’m a vegetarian, so cold turkey means nothing.) I’m choosing foods with the lowest sugar counts I can find and focusing on those that come from honey and other more nutritious sources. It’s like making a list of bad boy characteristics (rides of motorcycle, plays with fire, heckles comedians, steals from constructions sites, is rude to waiters) and choosing those I’m willing to live with (rides motorcycle). I’m also chewing things more slowly so I can taste what little sugar there is in everything. Who knew almonds were sweet?

Whenever the cravings are so severe, I start crawling the walls and feel I’m going to be led into temptation, I eat a banana while watching Die Hard. It gets all of my bad habits out of my system at the same time.

-By Leigh Anne Jasheway, from her blog – accidental comic.

The post Bad Boys and Sugar appeared first on The Wellness Report.

Click here for details for all three of these exercises (pdf).

1.   Pratipaksha Bhavana is a meditation practice based on a teaching from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali that says,

“When disturbed by negative thoughts and feelings, cultivate the positive.” (Yoga Sutras 2.33)

This meditation teaches us to exchange negative thoughts and feelings for positive ones. This nurtures our capacity to react constructively and mindfully in a levelheaded and calm manner to people and situations, and less likely to react automatically and negatively.  It helps us develop qualities like courage, kindness, patience and health improvement.  Doing so enables us to enjoy better relationships, benefit from clear thinking, and have the ability to make positive behavior changes.

Although it’s important to get to know all the emotions, even those that seem unpleasant or negative, it’s quite important to nourish, water and feed what we want to grow.  This meditation teaches us to exchange negative thoughts and feelings for positive ones.   We do this by breathing in and out the positive to counteract the negative. This emphasizes helpful qualities, enabling them to take root quickly and efficiently.  This nurtures our capacity to react constructively and mindfully in a levelheaded and calm manner to people and situations, and less likely to react automatically or  negatively.

2.  The Kubera Mudra is a yoga posture for the hands that  brings your intention to life.

• Focuses and concentrates energy for something strongly desired.
• Puts powerful strength behind future plans (goals and what you want fulfilled)
• Confidence, calmness and peacefulness
• It can also be used to find something (lost object, parking spot, etc.)
• Physically, it opens and is a decongestant the frontal sinuses

3.  Yoga Nidra is deeply restorative and healing.  It will seal your intention in so it will take root and bloom.   

Click here for details for all three of these exercises (pdf).

Remember, “When disturbed by negative thoughts and feelings, cultivate the positive. ” (Yoga Sutras 2.33)

-Posted by Julie Lusk, from Wholesome Resources

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