Change your mind, change your health.
It is how I end every post.
After years helping people change their health and fitness I have found that those who don’t think positively about fitness don’t (or won’t) do it.
If you don’t believe that you can do it or lack the confidence to exercise you won’t do it. If you believe that your genes control your destiny and nothing you can do will change your health, you won’t change anything. If you think that you won’t see any benefit, or it is too hard, it won’t happen.
It all starts with how you think and feel about your own health.
Mindfulness helps to change your mind.
One of my favourite mindfulness teachers, Jon Kabat-Zinn developed a mindfulness-based stress reduction program that was recently used in a study about the effects of mindfulness on activity.
Researchers from Iowa State University selected people to either a mindfulness group, an exercise group and a control group. The mindfulness participants spent 2.5 hours per week learning how to be more mindful. The exercise group learned about exercise technique, behaviour change and exercised together for a total of 2.5 hours a week.
The results?
Both the mindfulness group and the exercise group increased their levels of exercise. Even after the 8-week intervention was complete, both groups performed about 75 more minutes of exercise.
Professor Jacob Meyer was surprised by the results,
“To see a similar effect on physical activity from an intervention that focuses on the way someone thinks or perceives the world, was completely unexpected.”
Unexpected for him perhaps, but no surprise to me.
Change your mind, change your health,
Shayla
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