One of our core values at FRAME is the principle that we are at our best when working out. Mindful movement keeps our bodies healthy and strong. It boosts our mood, improves brain function, and helps us stay calm and focused, all things we need to be the best versions of ourselves and move through life with compassion, curiosity, and care.
With this guiding principle in mind, we’re sharing some wellness reminders with you this month that we hope will help you be at your best this holiday season, even with the added stressors that often emerge at this time of year.
#1 - You can’t serve others with an empty cup.
You’ve likely heard some iteration of this wellness principle before. We love it because the very literal image it conjures up helps drive home its meaning––you physically can’t pour a liquid into someone else's cup if you don’t have anything in your own cup to begin with…which means you can’t show up as a friend, parent, spouse, or leader if you haven’t taken care of yourself and your well-being first.
So make sure to carve out time this month for your favorite self-care practices. From journaling to meditation to mindful movement to cooking or getting creative, there are so many ways to reconnect to yourself and the deeper sense of who you are. Finding this self-connection doesn’t have to take a ton of time either. Countless studies have shown taking as little as five minutes a day (just five minutes!) to tune into yourself can have big, positive effects on your wellbeing and mental health.
#2 - Physical activity helps move energy through your body
In the field of body psychotherapy, it’s understood that our bodies often hold on to feelings, even if it seems like the conscious mind has already dealt with them. When a person moves, the physical body has the ability to relax and release, allowing the emotions to move through and complete the entire emotional experience. This phenomenon is what’s behind the tears people sometimes experience during mindful movement, like a yoga or Pilates class. It’s also what causes the less comfortable physical responses of vomiting or diarrhea. These responses are your body’s physical way of releasing any grief or loss you are subconsciously holding onto.
The holiday season has a way of bringing up a wide range of emotions, from intense joy to deep anger and sadness. Making time to move can help you process these feelings in a healthy way emotionally and physiologically, supporting you in not only creating a healthier, more connected relationship with yourself, but also with the other people in your life.
#3 - What you focus on grows.
Here’s a quick exercise to illustrate this phenomenon: Look around whatever environment you’re in right now and notice all the objects that are yellow and/or have some yellow color in them.
Now without looking around you again answer these two questions:
- How many yellow-colored things did you see?
- How many red-color things did you see?
Chances are you couldn’t recall seeing the color red at all! That’s because of a part of your brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS), a network of neurons located in the brain that filters out all the unimportant stuff so you can focus on the important stuff. In this example, you weren’t consciously looking for the color red and so you didn’t see it. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t around you.
This is the scientific reason why the wellness reminder, what you focus on grows, is so powerful. Our human brain is quite literally wired to pay attention to what we tell it to pay attention to, another reason why practicing gratitude and appreciation can be so powerful in helping you achieve your goals.
This holiday season, remember to take time to intentionally focus on what you want to create more of in your life. You might take a few minutes in the morning to write down three things you really appreciate about your life right now, or one amazing thing that happened yesterday. Or you could set a mid-day timer to remind you to pause for a moment in the middle of the day, take a deep breath, and identify one thing at that moment, that’s beautiful about being alive.
We hope these wellness reminders help you prioritize physical movement and self-care during this holiday season so you can stay grounded and present and enjoy this magical time of year. We’d love to hear any guiding principles you love, so please share them with us in the comments below!
