Category: Health and Wellness

Health and Wellness related articles.

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The Yogic Advantage for Body Builders

By Alexis Louise Reda

In the world of body building likely due to the ‘external’ nature of the process and culture surrounding their sport, many amateur athletes lack a deeper awareness required during training. This very awareness which I will be discussing here, that I have had to relinquish from yoga and apply in the weight room due to chronic pain, has anecdotally, turned out to dramatically affect adaptive volume progression requirements*.

Bodybuilding is quite a demanding sport. You are required to progressively and systematically overload your body both structurally and overall. To grow muscle and to lose fat, you can’t always go by “how you feel” to sustain progress. As we know from quantum science and emerging research on yoga, very simply, your mental states affect your physical; so as your ‘mental’ subtly gets ‘messed up’ when pushed deeper into a program’s progression set on taking your body to places it doesn’t naturally want to go, intuition becomes somewhat unreliable. Moreover, I’ve realized several yogic-practice integrations that are imperative to being the bodybuilder who is in it for the long-run. Let’s check them out:

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The First Muscle that Moves You

by Nora Reda

Committing to regular exercise is no children’s play. Or is it? Here is how we could shift our attitudes toward exercise and develop the muscle that moves us every time.

The Joy of Movement

Movement is one of the most innate nature of humans, and every living being. It begs the question then, why we need motivation to move as adults when we are so naturally and joyfully moving as children? What happens to the muscle that moves us in our young age later in life? It sounds so funny to ask this question in a world where we are constantly bombarded with  messages about how to motivate ourselves to lead a more active life.

Within this statement lies a clue to the answer. So what logically follows is a movement that is done consciously for the betterment of our physical shape and thus the meaning has changed from movement being done for joy to performing it to reach a certain goal or expectation. There is innately nothing wrong with goals and expectations. However, what this mentality leads to is another thing to insert into our busy schedule. (Read more on training optimality here!)

Shifting our mentality about exercise has to do with changing the meaning associated with movement. 

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What is Hard Work?

By Alexis Louise Reda

          It seems that every day I ask myself this question on some level: 

          What is hard work?

          🤔…

          What IS it?

          Why should anything be “hard” work?

          Why “work”?

          WHY?!

          I believe in the concept of what I call “Construct”. We create Constructs every day:  things and thoughts which we give an arbitrary yet specific meaning to – and I say arbitrary because in each our own realities, we can make anything mean whatever we want to us, even if it rubs against the majority’s typical associated meaning. But some Constructs are so instilled in us because they have been in our heritage for so long, that they are hard to rewire. They are hard to perceive in a different way to our personal liking, and so they influence our “default” perception, whenever we are less than fully aware. These Constructs have long been kept in circulation, regularly agreed upon by the masses of the “Collective” of people within which we live. They are being constantly reinforced, exemplifying a principle called “the majority rules.” “Hard work,” and even “work” alone, are one of these long-held, thus difficult-to-rewire Constructs. Being so, you will likely understand when I say that the cultural connotation of “hard work” is very rough and tough… but since “work” comprises so much of our day, I strongly believe it is counter-productive to hang onto this notion. In daily practice then, operating by the default implications of “hard work” imposes an overdose of restriction, and restriction destroys energy flow, destroying a person’s ability to “work hard” over time. 

          Counterintuitive? You might think so. 

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Boosting Performance With Essential Fatty Acids

By Fruzsina Páli and Alexis Louise Reda

There is something of critical importance that is missing in the conversation about essential fatty acids (EFAs), particularly omega-3s. Though the general benefits of omega-3s are very well documented, the correct and meaningful application of them is not, or at least, is only beginning to surface. 

Upon scouring the mere observable deductions of research, we find solid evidence of these benefits. The following article will list these prevailing benefits of omega-3s, but then dive into discussing their underlying, oddly more simplistic-seeming effects on the body which produce this plethora of beneficial changes. It is the aim of this article, that after comprehensively conveying these fundamental physiological effects, the importance of correct EFA intake will become more obvious, immediately graspable, and compelling in the face of the burning modern question of omega-3 supplementation: to do or not to do.

But to tackle this topic fairly, we must start from the surface and work our way into its depths. 

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Thoughts on Purpose and Fulfillment

By Nora Reda

We come to this world equipped with an arsenal of abilities, an abstract reflected through our soul as we slowly awaken to our consciousness as children. Some of us sense a stronger impulse to do something, to become someone particular, more than others. Yet, only a select few seem to really fulfill their heart’s desire and blossom, often very early on, into something the rest of us look upon as a prodigy. Needless to say, we are all talented in one way or another. Our potential is unlimited also. How is it then that some of us are struggling with finding a true passion in life? Why is it so difficult for us, as adults, to figure out our purpose in life? 

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Battling Belly Fat

By Alexis Louise Reda

This is a tough thing for a lot of people, because we cannot target specific areas of the body telling it to lose fat predominantly there. 

There is an illusion that hovers about in the fitness realm, that if you focus on training that specific region of the body you can “spot reduce” – but what happens to the target region instead, which contributes to this misconception, is that you build muscle in that region, therefore, that new, bigger muscle would show through at a higher body fat percentage than you would need to be at otherwise to see that definition you most likely desire.

You wanna look “tight” a.k.a. “toned”, as some may say, after all, right? That is what you wish to accomplish when you think you want to lose fat?

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