May is mental health month. In this week’s episode, 51, I talk about 7 components to good mental health. Today I want to talk about one of those components: self care. I’m offering up an opportunity to create a self care retreat experience in your own home. I’ve curated a retreat experience designed to help you ‘get into’ your body. The duration of the retreat is 3 hrs and it consists of various mindfulness activities. Click here to access it.
You see when I became a runner - only 4 years ago, I wanted to do it differently. I’d always exercised as a way to punish myself and I was over it. So when I started running I wanted to make sure I could enjoy it especially because as distance runners we invest a lot of time into it. I recognized that mindfulness was key - but how exactly would I go about doing it.
- For me it became about 1st my attitude towards running - I started being mindful and intentional in how I would feed my mind - positive language and thoughts ONLY. It created a foundation to where I willingly showed up for all my weekly training runs, snow or shine.
- Next, connecting to my body through breathwork, meditation and yoga over the last couple of years has helped me slow the busyness of my mind, stressors make us edgy and wired, and even though running is amazing it’s still a go-go-go activity that revs up our sympathetic nervous system (mindfulness activities on the other hand feeds our parasympathetic nervous system that helps in ‘rest and digest’ activities)..
- I created monthly self care retreats from what we talked about inside My Runner’s Mind coaching and they’ve become a ritual for us now.
You may wonder what mindfulness will add to your life and I want to share a quote by Deena Kastor on what she experienced (this is from her book Let Your Mind Run - a memoir of thinking my way into victory):
“...I noticed an undercurrent of energy pumping through my body, coming from an unknown source, a well inside I’d never noticed before. It was such a stark contrast to the fatigue at the start of the run that it clicked: practicing gratitude had opened a whole new channel of energy within me. “ And here’s where it really gets good - Deena says: “Living without the toxins and tension of regular negativity gave way to greater feelings of health. My body felt more fluid when I ran, lighter, and stronger. “
She goes on to describe a mental ease that emerged during physically challenging workouts/ times.
Here are 6 episodes that can help you create more mindfulness in your running and your life.
Podcast episodes:
- 10: Cultivating mindfulness
- 11: Filling your own cup and taking care of you first
- 29: 10 mindfulness tips for success
- 34: How mindfulness changed my life
- 36: Efforting into lightness - the process is the goal rather than the goal itself.
- 44: Running and feelings
