Hi guys,
Well actually I had no idea that this many people would be reading my posts, I thought it would only be my immediate clients. Fantastic. I really like to write, so ill continue to add regular entries as well as use this blog to document a book im currently writing.
The book will address the 'elephant in the room' I've seen i the health and fitness industry for as long as Ive worked in it and no one will address it...
Consistency. Achieving some kind of balance that lasts.
If you haven't experienced it yourself, you've at least had a friend who might have impressively lost weight on a diet, or through a new exercise program, thought they had found 'the answer' only to find themselves in a few months time back in at best a new version of the same old habits again. This happens for a very simple reason: the person is still thinking the same. They still have the same neutral pathways that are that have been reinforced over and over again to perform or behave in a certain way, trying to simply forget the old way of being just doesn't work, you are literally 'hardwired' through your neural conditioning to revert back to the same behaviour.
Even as recently as ten years ago the common view of the brain held by medical professionals was that we were born with a certain amount of mental capacity and that our brain cells slowly diminished as we aged. Modern neuroscience has disproved this held belief proving now that the brain is an incredibly 'plastic' system. It is constantly making new connections and at the same time, reabsorbing old connections that have not been used. Think back to what you can remember about school, or some place quite a while back, and you'll notice that you'll be drawn to a certain group of memories you have connected with the experience, but the whole bank of details that originally composed the memories have faded, just a few core memories remain.
The other factor to consider is the fact that the fitness movement, which is a fairly recent movement in the scheme of things, has been spawned from the medical model of medicine. A 'diagnose and prescribe' mentality. Overweight? = eat less, move more. The problem with this approach is it not only does not take into account the individuals beliefs, attitude psychology and neural conditioning in these areas, it also fails to take into account the rest of their life. Health and fitness doesn't happen in a vacuum. Your job, social needs, relationships impact on your ability to perform and maintain health behaviour. What like to do for fun, growth or to give you a sense of purpose in life are all incredibly important to understand when designing a new approach to your health and fitness. The field that studies this are is the wellness industry. Again its a complicated topic but the two important tenants to understand about what this industry is saying is:
Wellness is not the absence of illness. We actually don't have a clear way to express how 'well' we are in our culture, in our language, and as a result we don't think about it much, generally, and so we do not have a great understanding of the area. If we think of stages of illness we can se there are initially signs, symptoms, disability then eventually death from an illness. Past the 'neutral' point of midway of the continuum continues from awareness to education and then towards growth in the direction of high level wellness.
State of health is just the tip of an iceberg. Think of the top 10% of an iceberg that is visible above the water is our state of health. Just below the surface is our lifestyle/behaviour . Our society is now gaining solidarity in our understanding of the effect that lifestyle factors have on our health. How you deal with stress, what you eat, how you exercise or treat your body in a regular way at work etc We generally all know whats good and bad for us in this area, yet many of us continue to be pulled away towards a much more destructive lifestyle. To understand why you can look at your cultural, motivational, psychological level. This is a fascinating level. Here we find out what moves us lead the lifestyle we have chosen. How thin is healthy in your culture? What is ok to eat? We all have differing perspectives based on this. I mean, look at smoking for instance. Years ago it was acceptable to smoke in planes, restaurants... anywhere you liked. Nowadays the social norms around what's acceptable have changed drastically in the last few years in many place around the globe, including the place where I live. On a deeper level again your beliefs, spiritual opinions and sense of purpose can effect your health deeply. Here enters topics like placebo medicine, how is it that your held beliefs about a particular health behaviour will influence the outcome of the behaviour dramatically? Have you heard about 'pointing the bone' as its called in Australian indigenous culture? If the Marangesh, the chief of medicine in a culture, would point a sacred bone at an individual, it would signify their eventual death over the next short period of time. The people had such powerful beliefs about their healer that it influenced their health to the point of dying.
Wellness coaching can often use techniques based on our new understanding of how the brain works to help people change their attitudes and beliefs in the neural pathways of our mind in areas that make a huge difference to our wellness.
The central tenants of Daoism that heavily influenced the traditional medicine of China address the issue of balance from another level completely, and are included because they are able to describe through metaphor sometimes better than we can with prose.
over the next few weeks i will be continuing through this series, working towards the process of self coaching and how you can coach yourself to better health using the techniques and methodology I will detail for you.
Any interest?
Lucas
s an amalgamation of theories from a few areas I have stu
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