Things We Dive Into In This Episode:
Dropping the all or nothing mentality when it comes to exercise.
The difference between a fitness routine that is gentle vs rigid.
Eight tools for creating gentle structure around movement.
📘Resources
📌Episode Highlights
Eight Tools to Find Flow Within the Structure of Exercise
It's very important to define your movement why. What is the reason behind why you want to be moving your body? What impacts of exercise are most valuable and important to you?
Whenever you find yourself saying I should do something, try to replace it with need to or want to, and if neither of those two things are true, then it's not true that you should be doing that thing.
Abandon the should of exercise and define for yourself why is it that you either need to exercise or why is it that you want to exercise, genuinely.
It's likely that stuff related to ego comes up. There's often a little voice in our head that tries to hold on to a certain identity, like I need to have a certain body shape or body size, I need to continue being athletic after being a college athlete, I need to be able to pick up choreography perfectly. These identities we hold onto makes it difficult to maintain gentle structure with exercise.
Exercise needs to come from a place of self care, not from a place of self harm, or from a place of trying to fix yourself, or punish yourself, or say my body is wrong and needs to be fixed to be made right. Exercise must come from a place of I want to take care of myself, I want to nourish myself, I want to feel my best, I want to be of service in the world, I want to have the energy to do the things that I really desire to do, etc.
Ask yourself what types of movement you loved as a kid and what you were naturally drawn to. What kind of movement felt fun and freeing and liberating and natural to me as a child?
Let go of the idea that you have to do a particular type of movement. There isn't a type of movement that's required for every human. You don't need to visit the weight room or go to a trendy studio in order to get your body's needs met through movement.
And if it's hard to think about your childhood in that way, think about a time when movement felt natural to you at any point in your life. A moment when spontaneous movement occurred in your life and it felt easy, and then abandon the idea that there is one type of movement that's required for every human being.
Having a healthy relationship with movement does not mean that you never challenge yourself through movement.
Having a healthy relationship with movement is about identifying which types of challenges are truly for your growth, which types of challenges are truly your intuition telling you to challenge yourself, and which types of challenges are just your ego or anxiety telling you that you've have to challenge yourself in order to be good enough, prove yourself, or be worthy.
Your intuition is going to invite you to grow and step out of your comfort zone in a way that ultimately supports positive, long-term growth.
If we never feel challenged, we never grow. Copy paste that onto every area of your life. When you challenge yourself in a way that is guided by intuition, you'll learn and grow in a truly sustainable way.
Give yourself time to experiment with different structures, class formats, types of movement, see what feels most conducive to your life, your goals, and your why.
You can't get out of the experimentation phase when it comes to healing your relationship with movement. You'll always be experimenting because your preferences can change over time.
Permission to move on from movement that no longer serves you, without drama. You just get to move on.
No matter what intentions and goals you have for moving your body, it can serve as an energy clearing practice.
Moving the body can be a way to clear energetic and emotional clutter out of the body and get a really gracious/spacious reset. You can access a sense of clarity that wasn't there before through movement.
Permission to view exercise as a spiritual practice, as a ceremony, and as a way to connect with what's there when you turn off the noise of the world.
Only set goals that you can work towards in a way that actually feels good and is flexible.
It's very important that you aren't setting goals that you can't work with in a way that can flow a little bit.
Consider how you can work towards it with as much grace, as much fun, as much flexibility, and as much ease as possible. What would make working towards that goal more enjoyable? Perhaps a playlist you love, gear that makes you feel prepared and confident, support from people in your life, etc.
Make sure you're taking care of your body, feeding yourself, hydrating, taking time off when you need it.
In the moments when you are triggered or activated because you're in an environment that's reminding you of more rigid days of exercise, can you treat yourself like you would treat a friend that's triggered?
Let go of that idea that exercise should be hard work and not fun. Fun helps us establish habit, and a lack of fun over stresses and dysregulates your nervous system.
If shame or fear is your fuel, you will burn out.
If you are exercising because you are afraid to gain weight, you will not be able to implement a gentle structure that feels joyful, intuitive, and effective. The all or nothing relationship with movement will remain. So if you're exercising because you feel shame about your body size, you will burn out on exercise really quickly.
When it comes to exercise, just start somewhere and find spaces where you feel celebrated just for showing up.
Just choosing to show up at all is a really courageous and important step, and it's the step that counts.
People often get wrapped up in how much they sweat, how many calories they burn, and the amount of time a workout lasts as the markers of "success" in workouts. When you don't meet those milestones, that doesn't mean the workout didn't count.
Training your nervous system to be in fitness environments, letting your guard down, and being in your body might take some time. It's vulnerable. Be patient with yourself and celebrate yourself just showing up to a workout.
When fitness spaces feel triggering you don't have to go to that particular environment. Find spaces that feel good for you.
Thanks for listening! 💖 Stay tuned to my website for more episode updates and other exciting programs and resources.
Transcript
Caitie: When you start having too much structure, too rigid of a structure, you like, yeah, you can't return, you can't come back to you, you can't go back, like you're attached to this sense of like over-controlledness with movement and your relationship with movement becomes very all or nothing. It becomes like you either follow this rigid structure or you do absolutely nothing and it prevents you from having a fluid relationship with exercise. And I was like, yeah, that's like really the crux of my work. Thank you for summarizing it in that way. Like it's, I really want to prevent people from getting to a place where they're at structure to the point of no return.
Welcome to Whole, Full, & Alive a podcast helping you feed yourself, feel yourself and be yourself. I'm Caitie Corradino. I'm a Registered Dietitian-Nutritionist, a body image coach and the founder of Full Soul Nutrition, a method that combines nutrition counseling with a powerful toolkit of somatic healing modalities. I have guided hundreds of clients to freedom with food, their bodies and every aspect of their lives. I've also been through this healing myself, and on this podcast, I want to help you eat with confidence, embrace your body, form aligned relationships and create a life that you're in love with. I'll share actionable tools, no bullshit stories and interviews that will remind you why you have everything you need within you to feel whole, full and alive. Are you ready? Let's get into it.
Hi, welcome back to another episode of Whole, Full, & Alive. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Thank you so much for being here with me today.
Before I dive into today's episode about exercise, let's take a really deep breath together. This is for you and this is also for me. I find that if I don't take a deep breath before I speak for a long time like whether it's to like introduce myself to a group or to talk on a podcast if I don't take a deep breath, I don't end up saying what I really want to say. There's so much power in just one conscious breath to just regulate and make sure that you are speaking and your anxiety is not speaking. So let's take a deep breath, inhale through your nose, let that fill your chest, let that fill your belly, and then exhale through your nose if you can. Nice, long, strong, complete exhale. Let's do two deep breaths inhale and one more time, exhale, maybe through your mouth, if that feels better. Okay, here we are the one about exercise.
I talk about exercise a lot on the show because movement is a piece of the embodiment work that I do with my clients. Movement is a really big part of my life. I was a full-time fitness instructor for a little bit. Now I'm a part-time fitness instructor and I just sprinkle movement into my one-on-one work with my eating disorder recovery clients. So exercise and movement definitely makes its way onto this podcast in many capacities and I've never recorded, I don't think, a solo episode just about your relationship with exercise, healing your relationship with exercise. And I have spoken about exercise in many ways on my show before because movement is a big part of my life. It's a big part of what I do with my clients one-on-one. When I'm helping them heal body image and get embodied, I practice movement with them. I'm a part-time fitness and yoga instructor. I used to be a full-time fitness and yoga instructor and I also recorded an episode earlier this year about my experience running my first half marathon as not a runner at all.
But I've never put the question out to you, my dear listeners, like what do you need with exercise? And this week I did. I put a question sticker on my Instagram asking what do you need when it comes to healing your relationship with movement and exercise and interestingly, I got about 11 variations of the same question, 11 variations of the same question and it was like really something along the lines of every time I try to create a structure around exercise, I end up getting in a very all-or-nothing mentality with it. Some of the submissions were from people who have recovered from an eating disorder and have recovered from a compulsive relationship with movement and their question kind of read like every time I go to the gym I get super triggered. Every time I try to go to classes consistently, I get super triggered.
And then some people are just coming from a place of never having a compulsive relationship with exercise or compensatory relationship with exercise, but feeling like they need tools to help themselves get grounded in a sense of consistency with movement, without being so rigid about it that they just burn out very all-or-nothing. So that is what I'm going to focus on today. I really want to help you find a way to create gentle structure around your movement without burning out, without getting into an all-or-nothing mentality with it. So how can you create structure without creating rigidity that's going to turn you off from movement completely, it's going to burn you out. And also, how can you rewire your brain when it comes to fitness and movement so that you can navigate triggers that come up.
If you're someone who was desperately pursuing weight loss for a really long time and you let go of that desperate pursuit and now you just want to work out, to feel healthy and energized and strong and happy, but you feel like every time you go to the gym you're sort of reminded of darker and more rigid times? I am here to talk to you today. I feel like I've figured something out here, so I'm really excited for the tools and the perspective that I'm going to share with you today.
And before we dive in, I just want to remind you that I have a lot of resources available for you outside of this podcast. I have a free newsletter that I send every Wednesday. It's called Back to You with tangible tools to slow down, come back to you, take care of yourself, heal your relationship with nutrition and fitness and a lot of the things that we talk about on this show, but just a good, tiny weekly nugget in your inbox reminding you midweek to come back to you. That's free.
I also have a very low-cost community group that meets twice a month where we do 20 minutes of gentle yoga, stretching and breath work and then 40 minutes of individualized nutrition Q&A. So basically, it's a space to hold yourself accountable for stretching, breathing, slowing down and then have some of your personalized questions answered about nutrition and movement and body image and things like that. I also have the Whole, Full, & Alive toolkit available on my website, which is a great supplement to this podcast. It is a collection of journal prompts, actionable experiments, different tools and resources and many workshops that you can use to start creating structure around your wellness without restrictions. Start feeling energized by your self-care rather than drained by your self-care. And I also offer, of course, one-on-one counseling and coaching. I think I have one space for one client right now. You can learn more about that on my website, fullsoulnutrition.com.
And I am so excited to say that I am running my first retreat in March 2024. It's called Nutrition & Intuition and it is six days to nourish your body, connect to your soul, connect to yourself, make lifelong friends and go on an adventure in Scotland while you heal your relationship with food and your body. So, if that's speaking to you at all, as I'm recording this podcast on Monday, November 6, 2023, I have five spaces available still on the retreat. It's half full and I'd love to have you. If hearing about that retreat lights a little fire in your body, I'd love to have you.
So that's what's available outside of this podcast and that's what sponsors this podcast. That's what makes it possible for me to record this. So I would love for you to engage with any of those resources if it's calling to you, and I would love for you to know that that's what makes it possible for me to show up on the mic. So with that, let's dive in. Let's dive into the one about exercise.
I'm going to start this with a story. So a couple of weeks ago I was in Athens hanging out with two of my friends, Cecilie and Demetrius, and they are a couple and three of us were sitting at the kitchen table and you know, like couples do sometimes, they started like requesting for me to mediate their conversation about something and Cecilie basically says to me you know, I think that you should talk to Demetrius about exercise, about his relationship with exercise, and you know he's sitting right there and she turns to him to and says, like you know you should, you should talk to Caitie about your relationship with exercise, like while she's here, like while while she can talk to you about this, and he was like why do I need to talk to her about my relationship with exercise? I love exercising, I'm good, I exercise all the time, every single day, and I feel fine. And Cecilie was like that's the problem is that you exercise a lot, like all the time, like every single day, and it's just, it's a lot. Basically, I was like you know, I'm not going to force you to talk to me about this, but I would love to talk to you about this. I'm here and I'm happy to speak about it more.
So Demetrius and I, and sort of Cecilie as well, kind of started getting into a conversation about this and essentially what we kind of uncovered, without going into the nitty gritty of it, is that like yeah, maybe Demetrius is a little bit too like rigid sometimes in the way he forces himself to stick to a certain schedule with movement and it's kind of undoing some of the positive impacts of exercise in some ways, because when you get too rigid about exercise, it becomes a source of stress rather than stress relief and it prevents you from really listening to your body, which is also a big part of having a good relationship with exercises being able to listen to your body. You know he's not dealing with anything super serious, not an eating disorder or something like that, but we were just talking about how maybe sometimes he's a little bit too rigid. And one of the things that he reflected to me while we were talking is that he was like oh okay, so essentially you don't want me to have structure to the point of no return? And I was like, yes, that is a great way of saying it. Structure to the point of no return. When you start having too much structure, too rigid of a structure, you can't return, you can't come back to you, you can't go back. You're attached to this sense of over-controlledness with movement and your relationship with movement becomes very all or nothing. It becomes like you either follow this rigid structure or you do absolutely nothing, and it prevents you from having a fluid relationship with exercise. And I was like, yeah, that's like really the crux of my work. Thank you for summarizing it in that way. I really want to prevent people from getting to a place where they're at structure to the point of no return.
And so since I had that conversation with Demetrius, I've been like sitting with this for the last couple of weeks, like, yeah, like how do I prevent, how do I guide you in making sure you build structure? Because we need structure and we need movement. Right? Like we can't get out of moving our bodies. Our bodies are designed to move. Movement is an essential source of mental and emotional health. Movement is an essential source of physical health and physical strength. Movement is something that our bodies need. So we've got to create some semblance of structure around it so that we're making sure we move. And how can we prevent ourselves from becoming so structured with movement that it just becomes very all or nothing exhausting?
So as I've been kind of reflecting on this for the last couple of weeks, my eyes have really been open to okay, like, what supports structure without rigidity? What allows you to create structure without getting so narrow minded about it and so over controlled about it that you undo the effects of exercise? And a couple of days ago I had this really cool experience where I kind of saw like a great metaphor come together for this.
So a few days ago I was on a retreat in Mexico, which I'm so grateful for. I have so many reflections to share from that retreat. But one part of the retreat was a dance class and our retreat facilitator, who's going to be on this podcast very soon, taught us a really amazing dance class mid retreat and I, when we first started the dance class, I was like I don't know about this. I have a very loaded relationship with dance because I grew up dancing and developed my own eating disorder in the midst of the dance world and I kind of got caught in like the competitive catty side of dance for a minute and so sometimes when I, like, am immersed in a dance class, I have hesitations and reservations about it. But this dance class was so purely perfect and so beautifully healing because of the container that the instructor set at the beginning.
What she said was I'm going to offer choreography, we're going to build choreography and also fuck the choreography. She was like this choreography is going to provide a container for you, provide a foundation for you, provide a place to get you started to get your body dancing, and also I want you to just flow in it, I want you to feel into it and I want you to take your own interpretation of it and start moving your body in a way that feels good for you and she did this interesting demonstration for us where she did like the first step of the dance and she was like, would you rather watch this? You know she was doing the step perfectly, air quotes and or would you want to watch this? Where she did the step more or less, but it was like a little bit different. It was like a little bit slightly offbeat, but she was doing it like fully, with passion and with her body and like in a way that you could tell felt good in her system, and she was like you know, one of these is technically right and one of these is technically wrong, and I would much rather experience the second one. And so I'm going to give you the choreography as a container and also fuck the choreography.
And throughout this dance class I found myself, you know, I started with a little bit of rigidity because that's my experience with dance and my nervous system went right into like, like I've got to, I've got to do the choreography, I've got to, you know, be true to my dance background and show everybody here like that I've got the choreography, like I'm good and she would like. So we would do the dance fully and then she would stop the music and be like okay, we're going to do it again this time, make it even easier, make it even easier for you to do it. And at one point she was like you know, there's a reason why I'm not using words to describe the movements that I'm doing. There's a reason why I'm not talking at all when I show you the next move. It's because if I were to start talking and explaining these movements with words, you would get way in your head and I want you to say in your body. I don't want you to be thinking about like, okay, right arm here and left finger here and toe point here, and I want you to be moving in the structure and fluid within the structure. And I know that the second we introduce words, the more you're going to get into your head, get out of your head and into your body. How can you make this even easier? And I was like that's it, that's it right? Like can we give ourselves a structure with movement? Can we consult a fitness professional or a personal trainer or some sort of movement expert to help us build a structure around our movement or recommended structure? And then can we allow ourselves to also say fuck the structure and flow within that structure and take our own interpretation of the structure based on not only what feels good in our body because I know that that's hard to tap into sometimes, sometimes it's hard to tell, like, what does my body need today, because not all of us have that full connection with our body all the time. Based on what's going to feel good for you mentally, spiritually and emotionally, based on what you want to do, right, like just what you want to do, what you can sense a desire to do.
And I feel genuinely like a lot of people are going to say well, I never want to move, I would have to, I have to push myself to move, I have to give myself like a reward punishment system in order to, in order to want to move, and I, I genuinely know that that's not the truth, because truly, most of the time when we don't want to move, it's because we've either taken an all or nothing mentality to it, and so we don't actually have resistance to movement itself. It's that we have resistance to the very rigid structure that we've created for ourselves around movement and exercise and we feel like we can't do it unless we're doing it all. Or we have created a structure that is just not appropriate for our bodies, for our specific bodies, for our injuries that we might have, for whatever it is we're dealing with in our bodies or in our life, or in with our available energy levels, or we're just doing something that we, like, can't find any semblance of enjoyment in ever, and we need to create a structure that our personal nervous system actually can flow within. And so how do you go about creating this structure, this framework for yourself? So how do you go about creating a structure, a framework for yourself that you can then flow within?
I've got a few tools, a few recommendations for you, and we're going to dive in.
Tool number one is the most essential piece of the puzzle. It's very important to define your movement “why”. What is the reason why you want to be moving your body? What impacts of exercise are most valuable and important to you. And so many people so, so, so many people exercise because they feel like they should and let's abandon the concept of should, like right at the top of this list, right. One of the best pieces of advice I've ever heard, and I truly have no idea where I heard this the first time.
But whenever you find yourself saying I should do something, try to replace it with need to or want to, and if neither of those two things are true, then it's not true that you should be doing that thing. So, for example, this comes up with my clients a lot. They say I should eat breakfast, I should eat breakfast. And it's like no, it's not that you should eat breakfast, it's that you need to eat breakfast. And then some people will be like I should exercise, I should exercise. Is it that you should exercise? Or do you need to exercise for some specific reason, like you're recovering from an injury or something like that? Or is it that you want to exercise so that you can experience a certain set of positive impacts or have a certain enjoyable community experience? If you're going to a specific exercise experience, right? So abandon the should of exercise and define for yourself why is it that you either need to exercise or why is it that you want to exercise genuinely.
And if you start doing this, work and stuff related to ego comes up. And I don't mean like ego like Chad, who takes his mirror selfies at the gym. I mean like ego like that little voice in our head that tries to hold on to a very certain identity, like I need to have this certain body shape or body size, or I need to maintain this identity. I was an athlete in high school and now I need to make sure that I'm still an athlete, or I'm still athletic, or I'm still proving that I am capable of doing this form of exercise, or like with me in the dance class, right. Like I need to prove that I have a dance background by picking up the choreography perfectly. Like, if ego is coming up and if, of course, like the pursuit of weight loss by any and all means is coming up and your motivation for going to the gym is to look different in the mirror, then please know that it's never going to stick. Any structure that you try to create isn't going to land with you if you don't have a really solid, healthy why for exercising.
What is your why? And if your why is I hate my body and I think that my body needs to look different, then we need to dig a little bit deeper and we really need to heal that relationship that you have with your body. Exercise needs to come from a place of self care, not from a place of self harm or from a place of trying to fix yourself or punish yourself or say my body is wrong and needs to be fixed to be made right. Exercise must come from a place of I want to take care of myself and nourish myself and feel my best and go out and be of service in the world and have the energy to do the things that I really desire to do and live a life free of low back pain and whatever right.
What's not valuable is stuff that comes from ego, and I don't mean ego in the form of like egoic, like big head, like I am holier than thou, but just like trying to maintain this sort of like self concept or identity that you're attached to. Right, because ego gets in the way of a lot of things. Trying to maintain this certain idea that we have about ourselves, or attached to this very rigid identity that we have of ourselves, is ultimately what prevents us from being able to flow in life in so many different ways. So that is tool number one is defining this really really genuine and sustainable why. Creating a beautiful foundation by having a really solid? Why? And of course, I just want to remind you at the bottom of this that, like the benefits of exercise are uncountable, like better mood, better stamina, better bone health, better metabolism, better digestion, better muscle growth and repair, prevention of chronic disease, prevention of dementia and cognitive delays, improved learning and memory, community connection, happiness, embodiment and all of these benefits remain regardless of whether or not your body shape or size changes. You get all of these benefits with or without weight loss. So let's abandon that pigeonhole pursuit of weight loss through exercise so that you get to experience all these other pursuits of exercise. And if weight loss happens, it happens. And if you could get all of those things without weight loss, like would you still want them? You know, let's focus on that.
Step number two in cultivating this gentle structure with exercise is, I don't want to say step two, tool number two in cultivating this gentle structure with exercise is really asking yourself what did I do when I was a little kid? How did I move my body naturally when I was a little kid? What kind of movement felt fun and freeing and liberating and natural to me as a child? And when I think about this, I think about dance. Of course. I was a little performer when I was like three, four, five years old. I loved to dance and to sing around the house and around the grocery store and I loved to do cartwheels on the front lawn of my parents house and that movement always came super natural to me. And when I think about that, I know that I'm not meant to sit on a spin bike. I can't, I can't sit on a spin bike. I don't like spin. I really know that. I can't do a movement practice that is on a like a piece of machinery, like that. I don't even really like to go lift weights at the gym. I don't really like those like weight machines and stuff. I am really into movement that's connected to music and movement that allows me to move using only my body weight in space and kind of be creative with it.
My thinking back to happier times in my childhood gives me access to understanding what types of movement I'm actually going to want to do. And so many people have this idea of like you need to go to spin, you need to do that as your cardio it's the best and you need to go to a weight room in order to do strength and resistance training. And to that I say no, let go of the idea that you have to do any particular type of movement. There isn't a type of movement that's required for every human. It's just not true. I don't need to visit the weight room and I don't need to visit SoulCycle in order to get my body's needs met through movement. So I guess this is kind of like a two-parter. This tool is like asking yourself what did you like to do when you were a kid, what kind of movement came naturally? And if it's hard to think about your childhood in that way, I invite you to just think about was there a time when movement did feel natural to you at any point in your life when, like moving your body felt intrinsically motivating? Was it on a hike? Were you climbing a mountain? Was it when you were out dancing with your friends? Was it some random activity that you did in gym class in like middle school or high school, and you kind of found a little bit of a flow with it? You know, is there a moment when spontaneous movement occurred in your life and it felt easy, and then abandon the idea that there is one type of movement that's, like, required for every human being. You know, I really don't have to visit the weight room. I wear like bala bands, like ankle weights and wrist weights. Sometimes, when I'm doing like cardio classes and dance classes and I do body weight forms of resistance training, I incorporate planks and burpees into my cardio and dance classes and that just feels intuitive and natural to me and I know I'm strong. I get resistance training in without having to go to a weight room and, yeah, that feels good for me. And so, especially if those kinds of environments are triggering for you, like you don't have to go. No one's saying you have to go if you want to go, though. That's different. That is, that is different. So if you are in a position where you're like, okay, like yeah, I know I don't have to go to the weight room, but I want to go to the weight room and I still find it super triggering, I think this tool number three is for you.
Tool number three is remembering that having a healthy relationship with movement does not mean that you never challenge yourself through movement. It doesn't mean that there isn't gonna be a point where you're feeling really challenged. It doesn't mean that there isn't gonna be a point where you're like, fuck, I wanna stop this right now. That's gonna happen, that is gonna happen. It doesn't mean no challenge. But having a healthy relationship with movement is about identifying which types of challenges are truly for your growth, which types of challenges are truly your intuition telling you to challenge yourself, and which types of challenges are like just your ego or your anxiety telling you that you've gotta challenge yourself in order to be good enough, in order to prove yourself, in order to be worthy. And that takes a connection to your intuition.
Your intuition is gonna invite you to grow and step out of your comfort zone in a way that ultimately supports positive, long-term growth, whereas your anxiety is in that should brain and your ego is in that should brain, that brain of like I've gotta prove myself. I've gotta maintain this idea of myself. I've gotta maintain this sense of identity. I should, I should do this thing. So it's really important to know that you get to feel challenged by movement. That's an important thing, right? If we never feel challenged, we never grow that. Copy paste that onto every area of your life. And it's so important to identify when am I challenging myself and pushing myself in a way that's only feeding my ego, or me just listening to my anxiety about what I should do, and when am I challenging myself in a way that is my intuition telling me to challenge myself. And I'm actually learning and I'm actually growing, I'm actually getting stronger in a sustainable way here.
And just to bring this back to the dance class for a second, our instructor, her name is Aimee by the way, Aimee is so beautiful, I love her so much. She said you know, you might look at my choreography and you might just actually decide that the best thing for you is to just not do it. You know, like once we get doing this a few times I said I want you to make it easier and easier and add your flow to it and flow within the structure, and but also you might decide that the best thing for you is to just not do it. And that's cool too. You can just stand there and lean back and watch and that's also good and that is something else that's really important. Like, you get to say you know what. This challenge actually isn't the right challenge for me. This isn't the piece of choreography I wanna do. This isn't the structure for my movement that I need. I'm gonna abandon this one and go find a new structure because this isn't actually for me. And I think some ways to know when a challenge is. The wrong challenge for you are when you can't find a sense of permission giving within it. You can't find a sense of grace within it. You can't really give yourself permission to lean back at some point. And I know that I get this way sometimes when I go to a fitness class. That's the wrong fit for me when I'm in a fitness environment that's very toxic, very diet-y and very cross fit-y. But sometimes I get to a point where I'm unable to give myself permission to modify when I know I genuinely need to, like when my calves are feeling really tight and there's like a big cardio burst, I'm like well, gotta push through it, even though if I move through my tight calves right now I might sprain my ankle. And I think some ways to know when a challenge is. The wrong challenge for you are when you can't find a sense of permission giving within it. You can't find a sense of grace within it. You can't really give yourself permission to lean back at some point.
And tool number four is really related to that. It's about giving yourself time to experiment with different structures, with different class formats, with different formats of movement and really seeing what feels most conducive to your life and your goals and your why. We've gotta throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. You can't get out of the experimentation phase when it comes to healing your relationship with movement. It is really important, and sometimes you might be with a certain class format, a certain type of workout for months or years and then realize it's no longer working for you. That happens a lot. We have seasons in our life.
Coming back to our episode about self-confidence, it is really important to remember that as a human being, you're gonna go through seasons and transitions and times of the month and all of these different things that are gonna make a certain workout conducive to you at one point and no longer conducive to you at a different point. So you've gotta have that permission to change your mind and go with that ego that tells you you've gotta stick with something and you cannot change your mind. Breathe. You're supposed to change, you're supposed to evolve and as you're experimenting, you might find a piece of spaghetti that sticks to the wall for a little bit and then it doesn't stick anymore, and that's okay and you don't need to spend too much time ruminating on why you just get to move on, unless you really do wanna, you know, write down some data and collect some information about yourself, but just permission to move on, without drama, without making it a big to do. You just get to move on. You get to move on.
Tool number five is among the other reasons why you might move your body, remember that beneath it all, no matter what, no matter what other intentions and goals and purposes you have for moving your body, it is an energy clearing practice. Whether or not you wanna hold onto this tool and see it that way is up to you. I have found it so incredibly helpful to see exercise and movement as a way for me to clear energetic and emotional clutter out of my body and get a really gracious and spacious reset. No matter how I move my body whether I am just doing a couple of jumping jacks for five minutes, or I am doing a full-on dance class, or I am doing a full-on yoga flow or I am just kinda like shaking out my arms and legs for a moment I can feel just like emotional and energetic clutter clear out and I get to access a sense of clarity that wasn't there before I moved my body. And I love that about movement, I love that about exercise and no matter what kind of movement you do, it can be a way even if, like, beyond all of these other reasons, we exercise, beyond the stamina and the endurance and the muscle growth and repair and skeletal health and all of those things it also is just a way for you to kind of like take a deep breath and to be off of social media for a moment and to be out of conversation with other people and to be with you and to be with your body and to just clear away any stagnant thing that's kind of sitting there.
There's just so much relief that comes from moving your body. There's just a sense of relief and I find that with my clients who haven't been able to move or exercise their bodies intentionally for many years is that once we kind of get them in a flow with their gentle structure, they report just like a sense of relief, a sense of like this pressure vest is finally off my body. That's been on for like many years. I feel like access to myself, I feel access to a sense of clarity that I didn't before and I always find that, like I record podcasts best after I've moved my body and I write my newsletters best after I move my body, and that is because there is this just like clearing away that happens. Permission to view exercise as a spiritual practice, as like a ceremony, as a way to just connect with what's there when you turn off the noise of the world and just move and breathe and be in touch with yourself and your body and clear things out.
I think I'm kind of going in a million different directions with this tool, but yeah, that's one that's really really, really big for me, because when I feel myself slipping back into this place of, I should do exercise in this way. I should have two days of this and two days of that and exercise for this amount of time. What brings me peace is remembering that, no matter how long I move for, no matter how many reps I do, no matter how many times I take a break, I am always at the end of each workout, I do going to get that benefit of energy clearing, of energetic reset, of clearing out some clutter, and oftentimes exercise allows me to access emotions that I didn't realize were there. Sometimes exercise gives me the ability to access a little bit of a release of sadness or a release of anger or a release of anxiety, and I tap into it for a moment and I can like feel my way through it, through the movement practice, in a way that allows me to end just feeling like, ah, it doesn't matter how many pushups I did, it doesn't matter if I can prove it by being on the leaderboard at Flywheel, it doesn't matter if I can prove it with a selfie on Instagram, it's just like, no matter what I get this, this benefit from it and allows me to be like a kinder person.
Tool number six is making sure that you only set goals that you can work towards in a feel good and flexible way. So it is absolutely cool and valuable and awesome and amazing to set goals to lift a certain amount of weight, or to set goals to be able to hold a plank for a certain amount of time, or set a goal to heal an injury, to feel relief in your low back or to run a half marathon, like I did earlier this year, and I recorded that episode about if you want more tools for that specifically. But it is very important that you aren't setting goals that you can't work with in a way that can flow a little bit. So it's like okay, I have this goal and I want to meet this goal. Assuming that I've got to meet this goal, how can I work towards it with as much grace, as much fun, as much flexibility and as much ease as possible?
And this is actually another thing that I took away from the retreat that I was just on. During the retreat, we were practicing the class on a very like hard concrete surface and the instructor said to us on day two, after noticing that a lot of us had some like issues in our calves and our joints because we were practicing on this like hard concrete, they said look, the floor is here and we have to work with it. And we decided that we're going to work with it to practice in this space. So how can we work with the floor rather than working against the floor and pushing against the floor? You know, when you're doing a burpee, how can you be light on your feet? Or maybe turn the burpee into like a dance and like modify it and practice it in a way that's going to allow you to be a little bit lighter on this hard floor, and I think it's really important to look at your goals that way.
So when I was running a half marathon earlier this year, I paid fricking like $300 to do it and I was doing it with a friend who I like committed to doing it with, and I really wanted to do this and I decided you know what I unless I get some like crazy injury and I absolutely shouldn't be running I'm going to run this half marathon. So, given that I've set this goal and it is important that I run consistently to have the stamina that I need to complete this marathon, how can I work towards this goal with as little resistance and as much flow as possible? And I basically, in the episode that I recorded earlier this year, gave all the tools for how I did that. But just to give you a few ideas like, I had to buy a pair of shoes that really supported my specific foot shape and my specific needs. I needed to spend a little bit of money on shoes that were going to allow me to run, not feeling like my feet were on fire. I was running in Nikes for the first couple of weeks and it was awful, and then I got Hokas and all of a sudden I was running on a cloud. I had to really spend time creating intentional playlists that allowed me to access a certain level of fun and energy boost and process certain emotions while I was running, so I could kind of tap into that aspect of it while I was training. I had to accept that I wasn't going to run on certain days of the week and it just didn't work for me when I had a certain work schedule. That wouldn't be fun or enjoyable for me. And I also had to accept that maybe I wasn't going to get the exact time that I wanted in the marathon. Like I really needed to be loose with that and run in a way that was like my goal is to finish and my goal is to do it. My goal is to not stop running the entire time, that I might run slow or I might walk for a few minutes, obviously if I need to, and be less rigid about exactly what reaching that goal needed to look like. But it was like, yeah, my goal is to finish and to run it, to keep up with my friend as much as I possibly could, who, by the way, finished like maybe 25 minutes before me. I was like I'm going to do my best here to make this goal that I have. I've decided it's what I need to do, but how can I do it with as little resistance and work with it? It's again like anything else in life, right, like we have to make money. Are there ways that we can make money with as little resistance as possible and do our jobs and the boring things that we have to do day to day with as many deep breaths as possible, with as much nourishment as possible? Can we make sure we're taking care of our bodies and feeding ourselves and drinking water and not bringing a sense of roughness and rigidity and exhaustion and resistance to the thing that we're trying to do, to the goal that we inevitably have to reach or that we've decided we're going to reach because it's going to support our growth?
So that is another thing that I actually took away from the retreat, in addition to the dance class, is yeah, you've got this goal. How can I achieve it with as little resistance, as much fun as possible? Another way is like really speaking kindly to yourself, you know, in those moments when you are triggered or activated because you're in an environment that's reminding you of more rigid days of exercise, can you treat yourself like you would treat a friend that's triggered, or like you would treat a little puppy, an animal that's triggered. Breathe, calm down, speak to yourself with kindness, soothe yourself, regulate yourself and give yourself the nourishment that you need to navigate through that situation so that you can meet your goals. And really let go of that idea that exercise should be hard work and not fun. Fun helps us establish habit, and a lack of fun over stresses and dysregulates your nervous system. So it's not that every moment of your workout should be a party. Again, it's like you got to challenge yourself and you got to get to that point where you're like, ah, like I feel like maybe I can't go on right now. So not every moment is going to be like a rainbow dance party, but it can be that it's fun in some way, shape or form and you're doing what you can for it to be fun. Because if it's purely hard work and there isn't a sense of play and enjoyment in some area of your movement practice, in some area of your gentle structure that you are creating, then you're never going to do it and you're never going to establish the habit.
Tool number seven is remember that if shame or fear is your fuel, you will burn out. Shame or fuel is like putting little tiny pieces of paper on a fire, it doesn't keep the fire burning very long. So if you're exercising because you feel shame about your body size, you will burn out on exercise really quickly. If you are exercising because you are afraid to gain weight, you will not be able to implement a gentle structure that feels joyful and intuitive and effective. That all or nothing relationship with movement will remain. If you're exercising because you feel like you're bad or wrong if you don't exercise, that is another way that shame is fueling your fire and that fire is gonna stop burning. I promise. Whether it's because you just get a mental burnout from exercise or it leads to injury or just the general unsustainability of the all or nothing mentality that that fuels. If shame or fear is your fuel, you will burn out.
You do not need a rigid structure, shame or fear, to keep yourself motivated to move. I promise.
And tool number eight is start somewhere and start either with a person that's gonna celebrate you for showing up at all or in a space where you feel celebrated just for showing up. Remember that just choosing to show up at all is a really courageous step, a really important step, and it's a step that counts. I think that's something that we really get wrapped up in. With exercise. A lot is like if I don't sweat, it doesn't count. If I don't burn this many calories, it doesn't count. If I don't go for this long, it doesn't count. It counts just if you literally show the fuck up. If you show up with the intention to move in some way and you simply sit in a child's pose on your yoga mat, the entire class, that is still so valuable and still reinforcing a relationship with movement that is ultimately going to nurture and nourish you rather than being something that you come to resent or something that you can't stick to because you're either doing all or nothing. Choosing to show up at all and be there and learn from the experience or lean into your body or just be with your body and in your body is a lot.
A lot of gym environments, a lot of fitness classes are scary places to show up to, even if they're making all the effort in the world to be trauma informed and there are so many fitness studios that are doing a great job of being trauma informed and welcoming and inclusive. Even if they're doing that stuff, it's still really fucking scary to walk into a new environment and so just training your nervous system to be in that environment and let your guard down and be in your body and move is going to take some time. It's vulnerable. Be patient with yourself and celebrate yourself or, as I said, be in the company of a trainer or coach like me who will celebrate you for that big, courageous step of just showing up, and also know that a lot of fitness environments are toxic places and there's a lot of triggers to navigate there. And it's important to be patient with yourself as you navigate those triggers one by one and go slow and be kind and know that it is possible to heal your relationship even with those environments. And still, it's important to set boundaries with the ones that are not for you because, again, you don't have to go to any particular environment.
I was in New York two weeks ago and I went to a fitness class that is notoriously toxic. They have a bad reputation for just being really militant and really rigid and I decided to go to this class because I used to go in more of my disordered days and I was like I want to see if I can go in and set boundaries with this and see if I can still move intuitively and give myself permission. And I got to tell you it was hard, it was exhausting and it was hard and I noticed that my body image got a little wonky during the class. Some of the things that made this environment toxic were that I walked into the class on time and I had reserved a particular treadmill in the class. You have to reserve your spot. And I was like oh, where's treadmill number one? And the instructor was like maybe if you got here on time like everyone else, you'd be more settled. She said something like that and I was like what I was? Like I arrived at the time of the class. Thank you for welcoming me with shame. And then in one point during the class the instructor was like oh, if your body's getting tired, just use your mind. Use your mind to set your mind to keep going. And I was like I don't think that's a really great cue. What if someone's feeling injured right now? I think there's a better way to say you can do more than you might feel you're capable of right now. I think that there are healthier cues to give. We don't need to encourage disembodiment during exercise class. And then they had like Celsius available for sale there, and Celsius is a brand that literally says like fat burner, like on the can, it's like an energy drink and I was just like. This is just a really like, I don't think that you have to go to environments like this.
You might not find a sunshine in rainbows, trauma informed studio, and you can find something way better than that. You don't have to put yourself through that. You do not have to put yourself through that. That was a failed experiment of mine and I think that I'm going to record a follow up episode to this one where I create a toolkit for determining whether an exercise environment is the right one for you and just get a little bit more specific about that and kind of use my New York City experiment of like going to this class that I really didn't like. So I also went to a class that I really, really love and I obviously went on this retreat that I love. So I kind of picked up a lot of different tools and tips about like which fitness environment is right for you. So that will be my follow up to this episode.
These are just some ideas that I'm leaving you with today, and I hope that many of them serve you. I hope these perspectives serve you as you try to create your dental structure with movement. This is probably a tip of the iceberg situation, because there's more I can say and more I desire to say, so we'll come back to this topic very, very soon, I promise.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have follow up questions, follow up feedback, please send it to me directly on instagram at @caitie.c.rd. If you really liked this episode, it means the whole world and helps so much if you could leave a five star rating on Apple and/or Spotify, write a review on Apple so that more people can hear this perspective. And I think the most important thing is that if there was something on this episode that really served you today, that really helped you today, please share it with another person. Not necessarily the episode, but just the perspective. Let's make this Whole, Full, & Alive podcast a ripple effect that changes a lot of people's lives, not just the people who tune into the episode. But if you sent the episode, I wouldn't mind either.
I hope you have a peaceful rest of your day, wherever you're tuning in from, and I will see you back here two weeks with a guest. Take care.
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