Bright Ideas:
It all starts with
Awareness
by Kathy Rasmussen
I
have to admit it, sitting since I quit my day job
and started running my own business full time,
I’ve put on a bit of weight. It’s true that sitting
in front of a computer for several hours each day
is not an efficient way to burn calories, no matter
how fast I type. I’m not loving that my pants continue to get tighter and I feel, well...just BLAH.
Needless to say, I felt kind of weird interviewing
health and fitness expert, Suncana Selimovic for
my Bright Idea’s column. But, as soon as we started
talking, all that weirdness went away.
Suncana is a Yoga Tune Up® instructor and
self-proclaimed body nerd. She is also the owner of
Body Connection Obsessed. She lived six months
out of the year in Germany and the other six
months in Canada.
Growing up, Suncana was always athletic and
wanted to be healthy. Even though some of the
other girls she new were obsessed with being thin,
she would rather have a great workout than go on a
crash diet.
Her fitness and eating habits started to suffer when
she went away to University. Being away from
home and living on her own made it hard to eat
healthy and stay active. She’d start eating right and
working out for a couple weeks, but then fall back
into the same routine.
Suncana decided to try hot yoga and fell in love.
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Working up a sweat was the only way her body
would feel good again. But it was the instructors
who truly opened her eyes and changed the way
she thought about her body.
One day in class, as she went into a pose, her instructor adjusted her body position in the slightest
way and completely changed everything. She felt
new muscles working and how it connected with
other parts of her body. It made her aware of how
the minor body tweaks have a huge functional impact. This was her a-ha moment.
“The functional aspect...was mind-blowing for me.
I always felt like, if I wanted more, I needed to
either go for a longer run or lift a heavier weight.
But really, we have so much within ourselves that...
if we made tiny tweaks we could get just as much
of a workout as we actually do by lifting a heavier
dumbbell just by being aware of... what muscles
are working and if we are compensating somewhere.”
She started to understand that her body’s cravings
for hot yoga was its way of telling her what it needed - a good detox from all the crap she was eating.
She realized that it all starts with awareness - that
listening to her body and being aware of its needs
is the first step to healing.
But I’m not an athlete. I’m not even in good shape.
How does someone like me know where to start