Re: Your Body Is Amazing - Gratitude Edition
I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago that went over 5 reasons why your body is amazing. Click here to read it.
Your body actually does over 5 millions of things that are amazing. We’ll get to some of them in later posts. In this post, I want to talk about how to appreciate your body.
There is a difference between saying you appreciate something or someone, and actually feeling it.
For instance, I can list over 5 million amazing things that your body does. It’d just be a list. If I do not do anything with that list, it will remain just a list.
When you put gratitude into action, that’s where the magic happens. That is when you start to actually learn what gratitude feels like. It might sound wooey-hooey, but it’s science:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHv6vTKD6lg
To exemplify this, in the above video, researchers had participants write a letter to someone they are grateful for, someone who has had a huge positive impact in their life. Then, the researchers surprised the participants and asked them to call that person and read them the letter. You can actually see the difference in the gratitude of the participants when they write the letter versus when they call and read the letter to that person. This a great example of gratitude in action. The below links are further research on the subject of how expressing gratitude leads to happiness.
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful?language=en#t-191072
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618772506
Another example of being grateful versus feeling gratitude is saying you are grateful for your access and ability to afford top quality fruits, vegetables, and meats. You can put this gratitude into action by thanking the universe before each meal, buying extra food and donating it to those who do not have the same access you have, volunteering to improve a local food pantry, or getting involved with a food policy board.
When it comes to your body, you only get one.
Don’t just say you appreciate your body, show it.
How? Here are 5 ways to show your body you appreciate it.
1. Move it.
Your body was meant to move. Show your body you appreciate it by walking, running, strength training, hiking, bending, flexing, chasing, inverting, or anything else you may enjoy. There are humans who don’t have the luxury of being able to do these things easily. I am always grateful on a run that all four of my limbs are working and intact, and that my heart does its job without any complications, along with the rest of my organs.
2. Nourish it.
Are you fueling your only body with trash all the time? Are you under-fueling it? Do you give it enough water? Do you tell your body you hate that one part of it? Find one thing you like about it instead and start to nourish and treat your body like the incredible temple it is.
3. Observe it.
The fact that your body just breathes and sustains life without its inhabitants (us) having to think about doing that is amazing. Every once in a while, watch it do its thing. Meditate. Breathe. Just be.
4. Rest it.
Sleep! Sleep can be an entire blog post. There is a whole book on it, Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson. There are plenty of podcasts out there about the importance of sleep:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-should-prioritize-sleep-understanding-the/id596047499?i=1000533063379
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/physical-preparation-podcast-robertson-training-systems/id1011924486?i=1000536487523
And plenty of research on the subject. We don’t 100% understand sleep, but we know if we don’t get enough of it, our body will eventually tell us.
BTW - Resting your body also means not competing year round or training seven days of most weeks. It means taking enough rest days, and doing the appropriate phase of a training program at the appropriate time.
5. Share it.
Practice 1-4 so you can show up where ever you go as the best version of yourself. To borrow Rob Dial Jr’s of the Mindset Mentor’s signing off sentence, “make it your mission to make someone else’s day better.”
There are millions of more ways to show your body you appreciate it. Know or practice one of them? Please share it in the comments!
If you live in Central New Jersey and are ready to show your body you appreciate it, please use the form below to get in touch with me about my strength and conditioning programs for female youth athletes.
If you do not live in Central New Jersey, but are still ready to show your body you appreciate it, use the form below to ask me about my remote strength and conditioning programs for female youth athletes.
Also, coaches, please use the form below to ask me about my graphics and video editing skills.
