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Meditation: Practicing for Life

Ezra Bayda and Elizabeth Hamilton, husband and wife, have been practicing Zen meditation for over 40 years and have taught for the last 20 at the Zen Center of San Diego. They lead retreats across the United States and in Australia and France. Both have led meditation in hospice venues, and now they offer it in a retirement community.

IDEA Fitness Journal

recently interviewed them about the rising interest in meditation and what has kept them practicing for so long.

Taking Control With Mental Toughness Techniques

Sport psychology is dubbed the “science of success” because it studies the four mental toughness skills—motivation, confidence, concentration, and emotional and physiological control—that athletes use consistently, in conjunction with training and nutrition, to give them the ultimate performance edge. Whether you are a personal trainer, group fitness instructor, coach or mind-body wellness professional, the information, tools and techniques discussed here will help your clients to enhance their performance and give them the best shot at realizing their true potential.

How Positive Affirmations Can Help Boost Body Confidence

We think with our entire body. What we say affects how we feel. How we feel affects how we behave.
How we behave affects what we achieve. Thus, we must learn to effectively communicate with our bodies so that we have control over our performance and overall results.

5 Fascinating Facts We Learned on IDEA FitFeed This Week

Do treadmills accurately count calories burned? How many carbs are right for you? Can meditation slow the aging of your brain? Find the answers to these questions and other relevant news items on IDEA FitFeed. This inclusive tool gathers news articles, research studies, blogs and all content being shared by fitness professionals around the web and posts it in one convenient location.

Yoga for Neck and Shoulder Pain

In our high-stress, hurried world—filled with financial pressures, information overload, “terror alerts” and sleeplessness—many people feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. Add to this emotional tension the physical stress of sedentary lifestyles with long hours spent hunched over computers and, all too often, the result is a serious pain in the neck.

10 Signs You Are Suffering From Burnout

Generally, group fitness instructors are known for their upbeat, can-do attitude. It can be challenging to admit that you’re feeling burned out. The following signs of job-related burnout may give you clues about your own performance, so you can take steps to keep yourself inspired and motivated.?

Mind-Body Personal Training

When Tanya Colucci, MS, trains clients, she pulls from many different resources to offer the best results possible. Owner of Tanya Colucci Myofascial Release Therapy in Bluffton, South Carolina, Colucci believes in an integrative mind-body approach, which appears to resonate with many people. Case in point: client Aileen Worthington, age 71, who has osteoporosis.

How To Become a Mindful Personal Trainer

When leading client sessions, do you find that you have difficulty maintaining focus on the task at hand? Learn how to break the habit of mind wandering to become a more mindful—and fulfilled—personal trainer.

Mindful Walking

Walking can be more than just moving physically from one location to another. It can be a metaphor for your larger life journey. Things you’re walking toward are goals, aspirations, and dreams of a better future. Things you’re walking away from are fear, discomfort or negativity that is holding you back. Spend a few moments identifying things you would like to walk into and things you’d like to walk away from.

Mindfulness is the Best Sweetener

At your favorite lunch spot, they bake bread on the premises, and the delicious aroma of warm loaves has you salivating before you have even placed your order. You weren’t feeling especially hungry in the car and were thinking of eating a salad, but gosh, now that you’re here, wouldn’t you just love a chunk of that cinnamon-raisin bread with butter?

Tips for Working With Older Caregivers

Adults over 50 who are caring for aging parents are not like other fitness clients of similar age.

For starters, caregivers tend to be less healthy. A study by the insurance company MetLife noted that “adult children 50+ who work and provide care to a parent are more likely to have fair or poor health than those who do not provide care to their parents” (MetLife 2011). Another study showed that 17% of caregivers felt their health had gotten worse as a result of their caregiving responsibilities (Feinberg et al. 2011).

Research Looks at the Brain; Diabetes

Two distinct mental strategies used to manage pain—focusing attention externally and re-appraising the pain—involve different brain pathways, according to new research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study appeared in the journal Anesthesiology (2011, 115 [4], 844–51).

Powerful Postures to Melt Stress

In today’s complicated world, just listening to the evening news on television or radio can raise cortisol rates in the body. High stress levels, combined with current technological advancements, almost unending sensorial bombardment, and the ever-changing dietary habits of many developed countries, can deny the body time for repose and resynthesis.

Benefits of Mind-Body Activities for Kids

Today’s fast-paced, digital world pressures children to grow up fast. Instead of running around grassy playgrounds, most of them live highly structured lives, shuttling from one organized activity to the next, often while playing with hyper-stimulating devices. For school-age children, homework, peer pressure, teasing, poor grades, bullying, parental demands and isolation can all trigger stress.

Exercise Yourself Happy

Are you—or is someone in your life— anxious or depressed? Did you know that exercise can help? Scientific under- standing of mental health disorders is increasing—and exercise is emerging as a potent healing tool.

Shirley Archer, JD, MA, IDEA’s 2008 Fitness Instructor of the Year and author of Pilates Fusion: Well-Being for Body, Mind and Spirit, describes how exercise impacts mood and what you can do to improve mental health.

Science Says: Exercise Benefits Mental Health

MBSR Program, Especially Yoga, Helps Older Adults

In the first study to tease out the effects of different components of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, researchers have identified yoga and sitting meditation as particularly beneficial practices for promoting health among older adults.