Wellness
The Benefits of “Ikigai”
Lifestyle concepts like “Ikigai,” a Japanese concept related to living a meaningful and satisfying life, are gaining popular interest.
Tips for Getting Sleep
Answers and solutions for getting sleep, plus questions you can ask and tips you can offer when guiding others on their sleep quest.
Journaling Prompts
As we settle into 2022, Yoga Journal contributor Milan Sundaresan offers 10 pointers on using journaling to create the life you want.
Coping With Grief During COVID-19
Experts weigh in on coping with grief in the context of COVID-19, including what’s different about it and how to help yourself and others.
5 Crucial Behavior Change Variables
Behavior change theories are used to explain what drives a person to make a change and keep at it. Five key variables seem to play the greatest roles.
Fruits and Veggies for Kids’ Mental Health
There seems to be more stress and anxiety in children now. Encouraging them to eat more berries and carrots could help kids’ mental health.
10 Holiday Stress Coping Strategies
With the holidays often come new stressors. Family get-togethers, shopping, decorating, gift buying and wrapping, cooking and baking, and attending special activities can place extra demands on clients and lead to stress.
Here are 10 holiday stress coping strategies from the Mayo Clinic:
Holiday Self-Care
The words holiday and self-care may not seem like they go together. For some of us, celebrating the holidays can be a monumental effort often filled with stress. Before the whirlwind of the season starts, recommit to a workable routine of holiday self-care.
Exercise, Life Purpose and Happiness
Exercise, life purpose and happiness are a trio of ideas that enhance each other in meaningful ways. While your clients might not agree about the happiness part when they’re in the middle of a set of burpees, linking all the beyond-the-biceps benefits together can provide motivation and greater success.
Transform Your Fitness Facility
The traditional fitness facility has typically been viewed as a place to work out and play sports in order to change one’s physical appearance. However, this has shifted. Wellness—which includes physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellness—has become the buzzword of the decade, and today’s fitness facilities have begun offering a myriad of services, hoping that people will view these locations as the local wellness center. To cover the full wellness spectrum, however, you need to combine forces with other health modalities.
Exercise Boosts Neuroplasticity, Helping Depression
In studying physical activity’s effect on depression, researchers from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany found that exercise simultaneously lifts mood and boosts neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change. It is neuroplasticity that…
With Gyms Open, Are Clients Ready?
With many gyms open again—some after long closures—IDEA put three questions to five fitness pros from around the country: Are you now operating at full capacity? How are clients adapting as…
Tai Chi Is Good for Older Adults
Why tai chi? These Chinese movement patterns have been around for centuries. In recent years, study after study has proven their benefits—particularly for older exercisers—yet most fitness professionals seem to…
Sell Mental Health and Wellness, Not Exercise
As the world puts one foot in front of another after the pandemic, it’s critical to address mental and emotional health and wellness.
Self-Care Tips for Summer
The past couple years have been a long haul for you and your clients, and now is a great time to review some self-care tips. Enjoy the summer with these…
Pandemic Stress Among Clients?
As U.S. COVID-19 cases surged in the winter of 2020, pandemic stress rates rose steeply. In January, about 4 in 10 adults reported symptoms of depression or anxiety. That’s four times…
Breathwork Practices Gaining Popularity
Breathing programs are entering the mainstream, as breathwork was named one of the top seven trends to influence wellness in 2021 and beyond.
The Healing Benefits of Forgiveness
Learn what the research says about the many benefits of forgiveness and how you can achieve it for yourself.
How to Help Someone Who Is Grieving
Sooner or later, most of us lose someone we care about, and since the start of the pandemic, loss has visited more of us than ever. The pain can be…
Anger: A Tool to Help Us Thrive
Anger is a normal human emotion, part of both our lives and our work. And while we instinctively want our clients to train happy, understanding and leveraging angry feelings can have some positive results.