A Different Kind of Mindfulness

In Pilates, we focus on organizing the mechanics of the body—how the bones and joints align, the balance of the muscles around the joints, our breathing mechanism. And we believe this organization creates a better performing, more aligned body.

I think the same is true of our minds. They can use some organizing and aligning. Instead of a little more of this muscle and a little less of that one, it might be a little more of this emotion and a little less of that one.

Try gratitude journaling. See if you can think of ten things to be grateful for each day.

For a long time, the mind and body have been thought of as separate. We now know that’s not true at all. The mind influences the body and vice versa. The emotions you feel, the thoughts you have, they create chemical signals that affect every cell in your body. This is how we “feel” emotions, with the help of hormones and neurotransmitters released in response to them.

This means that a potent way to organize and clean up your body is to clean up your thoughts and emotions. This year, I stumbled upon one of my all time favorite books: Letting Go by David Hawkins. He takes the world of emotions and puts it into a framework that a more scientific mind like mine can appreciate. In fact, he assigns a number that represents its energy to various emotions. This helps you understand their impact on your body. For example, shame is the lowest of the emotions at only 20, guilt is 30, grief is 75, fear is 100, anger is 150. He classifies negative emotions as falling below 200.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a Pilates organized body with a mind vibrating on the frequency of fear or anger. How do I rise above that? Dr. Hawkins places acceptance at 350, love at 500, and peace at 600.

Love and gratitude are the highest energy emotions. Guilt and shame are the lowest. What is your body bathing in?

The emotions with the highest energy, with the most positive biochemical impact on the cells and tissues of your body, are love and gratitude. In fact, the energy of these frequencies is so powerful that researchers have found it to create microscopically measured effects on water (The Hidden Messages by Masuro Emoto) as well as macroscopic effects (The Living Language of Water by Veda Austin). So not only do your thoughts and emotions create biochemical changes in your body via hormones and neurotransmitters (The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton), they also affect the water that comprises 60-70% of your body by weight and over 99% of you by molecular count.

So basically, your thoughts and emotions matter!

Eight months ago, I decided to create a consistent, dedicated gratitude practice. I resolved to write a minimum of ten things I was grateful for in a journal every night. Let me tell you—there were some nights that I really struggled. I could hardly come up with a few things to be grateful for that day. So busy was my mind with all that was wrong, I could hardly find anything right.

Struggling to feel love and thankfulness? My sweet dog is my go to for feeling more love and gratitude!

Within a couple months, finding ten things to be grateful for became easy. In fact, I could regularly get to 15-20 without trying. And then suddenly, the gratitude crept into my day. I wasn’t just thankful for things when I focused on it. I was thankful for things in the moment, and in the midst of difficult moments! When I slept only four hours before waking up in the middle of the night and struggling for the rest of the night to fall back asleep, I could genuinely be grateful for those solid four hours of sleep rather than focusing on how that was half of what I wanted.

I truly believe that this is making me happier. I don’t need circumstances to fall into place, I don’t need an exotic vacation, I don’t need my spouse to plan the perfect date, I don’t need elections to go my way. I am starting to find boatloads of things to be grateful for in my mundane, everyday life.

Try a gratitude walk. Commit to only thinking of things you’re grateful for on a walk. In nature, it’s easy to find things to appreciate.

Try it! If a gratitude journal is not your style, try a gratitude walk. I take my dog on a walk and the entire walk, I think of things I’m grateful for. Especially if you’re in nature, it’s amazing what you will find to appreciate. Or try a gratitude body scan. During my meditations, I will go body part by body part thanking it for all it does well. How often do we ever thank the things that work well in our body rather than focus on what hurts or is riddled with disease? Seriously. I’ve never thanked my left elbow for not giving me a single issue ever!

Once you get started, you’ll realize that there is so much to be grateful for, there’s not much space left in your mind for complaining, worrying, sadness, fear, irritability, judgement, annoyance, or anger. And that kind of mindfulness over your thoughts and emotions is more powerful than the kind that brings awareness to how you move in Pilates.

Like this subject and want to learn more? I highly recommend the book Thank and Grow Rich by Pam Grout.

How to Train Your Skin

We train our muscles.  Through progressive challenges, the tissues respond and get stronger.  The same is true with our skin.

If you want your skin to perform well in response to sun, you’ll have to train it.  Just like you can’t sit on a couch all year and then go run a marathon, you can’t stay inside all year and expect your skin to do well on that summer beach vacation.

A two-hour hike at 8500 feet at midday with a hat but no sunglasses nor sunblock… and no burn!

If you want to reap the health benefits of the sun and wean yourself off of sunscreen, here are the steps for training:

1.  No more sunglasses.  They send a mixed message to your body.  They block the light, telling your brain that it isn’t that bright and then it doesn’t properly prepare your skin for the actual light it’s receiving.

2.  Set your circadian rhythms. A great way to support your circadian rhythm is to make unblocked sunlight the first light you see in the morning.  Wake up at the same time every day and either sit by an open window (glass blocks some of the sun’s spectrum) or go outside for at least 5 minutes.

3.  Be outside during UVA Rise. Spend 20+ minutes outside when the sun is 10-30 degrees above the horizon.  This is when UVA can penetrate the atmosphere and is often called UVA Rise.  The sun rises around 5:30am in Colorado currently and UVA rise begins around 6:30am and lasts until 8:25am.  How do I know?  A free App called Circadian that helps you better understand the sun—a crucial ingredient to improving your relationship with it.  Spending time outside during UVA rise helps prepare your body for the more intense midday sun while giving you a good dose of protective infrared and visible red light too. UVA also helps your eyeballs make hormones like serotonin and melatonin (so no sunglasses, glasses or contacts!)

4.  Sunbathe.  Spend specific amounts of time in the sun when UVA and UVB are present during the middle of the day.  Start small and see how your skin responds.  Slowly increase as desired.  You need a tan.  Melanin is our built in sunscreen and it does a host of beneficial things for our body besides allowing us to spend more time in the sun, like protecting our cells from man made EMF.  You also need UVB light to make vitamin D and the kind you make from the sun is way more effective than the kind you take in a supplement. Use the App D Minder to assess how many IUs of vitamin D you’ve made. This is a great way to start to understand what kind of sun dosage you’re getting. Sun at 1:00pm is different than at 4:00pm and when you understand that, you can make more informed decisions. Even if you are very pale (Fitzpatrick Skin Type 1), you can still get a tan with this skin training plan.

5.  Shade is your friend.  Rather than slather on sunscreen, which can have dangerous ingredients or can oxidize itself in the presence of sunlight, use shade and cover.  Once you’ve had enough sunlight, which you can determine using the D Minder App, protect yourself from it.  Wear clothing, put on a hat, go in the shade.  The only time I suggest wearing sunscreen is if you have no control over getting out of the sun, such as when playing a sport.  Sunscreen only blocks part of the sun’s spectrum and allows you to spend more time in the sun overdosing on other parts of the spectrum (like UVA or visible light).  Skin cancer has gone up not down since the invention of sunscreen.

6.  Spend evening time in the sun.  Currently from 5:40pm to sunset at 8:30pm, UVB is no longer present and there is a ton of healing red and infrared light.  If you got too much sun earlier in the day, this is a good time to be outside.

Getting sun, cold therapy, and Pilates at the same time!

7. Consider nutrition. Avoid seed oils—sunflower, safflower, canola, corn, soy, vegetable—which means avoid restaurant and processed foods. Try not to consume them and avoid skin care products, like face or body lotion, that contain them. These oils are very sensitive to sunlight and will oxidize in its presence, making you more sensitive to the sun and more likely to burn. Consider the supplement astaxanthin, which is made from the algae that makes flamingos pink and is a powerful antioxidant. My family has been using this for 6+ years and it does help you burn less.

Utilizing these strategies, I’ve been able to spend time in the sun without sunblock for over a year and almost never get burned. I love re-establishing my relationship with the sun as a friend not foe, reaping the benefits of sunlight, and no longer fearing it.

Thermoregulation Workout

Joseph Pilates didn’t just believe in exercising the musculoskeletal system. He also believed in challenging the systems in your body that maintain temperature. Photos from his life show him often underdressed in cold conditions (see his shirtless ski photo here or his snow Pilates photo shoot here) and his former student John Howard Steel described evening walks with Joe this way: “On the street, Joe looked like a strange old man, wearing nothing more than a pair of skimpy gym shorts…, a white turtleneck long-sleeve cotton shirt…, and canvas slippers.” Meanwhile, John wore “a tailored suit, shirt, and tie… and sometimes a coat. We were a study in contrasts.” (Caged Lion, 2020, pg. 46)

Good Stress

Pilates is a hormetic stressor. Hormetic stress is the just right amount of stress. If our body is understressed, it’s never challenged to grow. If it’s overstressed, it can’t repair and heal well. Good exercise is a stress to our system, which repairs later while we rest to grow stronger and more prepared for that stressor again.

We don’t just want hormetic stressors for our muscles. We can benefit from them in other areas of our lives. One of those is with temperature regulation, and recently it’s become more trendy to challenge our bodies with hot saunas, cold plunges, or cryotherapy.

Why try cold plunging?

I personally became interested in cold therapy because I was always so cold in winter. Living in Colorado and spending a good amount of the winter skiing gave me many chances to realize that I was uncomfortably cold in the cold. While some people might then chose to avoid the cold, live somewhere warmer, choose warmer sports, I decided to train my body to better tolerate the cold. I want to be resilient, not fearful or avoidant!

I began cold exposure with cold plunges. Filling my bathtub with cold water, measuring the temperature (the coldest it’s come out of my tap is 43-degrees), then getting as submerged as I could tolerate for as long as possible.

The first plunge was February 2023. The water was 44-degrees, I made it to my waist, and I lasted less than three minutes. My feet hurt so bad! (We have more bloodflow and sensory receptors on our hands and feet, so they’re more vulnerable to the cold).

I persisted. I aimed for at least 10 minutes a week in cold water. I sometimes laid flat in the snow. Initially I would shiver violently after the cold plunges or stay cold for an hour. My body was definitely not conditioned for this.

Shoveling in the single digits underdressed.

Brown Fat

The body will adapt to cold exposure eventually. It will start changing how the mitochondria produce energy to generate more heat instead of ATP. You’ll start making something called Brown Fat, which is metabolically active fat with much more blood and mitochondria to help you make heat. Scientists used to think only newborns had brown fat (to keep them warm because their muscles can’t shiver yet) until a couple decades ago when they realized adults can have it too. And brown fat not only helps you generate heat to stay warm, it also increases your insulin sensitivity. I’ve never been so excited to put on fat before!

Interestingly, to better increase your brown fat, you need to warm yourself up naturally after cold exposure. That means all the times I laid in the snow but then immediately jumped into the hot tub did not help me develop more brown fat (see Snow/Hot Tub video here). Now when I cold plunge, I wrap in a bathrobe afterwards and wait until my body temperature is back to normal before doing anything warming like sitting by the fire or taking a hot shower.

My Results

Fourteen months after starting my cold plunging journey, I am pleased with the results. I can sunbathe outside when the temperature is only in the 50s—my husband is fully dressed and I’m in a bikini, and it doesn’t bother me! I can submerge in 44-degree water now for three times as long as my first attempt. I can submerge in 50-60 degree water for over ten minutes and need no bathrobe to warm myself up after. When I ski, I’m no longer so cold. I am thrilled!

Physiologically, some interesting things happen with cold exposure too. One of them is an increase in the production of dopamine—the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation. In fact, my regular lab results show my dopamine levels increased over three times after beginning regular cold plunging! It also improves mitochondrial efficiency by bringing proteins closer together in the electron transport chain. Since mitochondria power all reactions in the body, this is no small thing.

I also have come to greatly enjoy the stimulation to my nervous system. The initial plunge stimulates the sympathetic nervous system—the fight or flight system that no doubt is worried about your survival in temps this cold. It’s so intense that you gasp! And hyperventilate. And make the sounds of a dying animal. But then, your nervous system realizes it needs to conserve resources and you switch to parasympathetic—your rest, repair, and digest system. I now drop into this phase within 1-2 minutes. My breathing rate slows and I suddenly feel ridiculously calm given the circumstances. It’s like a nice meditation. I believe that our nervous system benefits from this reset, if you will. It’s almost like restarting an electronic device. Some people swear cold plunging makes a huge difference for their mental health, depression, and addiction. It also can reduce pain and inflammation.

Be More Like Joe

To celebrate my success and enjoyment of cold plunging and to “be more like Joe,” I staged a Pilates photo shoot in the snow. I wore a black swim suit and white slippers like Joe. It was 35-degrees out with a mild breeze and it wasn’t bad. I barely needed to bundle up afterwards to walk home. Kinesis Pilates teacher Jennifer also attempted her own cold exposure Pilates in honor of Joe too.

If you want to get started, here are some suggestions:

• You don’t have to be in cold water for it to be cold exposure. Being underdressed when it’s cold outside counts.

• The best areas to expose to cold are your forehead, chest, and upper back. The latter two especially help with brown fat production.

• If you insulate your feet and hands, you’ll be able to handle more intense cold. Alternatively, just exposing those areas to cold also counts as cold exposure. When my tub is too cold for me, I’ll keep my hands and feet out of the water. Wearing slippers for snow Pilates was a must.

• Turning your shower to cold is a good start. However, the water warms as it passes down your body and the ambient air is warm too. So submerging is superior.

• You’ll stimulate brown fat production best if the temperature is below 60-degrees F.

• Dr. Susanna Soberg, author of Winter Swimming, suggests 11-minutes per week of cold plunging for optimal results.

Enjoy working out your body’s thermoregulatory systems and your newly acquired resilience to the cold!

How to improve the health of your fascia

When I was in anatomy cadaver labs in the 1990s, we always used our scalpel to cut away these cobwebs of connective tissue to get to the “good stuff” like muscles and organs.  It amazes me how quickly science can change.  Now the connective tissue that we completely ignored is recognized as having enormous value.  In fact, Scientific American named it the interstitium and declared it a “newly discovered” organ in 2018 (source). It’s no longer just connective tissue holding things together, but also a vast and fast communication network, is likely the location of the meridians and channels recognized for thousands of years by healing modalities like Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, an area that can transport not only information but also electrons/energy/Chi/Prana/life force, and a tissue that can generate energy that can power other areas of the body like organs.  We are starting to understand how it’s so much more than just the glue that holds us all together.

Fascia is a connective tissue primarily composed of collagen with some elastin.  It is a web that connects from skin to muscle, from muscles to tendons (which really aren’t isolated connectors of muscle to bone but rather areas where the fascia thickens into a bundle), from tissues into the extracellular matrix where the lymph bathes the cells. Fascinatingly, the tubules of fascia go from the extracellular matrix through cell membrane proteins called integrins, and into the intracellular matrix.  Once inside the cell, this network connects to organelles like the nucleus where it affects which genes get transcribed into proteins as well as the mitochondria where it affects energy production and the formation of biowater (biologically active water that can hold a charge and power operations).  This is remarkable.  What it means is that every cell in your body is connected to this network and paying attention to the information it gathers.  The movement of your body and therefore fascia has the potential to be registered by every cell in your body.  This is undoubtedly one of the mechanisms by which movement heals.

You’ve got to move it

When you keep all your joints moving well often, this fascia stays healthy.  Cells in the matrix called fasciacytes generate hyaluronic acid, the infamous HA in many beauty treatments used to try to plump wrinkles.  One HA molecule has the ability to hold onto up to 1600 molecules of water, which means it’s incredibly hydrating and plumping.  Nice for your skin and even nicer for your fascia.  Hydrated fascia is healthy fascia.  So when you move, you stimulate more HA which holds onto more water, which keeps your fascia hydrated.  

Immobilized fascia is unhealthy.  It is stagnant, potentially adhered if the immobilization is significant, and dehydrated.  It doesn’t have water to hold a charge and it can’t communicate as effectively.  If you experience stiffness, your fascia is likely dehydrated.  When you’re sitting for long periods, your desire to get up and move and stretch is partially to nourish your fascia.  This movement also helps pump lymph, since lymphatic vessels are threaded through the fascia.  Really a multitude of great things happen when you move!

Another benefit of moving your fascia is that it generates electricity in the connective tissue.  And through this tissue, the energy can be sent to where it’s most needed if the network is robust and functioning properly.  This is one of the reasons you feel energized by your workouts.

What kind of movement is best for the fascia?  Slow and controlled lengthening movements.  Not the sudden, fast ones of high intensity, but rather the gentle and intentional ones found in methods like yoga, Tai Chi, and of course, classical Pilates.  Slower movements with a focus on breath also calm the nervous system, which will then tolerate greater degrees of length in the fascia than if you’re in a frenzied fight or flight state like in a HIIT class.  

Stretch with strength and control

Romana Kryzanowska—who studied with Joseph Pilates, ran the studio when he and Clara passed, and who trained my teachers Amy Taylor Alpers and Rachel Taylor Segel—said Pilates is “stretch with strength and control.”  Isn’t that interesting?!  Stretch comes first.  I feel today we emphasize the strength and control.  Think about how many exercises Joe called stretch—Long Stretch, Up Stretch, Down Stretch, Long Back Stretch, Tendon Stretch, Knee Stretches, Thigh Stretch, Spine Stretch, Single Leg Stretch, Double Leg Stretch.  That’s more than he called Massage.  None are called Strengtheners.   If every exercise is about the stretch primarily, it really becomes a fascia-supporting movement method! 

Like a cat

Joseph Pilates got inspiration for his movement method from watching cats, especially wild cats on the Isle of Man where he was interned. Have you ever paid attention to what cats do? They stretch, sun themselves, and nap. They don’t do a lot of movements we would consider strengthening. Perhaps there is more potency to stretch and length (and sun!) than we ever imagined.

Hydration

If your body is supplied with high quality water, this fascial stretching and deformation will pull that water into its matrix.  Exposure of this water to the right frequencies (like infrared light, of which over 40% of the sun’s rays are) can help this water organize into structured water—sometimes also called Exclusion Zone (EZ) water, or the 4th phase of water, coherent water, or biowater.  It is a more gel-like water, with the ability to separate charges where it connects to cell membranes, generating a battery.  To learn more about the benefits of sun exposure, read our blog post All the Sunshine You Can Get. The best water you can drink to support this is mineral water, as mineral content helps the water be better absorbed by the cells and is more electrically conductive.  Mineral water is also more likely to lack chemicals that damage fascia like glyphosate and fluoride. 

Exercise isn’t the only movement that helps fascia hydrate, build biowater, and generate energy.  Compression like from laying on a foam roller or receiving a massage or receiving fascial work (rolfing, structural integration, the work of Tom Myers’ Anatomy Trains) can do it too.  But exercise gives the added benefit of strengthening your muscles and motor control, so of course that is my recommendation.

Earthing benefits us because of fascia

It is through this fascial network that electrons from earthing travel. The earth has a negative charge and a high supply of electrons. By comparison, we are electron deficient. When you touch the earth with your bare skin, electrons move from higher concentration to lower, or into you. Then via the fascial network, they can travel to wherever you need them most. Read our Return to the Earth blog post to learn more about earthing/grounding.

Consume collagen

Don’t forget that fascia is primarily collagen, so the consumption of high quality protein helps your body have the resources to expand this network (like when you become more flexible) and regenerate it as needed.  Animal protein is bioavailable and ready to be used.  Protein with collagen (grisly stew meats, bone broth made from bones with cartilage on them) is your best bet.  I do not recommend highly processed collagen powders.  The more natural and closer to the original source, the better.  Remember that the fascia connects to the nuclear DNA and is communicating what’s going on in your environment with it (aka, epigenetics).  Do you want that message to be what our DNA has evolved to get for hundreds of thousands of years or some frankenfood alien message?

Tend to Your Tissues

If you take care of your body, it will take care of you.  Give it the building blocks and stimulus it needs to thrive, and you will experience more vitality and energy.  Move your joints through their full range of motion regularly—daily if possible.  Avoid being stationary.  If you have surgery, once you’ve healed, work that scar tissue to help it hydrate and behave more normally.  Tend to your tissues.  Don’t wait until things start breaking down and hurting.  Your body will thank you and reward you.