I'm a bilingual yoga teacher who helps people who sit a lot gain mobility, move without pain and reduce their stress.
New year, same old me
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So here we are, over halfway through January. It's generally when we realise that "new year new me" didn't really come to be and that our lives aren't as transformed as we had wished. If that's your case, I want you to get rid of any guilt you might be carrying about this, and give you a few essential reminders you might need to hear right now. You don't need to go to the gym, run, or do anything you hate for your healthYou need to move to keep your body (and your mind) healthy, yes. But that can take many forms. You can walk, you can do yoga, you can lift weights, you can play padel. You can do it outside, in a gym or in your living room. My point is, you don't have to do something you dislike. Because if you don't like it, you're going to look for ANY excuse to stop doing it, and you WILL find it. Find something you are happy to do regularly. Inertia is what's killing your motivationOur bodies adapt to what they do most. So when you stay several days in a row without exercising, it takes a HUGE effort to start moving again. Find something you can do a little bit of, often. That's why I make short (5-15 minutes) routines for my clients. Easy to fit daily, to keep the momentum going. Make movement a part of your lifeTake the stairs, stretch in front of Netflix, do your steps while you're on the phone, take a walk at lunch to reset your mood and your body. Pro tip: If you start your day with the short routine from the point above, it'll be 10 times easier to keep the momentum going during the day (see my email last week about the sunk benefits). And most importantly... stop seeing your wellbeing as another task on your listIt is your maintenance, like brushing your teeth. You wouldn't stay in a house without fixing the leaky roof. I'm begging you to see your body as the only house you'll ever really own, and treat it with the kindness and care it deserves. Your physical wellbeing impacts your mental wellbeing and vice versa. And it impacts how you interact with the world around you. It's the table on which every other aspect of your life rests. So stop putting it last on your list of priorities. Nothing is more important. Love you, bye 🧡 Clem |
Clémence Dieryck
I'm a bilingual yoga teacher who helps people who sit a lot gain mobility, move without pain and reduce their stress.
I want to talk about fatigue today. It's something we all experience, yet we don't fully understand it. Even from a scientific standpoint, there's still a lot of ongoing research and competing theories. Here's one that recently blew my mind. The widespread belief is that we become physically tired when we reach our muscular limits. The muscles run out of oxygen, or start to suffer damage from the build-up of waste products like lactic acid (if you have ever held a Warrior 2 for over one...
Sooo... How many yoga or gym routines have you tried? I've done it all. I committed to a new routine I saw on Instagram. And I managed... what, four days? Before I had to travel, had an early meeting, or let's be honest... just couldn't be arsed to get out of bed. And then I thought: "The problem is me. I lack discipline. If I were more motivated, I'd manage it." Nope. I don't think that anymore. The problem is that I was trying to shoehorn a random routine into my life. If you've ever been...
There are two fundamental skills I believe everyone should develop as early as possible: emotional regulation and body awareness. Most people get why emotional regulation matters. It's the ability to recognise an emotion arriving, identify it precisely (sometimes anger is actually fear, or a subtler feeling like injustice), and pause before responding... so you can respond thoughtfully rather than reactively. But body awareness's trickier. You might be thinking: "Of course I know when I'm in...