10 Tricks for Sticking to It

By IDEA

Originally published in the Spring/Summer 2004 issue of Body Sense magazine.
Copyright 2004. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved. 

Now you’re exercising again, and it feels great. Of course, it felt great last year, too, when you went to the gym every morning for almost the entire winter. If it feels so great, why do you keep quitting? You may be able to make your physical activity more consistent by using some of these tricks.

1. Look at exercise differently.
This is the big one, from my perspective, says James Gavin, Ph.D., sports psychologist and professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. All movement is exercise. People need to give themselves more options. Take the dog for a walk, bike to the store, take five-minute stretch breaks. If you don’t count something as exercise unless it happens in the gym, goes on for 40 minutes, or requires a shower afterward, you’re missing some of your best opportunities to stay active.

2. Think small.
This advice can be hardest for people who expect the most from themselves. Why bother walking around the block when you should be running your usual four miles? Because when you don’t have time to do all four miles, a brisk hike can keep you from feeling that you’ve failed.

3. Set an agenda.
It helps to challenge yourself with a learning or performance agenda, Gavin says. Set a goal, such as increasing the speed, frequency, or duration of your activity. Maybe it’s time to train for a marathon or take a walk up the hill in the backyard without getting winded. (It’s perfectly fine to think small for your performance agenda, too.) Your trainer can help you determine appropriate goals.

4. Get off the beaten path.
Have you ever tried snowboarding? Bowling? Swing dancing? Body surfing? Qigong? How about reversing your power walk route? Exercising at a different time of day? Physical activity isn’t boring, but how you participate in it can be.

5. Use your brain.
The active mind needs to be engaged, Gavin says. If you’re new to exercise, dissociate tactics, such as listening to music, watching TV, or playing computer games may help you stick with it — but stay aware of sensations that could signal injury or overdoing it. As you become more experienced, associative strategies, such as focusing on your breath or concentrating on the movement of your body, can help you enjoy exercise more.

6. Get an accountability partner.
Minneapolis lifestyle coach Kate Larsen suggests finding a friend, mentor, or coach to keep you honest. You can either exercise with your partner, or simply check in with her to report your progress.

7. Plan to stay active.
Don’t decide in the moment if you can make the choice beforehand, Larsen says. Plan to park farther from the office and put your walking shoes in the car the night before. Plan to take that new yoga class next week, and call the babysitter now.

8. Face your fitness foes.
Does vacation throw your exercising schedule out of whack? Do projects at work overtake your activity time? Do injuries sideline you? Boredom? Fear of success? Fitness foes can be beaten once they’ve been identified. You can change your vacation style, set work limits, get guidance for injury-free activity, find new challenges, or face your fears with counseling and support.

9. Go tribal.
Even if you are introverted, the presence of others in your exercise environment can be motivating. We pick up on other people’s energy, Gavin points out. We get into the tribal rhythms of being fully alive. Choose places and times to exercise where there will be other people who are actively involved in exercise.

10. Use a script.
We tell ourselves things like, “Skipping this one little walk won’t matter all that much,” according to Larsen. Next time, be prepared with an answer for this excuse. Use images of past successful experiences to remind yourself of how good exercise makes you feel. Or repeat a simple phrase to yourself, such as, “Every little bit makes a big difference.” If you use planning, flexibility, and imagination, you won’t ever need to feel like a dropout again.

Benefits of Massage Improve with Frequency

By Karrie Osborn

Originally published in Body Sense, Autumn/Winter 2009. Copyright 2009. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved. 

What kind of massage client are you? Do you make an appointment after someone has given you a massage gift certificate? Do you try to get in every now and then for a stress-relieving tune-up? Or do you see your therapist religiously–once a week, every three weeks, once a month?

While getting a massage–regardless of how often–is incredibly beneficial to your mind and body, getting frequent massage treatments is even more powerful as a healthcare ally.

“Practicing massage therapists know that people who get massage regularly demonstrate greater improvement and notice a reduction in pain and muscular tension, as well as an improvement in posture,” says Anne Williams, author of Spa Bodywork: A Guide for Massage Therapists (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006) and education program director at Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals.

“People regularly make a commitment to fitness. People regularly make a commitment to changing their diet. The difference they’d experience if they regularly made a commitment to massage is mind-blowing,” Williams says.

Stress Killer
One way in which frequent massage can improve our quality of life is by alleviating stress. Experts say more than 90 percent of disease is stress- related, and nothing ages us faster–inside or out–than the effects of stress. As stress-related diseases continue to claim more lives every year, the increasingly deadly role stress plays in modern-day life is painfully clear.

Massage is a great way to take charge and reverse the situation. Mary Beth Braun and Stephanie Simonson, authors of Introduction to Massage Therapy(Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007), explain the benefits of massage therapy in the simplest of terms: “Healing input influences healing output.” They note that frequent massage can reduce the accumulation of stress and improve overall health. “The benefits of massage are cumulative,” they write.

This being the case, it only makes sense that those aches and pains you see your massage therapist for might disappear faster, stay away longer, or even go away altogether with more frequent visits. Stress might never reach those physiologically detrimental levels where the immune system is suppressed or the nervous system is sent into an alarm state if you are able to receive stress-relieving bodywork with some consistency. Not only would your body benefit by regularly unleashing its aches and pains instead of adapting to them, but your mind would have time to wash away the stresses of a life lived in overdrive. Both are critical pieces for living well.

Experts say the body and mind can learn to live more calmly, more efficiently, and more healthfully, when frequent massage shows the way. That makes for a healthier whole, allowing us to continue to live life at its fullest, even as we deal with each new stress or challenge.

Preventive Measures
In so many ways, massage is preventive healthcare. Yes, it can address injuries, scar tissue, and chronic pain, as well as provide relief for cancer patients and reduce hospitalization time for babies born prematurely, among so many other valuable benefits (go to MassageTherapy.com for more information on the myriad benefits of massage). But when the healthy, and trying-to-be-healthy, among us seek out massage on a regular basis, it helps us live a proactively healthier life.

Since bodywork influences every system in the body, there are enormous possibilities created by increasing the frequency in which you address those systems. It’s best to discuss your session goals with your massage therapist and together devise a plan of frequency that meets your needs, while taking into account your therapist’s best advice.

Body Awareness
According to Benny Vaughn, sports massage expert and owner of Athletic Therapy Center in Fort Worth, Texas, one of the benefits of consistent and regular massage therapy is better flexibility. “This happens because regular and structured touch stimulus enhances the nervous system’s sensory and spatial processing capacity,” he says. “That is, the person becomes more aware of their body’s movement in space and becomes more aware of tightness or pain long before it reaches a critical point of mechanical dysfunction.”

Quite simply, frequent massage puts you more in tune with your body. “The consistency of massage therapy over time creates a cumulative stress reduction effect,” Vaughn says. “The person becomes acutely aware of stress within their body long before it can create stress-driven damage.”

He says the consistency of receiving regular massage therapy has the potential to create the cumulative effect of feeling well and feeling better. “Ultimately when one feels good, our whole being follows suit on all other levels–i.e., decision-making is better, processing life events is better, and being happy is easier when you are not in pain or feeling ‘heavy’ or ‘tight.’”

Williams says she’s certain people’s lives would be changed if they could schedule massage and bodywork more frequently. “I encourage clients to commit to getting massage once a week for a month and then evaluate the results they get,” she says. “I guarantee they will become massage enthusiasts for life.”

Karrie Osborn is contributing editor for Body Sense. Contact her at karrie@abmp.com.

Improve Sleep, Immunity, Digestion, and Quality of Life

By Laurie Chance Smith

Originally published in Massage & Bodywork magazine, January/February 2009. Copyright 2009. Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. All rights reserved. 

Therapeutic touch is an instinctive and eloquent form of communication that has been molded into a healing art. Larry Costa, author of Massage: Mind and Body,writes that massage has many “physical and mental benefits, including … relieving muscle soreness, increasing flexibility, easing chronic pain, reducing tension headaches, boosting the immune system, promoting restful sleep, and improving concentration.” Massage positively affects the body’s circulatory, nervous, and immune systems. By encouraging blood flow through the veins, massage benefits the entire body. The calming effects of massage on the nervous system often produce a sense of serenity and well-being. Regular massage also stimulates the lymphatic system, which enhances the function of the immune system.

From easing arthritis and asthma to improving digestion, the benefits of massage therapy run the gamut. Massage helps relieve daily stressors and eases recovery from many serious illnesses. In The Complete Book of Relaxation Techniques, Jenny Sutcliffe points out that massage can relieve pain by stimulating the production of endorphins–the body’s own painkillers–and, by increasing the sensory input to the brain, thereby blocking out the pain messages.

The positive physiological and psychological effects of massage were demonstrated in a recent study of patients undergoing care for cancer. When given massage, study participants at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston exhibited increased relaxation, better sleep, and improved immune function, along with relief from fatigue, pain, anxiety, and nausea.

In Ayurvedic Herbal Massage, author Gita Ramesh says regular massages can “relieve stress and help to promote a long and healthy life.” In the Indian healing system of ayurveda, massage is considered a form of whole body exercise that increases stamina and energy, while simultaneously delivering an inexpressible quality of stillness and joy–a time to be present. Massage realigns the entire body, promotes deeper and more natural breathing patterns, and helps restore individual resources of vital energy. The moments spent in massage are an opportunity to experience oneself as completely accepted.

Regular massage is a gift to yourself. Through the power of structured, healing touch, massage helps the body run smoothly, like keeping a musical instrument in perfect tune. Massage rejuvenates the body from the outside in, with side benefits that include improved complexion, better posture, and a relaxed disposition on life.

Laurie Chance Smith is a Texas-based writer and photographer who works for national and international markets on a plethora of topics. She can be reached at lauriechancesmith@yahoo.com.