Bust Your Bad Mood with Exercise

Use Fitness, Not Food, to Change Your State of Mind
— By Jason Anderson, Certified Personal Trainer

from http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/articles_print.asp?id=1276

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–>Some days, I am just in a mood. I don’t know what you call it, maybe stressed, bored, lonely, angry, sad, anxious, or tired. I call it “getting into a funk.” When it happens, I have allowed my circumstances to dictate my attitude and my thinking and then—bam! Before I know what hit me, I’m in a full-blown funk. While I like to exercise when a bad mood rises, others turn to unhealthy habits like emotional eating or smoking. When you’re upset, stressed or otherwise not feeling like yourself, exercise—and the mood-enhancing endorphins it produces—can be the best thing for you. Don’t you believe me?

The next time you feel that mood coming on, identify what you’re feeling and why. Are you bored because your best friend is out of town? Are you feeling lonely since the kids have left the nest? Or maybe you are stressing over finances. Whatever it is, pinpoint it. Then use the specific ideas below to bust your bad mood with a feel-good exercise prescription.

Your Mood: Angry
Your blood is boiling! You want to take this anger out on someone before you explode!
Mood Busting Exercises: Kickboxing, boxing, shadowboxing, or martial arts.
Whether you follow a kickboxing video or take a group class, you’ll release anger with every punch, kick and jab. Imagine the target of your anger as you do a set of 12 front kicks! Besides getting your anger out you’ll blast calories with these cardio workouts. Any form of martial arts, often overlooked as a form of exercise, will also work. Besides actually making contact with pads, targets, and shields (a major stress and anger releaser!), you’ll gain gaining confidence, discipline, and focus.

Your Mood: Bored
You’re stuck in a rut and want to do something interesting, but you’re not sure what.
Mood Busting Exercises: Spinning class, step aerobics, or a new fitness DVD
Beat boredom (without food) by taking a high-energy Spinning class at your local gym. Set to great tunes, you’ll be surprised how quickly an hourlong class flies by. Step aerobics is another great workout when you’re bored because it’s always changing. You have to concentrate on the choreography—sort of like learning a simple dance that involves a step. You’ll build skills and feel really accomplished when it’s over! Lastly, head to the library or video rental store and pick up the first workout DVD that looks interesting to you. Do it at home or invite a friend over to try your newest exercise venture!

Your Mood: Lonely
When you feel lonely, throwing a pity party for one will only make it worse. Sometimes the best thing for you is to get out and socialize.
Mood Busting Exercises: Any group fitness class
Exercising with a group of people who are all following the same routine and all have similar goals can really make you feel like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself. No matter what type of class you choose, there are plenty of reasons why group classes are so popular: They offer social support, a friendly environment and an opportunity to meet people who have similar interests.

Your Mood: Depressed
Depression is no joke. Millions of people suffer from depression that is debilitating and emotionally painful, but exercise is scientifically proven to help treat depression. While finding the motivation to take the first step is the hardest part, the right activity can help.
Mood Busting Exercises: Outdoor walking, biking, or running
There’s something restorative about nature. Getting outside to breathe in fresh air and admire the scenery can make a world of difference in your perspective. Plus, regular exposure to sunlight can boost your mood and ward of seasonal depression, too. No matter what outdoor pursuit you enjoy (think outside of the box and try canoeing, climbing, or team sports, too), moving your body can help improve your outlook and symptoms.

Your Mood: Stressed
We’re all busy, often taking on more responsibilities than we can handle. When life gets crazy and you want to throw in the towel, you can wind down without giving up on your obligations.
Mood Busting Exercises: Mind-body exercises like yoga, Pilates, or Tai chi
Mind-body exercises take focus, patience, and attention. Because of the complexities of maintaining the correct form and breathing, which connects the mind and body, it’s almost impossible to think about your to-do list while you’re in the middle of a good yoga or Pilates class, for example. The quiet, meditative atmosphere in these classes (and videos) allows you to tune in to the present moment—something that the overly stressed should do more often! If you’re thinking that you’re too busy or overwhelmed to try a class, then take advantage of short video workouts that are often broken up into 10- to 30- minute segments.

Have you ever finished a workout and thought to yourself, “I wish I hadn’t done that! I really just wasted my time.” Probably not. Chances are you feel better physically and mentally. Regardless of your funk, exercise can be a useful tool to get you back to bust your bad mood and get back to your normal self. What are you waiting for?

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Tom Peters: Educate For a Creative Society

Tom Peters, a self-described “professional loudmouth” who has been compared to Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau and H.L. Mencken, declares war on the worthless rules and absurd organizational barriers that stand in the way of creativity and success. In a totally outrageous, in-your-face presentation, Tom reveals: A re-imagining of American business; 2 big markets – underserved and worth trillions!; The top qualities of leadership excellence; Why passion, talent and action must rule business today.

Dynamic Flow Yoga: Revolving Kundinya cycle

Coming to Our Senses

Mindfulness Stress Reduction And Healing

Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn

Jon Kabat-Zinn: Coming to Our Senses

PBwiki, the world’s largest community of educational wikis.

I found another interesting way to use the Cyberian realms in the services of learning that makes sense to me. I say makes sense to me because I have found and have had to use some that don’t work, more of which I will post later.

I came across this resource while searching for “graphic learning math” where I found this site http://internettime.pbwiki.com/gallery+at+l6

PBwiki for Classrooms

http://pbwiki.com/academic.wiki

PBwiki hosts more classroom wikis than anyone else in the world, and lets you create a simple, secure wiki in about 60 seconds. Wikis drive engagement and collaboration. A wiki is a live, evolving document – but gives you user tracking and access controls to monitor your wiki at all times.

You can make your wiki public or private or anywhere in between. No matter what, PBwiki keeps your students’ information safe.

Key features include:

• Multimedia plugins: Embed video & audio with a few clicks
• Tags, RSS, and full page revisions
• Student accountability: See who changed what, and automatically reverse any changes
• Access controls (Premium feature)

Why PBwiki?

• A safe, secure place to collaborate. PBwiki lets you monitor changes to your wiki by email and RSS – and reverse any changes instantly. See our special security features for educators.

• Keep students engaged outside of the classroom. As Karen Nelson, an educator from Vacaville, California, told us, “Today I got an email from a student asking for the password so he could add content. An hour later I got the wiki notification that the page had been edited by that student. This student has not completed one assignment outside of class yet this year. How great is that!!”

• Education-specific resources. Use our educational examples, our Support Center, or even our personal email support. With thousands of educators, we know how to help.

Are you a school district or large educational institution?

For school districts and institution-wide deployments, please click to get special information on deploying PBwiki in large-scale educational environments.

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Rickson Gracie Workout

and here is an excerpt from:

Rickson Gracie – Exploring Genius

by Eddie Edmunds

@ http://www.grapplearts.com/Rickson-Gracie-Exploring-Genius.htm

Body’s Intelligence
Another source of Rickson’s skill is termed as Bodily/Kinesthetic skill. This talent defined by Dr. Howard Gardner in his book Creating Minds (also the author of the bestseller, Multiple Intelligences) is the ability to use many parts of the body to express ideas and feelings and to interpret and invoke effective body language. Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Lance Armstrong and Rickson Gracie would be individuals Dr. Gardner would designate as having extraordinary bodily/kinesthetic ability. I will always remember a seminar Rickson taught in Salt Lake City because Rickson told us over and over that the way we grapple reveals our personality. So, for Rickson, a way of understanding people is not through a verbal conversation but he was able to glean personality types through “rolling.” This information indicates that Rickson’s body, functions as antennae for the brain. And as Gardner states, this knowledge could only be acquired through the body. Bruce Lee may have had this same type of highly refined Bodily/Kinesthetic intelligence. I remember a statement by Dan Inosanto where he spoke about a conversation with Bruce Lee and Bruce said (paraphrasing), “Dan, the secret is in the body.” It is no secret the Bruce Lee was hyperactive and his emphasis on “swimming in the water” and experiencing true reality was foremost for him.

I hear and forget. I see and remember. I do and I understand. The operative word “do” suggests that learning something is not just through passive understanding (reading, conversation, watching others) but also through the physical act of doing.

A noted Brazilian Yoga master, Orlando Cani who has trained numerous Brazilian sports champions (Rickson included), spoke about Rickson’s bodily/kinesthetic intelligence in this way:

“Rickson is special. Rickson Gracie was the best student I had. He was the one to assimilate best the process. He’s a very special fighter. Everything he learns he has a strong ability to assimilate and develop it. He has a clever way to assimilate and protect anything he likes.”

In conclusion, an appropriate quote by Shakespeare states: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” I would assert that Rickson’s path to greatness was that he had a father whose single-mindedness and fanatical attention to detail was passed directly to his son. And when speaking of Rickson Gracie’s extraordinary Jiu-Jitsu skills we might envision that when Rickson is grappling he sees Jiu-Jitsu in a three-dimensional world. This capacity allows him to spar, not only from his viewpoint but also from other viewpoints. Thus, a three-dimensioned view. And finally, Rickson’s supreme body-intelligence enhances his understanding of Jiu-Jitsu and is gained from the body having superb skills of sensitivity, adaptability and kinesthetic perception that are gleaned physiologically rather than cerebrally. This then is the difference between being great and Greatness.

Curing the Therapeutic State

Thomas Szasz on the medicalization of American life

Lifted from http://www.reason.com/news/show/27767.html Click on over to read the entire interview!

Reason: You may have seen the TV commercials in which drug companies urge people suffering from “social anxiety disorder” or “generalized anxiety disorder” to ask their doctor for a certain brand of pill. These ads reinforce the idea that anxiety and other kinds of psychological problems are medical issues, and they highlight the physician’s role as pharmacological gatekeeper. But they could also be seen as empowering individuals by encouraging them to be assertive with their doctors. On balance, do you see this kind of message as a positive or a negative development?

Szasz: This phenomenon illustrates what I call the creeping therapeutic state. I see it as insidious, especially given the cooperation between the government and the media. This is allowed on television. But advertising Scotch, a legal drink, is not allowed. This subtly undermines the rule of law, the principle that if something is legal, then it’s legal, and if it’s illegal, then it’s illegal. A prescription drug is illegal; pharmacists cannot sell it to you unless you have a prescription. These are illegal drugs, but nobody calls them illegal drugs. So I see this as pernicious, as an example of what F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises talked about–that the opposite of freedom is not brutal tyranny but capriciousness.

Reason: Suppose someone feels depressed, and he finds that when he takes Prozac he feels better. Or suppose he’s anxious, and he finds that he calms down when he takes a Xanax. He can get these pills from his doctor. Is he doing anything wrong by taking these drugs?

Szasz: I don’t think he’s doing anything wrong, except I think he should be able to buy these drugs in the free market so he can compare them to opium, marijuana, or other drugs. There is no competition now between the prescription drugs and the traditional drugs which people took when they felt bad. After all, people have medicated themselves since time immemorial. I suspect that opium in small doses is safer over a long period of time than these complicated organic compounds.

Reason: In recent years, we’re told, this country has been hit by an epidemic of “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.” What are the roots of this epidemic?

Szasz: I would first say that the epidemic doesn’t exist. No one explains where this disease came from, why it didn’t exist 50 years ago. No one is able to diagnose it with objective tests. It’s diagnosed by a teacher complaining or a parent complaining. People are referring to the fact that they don’t like misbehaving children, mainly boys, in the schools. The diagnosis helps tranquilize the parent, tranquilize the school system. It offers them the sense that they are doing something about the problem, that they are dealing with it in a rational, scientific way. It’s a kind of pharmacological magic.

Reason: What do you think the consequences of prescribing Ritalin for all of these kids will be?

Szasz: We may not know all of the medical consequences for another 20 or 30 years. In social terms, it gives the impression to people that behavioral problems are medical and should be handled with drugs; it imposes a certain stigma on the child, possibly on the family. It medicalizes educational and child- rearing problems, and it may cause biological problems in the person taking the drug. I don’t know if the average person on Main Street realizes that if a 30-year-old man has a pocketful of Ritalin, he can go to jail for years. This is called “speed.” And this is what they give as a treatment to schoolchildren when there’s absolutely no laboratory or medical evidence that they are sick.

Reason: Recently we’ve heard Tipper Gore and other people say that health insurers should be forced to cover mental health treatment on the same terms as medical treatment. What do you think the consequences of such “parity” will be?

Szasz: We are talking about a situation where the government is mandating that an ostensibly private insurance company provide coverage for a disease which doesn’t exist. There is so much to say about it, I don’t know where to begin. The people who clamor for this–mainly politicians and psychiatrists–want parity for mental illness, but they don’t want parity for the mental patient, because ordinary patients can reject treatment.

They don’t mean therapy; they mean getting a foot in the door for involuntarily treating people and having these huge bowls of money going into psychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Again, cui bono: Who profits from this? It finally came out that Eli Lilly is a big donor to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and they have millions of dollars to propagandize their views. The critics don’t have any money to propagandize their views. This is a completely one-sided, government-sponsored movement.

Taming the body, taming the mind…

Below is a great blog post that I stumbled upon in my research. I found it to be very inspiring as I continue to struggle with keeping a daily practice. As the title suggests, it touches on the body mind connection, a topic that I hope to expand on very soon. I hope you enjoy this post, and be sure to visit the original source for more.

http://ibanepal.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/taming-the-body-taming-the-mind%e2%80%a6/

Almost one year ago, inspired by H.H. Sakya Trizin´s Vajrayogini teachings in Spain, I started to practice yoga on a daily basis, and seeing the results in my body(more flexibility, strength and vitality) the desire to become a yoga teacher-practitioner developed, too. But what surprised me most was the endurance that yoga gives, and the fact that with this endurance, the body can easily stand longer hours of meditation without so many bodily aches and pains, and without feeling one has to move positions so often. The body’s activity is accompanied by the activity of the mind, and as a result I have found that I can bear new, uncomfortable situations in life with more peace and tranquillity. I don’t experience so much mental stress or anxiety because I trust things more and don’t react to them as I used to. This immediate benefit makes me want to get out of bed when it is so cosy and nice in there, and my mind would like to dwell in old habitual thinking patterns of laziness and procrastination. This is another effect of yoga, it has the power to ignite positive energy and enthusiasm in one´s day, while providing a stable platform on which to build new, healthy and positive habits for oneself. I like having yoga practice as my breakfast, as my travel companion everywhere, stretching at a bus stop or at airports. It feels as if a sudden breath of fresh air comes into my mind and makes me appreciate everything and everyone with a new light…it makes mind transformation easier when we can accompany it with the body, and we can become more agile and lighter in the process. It is so joyful to feel no pain in the body and to know, with meditation, that it is, after all, impermanent.

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

Excellent career advice from Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools:

Pilloried from http://graphicfacilitation.blogs.com/pages/2008/06/the-adventures.html#more

Presented in the form of manga (a comic book for grownups), this is the most succinct course in career counseling I’ve ever seen.

Not what career you should pursue, but *how* you should pursue it. You can read this masterpiece in an hour, but it will take a lifetime to work out the details of those six lessons.

This compact sermon will make the most difference to those just starting out in the workplace.

The six quick lessons [with my comments in brackets] are:

1. There is no plan. [The economy changes too fast for your career to have a plan]
2. Think strengths, not weaknesses. [Find your advantages]
3. It’s not about you. [Serving others serves you best]
4. Persistence trumps talent. [Keep showing up]
5. Make excellent mistakes. [Take risks, but fail forward]
6. Leave an imprint. [Do something that matters]

Each point is given consequential flesh in this engaging story. In my experience these six lessons highlight the skills needed at work better than, say, the bestseller Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And it is far more fun to read. I’ve bought copies of Bunko for each of my kids and for a few adult friends currently struggling with their path. I’ll probably re-read it myself in a year. — KK

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need
Daniel H. Pink (Art by Rob Ten Pas)
2008, 160 pages, $11

Complaining (or how to pour ten gallons of shit into a five gallon bucket)

Via: http://mexiconuevo.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/complaining-or-how-to-pour-ten-gallons-of-shit-into-a-five-gallon-bucket/

This summer’s math class taught me a lot of things. The main one is that I shouldn’t complain. Complaining only wastes valuable time that could be spent practicing math. Math after all is a large part practicing formulas and making sure you carefully follow all the steps needed in order to solve the problem that you are working on.

Which begs the question, “is there enough time to learn, practice and retain sixteen weeks worth of material in eight weeks time?”

All I have to say is that I will never take a summer class again if I can help it, and that the response, “thats just how summer classes are,” is not a good one and does not make a stupid situation right or good. I am reminded of a saying that was often floated back east in the Carpenters Union . . . When asking how things were going, the reply was often, “Oh you know, trying to pour ten gallons of shit into a five gallon bucket.”

Thats how I feel about the way I was taught math this summer, if you will allow me to be so bold as to call that teaching.

Oh yeah, and remember never to complain!