Episode 13 - On Physical Wellness

Mitigating stress with physical wellness?  Rob shares his experience with qigong, yoga, movement, and running as some of the various ways he's dealt with stress over the years - as well as how his life went during the times that he did *not* engage in this practice.

Looking back, I realize that the most stressful times in life - the times with the most uncertainty were also the times when I chose to engage in healthy practice for stress relief.

I've not always been able to find balance with how I've chosen to deal with stress.  Frequently, when I've found myself deep in the throes of any given project in life - I've often times resorted to indulgence...or overindulgence to "satisfy" my needs.

• Food
• Alcohol
• Drugs (specifically nicotine, caffeine, cannabis)

Often times, as the project drew to a close - or I began to experience some kind of transition in my life, I've begun to repattern my life with more positive experiences...specifically those involving movement exercises such as qigong and yoga.

Specifically, one practice has over the last 10 years or so has been:

• Qigong for Stress Relief, Francisco Garripoli

Also, side note:  while searching for information on this and/or a short trailer to share with you, I found a blog post of something that I had written years ago about this very thing:

The content I once thought I had lost I literally just found this morning while assembling show notes.  If you're interested in learning more, you can find it here, but this isn't something I'm going to widely share...but wanted to share in the excitement with you.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:23

We are not victims. And we are empowered. So good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All Around Girl Podcast. And today, we are going to talk about mitigating stress through physical wellness. And we will touch on where that quote came from that you just heard. Because that routine and that exercise has been part of my life for 10 years now. One quarter of my time on this planet. And I am looking forward to sharing with you what that is and how it has been of benefit to me. As always, I am your host, Rob Kaiser, and this is another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast, where today we are going to talk about mitigating stress through physical wellness. What you heard was part of a routine titled Qigong for Stress Relief. And that was a video by Francisco Garapoli published by Guyam, or what used to be known as Gaia, but they have since rebranded and renamed to Guyam G-A-I-A-M, like Mike. And that was something, or that's a part of something I had referenced in past videos about uh, you know, a subscription to that for the year. Now, like I said, I've been watching these videos, or like I've said in the past, I've been watching these videos, and they've been a part of my life since the days when I lived in Colorado 20 years ago. This video in particular was published or recorded in 2008, and I stumbled across it in 2010, I believe. And at that time, I purchased that video along with several others on a DVD, and at that time that was the that was the format of choice as opposed to VHS tapes. And now DVDs are almost obsolete and everything is streaming. But back then I remembered that I received so much value out of these videos that I decided to buy one again with a total of five videos on it, and I believe they were AM Yoga, PM Yoga, AM Chi, PM Chi, and Qigung for Stress Relief. Now, why did I buy these videos ten years ago? I had, and I was in the process of experiencing a pretty substantial amount of change, transition in my life. I had gotten out of a relationship. I had moved. My life as I knew it was basically up-ended, and on top of that, I was on the other side of the country in California, away from my family, away from that strong support network that I had mentioned before. Quite frankly, while being in California and since moving home here to Ohio, I have not always been the best at mitigating stress with healthy, positive, beneficial routines. There were often times that I included food, drugs, alcohol as primary coping mechanisms to deal with life on life's terms. And there were various times in my life when I realized that this wasn't the most positive way I could deal with life on life's terms. There were times when I had a number of problems that resulted from those coping mechanisms in and of themselves. And luckily, over time, I learned healthier mechanisms of dealing with stress. And one of the ways in which I learned to deal with stress was through this routine. Qi Gung for stress relief and other various exercises.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Exhale down. So much of stress comes from the mind wandering and worrying. Exercises like this can keep your focus and train your focus to help use the mind to settle your energy, increase your immune system, bring yourself into balance.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Now, this video in particular is something that I wanted to talk about because I feel like I'm at one of these points again in my life where I am dealing with transition, trying to figure some things out and deal with well, quite frankly, life on life's terms again. The nature of the transition is irrelevant because my life is different than your life, and your life is different than their life. But none of that matters. What does matter is that we are all in this together, and what does matter is that we are here to be the support network that sometimes we have not been able to find elsewhere. Accordingly, I'm sharing the experiences that I've had that have allowed me to increase the healthy, positive, and beneficial change in my life and get away from the coping mechanisms that were unhealthy and damaging. So, as I said, I've been utilizing this particular video for ten years. Now, I wish that I could say it's been ten years of consistent practice, ten years of really taking this in and incorporating it into my life with regularity, but the reality is it's not. When I get deep into the throes of projects, I tend to get away from these things. And that's unfortunate because I begin to lose sight of and lose touch with that which is healthy, positive, and beneficial. However, I am improving, and you are too. We've got a laundry list of projects, tasks that remain unfinished, unchecked. And oftentimes as time goes on, it feels like that list gets longer and longer because we put more and more on our plates. Then the real or the expectations that we have for ourselves are unrealistic. Our disappointment in ourselves grows. We focus on the mistakes that we've made. My friends, this is no way to go about life. You're worth more than that. So I would encourage you to start acting like that. Understand that your value is much greater than that which you place upon yourself. And I would strongly encourage you to watch this video and give yourself the opportunity to experience the peace of mind that it brought me last night again when I decided to record these little snippets for you and share some of that experience with you so that I can talk about it with you this morning. For example.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

We repeat over and over again, creating stressful situations, putting us into situations that create more stress, and the pattern repeats itself. By creating exercises like this and we're down the repertoire until now, we find that we can repattern our life with positive patterns and replace the constructive patterns with positive calming sensoring exercises.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Now I think what you'll find out as time goes on, and you find your own practice through qigong, yoga, movement, or running, that consistent application of these routines into your life and into your daily routine will help you negate these destructive patterns that we've all come to incorporate into our life and not simply negate them, but replace them with patterns that are of a more healthy, positive, and beneficial nature. We can't simply take things out of our lives, and we can't simply add things into our lives. And it's likely already quite full. If you are going to add things to your proverbial cup, you must allow some things to flow out of it. And if you are going to take things out of your proverbial cup, you must replace them and fill it back up. We have the ability within us, all of us, and you do too, to repattern your life. It takes time. And that's something that I realized last night and also this morning, as I'm speaking with you now. We've got to stay consistent with it. This particular video that these audio clips come from, Qigung for stress relief, has been a part of my life for 10 years now. Change is not easy, nor is it fast. But it is possible. And I'm excited to, in closing, I'm excited to share one other thing with you. When I talked in a previous episode about content that had been lost over time, as I was assembling the notes for this podcast this morning, I did a quick search on my search engine of choice, which is DuckDuckGo, to find a trailer or a link to this video so that I could share it with you. And at the same time, I found a blog post by the Nameless Wayfarer, which is me. Previously I was unable to find it, but somehow, some way it just popped up today. And I'm looking forward to gathering that. You can experience some of what I have over the years. This is documented stuff from several years, of several years, from eight years ago. Seven, eight years ago. And it'll be very interesting to see and reflect back on the change that has been a part of my life. Since uh since all of that, it'll be interesting to see the initial podcasts that I began to experiment with at that time, and it'll be interesting to get a complete and comprehensive understanding of the fact that change is possible. Change is real. And in talking about the actual results that can be achieved from implementing healthy, positive, and beneficial results into your life. And our lives. And then finding or trying to find a link to share with you. I just happened to stumble across something that I thought I'd lost, but I recovered. And this is how it works. When we become consistent with the things that benefit us that are beneficial, we see results that we didn't even expect. So stay tuned for more on that. And check out the show notes for all the links and everything that we talked about this morning. Thanks again for tuning in. I sincerely appreciate it. I hope you have a great day.