What Does Mind & Body Fitness Mean?

June 28, 2022 by Liz Carter

What Does Mind & Body Fitness Mean?

The mind and body are inseparable aspects of ourselves. A Zen Buddhist philosopher defines the body and mind relationship as “body and mind are not two and not one”. Considering these aspects, the IDEA mind-body fitness committee defines mind-body exercise as physical exercise executed with a profoundly inwardly directed focus. To explain further, mind & body fitness exercises aim to target mental well-being with physical actions.

In addition, mind-body exercises have five common attributes between them. For example, inner mental focus, concentration on muscular movement, synchronization of muscle movement with breathing, attention to form and alignment, and belief in life energy.

The regular practice of exercises increases our strength, mental resilience, cardiovascular functioning, and flexibility. The popular mind-body fitness exercises are Yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, and Pilates. [Read more…]

What Are the Best Career Opportunities for Wellness Coaches?

June 22, 2022 by Liz Carter

Should You Become A Wellness Coach?

The importance of health and wellness has become evident after the hard times of Covid-19, where everyone was forced to pay attention to themselves in a way unlike any other. In the unhealthy competitive space, the most crucial health was being ignored, but now the tides are changing. Consumers want to spend a high buck to learn about wellness and health for themselves and their loved ones.

The above 2 terms are generally misunderstood to be strictly in the domain of physical fitness and would hence involve gruesome exercise, but that couldn’t be farther away from the truth. Physical fitness is a part of overall wellness. Wellness involves the below-mentioned activities: [Read more…]

How to Use Affirmations as a Coach

May 10, 2022 by Liz Carter

Do Affirmations Have a Place in Your Coaching Practice?

Written by Mark Teahan Director of Education Programs

I recently had a phone call with a colleague and the topic of affirmations came up. It struck me as a coincidence because I was just working on the use of positive affirmations and motivational interviewing in coach training. If you are familiar with my coaching style and its impact on Spencer institute coaching programs, you know how and why we love and appreciate motivational interviewing. It is a standard for dialogue in the early stages of coaching and it’s important to do it right.

Depending on where you are in your coach training journey and experience, you might know this already. Largely through trial and error, previous generations of coaches fine-tuned and tweaked coaching deliverable services without any training related to psychology, where motivational interviewing has its roots. They were winging it. I know this to be a fact, I am guilty of it. [Read more…]

How to Change the Expression of Our Genes

March 22, 2022 by Liz Carter

How to Change the Expression of Our Genes

The concept of changing the expression of genes sounds unreal, but when we look at how technology is evolving, and the world is growing, even genes modification seems possible. Gene modification is quite an interesting field because of its practical applications. And the process of gene modification entirely depends upon the expression of our genes which is altered by genetics and epigenetics.

Genetics is not changeable, but epigenetics depends upon our behaviors and environment. The expression of the genes is dependent upon epigenetics, which encodes information into the genes to make the protein.

Here is how genetics and epigenetics are interlinked to change the behavioral pattern of an individual. [Read more…]

Coaching 2021: A Summary

November 11, 2021 by Liz Carter

Coaching 2021: A Summary

Time is such a powerful force, it even trickles into the coaching world. There was a time when a coach could skate by through working with clients, without any formal education! If you are already certified as a coach currently, you know how crazy this is. But this was how things were 20 or more years ago.

But advances in coach training do not come at us as quickly as advances in other areas, say, for example, science. Changes in the coaching profession come from either different techniques and training and how coaching services are delivered, or they are changed by events like our current pandemic. This results in a shift, whereby millions of people are forced to – literally – look inward at their own health. But the pandemic has also slowed down the already trickle speed of coach training. We didn’t really get to learn too much in 2020 apart from COVID19, we were focused on survival. But now that 2021 is nearly over, we’ve learned a few things in hindsight. [Read more…]

Can a Green Living Lifestyle Help Prevent Disease?

November 2, 2021 by Liz Carter

Can a Green Living Lifestyle Help Prevent Disease?

The truth is, most of us would not be able to afford to pay for medical expenses directly out of pocket but when you combine our current healthcare crisis with this fact, it becomes unsettling to think of what might happen if our client needs treatment for a serious or terminal illness. This is why we have to look at taking our own health and our health care needs into our own hands. This involves becoming our own health advocate, of sorts, and to become familiar with the term “preventative medicine” in the more immediate sense. [Read more…]

Reasons That Going Green and Sustainable Living Makes Sense

October 7, 2021 by Liz Carter

Why Going Green Makes Sense

There is a variety of reasons to go green, but most come back to supply and demand. We have a limited amount of resources available and more and more people using them up. If we want our future generations to enjoy the same standard of living we’ve experienced, we need to take action.

Green building is a great place to start, as buildings consume 14% of potable water, 40% of raw materials, and 39% of energy in the United States alone (according to the US Green Building Council). That’s 15 trillion gallons of water and 3 billion tons of raw materials each year! If that’s not enough to convince you, here are some other reasons to go green:

For The Environment

Want to make the world a better place? Implementing green practices into your home or office can help reduce waste, conserve natural resources, improve both air and water quality, and protect ecosystems and biodiversity. [Read more…]

What is the Difference between a Wellness Coach and a Health Coach?

August 25, 2021 by Liz Carter

What is the Difference between a Wellness Coach and a Health Coach?

Ever look at the job titles of each of these and wonder how they differ? Don’t health coaches and wellness coach do the same things and have the same scope? There’s great variability between job titles – even if the scope is the same or has overlap with another professional title.

What is a wellness coach?

[Read more…]

Strategies for Staying Healthy and Keeping Your Immune System Strong

August 17, 2021 by Liz Carter

Strategies for Staying Healthy and Keeping Your Immune System Strong

The immune system is influenced by a number of factors, and we need a well-structured plan when trying to strengthen it. In order to boost the immune system, we need to exercise regularly, eat a well-balanced diet, manage stress, get enough sleep, and reduce exposure to environmental pollutants and products with harsh ingredients. Remember, a healthy lifestyle is equal to strong immunity. [Read more…]

Helping Your Clients Improve Heart Health

July 15, 2021 by Liz Carter

Helping Your Clients Improve Heart Health

Heart disease remains the leading cause of mortality in the US. One-fourth of all deaths occur due to a heart problem. Each year about 610 000 people die of the condition, and half of them die due to coronary artery disease caused by arterial plaques. Total deaths due to cardiovascular diseases are around 859 000 when we add deaths related to stroke to these numbers. Another, 735 000 Americans have a heart attack each year.

Most people are aware of the symptoms of the condition like chest pain and discomfort, pain in the arm, stomach, shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, cold sweats, and so on.

Heart disease may occur due to many reasons, and most of these causes are modifiable and preventable. High blood pressure remains the most significant contributor to heart disease, followed by high cholesterol and smoking. Other underlying causes of cardiovascular diseases are diabetes, obesity, poor diet, physical inactivity, and alcohol abuse.

Are Heart Diseases Preventable?

Not all heart attacks are avoidable, but a considerable number of them can be prevented or delayed by several years with mere lifestyle interventions. After all, 80% of all heart diseases are due to preventable reasons. CDC says that about 200,000 deaths each year are preventable through lifestyle modification, and in many more cases, such events can be delayed significantly.

Heart health can be improved by non-pharmacological means is a proven fact and not just an opinion. From 1972 to 1992, just in a period of 20 years, Finland was able to reduce mortality due to coronary heart disease by as much as 80%. Ireland reduced mortality due to heart disease by 48.1% from 1985 to 2000.

Treating with Medications and Lifestyle Changes

Many people may think that taking a statin or low-dose aspirin may help prevent a heart attack. However, they are partially wrong. Lifestyle changes are the primary way to prevent cardiovascular diseases, and medications are just adjuncts. No, medication can help as exercise, dietary corrections, quitting smoking, and so on. In fact, medications may not even work if such changes are not carried out. This means that natural methods are superior in prevention to pharmacological drugs.

Regretfully, many people think that medications alone can save them. One of the reasons for such a mindset is that popping up a pill or two a day is much more comfortable than sweating out for an hour in a gym, or planning a diet, cooking at home, and so on.

This is not to say that medications have no value in preventing heart diseases, but they should always be used along with lifestyle interventions. Undoubtedly, controlling blood pressure, diabetes, dyslipidemia, with the help of medications, will make a considerable difference.

Preventing heart disease, improving heart health naturally, will only work when one combines a number of elements into the disease prevention program. Doing one of two things will still help, but not as much as one would like. So, healthy heart program should include dietary changes, daily exercise, stress management, reducing substance abuse, and so on. [Read more…]

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