Hello, Sunshine.

In January, as part of my self-care plan, I quit formally exercising. It was a hard mentality to shake off, because I was so used to berating myself for being inconsistent with fitness, it was very weird to have permission to not exercise. Now I am fully aware of both the health benefits of exercise, and the sanity benefits I personally notice, so I never planned to give it up for good…just to give it up until I naturally felt like doing it without any “shoulds” or nasty self-talk.

So this week, I am staying with a friend, who just happens to have a small fitness room in the apartment complex. On Monday I felt compelled to take a trip to the workout room. I was a bit hesitant, but exercise is really about convenience for me, and all i had to do was walk down some stairs. Getting on the treadmill and beginning to walk slowly felt really good. I walked a little faster, and then slowed down again when that felt right. It was a wonderfully liberating experience to be on a treadmill and to experience my lungs clearing, my blood flowing, and my skin sweating just for the sake of doing it. I didn’t focus on the distance covered, calories burned, or what speed I “should” be going. I focused on feeling my body move fast, and then to feel it move less fast. To not be pressuring myself or yelling at my body to do things it doesn’t want to do. Exercise feels amazing!

It is particularly enjoyable when I have given myself permission to only do what feels good. Almost every day since then I have taken some time to go to the exercise room and to move and stretch. I also didn’t go when I didn’t feel like it.

Tonight I had a particularly empowering experience where I went down in the evening to walk for a bit before dinner. I had been studying for finals all day, and I needed to move my body a little bit. So after like three minutes I was NOT feeling it, but I also didn’t feel quite ready to give up. I decided to go until the five minute mark and then stop if I didn’t want to continue. I know that sometimes it takes a minute for exercise to feel good, so I walked faster and into a (slow, incredibly slow) jog. Normally I walk the entire time and jog for about 2 minutes total, just to increase my sweat. But tonight jogging just never stopped feeling good, and I ran for EIGHT minutes. Now… this is significant. For a gal who hasn’t voluntarily run more than two minutes in.. my life? I ran a whole freakin’ lot. The significant part of the story though, is that it felt SO GOOD. Running has always been extremely uncomfortable for me, so I was perfectly happy to never do it. But tonight, to feel my body actually like something that I have always believed that I wasn’t capable of doing. Well, that was just extraordinary.

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