The “E” word
Recently I had a big A-ha! moment.
I was talking with my therapist, and casually said: “Exercise is as vital as food, water, and sleep.” Connected to another topic, it didn’t register at first. Then it struck me. Instantly I felt resistance, and a strong force inside me exclaiming, “FFS, NO, can’t be!”
Say “exercise” again, I dare you!
In my 20 years of health coaching, I had never made this connection. Moving the body and building strength are just as important as food, water, and sleep.
Is this true for you too?
I have accepted I have to eat every day, despite it seeming a lot sometimes to make 3 meals plus snacks! I drink enough water and get almost enough sleep, but movement, even as much as I often like the experience, has parts of me saying: “NO don’t do it, you can’t fit it in, it’s not that important.”
I love my mighty “no” part and could feel it was trying to take care of me. I wondered what was underneath it, so went looking for the roots.
I saw that my resistance is not to movement, but to the decades of being conditioned to believe that body shape and size are a direct indicator of health. I was saying no to the bullying of the diet industry, and rightfully so, but at the cost of my own well being, which only fuels the beasts of greed within industry.
“Mechanical Goliath Stands” from Stock cake
Skinny = healthy is screwing us all over.
I am infuriated by the false belief that body size is a reliable indicator of overall health. I advocate for myself, my clients, my kids, that stranger over there and all of us when I say toned arms, flat stomachs, big chests, slender legs, larger bellies, and curvy shapes are all zero indicators of health.
Weight and weight fluctuations can be used as one of many determinants of health, but as you can see in the study below, we generate poor health outcomes with the non-medical Body Mass Index (BMI).
A NHI study from 2023 states:
“BMI was originally established in the 19th century by a statistician and rebranded in the 21st century by a physiologist for capitalist and research benefits [1,2]. Neither of these individuals were medical professionals.”
This article clearly indicates the history and impacts of the current BMI along with suggestions for new directions to include more factors that determine health.
“As healthcare providers, we must consider each patient as a whole and consider how factors such as sex, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status - to name a few - each affect the health, disease risk, and life expectancy of individual patients.”
I wanna talk about the “E” word, about exercise, because it IS vital, and in any season we need to be moving. We don’t all have to rock climb or go for a run nor are all of us able to. Movement is crucial, as is movement that works for your body and being.
So, what now for our PORTAL February 2025 tips?
Between birth and death is a portal, a portal of being a life.
Every month I share seasonal tips to advocate for Life. If you’re new here, please join The PORTAL list and receive tips for clients and community at least twice per month.
The (understandable) fight response to diet & exercise needs a revamp.
Since time, humans have gone to war to “solve” conflict, and we will continue to protect, defend and assert ourselves. I am not opposed to war, thing is we can’t stay in fight mode all the time, cuz then the bullies win.
When I resist exercise to give the finger to the diet industry, I am opposing that which I participate in. My action here fuels the beast, by saying yes or no because I don’t want the diet industry to make me feel a way I live inside the diet industry deciding my actions. When my action is rooted in what I want for me (health, strength, flexibility, care for my physical and mental forms, energy and Qi flow) I move out of the diet industry dominance and into my personal power. I might still say “no” to exercise, but from my own seat… and then enter the movement is as necessary as water piece and I can root into my actual body and decide for myself, “what now?”
When we evolve decision-making to embrace the unknown, we ensure change has a relational free-flow and where free flow exists, balance results. Where harmony/homeostasis is cultivated, health will flourish with our vital differences intact. I don’t know if the diet industry is all bad, I can’t… what I can do is decide what do I want for me, my health, my future and all I touch. What I can do is learn, practice and discover what works for me, what aches to attend to and what decisions generate well being, and that well being will impact the world, via the relationships I have with people, places and things.
February is a month of continued rest, hibernation and consideration.
No one has to start exercising or stop eating chips, but we may decide to try these out in response to the question: “What do I need to do to support the inevitable change that IS this life in my body?”
To live at all, let alone with energy, clarity and determination, we need to take care of the vessel, and the soul illuminating our human form.
We might feel change as an urgency, but it is often subtle, like your liver cells transforming just under the right side of your ribcage right now. Change occurs everywhere, all the time—in every river, continent, and corner of the globe. Understanding what helps your body and soul adapt comes from experiencing and making conscious, the decisions you make to care for yourself, others, and the world.
There are no ends and no beginnings, everything is change.
This February, what daily movement would bring you joy?
If, like me, you have a big NOPE for exercise (there’s that “E” word again!), get curious and see if the connection that movement is as vital as water gets your motor running. And if not, ok, what do you have a “yes” for when it comes to movement, if anything?
To support your Kidney Qi as Winter rolls toward Spring, amidst climate change and increasingly violent regimes rooted in colonial domination (aka global bullying), there are foods, movements, knowledge and connections here for you:
Eat
Keep drinking water - ideally room temp or warm.
Eat foods that nourish Kidney Qi and Yang. Black beans, tempeh, kidney beans, organ meats, mussels, shrimp, beef and chicken are all great options for proteins. Millet, buckwheat and barley are kidney supporting grains and all dark vegetables and fruits (eggplant, kale, blackberries, blueberries) will offer you foundational nourishment.
Soups and stews and all food being cooked is super helpful, along with garlic, ginger and cinnamon to keep your innards warmed.
3 recipes for you to check out: steamed mussels & beef bone broth & Red lentil soup
Move
Movement is mandatory and now is not the season to sweat profusely. TCM advises that in winter, we shouldn't experience "leaking of the skin,".
Avoid high-energy cardio that causes excessive sweating by:
move less - If you are a regular at the gym, spin class or your local Dojo, check out what a week or two of doing less offers your over all health
move more - If the cold and inaccessible snowy sidewalks are keeping you slow try some at home dance moves, Yoga asana and even good old jumping jacks. Start slow and stay slow. Breaking a mild sweat is fine, but pouring with sweat is gonna drain your Qi.
keep stretching - no matter what you are doing, or how your body is able to move, get a daily stretch in. I find this haaaaaard to do so I set a February challenge for myself to stretch every day. I missed Feb 1, 2, 5 and 6 🤪 so I am now looking ahead to 21 more days of stretch portals! I’ll let you know how it goes.
What fun, reachable goal would keep your free flow, flowing?
Experience teaches what is harmony for the body. In 6 weeks, Spring will call forth vigorous activity to energize your Liver Qi, and that’s when I’ll be sharing about sweating, grooving and wiggling your anything.
Pursue
As I said above in MOVE, every decision is an experiment (of a kind). Even when committed to “the plan”, we can always check out what works, what doesn’t and what now?
Everything changes.
Is this true for you? Just cause I know there are no ends and no beginnings, doesn’t mean that lands for you. Pursue YOU this winter, going inward is harmony with winter, in the form of sleep, meditation, reflection, contemplation, inquiry or journalling. Winter offers stillness & rest to check out where things are at.
Share
What mind 🤯 blowing tidbit from this blog can you tell a friend about today?
Sharing is another essential, just like water (and “E”xercise). If we don’t connect we can’t thrive.
Forward this blog, post in socials, or print it out and pin it to your community bulletin board.
Folks are welcome to see me for treatments, but this is not the only way! Sharing knowledge has been contributing to generative evolution since the dawn of consciousness.
We do better in community, and as a world, when we have harmony. Health is also determined by the decisions we make with the conditions we have influencing those decisions. Sharing this blog generates access to high quality, practical healthcare.
To the thousands of people, plants, land and practices, who through trial and error, have generated Traditional Medicines, I offer my abundant gratitude.
And to the dominance and disregard within industrialized food production and diet culture… I say F-YOU!
May you, reader and human here on the Land where you are, have the conditions for Life to thrive.
with regard,
Lamia
RENEW this March
Join me for a free group program generating health and well being
“RENEW is a powerful and approachable offering that clearly grows from Lamia’s many years of direct experience of working with whole foods, Traditional East Asian Medicine, Shiatsu, and other modalities of healing and transformation. I simply couldn’t have asked for a more compassionate, skillful, empathetic/empathic, and non-judgmental guide through this well-constructed and deeply effective process.”
In 2024 I made RENEW (and RELEASE - happens in the fall) free or by donation to align with a personal value of healthcare being a given, not a service, or even a right per se, but a given.
Healthcare is like breathing, it is simply a part of being alive.
There is so much you can do for you that is taught out of us amidst medical models that centre the doctor/health practitioner. I rage at medical superiority and my counterbalance are these two programs.
Health centred healthcare has to include you having the theories & practices about what works for you, what heals you and what restores your harmony.
Whole foods, personalized grocery lists, coaching that centres health and fellow humans on a path of freedom.
This year RENEW is 1-4 weeks of choose your own health adventure. Commit for a week and stay for more.
We need presence, clarity, and energy to turn this environmental and social disaster ship around, and we need it now.
Renew will being March 29 2025 and you can decide to do 1, 2, 3 or 4 weeks or come in and out. More details to come.
