How to Approach Fitness Goals

We are so used to going after what we want. Metaphorically speaking, we curl our hands around that bar as we do pull ups or around those dumbbells as we do bicep curls - working hard towards a goal. We can easily equate “opening our palms” as letting go of the hold we have on our goals. I’m not sure what sparked my memory as I woke up this morning to a small story a dance instructor told me more than a decade ago. I was working really hard at the time towards a goal and yet that goal seemed slipping farther away from me - I was frustrated with myself and perplexed, as I felt I was doing all the appropriate things to achieve it. As I shared my frustration with her, she told me a story. I’ve tried finding where this story came from - I thought maybe some Buddhist teaching - but I have not been able to find it anywhere. She said this to me:

“Sabina, if you want to experience birds feeding out of your hand, you need to go out and find the right environment - go out into a garden surrounded by trees or a forest and enjoy standing there without expectations of any bird coming to eat out of your hand. You must return consistently each week, eventually putting out your hand with a seed placed in your palm. But you must relax your palm and keep it open. You need to be comfortable with the birds eating near you first and not from your hand yet. If you follow them, they will sense a predator and fly away. Don’t stop going to the garden just because the birds have not eaten out of your hand yet - learn to enjoy and really feel what it’s like to be in nature. When eventually a little bird does decide to land on your palm, let your palm remain open and relaxed, don’t close it trying to hold onto the bird: it will either fly away or you will kill it”. She had given me a lot to reflect on!

How does this translate into the fitness/health realm? Say you have been told by your doctor that your blood sugar is now in the prediabetes stage or perhaps you have been given the diagnosis of diabetes and told to exercise to help keep blood sugars in check. You have been taught and understand the importance of blood sugar control and may need to adjust medications/insulin and diet appropriately as well. So, you begin an exercise program and your mind is completely focused on the subject of getting tight blood sugar control. You have researched which activities have the most effect on lowering blood sugar and you picked the apparent results of your research without any consideration as to how to make them enjoyable. As you exercise you think and hope that this will help control your blood sugar - you might even try to “manifest” a lower blood sugar. You are laser focused on the subject as, with a frown on your face, you check your blood sugar before, during or after exercising - wanting and wishing it to be at a certain level. What you don’t realize is that you have created such an attachment to a result that in the process you have made “the little bird fly away” - and perhaps your blood sugar may be much higher than expected. The zealous over- focus around the goal of the blood sugar has created such levels of stress and higher cortisol that the environment (the exercise activity) that was meant to be conducive to lowering blood sugar, could not do its job because it got hijacked by the new internal environment of stress.

Another scenario could be one where you “caught the bird” but “have now killed it” by closing it tightly into your palm. This would be where you’ve gotten that tight blood sugar control through your hyper focus on the blood sugar - but you’ve been concentrating so much on a life of dieting and exercise for the sole purpose of the results, that you are exhausting yourself to a point that it might not be sustainable and there is no joy woven into the process of exercising and eating.

I just used an example where there is a goal that actually might be best attained in the here and now (blood sugar may need to be controlled each day if you suffer from diabetes- although better management often comes in time through some trial and error and adherence to lifestyle changes) - unlike a goal that takes much more time - like a weight related goal or a strength or mobility related goal. The reason why I chose diabetes as an example, was purposely to show that the goal could still be important (and perhaps even medically necessary); however, it is not only possible, but definitely more enjoyable and effective - to not CLING to the results. Instead, what works best is to fully immerse oneself to the experience of the process - to find joy in the process. Even in a situation where a goal needs to be met for medical purposes (like the blood sugar) - a person can loosen up around the goal focus and self-blame when it comes to the interventions. You can still take the blood sugar if your doctor has asked you to, but be ready to then move onto the experience in life at hand in the present moment. This involves observing in a detached manner the mental chatter, which usually blames and is negative around what you did or didn’t do “right”, and not get hooked on the content of that chatter. So, if your blood sugar is not where you’ve been told it would need to ideally be before an exercise session or a meal - unless the reading needs immediate medical attention - you can still immerse yourself in the fun elements of the exercise session, of feeling your body, your breath and the music rather than following your internal dialogue around the blood sugar. Similarly, you can focus on the taste of the food rather than counting the carbohydrate content in your mind and approaching each bite with dread. You can still make adjustments in exercise, diet or medications/insulin as necessary - but without that mental hyperfocus and rigidity. Similarly, if after a meal or exercise session, your blood sugar is not where you want it to be - you can make adjustments next time without an obsessive focus. Alternatively, if the undesirable results make you feel like giving up altogether, try to focus on keeping that consistency going instead (remembering the story of continuing to regularly show up in that garden even if the birds have not eaten out of your hand yet) .

Another great example for this is exercising to help mood - such as feelings of anxiety. If you approach exercise SOLELY with the attitude of: “I’m going to exercise to help my anxiety”, you may fall into the trap of monitoring whether it’s working during the entire session. What this does is that it gets you to focus on your goal - feeling calm/not feeling anxious - and therefore on your anxiety levels. You are now facing away from the experience of the exercise activity and focusing on the anxiety instead. Chances are that in your strive to lower anxiety, you are focusing so much on it that you are taking away from the experience of getting into your body and the actual activity, and hijacking the calming effects of the exercise session on your anxiety.

Ok - so how do we do this, you might ask?! After all, you are really thinking deep inside that the results are what you are after. You can think of it this way: The results that you are after are asking that you travel new roads that involve certain lifestyle modifications. You would have never explored those roads if it wasn’t for the fact that you are striving towards a new goal. The road you are on at present is the one that you already know and that, unfortunately, is not taking you towards your goal. You need to venture down new paths. However, I doubt you will want to set foot on these new paths or continue travelling down in their direction if they are very unpleasant, and full of stress. Why not fall in love with the walks down those roads instead? They are new and could be full of adventures! If, due to a medical condition, you’ve been advised not to have fish and chips and apple pie for dessert - well you certainly need not lose out on the gusto of eating. This could be a great opportunity to explore a Mediterranean style fish dish instead and a baked pear dessert.

When I had gestational diabetes, I was referred to a Diabetes Clinic and the nurses told me I had to go for a walk after each meal to help with the postprandial blood sugar. It was winter and cold. During the day I was fine, but the last thing I felt like doing after dinner was to go outside in the dark and cold. I had a super small house and did not own a treadmill. I asked the nurse what I should do. She spoke to me with a very reprimanding tone and said: “Well you just have to walk for a minimum of 10 minutes after meals! So put a timer on and walk in circles in your living room!” I didn't even try this: I was 100% sure that if I walked in circles around my super tiny living room with a timer on, it would feel so unnatural and not desirable that the fact that I was doing this just to lower my blood sugar would just jump out at me and my blood sugar was all I would be focusing on - perhaps even raising it from the stress! So what did I do? I tried to fall in love with the new road of movement after meals (I liked walking after lunch, but now I had to discover a new road for after dinner). My toddler at the time was a night owl, if I put her to bed early she just would not sleep. Despite what the parenting books said, if I did all the proper pre-bed routines she would wake up even more! So, after dinner became our little active play time! I was moving around, but I was concentrating on my time with my daughter. I had managed to keep my blood sugar in check AND finally get my daughter to fall asleep. I was no longer doing “all the right things to make her fall asleep” which actually took pressure off sleep time (I later realized she was scared of bedtime and the things that prepared her for bedtime reminded her of the looming bedtime), and I was moving around for a purpose I enjoyed that INDIRECTLY helped my blood sugar.

I feel that this subject of how to focus on goals is very important and full of nuances. If we look at exercising around a limitation (for example doing bodyweight lower body work in the presence of a broken arm or upper body resistance training in the presence of broken leg) or exercising in a way that is supportive of the healing of a posteriorly protruding bulging disc in the lower back (so strengthening the core, doing back extensions but avoiding forward flexion) we need to be constantly mindful of what is going on in our bodies, what to strengthen and stretch, and of the goal of avoiding further injury. So, in this case, we need to be focused on it even during the actual exercise session. For example, clients I have who have had knee pain or injuries in the past need to be aware of how their knees are doing during exercise. When we have those goals where having them in the forefront of our minds during an exercise session may be important - this story of the “feeding birds from the open palm” can still apply. How? It applies in the mindset that we have with regards to how we hold those goals in our mind. If we hold a mindset of dread, self blame, impatience, self criticism, and general negativity towards the limitations - we are clinging to a reality that we want to be different to the one that presents itself. Even here, we can hold our palm open - open to the new road of exercising towards a more fully mobile future while accepting where our body is at in the present moment and allow it all the time it needs to heal.

Following years of forward flexion positions in giving medications at the bedside in my nursing work, I developed a herniated disc in my lower back. When I became a yoga instructor I had to learn not to resent the limitation that doing many of the forward flexion poses were going to continue to aggravate the herniation (in fact it was the back extensions that were the most helpful at the time). I avoided a mindset that involved clinging to the wish that my body wasn’t so limited and the goal of eventually being free to move my body fluidly and painlessly in every direction. I learned to travel the road to appreciate what my body could do in the present moment and immersed myself joyfully in the experience of that and slowly, incrementally heal and build. I had almost forgotten the goal of being able to move fluidly again in all directions, when one day I realized that that goal was attained! The beauty was that my happiness in movement was not clinging to that result.

When we learn to be happy in the forest - palm open, a seed sitting in our hand, just listening to the birds singing, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying the beautiful sights - that’s when the magic happens. When the little bird does land and peck the seed, it is a surprising new experience - but simply a new experience - not superior to what we were experiencing already a few seconds before.