Category Archives: Stress-reduction

How to Reduce Chronic Pain: Improve Your Health, Wellness, and Quality of Life

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Guest-Blog by Sheila Olson

There’s no denying it: Americans are in pain. According to the latest estimates, more than 25 million Americans are living with chronic pain.

Photo courtesy of Pexels

Many things can result in chronic pain—everything from bad posture and too much time in front of the computer, to health conditions like fibromyalgia or migraines. Pain symptoms interfere with our daily lives, dampen our moods, and make us feel hopeless and helpless in our own bodies

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who are living with chronic pain and its related conditions, don’t despair. Luckily, there are many things you can do to boost your health and wellness and minimize your pain.

Reduce the Causes
Chronic pain can be a mysterious condition. Sometimes, the causes are not apparent. However, if you’re living with chronic pain, there’s a good chance you’ll start to notice certain things which either trigger your pain or make it worse. Do bright lights, and loud noises cause you to feel a migraine coming on? Does sitting in front of a computer screen for hours at a time trigger radiating pain through your neck, shoulders, and back? If these scenarios sound familiar, the good news is you’ve pinpointed a pain trigger. Now let’s explore a few things you can do about it.

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How a Smart Fitness Routine is the Key to Wise Self-Care

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Smart Fitness and Self-Care, It’s No Accident

It's important to include a smart, balanced approach to your Fitness routine-- to achieve wise Self-Care.

As I rebuild my health, I appreciate balance so much.

As I told you a few days ago, a smart, holistic-minded fitness trainer recently entered my life, through email. She requested a guest-blogging opportunity here at Taking Back Wellness. “Cool!”

As you know, it’s been hard for me to juggle this blog while I build my new site (about writing and editing). I wish she lived near me. I could use her help as I regain my own health. I think you’ll like her too.

Her name is Sheila Olson.
As I learn more about her, I like her even more. She has a very intelligent and balanced view of fitness. She had told me in the beginning that she’s pretty much all about, “…a balance between ‘holistic fitness’ and the obsessed and guilt-driven ‘fitness lifestyle.'” As a Holistic Health Coach, I appreciate her balanced, whole-person approach very much. And you’re going to hear from her in just a minute.

So here is the scoop on Shiela.
“Sheila Olson has been a personal trainer for five years. She believes the best way to achieve physical fitness and good health is to set and tackle small goals.

Learn why it's important to carefully select the right work out for your own personal style. Don't fall prey to burn-out or injury, do movement right.

Photo credit: skeeze at Pixabay

She encourages her clients to stay positive, and she incorporates mindfulness practices into her sessions. She finds this helps clients reduce the internal, negative self-talk.
She created FitSheila.com to spread the word about her fitness philosophy.”

And. . .

With no further ado, please join me in welcoming to Sheila Olson to our Taking Back Wellness community.

How to Build a Smart Fitness Routine into Your Self-Care

By Guest-Blogger, Sheila Olson of FitSheila.com

Balancing Your Self-Care with a Smart Fitness Routine Requires Intention
Successful self-care can be a balancing act. You must maintain both mind and body to be healthy, but the demands of a busy life can get in the way. A good exercise program can help you care for both at the same time.

How Exercise Helps Your Body and Mind

Exercise does more than just help you lose weight or build strength. Studies show that from the moment you begin working out, the activity has a positive impact on your health. Some of the benefits of a healthy workout routine include: (more…)

Office Reclamation Progress… Show-n-Tell

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How Goes the Ol’ Office Progress?
I thought you might be curious about my office reclamation process. As it turns out, I had started this post about my progress with my office. But as things sometimes happen, the post fell through the cracks and got stuck on the back burner. It’s been a “draft” for ages! I think I was probably waiting to upload photos and got distracted.

I believe the last photos I showed you were of the extreme, overwhelming disarray–stacks of… stuff from my April 2016 post, you can see to the right (->).
Uggh! Talk about stressing me out!?

So up there ^ (to the left) is May 12, 2016, when I decided to move things around, create space and add some color–to make this reclamation process more fun. I really needed to get moving on it. The longer I waited, the more stressed I became. I figured adding the color might inspire me. Please enjoy my story in photos (22 of them), as I walk you through the process.
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A Little Book Brag

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I wanted to brag just a little– Ok, maybe a lot. My dear friend and fellow Health Coach Karen Thomas has written and published her first book. It’s called, Overwhelmed & Undernourished: Use Food as Medicine and Turn Your Life Around. It’s available at Amazon.

But for me, it’s actually kind of a double brag– on one hand, it’s a brag on my friend Karen, yes. But on the other hand, it’s also my brag because I was the Chief Editor. Not only did I do all the substantive, developmental edits, and help her whip it into shape for publishing, but I also formatted it for submission and co-wrote the introduction.

It was a labor of love. Her book started out as a first draft in rough shape. She told me she was a “crappy writer” and she had no idea how to write something like this. I told her I was pretty sure I could help her.

She got started writing her book in the Launch Your Dream Book® course through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition®, where we both graduated in 2015. There were a few hundred students in this book writing course. They all had the option to enter their books into a Top 10 Author Contest (by a deadline). It became a prime motivation for all the students to shine their best work possible.

Although I never knew the exact number of submissions, it’s estimated there were over a hundred submissions into the contest. The prize was reimbursed tuition, a book blurb from the esteemed school founder, and a special listing of their winning book on the Institute’s website.

After I’d begun helping Karen work on her book, she told fellow students how happy she was with my work. Karen recommended (more…)

Life Happens!

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Sometimes, life has a habit of tossing curveballs our way or raining on our parade. And when it does, we’re usually best off Lightning in Tucumcari, NMjust rolling with it. That’s not always easy, but ya do the best you can. Don’t let the stress get to you. Breathe. When storms roll in, enjoy the lightning and look for the rainbow.

Today, just a quick note to check in and let you know I’m still alive. LOL
When I started rebuilding this website in December 2015, I thought I was going to be back at it full-time. But things came up. Life clouded me up with some stuff to deal with, and too many things to get done– all at once, or so it seems. It has taken more time than I’d anticipated. Funny how that happens. Then, there is always the thing with overwhelm. See? You’re not the only one who finds themselves stuck in overwhelm.

“Oh My God, It’s Full of Stars!”
No, not really, I just always liked that quote from the movie, 2001.
Have you ever had one of those rooms– a guest room, a study, or some other “extra room,” in your home, where stuff just accumulates. It becomes so full of– stuff, that it’s hard to navigate in there. Perhaps you have “plans” for it, and you want to clean it up, clear it out, or some other form of organizing it. Then, you can finally use it for your greater purpose.

But every time you open the door– you’re hit with a fright, your breath gets caught in your throat, you swallow a little scream, squeeze your eyes shut, and quickly close the door. Only then can you seem to breathe again. “Whew! That was scary! I can’t possibly go in there. It’s just too much.”

Yeah, I have one of those rooms I’m working to turn into my Home Office (& Radio Room). And these are only three angles. (shiver) It’s the one project hanging me up this year.

But the other one– and I keep allowing it to create a sense of overwhelm– is the rebuilding of this website. It seems when I have one of these “scary-big” projects, the ones I somehow keep avoiding, they almost always end up not being nearly as bad as the dread was making it seem. Once I figure out how to “chunk it” out, it becomes easier. So let’s breathe together, and get to it.

Pace Yourself
I eventually realized, maybe I’d put too much on my proverbial plate. This took some of the stress off of me. It’s hard to work on the website when I really have no space in which to work! I decided, “One thing at a time!” The clearing of my office needs to come first. And as you can see, I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Once I get about halfway through it, I’ll have a space to work undisturbed (mostly). I can then continue to chunk away at it, while I periodically work on rebuilding the site. Then I can also finish creating the programs I want to be able to offer you.

Another way I’m working to de-escalate the stress– I’m putting systems in place. Some work better than others. For now, I simply have to be kind to myself and realize I am one person. I can only do so much in a day. I will get these tasks (more…)