It’s super important for you to understand how you feel. Once you can identify your feelings you can accept them, and offer yourself unconditional acceptance.
Often people get really stuck? How do you feel?
Gosh, where do you start?
Its often a good idea to use a chart, or list as a prompt.
There are many useful lists to choose from. Plutchik, Aristotle and Darwin have all produced emotions lists. This is a useful chart from wikimedia
If you study the chart you’ll see that its very possible to have more than one emotional feeling at any one time. you can be sad, lonely and disappointed, all at the same time.
The older you get the more conscious you become about your health and the need to test to catch things early. At the same time the more people you like, the more you want them to test too so they can hang out with you, and not die in agony!
I’d been struggling to do a prostate test for years, but it seems, with the modern-day doctors that I use, it’s all a bit of a ballache (go in, collect tubes, take them home, bring them back blah blah), so I was delighted to come across the heavily marked Icle test. Basically, you spend £20 on amazon, it arrives the next, you wee on it, and voila you get your result there and then.
Marvellous.
This article was going to be a free push for the Icle test, but I thought I’d see what other tests are about, and I came across Urinox-10 (on amazon!!).
Rather than one test for £20, it’s basically one test for 30p. ( you still have to buy 30 for, wait for it, £9.99)
By testing your wee , you get early indications of possible problems.
According to their website this sort of means
A 10-parameter urine test strip such as Urinox-10 by Diagnox tests ten different urine parameters that include:
Leukocytes(for possible inflammation)
Nitrites(for bacteria in urine)
Urobilinogen(for liver health)
Protein(for kidney and urinary tract health)
pH (for acidity and alkalinity of the urine sample)
Blood(for visible and non-visible blood in urine)
Specific Gravity (for hydration status and the body’s ability to conserve water)
Ketones(for diabetes and high-fat/low-carb diets)
Bilirubin (for liver health)
Glucose (for diabetes)
You can get them here. (You’ll notice this isn’t an affiliate link). Each test is individually sealed, so they keep for a while.
If there is a drawback it’s that you need to “dip the strip” rather than just wee on it, so you need a reasonably sized container that you can fill to the right height.
Most dysfunctional behaviour probably comes from trauma, we normally associated trauma with great big awful stuff. However, it seems that it can also accumulate over time. No one considers that the rage, rejection and blame that children are subjected to amounts to trauma
Maybe trauma is the wrong word, maybe its core issues or core wounds. Maybe it’s as classic as the death of a thousand cuts
It seems that numerous petty wounds, accumulated over time can begin to disconnect you from your emotions. Julie Simons in The emotional Eaters Repair Manual gives the following examples of the stuff that you could be subjected to as a child that could have effects later on.
Abandonment: a caregiver dies or is so overworked that they are “not available.
Attack: your caregiver attacks you (everything from a wack to constant aggression, threats, or ridicule
Betrayal: your caregiver lies or makes empty promises.
Blame, you were blamed for the feelings and actions of others
Deceived: you were intentionally misled.
Neglected: simple neglect of your physical and emotional needs
Domination: excessively controlled
Engulfment: you were smothered
Exploitation. You were made to do excessive and age-inappropriate chores
Fragmentation: your caregiver was mentally ill.
parentification. you were made to be responsible for others.
Rejection: dismissed as useless or worthless.
Shame: regularly criticized.
Violation: invasion of your space.
But what could be the mechanism or process? Why would having to do extra chores or get a slap on the back of your legs mean you are unable to control certain aspects of your behavior when you are older?
As a small person, your job is to learn lots of stuff, verbs, going to the toilet, and setting fire to things. You also should learn how to manage your emotions. The correct process of looking after your emotional health is to understand how you feel, then accept those feelings as appropriate, and then make sure you have enough emotional resources to support going forward. Once you have this process, you can move quickly to technical solutions.
However, if you are brought up by idiots, no one asks you how you are. Your emotions are either ignored or discounted. In other words, you are taught to ignore your emotional state. As a child, what do you do? You still have the emotions. You still feel them, fear sadness, and anger (more choice here!).
How do you deal with them? You haven’t been taught how to cope with emotions so you need to soothe yourself. The number one choice of self-medication is food (although later on, it could be drugs, booze, or pornography). Every time you feel joy, sadness, happiness, or failure, you go straight to food. Basically, food becomes the only thing that means you can control your emotions. Where does this get you? It means that realistically you cannot control your food. Food is the only thing that keeps you sane. for years you have used it to push down emotions so it makes sense that you won’t allow it to be restricted or measured. If you do restrict it makes sense that you’ll binge later on during the day.
If you’re down in the dumps, what is the best choice?
1) Hideout from family and friends until you feel up to seeing them 2)Draw the curtains, stay inside, and rest 3) Get out of the house, exercise, and engage in activities 4) Self-medicate with alcohol and/or sweets to soothe your feelings
Save your wrists, vary your training. Get some parallettes.
If you regularly push up, L sit and practice handstands the chances are you could end up in intermediate hand and wrist pain.
After too many years of coaching, I’d suggest you seriously consider mixing your hand position up by including the use of parallettes. You can now pick up cheap ones any where, although if you intend to handstand with them, you ought to look at what they are suitable for. That said, Ive bought the cheapie set (pictured) about 10 years ago and Im still alive!
What could the acronym “FEED” stand for? Its a mnemonic device to help you remember the steps to change the way you think.
What do you think it stand for? a. Feel good, Exhale, Excite, and Dictate b. Focus, Effort, Effortlessness, and Determination c. Fail, Engage, Encourage, and Describe d. Freedom, Effortlessness, Entertainment, and Doing little
If you need help getting your mind or body right, do drop me an email andrew@andrewstemler.com or you can join my mailing list
there is mounting evidence of a therapeutic connection between you, the earth and for that matter the elements in general. For years the Earthing Institute has suggested that you can become healthier by properly and directly connecting yourself to the earth. In other words, walk around barefoot on the earth.
Obviously its a nasty, commercial world so there is a whole bundle of stuff you can now buy to “earth” yourself without jogging around the park barefoot, but being me, I’m suggesting to many of my clients that jogging (or a bit of circuit work) around the park barefoot, at least once a week, is a good thing.
From the seeming explosion of fungal nails, athletes’ feet, plantar fasciitis, and Achilles tendinopathy, it seems as if it’s a really good idea to get your feet out into the fresh air and sunlight if you possibly can.
Equally, wearing sandals should be firmly on the agenda for most people where possible: maybe not practical on building sites, in a warzone, or in a policing situation.
The plea is to make at least one of your training sessions barefoot
If you’d like some help in your training do email me on andrew@andrewstemler.com or fill out the form below and join the mailing list
