Category Archives: EMC Blog

Try Something New

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Summer is finally in fully force, and the living is easy! Kids are out of school (no more nagging to do homework anyway), schedules are lighter, days are longer.
Throughout the year we live at an intense pace (physical, emotional and mental), and we often get stuck in routine, either for the sake of efficiency or out of fear of unfamiliar territory. The lack of variety in doing the same things over and over stagnates not only our minds, but also our bodies and hearts.

Are you hesitant to break your routine? Fear and excitement have the same physiological expression in our bodies; it is our mind that classifies the feeling as either positive or negative. So the next time you consider a change in routine and your mind says “scary!” see if you can re-frame it as “exciting!”

What is something you have never done before or that you have wanted to do for a long time? Choose your own adventure: organize a kayak trip, take a yoga class , do some exotic traveling or set a goal for a new personal challenge. Or try something simple, like playing flashlight tag with your kids and neighbors or reading in the sunshine. Maybe it’s time to discover a new vegetable dish or to visit a new town, restaurant or beach.

Whatever adventure calls to you, use this summer to make it happen and enjoy yourlife. Increasing new experiences and excitement in your life can decrease your dependence on artificial stimulants like caffeine and sugar, leading to more vibrant health. Watch out for massive improvements in physical well-being, mental acuity and motivation, plus a full portfolio of fun.

The wheels don’t move you…

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Not your average spin class.

X-Bike at EMC is a unique, low impact, total body exercise that engages the core while strengthening the low back– offsetting any long days sitting at a desk, on a train or behind a wheel, or standing with locked out joints. Your heart and lungs will  reap the benefits from this cardiovascular workout that actually burns 55% more calories on average than the standard fixed wheel indoor bike. The free-wheel works exactly like a real bike and unlike fixed wheel systems doesn’t depend on momentum to move your legs for you. Did we mention the safety benefit? If your feet slip off the pedals, the free wheel stops the cranks from causing injury to your legs.

Even though elite athletes use this bike in training for their sport, i.e. World Cup Mountain Bikers, Motorsport, Trainers/Athletes, our classes are geared for the average person young and old can participate because you are encouraged to challenge yourself at your own pace. Click here to find out more about the X-Bike

Balance

Endurance

Interval

Summer Yoga OUTSIDE on Saturdays!

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Outdoor Yoga with Christine

Saturdays 6/22-9/14

9am-10am

$10 drop in

 

Take your yoga mat outside for a summer Saturday flow with Christine.  This yoga class, open to all levels, will meet under the shade of the trees by the boat launch at Riverfront Green, Peekskill.

In case of rain, the yoga class will take place inside at Energy Movement Center.

Westchester Mega Outdoor Yoga Event!

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Join Energy Movement Center as we partner with The Mental Health Association of Westchester’s 

GET ON YOUR MAT FOR MENTAL HEALTH!

Take your first breath of summer under the open sky  and roll out your mat with hundreds of yogis!

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Court Street, White Plains, NY

Class led by renowned yoga teacher Sadie Nardini  Opening meditation by Tao Porchon Lynch

All ages and levels welcome! Live music, healthy food, and exhibit displays.

First 500 participants receive free yoga mat and gift bag.

Food Focus: Fruit

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Food Focus: Fruit                                                                                        

A healthy lifestyle is the key to longevity, optimum weight, abundant energy and balance. By using fruit to satisfy our taste for sweetness, we can leave behind the use of chemical, processed and refined sweeteners. Fruits are easy to digest, are cleansing and cooling and are great for those who are overstressed and overheated from excessive mental strain or hot climates. Fruits are filled with fiber and liver stimulants, which act as natural, gentle laxatives. Whenever possible, buy fresh, locally grown fruit as opposed to imported fruits shipped from far-off places. This keeps you eating in season, and more in harmony with your environment and climate.

 

Eating raw fruit in summer months is highly cooling, while baking it in the winter months neutralizes the cooling effect. Fruit in the form of juice is a great choice for cleansing the body, but be aware that juice rapidly raises blood sugar levels, leading to an energy crash soon after. Frozen, whole, puréed or juiced fruit can make great summertime cool-down treats. Try frozen grapes, banana-coconut smoothie popsicles or lime juice ice-cubes in iced tea!

 

Whether you are having fresh fruit for a light early morning breakfast, a midday snack or evening treat, enjoy nature’s sweetness and whenever possible buy organic. Here are a few summer fruits and their health benefits:

 

Apricots: Great for lung conditions and asthma; used to help treat anemia due to their high copper and cobalt content.

Bananas: Help to lubricate the intestines, treat ulcers, detoxify the body and manage sugar cravings; are rich in potassium (which helps hypertension).

Cherries: Slightly warming in nature; increase overall body energy, remedy arthritis and rheumatism and are rich in iron, which improves the blood.

Grapefruits: Treat poor digestion, increase appetite during pregnancy, alleviate intestinal gas and reduce mucus conditions of the lungs.

Papayas: Tone the stomach, act as digestive aid, moisten the lungs and alleviate coughing; contain carpaine, an anti-tumor compound.

Raspberries: Benefit the liver and kidneys, cleanse blood of toxins, regulate menstrual cycles, treat anemia and can promote labor at childbirth.

Snack Attack

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Snack Attack

There’s no denying that everyone, at one time or another, has had a snack attack. Views on snacking differ. Some of us feel that snacking is bad and that eating between meals leads to weight gain. Others believe that eating many small meals and snacks throughout the day is healthy for maintaining energy levels and optimal weight. If there were one way of snacking that was right for everyone, we would all be doing it!

 

To alleviate snack attack guilt, try to understand why you are snacking and what snacks work best for your body. Perhaps you snack because your daily diet is missing nutrition, or because you are eating too little at meals. You might be snacking to soothe jangled nerves when you are emotional, or to entertain yourself when you are bored. Whatever your reason, acknowledge it and start thinking about how to create a life that is nourishing and truly satisfying.

 

Although snacks are no substitute for loving your life, they can be great energy boosters. Many convenient snack foods are highly processed and full of chemicals, additives, damaging fats and refined sugars. When a snack attack hits you, try foods that are filling and satisfying, but also nutritious. Snack on things that don’t come in a plastic wrapper or a box, like fresh fruit, leftover vegetables or rice cakes with almond butter and fruit spread. Make your own signature trail mix, organic hot chocolate made with almond milk sweetened with agave nectar, or blue corn chips with hummus.

 

You can also try “upgrading”. If you are craving something crunchy, upgrade from potato chips to raw carrots, apples or whole grain crackers; if you are craving a candy bar, upgrade to a handful of nuts and dried fruit; instead of a cup of coffee, upgrade to green tea; instead of ice cream, upgrade to applesauce with cinnamon. Upgraded snacks are high in nutrition and give you a greater sense of satiety and satisfaction; you won’t feel physically or psychologically deprived, and you’ll have plenty of energy to sustain your activities for hours.

 

Snacking is enjoyable and there is a wide variety of healthful goodies for whatever you’re craving, be it sweet, crunchy, salty, creamy or spicy. Dive in, be creative and enjoy your snack attack.

 

If Diets Don’t Work, What Does?

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How many times have you heard “Diets Don’t Work!”. What are your feelings about this? Have they worked for you? Are you frustrated because you don’t know what else to do?  Well, here are the facts:

  • Diets don’t work because each person is unique, with different needs based on gender, age, ancestry and lifestyle; how could one diet be right for everyone?
  • Diets don’t work because they are extreme solutions. As in physics, if a pendulum swings to one extreme, it has to swing equally to the other. A diet might work for a short amount of time, but research shows that almost all diets result in a 10-pound gain once off the diet.
  • Diets don’t work because they are too restrictive. People who fail on diet plans are not flawed or weak. Diets by nature require discipline and restriction at levels that are unsustainable by a healthy human body.

Most people are disconnected from why they gain weight and see diet as the only culprit. For example, ignoring or discounting emotions is often the first thing to cause weight imbalances. In our fast-paced world, we have lost sight of many aspects of life that truly nourish and balance our bodies, such as slowing down, eating a home-cooked meal and spending quality time with loving people. Eating consciously and making simple lifestyle changes will create positive results and release you from the endless cycle of dieting.

Do you know what else doesn’t work? Vigorous exercise. Yes I said exercise doesn’t work if you want to lose weight that is for specifically middle aged overweight women.

According to a New York Times magazine article Weighing the Evidence on Exercise by Gretchen Reynolds, exercise alone will not make you thin and if you are a woman, vigorous exercise actually can stimulate a hormonal response to encourage over eating. You see women’s bodies (as well as some overweight men) are biologically set up to maintain energy stores for reproduction. So after vigorous exercise, the hormones responsible for increasing appetite are released and insulin levels drop so a biological paradigm has been set up to make sure you replace those lost calories for reproduction. Thus our insulin levels drop, our need for sugar greatly increases, so we crave those simple carbs.  We have all seen those same people on the treadmill, elliptical, Stairmaster, etc. sweating and working hard for hours at the gym, right? They always look the same. Never losing any weight despite how hard they work.

So, what to do… Well, the key seems to be losing the weight first by reducing calories by eliminating processed foods, eating whole foods, increasing intake of vegetables and moderately increase activity.  Growing evidence proves low intensity movement such as standing instead of sitting, taking the stairs, fidgeting, walk from the back of the parking lot to the store has a greater effect on weight loss because it doesn’t seem to trigger the “caloric compensation effect”.  Other forms of exercise like Tai Chi, Pilates, Yoga, and even simple stretching can help to burn calories without over taxing the body. So this seems to allow one to be able to stick to a healthy eating plan that includes whole foods, mostly plants and whole grains, with moderate amounts of good lean protein.

To start on the path to losing extra weight for good follow these easy life style changes:

  • practice Mindful Eating by chewing each bite 30 times,
  • eat whole foods, get rid of all processed foods
  • limit to 3 meals per day
  • drink 1 glass of water before you eat
  • make sure you are hungry before you eat
  • listen to your body
  • begin a walking regimen. Start with 10 minutes 3 times a week. Increase the time to 15, 20 then add in another day. Slowly increase to walking every day at least 30 minutes.
  • As you get to your goal weight then increasing the intensity of your workouts actually will do what it is suppose to and that is burn fat immediately after meals, and re-establish the homeostasis between intake and expenditure to secure a lower body weight.

Remember to laugh, counts as low intensity movement too!!) Laughing extremely hard for 15 minutes a day one can burn up to 40 calories. That equals 4 lbs / year!

Darby Melnik, Owner Options in Fitness LLC
ACE CPT, Health Coach, AADP

Meditate Your Way to Better Health

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A bearded yogi, deep in the Himalayas, withdrawn from the distractions of society, sits perched cross-legged as he peacefully watches the sunrise and set– full, deep breaths of fresh air fill his lungs and calm his mind.

If only we could all withdraw so easily from the constant chatter of work, kids, friends and of course, our own minds!  There is an old saying, “For a long, healthy life, you must meditate 20 minutes a day.  If you don’t have time for this, you must meditate for an hour.”

In case you have been told otherwise, let us spill the beans… Meditation is for everyone.  There are many doors to meditation and mindfulness; each one offering practitioners a way to realize their own natural ability to quiet the mind and the ego.

But how can you find an hour to meditate, when you also want to work out?  Take a class that fuses the physical aspects of wellness with the mental focus– in other words, discover your moving meditation.  Check out classes in Tai Chi, Yoga and Pilates (offered right here at Energy Movement Center)– and for a deeper exploration, try our new Monthly Community Meditation or one of our Meditation Workshops.

Check out all of the mindful, wonderful, varieties of meditation we have coming up this Spring!

TAI CHI WORKSHOP WITH GRAND MASTER REN GUANG-YI*
Saturday May 11
9:30-3:30
*SPACE IS LIMITED– CALL TO REGISTER IN ADVANCE!

TAI CHI with Alan Bandes
Mondays 7:15 pm
Fridays 10am

SOUND, BREATH, MANTRA: MEDITATION WORKSHOP with Nomi Bachar

Friday May 17

7:00-9:00 pm

 FIRST THURSDAYS MONTHLY MEDITATION with Steve Quinn

Thursday May 2

7:45-8:45pm

CENTERING SUNDAY OUTDOOR DONATION YOGA CLASS 

Sunday May 19

11am

Riverfront Green, Peekskill

MAY Teacher of the Month-Liz Fareed

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Teacher of the Month: Liz Fareed

When it comes to your overall well-being, do you focus your attention on the body, mind or spirit?  And how do you find time to pay attention to all three?

Well, EMC’s Liz Fareed believes Pilates (originally called Contrology) is the answer.  Liz has studied Pilates since 1996 and has a BFA in Dance.  She teaches what is known as Classical, or traditional Pilates.

“Pilates is complete coordination of body, mind, and spirit. Through Contrology you first purposefully acquire complete control of your own body and then through proper repetition of its exercises you gradually and progressively acquire that natural rhythm and coordination associated with all your subconscious activities.” – Joseph Pilates

In the 1920’s, Joseph Pilates founded Contrology– a low impact system of flexibility and strengthening exercises used to develop the deep muscles of the abdomen and spine while also providing a full body workout.  Liz stays true to Joseph Pilates techniques and belief that in order to achieve physical well-being, you must focus the mind on every single movement, no matter how small– and that only through this focus and attention to alignment, you are able to be in control of your body, rather than at it’s mercy.

After leaving Liz’s class today, EMC member and pilates student Eva Burns commented, “I feel ten times taller!”  All it took was an hour, and Eva was able to enhance her physical posture– and perhaps more importantly, her awareness.

Join Liz every Wednesday at 10am for Pilates– the classical way.

PILATES with Liz

WEDNESDAYS 10am

READ LIZ’s BIO