Let’s start the day with something new! Piloga.
What is Piloga?
It is a new fitness discipline born of a mix of Pilates and yoga. Sounds fun? In this practice, we aim at total mental and physical well-being.
Click here to participate in this 30 minutes program. Piloga allows you to have control of your body, with the awareness of breathing and mastery of every muscle and every movement, bringing a balanced posture.
Enjoy!
Ready to make some amazingly delicious Scones and Roasted Pear and Onion Salad? This week Chef Robert Mills shares two of his favorite spring recipes. You can click here to watch the video. Here are the recipes. Enjoy!
Prep:15 mins Cook:17 mins Total:32mins Servings:8
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ Cup Sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 stick Butter room Temp
½ Cup Fresh Blue Berries
½ Cup Sliced Strawberries
½ Cup milk
1 large egg
Directions
Instructions Checklist
Step 1
Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Step 2
In a medium bowl, mix flour, 1/3 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt. Use your fingers to work in butter (mixture should resemble coarse meal)
Step 3
In a small bowl, whisk Milk and Egg
Step 4
Using a fork, stir in Milk and Egg into flour mixture until large dough clumps form. Use your hands to press the dough against the bowl into a ball. (The dough will be sticky in places, and there may not seem to be enough liquid at first, but as you press, the dough will come together.) add the Strawberries and blueberries.
Step 5
Place on a lightly floured surface and pat into a 7- to 8-inch circle about 3/4-inch thick. Use a sharp knife to cut into 8 triangles; place on a cookie sheet (preferably lined with parchment paper), about 1 inch apart. Bake until golden, about 15 to 17 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes and serve warm or at room temperature.
Nutrition Facts
Per Serving: 319 calories; protein 4.9g; carbohydrates 41.1g; fat 15.5g; cholesterol 60.1mg; sodium 249.3mg.
Salad for two
Prep: 10 mins Cook: 15 mins Total: 25 mins Servings: 2
Ingredients
1 Whole Pear
1 Whole Red onion
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
4 teaspoons balsamic vinaigrette
One head of Romaine
Directions
Instructions Checklist
Step 1
Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Step 2
Cut Pear into 8 Wedges removing the seeds, Removed the skin from the onion and cut into 8 Wedges
Step 3
Place onto a baking sheets and Drizzle over the Maple syrup and Olive Oil
Step 4
Place in the oven for 15-20 minutes
Step 5
Clean Romaine and set-up on two plates
And place warm Pears and Onions on top
Finish Balsamic Vinaigrette
Per Serving: 604 calories; protein 7.6g; carbohydrates 39.2g; fat 25.8g; cholesterol 17.7mg; sodium 335.2mg
This week Natalie and Kathie share with you how mindfulness might be something you can use every day in your life to manage stress, like a secret superpower. Click here to watch the video.
What do you think of when you hear the word mindfulness? Do you imagine a guru sitting crossed-legged on a mountain top chanting? Frankly, I think mindfulness could use a new public relations campaign, so that we can all appreciate the benefits of this simple yet powerful practice. I want to share with you how mindfulness might be something you can use every day in your life to manage stress, like a secret superpower.
It’s challenging for our busy thinking mind to understand that taking the focus off of our worries is a good thing. We “think” we have to think our way through everything but just like our body needs rest, our mind needs a break too. We’ve all been on a kooky emotional roller coaster ride, since this Pandemic pause began. Depending on your circumstances, you may be managing working from home, schooling for your children, you might be concerned about your investments, your family and friends, grieving loss of a loved one, your former life and there’s always the underlying fear that you might get sick.
Mindfulness is part of a deep-rooted Buddhist ritual; it’s a practice, just like being grateful is a practice. Once we start to notice what we’re grateful for in our lives, we’ll always find that there’s more to be grateful for but we have to develop the habit of seeing our world this way. Same thing goes for mindfulness, which is the practice of being present in the moment. Our beautiful brain is wired to anticipate what’s coming in the future and it loves to ruminate on what’s already happened whether it’s good or bad. The practice of mindfulness interrupts this ingrained pattern and allows us to be present without attachment to any of the concerns we have about the future or the past. The thing is it’s fleeting, so we have to be mindful of what thoughts are coming up and through practice, train our mind not to judge our thoughts and not to allow those thoughts to prevent us from living fully.
Mindfulness can be meditation but it doesn’t have to be. What if I suggested sitting comfortably with your eyes closed and just observing your breath for a few minutes. Breathing in and breathing out without judging anything, just observing. That’s a form of meditation and that’s not so weird is it? In my view, mindfulness is about becoming the observer of our thoughts without feeling that we have to jump in and engage with them. With practice, we become skilled at bringing our attention back to the present moment when we get carried off by a thought about something.
A lot of the stress we’re feeling these days is the result of speculative thinking because there is so much uncertainty in our world right now. Going over and over what we don’t know doesn’t soothe us, it does the opposite. So mindfulness can start by allowing for an awareness of how much time we invest in these questions with no answers. What if, instead of allowing random thoughts about all of our concerns, we focus on what we can do and choose one thing; then do it. That’s being mindful. If you pause when you notice your thoughts are taking you in six directions and just focus on your breath. Breathe in; breathe out. That’s being mindful.
Some people enjoy meditating, some love to colour. Some enjoy listening to music and for others it’s all about exercise. There’s no wrong or right way; certainly not just one way to nurture mindfulness. The key is to interrupt the constant stream of the 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts that bombard us every day and take up a lot of our brain’s bandwidth.
Beginning the day with a few minutes focused on mindfulness whether it’s writing in a journal, taking a walk outside, sitting quietly with a morning beverage or listening to a guided meditation, all of these practices can set us up to more easily manage our thoughts throughout the day. Then it’s important to move through the day, looking for the good in it and only focusing on one thing at a time. We’re very capable of multitasking and sometimes we think it’s the only way to get things done but multitasking is a myth; research has shown that it’s best for our mental wellness to focus on one task at a time.
However you choose to be mindful, whether it’s looking for ways to help others, learning something new or exercising, you’re supporting a healthy immune system, you’re preventing your cells from aging quickly and you’re taking charge because while there’s a lot we don’t know right now, there’s so much we can do to improve our mindset which is the only thing we have control over at any time. So, as you pursue your mindfulness practice, remember that your thoughts are powerful and you’re in charge of them.
Here is a list of suggested ways to practice mindfulness:
This Wellings blog by Kathie Donovan was exclusively written for Wellings Communities and appeared first on MyWellings.com.
Let’s get ready to have a great day! Today our video blog focuses on something fun and easy to do. The video will only take less than five minutes to watch; It will add good energy to your day, we promise! Team Fitness Powers will take you through a deep breathing exercise and a few stretches to relieve stress. Click here to watch the video.
Wellings friend, Imre, AKA The Big Handsome, fires up a country loaf that’s to die for! Click here to watch this simple and tasty recipe.
This week Natalie and Kathy discuss how to let go of stress and feel better during a pandemic. Click here to watch the video.
Discussing decluttering a year or two ago was quite a different conversation. Marie Kondo, the Japanese organizing consultant had us all under her spell, teaching that if something didn’t spark joy in us, we should let it go. Now we’re storing toilet paper and keeping our pantry full of dry goods just in case. We’re in survival and preparedness mode and that sparks stress: an indescribable often unacknowledged tension that lies there like a blanket covering all of our lives.
There’s nothing like a global health crisis to reshape how we think, how we spend and how we live, among other things. We panic purchased to help calm the fear that rose up and took over; we’ve been watching the news to stay informed, thinking that might calm the fear but it just feeds it. Almost a year later we are more hopeful with news of a vaccine but we are nowhere near the end of this and I think we’re all tired of being afraid of something we can’t understand. Let’s be mindful that fear serves a purpose; its job is to keep us safe and our job is to manage how much of it we allow to direct our lives. If we declutter fear, we’ll be able to see ourselves through this Pandemic with more hope and optimism.
Some good news in all of us spending time at home is that we’re finally getting around to painting a room or two and switching out furniture we’ve been meaning to replace. This has been a great benefit to charities like the Furniture Bank that assist refugees and low-income families with used furniture. There’s the rise in kindness and compassion we’re seeing in our neighbours, we’re spending less time in our cars and the work world is seeing benefit in having some employees work from home. I think we’re all searching for reasons to feel hopeful that out of this chaos comes some positive change. Isn’t that the way it always works? If we look back over our lives, I think we can all see evidence that out of disorder a new order is created however we just don’t do well when we don’t know what’s coming or when.
We want to plan grand reunions, we want to know when we can hug our kids and receive a hug from a friendly soul and who can blame us? We are made to live in a community; not isolation. So let’s begin by focusing on ways we can feel empowered instead of powerless. It starts with gratitude and appreciation for what we do have and what we can do. To activate the feeling of empowerment, it’s important that we implement simple practices like letting people know we appreciate them by giving compliments, making phone calls and sending messages to those we’re grateful for. There’s a lot of power in directing our attention this way.
We also have to manage how much time we devote to the news. It’s important to be informed but cultivating calm is how we quiet fear; we cultivate calm by settling the mind through prayer or meditation, whatever resonates with you. We calm our mind through exercise and focusing our attention on what we can control; surrendering the worry thoughts about what we aren’t in charge of. It’s like fine-tuning our insides; instead of allowing fear to make us feel scrambled and overwhelmed, we can manage our feelings by focusing on calm.
As we go through the day, instead of looking to the outer world for certainty, let’s go inward and take charge of our attention and focus. Remember that how we feel is going to dictate how our day will unfold. When we begin the day with appreciation and healthy boundaries, we’re decluttering our minds and choosing to feel empowered. When we limit our exposure to stressful influences we’re nurturing our mental wellness, which is an investment worth making if what we want is to live well.
Here’s a checklist to help maintain focus:
This Wellings blog by Kathie Donovan was exclusively written for Wellings Communities and appeared first on MyWellings.com.
“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.” – Oprah Winfrey
Here are four strategies for cultivating emotional intelligence:
Take advantage of exercising inside at the Recharge Fitness Centre in the Wellings. In this week’s blog, get tips from our fitness program developer, Tracy Reid of Fitness Powers. Click here to watch the video. Enjoy!
