For all the Mama's reaching for another cup of coffee...

Though this blog will mainly focus on conveying how we incorporate our faith into daily living, I've decided to also include the other things that go into keeping our family healthy and balanced. For us, as I'm sure with many others, when Mama's tired or not feeling well, the whole family suffers.  It has taken me years in navigating the Motherhood to finally be able to share a certain formula in how to attain a daily routine that seems to make things flow smoothly (give or take) around here. Holly Pierlot's book "A Mother's Rule of Life" which was recommended to me by my friend, a missionary with a family, was the catalyst to my first real efforts in trying to find balance in a role that I wasn't so natural in! (Previous to my conversion let's just say I wasn't striving to become a wife or mother!-but that's another post ;-) So this will be a post that I add to, but I wanted to start this morning with something that I do each morning after prayer time. That spiritual discipline combined with this physical discipline has me armed with energy, focus, and motivation to tackle whatever the day holds.

Now, unless your like my sister "T", who has crazy motivation to work out, as in waking up at 5 in the a.m. just to make sure she gets that heart rate up for a set amount of time, you might be interested in my workout of choice! This workout is 23 minutes long and it gives you energy while healing, toning, realigning, and strengthening your body. It is awesome and I've done it daily for 7 months since my own mama recommended that I try it. (thanks Mom!) The value in this will be initially hard for you to see if you're a "calories burned counter" as it's impossible to calculate just how many you burn off during the day after you do all those tai chi plies and get those mitochondria furnaces going! (you'll get that line once you do an episode or two!) But the benefits of this go far beyond the calorie burned. Of course on an ideal day, I will be able to go for a walk or sneak in a ballet barre class to supplement this, but this workout has been key for me. For those of you who workout hard regularly, maybe just think of adding this to alleviate some of the pain your workouts have undoubtedly brought on. Drumroll please... It's called Classical Stretch and it's taught by Miranda Esmonde-White who is a former ballerina. You can buy the DVD's or try a mini session on youtube....or it's on PBS every morning except on Sundays. Her daughter, Sahre teaches Essentrics, a version of classical stretch, which thankfully, seems to be gaining in popularity.  Try this especially if you suffer from joint pain (hip, knee, wrist, ankles, etc), or frozen shoulder, neck or back problems- really if you have any stiffness or soreness. After having 3 babes, two that were 10 pounders, I had some real back issues that made my day pretty uncomfortable at times. It's important to give it your all during these short workouts as they are so brief and you have to push yourself for optimal results. Don't worry if you can't do some of the moves- do what you can each day and soon you'll be on point! Here's one of Sahre's youtube videos that I like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmBtv5T7JBE&feature=player_embedded