"Being taught to read before you are ready is like being handed the keys to a secret garden, only to discover it's barren."

Paraphrased from a brain development book I read when I was a first time mother, Jane Healy points out in Your Child's Growing Mind, that reading is not simply an act of putting letters into words and words into sentences. Instead, we read to create meaning in our lives. For example, the word child is not simply a c, h, i, l, and d put sequentially next to one another. Instead this word invokes memories, meaning, opinions, thoughts, fears, hopes, and dreams. (Similarly, the word simoom means little to anyone who doesn't live near the Sahara.)

Instead of letters and words, the real precursor to reading is an engagement of our environment . . . so that we can make connections . . . figure out differences . . . and decide what's importance to us.

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For some it can be the same for how we view our bodies.

As long as you live in an industrialized nation, have stood in a checkout line, and viewed fashion magazines, you have been promised the amazing and incredible life that accompanies some ideal of a perfect body. Take some pouty lips, plus a bubble butt, minus the thighs touching, add in breasts, and luscious eyes . . . and voila . . . you are promised happiness, sexiness, popularity, likability, extroversion, and having "arrived".

But . . . to dismantle our bodies in terms of the arms we want and the thighs we desire . . . in hopes that we'll be able to piece ourselves back together into a whole, fulfilled human is missing the point (at best).

Perhaps you've known someone who has tried to do this.. It's usually a woman. She . . .

is overly thin
acts edgy
has a far-off gaze in her eyes
is unsatisfied with her life

Has she been taught that a life of thinness guarantees status, happiness, and a beautiful secret garden to live in?

Now that she is thin (possibly even perfectly shaped), is she standing . . . prized key in hand with only a barren garden in view?

This can happen if she was not also taught the importance of . . .

self love

self protection

growth mindset.

Truth is that no matter how sexy and appealing that perfect body is . . . we don't live our lives from the outside in.

We live and experience our lives from the inside out.

In our personal training studio, this is one of our keys to successful clients . . . leading with self-love within a safe environment.

Clients learn to be the landscape architects of their own beautiful life vision.

We take her vision and design the map to help her achieve it.

With her new keys in hand, she plants, tends, weeds, tills, and through patience and perseverance cultivates her own secret garden.

No one else gets to design the gardens of our lives.

Make sure that's the case.

And if part of your garden vision includes health and strength, ensure that your fitness plans are founded in love not hate.

For our lives and healthful bodies grow best in the fertile soil of self-care.

Cheers and hugs,
-Coach Rebecca

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