Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tinybuddha/~3/n2OyNBhQl8A/

“You think that the goal is to be over there, and we say the goal is the journey over there; the goal is the fun you have along the way on your way to over there.” ~Abraham

I have a clear memory of my mother looking at my bookshelves several years ago and commenting, “You’re always reading all these self-help books, and where has it gotten you?”

I responded with a quip about how I’ll always be working to align my personality with my soul, to which she scoffed and said, “When will you grow up and realize you have a great life, a great job, and great friends—and just enjoy it?!”

Of course, all I heard was “When are you going to grow up?” Her point, however, was a wise one: Just enjoy your life. She made a similar comment a couple of years later.

I had just been told the place I was living was going to be turned into an art studio for my landlady. Thankfully, she gave me two months notice to find a new place. But man, I loved my cinder block house on the river and was crushed by the news.

I called my mom in tears. I complained about how I’d never find someplace else so wonderful and how unhappy things were with my job. I talked about wanting to just sell everything I owned and take a walkabout.

Mom didn’t say a lot at the time. However, when I got …

Source: http://greatist.com/live/depression-treatment-apple-carekit-is-a-game-changer?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_http–greatistcom-

Finding the right treatment for anxiety and depression is exhausting—and it can leave you feeling defeated. Maybe you try talk therapy or an SSRI (or both), and then you continue to adjust and try new remedies until you find your literal happy medium, a process that takes most people at least six months. Part of the reason it takes so long is we’re not great at tracking whether the medication is actually helping. (When you can’t remember what you had for lunch yesterday, recalling how a drug made you feel over the last few weeks is no easy task.)

But that’s all about to change with CareKit, a game-changing software platform from Apple that will be released on iOS devices in April. CareKit includes four modules:

Care Card: Monitors medication or progress on treatment, like physical therapy.
Symptom and Measurement Tracker: Records physical signs, such as pain, fatigue, or infection, that suggest treatment should be changed.
Insight Dashboard: Analyzes data into graphs.
Connect: Shares medical data with doctors and family.

The platform will function much like Apple’s HealthKit, which is designed for health and fitness apps. Developers are already stepping up to the plate to take advantage of the new framework with apps to track depression, diabetes, and pos…

Source: http://www.theptdc.com/2016/03/10-retention-strategies-to-keep-your-online-fitness-clients-happy/

Personal training is a tough business.

Our periods of bounty and drought seem to come and go with the seasons. In January, our days are packed full of clients, all eager and excited to start training. How lucky we are, we think!

Come March though, and things look very different, bleak even.

There’s no beating around the bush here: Convincing clients to continue personal training is hard. Seriously hard. When expenses become an issue, we’re the first to go. That’s just the nature of the industry in which we work. Even in-house gym trainers experience difficulties with client retention, so is it a lost cause for us online personal trainers?

The Trouble With Going Digital

Thanks to technology, online personal training–be it one-on-one or groups–is more popular than ever for coaches. The appeal is clear: you get to work completely on your own schedule, coach clients from anywhere in the world; and if you have a day where all you want to do is sit on the couch in your underwear, watch TV, and do the occasional email check-in, you can do that (in theory).

That’s only the fantasy version. The reality of the onl…

Source: http://www.sonima.com/videos/regenerative-farming/

Watch video on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InPO1clcw44

The earth giveth, and its inhabitants taketh away. This approach of constantly taking without giving may ultimately leave us hungry and without a home soon. Which is why it’s very important to not only respect the environment that nourishes us, but also find ways to regenerate the land so that it can continue to produce a wealth of nutrient-dense foods to keep us healthy and well-fed—and not to mention keep earth green and beautiful. In this video, Sonima.com founder Sonia Jones visits Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York, where farm director Jack Algiere shares sustainable four-season farming practices used to cultivate rich, dark, moist soil—the secret ingredient to harvesting the best foods all-year-round.

Related: The Art of Seed Trials and Diversity in Sustainable Farming

The post What Is Resilient Regenerative Farming? appeared first on Sonima.

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Source: http://www.foodpolitics.com/2016/03/weekend-reading-concentration-and-power-in-the-food-system/

Philip H. Howard. Concentration and Power in the Food System: Who Controls What We Eat?  Bloomsbury, 2016.

I don’t know Philip Howard personally but I have long appreciated his graphic visualizations of the extent of concentration—only a few companies owning fast percentages of the market—in various industries:

Organic Processing Industry Structure, January 2016

Global Seed Industry Structure, 1996 to 2013

Concentration in the U.S. Wine Industry, December 2012

This brief book summarizes his work in developing these graphics and makes it clear why he thinks industrial concentration is a problem for American democracy.   Without competition, these companies get away with doing whatever they want.  He gives a few examples:

Walmart, which controls 33 percent of US grocery retailing, is challenged for exploiting its suppliers, taking advantage of taxpayer subsidies, and paying extremely low worker wages…Monsanto, which controls 26 percent of the global commercial seed market, is denounced for its influence on government polocies, spying on farmers it suspects of saving and replanting seeds, and the environmental impacts of herbicides tied to these seeds.  These impacts tend to disproportionately affect the disadvantaged—such as women, young children, recent immigrants, members of minority ethnic groups, and …

Source: http://greatist.com/move/cardio-workout-that-strengthens-your-core?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_http–greatistcom-

If you crave the rush of heart-pumping cardio but can’t stand the treadmill, you’ll love this no-equipment-required home workout.

You’ll spend the first two minutes doing a low-impact warm-up then transition into 18 minutes of fast footwork and basic boxing moves that engage your abs. Even without weights, you’ll break a sweat and exhaust multiple muscle groups. Finally, the instructor includes an active cool-down that engages your back body to balance your core and ends the workout with a soothing stretch.

The best part: You don’t even have to step foot in the gym. Squeeze this 25-minute routine into your day for twice the benefits in half the time.

To recap, you’ll do a 2-minute warm-up, followed by the workout below, and then a 6-minute cool-down.

Front Jab Pull Down With Knee Drive Jumping Jack With Punch Sumo Squat With Hook Squat With Front Kick Basic Punch Punch With Leg Cross Squat Punch High-Knee Pull With Side Crunch

​Looking for more short and effective at-home workouts? Grokker has thousands of routines, so you’ll never get bored. Bonus: For a limited time, Greatist readers get 40 percent off Grokker Premium (just $9 per month) and their first 14 days free. Sign up now!

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Source: http://evolutiontucson.com/whensciencegoeswrong/

Fitness trends come and go and over the past 20+ years I have been a part of and experienced most of them.  The past few years there has been a movement  of promoting the “science” of training, backed by research and University studies. Drop the Science of something in a blog, conversation or more importantly a sales pitch and you win instant credibility (to the naive). Science and research can be extremely beneficial  when applied correctly in the fitness / strength and conditioning field and there is large amounts of it available. Having said all of this there is a lot of skill in learning how to apply the “science” and understanding when good judgement and experience trump what research says about a specific concept.

Recently, I shopped another gym to see what type of programs they offered.  They drop the #science word a lot so I figured it was worth looking into. As a gym owner, staying connected to the industry is crucial if I want to stay on top of my game giving my clients the best overall experience. The gym I chose to visit promotes HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training ) and EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Consumption) as the science buzz words of choice. In theory high intensity bouts of conditioning will have increase…

Source: http://www.sonima.com/meditation/how-to-tell-your-story/

Watch video on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqYNcQlOLKc

We all have experiences in life that stir complicated feelings of stress, sadness, frustration, or confusion. When left unrecognized, these emotions can become obstacles to our personal growth and evolution. In this session with Nate Howard, a motivational speaker based in San Diego, California, you’ll learn to identify the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that surround a pivotal event in your life. When you put your story into words you can open your mind and your heart and let go. Follow along as Howard leads you through a poetic meditation that will help you learn how to tell your story and experience release.

Related: An Introduction to Poetic Meditation

The post How to Tell Your Story Through Poetic Meditation appeared first on Sonima.

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Source: http://greatist.com/live/aerie-viral-body-positive-campaign-is-actually-a-spoof?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_http–greatistcom-

It’s been a banner year for body positivity, so we weren’t the least bit surprised when Aerie, American Eagle’s lingerie brand, announced #AerieMAN, a campaign with ordinary guys (OK, one has a six-pack, but real men can have abs too!) modeling underwear. The unretouched photos have the tagline “the real you is sexy” emblazoned on them. Aerie is already known for not retouching photos of women in their skivvies, so this seemed like a natural next step.

Then we started to notice little hints that #AerieMAN might not be a genuine campaign but rather an elaborate spoof. The company’s spokesperson won’t confirm that it’s a parody, but we found a mountain of evidence:

Aerie is technically a women’s lingerie brand and does not sell any men’s items. Instead all men’s underwear is sold under the American Eagle Outfitters label. The #AerieMan campaign includes four men, but the product pages on American Eagle’s website include only photos of Matt, the career model with the six-pack. When The Huffington Post requested hi-res images, the photos they received were labeled “ae_spoof.” Photo: The Huffington Post

And then there are the videos. Let’s dive into each one individually.

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Source: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/03/24/471719770/eggs-become-art-to-celebrate-lifes-rebirth?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=thesalt

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Ukrainians have been crafting pysanky, elaborately decorated eggs, for thousands of years. “There’s an ancient legend that as long as pysanky are made, evil will not prevail in the world,” says one pysanky artist.

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Keith Ewing/Flickr

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A sculpture made of 3,000 wooden painted Easter eggs constructed at the 1,000-year-old Monastery of Caves in Kiev, during Easter in 2010.

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Sergei Chuzavkov/AP

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Famous Ukrainian Easter egg artist Galina Ivane…