July 2012 2nd Annual Self-Care Retreat: Movement

Our theme this week for the 2012 Self-Care Retreat – led by Cheryl of Gluten Free Goodness – is movement.  Shirley of Gluten Free Easily is our hostess this week and wrote about incorporating additional movement into her routine.  Cheryl also wrote a post on what movement means to her.  Both post are beautiful and touched me in different ways, so I urge you to read them.

My journey in regarding self-care as movement has been long and circuitous, and something I have written about over the years of this blog:

• On yoga (July 2009)
• On wishing to incorporate more movement in my life (September 2009) 
• On my Tuesday Night Yoga Promise (May 2010)
• On slowly but surely building more movement into my life in 2010 (January 2011)
• On meeting my goal to have a regular yoga practice again, yet not realizing I had met this goal (January 2011)
• On reframing movement as mind/body goals (February 2011)
• On wanting to make my movement routine a morning routine (April 2011)
• On my cautious optimism regarding said morning routine (June 2011)
• On completing a 21 day yoga challenge (June 2011)
• On why movement never came easily to me (this is actually last year’s movement post as part of our self-care retreat) (July 2011)
• On how much more movement is now part of my life (October 2011)
• On transforming my mornings (November 2011)
• On amazement as to how ingrained my morning exercise habit has become (January 2012)

It has been a long process – the posts span three years, but the last time, until recently months, that I had had such a regular movement routine was nine years ago.  Let’s just say that late 2003 until mid-2009 is when movement was not so present in my life.  To this day, I always have fear of going back to the worst part of that time (2007/2008), when I was so congested and tired and achy and stiff and would sleep for the better part of the weekends to get through my work-weeks.  Of course, not knowing gluten was one of my biggest problems, my tired self made a lot of simple meals of whole wheat pasta and vegetables, meals that would invariably send me right back to sleep post-dinner (gluten has a sleep inducing effect on me, almost immediately, followed by other symptoms). I look back at that time as particularly sad, as I remember feeling so trapped in a body that no longer felt like my own.

That is why both Cheryl’s and Shirley’s posts spoke to me, because they reminded me of two things:

1. Even at my worse, I actually still walked as much as possible, yet never really gave myself credit for it. As Shirley says: “never discredit the importance of walking.” Back then, I was just sad I could not do more than walk and just kept focusing on how hard any other movement was.

2. Even if I have a huge health set-back, or face new health issues, nothing can take away the progress I have made.  As Cheryl so eloquently wrote: “it will never be quite ground zero, because I have every walk that I have done.”  Even if my feet and knees rebel against more yoga or going to the gym or barre or zumba – or if I develop some other health issues that affect my mobility, I will still have every morning workout or yoga class I have done in the last year or so.

And on that note, a little more about this month’s self-care retreat:

Our fantastic group of bloggers and themes:

• June 30th Food: Cheryl of Gluten-Free Goodness
• July 7^th Support and Connection: Valerie of City Life Eats
• July 14^th Movement : Shirley of Gluten Free Easily (GFE)
• July 21^st Creativity: Carrie of Ginger Lemon Girl
• July 28^th Inward Reflection: Iris of The Daily Dietribe

These posts are to inspire you all to make July a month of reflecting on self-care and the many ways to nourish ourselves. We would like everyone to participate in this event in a way that feels appropriate to them, whether that’s through personal reflection, journal or other self-care. If you would like to share your experience with self-care, we would love to include you in the experience, whether you join us for one week or every week. You can write generally about self-care and how you include it in your life, or “try on” one of the practices we’re blogging about over the course of the next week (food, support and connection, movement, creativity and inward reflection). We ask that you link back to this post so that more people can learn about this retreat, and leave a comment for the weekly theme host, too! At the end of the month, we’ll include a roundup of all the self-care posts you write to inspire others to work on their own self-care.

As a little added incentive, for each post on your goals and your progress you link back here or one of the other co-hosts, you’ll be entered to receive a $50 gift certificate to Nuts.com (they are not sponsoring, Cheryl is donating this gift and wanted something with healthy gluten-free, vegan, sugar-free, etc. options).

I updated last year’s badge to use for the retreat; feel free to use it in your posts. If you would like to be included in our roundup and the drawing, please email a link to your post, along with your name and blog name, to us at selfcareretreat at gmail dot com by July 30, 2011.

Non-bloggers who would like to contribute, please e-mail the full text to the same address and it will be included in the roundup.

For a “flavor” of previous retreats, here’s a link to the July Self-Care Retreat and the December Sanity Retreat.. 

Since we are halfway through the month, here are the post for this year’s retreat so far:

Welcome & kick off posts from:

• Shirley GFE
• Carrie of Ginger Lemon Girl
• Valerie of City Life Eats
• Iris of Daily Dietribe
• Cheryl of Gluten-Free Goodness 

Food as Self-Care

• Food Restrictions as Self-Care (Cheryl of Gluten-Free Goodness)
• Thoughts on Food and Self Care Valerie of City Life Eats
• Check in from Valerie

Self-Care Through Connection

• Support and Connection Valerie of City Life Eats
• Putting life in perspective Iris of Daily Dietribe

Self-Care Through Movement

• Movement (reinventing a game from childhood) Shirley of Gluten Free Easily
• Joy of Movement Cheryl of Gluten-Free Goodness