Yoga: Heart Opening

I have spent years watching my teacher smile and purr as she basks in a heart opening yoga posture. While I frown and grumble, trying to get through the backbend, looking forward to the next pose, anything else.

Carson Efrid Westerlund swinging the door of the heart wide
open in Milos, Grece. August 2012

What most people call back bending, many yogis refer to as heart opening—a small matter of semantics that reflects a great deal about the perspective taken during the posture.

The heart is the metaphorical home of such good emotions: generosity, compassion, sincerity, receptivity, humility, love. Inviting these qualities through a heart opening practice makes it easy to see the good around you and in you.

Within our heart resides our heart guru, the innate intelligence that when followed guides us to our true self, our joyful self.

The yogic system of energetic anatomy places great importance on the qualities of the heart center, or anahata chakra. It serves as the gateway of integration allowing the energetic centers below and above it in the body to integrate, bringing together the body and the mind, the self and the other, the masculine and feminine, earth and heaven.

The heart organ is amazing, pumping blood through our body all day, everyday of our life. Through its work all of the extremities of our body are nourished and toxins are removed. The heart is a tireless worker—when it gives out, life ends.

The practice of opening the heart, stretching the muscles of the front heart and strengthening the muscles of the back and belly creates a receptive and open physical home for heart.

I recently came in contact with the following snippet of wisdom, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”*

I have found it helpful to apply this idea in my practice. Rather than attempting to embody the full luscious backbends I've seen in others, I look for those things that limit me. I identify the muscles, tension, and blockages that bar my happy expression of a backbend. I practice with the intention of lengthening my spine by softening the upper gluts and firming the belly while rolling my shoulder blades back and down, bringing them into the back of the heart. All of these actions together move my heart center up and out. And I find my perception of space expanding from the usual 180° or 270° to a full 360°.

May you live fully from your own open heart.

Join me in exploring heart opening postures in my Thursday night flow class through March 14.

*While frequently misattributed to the great Sufi poet Rumi, the correct source appears to be Jesus' Course in Miracles(2000) by Helen Schucman and William Thetford, Ch. 16 The Forgiveness of Illusions, p. 162.

Fat Burning Zone Myth

It has been said that the best way to burn fat is to train within the fat burning zone. This fat burning zone is understood to be around the training intensity of 60-70% of your max heart rate*. Even though training at this intensity might use a higher percentage of calories from fat for fuel, there is a problem with this way of thinking. 

Staying within the fat burning zone can cause the overall total calories burned to be fairly low, and losing weight is all about total caloric expenditure! So keeping the intensity down and the heart rate lower just so you can stay in the "fat burning zone", can have a negative affect on the total calories you burn from a work out session. For example, walking on a treadmill at 4 mph for 60 minutes can burn somewhere around 300 to 350 calories (or more depending on your weight), while running at 7 mph for half the time can burn around 350 to 400 calories. Try don't be so focused on your heart rate that you are not pushing yourself and getting the most effective work out you possibly can. Don't get me wrong heart rate is a great way to gage your intensity, but also think about how your body is feeling during the exercise, and how difficult it is.

A great way to gage this is your Rate of Perceived Exertion or RPE. This scale can help you determine the intensity level of your training by how difficult you feel the exercise is. The higher the rating you give yourself during exercise, the higher the intensity that you are working at.


Here is a great Treadmill work out to try so you can increase the intensity and total calorie expenditure that only takes a little more than 30 minutes.

Walk at a speed of 4 mph at an incline of 12 for 3 minutes, run at 7mph at an incline of 0 for 1 minute. Repeat 8 times. Cool down walk at 3 mph at 0 incline for 3 minutes. Total work out 35 minutes.
Adjust the speeds if needed to match your fitness level, but make sure to keep it challenging!

*Max heart rate = 220 - age.

Recreation Center Notices and Updates

We have hit the ground running here getting ready for all of our Spring Sports! We are still taking online registrations for Youth Soccer so it's not too late. If you are interested in signing up for the Youth Competitive League, call the recreation center because there are still a couple spots left! (435) 563-0048.

And, for your convenience, we have installed a brand new whiteboard outside the Aerobics Room! Ok, I know that doesn't sound too exciting, but it is. 

 

  We will put class changes, instructor subs, and time changes on this schedule so you can keep up to date on our Group Fitness Program! We will continue to email the changes to those on our distribution list as well. If you are interested in being included on this list just call the Recreation Center to let us know.

Stay healthy. Stay happy.

Spring Adult Leagues

Happy Valentine's Day!  We hope your day is filled with love and joy and happiness.  If it hasn't been yet, head on down to the Recreation Center for a good, hard workout and we guarantee you'll find that joy that comes from a job well done. 

We have now started taking registrations for our Spring Adult Leagues - Volleyball (Women's) and Basketball (Men's, Women's, 6 foot and under, and Prep).  You can sign up online at www.smithfieldrecreation.com or come into the Recreation Center and we'll help you out.  $25 is required to secure a spot in the league. Let us know if you have any questions!

Increase Calorie Expenditure and Stop Exercising!?

Okay well not exactly, let me explain. After you finish an exercise session there is a period of time where your body is restoring itself back to it's pre-exercise state. This process is referred to as EPOC (excess postexercise oxygen consumption) or more commonly known as afterburn.  During this time the body continues to require oxygen at a higher rate than before the exercise began, also causing energy to be expended at an elevated rate. Basically, you are still burning calories even though you have stopped exercising. In the graph below you can see the oxygen needs of the body through a exercise session. The green shaded area is the EPOC period. Let's say for example this specific graph shows the oxygen needs for jogging at 5mph on a treadmill for 30 minutes. If you increased the intensity of the workout to running 7mph for 20 minutes the oxygen requirement would be greater causing the EPOC phase to be even greater and increasing the calories expended during that time.  

The research suggests that a higher-intensity intermittent type training program has a greater effect on increasing the EPOC phase. It also appears that resistance training produces greater EPOC than aerobic. So if you are feeling like have hit a plateau and not losing any weight even though you are doing a lot of cardio, try changing it up. Your body has probably made adjustments to your training regimen and needs to be overloaded again. Increase your intensity, and do a combined resistance and cardio training circuit. Here is an example work out for you to try:

Do this 6 minute circuit 3 times:

1 minute alternating lunges
30 seconds push ups
repeat
30 seconds of jumping jacks
30 seconds of high knees
repeat
1 minute crunches


References:
Resistance training and Epoc. Jeff M. Reynolds and Len Kravitz. Ph.D.

Crazy or Dedicated?

We are all about fitness here at the Smithfield Recreation Center.  Racquetball, running, weight lifting, yoga, tumbling, softball, soccer, biking, hiking, swimming-wherever your exercise love is, we encourage you to pursue it!  We do some pretty crazy stuff at the Rec Center (half marathons, early morning Zumba classes, late night basketball tournaments) but who would ever think of doing a 50 mile ride on spin bikes?!? 

Yes, you read that right.  
5 am.  
50 miles.  
On a SPIN BIKE. 

Last Thursday morning, January 31, 30+ 'crazy' riders hopped on their bikes for a 50 mile mid-winter ride.  And they had a blast! 

4:30 am. Neat rows of bikes with goody bags from the sponsors are ready for each rider.

Instructor Matt Robbins helped the class push through with music, encouragement, and prizes!

Joe Beck everybody.

Scott Archibald with a smile still on his face!

50 miles. Done.

The masterminds behind it all.

After a day or two (or three or four) of sore muscles, the participants are all smiles and proud of this insane accomplishment. Nice work everyone!

Thank you to everyone who made this possible! So much support from sponsors and thank you ICON for lending some extra bikes. Unfortunately, there were some that had to be turned away due to lack of space and bike availability.  But don't worry, just wait until you see what is planned for next winter....

Bigger=better.