What are the non-negotiable items in your life?
Specifically, what is non-negotiable because your health and well-being depend on it?
This is different for each of us, and recently I guest blogged about a personal non-negotiable that has enabled me to be free from the back pain that plagued me for more than a year.
For all of you who subscribed to my blog this week, thanks to that article, thank you; you know exactly what I’m talking about: the Gokhale Method, invented by the ingenious Esther Gokhale, who also happens to be an incredible dancer, teacher, and community builder.
Esther and her team offer 1:1 therapeutic coaching for those of us who are working to overcome injury in addition to a robust dance and exercise program that’s geared for maintenance and injury prevention.
In addition to helping me feel great physically, I love how Esther’s daily 1-2-3 program functions a bit like an “artist’s date,” the prescription that Julia Cameron in her classic The Artist’s Way gives to anyone wishing to lead a creative life. For Cameron: the “artist date,” together with the Morning Pages, is non-negotiable. In her classes, Esther offers artistic images of people, animals or deities that exemplify principles of her method. In this age of Covid I’m still not visiting museums, so I appreciate how Esther incorporates imagery from around the world.
I also appreciate how every class is different. Yes, there are favorite songs and steps that are played and practiced every week or so, but Esther is constantly introducing new material and step combinations. This variety of movement is good for the brain; according to Harvard Medical School, studies have shown that dance “helps reduce stress, increases levels of the feel-good hormone serotonin, and helps develop new neural connections, especially in regions involved in executive function, long-term memory, and spatial recognition.” After one of Esther’s bharata natyam or capoeira classes, I feel like I’ve given my brain a workout.
If you’re interested in knowing what “bean-shaped feet” or an activated “inner corset” —two Gokhale principles— look like, or if you want to explore a different approach to healing back pain or want to change up your exercise routine, I invite you to check out the Gokhale method. Esther offers a free 7-day trial, or if you want to try the program for ten days, send me an email, and I’ll sign you up myself.
As I discuss in my guest blog, the term “non-negotiable” as a principle of functional nutrition and lifestyle comes from Andrea Nakayama, CEO of the Functional Nutrition Alliance. In preparation for Yom Kippur, I’m talking about fasting from a Jewish perspective with Andrea, as part of her mini-series “Fasting: Tradition, Therapy, Trigger?” Join us LIVE this Tuesday at 3 pm ET (noon, PT) on the Facebook page of the Functional Nutrition Alliance.
Thank you so much for this information. I look forward to your weekly blog. Have a good day! :)