What are your daily tips for maintaining a healthy body and staying motivated?
As New Yorker, it’s essential to manage activity, the mind and stress in order to maintain a healthy body and mind. I start the day with a breath and meditation practice to clear and focus my mind. If I skip days, I notice my attention dissipates and my motivation to maintain a healthy balance between activity and rest wanes as well. I often set an intention for my day while meditating, to set the tone of my day and/or set out a healthy task to accomplish.
Sometimes the healthy task is a mental attitude, sometimes it’s a physical one. To stay healthy, maintaining a balance between strength, flexibility and restoration of my body and mind is important to my health, so I set goals as to which classes or practices I will engage in that will support these objectives.
In order to stay motivated, I choose classes and teachers which inspire me, or I will touch base with a friend to accompany me. I like to journal about my meditation and breath practices, as thoughts from under the surface rise to consciousness and help me to understand where I might need more work or what might need to let go of.
I often honor the voice of my body, as it has intelligence that my conscious mind is not aware of, and through this connection, I am able to strengthen and nourish my body, which brings a sense of harmony to my mind as well.
Karen Nourizadeh is a yoga and meditation instructor, who has taught thousands of New Yorkers in group and corporate classes and in private instruction. She trains teachers and health workers on the benefits of meditation and yoga, and her tips have been published in national and local publications.
