I feel extremely blessed right now. Last week, I purchased a new Trek Domane AL 2 Endurance Bike, which I picked up on Thursday. I took it for a 12-mile spin this morning. Although my toes felt like they froze off from the cold (toe socks and shoes don’t provide much insulation), it was otherwise a great experience! I am also very happy to be evaluating this past month’s challenge. It’s not an exaggeration to say it was the most beneficial one I’ve done to date.

WHAT I LEARNED:

• More effective than karma points – I have used a self-generated karma scale as a source of intrapersonal validation and honoring of middle path for several years. However, it operates on a more cerebral level and doesn’t often give the visceral boost that a simple, “Good job!” from someone can do. In this regard, the journaling was a smashing success.
• Strengthened my empowering belief in consciousness conservation – I don’t talk about my metaphysical beliefs much because there aren’t any people or groups that I am associated with that hold them in the same way I do. For this reason, they sometimes feel completely intellectual and unreal. This challenge opened a sense of deep connection with my spiritual side and allowed me to actualize my beliefs in a practical way.
• Produced spontaneous gratitude – Many times throughout the month, I felt this totally unprompted surge of joie de vivre. Simple things like taking a deep breath, drinking a glass of water, and meditating felt hyperreal and wondrous. Very early on, I had a random sustained period of euphoria.

• Net energy gain in the moment for most of the challenge – All of the journaling challenges I have completed in the past – gratitude, reframing self-talk – have been helpful in allowing me to gain perspective about something or skillfully deal with some unpleasant emotions. However, although I was grateful for them overall, there definitely was an energy sink in committing to make an entry each day. This month was the opposite; I felt an energy boost almost every time after dictating.
• Felt a bit unnecessary the last week – Towards the end of the challenge, it started to lose its effectiveness. Making the entries was still nourishing, but felt more like a chore. I suppose this is to be expected with any new practice. Everything changes and getting attached to anything will ultimately produce some suffering in the process.

WHAT I WILL CONTINUE GOING FORWARD:

• One sentence journaling – I came up with this objective after a related challenge this summer, but didn’t follow through with it. I feel much more eager and optimistic in continuing this coming off the endorphins I experienced this past month.
• Use phone app instead of computer app – I believe one of the reasons I didn’t stick with journaling before is because I was using my laptop instead of my phone. There is something incredibly calming about sitting in a recliner and dictating my journal entry as opposed to sitting at my desk and typing it in.
• Look into backing up my entries – One of the downsides to using a free app is that you may not be able to backup your journal. I would like the opportunity to go back and read some of my entries from a particular time if I wish to do so, especially if I am going to become more consistent in writing.
• New focus for journal entries each month – I think this can aid in maintaining interest in journaling. If there is a new focus for each month, it adds a layer of purposefulness onto the experience. I am not saying I have to stay on this topic every day, but it is there as a helpful default.
• Commit to journaling as a practice, not a project – If I am constantly trying to create utility or meaning out of an entry, this is likely to lead to frustration. However, if I think more long-term, I can appreciate the action even when I’m not feeling it. This is very similar to my approach to meditation. I honor the practice whether it is easy, difficult, enjoyable, or painful. This elevates it to a meaningful experience regardless of the immediate outcome for any particular session.

I feel this past month has reignited my interest in journaling for the fun of it! Also, if approached skillfully, it can be a great way to enhance my experience and understanding of life.

Namaste.

It’s new challenge time again! I was thinking I would do a physically strenuous challenge for this month, but recent foot pain and dysfunction have made that option unwise at this time. Instead, I am going to do something that is long overdue. One of the areas of life I have been trying to restore in the last few years is my dysregulated sleep quality and schedule. This month is all about creating and maintaining a healthy and sustainable pre-sleep and post-sleep routine.

Here are the specifications for the challenge:

• Create a separate podcast account that is strictly for bedtime listening – I want to have a list of podcast episodes on my phone that are solely used for falling asleep and are updated regularly. What works best for me at this time, perhaps paradoxically, is casual political commentary.
• Do inversion practice for 5 minutes immediately before getting in bed – I was thinking about doing an inversion-specific challenge, but in looking into it discovered there are actually some benefits to sleep from inverting beforehand. My main focus is headstands, but I’m okay with sometimes just doing partial inversions on days I’m not feeling it.

• Decrease time spent watching TV or YouTube in bed to zero – This will be my third or fourth time to do this, but I am optimistic about it sticking this time since I’m combining it with a lot of other practices and aids. Also, I am not doing this all at once; I will taper down slowly over the course of the challenge.
• Turn off Wi-Fi at night – I had my students use an article on the dangers of wireless radiation as their scientific reasoning practice at the beginning of the year. Since that time, I have been more mindful of my own exposure. Unplugging at night is a great and easy way to reduce that, and may also have a slight impact on sleep quality.
• Reduce the amount of time between waking up and getting up – Currently, I have a series of small actions I take over the course of 30-35 minutes to gently coax myself out of bed. I developed these when simply judging myself for not getting up was unhelpful. I believe I am ready to curtail these down to maybe 10 minutes.
• Drink water with lemon first thing upon getting up – When researching effective practices to engage in immediately upon rising, drinking water was at the top of almost every list. Adding some lemon flavor can make that even better. I will start by just using essential oil and purchase and prepare some fresh lemons as I progress.
• Meditate outside for 5 minutes in the morning immediately after stretching – This will entail budgeting a few extra minutes in the morning to fit the practice in, but I think it will be worth it. Meditation has been the single most effective aid at regulating my nervous system, stabilizing my emotions, and increasing my level of gratitude. I am excited to try starting the day off with it.

I anticipate some struggles and failures as I implement these calibrations. The area of sleep has been one I’ve struggled with in different ways for decades. However, I am at a stable place in my sleep regimen currently, and hope to supercharge it over the course of this month.

Namaste.

Since the 2024 presidential election two and a half weeks ago, I have thought a decent amount about what, if any, underlying values are necessary for people to both be able to vehemently disagree with one another, while at the same time genuinely respect their experience and viewpoint.

A lot of assertive ideas have been bandied about as universal starting points, only to have a huge portion of the country utterly toss them out as bogus. Some common refrains I hear from a variety of sides:

• Trust the experts – What qualifies someone as an expert? What if the experts disagree? What if the experts are disconnected from the average person’s experience?
• Have faith in God’s plan – Can we prove God even exists? How can we be sure we are interpreting God’s plan correctly? What if God’s plan turns out to be evil?
• Believe in science – Why is science any more valid as a starting point than faith? Who decides when scientific consensus is reached? How can science instill values?
• Avoid extremes – What if an extreme position is the right position in some cases? Who decides what is extreme? Wouldn’t this cause us to shift values every time we visited a different culture?
• Use common sense – Does this essentially mean just trust our gut? If someone else’s gut doesn’t align with ours, does that mean they have the wrong type of common sense? What if Einstein was right when he said,

• Do what’s right – How can we know our feelings of morality are anything more than just saying “Boo!” or “Hooray!” in reaction to certain ideas and actions? If what is right is not dependent on what we feel, to whom should we sell our soul: Our perception of God? Pure rationality? Popular consensus?
• Avoid tribalism – How big does a group have to be before it becomes a tribe? Isn’t unity a desirable quality? If ancient human survival depended on being part of a group, are we asking people to discard an essential part of what it means to be human?

To be fair, I have used all of these refrains at one time or another in my life. Usually I would preface them with the word ‘just’ to emphasize the seeming simplicity of it all. Just trust the experts! Just have faith! Just use some common sense! Just do what’s right! It’s as if I thought the answer to all life’s problems could be illuminated in a single-sentence epiphany.

Looking back on my usages of these talking points, one common thread stands out to me: Arrogance. I really have the audacity to believe that in my paltry time on earth, I have figured out for myself – much less FOR EVERYONE – the obviously simple truth that informs all behavior, all morality, or all truth? A truth that countless philosophers, scientists, politicians, and theologians have debated for eons?

No, I think the only way to experience a sense of connection that is independent of a person’s fundamental epistemology, political alignment, or personal values is to embrace humility. I’m not proposing this is easy; in fact, it might be one of the hardest mindsets to live out. No one likes uncertainty. However, if you care at all about wanting to understand people that are radically different from you or learn from experiences that are utterly foreign from your own, I don’t see another option.

Maybe you are thinking to yourself, “Nah, such-and-such is the truth and that is just the way it is!” If so, I would encourage you to try this simple exercise. Ask yourself the question, “How do I know?” If you can give a compelling answer, then ask the question again. Usually, it only takes about 4 of these queries to get to the point where you honestly have to admit, “I don’t know.”

That. That right there is the bedrock of humility.

Humility does not mean giving up your convictions. However, the recognition that we don’t have absolute certainty can at the very least instill in us some curiosity and compassion for the beliefs and practices of those that are fundamentally different from our own. It can bring some much needed grace into our lives and relationships.

For me personally, I would like to transform my reactive “that is stupid” response into a more humble, “Hmm, that doesn’t make sense to me. What am I missing?” Every time I have chosen to take this approach, I have never been unhappy I did so.

Namaste.

I sometimes have people ask me, “What is a Buddhist like?” My thought upon hearing this is ‘pretty much the same as any other lovely person that exists in the world.’ However, I think what the question is driving at is: What virtues are at the core of Buddhist life? When you set aside the philosophical aspect of non-attachment and just look at character qualities, what would I expect to find?

One of the spokes of the dharma wheel is skillful effort, which involves cultivating what in Buddhism are referred to as the 4 heavenly abodes. I remember these using the acronym SCEL (and yes I realize this is not an actual word).

• Sympathetic Joy: experiencing the joy of others as if it was our own
• Compassion: experiencing the pain or sorrow of others as it if it was our own
• Equanimity: holding a balanced mixture of all emotions
• Lovingkindness: exhibiting complete and unrestrained friendliness

Of these four, equanimity is probably the most recognizably Buddhist, probably because of its association with meditation. However, a lot of people (myself included in the past), picture an equanimous person as someone who is never ruffled no matter what life throws their way – someone who is imperturbably calm and steady.

This stereotype is understandable because in the macro-sense, this is true. However, in the moment-by-moment sense, this is not so at all. In fact, pure equanimity implies feeling all emotions in their fullest sense, without judgment or embarrassment.

When something unjust happens, we can feel deep anger that leads to righteous action. When something painful happens, we can feel unabashed sorrow. When something exciting piques our interest, we can feel incredible passion. However, cultivating equanimity means accepting the truth that hanging out in any of these valences for an extended period of time is tiring. So after fully experiencing the anger, sorrow, or passion, we hold it in gentle awareness and come back to a balanced center.

Over the last couple of months, I have experienced increasing levels of equanimity in the midst of daily life. Sometimes, it seems inexplicable. A week and a half ago, I had a pretty rough day at work and felt like just stewing in a cloud of negativity on my drive home. However, I decided instead to practice curiosity and compassion: to acknowledge and unpack what I was feeling in all of its intensity without judgment or reaction.

A weird phenomenon occurred when I did this. I arrived home and almost suddenly started feeling upbeat and almost euphoric (not a normal occurrence for me following a bout of negativity). I decided to be curious about this as well and embrace the feeling without attachment. After a while, my mood settled into a more balanced position. The negativity and euphoria were still within me, and both had their purposes, but integrating them into my natural resting state was ultimately more comfortable than hanging out in either extreme.

I experienced a feeling of deep contentment. The cool thing about this experience is that it is completely replicable. Normally, the swing in my emotional disposition is not so pronounced, but as I have cultivated this mind state, I have discovered that although I can’t banish unpleasant emotions, I always have access to finding this place of balance. Just realizing this opens up a well of gratitude.

I am feeling more emotions at this point in my life than I have in a long time. I also feel more at peace with myself than I have in a long time. These things are not contradictory. In fact, I think they are intricately connected with a proper understanding of equanimity.

Namaste.

A few months ago, I embarked on a month of loving my former self. Ever since leaving med school, I have experienced a boatload of guilt and/or shame on a semi-regular basis. Even after working through a lot of the issues that lead to my breakdown multiple times over, I still retained a cacophony of unpleasant emotional noise from the past. My diagnosis was that I held bitterness at this earlier version of myself and my prescription was basically an elaborate self-forgiveness challenge.

I learned and grew a lot from the challenge. I unpacked most of the various threads that lead to my unraveling and the unpleasant current emotions that had glommed onto each thread. However, at the end of the process, although I gained an enormous amount of context and compassion for myself, I still felt like the whole mess was largely unresolved.

My eventual epiphany was that the root of my emotional turmoil was not guilt, anger, anxiety, or bitterness (even though these were close outgrowths), but rather deep embarrassment. I think one reason this is the case is that with most of the other uncomfortable emotions, I feel a sense of familiarity and confidence in dealing with them, even if it is painful and difficult work.

A podcast episode I listened to recently (either from Modern Wisdom or Ten Percent Happier) challenged the well-known idea that all growth comes when we get out of our comfort zone. The guest coined the phrase ‘uncertainty zone’ and proposed this to be the place where the rubber really meets the road in terms of learning about oneself and accomplishing not just personal growth but radical transformation.

Embarrassment is one emotion I feel deep and abiding uncertainty in navigating. In fact, it was this emotion more than any other that led to my general feeling withdrawal when I was a teenager. It induces in me a sense of panic, of unworthiness, and a host of downstream emotional ripples. It turns on my fight/flight/freeze/fawn reflex to full capacity.

I’m struggling to even write this blog post, because just contemplating the concept of embarrassment unleashes a cascade of moments and sensations from the past that causes my panic level to start rising. This is the zone of not just discomfort for me, but an abiding and almost existential aura of uncertainty.

I would love to say that this understanding opened up some sense of release and acceptance towards myself and the past, but that is not the case. If anything, I feel like I have regressed to the age of 13 and am struggling to breathe through the murky and toxic fog of an adolescent brain.

However, one positive thing I have experienced very recently is a feeling of resilience. This has been cultured through my firm commitment to middle path in all situations, developing a daily practice of intrapersonal validation, and my trust in the meta-narrative into which my life fits.

It is from this newfound sense of resilience and optimism that I write this post. I’m not sure how I will learn to sit with and accept my Achilles’ Heel, but I do know that being honest about it is the right action for me in this moment. All life is a series of moments and I trust I will be able to take the small action necessary at each juncture.

Namaste.

The inspiration for this challenge came from an episode on the Modern Wisdom podcast. I believe the guest being featured was Derek Sivers. However, even if I am misremembering the contribution, I do know that listening to this conversation resonated with a lot of the thoughts and challenges I have been experiencing over the last few years. Focusing on believing and doing things because they are useful instead of because they are “true” has become very central to the way I wish to operate.

I have kept a gratitude journal on and off for a few years now. The benefits of gratitude have been widely studied and reported. However, I personally have experienced that without engaging in underlying personal validation, expressing gratitude can feel a bit inorganic and performative.

This month is all about establishing and maintaining a more positive and healthy emotional baseline. I believe doing so will make gratitude more spontaneous and less transactional.

Here are the particulars of the challenge:

• Write 3 “good job” entries to myself each day using the Gratitude app journal –
  These could be done all at once at the end of the day, or singly as I recognize wise action in myself throughout the day. I can get more creative with the entries as I progress, but I want to start out simple. E.g. “Good job taking a few minutes to sit with the unpleasant agitation you felt after 8th period instead of giving in to avoidance.”
• If possible, focus on times during the day where I consciously used middle way –
  
  In addition to supplying daily doses of personal validation, my other goal is to create a ritual that affirms my empowering spiritual beliefs, primarily consciousness conservation and karma. As I believe good karma is acquired by living in middle way, I want this to be the main emphasis. This could be on a more macro systems-level or micro situational-level.
• Share one of these entries with someone else at least once per week – As valuable as INTRA-personal validation is, I want to also cultivate opportunities for INTER-personal validation as well. I have several obvious venues I can think of for this: Unitarian fellowship, Secular Buddhism zoom call, affirmative prayer sessions, or weekly blogs. However, I want to think about sharing in other contexts as well when appropriate.

I am incredibly excited and optimistic about this challenge. I am hopeful about this expanding to include expressions of validation about other people and related events around me as well. Maybe this will become an actionable way to appreciate the Universal Self.

Namaste.

People that have in-depth conversations with me would probably say I am over-focused on properly defining words. In the recent past, I would have worn this as a badge of honor. However, I now think they may be right, at least in part. I still believe standardized and agreed-upon definitions is a prerequisite when having any kind of grounded philosophical discussion. However, I am attempting to be less triggered by others’ use of language I find to be imprecise or just plain wrong.

All words are of course social constructions. They can mean whatever we want them to mean. What matters at least in the moment is that both parties are understanding each other. To this end, I want to adopt a usefulness metric, by asking myself 2 questions:

1. Is a precise definition necessary in the context of this discussion?
2. Do I foresee a reasonable chance that we can come to an understanding in a relatively short time span?

In the majority of conversations, I feel the answer to at least one of these would be a ‘no.’ In these instances, my options are either to steer the conversation into less troubled waters, avoid using words that need defining, or provide a conceptual framework that is obviously not intended to be a denotation.

This last option I have played around with a lot of late. Specifically, I think defining a word in the context of an equation can be an incredibly useful device.

Here are a few I have used recently:

• Suffering = pain x resistance
  This communicates the lesson that our suffering is as much caused by the resistance we experience to the life we have or the emotions we experience as it is caused by the physical or emotional stimuli themselves. My ability to eliminate pain from my life is limited; however, I have a lot more direct control over my level of acceptance.
  ⠀
• Happiness = # of things acquired / # of things you think will make you happy
  Viewing happiness as a fraction or an index gives us 2 nodes from which to increase it. A lot of people, myself included, spend most of their time trying to increase the top number. However, you can receive the same happiness boost by lowering the bottom number. Also sometimes increasing the top number doesn’t really affect happiness at all, because every time we do so, we add another thing to the denominator.
  ⠀
• Achievement = skill x effort
  In order to develop skill, we need both talent AND effort. I observed a stark example of this my second year of university as a music student.

  I attended two senior recitals in the spring of graduating piano majors. One had a boatload of talent but always put the bare minimum effort preparing for her performances. The other had much less natural talent but put a prodigious amount of time into practicing her recital pieces. At the beginning of the year, the first student was able to perform adequately. During her recital at the end of the year, she again performed adequately (nothing special). The second student choked the first half of the year when trying to perform her selections, but by the time she did her recital, she was highly competent.

  Achievement requires taking the skill you have developed in an area and finding an effective application. So, you could actually give an alternative equation for it: talent x effort squared.

My goal is to create more useful concepts like these to describe the words I employ and leave a more thorough denotations for particular formats and venues.

Namaste.

There are two monthly challenges I need to evaluate: my most recent challenge with lifting small weights, and the one I completed before that which involved transforming my self-talk.

I don’t have a lot to comment on with regards to the weights challenge. It was a terrific way to get back into resistance training and I plan on continuing to follow the protocols I created going forward. As much as I love Bikram yoga, it is nice to complement that with an exercise that is more strength-focused and progressive.

The evaluation of my self-talk challenge is more interesting and necessary, so I will devote the rest of this post to that.

What I learned:

• Running is a great training ground for self-talk – I learned a lot about my thinking process during my long-distance runs during this challenge.
  

  I started out having all of these negative thoughts (e.g. judgment for pushing myself too little, judgment for pushing myself too much, guilt from years ago when I stopped running, anxiety about my jacked up left foot and ankle, etc.).

  After going through a couple notice/soften/reframe procedures, I started to counter the negative thought with a positive reframe that I had come up with the previous week.

  By the end of the month, my inner narrative had mostly died away and I just ran without any internal voices, which was incredibly peaceful.

• Cognitive journaling is helpful, but I hate it – Taking the time each night to write down the specific process I had used that day was great for accountability and locking in affirmations. However, I always resented the time dump for something I probably will never post publicly.

• I love posting phrases around the house – Having the walls peppered with personalized affirmations and empowering suggestions was dope. The only problem is they were a bit visually tacky.
• Using terms of endearment and physical gestures towards myself feels forced – This just didn’t feel like me. It never stopped feeling like an act. I’m not saying it didn’t ever help in some way, but I felt really awkward doing it even when there wasn’t anyone around.
• Softening is a revolutionary practice for me – I’ve done noting practices with thoughts and emotions a decent amount both through meditation and non-meditation practices. I’ve also used affirmations and reframes in the past. However, actually carrying out a dialogue with my inner critic is not something I’ve purposefully done before and definitely not to this extent. As someone with INTJ preferences, I felt this to be completely natural and aligned with myself.

What I plan to continue going forward:

• One-sentence daily journaling – I love the idea of a daily journal, but it has to be very targeted and brief if I am going to keep it up and feel the derived benefit is worth the time input. I would like to have a specific topic each month that I focus on (motivation, time management, socialization, etc.) and just give a one-sentence update from that day pertaining to that topic. To make this more meaningful, I could turn these entries into a blog post each month.
• Purchase some sort of digital wall display to upload affirmations – I would like a way to continuously be updating my pithy quotes that is simple but also classy. Maybe the way to do this is with a digital picture frame, or maybe there is a better alternative I will discover for this specific purpose.
• Incorporate this strategy into some of my meditation sessions – I have a lot of different meditation practices and techniques I cycle through on a semi-regular basis, and this would be a great addition to that list. It is similar to the RAFT technique, but with a bigger emphasis on challenging the thoughts that are arising as opposed to just noticing and releasing them.

I feel like I thoroughly understand the concept of self-compassion but still struggle to actualize it on a regular basis. This challenge greatly helped in that regard and I feel much more confident in my ability to utilize this skill after going through this experience.

Namaste.

I am already half-way through the monthly challenge I am currently completing. My laxity in publishing blog posts is not mirrored in my commitment to challenges and I am hoping to remedy the former starting today. School started up a week and a half ago and I am teaching 5 days a week until September. That on top of the stress of moving to a new city has compromised some of my intentions, but no more!

The challenge for this month is focused on forgiving myself today for the breakdowns I had 5 years ago by choosing to send love to that former version of myself. I realized I was harboring a LOT of bitterness at myself for traits I possessed in the past, some of which are barely present at all in my current state.

Several years ago, I harbored deep bitterness towards certain people in my life and was able to process exactly what I was bitter about, productively share some of this with these people, and consequently experienced a huge burden being lifted off of my emotional bandwidth. This article from Psychology Today proved immensely useful in clearing up a lot of the hang-ups I had with the concept of forgiveness and enabled me to realize forgiveness did not depend on the other person’s current actions or on what I felt about them.

I want to do something similar concerning the bitterness I harbor at myself related to what I went through 5 years ago. There are 2 main daily components to the challenge:

1. 10-min RAFTT meditation – This is in addition to my regular meditation. RAFTT stands for:
   • Recognize = identify the emotion, thought, situation, or experience that causes discomfort
   • Allow = accept the above without judgment; send it love
   • Feel = really sink in to the emotions that arise; feel them in your body
   • Tease out = disentangle the different components of what you feel, especially if there is a lot of resistance or confusion
   • Trust = believe I have the capacity to weather the storm and grow from it
2. 5-min breakdown reflection – Immediately prior to meditation, I want to spend some time identifying and processing the various components that led to my breakdown and the bitterness I feel at my former self for engaging in them.

As I have already been engaged in this for the past 2 weeks, I can share some of what I have dug up already.

• Focusing on destination over process
• Embracing a nihilistic worldview
• Deprioritizing social engagements
• Having reticence to spend money and time on enjoying life in the now
• Turning anxiety into guilt
• Being embarrassed to ask for help or be vulnerable
• Committing to figuring things out on my own
• Believing “coming back” from a depressive-addictive spiral was simple
• Believing the arrival of a new day would magically solve things
• Failing to budget time and money on loving myself
• Choosing limiting beliefs because of an attachment to “truth”

When I write an evaluation of this challenge next month, I will elaborate on some of these insights and share what I decide to say to myself to get to a place of forgiveness. An unexpected benefit I’ve already experienced is that I have been absolutely LOVING my meditations, both the targeted ones and the more general ones. They are the highlights of most of my days.

Namaste.

I have intended to add resistance training to my exercise regimen for quite a while now. Currently, I do the following on most days:

• 20 minutes of abs
• 10 minutes of stationary bike
• 50 minutes of Bikram yoga
• 10 minutes of push-ups, planks, +/- hyperextension exercises
• 10 minutes of running

On Saturday, I usually run 10+ miles. I feel like the addition of weights would help round out my regimen; however, when I have done this in the past, I’ve usually overdone it and ended up in incredible back pain for sometimes days at a time.

Protocols of challenge:

• Start each day with Turkish Get-Up – I will start with no weight and work up to a 5-lb kettlebell and stay there for the remainder of the challenge.
• Use 1-lb weight on new exercises – I want to always start out with as little weight as possible and ensure correct form before adding amount.
• Don’t skip weights – When leveling up to a higher weight, I want to choose the lowest increment (never more than 1-lb heavier) and shift back down if needed.
• Do at least 15 minutes every day – This includes non-weighted Turkish Get-Ups and all weighted activities including breaks.

I have compiled a list of possible weight exercises from the Livestrong and Healthline websites that are listed below.

• One-Two Punch
• Lateral Raise
• Superman
• Hip Lift and Extend
• Triceps Kickback
• Renegade Row
• Front, Back, or Overhead Squat
• Weighted Glute Bridge
• Lunge
• Floor Press
• Bent-Over Row
• Floor Chest Fly
• Arnold Press

Whichever of these I choose to do on a given day, I want to finish 10-20 reps at a time and do 2-3 sets per session. I can do the same exercises each day or shift to do specific sequences on specific days. I will allow myself the freedom to find the pattern that works best for me.

Namaste.