Cultivate Joy Through Movement Beyond the Gym

When I say the word joyful movement, sometimes I see their eyes kind of glaze over, like how am I supposed to enjoy that? So I think we kind of need to rebrand what we're talking about. When we're talking about joyful movement, what's meaningful to me, what gives me purpose, what allows me to live a life that aligns with my value, that sort of approach to a activism.

Hey there, welcome to the Grace Tealth Podcast, your source for aging strong in your physical, mental and spiritual health. My name is Amy Connell. I'm a weight-neutral, certified personal trainer and nutrition coach who loves walks with friends, chocolate and Jesus. Whether you're looking to grow stronger as you age, nourish your body, mind and spirit, or fit all the pieces of your health together to holistically thrive, this is the place for women over 40. I am here to guide you in the areas I can, and bring on experts in the areas I'm still learning, and, of course, we cover it all in a whole lot of grace. I'm glad you're here. Okay, I've got a question for you, one that will probably be different for many of you. What is your relationship with exercise? For some, it's their way of managing their mental health, or heart health, or their way of connecting and socializing. For others, it's a bit more dark, and that's okay if it is, and it might feel like a chore or something we have to do. My guest today, lisa DeKam, is a physical therapist who is on a mission to help people create joyful movement. And you guys, my mind was blown when she explained that in more detail and then turned those words around to truly get the point across. I can't wait for you to hear that. We talk about reconnecting with our bodies, what to do when exercise feels like a chore and what to do when we are in chronic pain. We talk about self-compassion and so much more. I have to tell you that the editor that I use to edit both the video and audio is super helpful, and so whenever I hear like these little nuggets, I can copy and paste and create them into what they call a new composition, and that's something that I will use to create social media or YouTube shorts or something like that. I think I counted 12 on here. Lisa gives us so many nuggets that we can take and apply wherever we are. I'm just thrilled and excited for you to hear this conversation with her, so let me tell you just a little bit more about Lisa. With over 20 years experience as a physical therapist, lisa has a passion for working with individuals who are pursuing eating disordered recovery. She enjoys addressing the impact of eating disorders on physical function, the emotional experience of exercise and how meaningful movement offers a resource for healing and hope. Her deep appreciation for the human body and the gift of movement also translates into exploring the outdoors as often as she can. We had this interview several months before this aired and I can tell you that she does that. I love seeing all of the different experiences Lisa has outside, and you are just going to hear so much peace in her voice. I'm so thrilled to have Lisa today. Let's bring her on. Welcome to Grace.

Health. Thanks, amy. I'm really honored and glad to be with you today.

Yeah, well, the feeling is mutual and I tell you what I mean just getting outside. I have always loved it and I can feel, I can think about stories that I had growing up that just connected me and meaningful times and relationships to the outdoors. And I don't know why God put me in Houston, Texas, where it's really hard to get outside for about six months of the year, but in January it's lovely.

So well, the opposite is true. Here I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, so it's those winter months that provide a little bit more challenge. We have to look for those opportunities differently, but we love summer.

I bet you do. I bet you do. Okay, I am really excited to get to know you better. I'm excited to learn about the AXIA project, what you do, and I am excited to talk about our conversation today, which is going to be focused on joyful movement. First, I would love to hear what drew you to physical therapy.

Yeah, great question. I was thinking about this a little bit. The place where it started, I think, was in high school. I tried a career paper and I chose physical therapy for a variety of reasons. My dad broke his hip when he was in high school and so I saw the impact of that throughout his life. I had taken an anatomy class, a human anatomy class, and loved the class like I wanted to study it. So I knew there was a little bit of a delight that I felt there. I had a sports injury, not a big one, but one that required a little bit more care. So I had seen it as a patient and so I picked physical therapy. At the time my brother, my older brother, was in physical therapy school, so that was helpful too. But then that stuck after I wrote that paper and so I went on to get my exercise science degree, my bachelor's degree, and after graduating I went to the University of Iowa for physical therapy school. So I graduated, got married. We lived in Illinois for about a year. I worked at a small regional hospital there. I really enjoyed working there, that I got to see a lot of different types of patients, so that was exciting. It was always different, always challenging. Then we lived overseas for a short time, moved back to Minnesota, which is where my husband grew up, and I started working in outpatient orthopedics. So what I loved at that job was I worked with a huge group of physical therapists that had a wide breadth of experience and I learned so much from each of them During that time. I got to start working with some of our pregnant and postpartum patients who are experiencing musculoskeletal dysfunction, and that was really fun. I loved the patient education piece that came with that. So I considered going on for my master's in public health and then had a family, so things changed a little bit, stayed home for a bit. After a couple of years I wanted to get back in the clinic, so I did some on-call work yet in outpatient orthopedics. But then I also saw this ad for a physical therapist that was needed at an eating disorder clinic that was not far from our home and they needed weekend coverage, which worked really well for our family at the time. So I knew very little about eating disorders. It's not something that we learn a lot about in physical therapy school, at least when I was there 20 years ago more than 20 years ago so I stepped into it because logistically it worked well. That was 2009 and I've been there since, so on-call for much of that time. Now I'm in a more regular position, but I love working there. Our patients struggle with some of them do not all of them struggle with struggle with dysfunctional exercise, so there's not a lot of joy typically when exercise is dysfunctional.

Oh, so I so agree. And eating disorders and dysfunctional exercise, I have to imagine, often go hand in hand. Not one doesn't always perfectly correlate with the other, but you probably see that in tandem Right.

There's some research that actually shows that exercise is one of the first presenting symptoms of an eating disorder for some people and one of the last resolve. But we don't always pick it up right away because a lot of those exercise behaviors are very culturally celebrated.

Oh, it really is so, it is so true. You know, one of the things that you'll hear out of people's mouths a lot I mean, this is outside of the eating disorder lens is, oh, I have to work out, oh, I have to go to the gym. This is something I have to do. You know, I have this book called your Worthy Body, where I have every chapter is a rule to break, and one of the rules to break is I have to get my exercise in, I have to work off dessert, and so there's this mindset, there's this myth that exercise negates other things in our life and it is a chore. And it's, you know, it's in our mind. It's a chore. So, to start this off, I would love for you to give us the foundation of how you define joyful movement and why it's important to reset our mindset around exercise.

Yeah, I think a lot of times when we hear the word joyful movement even though it's it says joyful movement we tend to think happy, exercise, and so like dancing right, like I'm always going to love everything that I'm doing when I'm at the gym or I'm going to go on a walk, and it's going to be like the epitome of my emotional experience for the day, and so that can feel really out of reach for a lot of people. We, our pastor this summer, did a sermon series on the Fruit of the Spirit and he talked about joy and how it's different from happiness. I think happiness we think of, kind of as there's this cloud of glitter that's kind of following me around. That's not necessarily what we always feel with movement, but joy is something that's more substantive. It's not necessarily reactive, but there's more of a practice around it. It doesn't just show up. We have some work to kind of cultivate that he said. The Greek word for joy is kara I think I said that right or delight. So there's that sense of it's something that's present, it feels good and it's enduring too. It's going to be there even in times of suffering or even in times of pain or when things aren't going as well. So I think that picture of joy is a little bit different than what we hear in in kind of those catchphrases for exercise behaviors. And then I think with movement, I like to think of that pretty broad too, because we are so focused on the mechanics of exercise and I think there's benefit in understanding what we're doing. So we don't want to negate that it's not like we're throwing that out the window, but movement is something that shows up everywhere throughout our day. And so, looking at how can I experience joy with movement throughout my entire day? Obviously we can't spend all day thinking about I'm so delighted that I'm taking out the trash, like our brains just don't have space for that. But I think kind of thinking differently with that and what I, what I tend to see too, is when I'm working with individuals who have really struggled with either dysfunctional exercise that's compulsive or maybe excessive, or the other end of the spectrum where it's kind of that all or nothing of why even try? When I say the word joyful movement, sometimes I see their eyes kind of glaze over like how am I supposed to enjoy that? So I think we we kind of need to rebrand what we're talking about when we're talking about joyful movement, what's meaningful to me, what gives me purpose, what allows me to live a life that aligns with my values. That sort of approach to I think is important.

What are your thoughts on def? I don't I'm trying to think about the right words here, but allowing the joy to be expressed or to be felt in different times. So, for example, my community knows that I this is what I say I love doing track workouts. I never did. I never ran track as a kid, but there's something about a track workout that I love. So let me tell you what I love about it. I love it when I'm done and I know that I've done it. I love not in an obsessive way, but I think it's really fun to get on my, on my fitness app that's connected to my watch, and see my heart rate, like that's, for some strange reason, kind of fun for me. I love knowing that I've done it, but it is not joyful at the end of the sixth 300 meters that I'm running, which for some people is nothing, but for me it's. It's a good workout. So I mean, can we, can we find the joy maybe not necessarily when we're in it, but after it, or does that cross over into some sort of potentially disordered eating realm? Has the movie?

Yeah, I think it has the potentials to go there. But kind of what I hear too is there's some meaning in that experience for you, right, and an element of competence that comes with it, and we know that competence is a really important ingredient for experiencing joy with movement. So I think that's part of that picture. Another part of it is, I think we often use the phrase finding joy in movement and maybe we just move those words around a little bit and say finding movement in joy. So when do I experience joy. And what is movement's role in that? We lead so much with the movement rather than leading with the emotion? When do I experience peace and what's the role of movement in that? When do I experience social connectedness? What's the role of movement in that? And so that's just kind of a starting point for setting that foundation that can go different directions in terms of the formality of the exercise piece of it if we wanted to go there. But that emotional experience is super important. I think the place or the potential for dysfunction in what you were describing before. You know we tend to say data can be pretty problematic, so create distance from data if you're seeing a real drive to connect with that. There's a whole lot of different ways to explore that. I think heart rate is one that's maybe a little bit different than like pace, intensity, distance, some of those when I feel really tied to the outcome as opposed to the process. Outcome and results are similar there. I think too, when I get to the end of a workout, formal exercise, and I feel relief, is that because all the chore is done, the obligation is done, or is it more a sense of it feels good to have accomplished something? Or do I feel completely exhausted or do I feel some rejuvenation because of what I've just done? Those are different types of experiences and they will direct me differently in how I participate in the future.

That makes sense. What I'm really like seeing is just the chart of the of it going up and down and up.

Yeah, it's pretty well, and that leads to body appreciation, right, like when I can see wow, look at how my heart is responding to what I'm doing, look at how capable it is. I might get this quote wrong I'm pretty sure I will. But when I was an undergrad we had to read the book, fearfully and wonderfully made by I think it's Philippiansi and Dr Paul Brand, and he does a lot of comparing the body of Christ to the human body and there's some such beautiful analogies in there. But one statement that I think came from that book was the heart is this incredible pump that on average, lasts like 75 years. You can't find a pump like that for a car. You can't find it for the technology and the machines that we have. So celebrating that by watching how it responds to movement, that's my intention, that directs me there, that's so true, that's so true.

And, as you were talking earlier, one of the things that was coming to mind in my own story when you say you know finding movement and joy, and I think about that. I think about the joyful times that I have that involve movement, and it's things like hiking in the mountains, walk and talks with the friend, like when I am joyful, I am often moving with my friends, and so I love that connection that you made for sure. Yeah, now what about people who maybe have had some negative experiences in the past? What comes to mind are coaches like high school coaches, earlier coaches who have said just things that I think. I think I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. We're meant to inspire and motivate, but not necessarily things like you're going to run till you throw up and you're a minute late. You got to run a mile for that. You know that kind of stuff. But how can we start to reconnect with our bodies and find joy and movement when movement has created the opposite of joy for us in the past?

Yeah, I think an important starting point is naming what those barriers are. So name it to tame it, right. So that takes a little bit of work. It takes some intention to kind of figure out what, historically, has exercise represented to me. What has movement represented to me in the past? What has complicated that relationship? Right? So it's just like a relationship with a friend, right? If I have a relationship with a friend and there has been something that has broken with it in the past, I want to repair that, to heal the relationship. We don't just move forward and slip it under the rug. So our relationship with movement, there's some benefit in addressing those barriers, calling them out, saying I feel some shame because this is what I associated with movement and exercise in the past. And then I think it's helpful to pay attention to the things that help us to foster more joy in movement. So there's a book that I have found really helpful in this regard. It's not necessarily through an eating disorder lens, so it's not one that I would say you know hand to somebody who's really in the midst of working toward recovery, but it's called the Joy of Movement. I think it's by Kelly McGonigal.

Yes, that's a fantastic book. I actually quoted it a lot in my book.

Yeah. So she calls out those three ingredients of autonomy, competence and connection. So autonomy if I've had a coach yelling at me, that's not autonomy, right, even if I've signed up for the team. You know, I maybe have some autonomy in having joined the team, but that isn't dialed way up. So what can I do now to increase my sense of autonomy? And some of that is figuring out. What are things that I do want to do, if I can choose? What are things that I myself want to do, not because diet culture tells me I have to do it, or there's this other external expectation of what I'm supposed to do. So autonomy, being in the driver's seat of my choices. Competence so if I have mastered a skill or I'm working toward mastering a skill, that will lead to a little bit more pleasure with movement or joy with movement. So maybe it's trying something completely new, as long as I feel safe in that and I don't feel like there's significant threat in doing so. And then, like you referenced, connection, or social beings we want to feel a sense of belonging. So what is the role of socialization in my movement choices? We know that with dysfunctional exercise, in the case of an eating disorder especially, that is, there's not room for socialization. We really if dysfunctional exercise is part of the picture we tend to isolate or socially withdraw more because maybe my friend who I would run with doesn't go at the same pace as me and so I'm going to have to run extra at the end to make up for what the eating disorder expects for the day. Or maybe my friends are all going to a movie but I have to get my workout in, and so I prioritize workout over that social connection. So what are some small ways that I can explore social connection that feel comfortable to me?

When you're talking about competence too. I think that there's a mindset that we forget that we can have about the joy of being new at something. I'm specifically thinking about my own journey. I have recently taken up golf. So I golfed 20 years ago, before I had kids, like five times, and then I have taken it up again because we're getting ready to be empty nesters and this is something that I wanted to do with my husband, and there's something so freeing about sucking yes, and I'm like well, of course I can't make par, I'm not expected to, I'm new. Of course my ball is not as far as my husband's. He's been playing longer and it's been so nice. Now, if I'm saying this five years from now, I might feel a little differently, but I think that there's a freedom that we can embrace when we're new in something and incompetent, but knowing that we're enjoying it and maybe it's we're getting those other two things, like I am doing this because I want to do it. That's the autonomy I am connecting with my husband, that's the entire reason we're doing this or I'm doing it, and so maybe if we have the support of those other two, then that will help give some grace to I'm just thinking specifically to the, to the competence one.

Well, and I think I tend to think of those as dials, right. So if I'm really dialing up connection and I'm dialing up autonomy, then that overall experience is probably not positive. But if most of them are dialed way down, that's going to be a different experience. So, as I'm building competence, or starting to starting to see some of those skills grow, I'm dialing that up and maybe it shifts over time, five years later, right. But that's even in in your response. With being new to the sport, you're demonstrating self compassion for yourself, right. Of course, my husband is better at this.

He's been doing it all of that, so, and that's another important value to bring to it- yes, and also, by the way, if anyone listening really enjoys inspirational books with that are chock full of research, because Dr McGonigal, dr Kelly McGonigal is a researcher, she's a PhD. That book made me want to get back into group fitness. It's fantastic. She has some wonderful examples and her own story in it. So, as a side note, that's a great. Yeah, that's a great book and I will put it in the show notes. Ok, so let's talk some about the mind body connection and how we can utilize that. So if anyone's been listening me or really probably any anywhere I mean, mind body is not a new phrase anymore. Maybe 15, 20 years ago it was newer to many of us. But how can we utilize that to help us foster a positive influence and sort of relationship with exercise?

Yeah, that's a great question. I because, historically, the way that we have engaged with exercise a lot of it and I say this full well as a PT, knowing that we're part of the problem with this it's been very prescriptive. So, do this many reps, do this, follow the ACSM guidelines, you need to be at moderate intensity all of that right. So in many ways, it's taking the details of what I'm doing and it's being told to me to do, and I'm not necessarily doing it based on my physical experience during it. It's more, I am putting my physical experience into this expectation for what movement is going to look like. So mind body connection is important because it gives time to what is happening with my physical experience, and it's important that we're doing it because this stuff is happening anyway. Our body is giving us really important information. We sense things before we cognitively understand what's happening, and it's really wise that our body does that. It protects us, it keeps us safe with things that we don't have time to cognitively process before we need to react to them. So that I think too, in terms of when body image or body dissatisfaction is really pronounced. That is the answer to it, which is maybe the other end. Considering the physical side would be embodiment. So I'm living in my body, as opposed to being that observer, self-objectifying and thinking about what my body looks like to the world. So we call that in general terms, I'm listening to my body, right, and so we say, you know, I'll have people say, well, I just know I need to listen to my body more. So my goal is to listen to my body, and so we throw that term around a lot, but I don't think we really get into what does that mean? So I think a helpful structure for what that means is thinking in terms of neuroception. So neuroception is kind of that the work that my nervous system is doing under the surface all the time to keep me safe and stable, and there's three components to that. So extra-oception would be the things that I sense about my external surroundings, things that I smell, touch. Here, proprioception is like my body's internal GPS, whereas my body in space. And then introception is I need to go to the bathroom, I feel pain, I am hungry, I'm thirsty, those things. So starting in small ways to engage with those different layers of information, I think, is a way to start listening to our bodies and making that mind-body connection. That can feel really threatening for somebody who's had chronic pain or someone who has had a really difficult relationship with their body and doesn't want to sense what they're feeling internally. So maybe a starting point for creating that mind-body connection is to work on the extra-oceptive information. So observing sound, I think, is a great one for that, just as a grounding tool. You can do it while you're moving, while you're exercising, but you can also do it at times of rest. But that mind-body connection is important so we understand what it is that our body desires, needs, feels good with and can make decisions according to that.

I'm going to ask a follow-up question about this pain, because I do know that this can be a barrier to starting and maintaining any kind of just general movement, whether it be, I don't feel comfortable walking this far, I don't feel comfortable doing this exercise, my knees hurt when I'm lunging, and so I just want to stop and not do anything. Rather, you know, and it's confusing too when do we know? What is our body trying to tell us? How can we listen to our body and still try to work to meet whatever physical goals that we may be having if we are in pain?

I think that it's helpful to make it to delineate between acute pain and more chronic and enduring and ongoing pain, because those are different types of experiences and we need different things in those different situations. So with more chronic pain our brain develops a different sensitivity to that sense of threat and so there's change. That's possible with that. But we want to be really careful in how we approach that. So we don't necessarily want to say, well, lunges hurt, so I'm never going to lunge anymore. But we want to remind our body of safety and gradually ease into that over time. We don't just push in or force ourself into it. It's not a no pain, no gain type of mentality, but really enhancing mindfulness skills, mind-body connection can be a great way to remind our bodies of that safety, because they're helping us out by alerting us to something that was unsafe in the past. Acute pain is a different direction on that, but more chronic and enduring pain. I think too, it's how we approach that activity. But then what variety do we have in what we're doing for our movement routines? I think variety is super helpful for just opening up the door for that movement experience. I think we tend to gravitate toward the thing that feels good and we have time for and space in our life and just kind of stay in that rut. So bringing some variety in can be a helpful way to help the body reframe those experiences too.

Okay, that is great guidance. I like how you differentiate between chronic and acute. You knew exactly what I was talking about with more chronic pain. Acute pain is I jumped up, I landed and my ankle really hurts. That is the acute pain, or something that is a little more defined, rather than my knees always hurt. Anyway, I'm glad that you differentiated that and I really like that. You knew exactly what I was talking about.

But pain is a very real barrier right, and so we need to address the barriers that are there.

What are your thoughts on using words in our head, like just having things that we say like you are safe. I will be gentle with you, just internally. We don't even have to say the words coming out of our mouth to help create this space of safety so that we can do what we are trying to do to become either stronger, more flexible, etc.

Yeah, I really like that a lot. I think, in terms of that mind-body connection, mindfulness is something we practice. It's not something that we just throw in when things get messy as a way of getting out of the messiness. We want to practice it so that our body picks up on that in those moments that are difficult. So I think, tying a statement of some sort with physical experience or physical engagement too, one thing that I really like I do this myself and I sometimes will do it with some of the patients that I work with is 30 seconds of just breathing and noticing what my body is telling me. Super simple, and yet we don't do that very often, but hands down. So I'll do it with a patient in the room because I know I need it to. It helps us to regulate better together. When I do it, I take a breath and I'm not expecting anything, but what happens is my body is like oh, I've got your attention. You need to side bend to the left because your right upper trap is so tight right now. It's just been waiting to tell me that. Right, but it's got my attention. So I think pairing something that is one of those restorative phrases of I'm safe, I am grateful for my body's capacity for this with building an awareness of what it's telling me at the same time can be really helpful. It's a friendship right. If I am building a friendship with someone, I want to be a good listener. I don't want to be the only one talking. I want to hear what that person is saying and respond appropriately. So noticing what my body is telling me, becoming aware of that and responding in a way that supports that, and hearing what it needs in terms of safety and stability.

Yeah, talking to yourself like you would want to talk to your friend, or like you would want your friend to talk to you.

Right, yeah, which I think comes back to self compassion. Then, too right, because we don't tend to talk to ourselves that way. We tend to gravitate more toward that self judgment piece than we do toward kindness or compassion. Right.

Oh, that's so good. Okay, let's talk some about motivation, because that's something that people can struggle with. You mentioned earlier on about I'm all in or all out. You know green light, red light, something like that. How can we take what we've talked about today, find that movement in joy? I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote you on that for the rest of my life. That was so good and and strive for consistency, without putting the shame on ourselves when we mess out, you know, when we miss a workout, without feeling pressured, without feeling overwhelmed, because it's like, well, this is something I told myself I was going to do, and now I'm not, and then we go through down that internal death spiral.

Right, yeah, yeah, I love the consistency word in there. Sustainability, right. We know that the one of the most important factors in our behaviors is that sustainability piece. So if our goal is those long term health benefits, sustainability is the key that gets us there. And what is most sustainable is something that we're actually going to do. So if I don't like what I'm doing, I'm probably not actually going to do it. If I don't like it, training I might do it for a couple weeks and then be like you know, I really don't like this at all, I'm done. So we got to find that secret sauce. Is that thing that I actually really like doing? So I think it's kind of a mix of some extrinsic motivating factors and some intrinsic ones. So those extrinsic ones are, you know, I know it's helpful for my health, I know that strength training helps me to be able to age differently, it helps me with independence. So those are things that I kind of keep in my mind as some of those extrinsic factors. But intrinsic ones are actually super important. There's a gal Michelle I don't know if you say her name cigar cigar she has has done a lot of work around motivation and she says that we have that piece backward where motivation is actually the result, not the driving factor. But we step into movement and and come away feeling good in some way. So I have some sort of emotional thing which is that intrinsic motivation that keeps me going. So that intrinsic motivation is that result that brings me back again over time to build the sustainability.

I like that a lot and I find that to be true as well. It keeps us going back to doing that again or playing around with it rather than saying well, I'm just going to be more motivated to do this Right.

I just got to put those shoes on and get out the door. And it's not every day that you wake up and, like you know, I'm going to experience so much beauty and I can't wait to go. But when we stack up enough of those experiences, then we start to to understand our body. Start to understand that that's what happens in our mind. Start to understand that too.

As you're talking, I'm wondering if a good practice for people who have a hard time with motivation, have a hard time with consistency, would be to identify something positive at the end of a workout and tie it to that. And I don't know about you, lisa, but I have found whenever I say things out loud, it sticks with me a lot more than if it's just like this fleeing thought that is in and out. So if I say it like when I have to count, like when I'm counting my laps of the track, I have to say how many I've done, because otherwise I forget.

I think there's some science on that. Like when we hear our own voice, we own it differently. I don't know, but I don't know, maybe that makes sense for me.

Yeah, but like saying like I feel so accomplished, yeah, I enjoyed meeting that person out there, I loved catching up with my friend doing that, and then that that kind of starts to remind ourselves of why we are doing what we're doing and something that was enjoyable about it and that might kick in the motivation. Yeah, for the next time.

I love that. That's that mindfulness piece that we bring to it. So one way that we talk about bringing that in is we often think of doing kind of a physical warm up at the beginning of an exercise session and then a physical cool down at the end. We can tie a mental warm up to that physical warm up and then a mental and emotional cool down to that physical cool down to. So it's pairing those together of yeah, I got to have this great conversation with my friend when we went for our walk today, or I got to see the sunrise and that was really fun for me today when I went for my walk. I think there's huge benefit in being able to name those things that we want to return to.

I so wish I had this wisdom 20 years ago. Same, and I was when I was doing like the group fitness classes and I remember an instructor would turn down the lights and I was like, well, this is weird. Or they turned down the music and like, come on, I just want to get out of here and I just had that go, go go mentality all the time. And there's so many ways that I wish I could have made that mind body connection so many from myself 20 years ago and I think that would have paired me and my body better to thrive in the upcoming 20 years when things just aren't functioning quite. They're functioning well, but they're just it's different. Yeah, it looks different, right, yeah, in so many ways, yeah, yep, okay, lisa, I want you to tell people about the AXIA project, the work that you do and how people can connect with you.

Yeah. So the AXIA project is something that a friend and I started. Her name is Jackie Danz, and we were friends from school or kids went to the same school, and we ended up finding that we would meet up in the carpool line and be like, hey, you got to listen to this podcast, or I mean, we all have friends that we do that with right Like read this book. I'm going to send you this article and this link, check it out. And so that turned into not just sharing resources, but like meeting up for coffee with our notes and comparing and all of that and and we learned some things that were new to us around body dissatisfaction and body image. One, one really important resource in that for us was the book Beauty Sick by Dr Renee Engel, and she's a professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, and so she did a lot of work in her book at looking at objectification, self objectification, body satisfaction. There's one chapter in there called function versus form or function over form that talks a lot about how we spend so much effort and time thinking about how does my, how do my choices with movement impact the way that I look, my weight, shape, appearance as opposed to my ability to function. So we're comparing resources and saying you know what? This has been super helpful for us to dig into this a little bit. Let's bring it to some of our friends. So we initially we did like a three week email blast thing with some content started up Instagram and Facebook together, so we have a number of resources through that. With that we've developed. We had a newsletter, we've developed a body image, one on one online course, we've developed a text in an hour 26 page workbook with it and then some other resources that just help to foster body appreciation within a culture that doesn't necessarily foster that for us.

I love that. What's coming to mind is just like a best friends. I mean, I don't know if your best friends are not, but like a friends, like favorite things.

Yes, you know how.

at the end of the year, like Oprah, we used to have the favorite things and now there's like these favorite things party, like these are my favorite pieces of wellness based stuff, yes, and then sharing it out, because those are the things, too, that when you know someone else has found meaning in it, someone else has learned or maybe even made some adjustments from it. Well, that's the kind of thing that you want, that you want to be listened to.

Right, yeah, you want to pass it on. Yeah, exactly. We were actually in a favorite things group of women at Christmas time that would get together and $5 gift what's my favorite thing for $5. So it's funny you bring that up.

Well, they're fun they are like because you like, and okay, this is going to be a shameless plug, but my monthly journal is like a list of my favorite things throughout the month and I love sharing it. It is so fun. I keep notes all month long and I'm like I want to tell my people about this because and it's it's just once a month, and so that's a shameless plug. But I totally get that feeling of like, oh my gosh, I've learned so much here. I want to pass this along to you because I think it'll be meaningful to you as well.

Yeah, that's good stuff, yeah.

Okay, I've got a couple questions I ask all my guests. The first is I love learning about people's tattoos. I don't have any, but I have found that when someone put something on their body for the rest of their life, they often have a meaning behind it. So, do you have any tattoos and, if so, what's the meaning behind it? Just, you can just pick one if you have more than one and if you don't have any. If you had to get one, what would it be and where would it go?

Oh, great question. I do not have a tattoo. We were talking about this with a group of friends a while back and going around the table and my husband's first response was I'd get a QR code and I'm like what? And then someone else said that their teenage son would be like no, the apples, or whoever is already like figuring out everything about our lives. So do we make that an easier? So I don't have a tattoo. If I were to get one, we so. We have a 17 year old son. We also have a six year old son who's a first grader, and we had a son in between who passed away when he was three. He had glioblastoma, which is a very, very bad type of brain cancer.

And so when thank you.

when he died, our friends in our community really showed up and they lined the route from our house to the church with orange balloons, because orange was our older son's favorite color. So if I were to get a tattoo, I'm guessing it would be an orange balloon or something that kind of represents his presence in our life, because we always remember him. I don't know where I would put it. That's a good question, maybe ankle.

Okay, yeah, all right, lifting you up. What was his name? His name was Micah Micah. Oh, that's, that's wonderful, not the. It's a wonderful name, that all came out really badly.

I'm so, so sorry. Well, it's not fair of me to throw death into the middle of a joyful movement podcast.

But, lisa, this is life, right, this is how we are. We have the hard things, we have the the joyful things and that is what creates all of us. So I'm I thank you for sharing that with me and my community, because that has created that's part of who you are and I'm sure it it's part of how you relate to life and other people, right? So I'm sure I know Micah is missed and thank you for sharing that.

He was the epitome of joyful movement. He was, I mean, he's three, he would. He would circle around and say mom, I'm so busy, meaning mom I'm so dizzy, but he was really busy. How cute. We can learn a lot from kids on how we should move as adults should, right?

As adults. Oh, my goodness, Right, yeah, there was. I wish I had the study, but my husband was telling someone was telling me about this how they took children on a playground and then they replicated a playground for adults. Oh, I love it. These were like fit adults, Like these were people who normally moved and and they were each assigned a different child to mimic. And as these children were going through and monkey bars and pulling up and jumping off and all like the adults were zonked, Like they were so exhausted and the kids were like let's go.

I know if you've, if you've ever followed around a kid at a playground, you can relate to that Right Like trying to get through those little tunnels. That's hard work as an adult.

It sure is. Yeah, absolutely Okay, I would love it. You said that you would had a meaningful Bible verse that you would like to share, so I was wondering if you could share that.

Yeah. So I really like it's first, or it's John one, 14. The word became flesh and I looked at it this morning. I'm going to read it here because in I think it's the living Bible. Now I can't even remember which translation it was that I popped out this morning, but in that one it said and Christ became a human being and lived here on earth among us and was full of loving, forgiveness and truth. And I think, being somebody who works with the physical experience that people have, along with that emotional experience, knowing that Christ was here and he experienced the full realm of humanity, he understands what it's like to live in a body, he understands that emotion and all of that, and so that allows us to come to him in a different way than than a God who hasn't become one of us. So I like that as a simple reminder that he can relate to us and we can relate to him in very real ways.

That's so true. What is the one simple thing you would like us to remember? It can be big, it can be a small nugget, just anything from this conversation that we, that you would like us, to remember.

Yeah, I think the one simple thing is to take a brief moment on a daily basis to listen to what your body is telling you, to build that relationship by listening.

That's great. Okay, that is all for today. Go out there and have a grace today, why not? I send it out twice a month and it is a private fun space for me to share some of my favorite foods and recipes, movements, books, sermons and more. You never know what you're going to get, but I promise it will add value to your day. You can sign up at grace healthcom slash monthly dash updates and, of course, the link is in the show notes. I'll see you again for listening and I'll see you next time.