Ferris Bueller and Finding Focus

Hello, everyone! It’s been a little bit. I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer. It’s that time of year full of family trips, family reunions, and ball games. I don’t know about you, but I felt summer had just started and now the season is on its way out.

I may be too young to use this quote but as Ferris Bueller said, “If you don’t stop to look around once in a while you could miss it.” The month of June felt like this to me especially. As I had spoken about in my previous blog, I had experimented with meditation last summer going into the fall. It was my tool to help me refocus and slow the world down a little bit.

Since the last week of June, I have been trying to get back into the swing of things in terms of meditating and refocusing. As everyone does, I have obstacles to overcome to even set up a meditation session. I am usually at a very loud gym or at a home, where I live with six other people that all have different work, sleep, and class schedules. This has made my car my place of solace.

Now these are not marathon meditation sessions and I am not going on some out of this world trip in my head. I am simply focusing on one thing and one thing only for five to ten minutes. This one thing could be my breath or it could be how I’m trying to let myself melt into my car seat. I am not getting this session in everyday, but I am getting 2 or 3 times a week. The most common time that I am getting this session is when I have pulled in my parking spot at home. I set a timer for five to ten minutes. Then, I try to focus on my one thing for the duration of my timer. This had been tremendous way of helping me wind down and prepare to shut off before I go to bed.

These sessions have also given me my sensation of “looking around” as Bueller would say. They slow my time down for me. What I have found is that when time feels like it is flying too quickly for me I am typically also very anxious. Anyone who has been anxious or overwhelmed knows what this feels like. It’s like you’re rock climbing and your losing your pitons out of the side of the rock. These short sessions might just be what lets your pitons settle back into the rock wall.

We all know how important recovery is. It doesn’t do you, your family, or your team any good to train really hard and never be able to recover from it. The IFAST team wants to help you! We are going to be having a movement and meditation variation of our Athletika classes. After the month of August, at 7 am we will be having a class that will incorporate principles of meditation, yoga, and good ol’ fashioned movement. We will sweat, but we will leave feeling better than we arrived after every class.

Take advantage of our current Athletika 1^st 50 Special and be a part of an array of fitness classes here at IFAST! The first 50 individuals to register get unlimited classes for $99/month.