My Name is Jeany Schall, from SoulMotion Cairns. I am a yoga teacher, fitness instructor, nutritionist and regular special guest blogger for Getaway Trekking!
I am very passionate about physical and mental wellbeing and feel that a holistic approach to life is the key to not only living long, but living longer; healthy and vital. I run private and community yoga classes in Cairns, organise health and wellbeing holidays in Australia and internationally and have been a teacher to thousands of individuals over the years.
Many of us walk through life, striving towards the next big adventure, challenge or achievement. This shows determination, joy and passion towards our goals which can bring a wonderful sense of contentment & achievement. Other times we fail along the way as various challenges may be in our way.
Sometimes, in the progress of running towards our goals, we forget to become aware where our physical and mental alignments and limitations are, and we end up giving it too much, giving up with injuries or worse; with sickness.
When we don’t achieve our goals, for whatever reason, it usually leaves us with a sense of failure and possibly disappointment.
My objective, in writing for Getaway Trekking, is to help you on your way to be in the best shape of your life yet, knowing many of the tools you need to grow older happy, healthy and full of vitality to master your next big trekking adventure in order to glow with knowledge, experience and vitality. So you can thrive being an inspiration for yourself and others.
I’m only 37, maybe a spring chicken to some of you, yet I have encountered many challenging situations in my life; mentally and physically. Never in my life have I felt so confident managing, accepting and eliminating them as with the knowledge, experiences and skills that I have developed over the years studying and working with so many inspiring people.
I am looking forward to sharing all my secrets with you and being your ‘go-to’ person for any questions relating to health and wellbeing.
Let’s keep going, growing strong, healthy and vital together.
Balance Is The Key
Coming from a fitness, nutrition and yoga background, attaining the correct level of balance is exactly what I’ve experienced watching people train and work towards their physical and spiritual goals.
I agree and encourage to train sometime out of your comfort zone and engage in challenging training regime to gain more strength and greater range of movement.
Just like you I know the fantastic feeling that one gets if we finally can run 20, 40 or 60 km, when you have participated in your first triathlon, you have lifted the greatest weight yet, have entered and/or won a competition or reached further heights in our career.
Although we may have an ‘unthinkable’ final goal, let’s love the view from a distance and take steps that are aligned with your current situation. Allow enough time to balance our training, our mind and our nutrition to have our body, mind and circumstances fall in the right place.
An example of such an approach could be taking time off and/or doing a complementary exercise when working to achieve a physical goal. If you love cycling, you may want to complement the activity with swimming or yoga. If you love running, complement it with enough stretching, possibly pilates.
For weight training, make sure you don’t disregard your cardiovascular exercises and working on lengthening the muscles after training.
Why??? Mainly to avoid injury – which can lead to failure in your greater goals – but also to enhance the performance and the recovery time.
I see the same as a nutritionist. People start on a ‘health kick’ and eat nothing but fruit and veggies for a whole…. 24hrs :-). This is great and I encourage this, yet I see people failing due to lack of energy and enthusiasm after the shortest amount of time. This tends to happen given your energy production system has to change, toxins may be released from your cells, vitality is reduced for the moment and energy reserves lowered.
This is a normal and healthy response from your body when it gets the opportunity to let go of toxins accumulated over the time (while not on a health kick). How much better would it be if we could implement more fresh vegetables and fruit daily to never feel like one has to diet or go on the next ‘health kick’, because all energy and detoxification systems work well..?
Balancing our minds may be the most challenging and most beneficial practice while working towards our goals. Having dreams that are bigger than our imagination are wonderful and inspiring. Let’s know them, embody them and then let’s take the right steps in our every day life towards them.
For example, my goal is to be an inspirer, a motivational speaker, a book author, a wellness retreat leader and yoga teacher, reaching millions of people all over the world. I don’t know if I will be there before my time is over. But does it matter???
In the meantime, I am learning to be the best version of myself hoping to improve, practicing and learning more about yoga, nutrition and life daily.
I meet people like you and learn from them and I absolutely enjoy every step of it all. I am loving sharing this message with you right now.
If I end up being all I dreamed of – great! If I don’t – I followed my passion with small failure and successes along the way which makes the journey of life exciting and fun.
Are you determined to reach you goal? Walking this trek, lifting this weight, participating in or winning a competition, achieve something none ever has….???
Don’t let your determination be in the way of your success.
Celebrate small goals which make your face and heart smile, taking the right steps to live up to the impossible.
Meanwhile, keep an eye on balance and enjoy the times where you fail, they will make you stronger for the following attempt at success.
In signing off, I have shared a story I came across on social media with you below. I don’t know the author but nature is the story teller. It’s all about how we learn and grow in the best version of ourselves yet. In this sense…. spread your wings when time is right
🙂 Smiles, Jeany
One day, a man saw a cocoon. He loved butterflies and had a craze for its wonderful combination of colours. In fact, he used to spend a lot of time around butterflies. He knew how a butterfly would struggle to transform from an ugly caterpillar into a beautiful one.
He saw the cocoon with a tiny opening. It meant that the butterfly was trying to make its way out to enjoy the world. He decided to watch how the butterfly would come out of the cocoon. He was watching the butterfly struggling to break the shell for several hours. He spent almost more than 10 hours with the cocoon and the butterfly. The butterfly had been struggling very hard for hours to come out through the tiny opening. Unfortunately, even after continuous attempts for several hours, there was no progress. It seemed that the butterfly had tried its best and could not give any more try.
The man, who had a passion and love for butterflies, decided to help the butterfly. He got a pair of scissors and tweaked the cocoon to make larger opening for the butterfly and removed the remaining cocoon. The butterfly emerged without any struggle!
Unfortunately, the butterfly looked no longer beautiful and had a swollen body with small and withered wings.
The man was happy that he had made the butterfly come out of the cocoon without any more struggles. He continued to watch the butterfly and was quite eager to see it fly with its beautiful wings. He thought that at any time, the butterfly might expand its wings, shrink the body and the wings could support the body. Unfortunately, neither did the wings expand nor the swollen body reduce.
Unfortunately, the butterfly just crawled around with withered wings and a huge body. It was never able to fly. Although the man did it with a good intention, he did not know that only by going through struggles the butterfly can emerge to be beautiful, with strong wings.
The continuous effort from the butterfly to come out of its cocoon would let the fluid stored in the body be converted into wings. Thus, the body would become lighter and smaller, and the wings would be beautiful and large.
If we don’t want to undergo any struggle, we won’t be able to fly!
Struggles make us shine!