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Social Integration: We All Need People

1/28/2019

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I’ve recently started a creative writing group at my house. We eat homemade scones, chat about writing topics, and do some creative exercises to get the words flowing onto the page.
 
The other day, one member of the group seemed distressed that I would be the only one responsible for organizing our gatherings: “Isn’t it a lot of work for you to plan and host us every time?” I looked at her with what can only be described as shock. And then I realized why she might interpret the planning and hosting of such an event as a relative burden. She has a family, her own service business, and a deeply rooted local community to tend to that she’s built over 20 years. Therefore, she has lots of roles and possible demands on her time and energy. Adding one more ounce to that load might, indeed, feel as though it could break the camel’s back, especially if she weren’t careful to engage in self-care first.


As opposed to my new friend, however, I have no family here. I have been on a long-overdue sabbatical from a draining desk job that I took after we moved, so I have not had students or clients to tend to since last spring. I have had no local community and no friends at all, outside of my wonderful husband, since we moved overseas 4 years ago. (FOUR years!)
We all need people.

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See Posts from Pages you Like on Facebook

7/18/2017

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I wanted to create this simple step-by-step post about how to actually see in your timeline the posts you want to see from the Facebook pages you have “liked” and “followed,” because it’s not automatic that they will show up. Facebook seems to limit how many “likers” and “followers” actually see pages’ posts so that page managers are incentivized to pay Facebook to “boost” their posts onto likers' and followers' timelines. But there is something you can do to increase your chances of seeing the content you want...
Four Tips to See Your Liked Pages’ Posts in Your Facebook Timeline

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Strategies for Staying in Recovery

7/13/2017

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As I revealed in this post, I am deeply into trying to stay in recovery from an addiction that covered up some really negative emotions. And wow, has it been a lesson. I mean, I have known and dated addicts my whole adult life, and I have studied and had a deep intellectual understanding of addiction for decades, but never did I actively try to heal my own because I conveniently kept myself unaware of the important/necessary emotions I was covering up. Now that the process of uncovering and healing the emotions has begun, so has the process of sticking to my recovery from addiction.
 
These are my basic strategies, probably subject to change. I am no expert, just a person dealing with healing and wanting to share what I do.


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Overcoming sugar addiction: Uncovering pain

7/7/2017

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I could have called this post so many things:
  • Desperate times call for desperate measures.
  • Now I understand what crack addicts feel like in rehab.
  • Mourning the loss of German Black Forest Cake.
  • My husband and I can no longer eat the foods we love together, and that sucks.
  • Please, gawd, make this torture stop. 
Sugar addiction
This used to be lunch.
But the truth of the matter is, I am hopeful that the process I am going through right this minute (and have gone through about 43,200 minutes already) will cease to feel desperate, not remind me of crack addiction, no longer have me mourning, allow me once again to eat meals with my husband, and have me not feeling as though I am being tortured most hours of most days of the week.

I’m hopeful that I will, indeed, overcome the sugar addiction that I have been unconsciously feeding for over a decade now. It went into overdrive when I met and married another sugar addict (isn’t that how it always goes?) and discovered I needed to drop sugar to heal a damaged gut (more on that later).


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Peeling the Layers of the Onion

6/27/2017

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Peeling back the layers of an onion. It’s a metaphor for life and growth that might not be perfect but never gets old.
 
The most poignant part of the metaphor for me is that peeling onions can sting and make you cry. Well, if that’s not a truth about growth and life, I don’t know what is!

With every layer we peel back, we can potentially face great pain and lots of tears. But it’s worth it, because onions, like life, are so tasty when they’re peeled and used in a way that is totally different from how they started. Instead of being a thick, protected orb with all sorts of potential (imagine our adult defenses), when the onion has been peeled and chopped, allowing us to cry while we peel and chop it, we make something pretty delicious and wonderful with it.
 
With life, it seems, it’s only in the unpeeling (discovering), chopping (analyzing), and making us cry (healing) that we learn, grow, and become our true selves.
 
Is it uncomfortable? Hell yes, just like peeling and chopping an onion can be.
 
Is it worth the discomfort? 


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How is coaching different from therapy?

6/6/2017

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Because the concept of “coaching” is still so nebulous to the majority of folks, I thought I’d whip up this quick list of comparisons that should help differentiate it from counseling or therapy. 

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Teaching and coaching: What's the difference?

5/31/2017

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After my last post, several of you wrote to me to tell me that you thought I was a great teacher, and that you appreciated what you learned from me. For that, I am eternally grateful. And as I enter the world of the coach again, I find myself pondering the differences between coaching and teaching and what they mean to me.

I don’t think I ever bothered to investigate their differences very closely before, because I had never spent so much time teaching in my life. But now that I have 17+ years of teaching under my belt, I can pick apart the qualities of teaching and coaching quite well. These are my realizations.


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I'm terrified. And I'm doing it anyway.

5/29/2017

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I’m absolutely terrified to write this post.
 
This post is about my dreams. It’s about the dreams that I neglected while I pursued what I had convinced myself were “smarter” (i.e., someone else's) goals. In 2009, I walked away from my dreams (a second time!) and into what would become the most difficult period of my life, fighting for things I did not believe in, getting farther and farther away from myself in the process.

In my mind, my dreams would never be attainable. I could not put aside all of the other noise, distraction, and false needs to pursue my authentic dreams. So I didn’t. And I suffered. Wow, have I suffered.
 
But the suffering ends today.

Life-wellness-coaching-germany-sara-hauber
What happens when we go after our dreams?

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Use SMART Goals to Increase Health & Wellbeing

11/14/2013

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Did you know that the secret to increasing your health and wellbeing is to use effective SMART goals?

When people set out to achieve health, wellness, or fitness goals, they mistakenly focus on outcomes (i.e., "I want to lose 15 Ibs," or "I want to lower my cholesterol," or “I want to live without back pain.”).

Successful clients instead focus on actions—things that they choose to do, practice, or take part in. Well-chosen actions lead naturally to the ultimate outcomes people seek. They are the centerpiece of what we wellness coaches call SMART goals. These goals are:
​

S = Specific.  "I want to feel better" is a vague outcome. "I will walk at 3.6 mph for 30 minutes on Monday and Friday" is a specific goal that will likely help you achieve the outcome of “feeling better.”
​

M = Measurable. "I will walk today" is too loose. Does walking to the car, which is 20 feet away, count? "I will walk at 3.6 mph for 30 minutes on Monday and Friday" is a measurable goal—there is nothing vague about it.

A = Actionable. "I will lose 20 pounds" is not an action. Can I look at you and see that you are losing 20 pounds, right at this moment? No. But if you say, "I will walk at 3.6 mph for 30 minutes on Monday and Friday" and it is Monday and I see you on the treadmill, I can see that you are likely on your way to losing that 20 pounds.

R = Realistic. "I will work out for an hour every day this month" is not realistic. If you set your goal too high, and then you don't succeed, you will feel bad about yourself. Set your goal at a reasonable level to make sure you succeed. After all, success breeds success. Achieving even one tiny action goal—perhaps "I will walk at 3.6 mph for 30 minutes on Monday and Friday this week"—will set you up for bigger and better future goals. Always start small.

T = Timed. "I will work out" is not a SMART goal because it has no timeframe.
In order to reach a goal, you must have a set time within which you will complete that goal. Set new action goals each week, and make sure your goals can be accomplished by your next goal-setting date.

Sara Hauber's SMART goal setting worksheetClick the image to download your free SMART goals worksheet.
Now that you know what a SMART goal is, download the SMART goal worksheet I created and craft a SMART goal that will help you reach an outcome you desire.

Be sure to follow the tips in my super-explanatory post about how to make sure you can start and maintain a new practice first. 
 
And remember, stay curious and find something to enjoy about each SMART goal you set!


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Looking Perfect or Feeling Good?

7/7/2013

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Looking perfect or feeling good. That struggle has been on my mind a lot lately as I welcome a host of new internal and external conditions that have a direct impact on my identity as a "health and fitness professional":
  • severe iron deficiency, which makes me fatigued if I even think about exercise
  • aging, which makes me not care one bit about whether I have the most toned body on the planet because other things seem far more important
  • building a business, which takes up a lot of time and intrinsically feels more satisfying than spending an hour each day listening to testosterone-heavy muscle-heads groan and yell at the gym I belong to
  • my yoga mind, which knows without a doubt that the appearance of my physical body is perfect just as it is--however that may be on any given day--and its lack of muscle does not have one tiny bit of impact on my status as a lovely/loving/lovable human being.

The items in the above list have undermined the major belief that drove me to exercise obsessively for the first 10 years of my professional fitness career: ​my body was really messed up from scoliosis and other health issues, and I had to work really hard to make it appear "perfect" or I wouldn't be respected, successful, or loved.

I think perhaps a majority of women are led to believe something very similar, and that is what countless "love your body" campaigns and groups are designed to help defuse.

But as anyone who has made a major shift in her life knows, old beliefs and thought patterns die hard. Really hard. It takes more than a simple ad campaign or a support group to change our core beliefs.

Especially when every bit of advertising and social conditioning in our society says, "Women are their bodies, nothing more, and we demand that those bodies appear PERFECT!" And as a professional in the fitness and wellness industry (and, sadly, also in "Westernized" yoga)? Forget about it: We are ALL supposed to be perfect icons of bodily perfection: no body fat, no cellulite, no structural malformations, no outward appearance of aging, perfect curves in exactly the right places, and energy so abundant we work out hours a day without a care in the world.

Hmph. I don't think anyone can adhere to those expectations without being sick and obsessed.

So here I reveal the strategies that work to ensure that I don't fall into the "trying to appear perfect" trap again. If you recognize yourself struggling with anything I've mentioned so far, maybe one or more of these can help you, too.
  1. Practice some form of meditation or internal awareness exercise on a daily basis, no matter how briefly. Turning inward has an incredible impact on my sense of well being and my awareness of what's truly important in life: a mind-body relationship built on mutual understanding and admiration.
  2. Question everything, and choose which option feels right. When I walk past the mirror and see loose upper arms, flapping along beside me, my first, fleeting reaction has been "Oh, man, I should go lift weights!" But then I learned to pause and think, "Why? Is it hurting me at all to have floppy arms?" I quickly acknowledge the deep feelings of "should" and contrast them to the much more important knowing of "want to"--and the "want to" part of me just knows that lifting weights would be profoundly worse for me than simply accepting my body's current condition (see list above) and realizing I'll get excited to lift weights again when my body and mind are screaming in unison, "Yay, now we want to!"
  3. Do what I can to stay healthy and feel good. That means taking my iron and vitamin C and D on time with lots of water; doing at least one foundation move from the Hauber Method™ a couple times a week so I maintain a pain-free back; walking or biking to my appointments when I feel up to it, but taking the bus when I don't have any energy; getting a massage when I can, and using my magic tennis balls when I can't; and balancing my precious work time with measured amounts of high-quality social time with people who mean a lot to me. (I'm a big believer that social support and sharing have a huge impact on health and well being.)
  4. Participate in EMDR. What's that, you ask? Well, this little acronym has probably gone the farthest, after my yoga training, to help me defuse any remaining delusions that my body's shape and appearance determine my value in life. The acronym stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming, although newer research has shown that any bilateral stimulation of the sense organs (eyes, ears, hands) brings the same beneficial results. The technique is too complex to explain in a paragraph, but in practice with a qualified therapist, it's simple and utterly profound. I participated in it, with Chicago-based therapist Vanessa Ford, because it's got decades of support from high-quality research studies, especially on its benefits for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I can tell you, though, that it worked wonders for me and my seemingly small (when compared to military combat or rape, the two most common causes of PTSD) problems. In combination with my Buddhist and Yoga meditation practices, EMDR has given me a new life. And I can tell you without hesitation I'll simply never go back to hating any part of my body ever again. Or lifting weights when I don't want to. Or feeling like a failure for having floppy upper arms. The effects of EMDR are lasting, and treatment takes mere weeks or months, not years and years like often-ineffective traditional therapy.

When faced with the choice to "look perfect" or "feel good," I'm opting for feeling good from here on out. What about you?

** I had so many wonderful, heartfelt comments to this post on its original Wordpress page. It's too bad I could not preserve them when I moved the site. Perhaps new readers would like to add some helpful comments of their own?
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Why Do I Teach Yoga?

5/1/2013

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"Why do I teach yoga?"

It's a question I often ask myself, because sometimes I get lost and need to find my way back. I get caught up in the very American view of yoga that promotes yoga practice as a way to lose weight and work on one's body shape and size. I feel pressured to teach a fast, flowing, aerobically stimulating class even when I know that the students asking for such a class are not ready for it physically. I let myself fall into the trap that I have fallen into since I was a youngster: trying to be what people want me to be instead of what I am.

In the last week, during my lovely yoga retreat in Puglia, Italy, I found myself falling into the traps that I just described, and I had to pause and ask myself again, "Why do I teach yoga?" Below are my answers.

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Gratitude = Better Health

3/22/2013

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I learned long ago, probably during one of my many self-help-book-reading jags, that expressing appreciation to others makes them feel really, really good, and it actually has a profoundly positive effect on relationships.

As I exponentially increased my expressions of appreciation and gratefulness--by consciously choosing to do so--I started to notice just how rarely I had heard such appreciation sent my direction. Such warm-and-fuzzy, heartfelt feelings of gratitude were apparently more rare than I ever imagined them to be, and I never would have noticed if I hadn’t made the concerted effort to increase my own delivery of these simple, yet meaningful, expressions.

In my inbox last week, I received an e-mail from the leader of a women’s chorus that I belonged to in Chapel Hill, NC. Every week, this amazing woman sends out announcements of uplifting, healing, love-focused events, requests, and news items. Amongst the long list that day was a link to ArtofGratitude.com [sadly, the website is now defunct], described as “a free resource designed to help people create a daily practice of expressing gratitude.”


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Relaxation Improves Performance

2/15/2013

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Ever since I can remember, I have gotten sick when I have been forced to work a solid "8-hour workday." I never drank coffee until I started working in the corporate world, as I tried to force my energy level to adhere to the false notion that a worker at a desk job for 8 hours is a productive one. Nothing could be further from the truth, but only recently have scientists and corporate bigwigs been catching on to that fact.

It's been shown time and again that we humans need rest--and lots of it--to be at our best, cognitively, emotionally, and physically. We start to destroy cells and important muscle tissues as soon as we cross that line from "working optimally" to "being a little fatigued," and it's all down hill from there. The thing is, we humans cross that line after a much shorter time than 8 hours! As Tony Schwartz reveals in his excellent New York Times piece, "Relax! You'll Be More Productive," in as little as 90 minutes after an energetic high, we need a rest.
The bottom line of the article, and what my body seems to have been telling me for years, is: Relaxation improves performance.

And by performance, I'm talking not just about work. I'm talking thinking/reasoning skills, emotional skills, and life skills that are crucial to "performance" in relationships, day-to-day interactions in public, and self-care.

We need vacations and time away from the "grind" sprinkled heavily throughout our days, or we just don't feel and act right. If we don't get that needed time away, addictions are a frequently used crutch to help us push through, and we all know that addictions can have some dire consequences.

I realized after trying to work for other people many times that I just couldn't play by someone else's rules (which required someone else's schedule) without getting dead sick. It happened every time! My body told me loud and clear, "Sara, you need regular relaxation built into your days or you'll die." Or at least, that's what it felt like. So I put a plan in motion to get out of the 9-to-5 (or, more often, 7-to-6) rat race and into a life that better suited my values: healthy life, healthy relationships, healthy body (none of which I had when working the corporate gig).

As we emerge from winter to spring, keep your needs for relaxation in mind. Honor your body's rhythms. And if you think you need some good brainstorming to come up with ideas for how to find that relaxation even during a 9-to-5 (or 7-to-6) gig, let me help. I can't give you answers, but I can ask you all the right questions to help you find what'll work for you.

Now, isn't it nap time?

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Healing Back Pain: I Did It, You Can Do It

6/10/2012

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Back pain has been a professional specialty of mine since 1999. I should say, back pain relief has been my specialty since that time. That professional focus arose directly from my personal experience with spine surgery and my expert training in functional movement.

It seems odd to me that hundreds of people each year are trained as personal trainers with certifications in “functional training,” yet I rarely meet someone who can teach what I teach, how I teach it.
  • They don’t really understand the deep core musculature.
  • They don’t really know what stretches or exercises accomplish what gains.
  • They don't really understand the progressions that help clients--who've been in active pain for weeks, months, or decades--get a truly strong core and a pain-free back.
And then it finally dawned on me: It’s my personal experience with back pain that makes my style or method of teaching so effective.

I’ve lived back pain. I’ve survived back surgery. I’ve struggled through recovery, not just from that, but from a traumatic hip surgery as well.

I know exactly what it’s like:
  • to suffer those few hours when one pain pill is wearing off, and it’s too soon to take another;
  • to roll the wrong way in bed and have pain make me cry;
  • to struggle through just a couple tiny physical therapy movements when I know that I have to complete dozens more in order for my range of motion to return and my muscles not to atrophy further.

I’ve been faced with many physical challenges for the last 25+ years of my life.

But here’s the thing: I’m still here. I’m still active. I’m still pain free.

And that’s what I bring to this field of back-pain management (and functional movement training) that others simply don’t: first-hand experience, first-hand struggle, first-hand success and triumph.

Because of my own experience, I have an undying belief—rather, a knowing—that you, too, can overcome whatever obstacles (physical, emotional, spiritual) you’re facing, and come out the other side a pain-free, thriving, integrated person. I’ve seen it happen time and again with clients and students of mine.
​And I invite you to join us.

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Spouse's Lack of Support Affects Pain

12/19/2011

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HealthDay News just posted a brief review of recent research published in the Journal of Pain by Leong, Kano, & Johansen that shows a connection between spousal communication and physical pain.

The topic of this study supports my whole existence as a back-care and yoga practitioner. Part of what makes my work so effective is my unwavering validation of my clients' emotions and lived experience. In graduate school, I focused my study on the methods of interpersonal communication that foster trust, respect, and partnership when one party is facing difficult life changes or emotional upheaval.

Unfortunately, most couples have not completed such communication training. So when one spouse is in pain, the pain-free spouse is inadequately trained to actually help the other feel supported and "heard." Yet, that emotional support is crucial to the healing process. Without such emotional support, people can cope very poorly with pain and, in fact, hold on to pain for decades . . . or a lifetime.

I'm so happy to read major peer-reviewed medical journals are publishing this type of psycho-social-medical research. Pain research has typically been focused on medications (which are more addictive than they are effective) and surgical interventions (which are shown to be less effective than just about any other pain treatment over the long-term).
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Self-Care: Why Should We?

10/14/2011

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Sara Hauber's Self Care Article
This article I wrote for Wellness & Fitness Entrepreneur in October 2006 is timeless.

​The content applies not only to helping professionals like fitness trainers, yoga teachers, nurses, doctors, and anyone else who cares for other people’s bodies, minds, and spirits. It applies to all of us who wish to live a full, contented life free from guilt, blame, and emotional exhaustion.

One of the things my coaching clients present most often is issues related to caring for themselves when they feel they “should” be caring for everyone else first. In the article, I explain how our own wellness/priorities must come first, or we eventually suffer the consequences. I hope you find it a valuable read.


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The PDF viewing window in my website editor is not working properly. If you click on the Adobe symbol or file name, above, you can download and read a PDF of the original article.
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