Salty Summer Float Giveaway

The perfect summer oasis is something that we dream of.

Escaping from the hustle and bustle to be at ease and enjoy some R&R.

COVID-19 changed our plans for vacations and cottage getaways though, and this summer has been full of stress for a lot of us.

We’re doing something special as a way to help out with your relaxation this summer. The Salty Summer Giveaway is on now and you can enter to win the grand prize of 3 float sessions, for yourself or to share with your friends and family.

Getting a chance to tune out from all the noise and busyness around you for an hour is as blissful as it comes. 3 times makes it all the better.

Don’t wait because the contest closes soon and by sharing it with your friends you’ll get even more chances to win.

You can enter the contest through this link:

P.S. Everyone wins something! Your first prize starts with just one referral entry into the contest.

Use These Strategies to Properly Return to the Gym While Recovering Your Best Post-COVID-19

For many of us, our training has been off of peak for months now. What’s going to happen when the gyms reopen?

I have a thought that we may see an increase in sports-related injuries and rhabdomyolysis as people get back to their routines and feel the urge to push as hard as they were used to before COVID-19 and gyms closing. Rhabdomyolysis (rhabdo) is the breakdown of damaged muscle that can occur in athletes who overtrain by doing too much work without adequate recovery. It’s a dangerous condition because it can lead to kidney damage in addition to the effects of overtraining syndrome.

As gym goers return to their fitness centres, we need to remember the importance of adequate recovery and training programs that are designed for making progress over time.

Here are some ways to approach getting your grind on responsibly once back in the gym.

Listen in to this discussion on the FlowCast

Ramp up your volume now.

Knowing that gyms in Ontario are gearing up for re-opening soon, the first thing that I encourage anyone who is camping outside the gym with their Zubaz pants and fanny pack to do is start to increase the volume and intensity of your home workouts now. Do more bodyweight workouts and incorporate the exercises that you don’t like because they hit your weak points. If you’ve been sticking to a program consistently throughout the last several months, try to do whatever you can to increase the intensity by adding weight to the movements. Throw on a backpack loaded with books if you need to.

If you’re stuck on what you can do to ramp up the intensity right now, it’s the perfect time to support a local personal trainer and get a sensible training program for returning the gym designed for you.

Start slow - you’re not going to be at your best immediately

So your local gym has announced that they’ve reopened and day one looks like the onslaught of people who’ve made resolutions at New Years to get in shape.

Everyone is training like it’s the zombie apocalypse and the only suitable soundtrack to fuel such intensity is an 80’s Training Montage a la Eye of The Tiger.

This is where we will see the risk of overtraining and potential injury run at a fever pitch in the oncoming months.

In the training world, we talk about having true one-rep maxes and training maxes. And this is the time to be extra conservative with the percentage of your one-rep max that you use. A typical training max is set at 95% of your true one-rep max so that you can continue to make progress without getting stuck at a plateau and also for reducing the risk of injury, which is especially important for training athletes.

It would be wise to consider working off of 90% of your true max or even 85% when programming your volume and intensity at least for one training macrocycle of 4-6 weeks as you get back into the gym.

After your muscles and nervous system have re-adapted you can start to resume a little more of your normal training, provided that you keep in mind the need for recovery and balancing the stress that isn’t going away anytime soon.

Implement proper recovery now

Many of us use the gym as a way to “de-stress” so we often forget that it is imposing additional stress on our bodies.

Training too hard - non-functional overtraining - is one of the most common sources of stress alongside things like poor diet and breathing patterns as well as relationship and work stress. In normal times we don’t have this additional burden of the anxiety surrounding the global health situation and recessions which only further stoke our stress levels.

Before you get back into the gym and start training hard again, identify the ways that you like to recover and restore your body so that you can plan it into your schedule. This is just as important for peak performers as the training itself and is one of the strategies that separate the world-class from everyone else.

If you are training hard and working hard, there should be recovery time included in your daily schedule with longer sessions in which you treat yourself with doing the things that help you relax and enjoy at least once or twice per week. This could be spending half an hour in the sauna after one of your workouts or going for a float to unwind and decompress.

If you spend a lot of time at a desk, your recharge time may look like getting out to golf or going for a lunchtime walk through the local trails.

The more that you see this as part of your job in staying healthy and well, the better you will be able to perform and fully engage in the other areas of your life.

Join Peak Performance Monthly Coaching

This month’s peak performance training was on functional overtraining and HRV tracking for peak performance. Visit the Flow Academy if you want more advanced training on recovery for training and performing your best.

Getting Back On Track After COVID-19

It has been over 100 days since Canada was struck down by COVID-19 and the world changed forever. Things are different now, the new normal, as it has been known means a lot of different things to a lot of people but the one consistent thing is that we have to adapt to survive and thrive.

Admit it, there were times over the last several months that were not very productive for you. Tiger King ate up a weekend here, TikTok an hour at a time there, and throughout it all, there was an impending sense of doom weighing on your chest.

As dramatic as this all sounds, it has been the reality for most people that I've talked to and coached through this time.

But the past doesn't have to dictate the present, nor the future, and if you are looking to accomplish your Dream Goals, you will more often than not have to face things in just this way.

So how do we return to performing our best and being productive again? Or if you recognize that you aren't the best as productivity, then how can you use the past several months are fuel for living a more meaningful life?

Watch The Video Version Here

Reflect on what you've learned in the past several months

The first thing that we must do is set aside some time to reflect on what we've learned during the past several months. Make this tangible for yourself. I use an hour or so Sunday morning every week to reflect and review each week and then on a monthly and quarterly basis, I do an even deeper reflection that often lasts several hours. Right now I want to you schedule an hour for reflection into your calendar this Sunday morning - or another time if it works better for you but do it now. Don't leave it unscheduled and expect it to get done.

The power of reflection is not to be underestimated when it comes to holding yourself accountable, learning to overcome obstacles, and making progress.

We've all been through incredibly difficult times in the last hundred days. Businesses are hanging on by a thread and a prayer, our friends and loved ones have become sick and died, we've been disconnected from the social bonds that keep us sane, and our financial turmoil has stressed us.

This is not meant to be a doom and gloom message to you though. Yes, it has been hard, but what have you learned from this? If you're reading this, it means that you're still breathing and you've still got access to one of the most powerful technological advances humans have ever created with the internet.

During your reflection, you can write about what you've learned from the negative but also look at the positive things you have learned or experienced.

• Who have you been able to connect or reconnect with?

• What interests or actives have sparked creativity and passion in you?

• What have you created or what did you hope to create during this time?

Instead of getting down on yourself, look at what you want to accomplish next in your life.

As I mentioned in the introduction, most people have not used the extra time on their hands to accomplish anything very meaningful during the COVid-19 quarantine. But don't get down on yourself about it. The stress and anxiety of the times were physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually draining and did not make it easy for anyone to have the desire to pump out ideas or create the next great tech platform.

Let's look at what you can do to move forward from here and accomplish next in your life.

Did something spark your interest and passion? Of course, one of the most common plans of all is that maybe you want to exercise more and get in better shape. It could be that you wanted to create a side hustle that you're more passionate about than the work you currently earn a living from, or you want to connect better with your loved ones and friends.

Whatever ideas came to mind that you've reflected upon are great and meaningful to what you want to work on accomplishing next in your life.

Now the trick is to create simple steps to build momentum.

Don't try to pile too much on your plate.

Maybe work is also picking back up now or deferred bills are coming due. You've got to look at your Whole Life to know how much more you can handle.

Building momentum from zero to one hundred takes time. If you overdo it you'll run the risk of burning yourself out and I think that's going to be a particularly prevalent concern in the coming months as we enter this New Normal.

Start with a modest amount of change in your schedule. If you're looking to include more exercise, build up and start slow. It's going to depend on your current fitness and capabilities but even starting with three 1-hour sessions per week is great. Then build up your capacity from there. The same thing goes with starting a business on the side. Focus on the steps that are going to get you to making money from it and validating the idea. Start lean and don't waste time on things like designing logos or upgrading to fancy software if you haven't validated the idea first.

You want quality output from the time you put into it. Believe it or not, something that we do as peak performers is generating more quality work in a single 90-minute block of time than most people can complete in a full workday. If you structure your time and intention in the work that you do for your side hustle in the same way, in no time, those last three months that felt like a waste will become a valuable time where you let your ideas percolate.

Respect the need for recovery.

Everything has to be rebuilt slowly as we are all still facing stress and uncertainty. So be patient with yourself and remember the journey.

If you didn't take care of your recovery as well before COVID-19, now is an excellent time to consider how you can do better with your self-care and recharging regularly. Grinding through every day and week is not the path to peak performance. Much like how REM sleep fluctuates on a 90-minute cycle through the night, our energy oscillates throughout the day in 90-minute segments as well. We can use willpower and discipline to push ourselves from 8 am to 10 pm every day but this drastically affects performance throughout the day and the stress that builds up from the schedule leads to burnout, much like how an athlete that tries to perform in the same fashion without recovery will overtrain.

Each individual requires different needs for recovery, but just like how you're going to add in modest amounts of the Dream Goal projects that you're working on into your schedule, add in your self-care and recovery routines.

Hopefully, you spent some of the quarantine time getting a restful holiday but if you didn't, it's important to note that quality recovery includes things that you enjoy, getting into nature, sleeping more or doing other restorative mindfulness practices like meditating but does not include watching the blue light screens of TVs, tablets, or other tech devices.

Often your most ideal recovery activities will be the opposite of the style of work you mostly do. If you're at a desk job most of the time, recovering with something physical can be very beneficial and if you've got an active job, de-stressing with more creative and calm activities might be best for you.

Most importantly, do the things you enjoy.

Schedule your work into 60-to-90-minute blocks of time throughout the day, include time for refuelling and re-energizing, and block off at least 2-3 blocks each week to do your deeper recovery activities. Also make sure that you're getting the right amount of sleep that you need, typically 7-8 hours every night. This is what maintaining a balanced and productive schedule as a peak performer looks like.

We all go through adversity on the journey of life, but if you're going to be the hero of your story you've got to reflect on what this last chapter taught you and what's coming in the next chapter of your life. Start the process slowly and build up momentum. And remember that we all need to prioritize recovery even more than ever to keep our immune systems healthy and balance the stressors in our lives.

To learn more about how you can perform your best in this next phase, check out the free webinar on peak performance and the new normal.

7 Effective, Natural Ways To Relieve Pain and Feel Your Best

Pain is one of the most pervasive and pernicious conditions that we face. We've all experienced pain in our lives and about 20 percent of the population lives with a chronic pain condition. From our joints to our muscles, to our nerves and beyond, all systems of our body are affected by pain. Fibromyalgia, arthritis, and sciatica have become commonplace words as we face these conditions ourselves or know someone we deeply care about who is suffering daily from them.

Billions of dollars are spent each year treating pain and researchers are equally invested in seeking out effective ways to relieve pain.

Today, let's go through some of the most effective pain treatments that you may not be familiar with and how they may help you to relieve your pain and find more ease in your life safely and naturally.

First, we must preface by saying this is for informational purposes only and always consult your physician before making any changes in your prescription or routine.

How We Normally Treat Pain

Billions of dollars are spent each year on over the counter and prescription pain medications to treat the slew of symptoms that affect us. While many people are dependent on the medications they are taking for pain management, most of us are aware that medications and even operations that we go through for treating our pain are not without their downsides. Over the counter drugs, like NSAIDs are known to cause gastrointestinal issues, prescription drugs like opiates carry addiction and dependency risks with them, and going under the knife always poses a risk as well.

When it comes to joint replacements and spinal fusions, we may be opting for limited mobility and strength while on borrowed time with nuts and bolts that don't stand the test of time in the same way as our organic parts do.

Research and technology are making miraculous changes in the field of medicine though and we will continuously see improvements across the board with safety in regards to medications and pain treatment procedures but it still comes down to the decision of the individual on what route they wish to go. Cost also becomes a limiting factor in many instances with medical interventions.

So whether it's because of the financial costs, or you're someone who prefers natural options wherever possible, let's now look at natural pain relief options that you may not be familiar with and how they may help in your case.

Why Natural Pain Relief?

Natural pain relief need not be ineffective pain relief.

Our bodies have innate systems in place to deal with blunting pain signals and healing injuries to our bodies.

The inflammatory response is an inherent defense system against attacks. When we are physically injured, inflammation signals the defenders to heal or kill and regenerate any cells in our bodies that were affected. This system is again activated by internal threats like pathogens when we get sick or contract a foodborne illness. Pain signals are produced as a way to protect ourselves from further damage during these attacks but also get produced by the inflammatory system as well. As most of us have experienced, short-lived pain is manageable but starts to take its more serious toll on us when it becomes a chronic and ongoing problem. Inflammation isn't supposed to linger in our body and it appears that a dysfunctional state of inflammation is linked to many chronic pain disorders. Pain researchers have shown that many of the common types of pain that we experience have a disorder with inflammation at the root of the issue.

By learning how to treat the root cause and taking proactive steps to keep up the treatments, many people can reduce their need for harmful medications or prevent the need for surgery through a holistic approach to pain relief.

Once again, always check with your doctor, but we'll go through these exciting and promising pain relief treatments and what types of conditions they may benefit you for.

Remedies You Can Use Right Now to Relieve Pain

Rule number one with making any changes is never pushing it and always check with your doctor.

Stretching or Foam Rolling

Stretching and foam rolling can often be beneficial for muscle or tendon pain. We've heard of people saying they've got a knot in their muscle or we've experienced it ourselves and there seems to be some truth to the statement. Often due to repetitive strain or injury, our muscles can form trigger points which are adhesions in the muscles. Other issues can include restrictions in the fascia that holds muscles together or scar tissue in muscles and tendons. These conditions are painful and often chronically so unless they are worked on, either on your own or with the help of a therapist. While you may not think that a simple knot in your muscle or repetitive strain could cause a debilitating issue, our body is so highly interconnected that this can often create a weak link effect where your most noticeable issue is further down the chain from where the problem originated.

Doing light stretching daily and including foam rolling in your routine are simple ways to create some more mobility in your system. Foam rolling involves putting your body weight into a soft foam tube on affected areas and rolling gently back and forth as a form of self-massage. Using props like a tennis ball, or Thera-cane can also help to access small or hard to reach areas. One area that we often neglect but can see dramatic results from is rolling out the soles of our feet. Because we are on our feet for so much of our lives and many people do not have perfect posture or wear improper shoes, researchers have shown that this can almost immediately improve the range of motion in our entire posterior chain. It's a testament to how interconnected our entire body is.

CBD Oil

CBD oil is a very promising natural remedy for many people suffering from inflammatory conditions. CBD is the non-psychoactive component of the Cannabis plant and is also often extracted from hemp. It is a powerful natural anti-inflammatory remedy that works to block pain signals through our endogenous cannabinoid system.

Both pets and people find incredible relief by including topical or ingestible CBD products. With the Cannabis industry becoming prominent, CBD research is starting to show effectiveness for a wide range of pain conditions, including arthritis, fibromyalgia, cancer-related pain, nerve pain, chronic back pain, and joint and muscle pain from sports. It also has been very beneficial for relaxing people and helping with anxiety and insomnia or sleep-related disorders.

Because of the anti-inflammatory effects with CBD, it's best to check with your doctor if you are on any other anti-inflammatory medications before trying CBD.

We sell CBD products at Flow Spa and have seen many customers able to avoid the need for medications or reduce medications by adding CBD to their routine.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is one of the most exciting fields of research from the past decade. This buzz-word worthy term includes things like meditation and enlightenment or transcendence but there's nothing mystical about the science of mindfulness; it is simply a way to think of present state awareness or non-judgemental thinking. Not only is mindfulness effective for reducing stress and anxiety, but research has also shown that a regular practice of mindfulness can help us to become more resilient to pain and suffering in our life. People who are trained in mindfulness are better able to block and ignore pain signals in their body, which can lead to higher levels of happiness and perceiving life more positively.

There are many free or inexpensive courses and apps for practicing mindfulness. Some that we recommend include the Waking Up app, Oak, Headspace, and Insight Timer. At Flow Spa, we also have a Muse Meditation headband which is a biofeedback device that guides your brain into a calm state using cues from nature sounds. It's free for anyone to use at the spa.

Learning how to become more mindful is a challenge for many of us, which is why several of the other safe and natural treatments for the pain we're going to suggest may help to ease you into regular mindfulness practice if it doesn't come naturally to you.

Nature Exposure

One of the ways to make mindfulness more accessible to you if you struggle with it is through getting into nature, which has also been called forest bathing. When we breathe in the fresh air of natural surroundings like in the woods or a park, the fragrances that are released from the plants and trees around us have been shown to reduce blood pressure and stress. Stress is a pro-inflammatory condition in our body, so by reducing stress in our body, we are also able to reduce a major source of chronic inflammation.

To get the greatest benefit from nature exposure, leave your phone and other devices behind, breathe deeply, and enjoy your presence in nature. If you need a phone with you for emergencies, you can put it on airplane mode.

Nature exposure can work well to help you into a mindful state because of the calming effect but also due to being a more active form of walking meditation. Try counting your paces or breathing on pace with your steps as you walk through the woods.

Treatments Worth Trying for Deeper Pain Management

Infrared Sauna

Chronic stress is pro-inflammatory and a pervasive problem in our bodies but a complete absence of stress is also not ideal for our well-being. Short, intense bouts of stress like with a hard workout, heat, or cold exposure, make our bodies adaptable and more resilient. Infrared saunas and other sauna use have been shown to help with joint and muscle pain like arthritis, as well as create a beneficial response for coping with and reducing stress. When we get exposed to intense heat like with sauna for a short period, our body responds with the same defense system that is activated during injuries, which helps us to heal and regenerate. Furthermore, the sweating that is caused by the heat helps to rid our bodies of other stressors that build up in our system, like the toxic byproducts of chronic inflammation or heavy metals and other environmental toxins.

Sauna use seems to help a lot of people who struggle with joint paint like arthritis and some circulatory conditions that lead to pain and discomfort. To get the most out of a sauna treatment protocol, it needs to be done ideally 2-3 times per week and at least once per week.

Acupuncture

As we talked about with foam rolling and stretching, adhesions throughout our bodies can lead to pain and dysfunction. Acupuncture can help to stimulate blood flow and relax adhesions to allow our bodies to move better again and reduce inflammation. While this treatment modality may not appeal to everyone, it has a wide range of benefits that may be worthwhile for you to consider looking further into. Treatments will usually start with a more frequent schedule until the pain and tension have diminished at which point less frequent maintenance sessions may be performed to prevent pain or injury from recurring.

Floatation Therapy

Floating or float therapy goes by many names, like sensory deprivation or R.E.S.T for Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy. It's the Dead Sea experience harnessed in a comfortable and private room with a pod or a float tank that's designed like a bathtub big enough for you to lie down flat on your back in without touching any sides. Within the float tank, there are only 10 or 11 inches of water with 1,000 lb. of Epsom Salt dissolved into it, allowing our bodies to float like a cork on the surface. The float rooms are dark and quiet, with optional music and lights, and the experience of laying in the super-saturated saltwater decompresses the entire body and lets the mind relax and quiet to reduce stress and anxiety. Experiences usually range from 60-to-90 minutes in length as the body needs time to decompress and reduce tension once the pressure is taken off your body.

Float therapy is one of the safest and most effective treatments for a wide variety of conditions which is why much research has been going into this amazing and relaxing experience in recent years. Clinical evidence for float therapy includes treating chronic neck and back pain, pain related to depression, reductions in stress, anxiety, and blood pressure, and ongoing research is further validating the benefits for arthritis, fibromyalgia, concussion therapy, and PTSD.

This bucket list experience for many people becomes a regular part of their routine once they realize how much it helps with reducing pain not only right after the treatment but for days and weeks at a time. Many doctors regularly rank float therapy at the top of their list of recommended treatments because of its safety and efficacy with little to no side effects. Typical frequency of treatments ranges from one to four times per month depending on the severity of pain and the need for relief.

At Flow Spa, we specialize in float therapy and have seen countless customers come in again and again for relief from pain. If you're interested in learning more about how float therapy can help you, book your first appointment today or give us a call for more information.

How To Make Your Exercise Routine Easy To Stick To

Throughout this quarantine, I've been talking about the importance of exercise and staying active and getting outside.

For me, this was a big shift as a strongman competitor my training has been way off but I dove right into looking forward to a different style of training with bodyweight movements and higher repetition work which is quite out of the ordinary for me and a good challenge.

In addition to going on walks, my fitness routine hasn't dropped off and, in a lot of ways, it's increased because I can work out as well as get out for a walk each day and I'm doing this at least six days a week.

But when my friend Tony invited me on a bike ride just the other day something clicked in me that I haven’t experienced in quite a while and it reminded me of the most important lesson there is when it comes to exercise and consistency.

That's when I clued in and remembered that not everybody loves to do the gym rats scenario.

Maybe for you, the thought of Burpee's and squats and push-ups at home in your living room is as bad as pulling teeth. I remembered that moment the joy that I used to experience when I first discovered basketball because as an overweight teenager I was not physically active at all.

I had played soccer and baseball growing up as a child but I never really liked those sports. But everything shifted at that moment when I found a type of activity and a sport that I enjoyed.

You see, I set out a goal to start running when the quarantine hit just as a way to burn off some energy and get exercise and guess what? I haven't run a single time in the past two months that we've been stuck at home. And so it's all coming full circle almost 20 years later as I'm finding the joy in biking. My sport of strong man beats me up enough and I don't want to feel the wear and tear of pounding the pavement while running which is why cycling has become so great for me since I never really feel like my evening walks do much to get my heart rate up or feel like exertion. And that’s ok too. Exercise doesn’t always have to be hard to be beneficial.

So today I want to take you through how you can find that activity that you love.

And this isn’t to say there's no value in pushing yourself and the discipline of doing hard things. Training that grit is essential for peak performance but as I've been talking about as well lately right now we're not in a state where a lot of us can get to peak performance but rather we need to think about what is optimal for us in this time and so one way to optimize your situation is to make some lighthearted decisions and get more joy out of your daily routine and the activities that you do.

So the more fun you can have with your exercise right now the more willpower that you can exert over staying focussed on doing the deep work you need and avoiding those distractions in your workplace at home and treating yourself with exercise that you like.

The only step to finding enjoyment and exercise is to try a bunch of things.

Now, at first, you may not get peak joy out of something just because the challenge maybe a little bit greater than what you can handle so I would say stick with things for at least 1 to 2 weeks and see how you feel don't make a big investment into it but just get started and if things don't feel right keep moving on to something else.

I think the most important thing is you've got to try a lot of different activities.

Maybe you're thinking to yourself that you don't like to do anything physical but at least in my mind, I have yet to meet somebody that doesn't find at least one type of physical activity to just get more exercise enjoyable.

Do your research and figure out what types of activities you may enjoy. The unfortunate thing is I feel like some of us will struggle in this realm right now just because there are sports that require multiple participants that are out of the question right now and so in those cases you'll just have to do your best to at least make some lighthearted choices with your exercise to stay active.

What Can We Learn and Apply from Silent Meditation Retreats to Our Everyday Life?

I recently had my friend Tony Francis on the FlowCast where we went in-depth on the story of a virtual silent meditation retreat that he attended during the COVID-19 quarantine. Not only was this a unique style of a meditation retreat, but it also got me thinking about how we all could apply those lessons to our everyday lives. Instead of endlessly flicking through social media what if we paused to listen to the birds chirping and just watch the clouds drifting by us?

Instead of seeing meditation as a bandaid solution to a tightening in our chest what if we made it a part of our daily routine just because?

What would our life be like then?

Today, let's look at what we can learn from the experience of others who have attended silent meditation retreats and see how we can live a little more mindfully by following their lead.

We're Always Chasing The Next Mountain

We face an immense issue in our modern world that is driven by our primitive brains in this hyperstimulated setting. We are so driven and focused by the next milestone or next objective that we never stop to appreciate what's in front of us. You've probably experienced this yourself before. You go on a beautiful hike, seeking out the highest point in the area. You are so focused on reaching that zenith too far away to even see in the distance that you don't take in the forest around you. Or maybe you're on vacation on the Mediterranean coast, and instead of appreciating the breathtaking scenery, you're only thinking about what you're going to have for dinner and where you're going to eat.

Our agendas are meant to guide us towards living more purposefully, not to own us and our every thought.

Silent Retreats Give Us Access To Experiences No Other Humans Have

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist who has found his purpose in teaching meditation, primarily through his Waking Up app where he teaches daily meditations, brings on guest instructors, and has deep discussions with long time practitioners. In his book of the same name, *Waking Up*, Sam talks about his first silent meditation retreat experience which happened when he was only sixteen. Sam talked about the misery of the experience, as part of the retreat included a multi-day fast in the woods alone. Chasing his metaphorical mountain, Sam spent the first few days journaling about all the foods he would eat when he was back home. Despite the challenge of the initial phase of the retreat, over the years Sam has reflected that he believes silent retreats give us access to experiences that no other humans have. There's a transcendence of the primal chase when we exact our willpower to retreat into silence for days at a time. It strips away all the distractions from what is known as "the wound of existence." We recognize that life is entirely made up of NOW. Unlike a prophecy, whatever comes next has not come into existence yet and whatever has already passed may have left a scar but is equally nonexistent in the present moment.

While I have not attended a silent meditation retreat, I am deeply curious about what this exclusive experience Sam Harris talks about might be...

Unlocking Peak Experiences and Flow

Perhaps one part of the silent retreat experience that Sam Harris talked about is what Abraham Maslow called peak experiences and we more intimately know as the flow state. Flow is technically defined as an optimal state of consciousness, one where performance goes through the roof, and we are forced into the present moment.

The conditions of flow are most commonly met in activities with clearly defined goals and a degree of challenge that is ever-so-slightly above your skill level (4% above to be exact). But what happens when we find flow in situations without a definite outcome?

There is no goal of meditation and that's what most people new to the practice get tripped up over.

Am I meditating correctly?

Am I doing it right?

I'm sure that you've had these thoughts before.

To paraphrase what Tony said so eloquently in the podcast, "we often meditate when we are already anxious as a way to try to relieve that anxiety." One thing that he took away from the experience of the silent retreat when meditating for upwards of three hours every day was the feeling of meditation solely the sake of meditating without needing to do so because one is anxious is a profoundly different experience.

When you let yourself meditate for the sake of meditation, you learn to derive joy from the experience itself rather than some expected outcome of your actions, in other words, it becomes autotelic, another keystone of flow. Then there is the action of mindfulness which is like doing bicep curls for your brain, as each fleeting thought gets flexed away to bring yourself back to open awareness. You experience progress in real-time which when you do for the pure pleasure of the act, keeps you perfectly aligned in that flow channel where challenge meets skill.

All of this culminates in one of the most intoxicating effects of flow; we experience time differently as it becomes distorted. This is very common in the float tank where the dials on all sensory inputs are turned way down. It feels like forever and then it's over. When meditating for prolonged periods and stripping away all temptations of distraction, we come to experience it in a very similar way in finding flow.

Can a Digital Detox Be an Entry Point to a Silent Retreat?

Maybe like me, you are left a little more curious about what experiences are invited into your being when you set out on a silent meditation retreat so I want to leave you with an idea of how we can incorporate some of this mindfulness into our lives.

Within 24 hours we are hit with over 4,000 advertising messages in our environment. Because a silent retreat is all about stripping away all those distractions, I have a hypothesis that a digital detox could be a great entry point to the experience if you're hesitant to dive in or not at liberty to do so at this point in your life.

A digital detox allows you to get some clarity through turning off all of your devices for a period of freedom. While you can do a 30-day social media fast, as Cal Newport suggests in his book Digital Minimalism, a more realistic starting point for you may be starting with a digital Shabbath as Tiffany Shlain describes in 24/6. Having a "screen off Saturday" makes it very easy to unplug without an overwhelming amount of stress and anxiety around feeling like your work life may be falling apart while you step away.

By turning off your devices for 24 hours on the weekend, you can take a step back and look at your life a little more clearly from a vantage point that is away from the frontline of battle.

So what are you waiting for? I encourage you to figure out a way to make this happen right away because you just don't know the depth of experience that is waiting on the other side for you.

Whether you want to venture out into the wilderness on a silent meditation retreat to explore the nature of your reality deeply or take an afternoon to hike through the local woods without tech pinging and binging around you, you are bound to discover the wonder that waits for you when you learn to take a pause and breathe.

5 Steps To Improving Your Mindset During Quarantine

How many times have you heard someone lament over what a challenge it is to get off the couch and get work done in the past several months while being stuck at home? It’s so easy to get lost binge-watching shows and trying to forget the world around us for a bit but we all know deep down that it doesn’t feel good to do this. It leaves us in a shroud of a perpetual hangover. Let’s look at a few steps that you can take to drastically improve your mindset and how you are feeling during the quarantine.

Even if the restrictions have lifted wherever you are, using these tips will still help to enhance your mindset and your experience of life.

So read on and take note of what you need to improve upon. 

5 Ways To Improve Your Mindset During Quarantine

1. USE your bliss station. 👩‍💻

A lot of us are struggling in part because productivity has bottomed out during the quarantine. It's difficult to get work done at home if you're not used to doing so and to add fuel to the fire, we're working online a lot more right now which is also a struggle if you don't have the right systems in place to master digital distractions.

A bliss station is your temple for deep work. It's a secluded place where you can be most productive. It should inspire creativity and focus.

Some people love the local coffee shop or library for this but as that's not an option for most of us still at this time, we have to manufacture our bliss stations at home. Download coffee shop sounds or play a movie with no sound in the background if you like to feel the company of other people around you. Or if your house is feeling too full right now, you can turn inward by repurposing a closet or using noise-cancelling headphones.

Creativity is a habit that we all can tap into if we create the right rituals and routines to produce more of it in our lives.

2. Keep a clean environment for focus. 🧹

If you're feeling frazzled in getting work done or just from feeling cooped up, a clean physical environment is linked to a clean mental space. To break through that ennui, tidy up your house or at least start with your work station to create more inspiration.  

And if you hate cleaning, it only takes about 60 seconds of cleaning before your brain and body shift gears and it starts to lift your mood. So set your timer and start moving and you’ll be amazed at the shift in your mindset.

3. Get outside 🌲

Nature is incredibly refreshing physically, mentally, and emotionally. Fresh air and the chemicals in plants that produce fragrances have a calming effect and reduce stress and blood pressure.

Try to get outside every single day and you'll immensely change the way you are feeling very quickly.

Even going barefoot outside of wherever you are living for a few minutes will help to ground you more.

If you need music or a podcast to get you out the door and into the woods, I suggest at some point turning it off and just tuning in to the sounds of nature around you.

4. Start a mindfulness practice 🧘‍♂️

Now is the perfect time to start a mindfulness practice. Being at home and maybe secluded from other people makes it important to turn inward and tune into your feelings and emotions.

Learning how to meditate is the closest thing that we have to a superpower as humans. You can tie this into your daily walks outside or your gratitude practice if the idea of trying to clear your head of all thoughts is daunting. The real magic comes around 10 minutes per day of practice but consistency is much more important than outright length, so if all you can muster is four deep breaths to start, that's still great!

If you need a place to start with meditation, the Flow Academy free Challenge Week for Staying Healthy, Happy, and Stress-Free at-home includes several great meditations for getting started and getting through these tough times.

5. 3-Step Gratitude 🙏

Practicing gratitude is incredibly powerful for living more positively and generating optimism.

Now more than ever, we should be writing down our experiences and so I strongly encourage you to start a daily journal and just jot down some of your ideas or experiences through this pandemic.

While you don't need to write down the things you are grateful for, it can be a useful way to embody the feelings of gratitude deeper.

I find that doing a 3-step gratitude is the best way to create balance with the practice. A lot of the time if we do the same gratitude every time it will lose some of its emotional charge. Some people like to just think of their life's highlight reel, others treat gratitude as mindfulness and just focus on the present while a third group tends to visualize the future first and foremost and is always chasing a perceived endpoint instead of balancing the appreciation of the journey.

Combining Past, Present, and Future into your gratitude practice is a way to create more balance.

1. Start by pulling on a past peak experience. Let it fill you up with happiness and gratitude. 

2. Use that energy to bring yourself into the present and focus on something small in your immediate environment that you can be grateful for. 

3. Now visualize a future event or goal that you are looking forward to. You can even envision it having already been accomplished or experienced. 

Using these mindset strategies can start to shift you towards more positivity and optimism. If it seems like a lot to ask for in one go, just start with whichever tip appeals to you the most and work on doing that one for a week or two. Once it feels easy to keep that one change in your routine, add in another step.

Remember that building a more resilient mindset doesn’t happen overnight and that this is about the long journey and not quick hacks. Take your time and be patient and wonderful things will start to happen for you.

Ready to take your performance to the next level? Register for the free webinar on How Will Peak Performance Change in “The New Normal?”

Building Your Bliss Station

Building Your Bliss Station

In Deep Work, Cal Newport talks about the necessity of your workspace for getting quality deep work done. Deep Work refers to the tasks that require ingenuity and creativity; the kinds of jobs that humans excel at that cannot be recreated and automated by robots and AI.

In his excellent book, Cal Newport talks about some of the giants of knowledge work over the past several centuries and how seriously they took their work by creating fortresses of solitude to do their work in.

Carl Jung built a cottage where he would retreat to for days and weeks on end to do his deep work. Similarly, Bill Gates leaves for a week each year to a cottage without connection to the outside world to do nothing but think about challenges and read.

Joseph Campbell called this the act of building your bliss station; Austin Kleon talks about this idea in his excellent book for creatives called Keep Going.

Building your bliss station means you’ve got a space that you keep sacred from non-work activities - you can get your deepest thinking and creation done. This means that ideally, it’s not in your living room or your bedroom.

Sometimes this can be challenging and unrealistic, especially when the whole family is at home right now. This is why technology can help us to bridge the gap between a bliss station and the realities of modern living.
Ideally, your bliss station is sacred and doesn't have to be converted depending on the time of day but do what you need to at this time to get your deep work done.

If you're looking to optimize your productivity at home and for the future at work, build yourself a standing desk or buy one. Standing to work helps to energize you, ergonomics are better if you're working at the right height. You will also find that you can get more work done by keeping your body more active than if you are sitting and slowly curving forward while bent over your computer screen day-after-day. Try it out for yourself and just see.

I recommend having a chair or something to sit on nearby so that you can alternate your position every once in a while because standing perfectly still isn't ideal either. I also started using an acupressure mat to stand on for a little bit of cushion but also to have something that stimulates me to keep moving and shifting weight throughout the day.

This excerpt was from an article on Performing Your Best While Working From Home on the Flow Academy

Boost Your Immune System With These 4 Top Tips

Last week we launched the Flow Academy, an online learning platform for peak performance and flow.

In this time of being stuck at home, I'm seeing a lot of people spiral out of control and lose their sense of well-being.

That's why the first course I've made available on the Flow Academy website is a free challenge week, which unlocks to you a few simple challenges each day for one week so that you've got some steps you can take action on to reclaim your wellness and feel more happy, healthy, and stress-free at home.

I encourage you to go and sign up for the challenges right now.

Today I want to talk a bit about your immune system, a topic that relates to Day 2 of Challenge week with Stress Management.

Watch the video here:

Nutrition

In the course, I touched mostly on stress as the main topic so today I want to cover a few more key points to help you to take care of your immune system during this difficult time.

While I did touch on nutrition in regards to stress in the challenge week let's talk more about the immune system here.

Eat Water-Rich Foods

Foods with the highest water content are important for the nutrients they provide, as well as the water and hydrating effects on our bodies. Hydration is very important for our immune function. By drinking plenty of water and getting more water through a water-rich diet we help to support our lymphatic system, which transports immune cells throughout our body and carries waste away when fighting off infection and illness.

This hydration factor is critical enough let alone the vitamins you get in abundance when you prioritize the vegetables and fruits in your diet.

Exercise

Regular exercise not only feels good, but it also keeps us resilient to getting sick. Next to old age, the risk factors for obesity are linked to susceptibility to COVID-19 so making sure that you are moving your body and staying active is something that’s in your control during this pandemic.

You can find out more about easy ways to move more instantly on day 1 of the wellness challenge week.

Sleep

One of the easiest ways to get sick more often and crush your immune system is to sleep less than your body needs. While I sometimes fall prey to this as well,  don't get caught in a YouTube binge that compromises your sleep and have a proper sleep hygiene routine to wind down well at the end of the day. If you are going to be watching TV or on blue light devices after the sun goes down, try using some blue light blocking glasses.

Food safety

Another factor to keep in mind right now is food safety, and not just through hand washing prior to eating or preparing your meals. Be cognizant of the foods you are eating to watch out for foodborne illness or gut health issues. Whether you get sick from food poisoning or due to digestive distress from foods that don't agree with you, it's going to compromise your immune system and make you susceptible to other illnesses, which is what we most certainly don't need right now. This is something I’ve always recommended with strongman athletes in the days leading up to a competition to avoid any issues with fuelling and preparing for competition and the same applies to us all right now.

Those are four of the things that are in your control to boost your immune system during this pandemic. You can learn more by watching this week’s video.

Remember to go and sign up for the Flow Academy challenge week to level up your wellness at home even more.

Find Your Flow,

RJ

Increasing Your Wellness With This Easy Stress and Energy Tracker Solution

We are all stressed and feeling anxious right now and one of the most practical things that you can do to get a handle on the situation and help you to focus on the things that you can control is by creating a simple tracker system to monitor the most important aspects of your wellness right now.

One of the most impactful takeaways I got from Tony Robbins at the power of success seminar that I attended was how beneficial tracking your energy levels can be to sustain a higher level of performance - regardless of what that means to you.

Habits trackers are the simplest way to do that and while you can create a digital table or use an app, like a Fitbit or Oura ring to track some of the metrics, writing it down on paper or in a journal seems to be the most effective way of visually portraying this and truly understanding what the trends mean for you.

A simple tracker, like the one that I've included as a bonus download in the wellness challenge week, can allow you to write the number associated with your subjective feelings each day.

In the image below you'll see how I visually represent these details on an X- and Y-axis. Daily I track my energy level with a dot or bullet and my subjective sleep quality with an open circle. I'm also adding in a subjective stress level with a different symbol.

 What I want you to do is create a similar tracker for yourself.

You can print off the tracker from the wellness course, or create your own in a journal or even on a scrap piece of paper.

If you're drawing it out for yourself, create the graph that is more visual than just the boxes from the habit tracker template. 

-Draw or mark out space for ten lines.

-Each day give yourself a score from 1 - 10 for the following:

• Your energy level - how ready are you to perform at your best? 10 would be unstoppable.

• Your sleep - 10 would be the perfect amount of sleep for your needs and waking up feeling refreshed.

• Your stress level - 10 being the absolute worst you’ve ever felt.

 I find that I will personally record sleep in the morning but save energy and stress levels for at least a few hours later once I have had some time to wake up. You can even do these much later after you've had some time to reflect on how well you performed today.

Nobody seeking flow and peak performance, or even just stress-free living in our current circumstances wants to live a life that's always a 6 or 7 out of 10, just as you wouldn’t go around bragging if you scored 60% on a test.

Making the stress tracker something visual like this works so well because it motivates you to want to find solutions.

And if you don't know where to start, sign up for the free healthy, happy, and stress-free challenge week for easy challenges you can implement into your at-home routine.  

Listen to this Flow Under Five episode for more on tracking stress and energy with these trackers.

7 Workouts You Can Do From Home (While Supporting Ptbo Businesses)

We’re facing a very difficult time for a lot of people and I wanted to share with you some resources that can help you to get your mindset right this week and for the duration that we are physically distancing ourselves. 
 

7 Workouts You Can Do From Home

The listed businesses are local to Peterborough and as with all small businesses right now, keeping the support close to home is crucial. We all need to band together to stay strong and make it out the other side of the COVID-19 business closures.

Check out the following businesses on social media for many free workout ideas and to learn more about their workout programs that you can do from home.

1. Telsi Szanyi @telsi.flows - Animal Flow small group coaching through Zoom - Get the feedback you need to learn this fun but challenging bodyweight workout style.

2. House Fitness - @houseftns $10 home workout plan and gym equipment rentals starting this week.

3. Pilates On-Demand - The largest On-Demand pilates workout database in Canada. Get a free 21-day trial when you use the code FlowSpa at checkout.

4. Peterborough Yoga - @peterboroughyoga Livestream Yoga sessions on social media as well as new online members area.

5. Pulse Physiotherapy - @pulsephysioptbo Daily workouts for at home with minimal equipment on their Instagram page.

6. Sweat Happy Wellness - @sweathappypilates Small group pilates workouts through Zoom for guidance and immediate feedback.

7. Dohjo Muay Thai - @dohjomt New online martial arts classes being offered for members.

Lion's Mane Mushroom for Mindfulness?

This article was originally published on RJKAYSER.com in February 2018.

Since Flow Spa now has Four Sigmatic mushroom coffee and elixirs available, it ‘s a good time to re-share this popular blog post.

People search far and wide to get the "Limitless effect" from a bevvy of supplements and drugs until they are stacked on top of each other like your grandfather's daily pill planner. 

Nootropics, substances that can enhance your cognition, have likely been experimented with since the dawn of mankind and is a hypothesis for why humans evolved cognitively past other animals. 20th-century science and beyond has added extra “go” to the nootropic substances of ancient days and kicked up the stimulus that newer drugs provide to the different neural pathways. 

Maybe the answer is not to look towards futuristic nootropics that crank the dial up to 11 on your brain and have you buzzing but to look back to the roots of mankind to the fun guy (pun intended) that has been hypothesized to have helped develop the cognition of humans in the first place: mushrooms. 

I’ve been very interested in the functional food effects of mushrooms for a long time because I freakin’ love cooking with mushrooms for one thing and you can’t get through an episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast without his sponsor ad for Four Sigmatic’s Mushroom Coffee espousing that it’s the closest thing to the Limitless effect. Being lit up like a Christmas tree sounds too good to be true and the mixed reviews for the product had me waiting on the neutral ground.

Once I saw a few more highly positive comments on one of the main ingredients, Lion’s Mane mushroom, from nutrition experts that I trust the word of, I figured I would give it a go and order the product from Four Sigmatic. 

A LITTLE DAB’LL DO YA

I figured that the small 50 mg dose of caffeine in the mushroom coffee packets wouldn’t be a major factor in affecting a change in my state, as I regularly drink coffee in the morning. 

My first test of the mushroom coffee came on a day when I would need to maximize the use of my afternoon to get more writing done leftover from the deep work that I do in the morning. 

As I settled into my afternoon of writing and other work, I turned the kettle on and watched the water boil as I carefully read the instructions on how much water I should add to the instant coffee. It’s been many years since the last time I’ve had instant coffee because it usually tastes like someone mixed the dregs of a french pressed coffee with water and then served it to you; very watered down and weak. I didn’t want to add too much water and ruin this experience.

The instructions call for mixing the packet with 8 oz of water but I like to have a bigger cuppa to sip on so I added just a little bit more water. 

After allowing it to cool so that I didn’t scald my tongue and be forced to wait 24 hours before my taste buds returned, I inhaled the aroma and took my first sip and it was surprisingly good!

It wasn’t very bitter and was earthy and chocolatey and somewhat more soothing than the usual jolt of java. Taste-wise at least, this was something I could get behind. 

I then sat down to work and blasted through four uninterrupted hours of focused work. 

Now, I know that anecdotal evidence is weak but self-experimentation is usually the first step to unlocking greater realizations in what helps each of us to perform optimally. 

It could have been the extra bump in caffeine, which I usually skip for my afternoon work or maybe it was placebo. Even though I was sceptical about the effects of this mushroom coffee based on the reviews, I was hopeful that it would work well and that could very well be enough to get it working. 

I also know that many writers talk about how the ritual of a hot cup of coffee is enough to get the creative juices flowing. 

There are a lot more reasons for why it wouldn’t be the purported nootropic effects of the mushrooms per se but I digress.

However you take it, this was my first step down the toadstool lane. 

CONFOUNDING FACTORS

I’m not one for the isolated bubble of self-experimentation and truth be told, I usually take on a few new daily tasks or “experiments” at a time making it truly impossible to correctly correlate any effects. Some of the following changes coincide with my Lion’s Mane experiment.

Meditation  

My re-engagement with meditation might be the biggest factor that is playing into how I feel and the positive effects that might rightly be attributed to it and less to the Lion’s Mane. 

As I described in my introduction to the Mindful Musings [at the start of 2018], I’ve set out on a goal to meditate for 20 minutes per day for 100 days straight. As of writing this, I’m now over a quarter of the way to that goal. From my past experience with extended stretches of consistent meditation, I know that it works well for helping me to better control stress and anxiety. I’m able to recognize when my thoughts are spiralling out of control and I’m able to return to a calm state with a few focused breaths. 

Meditation truly is the closest thing to magical superpowers that we humans have control over. 

In the past, I lost connection to meditation as I would do it first thing in the morning and discovered it wasn’t working well for me, as I would wake up earlier and earlier to fit meditation into my schedule, but what happened was I would spend most of the session dozing off and struggling to stay awake. It had lost its effectiveness in this way. Now I meditate mid-day before lunch to reset myself and enter the afternoon in a refreshed state. It’s like taking a mid-day nap but even better.  

Maybe it is the meditation, although I haven’t made it back to being as proficient a meditator yet as I have been. For this 100-day challenge, I’ve been using the Muse headband to retrain myself as a meditator and so I know that I’m still not back to where I was in being so calm with my meditation. Typically only about 50% of my time meditating is spent in a calm state, whereas when I was most consistent previously, I would be around 70-80% in a calm state on average. It will be interesting to see what happens as I meditate more, but for now, I’ve still got work to do. 

Writing it Down 

Writing down goals, tasks to do, and a planned schedule primes your brain to focus and act on things that are conducive to achieving your goals. Many top performers in all walks of life talk about this in many different ways as priming, productivity, systems thinking, and affirmations. Whatever you want to call it, writing it down equals getting it done. I’ve found a system of planning that works really well for me and it involves a lot of writing and reviewing schedules and goals. Perhaps the writing itself is priming me for greater creativity and focus on work and reviewing it keeping me on track as well. 

LION’S MANE MUSHROOM SCIENCE

Lion’s Mane mushroom is the most common name for the fungus Hericium erinaceus. It gets its name from the look of it, which resembles the mane of a lion.  Some people have also suggested it looks like a human brain and suggest there is some sort of connection there other than merely coincident. While that may be a stretch, it is still very bizarre looking and fascinating. 

The primary interest in Lion’s Mane for nootropic effects is due to the support for its ability to produce Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) and thereby create a neurogenesis effect. This means that Lion’s Mane can support the development of nerve cells and synaptic connections between nerve cells in the brain. 

The support for these incredible effects includes demonstrations of enhancing memory and recall, as well as focus and attention. It will be great progress in science and nutrition if we can start to see more adults with cognitive decline or students facing attention difficulties in school use natural nootropics like Lion’s Mane instead of harmful drugs. 

Studied dosages range from 500 - 3000 mg per day. Most bulk Lion’s Mane mushroom extract products recommend a teaspoon amount per day which equates to 2000 mg. 

Lion’s Mane isn’t even a one-trick pony though. While most people are drawing their attention towards the potential brain-boosting effects of the ‘shroom, it also has the potential to treat digestive ailments. Lion’s Mane extract contains ß-glucans, a type of prebiotic fibre that can nourish beneficial bacteria to promote gut health; furthermore, extracts have been shown to have anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory effects that can also help to treat sensitive stomachs and fight off pathogens. 

BACK TO THE JOURNEY

It’s been 8 days now and I feel like my creativity has been jacked to a whole new level. A large part of it seems to be an enhancement in memory. While meditating, working, and dreaming I’ve been having tons of vivid memories about things I haven’t thought of in years, if at all since I originally experienced those moments. 

On the subject of dreams for a minute; I’ve been recalling my dreams with incredible detail every night since starting the daily Lion’s Mane routine. I’ve always thought the idea of writing down dreams to enhance your ability to recall them, and maybe someday experience lucidity whilst dreaming was cool yet I always failed to catch my dreams drifting away like smoke as I awaken and try to write them down. 

Like having a word stuck on the tip of your tongue, you can almost visualize what happened in the dream you just had, but putting the words to paper is futile. 

In the past 8 nights, I have recalled and written down the details of no less than 17 dreams that I remember vividly in that time. This has been the coolest effect that I see as somehow different from what I get out of meditation and priming through writing. I also seem to be waking up before my alarm and fired up and ready to get started for the day, which is also nice. 

The other thing I have noticed that may be more the effect of meditation is a deeper level of introspection and focus on physical things which has allowed me to have some really great flow while training several times in the past week. I can see how this could have a potential benefit on enhancing technique during training. 

Being able to maintain a higher level of present-state awareness and creativity is an incredible feeling, whether you use mindfulness or some sort of brain-boosting supplement to help you achieve it. Self-experimentation can be thrilling but should be approached rationally to avoid any dramatic shifts in cognition that may be unsettling. I will be sure to continue to provide updates as my meditation journey continues and as the dream train keeps rolling on with the help of Lion’s Mane mushroom. 

Have you tried Lion's Mane or any other nootropic before? Leave a comment below and let me know what works best for you. 

Four Sigmatic products are now available at Flow Spa. If you’re interested in trying a sample, let us know.

The Pursuit of Progress

This month we have been heavily focusing on goals and resolutions in writing, video, and on the FlowCast. It's not only at the start of a new year but also the start of a new decade that brings many of us hope that we can make a change that sticks and complete some mission.

It's certainly rewarding and exciting to be chasing after Dream Goals at the start of any new year, let alone 2020, but when we get too focused on the endpoint we lose track of where we currently are and the progress that has led here thus far.

Whether you realize it or not, progress is what we are truly after. Going from Point A of where we used to be to Point B of who we are now is what makes setting goals meaningful.

Progress over everything.

For it is not in the endpoint of our journey that we find the utmost satisfaction, but every minute of progress along the path.

Watch this week's vlog where my friend Josh and I talk about progress and creating challenges to gauge progress.

Setting Lofty Goals While Making Sustainable Changes

Whether you're part of big business, a small, locally-owned business, or an individual setting and striving for your resolutions, the threshold of passing from one year to the next sparks a lot of latent energy for most people.

Businesses often use the start of the new year to look forward to setting lofty goals, although the year often cycles around the financial calendar and need not be based on January 1. It's in the sustainable little changes that we see our greatest goals accomplished.

Colleen Hunt gets into this on the FlowCast this week. With her business partner at Naturally Nested, she has lofty goals for her young business but is focussed on what she can do at the macro scale to keep moving forward.

She first had a vision for what the future held for herself and her business last year when she dreamed up the idea to hold an exhibition where people could go to meet the business owners providing different wellness opportunities in the city, supporting not only her own business but the whole health and wellness community in Peterborough. Step by step, Colleen gathered the sponsors and support of other businesses to make it happen at the start of March of this year for the inaugural Peterborough Wellness Expo.

The bigger goals and the steps to get there will be unclear to you in the beginning. It takes practice and experience to figure out how you're going to accomplish what you've dreamed up. But the more that you can look at what sustainable changes you can make right now, the better you'll be at doing things that stick long-term.

As Colleen says, picture it like this: if you look at making the smallest, sustainable change once per week, you can build up many new habits over the course of the year but it will feel vastly different than the overwhelm of trying to do it all at once.

52 new changes or habits essentially makes you a new person in a year.

It's the same when looking to be 1% better. Strive to be just one percent better each day or each week and you'll 100% different before you know it.

We all envision this perfect future life and the simplest way of achieving the perfect future life is to start with a perfect day, and then a perfect week, a perfect month, and so on.

To get to the perfect day you just have to start by making your day 1% better.

So get in the routine of reflecting on your day before you go to sleep and ask yourself how you can be 1% better tomorrow?

How To Achieve Your New Years' Resolutions with Floating

It's no surprise that most New Year's resolutions fail. The gym-goers and crash dieters who make resolutions in January are usually throwing in the towel within four weeks.

The issue with resolutions as well-intentioned as they may be is that they lack a plan. We often set goals and resolutions to break old habits and create new ones. But when we're stressed or busy, we often revert to our old habits instead of rising to the challenge.

Adding float therapy to your plan for a new you in 2023 can help you achieve your resolutions.

Here are 6 ways floating can help you to accomplish your New Years’ Resolutions.

Exercise and Recovery

Hitting the gym more is a popular resolution for many people but the problem that most of us face is dropping off from our goal too soon to see any real results.

Floating is one of the best sports recovery methods ever. The effects of floating effortlessly improve circulation and helps to remove the lactic acid that builds up from working out. The decompression on your back and muscles is also great if you're feeling sore or pushed yourself a little too hard with your workout.

The 1,000 lb. of Epsom salt in the float tank solution is also an athlete's dream, Magnesium is an important mineral for muscle function and Epsom salt soaks have been used by athletes for centuries to aid in recovery.

You may find yourself getting sore a lot at the start of your new adventures at the gym. Try to find the right balance so that you're not hurting too much to keep going to the gym on your planned schedule.

Weight Loss Support

This benefit of floating will be important to you if your New Years’ goal is to lose weight.

Getting control of your hormones through healthy choices is going to make a big difference in your weight loss. Cortisol is affected by our stress levels and when we're stressed all the time, cortisol remains elevated. This can lead to higher blood sugar levels and more fat being stored instead of burned.

Floating helps to drastically lower cortisol levels, supporting a healthier hormone balance in our bodies and improving our ability to burn fat, instead of storing it.

De-Stress

Maybe your resolution is to simply stress less this year and floating definitely helps with that. Floating is one of the most powerful treatments for reducing the stress hormone cortisol but the de-stressing effects don't stop there.

The physical relief of pain and the alleviation of anxiety also help to make a big difference in our stress levels, leaving you in a blissful state of relaxation.

Before you burnout, this New Year, consider floating away your stress. We find that most customers see the best de-stressing results when floating with one of our memberships every two weeks or monthly.

Addiction Support

Reducing your stress levels is also one of the most effective ways to prevent relapse when quitting smoking, drugs, or alcohol.

Researchers have effectively used float therapy as an anti-smoking intervention and the same efforts can be applied to supporting the recovery from other vices. The reduction in stress and anxiety can make a big difference in reducing cravings.

More Sleep

Most of our New Years’ Resolutions include resolving to do more.

More exercise.

More weight loss.

Making more money.

More, more, more.

And when we strive to do more, our bodies need the support and rejuvenation of more sleep. Floating relaxes the brain to the slower theta brainwave state that we also experience in REM sleep. This is one of the reasons why everyone likes floating for feeling refreshed and reinvigorated like you just came out of a great nap. Some people do indeed sleep during their float while others get this deep relaxation that allows them to then sleep better at night.

Meditation

Practicing mindfulness has become a recent resolution for a lot of people and floating is the best training wheel support for your meditation goals that you can find.

When you are floating, your brain and body can't help but get into the same state as experienced meditators do. The theta brainwave state used to be only accessible to monks and unconsciously while we are in REM sleep but float therapy has opened up this realm of relaxation to everyone.

Because the float tanks have audio in them, a float session can also be coupled with a guided meditation to teach you how to meditate while in a relaxed state.

Maybe you resolved to float more this year, but for all your other goals, the many benefits of floating can help you better achieve them.

Book a float session today to help you with your New Years’ Resolutions.

A Yuletide Poem From RJ Claus

'Twas the week before Christmas and all through Flow Spa, 

Not a creature was stirring, just floating in awe. 

Buoyantly nestled on a bed of Epsom salt solution, 

As visions of sugar plums danced amongst New Year’s resolutions.

Listen up now as I sing out with elation, 

Come one, come all, and save at our holiday celebration!

🎄Merry Christmas to all from RJ Claus and the Flow Spa Elves!🎄

Passion Over Profits

Profits are essential to running a business long-term but if you base your model off of profit first, you're going to have a hard go of it when things become messy.

I am fortunate to get to speak to many different people at different stages on the business journey through the FlowCast and in having started Flow Spa this year. One thing that stands out across the board is where people as it relates to passion versus profits.

Particularly if you're starting a business from the ground up, passion is crucial in my opinion. You certainly can build a business solely around profits in the monetary sense but be prepared for the grind to feel that much harder. This is a topic that Si Grobler and I got into on the FlowCast this week.

Si is working on his MBA and teaches a university course in social enterprise; a different way of operating revenue-generating businesses.

Public companies over the last forty years have been all about maximizing shareholder value. Pumping up the stock prices superseded virtually everything else so that the shareholders were kept happy.

Times are changing though.

Consumers are demanding more out of the companies that they support and this has led to a new lean towards maximizing stakeholder value. There's a lot of greed at the top in big business so it's going to be a long road to see this shift actually come into place.

Fortunately, more entrepreneurs are getting started with a passion-first perspective and as the businesses of the past decade or two continue to grow and spread their own newfound wisdom, more businesses will be inclined to follow suit.

So if you're looking to get into business and see it as something to be passionate about, there's plenty of help to be found in your local communities.

Listen to this week's episode of the FlowCast for a deeper discussion of passion and community with businesses.

Be Content, Not Complacent

Envy is a pernicious emotion.

It’s harmful to your sense of well-being, your reputation, your business, and your flow, which is why we’re talking about it on this week’s episode of the FlowCast.

Much like comparison, most of us realize that we should work on feeling envy less often and less intensely as an emotion.

Listen in as we discuss the negative repercussions of envy on flow in this week’s podcast.

There were a few key takeaways that you can work on implementing right away to eliminate envy:

• Create before Consume.

  • Box off your creative work at a time where it won’t be influenced as much by outside sources.

• Know what you actually want for yourself.

  • Is that shiny thing your friend has going to make you happier?

• Find contentment in the present moment but don’t get complacent.

  • Mindfulness and flow will help you to overcome a lot of negative emotions including envy.

Find out more about these tips and other strategies by tuning in to the FlowCast.

Challenge Yourself Regularly

Humans are driven forward by a condition of never being satisfied.

It's how we evolved and learned how to thrive and progressively grow as a species.

Challenging ourselves regularly is the only way to remain satisfied long-term.

Stagnation breeds complacency.

I saw a shirt recently with a bold statement printed on it: "Give me progress or give me death."

My friends Josh and Dan epitomize this need to always push forward with progress.

They've created an awesome trail run community event in Peterborough that's taking place next Saturday, November 30.

Listen to this week's episode of The FlowCast to learn more about the event and sign up for "The Runs" at: https://theruns.itsyourrace.com/register/?fbclid=IwAR3M3u9feq6u6-EfymyOSq73yp8mapQjC36jN_5QZbiTwpHRA2zdkhCqmOQ

Prepare Yourself For Your Biggest Challenges

Everything you are trying to do has been done before.

When you accept this instead of puff out your chest at the ego-insult that you are unoriginal you open the doors to a superpower. That superpower is acquiring knowledge.

Books may be the best form of knowledge accessible to this day. With everything immediately accessible through Google it’s hard to pull ourselves to deep dive into a book for answers but heart and soul is poured into a good book. When we are trying to create something great, heart and soul are essential. A book need not always be right to provide you with insight but a Google answer does.

When we look to the biographies and lessons told from great people across generations passed we can absorb a lifetime of their best knowledge in just a few hours. It helps to smooth out our own journeys and prepare us for our biggest challenges. We know it will be hard because we’ve been told and shown that through stories of persistence. There will be struggle. Every path will be messy and never straightforward.

We must prepare ourselves for hardship and always remember this.

When another obstacle comes, turn to the lessons of others in order to accelerate the way through. There are no shortcuts and exact answers, but coming to the battle standing on the shoulders of giants that have come before us gives us better vision of the road ahead.