The Missing Link - Movement and your Mental Health
Meg in her happy place - with strong legs + lungs at the top of a mountain
When asked what fitness meant to me, and why I show up everyday, I was overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed with just how pivotal movement has been in my life, and how could I possibly explain how important it was. Almost 6 years ago, my family was stunned by the sudden passing of my dad. He had died by suicide. I spent the days following his passing making small steps, getting out of bed, stepping outside the back door for small amounts of sunshine and fresh air and walking to the mailbox and back. Soon this turned into running, crying most of the time, but running nevertheless. It was a place where I could just let go, process, think, and truly grieve, putting one foot in front of the other. Both literally and figuratively I felt like I was moving.
Moving my body, moving through emotions, and moving through heavy stuff that felt much lighter with each stride. Fitness became a sanctuary and an extension of my therapy. Some days the workouts felt impossible; they didn’t look fun and I certainly wasn’t always motivated, but one thing always remained true - I never regretted going. After every workout, I felt better, not because all of a sudden my problems were gone, but because movement was a tool that I had to control the overwhelming sadness that filled my days. It felt like grief and anxiousness were dust and movement was a vacuum, I felt in control.
I am immensely grateful for the time that I spent in therapy, as I truly would not be where I am today without that support, and I hope everyone gets to experience how life giving therapy is, but I would not be as happy, productive, disciplined, confident and healthy without movement. Both of these pillars have been essential for me. I hope that our world continues to see and experience how mental and physical health go hand in hand and that both will be a priority for future generations. I hope that we can continue to learn and teach others to use movement as a tool to support our mental health instead of something to dread. Which leads me to why this conversation with Jeff, a Registered Provisional Psychologist, is so important.
Meg Buchanan, Front of House Lead, Mover, and Mental Health Advocate, CrushCamp
Jeff Kubik, Registered Provisional Therapist, Vivid Psychology + Wellness
Meg: Jeff, thank you so much for joining us for such an important conversation. I know Emily and I have been looking forward to connecting with someone in the mental health field as we know that it is super important to create a more holistic approach to wellness, so we are super excited to have you. I guess we will start it off with a little bit of an introduction, so could you tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are and how you landed in the mental health field?
Jeff: That’s a good question! It’s definitely not my first career, as you know, Meg and I worked together back when I was doing Athletic Therapy. I grew up in rural Alberta, bounced around after high school for a little while, and had some aspirations for the military and ended up landing in University at Mount Royal doing the Athletic Therapy Program. In my last year, I really noticed that a lot of the students and a lot of the student athletes were dealing with things that didn’t really seem within the scope of an Athletic Therapist; anxiety and depression and those sorts of things. I felt like I didn’t have the tools to actually be able to assist or help these athletes that were struggling and so I started looking around at other programs and found a program that I would be able to switch over to after I completed my undergrad in health and phys-ed. I did that program while working as an Athletic Therapist in a few different clinics, which lasted about two years. I graduated this past August from that program and I am now working at Vivid Psychology in Kensington.
Meg: Awesome, yeah I think that’s why this conversation is so important. There are certain things that we have seen in the physical aspect of our job that we are unable to help people with, particularly the mental side of things so that’s really important. Could you tell us a little bit about what fitness means to you?
Jeff: It has definitely changed for me over the past 15 years. I think that the longer you are in this industry the more it changes. You have an idea when you get into it, and it’s a very low resolution idea. It has become a lot less focused on outcome, the idea of I need to hit this number, I need to be able to lift this much and do this workout in this amount of time. Which at that point when I was competing in CrossFit, made a lot of sense, because that’s how you’re measured against other people. As a result that is how you end up measuring your own self worth. If I’m not hitting this number, there is something wrong with me. So for me fitness has really changed, and probably the big turning point for me was working with seniors for about a year and a half doing exercise programs for them during COVID. One day I had this idea about asking them, “why are you all coming here?” because they would notoriously complain. They were so friendly, they loved it but they would always be like “Oh you really worked us yesterday”. It was great, but I had this thought of “but why? What is important to you? What do you really want to get out of these classes?”. The answers that I got were answers that are really different from what is being marketed to people today. They wanted to be strong and they wanted to be mobile and that was it. They didn’t care about having a six pack and they didn’t care about the photos that they were going to put on Instagram and that sort of thing. So it really changed for me looking at the end goal and seeing how that informs what we do going forward. As far as developing goals, for me fitness just means being capable in the way that you want to be to live your life to the fullest degree. One of my old coaches talked about the fact that we train to live, we don’t live to train and if you lose sight of that, it can be easy to lose sight of that depending on who you are surrounding yourself with, you are going to develop a really unhealthy relationship with exercise and as a result with yourself.
Emily: I love your comments about seniors and I hear that all the time. People wake up at 55, or 60, or 65 and they have some kind of wake up call. Something happens, maybe there is a fall, maybe they lose somebody they love, or there is a diagnosis, and they say “I have to get my life in order and I have to get healthy”. How do we prevent that? How do we create those healthy habits now? Because it is easy in your 20s, 30s, 40s to say, I will do that later… later… later… I'm busy! I’m busy building a career and busy building a family and I have limited resources and I will do it later. What would you say to somebody trying to find that priority in their life?
“For me, fitness just means being capable to live your life to the fullest degree.”
Jeff: I would say you really need to figure out whether it is an excuse or a reason… at some point you need to really understand if you are BSing yourself. Do you actually not have time? Look at your screen time on your phone, look at Tik Tok, look at Instagram and tell me how much time you're spending on that before you tell me that you literally don’t have any time in the day. It doesn’t need to be big, and we get caught in that all or nothing thinking that I don’t have time to go do this 90 minute class so I guess I can’t workout and I should just go party on the weekend and continue to do these things that are really detrimental to my life, while not prioritizing my health. It doesn’t have to be big, it can be 10 minutes of doing a workout in your basement and that’s the way to get around that all or nothing thinking that people fall into. It’s always “If I can’t do this perfect thing, and I can’t follow this program to a tee then I might as well not do it at all”.
Emily: I love that, and I agree. We see a lot of that. We have a lot of high achievers in our studio; I think it’s kind of the nature of group fitness classes. We’re finding now that for some, there’s an element of comparison, that people are feeling “well I can’t do what I used to do” either because of time, or energy, or money, and so i’m just going to do nothing. Or “I’m not at the level I used to be, I don’t look the same, my clothes don’t fit the same, I don’t look the same in the mirror, I can’t lift as much, I can’t run as fast.” What would you say to someone struggling with that comparison or before and after?
Jeff: I can probably speak to that personally, I really devoted as much of my life as I could to training. I was a full time student, I had practicum on top of that, I was working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet and the rest of my time, I was doing two a days when I was competing in CrossFit and I sacrificed a lot of social relationships which we will get to later. Inside of all of that, you realize that you will never be able to attain that level that you were at when you were in your 20s, mid 20s, 30s, that sort of thing. At this point I have redirected my goals into something different so that I am no longer trying to do the thing that I was doing, I am trying to do different things and so that can be really encouraging to find something different. Maybe it's running or maybe it's a triathlon, but to not have this focus on the outcome because I know how much I used to be able to squat or deadlift and that sort of thing, but those numbers are never really going to be the same. You can get away from that and the neat thing about fitness is that you can do whatever you want with it. You can do ultramarathoning if you want to, you can train sprinting if you want to, but the other side of that too, is that if you think about the academic analogy - if I were to be taking 6 classes at once and I am working full time, the likelihood that I am going to be able to get A+ in every single one of those [classes] is very very low. If I am taking 1 class or 2 classes, I can devote all of my time to that and do really really well with it. So it is a little bit about accepting that this is a point in your life where you have kids, you have a family, there are other things that need prioritizing, but that doesn’t mean that that one class that you’re taking, that you don’t have a lot of time for, you need to accept that you should just never go to that class and receive an F in it. You can still put time towards it and that comes from the question, what is the reason for me doing this and why is it important to me?
Meg: Jeff, I really liked how you addressed the idea of potentially finding a new goal or something new that you are working towards because I think that is what people struggle with a lot. People are still working towards that exact same thing that maybe they were working towards 5 years ago and maybe that's not realistic anymore and that's not what our world is about any more given the changes in the demands of their lives. You spoke to that a little bit when talking about potentially aesthetics not being as important to people anymore as is longevity and living a long healthy life. Seeing as you have a background in athletics, through athletic therapy and your own pursuits and now your shift into the mental health field, how would you speak to the importance of movement for mental health in your professional role?
Jeff: You can find a study to claim anything, but I think you would be hard pressed to find a study that has backing that exercise is detrimental towards someone’s mental health. I think for this stage in my life and for where other people might be at right now the social aspect of it I think is so important because we lost that for two years right? It's hard to believe it's been almost 3 years now since that change that everyone experienced, but the social aspect is so important because as we continue to grow in our careers and things like that, those friendships become more difficult to maintain and you lose contact with people, but group fitness classes like with you folks at CrushCamp, also martial arts, and CrossFit you get to actually go and interact with other people. You develop this friendship and comradery and it’s a relationship outside of work that is based predominantly on fun and encouragement which is really really good for people because people throughout the pandemic were lonely. We didn’t even have the opportunity to do in person therapy, it was all over zoom, which is great that we can do that but that social aspect of exercise and group exercise is lost. The other side of it is what exercise can do for you on a physiological level, not to mention how it builds your self concept and your self esteem is very important. In the climate that we are in and getting very little sunlight at this time of year, people's sleep schedules can get all jacked up because you're not actually seeing daylight until 9-9:30am. If you work in a building you might not see much sunlight at all, but exercise can be a way to release some of those neurotransmitters to wake yourself up. It’s been such a big part of my life and I know for me personally and for a lot of people like me, if you don’t get a workout in, the rest of your day doesn’t quite seem right. I have 4 dogs and one of them is a purebred border collie and if I don’t get him out for a run or to play frisbee or to do something, I know that something in the house is going to get destroyed because he has all this energy that he needs to get out and need to find a way to get it out and I think of that same analogy for people. We are so wound up, you have all this energy but then we sit in a cubical or in an office, or at our desk at home and we have no real outlet. If you are able to do these difficult things, because waking up and going to a class isn’t the easiest thing in the world, you are building your capacity to do difficult things. That for me is probably the most important thing. I worked with organizations for a long time that were dedicated to building mental toughness and I started to realize that anyone can be mentally tough and build mental toughness by doing things that aren’t easy. It’s easy to sit on our phone and stay in bed and do that sort of thing but to build that capacity to actually push through those barriers, for me that’s a huge benefit of exercise that’s often really overlooked.
Emily: I would love to build upon something that you touched on Jeff, and that’s kind of the loss of a lot over the past few years, and sitting at home and not having that outlet. One of the things we are hearing from our members, friends and social circles is that there feels like this sense of just global burnout and exhaustion. It’s the things that used to be so easy, it used to be nothing for me to want to workout 3-5 times a week, meet up with friends, make social plans, and now it feels like there is this trend towards global exhaustion and burnout. Is that something that you are seeing with your clients as well and can you speak to that?
Jeff: Yeah, I think, like you said, I see it in my clients, I see it in my friends, I see in my family. I feel it. It was a lot to deal with, and a lot to make sense of because your emotions got toyed with because it was safe to go outside, and it wasn't safe at other times, and it was safe to go and shake someone's hand and then wasn't safe to do that sort of thing. So we had all these mixed messages that were coming towards us.
Emily: It was safe to work out and then it wasn’t!
Jeff: Which is pretty wild to think. Early on in the pandemic, I think, Meg, you were probably a part of this conversation. I encouraged my athletes to go and get cinder blocks from Home Depot because everyone was saying, “I don't have access to any weight, so I might as well not work out right?” That all or nothing thinking that we got back into it. We can still do it. It's just not going to look the exact same. What I realized that I missed when I got out of CrossFit was the social aspect, because I sacrificed a lot of my relationships in pursuit of other things in my 20s, which that's my bed. I get to sleep in it. But for me, I started jiu jitsu, and it's to check the box of fitness, but it's also to build relationships. So I think that recommitting to a program like that and to yourself and to developing those relationships with people it's a whole lot easier to go to one of those classes if you know that there's a little bit of accountability. When you don't go for a week and it's like, “Hey, Jeff, where were you last week? We missed you here training, we learned some really cool stuff.” Especially in that context, because then they're going to use a move on me and I'm going to be getting choked out for the next two weeks when I don't really know how to defend it. So having that social aspect is so important, I can't stress that enough for people. It's great to be able to have Zoom face to face (virtually), but it's not the same and I'm sure that the energy in CrushCamp can probably speak and attest to that, too. It's always difficult to get there, maybe, but when you're there, you're committed. You don't have to think, you can do your workout, and then when you leave, you feel better and if you can focus on that, the feeling after knowing that as difficult as this might be for me to do in the moment, I'm going to feel so much better after I do it. The rest of my day is going to be better. I'm going to be a better friend. I'll be a better employee. I'm going to be a better person to be around. I'm going to be that version of myself that I would like to be. That's the way in my mind, that you can at least bring yourself to do these difficult things and get past that fear that you might have.
Meg: Yeah, I think the energy in CrushCamp and the reason why I mean, [for] me personally, why I fell in love with it was because of the community, was because of the energy it gave me and that's something that you only experience once you've shown up. And I think so many people are feeling unmotivated to even get to that point, to get to that starting line and then stick with it. Like your body after you first start something new, it hurts and you feel uncomfortable and you're like, oh, I can't do this because I've injured myself. Knowing the difference between injury and just post workout pain, those are the growing pains. And I think we see that a lot, too, of just people starting and then being like, oh, this isn't for me I'm not supposed to be here. And I guess my question to you would be, have you seen that in your sports performance stuff as well as, I guess, in the mental health field as well? And how do you motivate someone to stick with it even when things don't feel comfortable, when that's kind of an uncomfortable space to be for them?
Jeff: That's a really good question. That's probably one of the most common things that people bump up against and that I've seen. And I think that if you rely upon motivation to pull you through, it's going to be a very difficult road for you. Because, let's face it, when it's -30, like it was a few weeks ago, who's motivated to go outside to get anywhere? No one's motivated to do that. People who start to attempt to eat, maybe healthier, more in line with their goals, that's easy when you're motivated, but as soon as you get hungry and you don't have that stuff near you, it's really easy to go off track. And so the thing that I always would recommend is developing discipline. And like we talked about earlier, developing the discipline to do those difficult things, because you know that it's going to benefit you. And there are ways that you can do that for habit change and for patterning and stuff like that. I had a scenario where I would leave my work and on the way home, I would stop by a bakery, get some stuff, and then go home. And my iPhone will tell me, oh, 22 minutes to work if you take this route. At a point, my iPhone figured out it would no longer say, you know, 30 minutes to home. It woulad say 15 minutes to get to this bakery. And for me, I was like, oh, okay! That's a pattern, right? So that's a pattern that you can attempt to change. If you are patterning in things like staying up until 01:00 am watching YouTube, it's going to be really difficult to wake up at 05:00. So you can make these things easier by removing obstacles for you by having your bag packed the day before. Because how many times have you woken up and been like, oh, I don't have everything together. I'll just sleep another hour and a half and I'll feel better, only to wake up that hour and a half later and actually not feel better. You can develop patterns and kind of assess where you're losing ground on these things and what you might need to do in order to actually accomplish those things. But that, again, takes discipline. When you start something new, it's completely different. A workout program, don't dive head first into it, you know, five days a week, that sort of thing, because you are going to get these weird little overuse things that you haven't experienced before, and that's okay like, that's also something that's important to know going into it. The best advice that I achieved for getting into Jiu Jitsu was stay in it until you tap someone out. Because it's really easy when you're going there and getting your butt kicked every single day, which I still am, but it's really easy to go in there and be like, this isn't for me. I don't want to do it, right? I tried it. But you really need to understand and know if it's genuinely not for you or if you are kind of running away from it because it's uncomfortable. Because I even experienced that. Being someone who's fairly confident in the fitness realm, going into something brand new. And I was like, this is probably what people are experiencing. There's a lot of hesitation. And in the therapeutic realm, we call that resistance. And what I tell my clients is the day that you really don't want to come to therapy is probably the day that you need to come to therapy the most, right? There's this resistance, and it's there for a reason. It's trying to keep you safe. It's trying to keep you comfortable, but safe and comfortable for us right now, in my mind, looks like a lack of growth. So understanding that it's going to be difficult, understanding that you're not always going to be motivated, and even for the people you see on social media who are doing these difficult things. The two people that I probably follow the most are David Goggins and Jocko [Willink] And even they talk about how they don't want to do these things. David Goggins always talks about the fact that sometimes he'll wake up and he'll look at his shoes for a half hour before he actually puts them on and goes out for a run. And we're told that these things should be easy because we see other people on social media doing these things effortlessly and looking like they're having so much fun, and we think, why can't that be me? Why can't I do that? So understanding that message can be really helpful for people. It's okay to be resistant and hesitant.
Meg: Yeah, totally. I love that you kind of talk about that idea of habit stacking, and that sometimes the only thing that you need to do is just to continue to do it in order for your body to realize that, yes, this is good for me, this is what feels good, and this is what I need. And we talk about that a lot at CrushCamp as well, that this doesn't always feel comfortable for anybody. Working out isn't just like, one day I came to the CrushCamp, and all of a sudden it was easy. No, it doesn't get easier. You just get stronger and you also realize the benefits that it brings for you, and that's what gets you to come back. Not that it's easy. And if it's easy, you're not growing. And I love that you kind of spoke to that. Jeff, has there ever been a time when movement kind of became a pillar for you and for your mental health? And what did that look like for you?
Jeff: For me, it was early on growing up, I was an overweight kid, had a hyper athletic older brother, nine years older, played at UofC, volleyball, played pro in Europe. There was always this kind of comparison for me growing up to to live up to that level or his legacy sort of thing. At least that's what I felt. And when I kind of got into high school, I started to really gravitate towards exercise, and then I kind of floundered, I guess I wouldn't say floundered, but I moved around a lot after high school, didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I had a really good mentor. I was fortunate enough to kind of stumble upon someone who spoke really, really highly of the military and gave me a lot of encouragement to do that. And I fell in love with the training, I would say, doing these things and running and that sort of thing. And I think at that point, it really kind of changed for me. When I started to compete more and more [in] CrossFit and had maybe higher goals, then I started to eliminate a lot of the things that were maybe negatively impacting my health and so because of that, because of that focus on training and really trying to squeeze as much out of my effort as I could, I was fortunate enough to kick things that I've seen a lot of people struggle with. That being said, the roads not always easy, and there's always going to be times where you go up and down and you're motivated, you're unmotivated, you're trying to figure out how it was so easy back, say, three or four years ago, because it did feel comparatively now easy. But hindsight is 2020. We tend to forget the things that were difficult at that moment and all the struggles that we had, and we only kind of see the positives with it. And I've seen it for a ton of people, and I try to encourage people to go and find something that they like for exercise. I used to be very opinionated about this, this is the exact perfect way that you should be working out based on all the science, but it doesn't matter, people don't do it. And so the thing is, if you go and do some program, some work out three days a week, and you're committed to doing that, that's way better than having a perfect program written for you and not always doing it. And for me, I just know that exercise is going to be something that's always going to be necessary for me to be at my best, because I think things through when I go for a long run after working with clients and I kind of have these epiphanies that when I'm in that moment, I get these great ideas. And when I'm not in that moment, that's when the self doubt kind of kicks in and says, don't do that. That's going to be silly or that's going to be stupid or you're not going to succeed with that. And so I feel at my best when I do it and when I'm engaged in it, when I'm working towards a goal, which is consistent with a lot of the research and findings and what the great psychologists say about pursuing meaning. We're not happy when we're sitting and not progressing. We're happiest when we're pursuing a goal, and then you get that goal and then you're actually not that happy that you got it, and so you immediately find another one. Anyone who's been to university probably can relate to that sort of thing, but that pursuit is what's important. And when your goals can shift from outcome towards just self mastery, then there's never really the top of the mountain for you to hit. And that’s okay.
Meg: Yeah, I love the idea of not working towards something just to have an end to it. Fitness for me and for a lot of our coaches at CrushCamp, and I know for Emily, it's about longevity, it's about your life and that's your lifestyle. And I kind of share a similar kind of love for exercise. And that's a time when I'm at peace and I can kind of work through things and I find that I'm able to work through conversations I've had or things in school or anything like that, that it gives me that space and that time to do so. And I believe that's super important for people. And I really hope that others will kind of find that same love and same success with fitness and finding those benefits that are aside from aesthetics. So I think that's really important.
Emily: It is funny though, too because Meg I know you've always been in sport, you've grown up in sport, but Jeff, you mentioned you were kind of an overweight kid. My story resonates more with that. I don't often enjoy pushing myself physically. I feel like some people really enjoy that feeling of intensity, that feeling of challenge, that feeling of that gritty physical work. I don't and I think not everybody does. Maybe you can kind of elaborate, Jeff, but I think there's an element of just like who you are and how you are as a person and how you're kind of genetically predispositioned and I am a little bit more sedentary. My happy place is like sitting curled up with a book and a glass of wine kind of thing, or music. And I have my other strengths. They're very much not athletic. I got cut from every team in the first round. For me, I had to find my own way to stay active and to stay engaged and I went a little extreme and actually started the gym. But I think what has changed for me, even in these past few years is, I was really nervous when the pandemic hit that I was never going to move again. Because I'm like, I don't have group fitness, group is the only way I will do things because I've never completed a single zoom workout because I hate it, or a single at home workout because I just cannot. I just absolutely hate it. But what really shifted for me was I noticed how much I missed it. And I think that's what I really noticed. And I'm like, oh, movement actually always will be part of my life now, maybe in different capacities and at different intensities, but I think for me that was that wake up call that I'm like, it might not look like it used to be, but I know my longer why and that is for aging. That is for preventative health care long term. That is so that I can chase my grandkids up a mountain one day. I don't know if it's questioned so much as a statement, but I think that there are so many different ways to approach movement, sometimes maybe we as owners and as fitness enthusiasts do a disservice to say things like, “it's so fun!” It's not always going to be fun. Hopefully you find some enjoyment out of it. Hopefully you don't hate every minute. But you're right, some days discipline just has to take over and some days that deeper why that deeper kind of habit has to take over.
Jeff: If we jump back a little bit, there's this concept called the Hedonic adaptation which can explain a lot of these little things as we start to progress towards our goal, right? We're currently unhappy where we're at. And we have this idea in our mind that if we attain this thing, we'll be happy, right? So we pursue it and if we do accomplish it, we get it. We have this brief moment of happiness and then eventually we become adapted to its presence in our life and then we're no longer happy, right? You can see this with any consumer product, it could be a home, a vehicle, any little thing. You work towards this thing, you get it, you're happy briefly and then the new one comes out and then these companies play really well on it. Same thing happens with fitness. You attain this goal because you're outcome driven and you achieve this weight or this certain thing, or this lift and it will feel good very briefly. And then there's going to be something else to pursue, right? You hit a number for a squat, that's great. But then Jim over there is squatting way more than me, so I should continue to pursue and I feel inadequate in comparison. And so set up your goals and make yourself value the things that you have. Everyone has people in their life that have lost physical abilities. My mom growing up, since I can remember, she had MS. She is a very strong woman, but you can see things consistently get taken from her and it's really easy to take these things for granted. And so there's this concept of negative visualization which isn't as horrible as it sounds, but basically just imagining what would I do differently today if I knew tomorrow maybe I'd lose some of those physical abilities. And the idea isn't for me to sit here for 4 hours and meditate on it and feel horrible, but just to literally think about that for a second. What if I couldn't go to class tomorrow? What if I was unable to go and do these things tomorrow to try and change some behavior today? Because that's the only way for us to really be happy with where we're currently at. And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't pursue more optimal health or something like that, but it gets rid of the idea that you're going to be happy when you get there. I just think about that a lot with what you talked about. It's hard to sell like incremental progression over the long term to be healthy when you're 60, 70, 80 because it's not sexy. I've done little experiments with myself and depending on the picture that you post, with the exact same caption, you're going to get a whole lot more from the algorithm. But that message is super important, and I think that more people are starting to come around to it, especially in the aftermath of COVID. We've heard about what exercise could do for you preventatively, and people are starting to wake up to that. It doesn't need to be this all or nothing, all encompassing, either in this lifestyle or not. It can be little and often over the long haul and that's okay.
Emily: And thanks so much, Jeff. I totally agree. And I know it's a big passion of ours to have that preventative wellness conversation. And it is my hope, my dream, my goal that over the next ten years that our society really starts to view both mental and physical health as true preventative health care and acknowledge that healthcare doesn't start at the emergency room and it doesn't start at the doctor's office and it doesn't start at the pharmacist. It starts in your clinic and it starts in our studio. And that can actually do so many wonders for kind of removing the burden on our overall system and just changing our lives. You have a workshop coming up this Sunday? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Jeff: Yeah so I have a workshop coming up this Sunday from 1-3pm at Vivid Psychology in Kensington. It's titled “Using Exercise to Support your Mental Health”. It’s running this Sunday and then there is a follow up five weeks from now. So this Sunday is focused on the benefits of exercise, I go into a lot of the science behind it and what it actually does and then there is a thorough goal setting [session]. We go over the 8 step approach to goal setting and the amount of discipline required to do something versus the investment. For example downloading a workout app on your phone is low investment, and a high amount of discipline required, having a group class membership is a moderate investment and a moderate amount of discipline required and 1 on 1 personal training is a high investment but a much lower amount of discipline required. The idea is we set a plan for people, give directions and guidelines, and then set a follow up. And the follow up is going to be focused on how things are going and what are people bumping up against. Because a lot of people are going to be experiencing the same things. Where they have seen successes and where they have seen downfalls and then coordinate an effort to think through these things with people. We touch on body image, we talk a lot about discipline and motivation and how to develop these things. And just try to provide as many tools as possible. The idea is if you have a gym membership or you have paid for something and you don’t feel like you are getting the most out of it as you could then this is 100% for you because it is going to try and break down those barriers so that you can actually utilize it. I love what you said earlier about the preventative healthcare and I have had some people contact me and say well I’m not clinically depressed or my son isn’t clinically depressed or my daughter isn’t clinically depressed but they would still like someone to talk to and I would always say that is 100% okay. I don’t think that people should only seek out support when they are at their lowest because it’s going to be much more difficult to work yourself into a positive place, right? It’s something that, just like going to the chiropractor, you might go every two months, and that should be the same as your mental health therapist. Within that, finding someone that you jive with is the most important thing and there are alot of people out there and a lot of resources if people are having difficulties finding someone, to still get support and access to it.
Emily: Awesome, thank you so much Jeff and where do you learn more about you and the workshop? And where and how can we sign up?
Jeff: So the workshop is a vividpsychology.com and then there is a title in there “workshops”. There are some other really great workshops running. I think the other one going on right now is about overcoming breakups or relationship loss. To find me personally I am at arete_psychology [on Instagram] or aretepsyc.com and that is probably the best way to find out more. If people are interested, pretty much every therapist offers free consultations to see if people are a good fit so I would encourage everyone, not just for me, but if this has sparked some interest for you, to reach out to someone and have a 15 minute free conversation. It will either make you really feel drawn to that person as the person that you want to work with, or you might not be as into it and that’s okay too, you can find someone else.
Emily: Awesome, well thank you so much Jeff, you have been so generous with your time today and we really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. I look forward to checking out your workshop and chatting more in the future!
Jeff: Great to meet you, thank you so much!
Meg: Thanks so much, Jeff!
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You can learn more about Using Exercise to Support Your Mental Health via Jeff’s workshop at Vivid Pscyhology in Kensington this Sunday January 15th from 1-3pm. You can find Jeff online at arete_psychology on Instagram.