Move:

• Do you have plantar fasciitis? Do you have calves? If you answered yes to one of these questions, check out this calf stretch from Brad Kearns.
• Kearns is an accomplished runner who no longer ever has plantar fasciitis pain. He performs this calf stretch a few times a day. I have worked it into my day as much as possible.
• Basically the old lean against the wall with one foot flat on the ground, far behind you. Push very hard against the wall. The key here is the duration. He recommends a full 2 minutes on each leg. (Then 2 more minutes on each leg with knee bent, to stretch the superficial gastrocnemius muscles). Your tight calves will feel like jelly when you’re finished. He also links to a cool description of how stretching works. 

Nutrition:

• Ok Happy Halloween everyone. I know no one is going to eat candy today or at all this week, so we have nutrition locked down.
• But. For those noble souls who are faced with the decision of whether to throw out candy or take one for the team and eat it, a few practices can help.
1. Don’t graze on candy all day or all week. Pick a time that you are going to eat it each day, and eat as small amount as possible. Then get it out of your face the rest of the day.
2. Eat the candy after a hard workout, or at least a brief workout. Run up and down the stairs, do 100 air squats, run a mile. You might say this sounds like an eating disorder. Not as much of a disorder as waking up with 20 Reese’s wrappers in your lap.
3. After you eat the candy, take a walk. This will blunt the glucose and insulin spike.
4. Avoid other carbs in these candy-filled days. IIFMM.
5. Don’t feel guilty. It is a holiday, candy tastes amazing (if it has chocolate), and everyone is going to have some. Enjoy!

Rest:

• I have mentioned the Headspace meditation app in the past. Though not free, this app has a huge supply of guided meditation, along with kid versions. 
• A new app that looks solid on first time through is Waking Up, created by Sam Harris. Harris is a very cerebral guy, with a secular approach to mindfulness. He is a philosopher and neuroscientist. Check out his book Waking Up.

Wisdom:

• This concise article summarizes a new study on mindfulness meditation. The subjects had fairly significant instruction, but only for 2 weeks. They sat for 45 minutes, four times a week and practiced 10 minutes of daily meditation outside of class. Similar cumulative time to the UofL Min-Body Medicine course. 
• Students were randomized to either nutrition training or meditation training. “The students who practiced mindfulness not only improved their reading comprehension, they also improved their working memory capacity and reduced their mind-wandering.” 
• The summary highlights the importance here of “transfer.” The meditation caused improvements in a few facets of performance. If you practice a lot of chess, sudoku, crossword puzzles, etc, you get better at those particular activities. Transfer is difficult to achieve, especially in two weeks. Thanks Staci Saner for the recommendation. 

Community:

• You may have heard of fight or flight. When under stress, you have a surge of adrenaline to either fight the attacker or run away. Of course in today’s world today it is more the overdue TPS report than the tiger chasing you. 
• Another way to deal with stress is to “Tend and Befriend.” When you encounter stress, time constraints, anxiety, or any other overwhelming situation, reach out for help. If you isolate yourself, you will become more overwhelmed and even hopeless.
• Better yet, get out there and help someone else when you are feeling this low. It takes a major dose of willpower to get up and try it, but studies have shown that you “counter the downward spiral of defeat.”
• Social caregiving, reward, and attunement drive your brain chemistry when you help someone in need (via oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin). Its science.   

Quote: 

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
– Mark Twain