Tag: hula hooping

The BRAVE Interview #8 March 2017: Jennifer Greiner

by Karen, posted in friends, Interviews, local fun, Metaphysical healing, The BRAVE Interviews

Here is #8 in The BRAVE Interview series! It’s the Who, What, When, Where, How, (and sometimes Why) of YOUR ‘one brave thing’! December’s interview is with Jennifer Greiner. 🙂

jen-greinerWHO are you? I am Jennifer Greiner, a strong, individual woman who knows what she wants and works hard to get it.  I am passionate, caring and considerate.  I am professionally a therapist but also an essential oil and hula hooping enthusiast! Part of my identity has become being a significant other to a first year Med Student.

WHAT is your One Brave Thing (so far!!)? My One Brave Thing was starting my essential oil business, Green Thinking.  It is something I have never done, nor have ever particularly wanted to do.  It was very scary for me to jump into selling products to others that I, myself, love.  Not only did I just start Green Thinking, I was also adjusting to a big transition: moving to a new state and vicariously beginning medical school.  Thank goodness I was brave enough to launch into this wonderful endeavor as it helped keep me busy, adjust and gain a wonderful new community!

WHEN did you do it? I officially started Green Thinking at the Saco River Market on October 29th, 2016.

WHERE did it occur?  The Saco River Market had just changed locations from Saco Island to a church in Biddeford, ME.  It was an adjustment for the whole Market and was crushing after that first market day, to learn that we would be moving to another new place, 40 Main St., Biddeford.  I could easily empathize with other vendors as it was normal for me to move around and wait a while to get used to a place.  I have been able to easily settle into our new space, as I believe, so has the rest of the market.


HOW did you make it happen?   Pretty easily, looking back on the year.  I had been making my own products for myself for months.  I had tested them out and shared with friends.  When I learned of the Saco River Market, I went down there to speak with them about becoming a vendor.  I printed out the application, sent it in and discussed that I would start at the end of October.  Then it was the scramble to get products made, labels on and purchase a table!  I was able to make it all happen and be ready for that first market.


WHY did you do it? One of my many passions is essential oils.  I want to share them with everyone and teach how you can incorporate them into your lifestyle, to help elevate your life and live naturally, chemical free.  I’ve always admired market vendors and was eager for the opportunity to become one myself.  I consider myself a people-person and looked forward to talking with and meeting new people to immerse myself in my new community.  I am so happy to have persevered through my One Brave Thing to feel successful and accomplished!

If you’d like to read the other interviews in the series, click here for the list: https://kwrites.com/?s=the+BRAVE+interview

If you’d like to be interviewed for this series about your own ‘one brave thing’, email me at kmcwrites@gmail.com.

 

You, Mii, and Wii

by Karen, posted in family, fitness, health, Holidays, tweens

Hate exercise? Mii too.  Well, I do if you are referring to

  1. Going to the gym
  2. Jogging
  3. Stairmaster
  4. Shoveling

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you are not shocked by this admission. I do to practice yoga and like to hula hoop, but getting exercise is a byproduct (for me) of the activity, not the goal.

Enter Christmas. Enter the Wii. Now, when I used to go to Curves, some of the older (than me) women would talk about how much they enjoyed exercising with their Wii Fit games. I was interested in their stories, but not motivated in finding out any more about it.

Then I went to my brother’s house for Christmas and they were using their Wii and the kids were having so much fun that I thought, “Hey, maybe there is something to this…” When my 12-year-old niece persuaded my brother to get off the couch and dance to “Viva Las Vegas” with her, I made up my mind to get that game for my family.

I’ve never looked back. After I bought the console to play the games, which came with one controller and one nunchuk, I sprang for an additional controller and nunchuk. You need two of each to play against each other in boxing, and my daughter wanted to box with me (should I read anything into that??).

It’s really only me and my tween daughter (and her friends) using the Wii right now, but I’m hopeful that my husband will join in at some point (hey, virtual boxing with your spouse could expel a lot of demons, don’t you think?). I made a “Mii” for him already (and he’s a hunk!) so he’ll be all set to go.

Can’t wait to knock him out.

🙂

Exercise? Ugh!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, fitness, gardening, health, local fun

Some people love exercise; I am not one of those people. I like to eat big, however, so I have to (at least sometimes) engage in physical activity of some sort to avoid doubling in size.

I subscribe to the idea that little (read: bearable)  increments of exercise throughout the day that add up to a half an hour are as good as 30 consecutive minutes. Better, maybe. So.

Here’s what I do in increments on the days that I can’t talk myself into going to the gym (ugh!):

  1. Hula hoop. I keep one in my cubicle at work. Some days if I get in early (eg: before any potential witnesses) I go into an empty conference room (one with enough clearance!) and hoop for 10-15 minutes.

    Hooping!
  2. Yoga. There are several yoga poses that you can do at your desk, in line at the supermarket, even in the car.
  3. Gardening. Depending on the time of year, that might mean berry picking (straw, blue, black, in that order), weeding, dealing with tomato staking and harvesting, digging potatoes, watering, and so on.

    Yukon gold potatoes from our garden
  4. Walking. Go to the ocean for a walk. Also, getting out for 10 or 15 minutes to walk on a work break is usually doable. Problem: I often walk to the gelato store…nothing like a caramel turtle or a cappuccino fudge brownie gelato to lift one’s spirits… 🙂
  5. Bike ride. Not in “treks” or “marathons” of any sort; just in circles in the driveway or around the block on flat pavement.
  6. Dance! Crank up the stereo/iPod/mp3…almost painless. 🙂

A bonus is that all of the above can be done with your child present. Maybe they will even participate. You can feel good because a) you are setting a good example for him or her and b) not having a babysitter is not valid excuse to blow it off.

What do you do for exercise? Do you love it or hate it?

Saying goodbye to a friend

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, fitness, good grief, health, tweens

My daughter’s friend delivered some unexpected news last week. Without preamble, she sent a one line email declaring that she was moving. To California. Like, soon. 

Chocolate chip cookies

 

Well. It’s not the first time that one of her close friends have moved away; it’s the third time, actually. It seems to be hitting her in a different way this time, however, which I imagine is due to her developmental stage. She is feeling it more, so of course, I am feeling it more as well. She was visibly sad, and was telling anyone in the family who would listen about how her friend was moving and how much she was going to miss her. 

Then a funny thing happened: as I was busily trying to think of a way to help her to feel better, she was busily figuring it put for herself. This is what she did: 

  1. She took construction paper and crayons and made a book for her friend. The book’s title? “Things I like about (name of friend)”.
  2. She asked me if we could bake some chocolate chip cookies for her friend, having ascertained beforehand that these were her favorite kind of cookies (note: date stamp on photo is incorrect; it’s a new camera and I’ve yet to set the date!).
  3. She obtained her friend’s new phone number in California, and in addition to placing it in a safe place, she made sure I had saved it in my cell phone as a safety measure.
  4. She hunted down a gift bag (purple! purple is her friend’s favorite color!) that was big enough to hold the construction paper book without folding it, the container of cookies, and an “I’m going to miss you!” greeting card, then assembled the gift.

So, she did all of these things just by instinct. She thought she was putting together a nice present for her friend and making sure they could stay in touch. I realized that she was processing her grief, and doing it by instinct, and in a healthy way. 

Then, she put it all aside and went out in the yard to hula hoop for an hour. 

 

Isn’t it amazing how much our children teach us about life (see note about picture date stamp, #2 above)?

hula hooping for beginners

by Karen, posted in family, fitness, health

after i wrote my prior post about hula hooping, i took things one step further and actually signed up for the WOCSD class, Hula Hooping for Beginners. it runs for 6 weeks on monday evenings and started may 17th.

when i called to sign up they said it was a big class. it was; there were 17 other brave women like myself who were daring to do something different, and risking looking like a fool for the sake of  fitness.  we ranged in age from twenty-somethings to over fifty-somethings. we all dropped our hoops and bumped into things, but it didn’t feel foolish, it felt…FUN!

the instructor, Christine MacDonald, is engaging and encouraging. she brought everything we needed, which turned out to be the hoops and the tunes (on her ipod). oh, and the enthusiasm!

you know how half an hour at the gym can feel like half a day? well, an hour of hula hooping for beginners felt like ten minutes.  so, if you are feeling like trying something different and coming out of your comfort zone, consider hooping.

Christine MacDonald teaches…well, wherever you are, most likely. here’s her website: http://www.missfithooping.com/