Need to Feel Better Soon? Now?

If there was ever a time where we all needed a real break, it is very soon, if not right here right now.  The pandemic stress is weighing heavily on us all, no matter how you look at it.  Even if you are thriving, making more money, feeling needed in a good way, loving your family and enjoying home cooked meals one after another--all you need to do is step outside your door and observe people walking around in masks, distancing from friends, behaving suspiciously in the grocery store to realize--OH NO, this is not normal, yet it is here to stay for quite a while.

This kind of overarching stressor takes its toll.  Therefore now, more than ever, it's time to look at what we have at our immediate disposal that is convenient, safe and always available to BUST a BAD MOOD.  Exercise, my dear ones, in little spurts or big--is a fast way to get into a better mood.  It increases the feel good chemicals in the brain that say all is well.  Boy oh boy, we need more of that. 

So, this is not a post about doing a puzzle or listening to jazzy music (unless it includes jazzy dancing).  This is about moving that bod of yours enough to feel better.  Get the lead out is something I have been known to say.  When you do this, you feel lighter in more ways than one.  LEAD... lightER.....  GET IT?

Why bother?  Why?  Because you, me, we cannot stay stuck until a C19 vaccine is discovered.  We cannot let a bad mood consume our bodies or our minds.  You, me, we have to rise again, with the sun, day in and day out and face whatever it is that is coming even when you feel like saying NO WAY.  Oh, wait, today is just like yesterday?  This is getting old, you say?  I've noticed too.   And, yet, we still soldier on, in this war without guns building our resiliency skills.  It's not pretty.  It doesn't have to be. 

Now that the weather is mostly good in Minnesota, I am jumping on my bike for a five or ten minute ride around the 'hood just to get outside and feel better.  I walk Pippa a lot.  I film yoga and qi gong outside for my YouTube channel.  I run around Lake Harriet too.  But for that immediate--get me out of this C19 world, the quickie bike ride does the trick.  I am a kid again.  Seratonin is UP.  Dopamine is UP.  Free drugs are UP.  Legal drugs I mean!

Check in with yourself regularly and pause long enough to realize how you are in the moment.  Respect that observation without judgment.  When you start realizing you are not ok, accept it and move it. That's it.  Five minutes.  See what it might do to build you up to feel better not only soon, but now.