YogaFit RYT-200 & ACE Certified Personal Trainer
R-CYAT Registered Christian Yoga Association Trainer

Find your moment. Only YOU know what that moment is. I'm not talking about the moments we typically do well: the beginning of an interesting new fitness class. Mornings that we wake up on time, keep decent pace with our to-do list, and feel encouraged by our peers. Our head is clear, and our refrigerator is bursting with fresh and beautiful veggies. While these moments are crucial and require the discipline of consistency for success- these will not be the moments that cau

I have a friend who’s father used to always admonish “Don’t rest on your laurels”. In high school she was athletic, good looking, and well-liked enough to be homecoming queen. The Cambridge Dictionary says of this phrase: “To be satisfied with your achievements and not to make an effort to do anything else: Just because you've got your degree doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels. Satisfied and complacent.” Clearly, my friend’s dad understood that these early graces of

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month! I'm betting every single one of us has been affected by this disease either personally or when a loved one has been diagnosed. Sometimes it's tough to know how to help- so as a Breast Cancer Survivor myself, I decided to take this opportunity to offer a few practical tips based on my experience: • Help with nutrition: eating as healthy as I could became more important than ever once I was diagnosed, but recovering from a double maste

Zig Ziglar: “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” Last week at the gym I couldn't help but notice another member carefully referencing and notating in her beautiful fitness journal. She was kind enough to take a few moments from her own workout to show me her journal, and recommended a couple of great instagrammers that keep her workouts interesting and on track. To be honest- I hadn't thought about how long it's been since I've touched my own fitness journals

If you you feeling "stuck" in your progress the number one weapon you have is the journal you've been keeping. If you haven't been keeping one, the most important step you can take in your weight loss journey is to start now. I absolutely believe to lose weight you must journal every bite. If you are stuck, get out the last ten days of your journal and check the following to see if anything can be tweaked: • Are you getting 25 grams of fiber daily, and eating 5-10 serving

This weekend my daughter and I watched the movie “Hairspray” as homework for her class. The story centers on a teen dance show in the 60’s during a time of deep racial prejudice and segregation. The struggle of the story is to integrate more than the stereotype of society into the dance. The movie ends with a dance in which varied races, sizes, and ages participate in celebration. The prejudiced actions of the cruel are brought to humiliation, and after a long struggle, th

This morning I was rushing around at an "almost-late-for-church" whirlwind speed when I saw the front page of the Kenosha News, and it stopped me in my tracks: "Nominations Welcome for Person of the Year" While I have no plans to send in an actual nomination- it made me pause and think about who I would nominate. It didn't take more than a few moments for an entire list of people that have impacted me to flood my mind in gratitude. Yesterday my family saw the new movie calle

If you've been in my yoga classes, you know I spend the first 3-5 minutes teaching breath practice or what we refer to in yoga as pranayama in Sanskript. Breath is an amazing gift of God to manage stressful situations beyond our control, and to train our minds to focus in the midst of a multi-tasking world. I occasionally reference the rule of 3's (see below) in my Yoga Classes to help participants understand the nourishing importance of our breath. As a believer, I'm fascin

Philippians 4:7 describes a “Peace that passes all understanding”. When we surrender our will to the power of Holy Spirit, our life will become one lived beyond understanding. Galatians 5:22-23 details a list of admirable qualities that are the “fruit” of Spirit-led life: love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Imagine a person that exhibited all these qualities; wouldn’t you want a person like that to be your friend, spouse, or co-w

I wish we could wake up feeling ready to “hit one out of the park” every day, but let’s be honest- we don’t. But take heart... these are the days that CHANGE us. True progress isn’t going to happen if we only work on the days we wake up feeling motivated- it happens by pushing through our weakest moments. On the day you showered then went right back to bed (me today). The day you googled “yoga for a bad mood” for your first workout (me today again). But then you stepped i

A family funeral took me to the heart of Iowa this week. I realized this might be the last time I’d be drawn near the two neighboring small towns that my parents grew up in, and I decided it was time to take a mini tour of my roots. I drove to my maternal grandfather’s farm, and what used to be a restaurant my mom waitressed for in high school. I drove to my dad’s high school football field and the house he lived in as a teenager. The final stop was the church my paternal gra

The other day a gym member asked about my take on using the fitness machines that he enjoys including in his workouts. (Another member had told him to should stop and only use free weights.) The conversation prompted me to look up this article I’d read awhile back, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about use of machines rather than free weights and his “why”. I use both- and here are a few of the reasons I like including machines in workouts for myself or clients: - Safe

Last summer our Prayer & Pose class did a Beth Moore study titled “The Quest. One of my big take-aways from that study is that God does not rebuke us for our questions. Scholars estimate that the Bible is home to about thirty-three hundred questions depending on the translation. Some of these questions are asked one person to another. God asks questions of us- not because He doesn’t know, but to make us think and show He cares. Other questions are asked from us to God—seeki