My Focus

         I've been on a bit of a wellness journey the past year.  My stress levels were out of control and causing both physiological and psychological problems.  It's been getting better the more I've been working on it, although there are still some things I need to address.

        My progress has been easy to track.  I have an Oura ring, think smart watch, but a ring.  They are a bit more accurate taking the pulse from the finger, like you would at a doctor's office, as opposed to the wrist.  It has many metrics for me to see from sleep, which includes: duration, restfulness, body temperature, breathing heart, heart rate, HRV, minutes in deep sleep, REM sleep, light sleep, and times awake.  Other metrics include my readiness score, which is based off of: HRV (heart rate variability), respiratory rate, body temp, recovery index, sleep regularity, previous days activity, and activity balance.  It has my activity: calories burned, active time, steps, training frequency and volume, and recovery time.  Most importantly it records my stress, which is broken up throughout the day between time in: stress, engagement, relaxation, and recovery.  All of this to give me a picture of how I am doing, how I am handling or not handling stress, and my overall health.  For reference, some of my scores back in April: Readiness average score was 77, Sleep average score was 73, Activity average was 93, and I spent more time stressed than I did recovered.  Compared to this month my average scores are: Readiness 87, Sleep 79 (still some off nights), Activity 96, and I've spent more time in the relaxed and restorative states, as opposed to engaged and stressed states.

        Now I do recognize that there is some eustress in there too, or the "good" stress.  Even workouts are stress to the body.  What I look at are the times when I'm not active and trying to relax, that is my biggest indicator.  That and sleep.  Somewhere along the way in life, I forgot to know how to relax and live with my nervous system constantly in sympathetic or active mode.  One would think that being that vigilant would be good for one's Kung Fu, but it isn't.  Sure, you're always at the ready, but your muscles are tense, you tend to rush things because you're not living in the moment, and eventually you get run down from working overtime on your mind and body.  So, my focus has been on reducing stress and regulating my nervous system.

        How I've been doing this is through mindful practices like guided meditation (especially before bed), tweaking my diet to nourish the deficiencies and supplementing where I need to, seeing my own acupuncturist, keeping up exercise, journaling and journaling exercises, bettering my sleep hygiene habits, less screen time, and depending on my community for my mental health.  I'll add that I am also mindfully relaxing to be restored, so picking days/times that my purpose is to rest, and not worry about the laundry list of things that "need" doing.  As for my Kung Fu, its two-fold.  Kung Fu is helping me with my stress reduction, and my stress reduction is helping my Kung Fu.  I am able to take some deep cleansing breaths and lower my active nervous system and be more present in what I'm doing.  My forms feel lighter and smoother.  I can tell I'm less tense.  My reaction time is improving, and I feel more calm overall.

        For reference I'm using the Headspace app.  I think it's around $80/year, and has a library full of meditations and different courses to choose from.  The journal I've been using is The Growth by Pulse of Potential.  It's broken-up into 4 chapters that help you get to know yourself better through prompted questions.