Summer Newsletter

Get to Know: Pat Twilla

I am a certified NASM Personal Trainer and Corrective Exercise Specialist.  I am also a certified TRX trainer, Group Exercise Instructor, SCW Fitness certified in Pilates Mat, and Reformer trained through Balanced Body University.  I recently received my certification in MOTR (core roller) thru Balanced Body University and Sandie Hendrix, and am studying the Cadillac under Sandie as well. My fitness career spans 22 years and counting.

I have been active in sports and fitness all my life, and with good reason.  Growing up in a three bedroom home with five sisters and one brother, we found ourselves playing outdoors all day, every day, year-round.  I’d like to think it was because of our love for sports and nature, but it probably had something to do with close quarters and our mom’s sanity.  Imagine seven very active children ages 2 thru 14 years old.  It tires me just thinking about it!  As we’ve grown up and had children of our own, we all refer to our mother as “the Saint”!  Besides being patient, loving, and kind, she was health conscious and always exercised.  Our dad kept fit with manual labor, hunting, fishing, and gardening.  His love of nature spilled over into our lives.  We grew up helping him in the garden daily and canning the fresh produce with our mom.  We were organic before organic was popular!

I was very active in high school sports:  basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, track, and even field hockey.  I was a cheerleader, which seems to be the common denominator with many fitness instructors.  We must lead, I suppose!  Oddly enough, I was an introvert.  I loved to read and was an A student, graduating 3^rd in my class.  My love for physical activities seemed to pull me out of my shell, and I believe made me a well-rounded individual.  I am a life long learner, reading everything I can get my hands on about health and fitness. 

I am also an avid gardener.  After my divorce I went to work as a 1^st grade teachers’ aide at my daughter’s school and I landscaped in the summers with my best friend from high school, who owned a landscape business.  I also taught Step Aerobics at the YMCA in the evenings.  That marked the beginning of my fitness career.  Several years later I decided to pursue fitness full time.  I guess I have always been fortunate to love my work.  I met John, the man of my dreams, working out at the Y.  We’re still gardening together, 20 years later.  Our two dogs, Max and Bella, and our way too many cats round out our household.

I mentioned I have a daughter, Abby, and she and her husband Chet have two beautiful daughters, Ashlyn, who’s five and Ella, three.  After leaving my position as Health and Fitness Director at the Y, I began my new career as a full time grandma, which has been the best job of my life, along with motherhood, of course!  I cared for both girls while their parents worked until they entered full time preschool last fall.  I still pick them up twice a week after my morning classes and trainings to spend the day together, mostly outdoors.  For me, one of the greatest joys on earth is to see life through the eyes of a child.  They are such a joy to be with! Children are a great reminder to stop and smell the roses, and isn’t that what life should be about, after all?

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Announcements

Help us Wish Sandie Well!

Come to Pumps on Friday, August 1st at 5:30 pm for a Well Wishing celebration for Sandie!

  

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Pumps Happenings

• Summer is in full swing and so is Pumps!  Our summer schedule is up and running and we have added new and exciting classes to the schedule.  Check out our MOTR circuit class and our Stretch and Meditate class.  

•        Over the next two months, the Group Fitness room will be painted along with the bathrooms!  

• Our T-shirts are in and available for purchase.  

• Introducing our Client of the Month Program!  Each month, a client will be chosen at random and highlighted!  Stay tuned for the first selection in August...

Save Some Green!

• We are rolling out a standing referral discount for Pumps Group Fitness participants.  If you participate in our Group Fitness classes, you can receive $10 off of your next month of Group by referring a friend to participate in our monthly package!  This is not a one time discount...keep referring and you keep saving.  

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What is Reiki?

by Erica Lebrandt

When I first heard about it maybe 20 years ago, it was from my sister—a nurse practitioner who saw reiki being used in the hospital where she worked.

She reported to my very skeptical younger self that she had seen miraculous things happen.

It would take a long journey of self healing before I had an inkling of what she meant.

Officially, “Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing. It’s administered by laying on hands and can be easily learned by anyone.”

In reality, reiki is so much more.

Here I sit once again, in this lovely old home on the North Shore, ready for my long anticipated level-two reiki training.

Outside, the sound of dogs occasionally barking and the joyous shrieks of children playing on the neighboring playground. It is an unapologetically bright summer day, the kind of day that makes going indoors seems criminal, unless you have something very important to do—and I most certainly do.

We, my two fellow students, my teacher and I, gaze at each other eagerly. We know good things are about to happen.

First, a meditation.

To allow reiki (also known as as healing energy) to flow through the body more energetically, we ground ourselves by imagining a cord extending from the base of our spine to the center of the earth. We breathe the power of the earth up through that cord and into our bodies, through the spine, the belly, the heart and the head. Hovering above us, we envision a radiant sun which beams down a pyramid of golden light, and encapsulates us entirely.
We are suspended between these two great forces, plugged in all all sides, and the sense of connection is absolute.

After who-knows-how-long, we reluctantly leave our meditation to discuss the practical pieces of level two.

These include sacred symbols which we are to master and use as a way to channel reiki more powerfully, and other techniques intended to give us greater access to the always flowing positive energy that wraps in vibrational rivers around everything that has existed, does exist or will exist.

We learn how to send reiki to the past, to the future and across physical distances.

We learn how to clear rooms and objects of negative energy and how to bless things in our day to day lives.

Reiki can be called upon almost indiscriminately we discover, put to use in any situation imaginable.

As we sit there, talking, learning and applying reiki in myriad ways to ourselves, to the room, to each other and to distant friends, I am suffused by a sense of belonging. Not belonging in the way of belonging to an exclusive club, (which reiki practitioners can ironically appear to be), but of belonging to the universe.

All the techniques we use to flow reiki are really just ways for us to break down walls and remember what we already know—all things are one.

Understanding this is to understand the same principle taught to yogis, the only difference is that in yoga, we call it “om.”
We are all part of a dynamic system of energy and if we allow ourselves to be swept up in it, seemingly magical things can happen.

Things like helping a barren woman become pregnant, or a veteran find relief from debilitating migraines, or an insomniac sleep consistently through the night. (All events that I know first hand to have transpired.)

Many people hem and haw at the idea of reiki—how is it possible to simply lay our hands on someone and help them heal? Or stranger still, to not even touch them, or perhaps never meet them and still be the agent of powerful healing?

Nonetheless, like love (which would be another apt word to describe this phenomenon), reiki is real.

Sometimes, when we realize our human minds are simply not equipped to comprehend the totality or vastness of an idea, we must simply sit back and accept that it is true.

There can be danger in faith, indeed, and people across the centuries have been manipulated to bad ends as they remain stuck in their own ignorance, but that can not be the case with reiki.

Reiki is not political, reiki is not a club, reiki does not conflict with anything or demand any particular set of behaviors or beliefs.

True reiki practitioners are concerned solely with helping to bring about the greatest good.

No, they don’t pretend to know what that is—there is no ego in real reiki. They set aside all personal expectations and simply act as an agent for positivity, hoping to bring light into the darkness and love where there is fear.

When I hugged my teacher after our last level two session ended, I thought how lucky I was to have peeked into the machinery upon which the illusions of our lives have been built. The machinery is beautiful and elegant and always working away efficiently.

We, as spirits, are much more than we generally perceive we are, part of a thrumming, ever expanding whole, whose destiny is yet unknown, but whose vibration continually rises and whose fabric is woven in love.

The gift reiki offers is the ability to connect those dots—if even for the space of a few breaths—and to be healed by the knowledge that we are love, and that we are loved.

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Nutrition, Fitness, and YOU!!

Find healthy ways to use fruit in your diet!

When Fruit Sabotages Results (From John Hall Studios)

Most of us consider fruit to be healthy – something that we can enjoy without restraint. And while fresh fruit does contain essential vitamins, minerals and fiber, the market place has been flooded with "fruit products" that are sabotaging your fat loss results.

Is any product with the word "fruit" in the name a valid way to meet your fruit quota? Nope. Here's what I mean:

Problem Fruit #1: Juice

Fresh fruit juice can be wonderful. It has great flavor, great color, and good amounts of important vitamins and minerals. At least it does when it is actually fruit juice. Unfortunately, many drinks labeled as fruit juice, contain a very low amount of actual fruit juice. For these hardly-fruit fruit juices, sugar and water make up the bulk of the contents, robbing you of the important benefits of all-natural fruit juice and leaving you primed and ready to fill your fat cells.

Always keep fruit juice indulgences to a minimum, as even the fruit-only kind is loaded with simple sugars.

Problem Fruit #2: The Fruit Smoothie
Now, now, don't get all up in arms. Smoothies have long been considered a healthy treat, but this often a misconception. It's not that all fruit smoothies are unhealthy. In fact, a smoothie can give you a big boost of vitamins and minerals that help you feel energetic and ready to face the day. However, it's very easy to add more sugar than is found in many desserts, losing all the healthy benefits and putting you at risk for fat storage.

To keep your smoothie lean and healthy, don't add ice cream or frozen yogurt, processed sweeteners, or other items that are high in sugar and filled with empty calories. Keep your smoothie nothing but fruit, ice, juice, yogurt, and a nice scoop of protein powder to ensure it is high on the health chart.

Problem Fruit #3: Fruit-Filled Desserts
Lots of desserts are based around fruit. Cheesecake, pie, and upside down cake just to name a few. Though most of these desserts are unhealthy, there are a few healthy fruit-based desserts to enjoy. Fruit parfait and fruit sorbet are usually lower in sugar and calories than most desserts. And if you just have to have your cake and eat it with berries too, a light angel food will do just fine. Just make sure the slice of cake is thin.

Problem Fruit #4: Fruit-Flavored Cereals
Hopefully eating bowl after bowl of fruity cereals that leave your milk pink and orange is only a problem for your kids. But if you're still hooked on cereals that claim to have some semblance of fruit, while being filled with added sugars and calories, it's time for a change. Yes, these cereals may taste good, but sugar-laden breakfast cereals are ruining your fitness results—even if they supposedly have real fruit flavors. Wean yourself from the fruity cereals by chopping some real fruit into a bowl of healthy, sugar-free, whole grain cereal.

Stick with the Real Deal. The best way to avoid unhealthy fruit flavored products is to only eat raw, whole fruits and avoid packaged fruit in any shape or form. This will keep you on track with your fitness and fat loss goal.

Don't forget that true fitness success comes from a combination of a consistent, challenging exercise routine coupled with a diet of wholesome, unprocessed foods.

I'm here to help you meet your fitness and weight loss goals.

Call or email today to get started on a fitness program that will have you seeing results before this year's end.

Whole, Raw Fruit: The Benefits

There's a reason that health care providers and fitness experts recommend a balanced diet with plenty of fruits. Quite a few reasons, actually. Here are a few things you'll consume when eating a piece of your favorite fruit:

• Fiber, which helps maintain gastrointestinal regularity and reduces the risk of heart disease.
• Folate, which helps reduce a pregnant woman's risk for giving birth to a child with defects in the brain or spinal cord.
• Potassium, which helps your body maintain a healthy blood pressure.
• Vitamin A, which helps your body fight off infections and maintain healthy eyes and skin.
• Vitamin C, which helps your teeth stay healthy and assists your body in the healing process when you experience a cut or wound.

Cinnamon Baked Apple Chips

Most packaged dried fruits contain added cane sugar, but here's a recipe for baked apple chips that uses only a touch of wholesome sweeteners and a sprinkle of cinnamon. No need for a dehydrator either, these tasty chips are made in the oven! Enjoy this as a delicious dessert or pack a bagful for an on-the-go snack. Servings: 5

Here's what you need:

• 6 apples (try Pink Lady or Honeycrisp)
• 6 cups fruit-only juice (try pear juice)
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• Ground cinnamon
• Sea salt
• Coconut Crystals

1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. Core and then thinly slice 6 apples (skins are fine!)
2. Boil the apples for 5 minutes in a pot with the fruit juice and cinnamon sticks.
3. Remove from the juice, pat dry and arrange the apple slices on a cooling rack placed on a rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with cinnamon, sea salt and coconut crystals. Place in the preheated oven for 1 to 2 hours. Remove from heat once crispy.

Nutritional Analysis: One serving equals: 114 calories, 0g fat, 60mg sodium, 30g carbohydrate, 6g fiber, and 1g protein

Call Pumps to set up an appointment for your FREE fitness assessment.  One of our trainers will help set up a program and work with you to reach your goals!
219-548-3480 / pumpstrainingandpilates@gmail.com / www.pumpsfitnessinc.com