my Body can : midlife exercise experiments and reflections

Allowing Myself to Be Bad at Exercise

I recorded this episode after something small but meaningful happened during a workout. I didn’t plan for it to become an episode. I just noticed that a familiar pattern had shifted, and I wanted to celebrate it. What surprised me wasn’t the movement itself. It was how I related to it. The mindset shift I’d been doing a short workout. Five minutes of barre. My knees were still healing. My arms were shaky. My coordination was off. I was clearly not good at what I was doing. Normally, that’s the moment where frustration shows up. Where I start negotiating with myself about whether this is worth it. Whether I should be doing something else. Something I’m better at. Instead, a different thought landed. “I sucked at this but it’s fun.” 💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com [https://mybodycan.substack.com] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mybodycan.substack.com [https://mybodycan.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Strength Exercises I Do at (and Near) My Desk in Midlife

There was ping pong happening behind me when I recorded this episode. Not aggressively. Just enough that if this were the audio episode you’d hear it and think, oh, she’s definitely not at home. I was standing in a coworking booth with a resistance band around my legs. Yes. Around my actual legs. While working. Very professional. And I keep wondering, why is it so weird to move at work? Because my brain is moving. My thoughts are moving. Everything up here is firing. And my Body wants to join in. If you want to keep thinking about this with me, you’re welcome here. I write to make sense of what my Body is doing and how that changes how I work, move, and think. And right now what it’s doing is refusing to sit still like a polite midlife woman with a laptop. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. 💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com [https://mybodycan.substack.com] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mybodycan.substack.com [https://mybodycan.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Midlife Exercise Blocks: Rediscovering Barre in a Body That Changed

I didn’t stop doing barre because I didn’t like it.I stopped because I didn’t feel “good at it” and that mattered for some reason. This was an unconscious consensus for sure. And it stuck. The way subtle pressures rest on our body before the brain ever checks them. I’m realizing now that a lot of my movement history lives there.In the quiet decisions.In the things I stopped trying without ever officially quitting. This is my Body can, after all.Not my body should.Not my body used to.Just what my Body can do. Right now. And lately, my body can do five minutes of barre. Five minutes.That’s it. And somehow, that’s enough. 💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com [https://mybodycan.substack.com] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mybodycan.substack.com [https://mybodycan.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Managing Exercise Soreness in Midlife

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about soreness. Not pain. Not injury. Just that dull, sometimes surprising physical soreness that shows up after movement. The kind that makes you pause and ask, wait, why now? If you want to keep thinking about this with me, you’re welcome here. What keeps catching my attention is not just that I get sore, but when I get sore. Sometimes it’s immediate. Sometimes it’s the next morning. And sometimes it shows up two or three days later, long after I’ve forgotten exactly which movement might have caused it. That timing feels different than it used to, and I’ve been curious about what that difference is asking of me. If you want to keep thinking about this with me, you’re welcome to follow me here. https://mybodycan.substack.com [https://mybodycan.substack.com] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mybodycan.substack.com [https://mybodycan.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Releasing Stress When Chronic Pain and Trauma Change How I Move

For a long time, I released stress by moving for a long time. Long walks.Long hikes.Long bike rides. Not fast. Not intense. Just long enough for my nervous system to settle into a rhythm and let whatever needed to move, move. I never thought of it as regulation back then. It was just what felt good. What worked. And then, not so slowly I couldn’t do that. Foot problems. Back problems. Endometriosis. Surgery. Recovery. Vertigo. Unpredictability. It wasn’t one thing. It was a pileup. And somewhere along the way, the main way I knew how to get energy out of my body didn’t work. I didn’t just lose exercise. I lost a pressure valve. When energy has nowhere to go Stress doesn’t politely stay in the brain. It shows up in the body whether we invite it or not. And when I couldn’t move the way I used to, the stress didn’t disappear. It just stayed. It pooled. It poked. It pressed. I didn’t always notice it right away. Sometimes it showed up as irritability. Sometimes exhaustion. Sometimes sadness that didn’t seem to belong. Sometimes it was just a sense of being weighed down by something I couldn’t name. The hardest part was not knowing when my body would cooperate. 💡 Check out the Substack post that goes into this topic in more detail: https://mybodycan.substack.com [https://mybodycan.substack.com] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mybodycan.substack.com [https://mybodycan.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]