HEALTH AND WELLNESS: FALLING OFF...AND GETTING BACK ON

WORDS AND IMAGE: KIMORA BROCK

LOAM MAGAZINE

The past week has been a dream. From having my car broken into to performing at the Hollywood Bowl as a dancer and model for Kanye West's 808's and Heartbreak concert, I've gone through almost every emotion. With long rehearsal hours and stressful situations, my self-care activities were relegated to the back burner.

For me, self-care includes my daily yoga practice and healthy eating. I feel my best when I consciously ingest foods that not only taste good, but also give life and energy and vital nutrients to each cell in my body. Eating whole foods gives me the energy to push the limits on what I can do in a day (an extremely useful tool for a young actress!) Yoga wakes up the mind, body and spirit, releases endorphins and acts as my cup of coffee.

Although I can pinpoint the exact day I fell off the wagon, it didn't happen all at once. During the first day of rehearsal, I found out there were no vegetarian options so I had to order food with a few other veggie girls. It's not that eating out is bad, it's just that there's nothing like eating food you prepare yourself! You know exactly what's in it and that it was made with love. I learned my lesson and brought my own food the next day. Getting home that night, I was so exhausted from the long hours that I didn't do my nightly stretch, and decided to skip my yoga practice the following morning to sleep for an extra hour. Bad Idea. I wasn't nearly as alert the next day and just felt off. Not long after, I went to my car to find all of my items from the glove compartments in disarray. By the time I had realized it, a week had gone by without a yoga session on my mat, and my sustenance consisted of mostly quick meals and snack food.

Regressing happens and it's not worth stressing over. What matters is that you recognize where you fell off and do your best to shorten the recovery time. Realize that you aren't doing what you'd like to, detail how you are going to get started, and put in the work to get where you need to be. Note that the process of getting back in shape is very often the opposite of comfortable. My first day back on my yoga mat I felt frustrated and weak; it reminded me of feeling I had at the beginning of every track season when I began to run and couldn't believe that I had again neglected my summer training.

The fun part though is that when you allow yourself to be uncomfortable, when you try despite temporary struggles, you push your boundaries. This allows in turn for the creation of bigger and better experiences to come your way. And to me, that's worth it.