Month: November 2019

November 08, 2019 at 02:00AM by CWC When someone says you “wear your heart on your sleeve,” it’s almost always a backhanded compliment. In certain company, being in touch with your emotions can lead to deep conversations. But at work, for example, it often pays to know how to cloak your true feelings to avoid unnecessary attention or conflict. Some people are simply more emotive than others, says body-language expert Patti Wood,  but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to hide when someone is really pushing your buttons. “First, always ask yourself if not disclosing how you feel is the best course of action,” says Wood. “If someone is doing something, like criticizing a friend of yours when she’s not present with you, it might serve you better to to say, ‘I don’t like to hear criticism of my friends.’” Knowing when to speak your feelings and when to hide them is a skill worth developing, but while you’re still trying to figure it out, use Wood’s three tips for concealing how you really feel when you’d simply rather not discuss it. Wear your heart on your sleeve? Hide your true feelings with these 3 tactics 1. Place your tongue on the roof of your mouth ‘This is an exercise used by audiologists and speech pathologists to relax, and it’s also a yoga exercise used to center and calm,” says Wood. When your tongue’s resting just behind your teeth, it becomes difficult to grimace, so even if you’re teeming

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November 08, 2019 at 12:00AM by CWC Name me something more annoying than waking up in the middle of the night and then having trouble heading back into slumber. I’ll wait. Well, big plot twist ahead, because the top reason for waking up in the middle of the night is that doing so is simply part of your normal sleep cycle. But how many times is too many times? And if that number does err on excessive, what could be causing the wake-ups? “Everyone wakes up five to seven times per night between finishing complete sleep cycles,” says sleep expert Shelby Harris, PsyD, author of The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia. “Each awakening is extremely brief in nature, and we fall right back asleep with amnesia for it.” Furthermore, having two or three wake-ups that you actually remember is common, and NBD for your snooze time, so long as you’re able to return to sleep relatively quickly. Age plays a factor here, Dr. Harris says, given that younger people tend to awaken once or twice a night briefly, whereas older people tend to have more “broken, shallow sleep.” No matter your age, what matters more than the number of times you wake up (and remember it) is the the duration—and if your mornings feel messed up as a result. “You could awaken only twice at night, but if one awakening is for an hour many times a week, that’s likely a problem,” Dr. Harris says. So, if you’re feeling exhausted from

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November 07, 2019 at 10:45PM by CWC It’s a huge bummer that despite rapidly changing social norms, number shame still exists—particularly for women. I’m talking about the question: “What’s your number?”—how many people you’ve had sex with. According to a recent study, horny (heterosexual) people are likely report a lower number when interacting with someone attractive of the opposite sex so as to appear more selective and less promiscuous. Everyone is entitled to partner with someone—or many someones—who shares their values and interests, but a focus on past sexual partners may eclipse a more objectively important conversation that should be had between two people who are planning to become intimate with one another: “When was the last time you were tested for STIs, and can I see the results?” Broaching the topic—that is, how to talk about STDs with a new partner—is often easier said than done. “How many past sexual partners your partner has had is completely irrelevant,” says Laurel Steinberg, PhD, a psychotherapist, certified sexologist, and adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University. You should wish for your partner a past spent doing whatever made them happiest, she says. “What is important is for you to know is what they are currently involved in sexually as well as their health status and what, if any, STIs you could contract by being with them so that you can make an education decision about your own health.” STD rates have risen to a record high, and yet large numbers of women and

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November 07, 2019 at 09:28PM by CWC As a member of the burnout generation (hi guys! hope you’re all hangin’ in there!) who barely has time to wash her hair, I can’t be bothered spending hours in the gym. Which means I need my workouts to be two things: effective and efficient. It’s why I’ve fallen so deeply in love with megaformer classes that marry strength training and cardio into a 50-minute session. It’s also why I once subjected myself to a fitness singles mixer, but that’s a story for another time. So when I first heard about EMS, or “electrical muscular stimulation” training, which promises to give the equivalent of a 90-minute workout in 30 minutes flat, I cleared a space in my back-to-back calendar and booked a strength-training session at NOVA Fitness in Tribeca. EMS training uses electrical currents to heighten the contractions in your muscles. It’s the same technology that doctors use on injuries, but has some pretty cool applications when repurposed for the sake of fitness. When you work out, you’re voluntarily contracting your muscles—that’s more or less Physiology 101. What EMS technology does, though, is trigger involuntary muscle contractions, which your brain doesn’t know how to do on its own, in order to get more from your moves. So for example, with a regular bicep curl, you get two muscle contractions. But when you add EMS into the mix, you’re purportedly getting forty of them, without having to do anything differently. While it may sound

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