November 05, 2019 at 04:30AM by CWC No matter how much you love your job, co-workers, and roommates (whether they’re the actual roommate kind, or the significant other and delightfully demanding mini human variety), there is one universal truth for all of us: We can all use a vacation—and we can’t always go on one. Whether it’s time or budget keeping you in place, no worries—because at our recent Well+Good Retreat at Miraval Wellness Resort in Tucson, Arizona, we learned a treasure trove of hacks for bringing the vacay vibes to life, wherever you are. From morning hikes to afternoon mingle sessions (featuring everyone’s fave Retreat snack, Smartfood® Smart50) there was no shortage of genius staycation inspiration for continuing the relaxation in your day-to-day life—and we’re sharing all of the intel with you. Keep scrolling for 8 easy staycation tips we learned from the Well+Good Retreat. 1. Give your space a mini refresh Don’t you just want to pack up and head to the desert ASAP? Create the same soothing oasis feeling in your own space by adding cacti, succulents, and desert-inspired colors (think textiles like pillows and throws for an easy makeover). If desert vibes don’t speak to you, try a budget-friendly refresh that’s more your style and you’ll suddenly feel like you’re staying at a hotel. 2. Treat your body to an extended stretch sesh After guests checked in, choreographer and artistic director Kristin Sudeikis led a stretch session for everyone to work out all the stiffness from their day
Month: November 2019
Overwhelmed with all the world’s problems? Here’s how to stop feeling futile and actually get involved
November 05, 2019 at 04:30AM by CWC Meet Wellness Collective, our new, immersive curriculum with Athleta that hooks you up with actionable advice from the smartest experts and brand founders in wellness right now. Get the goods at our monthly event series in New York City, plus our online one-month wellness plans. Here, Get Out Stay Out founder Karen Ramos shares her advice on how to choose a charity to support. Staring at a giant menu of salad options is enough to strike decision paralysis into even the most decisive of people. So if you’re struggling to pick a cause to support—when there are so. many. options. and there’s a lot more at stake than what’s for lunch—you’re definitely not alone. Because let’s face it: There’s a lot of need in our world. From disaster relief to disease research and social justice, there are a lot of worthy causes but only one of you. So how do you decide what to commit to, and not ignore issues entirely simply from being overwhelmed? Karen Ramos—founder and executive director of the nonprofit Get Out Stay Out, an outdoor excursion program for indigenous migrant youth—landed on her own passion project after a lot of self reflection, which gave her the wisdom to share her process with others. “I began reflecting on my own outlets and experiences, and I kept coming back to the outdoors,” she says. “The outdoors offered the perfect environment to foster interpersonal growth and be a catalyst for greater social change.
How to negotiate your salary like a (literal) boss
November 05, 2019 at 04:30AM by CWC Meet Wellness Collective, our new, immersive curriculum with Athleta that hooks you up with actionable advice from the smartest experts and brand founders in wellness right now. Get the goods at our monthly event series in New York City, plus our online one-month wellness plans. Here, Ladies Get Paid founder and CEO Claire Wasserman breaks down the basics on how to negotiate a salary. The emotional stages of heading into a salary negotiation can feel similar to firing off a text to someone in potential-significant-other category: Excitement, terror, and utter relief once its over. But being able to take on this crucial conversation is an aspect of your career you can’t avoid, and one you’ll likely have do several (if not many) times in your lifetime. And according to Claire Wasserman, founder and CEO of Ladies Get Paid—a network that provides tools and resources for women in the workplace—in order to be recognized, “you have to find ways throughout the year to make sure your manager is aware of what you’ve done and the impact it’s had on the business.” That means not waiting around for someone to give you five gold stars for beating deadlines, leading meetings, and generally crushing it—but stepping up, pointing out what you bring to the table, and asking for what you deserve. So, prepare yourself: You will be inspired to ask for a raise after this. Keep scrolling for Wasserman’s four steps on how to negotiate a salary,
Self care over the holidays is essential for survival—these 4 steps will get you there
November 05, 2019 at 04:30AM by CWC Meet Wellness Collective, our new, immersive curriculum with Athleta that hooks you up with actionable advice from the smartest experts and brand founders in wellness right now. Get the goods at our monthly event series in New York City, plus our online one-month wellness plans. Here, Kelsey Patel, reiki master, empowerment coach, and thought leader shares how to prioritize self care during the holidays. Picture this: It’s December, your packing list won’t stop growing, and you still haven’t purchased any gifts. Add family, friends, and distant relatives to the mix, and dedicating time to yourself becomes nonexistent. But have you ever paused to think why you stop caring about your own needs as soon as the cheery music starts playing and the string lights pop up? “To me it’s because suddenly everyone puts on their ‘old’ hats and roles and want to show up and essentially perform for their family versus being themselves and showing up exactly as they are,” says Kelsey J. Patel, reiki master and empowerment coach. “You’d be surprised what can happen when you start speaking and sharing your truth versus doing everything you think everyone else wants you to do.” So take it from Patel: This is your permission to stop repeating the same script about what you do for work, who you’re dating (or not dating), whether you’re having a baby, and so on—and just be yourself. “We receive this time to get back to ourselves and our inner circle
4 lessons you can learn from yoga to propel you to career success
November 05, 2019 at 04:30AM by CWC Meet Wellness Collective, our new, immersive curriculum with Athleta that hooks you up with actionable advice from the smartest experts and brand founders in wellness right now. Get the goods at our monthly event series in New York City, plus our online one-month wellness plans. Here, Yoga Foster founder Nicole Cardoza shares the ways yoga benefits career success. Have you ever been flowing through a yoga class and suddenly gotten hit with a burst of creativity or finally figured out what you want to say in that conversation you’ve been putting off? Well, what if you could apply that same mid-flow inspiration to your career? While we don’t suggest breaking into wheel pose in the middle of your office (unless your job is down with that kind of thing), you can tap into those asana-inspired vibes to fuel your workplace success. Nicole Cardoza, founder of Yoga Foster—a mindful movement program that teaches educators how to use yoga to empower their students—uses this principle in her training programs, and she’s sharing how you can apply it to your own career goals. “Yoga is a practice that goes much deeper than getting a seat in the boardroom,” Cardoza says. “It’s a complex, intimate, spiritual practice that can offer transformation for not just ourselves, but how we engage with the world around us. I think that it can help us feel more rooted in who we are and help us feel more grounded, which helps us show
A Sleepless Night Can Raise Your Anxiety Levels By 30%, Study Finds
November 05, 2019 at 02:26AM Time to hit snooze! Continue Reading… Author Jamie Schneider | Life by Daily Burn Selected by CWC
Real talk: How freaked should I be about the sugar content in alcohol?
November 05, 2019 at 03:00AM by CWC The wellness world has a complicated relationship with alcohol. On the one hand, many experts say alcohol in moderation is good for health. (Hey, it is part of the Mediterranean diet.) On the other, some say that heart healthy glass of wine is secretly full of sugar—and everybody *knows* how bad sugar is for you, right? It’s a challenge to know what exactly is in any alcoholic drink since the labeling laws vary so much that it can make the beverage category as a whole seem like a nutritional Wild West. It’s time to clear up exactly what’s in your glass, and how sugar in alcohol impacts your overall health. Keep reading for the need-to-know intel that just might affect your go-to happy hour order. Where does the sugar in alcohol come from? Before we get into how the sugar in alcohol affects the body, it helps to know where it’s actually coming from, which alcohol and sugar expert Chris Beatty says varies based on what’s being fermented. (Remember, alcohol is created by combining yeast plus some form of sugar or carbohydrate, like grapes, wheat, or potatoes.) With wine, for example, Beatty explains that while sugar comes the grapes, the longer a wine is fermented, the less sugar will be in the end result since the yeast has had more time to eat up the sugar. “Dry red and wine wines have almost no sugar, but a sweet wine can have quite a
I tried a heart-opening ancient cacao ceremony and learned an unexpected lesson about love
November 05, 2019 at 02:00AM by CWC I first learned about the ancient tradition of the cacao ceremony—wherein you drink hot, ceremonial-grade cacao in a ritual setting—from new friends I met at a yoga retreat. And when I got the opportunity to experience the practice for myself at The Cape, A Thompson Hotel in Los Cabos, Mexico, that works with local facilitators to offer cacao ceremonies for guests—it felt positively fated. On a mystical level, raw cacao is said to open the heart (and not just because it’s a main ingredient in chocolate), and my heart was definitely in need of some healing. I had just passed the two-year anniversary of a breakup from a serious relationship, having left the situation feeling confident I would meet someone better suited for me. Yet, in the past 24 months, I’ve experienced nothing but disappointment in the romantic department. None of my go-to self-improvement tools have helped me shake the jadedness clouding my usually optimistic spirit, and my emotional walls began impacting every area of my life. If meditation, journaling, and long talks with smart friends couldn’t turn my attitude around, I reasoned that maybe a thousands-of-years-old Central American rite that Olmec, Aztec, and Mayan elites leaned on to connect with the gods and promote good health could do the trick. So that’s how I found myself in a suite at The Cape, watching the sun set over the sea and sitting in a circle with three other women and our guide, psychologist
We know that exercise keeps the body young, but what about the skin?
November 05, 2019 at 01:30AM by CWC Skin care and exercise have a complicated relationship. For every dermatologist out there who will tell you that sweat is amazing for your skin, there’s another who will caution you about the impending pimple risk it poses. So the real answer to the question of whether that gym sesh will help or hurt your complexion is, well, both. Sweat does a lot of different things for skin: some of it good, some of it bad, and (if my own sweaty post-gym selfies are to be believed), some of it downright ugly. For the full 411 on how skin care and exercise relate, we had the pros break down all of the different ways your workout can effect your complexion. Photo: Getty/jacoblund Skin care and exercise: the good Brightening: When you exercise, your blood vessels expand, and more blood and oxygen flow to the surface of your skin. This, says board-certified dermatologist Marisa Garshik, MD, gives the skin a brighter appearance. “At its most fundamental level, sweating occurs to protect us from overheating, which as a result, translates into a brightened glow rather than an intense flushed appearance to the skin,” she explains (though, let’s be real: some of us, self included, still flush). But, if you’ve ever looked in the mirror after a workout and thought: “Damn, girl!” consider that the explanation you’ve been looking for. Protecting: While sweat certainly can bring on breakouts, it also offers some protective measures, too—no matter what type of
Waking up in the middle of the night? Your big dinner could be to blame
November 05, 2019 at 01:00AM by CWC Does 3 a.m. roll around and you can’t help but stare at the wall, wide awake, unable to fall back asleep? Ugh, the worst. If you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, it might not necessarily be because your room is too hot or your partner is snoring. It might be what you had for dinner—especially if it was a really big meal. “Negative sleep and health outcomes have been associated with populations who eat a majority of their daily food intake in evening hours. [And] regular meals and smaller, well-balanced snacks have a positive association with sleep,” says Kelly Jones, MS, RD, CSSD, LDN. Why? “This occurs because your body is less sensitive to insulin in the evening, and insulin helps control your blood sugar levels,” says Juliana Dewsnap, RD, LDN, CPT, a dietitian for Baze. “[So], eating too close to bedtime may lead to varying blood sugar levels, which can impact your quality of sleep.” For example, having a sudden drop in blood sugar triggers an increase in certain hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that can lead to night sweats. (And who has ever had a restful sleep when they’re sweating?) It’s not just the lateness of the hour—big meals in the evening can affect sleep, too. “High intake of total energy, fat, and sodium has also been associated with higher blood pressure while sleeping. This may in turn cause poor quality sleep, night sweats in some,