Written By: Eva Rykrsmith on April 2, 2012 No Comment

Meditation or Yoga. Both involve a focus on calming your body and entering a state of relaxation. The idea behind this common recommendation is that you become more aware of your body and learn to sense when stress is affecting you. As you practice learning how to relax, you are able to calm yourself more [...]

Written By: Eva Rykrsmith on March 26, 2012 No Comment

Stress is a necessary fact of life for us humans. Indeed, it has helped us survive. But over time, the bodily response that was meant for life-threatening situations becomes triggered by simple daily hassles. How did this come to be?

A stressful event activates the lower, primitive part of our brain, which triggers our fight-or-flight response [...]

Written By: Eva Rykrsmith on February 1, 2012 No Comment

Here in the United States, we are right in the middle of winter. The excitement of the holidays is over, the momentum of New Year’s resolutions may have faded, and we have quite a few more months until warm weather seasons. On the East Coast, daylight is only available to us between 7:30 am and [...]

Written By: Eva Rykrsmith on August 1, 2011 No Comment

The Biggest Loser is a reality show on NBC soon wrapping up its 10th season. The contestants on the show are morbidly obese, have often tried and failed to lose weight numerous times, and many have undergone gastric bypass surgery – and gained the weight back. The premise of the show is [...]

Written By: Eva Rykrsmith on May 19, 2011 No Comment
Use Your Own Stories to Inspire Others

I woke up on Christmas morning to cold New Jersey rain. I had planned on going for a run. Not just any run, but my first run. I had planned to start my New Year’s resolution early, but I had not planned on this weather. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. Tempted to stay inside the [...]

Written By: Eva Rykrsmith on February 27, 2011 2 Comments

This past Saturday I ran my first trail race, the Hardcore Serious Trail Run 5k/10k/15k. This was an interesting race structure where the 5k started at 9am and the 10k started at 10am so the sign-up options were to race the 5k, race the 10k, or to race [...]

Written By: Eva Rykrsmith on February 6, 2011 One Comment

Some time last year I caught the running bug. I started jogging/walking slowly and sporadically, but by the end of 2010 I was running about 15-20 miles a week. I knew that to keep 2011 interesting, I would have to sign up for a few races. I decided on the UNCC Homecoming [...]

Written By: Eva Rykrsmith on August 5, 2010 No Comment

In order for man to succeed in life, god provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body but for the two together. With these two means, men can attain perfection’’ (Plato, fourth century BC).

Here are several good reasons to work in working [...]

  Copyright © 2010 Eva Rykr | Art credit for square in upper right hand corner to Michael D. Edens