How can we lead healthy, productive, and aesthetically pleasing lives without adding more physical and mental stress through exercise? In my practice this is my entire focus.

My history of torturing my body to get the results I desired was successful in some regards: I looked great on the outside, but the inside was crumbling from the intense stress of the work. I had to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to make my intense passion of physical training work for me and of course for my clients. I immersed myself in physical techniques: Pilates, Yoga, Gyrotonic; and began to integrate them with the work I already knew( i.e. traditional weight training etc). I realized that at a certain place: they are all the same. But there was one missing component which leads away from a stressful result... Awareness.

Much of what is taught and practiced in the exercise world is mechanical, without awareness and presence. People ride cardiovascular machines downloading more information to their already full brains with television, music, or even the internet. Exercise classes are taught fast and furious to blaring music and pushing out the repetitions. This is not my approach at all.

My practice is to guide people to reserve their attention to being aware of the body through the process of locating the present moment in your body at all times. On a physical level, this is related to your five external senses and to your internal kinesthetic senses (your ability to feel tension, temperature, pain, pressure, balance, and so forth within your body). Physical sensations register and transmit to your brain and allows awareness to become a part of your consciousness. In my experience this the best way to reduce stress on a very practical level because you are also teaching the client how to access this themselves outside of the studio.

Awareness brings a definite quality to your experience: when it is available in an unrestricted way, your mind has a lightness to it, a clarity, a cool freshness. Things appear bright. You experience the immediacy of being in direct contact with things you are aware of: your perception actually touches them without thought. All habitual familiarity, and the huge workload left for you at the office is erased, you are just here with the simple reality of your exercise experience. How does this reduce stress: Awareness is independent of thinking and New Yorkers think too much.

The environment at Fitness Results makes it an ideal place for me to teach this way... very few interruptions from other people, a spiritual (Taoist) undertone, and the four elements existing in the decor of the place by either colors, shapes, or fixtures such as the giant fish tank create a natural environment.

In my opinion if you want to work out without getting stressed then ... wake up and become aware of the reality of the present moment.

Peace and Happiness... Ari

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