Looking After Your Dancing Bodies in this COLD COLD Weather

In the winter your body has to work much harder to regulate its core temperature, so expect yourself to feel more tired than usual. You might need to eat and sleep more. Also, the days are short and dingy. Wear bright socks and stay social and happy.

Warming Up

Make sure you do plenty of cardio to get your muscles warm, and stretch well.

Cool Downs

Just as important as warm ups if you want to keep your joints released and maintain your strength and flexibility. It only takes a few extra minutes but it will be the difference between you being able to do the splits or not.

Self-massage

Spiky balls, foam rollers, golf ball under your foot. Pay close attention to keeping your calves and feet loose because lots of people find their shins start to get sore when it gets cold.

Moving Mountains

Even if you have flexible muscles you won’t be able to stretch all that far unless your joints are also released. The BEST thing I have found to help me maintain my flexibility is going to Moving Mountains with Jules, and practicing being mindful about my body and alignment, and the amount of effort/tension I put into tasks.

Eating Well

Make lunches, freeze meals, don’t skip breakfast. It’s common to need to eat more in the winter because your body has to work harder to regulate its temperature. So make sure that you are eating good food that is nutritious as well. Unfortunately, Mi Goreng doesn’t fall into this category. If you want food ideas, see the end of this article.

Sleep

It’s easy for sleep to be the thing that gets sacrificed as the work load intensifies; try to be mindful not to let this happen, or at least for it not to happen more than one night in a row. It sounds difficult if you have lots of lines to learn and scenes to prepare, but if you are working with a body that has had a full night’s sleep, you will actually be able to work more effectively than if you are dealing with a fatigued body, and therefore you decrease the amount of time you need to put into studying. Remember, study smart, not hard.

Thermals

Super great if you don’t like wearing lots of layers, and if you don’t want to have a higher gas bill by having your house heater running. Pretend you’re camping. If you don’t’ own any, keep an eye on Aldi special buys for some good deals, or have a look in Target and Best N Less.

Food ideas

Slow cooks are amazing because you can just chuck all the ingredients in which will take you about 10-15 minutes in the morning, let it cook all day then come home to a hearty, warm meal and a house that smells divine. Plus, you will have plenty of leftovers to freeze for the rest of the week. If you would like some recipes comment below.

Couscous is a good and cheap lunch for Uni. It’s pretty boring by itself though so you can try adding mixed herbs, lemon juice, mandarin pieces, slithered almonds, tuna, sultanas, corn kernels or beans (I buy the mini cans and keep them stocked in the cupboard) etc. Get creative. This meal also takes two seconds to throw together in the morning or pre-pack the night before and it’s filling, long-lasting energy.

Veggie Bowls are another one of my favourites. Roast some pumpkin, sweet potato, carrot, beetroot, parsnips, apple… any vegetable that’s on special really. You can use mashed potato as a base, or fry some cabbage, zucchini, capsicum. You could chuck some spinach, peas or mixed greens on top. Add sour cream, mayonnaise, thousand island dressing, chutney, relish, parmesan or mozzarella. You might also like to add some salami, ham or chorizo on top. Basically, just walk through Coles or Curtis Fresh or anywhere that sells fresh produce and pick a bunch of veggies and things that are cheap and make up a yummy bowl with them. You can also freeze pre-cooked veggies in containers (not potato though coz it goes gross) and make a week’s worth of meals this way.

What Happens When You Pull an All-Nighter for Uni

DSC_0142As a Student Academic Leader, I like to think that I am a reasonably hardworking, disciplined, and organised student. But there are occasional situations I find myself in that challenge this perception. Case in point: I pulled a late night during week 9 to get an assignment done. It was a 2500 word law assignment due on the Friday night, which I started on the Thursday night. I stayed up until 5am, got a few hours sleep, then continued working on it until I submitted it minutes before the deadline.

image1 Continue reading What Happens When You Pull an All-Nighter for Uni

National Blood Donor Week

285736_514505705244967_163577496_nIf you are anything like me, you’d love to give back to those less fortunate, but need money for rent, food and that $200 text book next semester. What if I told that you could save 3 lives by simply donating an hour of your time, and a little bit of blood? I am, of course, talking about blood donation. This week is the perfect time to consider donating blood; as Red Cross Australia is celebrating National Blood Donor Week from the 12th to the 18th of June. Continue reading National Blood Donor Week

Planning Life and Juggling Commitments

SamAs Uni students, we can often feel like we are trying to juggle hundreds of commitments at once. For example: finding the time to go to lectures, tutes, study, do assignments, keep healthy, work, family, friends, partners, getting drunk every now and then — the usual stuff! If you leave everything up in the air and unorganised it tends to get very easy to miss things and you end up having that dreaded feeling of regret when you know you should have done something but decided to take a quick nap instead.

I know you would have heard it all before: plan out this, plan out that, blah blah blah. But coming from somebody who never used to plan out anything, it really does pay off to spend a little bit of time to plan out different things in your life.

Continue reading Planning Life and Juggling Commitments

Mindfulness

Flying MaryDo you ever find yourself lying awake at night not able to switch your mind off?

Panicking about the assignment that’s due next week?

Stress less!

Let me introduce you to mindfulness. (I know you’re thinking that sounds kinda lame-o, I used to think so too, but not anymore!). Mindfulness is an effective way to reduce stress, increase self-awareness, and handle painful thoughts and feelings. It can be a very effective way to get those delightful hours of sleep as night (I consider myself a professional sleeper, so I know how to get some solid ZZZs!) It can be done several different ways, allow me to discuss a few with you now:

Continue reading Mindfulness

MEWD: I wrote a list

Emma Foster - ASK Blog PicThings I have been unable to do in the last 48 hours due to my depression

  • Get out of bed on my own — if I didn’t have my husband by my side reminding me that I am capable of surviving the day, I would spend a LOT more of my time hiding from the day.
  • Anything that remotely resembles studying — I may have all the good intentions in the world, but that doesn’t help. The other morning I set myself up with my textbooks and my assignment notes. All I wanted to do was type up my handwritten notes and, as this doesn’t really require any higher level thinking, I thought I’d be okay. Ba-bown. When it came time to actually open my laptop, I just couldn’t do it.
  • Be on time — ask anyone and they’ll tell you that the chances of my arriving on time to ANYTHING are ridiculously low. Often, the reason behind this is that it takes a lot of effort to drag myself around the house and get ready. Depression puts me on a go slow, and oftentimes it takes away my willingness to be in public and interact with human beings (this is also due to my social anxiety)
  • Cook. Anything — I’m not a great cook at the best of times, but I can usually rustle up a curry or stir-fry, or something else fairly low-effort to feed myself and my partner. Not so lately. When it comes time for dinner preparation, I can’t think of a single thing to create, let alone work up the motivation to actually move and get that happening.

Continue reading MEWD: I wrote a list

MEWD: Busy but Useless

Sometimes my mind is as busy as this little bee:

BEE

It just goes and goes and goes and I can’t really keep track of my thoughts because there’s so many of them and they’re all making so much noise inside my brain.

You would think that being busy like a bee might be a good thing, because bees are productive little critters that make honey and pollinate flowers and go ‘bzzz bzzzz bzzzz’. Continue reading MEWD: Busy but Useless

MEWD: Haze

Emma Foster - ASK Blog PicSome days I have what seems to be a haze fall over me. It’s like I’m seeing through a bit of a fog and, sometimes, like the things I’m experiencing aren’t actually happening to me, but to someone else, and I’m only getting an echo of what they would be feeling. I can’t settle in to any one task, and my concentration levels are practically nil. Continue reading MEWD: Haze

MEWD: Counselling & Psychology

Emma Foster - ASK Blog PicIf you’ve ever danced with depression, or any other type of mental illness, chances are that at some point or another someone has recommended seeking counselling, or seeing a psychologist to you.

This can be a super daunting thing, for anyone, at anything, for any reason. Particularly if you’ve never been to one before. Continue reading MEWD: Counselling & Psychology