The Yin Yang Of Physical Fitness

Everybody has male and female energy, also known as yin and yang. The goal is to know this and to bring into balance that and other types of energies—positive and negative, strengths and weaknesses, as well as the left brain’s and the right brain’s different functions.

Female energy is about receiving, being available, giving back, and respecting the giver. Male energy is about giving, competing, protecting women, kids, and animals, and taking care of the other person’s feelings ahead of his own.

Women, and men who are left-handed (“right-brained), are generally more feeling-oriented and can simultaneously multitask by jumping back and forth from thinking to feeling. Right-handed men are known as “left-brained,” because they’re better at analyzing systems, solving problems, and operating from one side of the brain at a time.

Think about how batteries—each with one positive and one negative end provide power to electronics such as remotes and thermostats. The yin/yang energies are human powers that when in balance allow a person to live the full range of a human experience with freedom. A balance of the yin and yang means a person is psychologically, emotionally, and physically well.

When the aging process begins and hormones change women produce more progesterone (the female version of testosterone), which causes them to develop increased male characteristics. They often become more intellectual than emotional. Business pressures, family obligations, and the hectic schedules our society promote to achieve professional, personal, and financial successes encourage women to suppress their emotions. This results in their inability to cross the bridge between the left and right brain at will. At that point, women primarily function from their male side and become out of balance.

The fitness industry is primarily based on male energy, performing and competing, doing more than what we can achieve comfortably by going for the “no pain, no gain” mentality. This goes directly against feminine nature and compounds their already overloaded nervous systems.

Performance-oriented exercises are what women do when working out independently, with their significant others, or with personal trainers. When they carry that mindset to their workouts, they embrace the “no pain, no gain” mentality, which can lead to stress and injuries. Depression may set in, causing a rush of fight-or-flight hormones, such as cortisol, to be released into their bloodstreams. Cortisol is only suitable when a person is in actual danger, but it can produce disease if it becomes unregulated due to stressful situations. In extreme cases, this hormonal state destroys appetite, cripples the immune system, promotes weight gain, and shuts down processes that repair tissues, making it more difficult for the body to recover.

A woman needs to reconnect with her body from a female perspective to feel good. The beauty of strength training is that it helps a woman feel her feelings, feel her body, creates new circuitry in the brain, and enable you to rebuild the connection to the right brain. It gives you biofeedback that produces new signals to the brain such as:

? How strong you are

? How to get stronger

? How to stay strong

? What it feels like to be strong

Strength training reawakens the brain-to-muscles connection. When muscles have atrophied in the body over time, strength training is the answer because it provides both nourishment and self-support.

For men, it is the opposite. In their aging process, they produce less testosterone and become more feminized. While they may have worked out with weights in their younger years, in age they often prefer softer, more pleasurable activities, such as yoga or walking. In reality, they need to revise their thinking. Strength training increases testosterone naturally and helps retain male characteristics (such as preventing erectile dysfunction) and helping the body recover from stressful situations.

Loss of physical strength can cause any person to overreact to a situation and think about it later. A healthy person thinks first and then takes the appropriate action.

As both male and female hormones change with age, it is important to maintain a healthy musculature with strength training, versus doing aerobics, yoga, Pilates, or boot camp types of activities.

Whether you are a man or a woman, strength training offers an ideal undiluted anti-aging solution to regulating hormonal imbalances, stabilizing mood behavior, and balancing your yin and yang energies.

Originally written for "In The Limelight With Clarissa" summer issue 2021

Batista Gremaud is the CEO and President of Dr Fitness International. Empowerment speaker, number 1 best-selling author, and creator of the award-winning Feminine Body Design strength training system.

Find her at www.drfitnessint.com and www.drfitnessusa.com or call 424-245-6560.29