I’m not quite sure how to describe how I met Jensy, author of Your Wide Awakening: A Guide to Anorexia Recovery. I had participated, while very pregnant with The Comedian, in a yoga class for moms and kids that she taught at TD’s preschool and I knew of her through our mutual friend Jen who we sadly had to say good-bye to this past February.
Jen had always told me that I would love Jensy and that one day we should all get together. That fun little trio never got to happen but it didn’t matter. Shortly after Jen passed away we decided to meet online through Facebook. We have a lot in common, being mothers to all girls, the connection between your mind, body and spirit being the utmost importance to your overall health and a general love of life and being positive. We never actually met until this past spring at our daughters dance recital. Both of us standing in a long, snaking line that managed to put us parallel to one another. We locked eyes, smiled and crossed the line and hugged. The sheer energy and grace that Jensy possesses is apparent right away. I knew I just had to know her better and share her story with you.
I asked Jensy to share a bit about herself and her new book, Your Wide Awakening: A Guide to Anorexia Recovery.
My name is Jensy Scarola. I am a wife, mother, sister, daughter and friend. I am an author. I am a blogger. I love to write. Writing is my passion and what soothes my soul.
I am also a recovered anorexic and chronic overexerciser. Since my early 20’s I used exercise as a way to control what my body looked like on the outside, while wreaking havoc on what was going on in the inside. I competed in fitness competitions and had a very low bodyfat percentage. I worked out at the gym at least two hours a day. Yet, my organs were failing and working on overdrive to keep up with all the stress I was putting on my body. I was severely nutrient deprived and longing for love and attention in all the wrong places.
When I began my recovery journey with anorexia, I started to use exercise as a way for my body to feel good. Instead of engaging in sheer punishment exercises, slaving away for hours at the gym, or to burn off calories, I now use exercise as a way to have fun and feel good in my own skin. I run sprints with the kids outside. I walk my new puppy often. I do yoga everyday to connect my mind, body and spirit. Yoga has made me appreciate everything my body does for me. Yoga centers me in a good space of keeping my body in shape but my mind too!
In Your Wide Awakening: A Guide to Anorexia Recovery (released last week on Amazon!), I talk about finding Your Wide Awake Body Movement. Wide-Awake Movement, by my definition, is any physical activity that makes you feel alive, refreshed, and energized during the activity and at its conclusion. You should feel challenged without noticing the time. You will feel like you gave your body a gift of love and well-deserved attention. When you are doing this type of movement, your thinking is fun, exciting, and carefree. You aren’t thinking about the calories you are burning or how much you hate this type of activity or how fat your thighs are. You move because it feels good.
What you say about feeling challenged without noticing the time and feeling energized during the exercise as well as when it is done is the very core of why I think finding something you love and using it as a form of fitness is so important. It’s why I run sometimes, but not always or take yoga classes versus HIIT training on other days. I listen to my body and give it what it needs.
So for me at this point of my fitness journey, I am looking to feel good in my body, listen to its needs everyday. Stretch because it feels good. Move because my body needs to used so my spirit can do its job on Earth. And keep it healthy so I can laugh, play, jump, and run with my grandkids and great grandkids. Fitness is important to stay strong and healthy and to get good endorphins flowing.
The goal for me is to stay flexible, fluid, and strong. I don’t ever want to feel like I can’t physically do something because I didn’t take care of my body. But I am certainly not going to exercise to burn calories and worry so much about how my body looks. If I stay healthy by nourishing myself with lots of whole foods and move often, I know my body will be at a place it needs, where it feels healthy and capable of taking on the day.
My family benefits because we do exercise together. I make it point to be active with them. They have so much energy. I need that same energy to give back to the world so exercising will always be important to me.
I always say that I don’t know how I would manage my own three girls, work, the house and all our lives encompass if I didn’t feel physically fit as well as mentally and emotionally fit.
More About Jensy:
Jensy Scarola is a stay at home mom, blogger, writer, and kids yoga instructor. Jensy is the mother to her two greatest teachers of Life, daughters ages 7 & 6 and happily married to her high school soulmate. She was most recently the Executive Director for Fit & Healthy Schools, a non-profit organization advocating health and wellness. She has since left that career in order to find her true calling as an author, but keeps that passion in mind as she teaches young children yoga. She currently blogs at www.jensyscarola.blogspot.com where she shares her tips, struggles, triumphs, spirituality, and motivating tools for women and men in hopes to help others overcome their adversity. Visit her website to learn more about her, her life story, to read inspiring lifestyle articles and daily motivating thoughts. In her spare time, she loves to bake, do crafts with her kids, watch sappy romantic films, read, watch Oprah and Redskins Football.
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Love u Jensy!!