WELCOME!

My Dear Family,

Today in my Positive Psychology class I learned a lot of interesting things about exercise. Bare with me as I share a few very significant findings.

Exercise (preferably aerobic) not only releases endorphins which help us feel good, it also increases the natural production of neurotransmiters such as seratonen and dopamine (the lack of which cause depression and anxiety disorders).

Exercise also burns off excess adrenaline that builds up in our blood stream durring the day. Adrenalin is caused by stress... overflowing stress = excess adrenalin = overflowing anger. I never realized how wise it was of mom to order us to go run around the block when we had been couped up inside or were getting really anzy or tempermental.

So this is the Running For Freedom blog, welcome. April and I have started training to run races. One day while she was running, the thought dawned on her that we should have a theme for the causes that we are running for. Once coined with a theme cause, our efforts have felt more empowering and meaningful. April came up with our excellent theme: Running For Freedom: Freedom from violence, from fear, from food, from negative talk, from abusive relationships, from bad habits, from internal demons, from anything that is oppressive in your life or in the life of a loved one. This Saturday morning, September 12th will be our first race, 5K for Abuse Prevention. It starts at 8:00Am just outside of the RB on BYU campus. I know this is late notice, but we'd love to have spectator fans or/and fellow runners!

As you all know, it is often very hard to find motivation and time to do physical exercise. We've created this blog so that we can share not only our progressive with eachother but also lessons that we're learning along the way. We've also found that it feels even more gratifying and motivating when we give eachother positive and encouraging feedback.

Morgan recently shared with us that he is running on his lunch break at work as well as doing yoga two times a week! That is so awesome and admirable! Everyone has at least something that they wish they were free of. We'd love to have you all get involved with our theme and share with eachother what you are doing for physical exercise (does not have to be running), as well as the lessons, thoughts and experiences that you have along your journey. I think we can all learn a lot from eachother and I know that having eachothers' enouragement along the way will be a priceless and extremely motivating benefactor.

I love you all immensely. Please jump in and get involved and remember, it does not matter what level everyone is at. If it's that you hiked up a huge stairwell instead of taking the elevator and were totally out of breath at the top but it felt good, that's great! Hope to see your posts soon!

Love,
your baby sister and daughter :-),

Rachel