Physical support
Physical supportSport Coaching:
Anis Abdellak: Head of the Smart and Light Sport Coaching program
Overweight people suffer in their daily lives, day after day. This suffering is not only psychological i.e. associated with the gazes of the others and the body standards imposed by society. It is equally and essentially a PHYSICAL suffering comprising a set of daily complaints: breathlessness, reduced mobility, heavy legs, pain, excessive sweating, rash, limited sex life, inadequate clothing, and difficult travel and movement in common public places. The bodily envelope of the obese person ends up by being deserted. It becomes an alien body and an object of hatred and disgust.
When “fat people” challenge the accusing gazes of the others and make the extraordinary step to begin a process of losing weight, which can last for a long time, very few of them are oriented towards “body professionals”.
However, this could help them a lot in reducing their pain, increasing their mobility, and also enhancing their body image.
Overweight is caused by a sedentary lifestyle and when muscle consumption of energy is reduced to the minimum. The idea of postponing the practice of a physical activity until losing some weight is to be completely forgotten. Reject this feeling of abnormality and guilt that you feel when going past a sports complex, fitness course, or simply looking at a gym mat. If physical inactivity is one of the causes of obesity, it is more surely to be a consequence. This is the beginning of a vicious circle. Morbid obesity inevitably leads to preferring immobility to activity in order to forget a body that is often painful and detested. Physical activity of any type (gym, walking, cycling, swimming ...) plays a significant role in the prevention of overweight and the fight against obesity.
The main benefits of physical activity are not solely related to weight. Physical activity intervenes in the reduction of biological disorders (hypertension, triglycerides, hyperglycemia, cholesterol, etc…), maintains and strengthens the development of physical abilities, and it helps gain autonomy and good relationships with people.
However, it does not mean that obese people should take up intensive sport activities. You must not torment a body that is already tormented enough.
The best-known gyms do not always provide the adequate framework and the necessary skills needed to welcome people struggling with their body in general and weight in particular. In cases where physical disability is predominant, having recourse to the skills of a "fitness coach" becomes necessary.
While it is true that a long and intense physical exercise helps build muscles and burn a significant number of calories, the fact remains that the obese person who performs an intensive sport would be exposed to important rheumatological and cardiovascular risks. Forget about the calories that should be burnt; the most recommended physical activities are those that foster well-being, body awareness, and conviviality.
It is recommended to start smoothly and consider the physical exercise a way to renew contact with your body, and to get reconciled with it.
Apart from the choice of discipline and methodology, the listening ability and the creativity of the coach are critical factors for us. The "purists" who give preference to the technique at the expense of the body are not suited at all for an obese population.
We are able to offer gymnastic exercises tailored to the capabilities of the patient. Although meant to be performed individually, these exercises may be proposed in small groups.
In order to complete a proper sport activity, it is advisable to involve a good recovery plan: sleep, relaxation, and massages. It's an extra reward for the body.
The important thing is to feel your body: to listen to its breathing, to learn how to relax it, how to stretch it, how to strengthen it, and how to soften it. Discovering your body, its postures, its breathing, and its movement is a profound process of knowledge and self-assertion. By renewing contact with your body in this way, you restore some balance. Moving your body again is good, but making it regain sensations is even better. For it is from your sensations and internal perceptions that you are able to control your needs in general and your food needs in particular.
The real benefit of physical activity is to regain control of your body, its needs, its desires, and to reduce stress and avoid food disorders.
By combining the effects of the exclusive Smart and Light program and a customized and individualized physical activity, the benefits can only be larger, more comprehensive and especially more lasting.
The association of the program proposed by Sophie Reverdi and the benefits of a customized sports coaching has imposed itself naturally.
Try, test, live, lose, move ... and you will ask for more!!
Body Therapy:
Rosalie Evelyn: Head of the Smart and Light Body therapy
By word of mouth, the miracles accomplished in terms of suppleness and well-being didn’t remain without echoes. Some individuals who heard of her qualities began asking for her services.
Yet, her desire to explore in depth "the undersides of the body" pushed it to enrol again in the Sorbonne University where she obtained a Master’s degree in art Therapy. Her personal observations and her knowledge allowed her to build the basis of a new therapy which relies on the footprints left by breathing on the body.
She also worked with doctors and psychologists on a book titled « fifty on top » which came out in 2002.
Her encounter with Michèle Fitoussi fifteen years ago urged her to write her first book « perfect agreement », which came out in 2003.
She then wrote « life story, body story » in 2007. In 2004, she opened her office at 3, rue de Berry in Paris’s eight district. At the same time, she worked on problems related to eating disorders at the Montévideo clinic in Boulogne, at the American hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine and with Sophie Reverdi from Smart and Light, an organization based in Tunisia and specialised in obesity.
In 2008, she created her website and started writing a new book. It’ll deal with the relationships between body traumas and collective history (shoah, cambodian and rwandan genocide, slavery).
« I have in front of me a body that is fighting, defending itself, shaking, reddening, perspiring, but that is taking some load off and calming down (…) It is by sharing my experiences with psychologists, psychiatrists, generalists, nutritionists and through my different psychoanalytic readings that I realised the importance of listening to the non mobile parts of the body (…) The body is the origin of the individual formation but it is mostly an interpreter of his history. I do not translate psyches, but feelings of everybody. I observe how everyone perceives the problems of their bodies and I adapt my therapy »
Therapy of the body:
Therapy is a process of conditioning and of de-conditioning adopted vis-a-vis a behavioral disorder so as to cure it. The behavior is connected to the manner of behaving. To behave holds in its centre two concepts: "com" which means in Latin "with" and " to carry " which indicates the fact " supporting the weight of ".
Here the suggested work consists in relieving the body of the weight of things.
The role of breathing:
For certain therapies, we use words, but here the adopted language is that of the body. It is initially a question of understanding the installation and the development of a simple process, an unconscious and inescapable act at the same time: the fact of breathing. This spontaneous movement describes on its own a significant part of our intimacy by the tensions, the sorrows and the reserves which are hidden in it; but also because it is the direct representation of the profound relationship which we maintain with the world.
The most striking example is “voluntary smothering”. Feelings like stress and fear frequently involve a bad management of the incoming or outgoing air. Unnoticed in some people, this deficiency becomes little by little part of the behaviour in other people and upsets the original rhythm of breathing marking the organism of each person for a long period. To condition the body to suitable breathing amounts to relieving it of the weight of the badly controlled feelings which too often overpower it.
If the pulmonary mechanism is the source of evil which corrodes the bodies, it proves to be an excellent remedy for all the sorrows which turned with the passing of years into tensions and stiffness.
Analysis of mobility and the importance of movement.
The basis of the therapy consists in seeking the dynamics of the body since its origin. To do this, it is necessary to cure the rhythm of which it is composed, decode the tensions which reside in it, and deal with the person in question, and this is all at the same time. Mobility during sessions is thus of primary importance. The practised movements aim at recovering a forgotten flexibility, that which accompanied each one of our gestures at the prime of infancy.
These exercises are not done with force, or at least not with the usual force we normally know. The power used here is that of the controlled air. Indeed, the gesture is significant, and the air which it engenders is even more significant....
As a matter of fact, irrigated from all parts, the body rebuilds the natural processes of opening and closing, of rolling up and unfolding, of inflection and extension which compose its reflex arch. A close attention is paid to sitting, anchoring, the pace, the various zones to be relieved and the pelvic and scapular girdles.
Irrigated from all parts, the body rears, cries, trembles, sweats, reddens, but releases all that it encloses through its history and its perception of the world and stops "supporting the weight of " by an unusual but natural behaviour.
Obesity
Obesity is characterized by an abnormal or disproportionate accumulation of body fat. This pathology which damages health particularly causes a conflict between the patient and the image he or she conveys.
Importance of the body perception for an obese person.
Obese people make their bodies not only the support but also the container of all its rejections. To forget this phenomenon, patients move the least possible and air which is supposed to penetrate each recess becomes concentrated with no major desire to circulate. According to Rosalie Evelyn, psycho-corporal therapist, it is necessary to relearn to breathe to have a true influence on the dynamics of the excessive digestion which causes the body an endless suffering. Indeed, this spontaneous air movement describes on its own an important part of our intimacy by the tensions, the sorrows, and reserves which are hidden in it, but also because this reflex is the direct representation of the profound relationship we have with the world.
The basis of the therapy is to release the grip and control our bodies. The practice of the air-irrigated mobility is thus essential since it helps reorder natural feelings and to accept the operation of the body. To prepare the obese person carefully with a new technique, movement, mobility, and motricity are priorities.
See you at Smart and Light, they will take care of you!