Making Self Care a Priority
Ashford Acres Inn Manager, Annastasia Hicks contributed this blog post. The inn is her baby and her workouts are her therapy. Thanks for contributing to the blog Annastasia!
When it comes to Ashford Acres Inn and managing the property as a whole, self-care is at the top of my list of daily priorities in order to stay fresh and focused every day on the job and present in my relationships. Part of my daily routine to ensure I take care of my physical and mental health is an early morning workout with one of my co-workers, Chelsea Hill. (I have to have another person participating in order to actually get myself out of bed each day!)
Every day of the week at 6:00 AM we get up and head to either Ashford Acres Inn or the local park to workout. We have meticulously planned each day to have a different purpose for our workouts in order to ensure we don’t get bored and we have the motivation to get up each day. Mondays are for HIIT Training, Tuesdays are for Strength Training, Wednesdays are for distance running, Thursdays are for HIIT Training, Fridays are for Yoga.
Listed below are a few mental health moments we incorporate into our daily workouts to help us start each day on our best foot possible!
- When we run distance, we go to the local park, which has the most gorgeous sunrises! While running, Chelsea listens to an app (titled ‘ Aaptiv’ ) that helps her mentally focus on her day that is to come by talking her through tips on her thinking. For example, it asks her to think about what she was grateful for that day and to focus on that for that single moment during her run. How cool is that! She says it makes her immediately grateful to her body for getting up out of bed to go complete the run! Interestingly, we were both doing very similar things during our runs! I like to incorporate positive affirmations in my runs. I mentally repeat phrases to myself like, “you are healthy and strong”; “you are a kind person & and you are enough”. These affirmations help me to actually be those things throughout the day when adversity comes into play and throws me off!
- When we do yoga, we turn out all of the lights in the barn and use the app, ‘Down Dog’ on the loud speaker. This app has really relaxing music, fantastic directions and yoga sequences that you can fit to what you are feeling that day (relaxation, beginner 1, etc).
- Doing workouts at the Inn always provides a serene, beautiful setting which helps when workouts are tough or getting out of bed is hard to force yourself to do. The photos posted below show some of the summer/early fall workouts we completed! On occasion, Ashford Acres Inn will host yoga and workout events that follow with brunch. On September 29 th at 10AM we will host Mimoga , our last yoga event of the year. Purchase your tickets HERE to attend, enjoy a beautiful view with us, and sip on endless mimosas & brunch!
- Chelsea and I switch weeks on creating the workouts. Doing this helps us not feel the burden of having to make a new workout every single day, and gives us each the opportunity to be creative.
- We jam to our favorite hits during our workouts! We share a playlist that all of us can add to when we find a song that would motivate us to workout. We have a pic of our Spotify playlist below, titled ‘Hot Girl Summer’. Follow to enjoy some of our faves during your workouts!
- On occasion we go to Lexington to attend Hot Yoga with Ivy League Strength’s Ivy Invalesco. Several of our employees like to join in on this one! If you haven’t tried hot yoga, and you are close to Lexington, Ivy is ahhhmazinggg! Find her on Instagram at @ivyleaguestrength.
Whatever you do, my overall suggestion is to do
something no matter what! Find out your mental weaknesses and work around those to make sure you’re successful in your fitness and health journey. Enjoy the time to yourself, and as our yoga instructor Ivy would say, remember what your body felt like at the beginning of your workout and what it feels like at the end & be thankful for that.
