Tag: The Brokins

Embracing My Body: My Experience at Green Mountain at Fox Run {Women’s History}

Written by Jasmine Brown of The Brokins

As a part of Jasmine’s experiment dubbed “Project Totus”, Jasmine was invited to Green Mountain at Fox Run. To follow Jasmine’s journey with food, emotional wellness, and body acceptance check out TheBrokins.com

 Women can become so body obssessed! We adopt what media and social constraints tell us about our body. Though the average woman is anywhere between size 12-16, we still glorify the size 2. There is nothing inherently wrong with size 2! She is beautiful! So is a size 26, though! I was one of those women chasing the perfect jean size, ever distracted from fulfilling my potential as a woman because I was lost in the tyranny of dieting and punishing my body with workouts I did not enjoy.

I was invited to come to Green Mountain at Fox Run as a blogger. I left Green Mountain at Fox Run changed from the inside out. Even as I write this, I feel the emotions I unearthed bubble up. I cringe, inhale, and think quietly to myself, “you are okay, you are safe.” Green Mountain at Fox Run is a facility that was founded to address the broken mentality that exists about women’s body, food habits, and fitness. It is a woman only center that helps address nutrition, emotional health concerning food, and body fitness. The staff at GMAFR stand by the belief that your size DOES NOT equate to your quality of life. This is a hard belief to hold in our body obsessed society. I used to be, and still frequently am, obsessed about “skinny”. Chasing the next diet, diet tip, “life style change”, and ideal weight became distractions and compulsions for me. I am a recovered Bulimic turned Binge Eater.

While at Green Mountain at Fox Run, I experienced professionals for the first time in my life applaud my body. They focused on what it had accomplished instead of what it had not. Robyn, their gentle-spirited nutritionist, encourages each woman to heal their relationship with food. “Feed your body well,” she said in a class I attended. Her beautiful long hair tossed from side to side as she passionately encouraged us to eat foods we love.

One of my most formative experiences was with Kate Nolte, Green Mountain’s fitness specialist. Kate is an energetic and approachable woman. Her level of fitness shows in her sculpted body. I felt very intimidated by her. By the end of the week, though, I was being challenged to believe in my body and my abilities the way Kate believed in me. She shows woman after woman that your body is an amazing tool, irregardless of its size.

Combine Robyn and Kate with Darla Breckinridge, the Clinical Psychologist whose “Darlaisms” will make you both cry and laugh, and you get what I call the Green Mountain at Fox Run Trifecta. I came home deeply broken. I was in mourning. I realized how ugly I had been to my body, to myself. I realized how I had adopted a lot of what society and the media tells me to believe. I am still mourning… but today I am inching closer to hope and joy. I am embracing this body of mine with stretch marks and all. I am celebrating that I am beautiful and a scale cannot tell me that. I am finding ways to appreciate my womanhood, curves, rolls, stretch marks and all!

Jasmine Brown of The Brokins is the kind of girl you either love or really love.  She is smart, wet-your-pants funny, and sometimes brutally honest.  She has a unique and even snarky outlook on life.  You will learn a lot of things you’ve always wanted to know and even some things you didn’t on her blog The Brokins.

New Year, New…You? {New Year, New You}

New Year, New…You?
Written by Jasmine Brown of The Brokins.

As the clock turns over into a new year, new ad campaigns pop up along with the new year resolutions of masses: “New Year New You”. The myriad contemplate what things they will resolve to do in the year to come. These things ostensibly lean toward shedding the old you and cultivating something else. “My new year resolution is to be more fit, to eat better, to lose weight, to drink less coffee, etc. etc.” The tradition of stating a new year’s resolution bring up thoughts of change, dissatisfaction, and self-grading for some, and even promise. “If I eat better I will be a better me…a “new” me.

Are these things inherently wrong? They are not bad ideas- unless they are attached with loaded meaning. The tradition of the new year resolution is something that is attached to the ideal that if we follow through with resolution we will have accomplished something that will elevate the year we lived higher than others. The problem with “New Year New You” begs the question, “but what is wrong with the old me?”

During the new year so many of us get wrapped up in the idea that if we can become someone new and someone different, things will be better. Fact of the matter is that new data is showing a paradox in how people are discovering real happiness. It is the paradox that you cannot become different until you embrace what you are now. Moreover, many researchers and theorists in the field of Positive Psychology are contending that maybe the best you isn’t a “new you” but rather a more honest you that you have NOW. What would our new year resolutions look like if we reframed how we view ourselves? We focus so much on pathology, what is wrong with us, that we forget the power we hold in each of us. SO what that you don’t have Jillian Michael abs! She doesn’t have your sense of awesome…now does she?!

I’m only saying that the tradition of: “2012 will be the best year ever because I am going to start_______fill in the blank” might be causing more harm than good to our psyche.

Let us consider well being in a different light: what are you good at? What strengths do you have NOW? What do you adore about yourself NOW? Let us resolve to create a year where we embraced our small victories and our realities instead of creating lofty goals that fade as soon as Valentine’s Day candy rolls out.

Jasmine
banksj@jbu.edu

Jasmine Brown of The Brokins is the kind of girl you either love or really love.  She is smart, wet-your-pants funny and sometimes brutally honest.  She has a unique and even snarky outlook on life.  You will learn a lot of things you’ve always wanted to know and even some things you didn’t on her blog The Brokins.

Getting the Most out of SEO or “Search Engine Optimization”

Written by Jasmine Brown of The Brokins.

So you have a blog, dreams of using it as a source of income, and everyone keeps going on and on about something called “SEO”.

“SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization” is something that only truly matters if you care about your blog getting attention outside of your mom, Aunt Lucy, and third cousin Mabel. Bottom line? Search Engine Optimization matters to individuals who are interested in exposure via search engines. So lets go over the basic things that can be important for a blogger who wants to optimize their blog.

Write for your readers FIRST

Many bloggers fire up their blogs and get excited to fill their pages with content, content, and more content. The thing is blogging solely for content or flooding your blog with “key words” will show through. This is, in my opinion, the fastest way to turn off your readers.  Striking a balance of creativity and best practice SEO is sometimes a tight rope walk and with some practice and attention it can be done.

Title is important

Create a title that A) grabs the readers attention B) communicates the content of the post and C) has the keywords that people search for in search engines. If your blog post is about DIY birdhouses, please don’t title it “Jimmy John Loves Birdies”. This title does not tell us what you are writing about specifically. If you must talk about Jimmy John, try this: “DIY Birdhouses: Jimmy John Loves Birdies”

Appropriately tag your posts, images, and links

Make sure to create appropriate tags that match your key words and be congruent and specific. The more key words, or words that describe your content, that show up in your post, title, tags, and links the more easily search engines will be able to find your blog posts and articles.

Keywords

“Keywords” are the holy grail of Search Engine Optimization. Most algorithms search for your keywords in the first 50-100 words of your content. For the best hits in SEO-world, add your keywords into an introductory sentence. Ex: “I want to show you my process of a DIY birdhouse”. Emboldened words get attention. All of that being said… the worst, WORST thing you can do is shovel a bunch of key words onto your blog for the purpose of search engine hits. Why is it the worst thing you can do? Um… because people aren’t algorithms and as fast they arrived to visit your site they will leave from lack of quality content.

My advice is to write good quality blog posts and articles FIRST and then see if there is a theme or keywords that you can identify to search engine optimize your content, titles, tag, and images. Bloggers excited to move on up in their Google (or whatever choice search engine) rankings can get over zealous and easily forget that getting people to stay, read, and subscribe to your blog is just as important as search hits. The best way to get those readers to engage and be dedicated to your blog is to establish a connection and provide your readers with good, stable, and diverse but relevant content. I am sure you’ve heard of the phrase “content is king” in the blogosphere. I would amend that phrase and say,
“content is king, but authenticity is queen (and queens have always been better rulers!)”

For valuable resources on SEO writing and Best Practice check out iBlogZone, http://www.iblogzone.com/2009/07/3-step-guide-to-simple-seo-article.html