Stats
Name:
Amanda Jean Bernabe
Age:
21 with experience
Current Challenge:
To find myself back in the place of optimum health and well being, while helping my family to get there as well. Also, along the way to inspire many many more to come along and explore the good life together.
Results to come:
To lose weight, get tone, recreate a healthy lifestyle I have already reached before and not let go, re-energize, de-stress, and create my dream job and income while doing it.
How My Health Affected My Life
My health was one of the reasons I started my first company to begin with and why I was so passionate about it. I often had the challenge of dealing with flair ups from fibromyalgia, which made me feel like not getting out of bed some mornings (which all Moms and Dads know is impossible with a little one). This often leads to many times wanting to roll back over to sleep, making excuses for things like not exercising or eating right in a given day or week. This is something I have battled for many years and since these flair ups are more active during periods of stress, it affects all aspects of your life when you are trying to work, be a mother, and live a normal life. If you are unfamiliar with fibromyalgia it is a autoimmune disorder (not to be confused with autoimmune disease) that when in attack mode feels like severe arthritis all over the body. It has a long laundry list of other ‘wonderful’ aliments. After getting fibromyalgia at a very young age I started an active plan to make myself better by becoming an avid yoga practitioner and eating right. I became more healthy, happy, and had more energy than I had in years and was able to continue my love for martial arts instead of giving it up like I was told by doctors I may have to. Instead I went on to win many, state, national and international championships in martial arts. At this point in my life I decided to give the gift back to the world and heal through these beautiful things that healed me.
My Business: My Love/Hate Relationship
We (Myself, mom, dad, husband and ex-partner) owned a large mind body arts studio featuring, martial arts, yoga, Pilates, dance and spin. Starting as a family run small yoga studio we decided to expand 5 years later into what was to become the love hate relationship, the expansion. After a little over 5 years later closing the business was second only to burying my Grandmother as the hardest thing I ever did in my life. Especially towards the end, it was practically killing us literally and figuratively to keep it running, even though the business was my dream and passion. Many of our members in a sense were like family to us. They flooded us with emails, calls about their sadness in the closing of our business, and their wishes for us to know about the impact we had on their lives. So although in some ways it was a relief when the doors closed it was also very difficult, like letting a dream die. However, now I am coming to see it as a rebirth in a new and better way, like the phoenix rising. A rebirth, that was soon to come into my life, in the blog we now know as Expedition Good Life.It starting as a healing blog on my journey that I wanted to share with others to inspire others along the way.
The Turn in My Life
Since May 30th of 2013 I have been a very proud and busy new mom of my first child Tristan. He is the best thing I ever did, hands down. As any new mother will tell you, I loved before, but I never truly new the extent of my love till they put that little man in my arms. I often find strength I did not know I had to move on and better myself for him.
When it comes to stress I have been through it all in the last few years, including the challenges of maintaining a healthy family life all while dealing with a severe lack in monetary support. The first major domino to fall in my downward spiral was the loss of my business after ten years of backbreaking work, due to an unfortunate partnership and a bad economy that did not let us recover from the separation of the partnership (the damage was already done so to speak). It was an unfortunate situation where I bringing in a partner who was a friend. Although a fantastic martial artist, he had no previous business knowledge, was young, and I am not sure ever really got the concept of what we were trying to do as a whole. I feel as though that was my fault, I thought this person had the same vision for our business, and I was wrong, they had envisioned something different for themselves and that is one thing I will always regret. This partnership was not a good fit for the company. This may have been the cause of the spiral that caused us to separate, unhappiness on both parts. Unhappiness causes people to do things they may not have done otherwise, at least I will always hope so, especially in this case. So I take my part in the failure of our company whether or not the other party does, and wish them happiness in there other endeavors.
The business loss was the cause of losing my home, three months before the closing of the business, while pregnant with my son. I moved from my first home to live back with my parents, had my baby via C-section and closed my business all within a two-month period. A bit stressful, lol. 😉
What Now? The After Effects
Unfortunately as often happens to business owners when partnerships fail or even when they don’t, I got burned out. I lost everything I had gained in health and in doing so lost the business anyhow. After the business closed I spent many days and nights trying to figure out what to do. After several attempts at ideas and even the possibility of moving out of state, my family and I decided to stay in Florida. The deliberation came to several things that allow me to expand upon the things I love and to help even more people without losing myself. I started the Expedition Good Life Blog. At the same time I went back to school to get a degree as a Physical Therapy Assistant. After two years it became apparent this was negatively effecting my son. I decided to put that temporarily on hold, and hope to go back, and maybe even earn a doctorate as a physical therapist. I enjoyed the classes and did quite well acing the challenging program so far. (It is a terrific program for those of you interested www.browardcollege.com at North Campus). However, Tristan is the first and most important thing in my life. I put it on hold, temporarily, under the grace of my head instructor allowing me to return to the program at a later time.
So for now I will be working on this site. Currently with my over 19 years experience in Martial Arts, I am a black belt in Choy Lee Fut Kung Fu, and have won many national, international and even world championships. I have over 5000 hours training in Yoga, and have trained with the likes of Rodney Yee, Duncan Wong, Johnny Kest, and many more. I also have certificates in Pilates, Om Gym, a Masters in Reiki, an Associates in Art, and just over 2 years schooling in the medical and science fields, as well as over 10 years experience as the owner of Health and Wellness Company. I have coached privately for athletes, and I also have worked with many different support groups on meditation, yoga and the power of the mind. I created a very popular class called Dragon’s Breath Yoga, a combo of Martial Skill and Yoga. At one point I believe I had completely cured myself of Candida and I plan to do it again while you follow me on our blogs.
I hope you will come along on my journey; I would be so blessed to touch anyone’s life.
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