Finding Wellness in Movement, Community, and Connection

Briefly introduce yourself and share about your background. 

My name is Sue Givens and I’m an administrative assistant in the Department of Community Medicine and Population Health in CCHS. I like spending my time finding adventures with my husband and friends, sewing, crafting, and traveling. I love a good cruise, a good cheese, and a good nap. My happy place is a pool or hot tub, no matter the time of year. 

Can you describe the start of your wellness journey and the factors that led to this decision? 

My wellness journey started when a friend asked me to come to yoga with her. I had a bad fall in my early twenties that left me with chronic back pain and my friend suggested I try yoga. That yoga class was the gateway to fitness and wellness in my life. Yoga turned into finding deep water aerobics and daze classes at UREC. Eventually, I trained to teach all three formats and branched out to other organizations in the community. 

How has your wellness journey influenced your daily life, including work, relationships, and overall well-being? 

Social interaction is the thread that connects all my most satisfying and successful efforts at wellness. I have found friends and community through group exercise classes with UREC. Those classes are my main source of exercise and have provided friendships and a social group going on 10 years now. Teaching introduced me to some fantastic community organizations and created a real appreciation for the senior population that participates in group exercise. I’ve met more people while I’ve been covered in sweat, than I ever did sitting in an office. 

What advice would you give someone who is just starting their wellness journey? 

I want to remind people that there will be lulls and slow points in the process. Success doesn’t always mean a scale number or improvement in bloodwork. Sometimes, success looks like having an unexpected conversation with the person who’s had the mat next to you for 6 months and you’re just now getting around to introducing yourself. It’s easy to get wrapped up in hard metrics, but I want to encourage you to realize things like social interaction, schedule stability, and an innate sense of accomplishment are just as important. 

How do you plan to sustain your well-being and continue growing in the future? 

Keep doing what I’m doing. My lovely fitness community have truly helped sustain me through lots of good times as well as some truly rough moments in my life. At this point, my motivation is 40% movement and 60% chatting it up with friends. Using the foundation of my friend group, I’m using that to motivate me to branch back out to more high intensity classes.