News Category: News

We are so excited to share the second installment in our series highlighting some of the amazing people BOKS is thankful for this season, featuring Ewunike Akpan. If you live in the Washington D.C. area you may have seen Ewunike representing BOKS on a LIVE segment of Good Morning Washington. Ewunike is passionate about BOKS, knows her stuff when it comes to physical activity as a trainer of all ages, and if you saw her segment last week you probably noticed she’s cool under pressure! Thank you for all you do for the BOKS program Ewunike!

Here’s four questions with Ewunike:

What do you love about BOKS?

I love that BOKS is a FREE program that’s made so accessible for kids because it’s offered right at their schools. Besides the accessibility of BOKS, I love that this is essentially Fun/Play time in the mornings for kids and I’ve seen how impactful this time with peers, running, jumping and laughing can have on a kids entire day!

How has fitness and/or physical activity been important in your life?

I was raised in a household where good nutrition and exercise were a way of life. My mother was a runner and an aerobics class instructor. Sometimes I feel like I grew up at the YWCA in downtown Detroit because my mom taught classes there and for a couple of years, my school was located inside the same building. I would hang out in the gym while my mom taught classes or run around on the track above the gym. And when she wasn’t inside teaching classes, my mom was outside running with her friends and I was rode my bike next to her. That was until I was old enough to run. I started running when I was 7 or 8 years old. I literally developed the skills and passion to transform my early childhood experiences into the career I have today.

Describe yourself in 140 characters.

Strong mind, body and spirit

Share your favorite BOKS story

Both of my favorite BOKS stories involve Michelle Obama and BOKS Founder Kathleen Tullie. The stories are connected because of the power of intention. In 2010 at the first Partnership for a Healthier America Conference, Mrs. Obama gave the keynote address and after her speech surprised the audience when she came down off the stage to shake hands and greet the crowd. I took advantage of the opportunity to move to the front and Kathleen followed. We were able to meet Mrs. Obama and quickly tell her that we were with BOKS a FREE before school physical activity program and that we’d love to share more information about the program with her. She graciously suggested we give our cards to her assistant.

A few short years later, BOKS partnered with Mrs. Obama’s Let’s Move! Active Schools initiative and we were able to host her along with other celebrity athletes and the former Reebok CEO at a BOKS school in Washington DC. The event was a huge production, but the end result was Mrs. Obama running around the gym of Orr Elementary school with BOKS students and experiencing the fun of physical activity together. That moment was priceless for ALL of the students and for the entire school. That event with Mrs. Obama cemented BOKS at Orr Elementary as an integral part of their school day, routine and culture.

It’s officially December, which means 2017 is coming to a close. As we finish up another successful and exciting year at BOKS we wanted to look back and highlight some of the people that have contributed to that success. Over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing some quick interviews with the people who make BOKS the program that it is today so you can get to know them a bit better.

Our first interview is with Nicole DiBitetto. Nicole is our Boston Area Coordinator, managing more than 60 Boston Public Schools running BOKS. Nicole is incredibly hard working and well-organized and we are proud to have her on our team – below is a little bit more about Nicole and her passion for BOKS:

What do you love about BOKS?

I love that BOKS gives an entire school community the opportunity to be active in a safe and welcoming environment.

Many schools that I visit not only have the students and trainers participating but also the principal, school nurse, coaches, and parent volunteers!

It is amazing to see everyone running around and having fun while also learning social skills that they can use with them in their every day lives.

The power of movement is amazing and I love seeing our program positively affecting so many people every day!

How has fitness and/or physical activity been important in your life?

I have always been a very active person. I have been dancing since the age of 3, ran cross country in high school, and most recently fell in love with yoga.

Physical activity is important to me not only for the physical benefits to your body, but also because it helps relieve stress, increase your energy, and can also introduce you to some new friends! I have made my closest friends through dance and other activities and I am very grateful for that.

As the area coordinator for BOKS, I love that I am able to give so many people the opportunity to move, learn new skills, and also make some friends along the way!

Describe yourself in 140 characters.

Greek, Italian, and Irish girl with a love of all food, yoga, and spending time with family and friends. Small obsession with coffee, peanut butter, and cozy blankets. Always willing to lend a helping hand or a smile!

Share your favorite BOKS story.

My favorite day so far was when I helped the FDR Upper and Lower schools coordinate a Marathon Monday Fun Run in honor of a former trainer who passed away. So many families from the school community as well as many staff members came out to participate in a warm up and run around the park that had signs indicating which “town” we were in just like on the Marathon route. It was such a fun and special day and I was honored to be a part of it.

BOKS was founded on the belief that movement has the power to improve a child physically, mentally and socially. It is unclear however, whether or not the three Natick moms that startedthe program had any inclination of the impact BOKS could have on an adult.

As the Marketing Manager here at BOKS HQ, it is my job to uncover and tell these stories.

Enter Jesse Farren-James a BOKS trainer at the FDR school in Hyde Park, Boston, MA. I had heard Jesse’s name a few times since I came to BOKS HQ, as she stands out in everyone’s mind as atrainer that truly represents what BOKSis all about. And no, that doesn’t mean she’s a fitness-fanatic. In fact, from an early age, Jesse, like too many young girls today, developed a strong distaste for any physical activity.

This is Jesse’s BOKStar Story:

“Growing up, I was heavy, so for me gym class was horrible,” Jesse told me over coffee. “I never saw physical activity as fun – I saw it as something that was very embarrassing and uncomfortable.”

Fast forward to four years ago when Jesse was sitting in a meeting with some dedicated parents and educators in her school community in Hyde Park Boston. The group was discussing the fact that the school didn’t have the funds for P.E. class when Jesse’s now co-trainer Lori presented the idea of BOKS to the group.

“Our community is incredibly diverse in every way – it’s considered inner city but the gap is wide and we just didn’t have the funds for P.E.,” said Jesse. “When Lori brought BOKS to the group I knew I wanted to get involved because I wanted my kids to have a different experience with physical activity than I did. I knew our kids needed this program, but my first thought was that because I was overweight, I couldn’t represent an exercise program.”

Jesse felt BOKS was important for her community because while her kids are involved in youth sports, many families living at poverty level cannot afford to get their kids involved on teams. She added that many of these lower income families have children that are overweight because they don’t have enough opportunity for movement.

With some encouragement from her friends Jesse and a group of parent volunteers brought the BOKS program to both the upper and lower campuses at the FDR school and since its founding ,has been a huge success.

“My son, he’s just like me, and I wanted him to see that physical activity doesn’t have to be something that makes you self-conscious – it can be fun,” said Jesse.

Jesse is passionate about the BOKS program because it’s all about self-betterment rather than competition. There is no picking of teams where a student is picked last or competition between students.

“I always remind the kids when we are running that the only person they are running against is themselves,” Jesse added. “As I’m saying these things to the kids I’m also reminding myself.”

During her time training Jesse has hit highs and lows in her own personal struggle with her weight.

“I remember at one point when I was at my heaviest I couldn’t keep up with the kids during our quarter mile run,” Jesse said. “I had a moment where I thought ‘I want to be a good example for these kids’, I may have given up on my bikini dreams, but I want to be able to keep up, I want to be fit and I want to be healthy.”

Jesse lost 100lbs. and running BOKS was a big part of that achievement: “When you go to the gym first thing in the morning it sort of shapes your day and that’s exactly how I feel after moving with the kids at BOKS,” she added. “After a BOKS class I’m more motivated to go hiking with my dog and after hearing the Nutrition Bit I’m more motivated to eat healthy.”

I recently visited Jesse’s BOKS class at the lower campus at FDR. She is an incredible trainer. From the moment I arrived at the school she was bursting with energy and that energy is completely infectious.

The kids in her BOKS class look up to her and you can tell they truly enjoy just being around her. One student once told her she was “the most beautiful mom she knew.” And that was before Jesse lost the weight.

Jesse shows the kids you don’t have the be the best, you just have to try your best. “Next week is burpee week you guys and you know that Coach Jesse does not like burpees!” she exclaims. “But you know what, I’m excited because I’m going to try my best and I may only get three when you guys do twenty and that’s okay!”

“I want to show kids that you can be any shape or any size and you don’t need to be an athlete to enjoy play and exercise,” said Jesse. “I think if I had had that kind of role model or I had learned that – my life would have been shaped so differently.”

One of the best things about working for BOKS HQ is hearing about how the program is improving the lives of students, trainers and communities – and every so often we are contacted by particular individuals whose BOKS stories are so special we feel compelled to share them.

Paige Meile is one of those individuals. This is Paige’s BOKS Star Story:

Our team first heard about Paige when her BOKS trainer Katherine Bitzas reached out to us with an email from Paige’s mom Michelle. From this email, we quickly realized Paige was no ordinary student – so we packed our bags and drove down to CT to meet this young girl who had repotedly been so transformed by BOKS.

When I first shook Paige’s hand my first thought was, “I must’ve gotten her age wrong,” she is so well spoken and assertive I though she must be in one of our middle school programs not elementary. But I was wrong. Paige is just 10 years old and has just entered the fourth grade – yet her presence is much more mature and graceful than that of an average 10 year old. I’m instantly impressed by her.

I met Paige and her mom Michelle at Paige’s favorite place – her Irish Step Dance Studio, Scoil Rince Luimni (translates to Limerick School of Dance) – to talk to her about her experience with BOKS.

Michelle painted a picture for me of who Paige was before BOKS, which was a stark contrast to the young woman sitting down next to me. “Paige was so shy and so anxious about school that we actually had to home school her for two years. She even thought about quitting Irish Step dancing which she loves so much,” said Michelle. “BOKS became the way we got Paige to go to school in the morning.”

By attending BOKS at Munger Hill School in Westfield MA, Paige was able to make friends, gain confidence, channel her competitive spirit and most transformatively, she learned to love fitness. Physically, Paige lost 35 lbs doing BOKS, but her transformation goes far beyond that, “she learned that she loves the way she feels when she’s active and healthy,” said Michelle while sharing some of Paige’s before and after photos with me.

After talking with Paige I got the opportunity to watch her Irish Step Dance. She spends almost 8 hours a week at this studio practicing what she and her mom describe as “her thing.” I asked Paige what she loves most about dance – to which she replied, “everything.”

I learned a lot documenting Paige’s class. Irish Step isn’t for the faint of heart – it’s physically demanding and takes a tremendous amount of mental stregth to memorize and coordinate each and every step to fast-paced music.
Paige is dynamic. She dances with her head held high and pushes herself beyond what her teacher demands of her. It’s hard to believe that such a talented individual had at one point thought about quitting something she clearly loves so much.

“Paige is a leader now,” added Michelle. In fact, Paige wants to be come a BOKS “leader in training” to help her younger sister (who seems to be shy like Paige once was) get to BOKS in the morning.

I reached out to Paige’s BOKS trainers, Katherin Bitzas and Sue Pederson, who added, “Paige has been an inspiration us. Hearing how BOKS has helped her makes us even more determined to reach out to as many kids as possible”

“BOKS is awesome,” Paige added before lacing up her step shoes and enterting her dance class for the third time that week.

I was lucky as a kid to grow up with a healthy dose of mindfulness without the side of pretense. My parents led by example that it was important to take care of our bodies by eating close to nature, take care of ourselves and each other by acting with kindness, and take care of our surroundings and the planet by being mindful of our daily actions. We recycled everything from milk cartons to old clothes. Picking up trash in ditches was a fun weekend activity.

It may have seemed strange at the time, but this way of being instilled the philosophy of yoga in my life in a real-world and super useful way. It is just how they live and it makes a lot of sense. For me, the way of being came first and the poses second. I was introduced to the physical practice of yoga in my teens, when I really needed it.

Physical yoga provided a vocabulary of movement and pretty great structure for practicing how I wanted to be. Healthy, connected, radiant and happy. Picking up cans in the ditch was one way to practice. Moving with ease during simple and challenging moments alike on the yoga mat is another. Essentially both led to the same place, and how we are in one moment is how we are in everything. We have an opportunity to practice with everything we do.

With STRALA we address how we are first, learning a way of being easy in body and mind. We practice being gentle with ourselves, and responsive in our movement to who we are and how we feel. This combined way of being and moving leads us to some pretty spectacular results. We become sensitized to how we feel and responsive to what we need to be radiantly healthy. We become pretty great care givers of ourselves, and from this place have a firm ground to help others.

I’m thrilled that STRALA is now a part of BOKS, helping so many kids connect with themselves, get and stay radiantly healthy, and feel fantastic in the process. Having a little one now (our baby Daisy is 2 months old), I feel the importance personally of putting our attention on the wellbeing of children.

How we are is ultimately the experience we give to others.

I learned growing up how I wanted to be, and in my teens I learned a vocabulary of movement to continue this practice.

When I was a teenager, tension and rigidity had started to find their way into my life, as it does for most of us at some point or another. Learning a physical practice that matched the sensibilities and mindset I discovered as a kid was mind blowing. I realized we collect stress not through the things that happen in our lives, but in how we choose to live.

The coolest part is we can learn and practice a better way to deal with the simple and challenging moments alike. It begins with dropping the tension, and re-learning how to be in alignment with our selves through a mindset that says no pain no gain is a myth, and our best path to accomplishment is in feeling good every step of the way. It continues through a practice of natural movement in our lives, that agrees with our mindset.

Of course it’s really challenging sometimes to change our mindset. It’s so familiar to us, it’s in all our habits, and we’re comfortable here. We wear our stress with a badge of honor. If we’re exhausted, we must be working hard and achieving big things. If we’re super-frazzled, we must be headed toward our goals.

The tricky reality of living this way, soaked in stress, is our mind and body cannot function properly. In tension mode we can accomplish some things, but we eventually break down. In tension mode we fall out of the flow of possibilities. Our body literally can’t maintain optimal performance in these conditions, and to put it simply, is always preparing for battle. This is a strategy that works for the short-term, and when real dangers are present. But it’s not a strategy we can sustain, and it doesn’t work when the obstacles we face are mostly inside of us.

When we’re living in stress and tension mode, we collect more stress and tension, and eventually break down. When we live in harmony with our self, anything is possible.

Yoga is a wonderful practice with a rich vocabulary of movement. It allows us to get into our whole body and move in every direction possible, so every part of us can come into harmony with every other part. But the problem we run into with our yoga is the same problem we run into in our lives. We make it about nailing a pose, and hitting a goal. We bring our tension and stress along with us for the ride.

The amazing thing is, we come to yoga to de-stress and gain health and wellbeing, but it’s impossible to separate how we are in the rest of our life from how we are for those moments when we’re here to practice mindfulness. So we need to practice how we are, as a way to replace the old habits that don’t work so well with new ones that do.

We need to practice shifting our mindset from stiff and tense to soft and fluid. We need to believe in ourselves, and believe that when we stay in the process and focus on moving naturally, in alignment with ourselves, we’ll achieve more than when we force, push and struggle our way through life. This is a massive shift in how we are, and when we’re brave enough to take a look at how we are right now, we have massive opportunity to cultivate how we would like to be. This isn’t about becoming great at yoga. It’s about becoming great at you.

When you shift your attention away from the goal of a pose and onto yourself, you’ll be able to achieve so much more with grace and ease. You’ll be able to drop the tension and stress that lead to so many of our problems, and you’ll feel fantastic along the way.

You have everything you need, right inside, waiting to be discovered.

Tara