Welcome back to this special series featuring the stories of the Senior Planet Sponsored Athletes as they pursue their fitness goals in 2020. You can find all of our Sponsored Athletes’ stories here. 

Liliana Cortez is a freelance bodyworker (someone who uses therapeutic or personal development techniques that involve working with the human body). Get to know Liliana here, and read on for a more recent update on her wellness journey:

I’m so grateful to still have the passion to continue my pursuit of the best version of me! Prioritizing my self-care on how best to stay well during these times is of utmost importance. The pause has allowed me the time and patience to do a lot of online research. I’ve also found generous, like-minded professionals who share tons of information.

I am presently following — and have made several changes to — my already conscious diet and exercise routines:

• Intermittent fasting plan: energy that would normally go into constant digestion of several meals a day goes into healing and detoxifying the body.
• Adding more weight to my workout assists at building and keeping the aging process depletion of muscles at bay.
• The Breathwrk app that I follow daily, combined with morning cold showers, has noticeably cleared my mind and focus.

Having read that working the soil enhances the immune system, I took the opportunity to answer a request for volunteers by Green Bronx Machine to harvest a field of theirs up in the Bronx. I put in a few hours, (and taught the young’uns some old-school work ethics — “chat less, work more” — for example, haha!) and brought home a bounty of organic collard greens for me and my neighbors up here on the Upper West Side.

Bottom line: so far, so good! I am learning something new every day!