WELLNESS AUTHOR
Cindy Present
PADDLING TO 100 DAYS OF BLUE n Cindy Present shares with us how morning paddles have enriched her soulful longevity.
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00 Days of Blue is a challenge from Wallace J. Nichols, a friend and the author of Blue Mind, that has summoned water lovers annually for the past seven years. The challenge is to be in, near, on or under the water daily from Memorial Day through Labor Day. “J,” as we call him, captures the data and science around the positive effects that water has on us mentally, physically and emotionally. Our family utilizes
AUGUST 2020
this science in our daily lives, our business and as the root of our foundation: Operation Get Out. The foundation is about getting individuals and organizations on the water — specifically, those who are experiencing stress, illness, loss, depression, anxiety, PTS — and quite simply, sometimes just the tough chapters that life deals us. At the time of writing this, my husband, Steve, and I have just wrapped up our seventh week of #100DaysOfBlue. Every
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morning for 51 days thus far, we’ve awakened before dawn and rolled the sliding door of our tiny house’s lakeside bedroom. The door opens to our “quiver” of paddleboards and an array of paddles: race boards, leisure boards, displacement boards, traditional boards and some nostalgic boards — the paddles for speed, distance, training — and sharing. Our dog Star, Steve and I tiptoe through the dewy grass to our water’s edge each day, schlepping our boards and paddles, sometimes
