Olympic Breaker Sunny Choi Talks Psychological Well being

No two paths to the Olympics are ever the identical, however one thing feels particularly distinctive about Sunny Choi’s. A former aggressive gymnast and Ivy League grad-turned-executive at Estée Lauder, 35-year-old Choi is now one of many inaugural athletes competing in breaking (colloquially often known as breakdancing) this summer season within the 2024 Olympics.

Choi found breaking in school, and he or she doesn’t understate the game’s position in her life. “Breaking has been the catalyst for a lot of my private progress,” she tells SheKnows, although it took her years to belief herself and her expertise sufficient to do it full-time. It wasn’t till 2022, after Choi completed second on the World Video games, that she took the leap.

Whereas it wasn’t a simple transfer, it was clearly the best one, and never solely as a result of Choi is now Olympic-bound. “Once I was working in company, it’s virtually such as you’re rewarded for displaying up and being a robotic, not having feelings, not letting any of that get in the best way, simply working, working, working, working,” Choi displays. Breaking, she says, is the alternative. “As a breaker, it’s all about self expression,” she explains. “It’s about being you and determining who that particular person is and what that particular person seems to be like on the ground and what that particular person seems to be like off the ground too, as a result of all of it combines. It’s all one, as a result of that is an artwork. It’s a dance.”

Choi appreciates that breaking requires her to faucet into the truest, deepest a part of herself, as a result of her life hasn’t at all times allowed for that. From childhood as much as the company job, Choi remembers combating psychological well being as she pushed herself to chase the standard thought of success.

“I used to be in each single AP class you can presumably enroll in, in my highschool,” Choi remembers. “I used to be a extremely high-performing gymnast. I bought into an Ivy League. I went to Wharton. I didn’t even need to do enterprise, but it surely was as a result of I knew I’d be financially steady afterwards.” Trying again, Choi can see the sample. “I had been for therefore lengthy suppressing my private needs so as to examine off all of the bins that I believed would make me profitable in life… I used to be simply trekking ahead, shoving issues apart, placing these blinders on and just a little comfortable face and displaying as much as work each single day.”

The sample took its toll as Choi skilled “cycles of burnout and melancholy,” she says. “It was simply actually, actually robust.”

She began remedy, the place she realized, initially, the vocabulary that helped her categorical her struggles for the primary time. “Rising up in a extra conservative family inside an immigrant household,” Choi says, “we didn’t speak about psychological well being, so I didn’t know how you can speak about it… I didn’t even know that this was one thing that you simply have been supposed to speak about.”

Whereas the subject is much less taboo now, Choi notes that even at present, not all communities are fully open about it. For her half, Choi now makes psychological well being a precedence. Along with remedy, she additionally “resets” by occurring no-phone walks together with her canine and her boyfriend, and by taking 10-second “micro breaks” all through the day to examine in with herself. Scorching vinyasa yoga can also be a great way to quiet her mind. “It’s a extremely good hour the place I’m simply, like, sweating my existence out, and so you’ll be able to’t actually suppose,” she says.

One other psychological well being software? Cooking, particularly candy treats. Choi just lately partnered with the Unimaginable Egg to share the recipe for one in all her favorites, a frozen custard, and for the model’s upcoming Meant to Be Damaged marketing campaign, which she says speaks to her personal non-linear journey. “It’s about making these errors,” she says. “It’s about not seeing these as failure, however seeing all of it as classes and alternatives.”

That worry of failure was maybe the primary hurdle that stored Choi from embracing breaking. “Lastly selecting myself and selecting what was going to make me comfortable — that’s sort of been the theme of my journey to the Olympics,” she says now. “Actually digging deep and determining what it was that was stopping me and getting over that.” Now she’s heading to Paris, totally appreciative of the whole lot it took to get right here. Whether or not she comes dwelling with a medal or not, “in my eyes,” she says, “there’s no manner I can fail on the Video games.”

Earlier than you go, take a look at our favourite psychological well being apps: