"Lighten up” — both figuratively and literally — was the message of the day for those taking part in the Third Annual Women’s Health & Fitness Expo held Oct. 22 at the Lautenberg Family JCC in Whippany.

Keynote speaker Dr. Meredith Drench told the audience of about 75 about the importance of accentuating the positive.

“We all have flaws,” she said. “The trick is to capitalize on those imperfections.”

She offered several tips for a “healthy state of mind,” including making efforts to confront one’s fears, “worry less, if at all,” and “keep things in perspective.”

The program — sponsored by JCC MetroWest, the MetroWest Jewish Health & Healing Center, The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, and the Jewish Family Service of MetroWest — included breakout sessions that provided samples of such regimens as yoga, tai chi, meditation, and posture fitness. The expo also featured health screenings, including for blood pressure, bone density, and chiropractic assessment.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation presented a program on breast cancer prevention.

The health and fitness expo gets better every year, said Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu, director of the MetroWest Health and Healing Center.

The audience was a mix of “a number of people who are coming to try things out as well as those who want to learn something new from the keynote speaker and breakout session,” Sirbu said. “Every breakout session has classes starting within two weeks of the expo, so they’re encouraged to sign up and continue with their exercises.”

During her talk, Drench discussed healthy approaches to self-criticism. “No one is right 100 percent of the time,” she said. “What you call ‘mistakes’ may be opportunities to grow.”

Following her presentation, Drench told NJ Jewish News, “We talked about identifying your inner critic, the messages we give ourselves that sometimes can strengthen us and support us and at other times perpetuate the myth of what we can’t do, all kinds of defeatist behavior that it would reinforce. Once we hear the critic, we can identify the criticism, the words that rob us of our confidence and our ability to solve problems.”

“Once we hear where the critic comes from and identify [it],” Drench said in her keynote address, “we can silence the critic, if it [involves] writing a ‘negative thought journal’ or saying ‘stop’ when you begin to have negative thoughts. Then, since nature loves a void, we need to fill it with something. If we silence the critic, we can reprogram our inner tapes” to be more self-supportive.

Drench, a native of Rockaway Township now residing in Rhode Island, said she adjusted the message of her presentation to accommodate the wide range of ages of the women in the audience.

With an older audience, for example, she spends a good deal of time speaking about loss, she said.

Losses suffered by younger people are different, she told NJJN, “maybe one here, one there, but the older you get, the losses intensify, the volume picks up.”

She acknowledged the impact of such events on mental health. “I’m not saying you should use a ‘don’t worry, be happy’ philosophy…but sometimes it helps to start with a facade [of well-being]; it becomes a habit and then it will ring more true as the skill develops.

“For those people, I would talk more about how to look at your assets versus liabilities, because the liabilities are there, you can’t change them, you can’t ignore them. It could be arthritis, it could be heart problems, it could be Parkinson’s” or other problems associated with growing older.

Older women “may lose the ability to stay in their family home for all these years and move into a facility that will aid and assist them more in their life,” said Drench. “So they’re not only giving up their physical home and all the things about them, but their sense of freedom and control. It’s a very major issue.”

Expo cosponsors were Morristown Jewish Center Beit Yisrael; Adat Israel Congregation, Boonton; Temple B’nai Abraham, Livingston; Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex, Caldwell; Temple Shalom, Succasunna; White Meadow Temple, Rockaway; the Morristown chapter and the Northern NJ Region of Hadassah; the Women’s Department of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ; and the National Council of Jewish Women, Essex County Section.