It was about 9 years ago that I first found out about alignment, movement and a different way of looking at how my body works; thinking less”my body doesn’t work” to “my body can work I just need to change how I use it”
I have become really passionate about it but along the way I have made myself feel guilty and ashamed that I don’t move enough, don’t walk enough, don’t exercise enough. Many of my mentors talk about this a lot – how so many people can get fixated on doing it right and setting themselves over high standards.
Fitness and exercise is often associated with ‘feeling the burn’, pushing yourself to the max, straining for that last repetition or those last few minutes. But it doesn’t have to be like that to see achievements. You can do just as much if you are more gentle on yourself, be aware of when your body needs to stop and rest and know that if you try and overdo it that your body will make compensations that could result in injury over time.
Better is to find ways of adding extra movement into your day that makes it easy and you don’t necessarily have to set up some special time for exercise.
This is where creating a way to do calf stretches while you go about kitchen jobs, or sitting on the floor so that you have to get up and down more and are more encouraged to change positions regularly.
A great quote I heard from Lauren Ohayen from Restore Your Core is ‘The best move you make is the next move you make’ – meaning moving more and not allowing yourself to stay static in one position is really important. It’s less about ergonomics (how can I hold myself in the correct position for long periods of time, but instead, how many positions can I move into whilst reading a book, typing, watching tv.
Walking is really important, how much more can you include into yoru life and how to achieve this?
There are the simple everyday ones like getting off the bus a stop early, parking further away from the shop. But it can be hard to motivate yourself to get out in the darker, colder months, especially if you have children and you have to find motivation for them too. Can you create a walking group with friends? I have seen this interesting article about walking book clubs, how else could you include a walk where you’d normally be sitting? Walking meetings? Walking networking? You could create foraging groups or a bird watching group, I could go on.
Children walk better with other children so maybe rather than meeting in a soft play area you could go out for a walk instead (save soft play for those really wet days).
My achievements so far have been to set up a walking group for our home education community, so people can find others to walk with and taking advantage of another parent who has set up an outdoor sports meeting once a week. It’s been interesting to see how much mine and my children’s moods have improved for just getting out twice this week (and I know that it’s better for my mood but so easy to just sit in front of the fire and read a book (watch tv) instead.
If you like a challenge why not have a look at the walk 1000 miles in a year challenge.