Move

How Often Do YOU Move Your Body?

These are the questions I ask my clients…

Personally, my motivation is the challenge of various poses in yoga that I continue to practice and play at, making me feel like a kid again at this ripe age of 43. The playfulness of upside down and twisty poses I find amusing and fun. The joy I gain from gardening, walking around my property, going for family bike rides and hiking in the beauty of Tasmanians natural environment.

These types of movement slows my mind, gives me the motivation to breathe deeply, improves my circulation, increases my strength, endurance and flexibility. I aim to move daily, and I find that if I miss too many days of daily stretching or regular movement, my body starts to complain through aches and pains.

I may aim to encourage everyone to practice yoga or move in nature, as I personally find this therapeutic. But what type of movement is right for you? Is it Aerobic? Strength training? Flexibility? Balance? Do you need weights, elastic bands, props to assist your movement? Do you have restrictions? Injuries, chronic health issues, disability, joint pain, lack of time, social and or personal insecurities or just as simple as low self-confidence or self-doubt? Or is it just no motivation to move?

What your body needs and what you want or what your motivation is to move if any, can be completely different things. There is no, one size fits all and therefore how you move, where and when should be individually suited to your body and what is beneficial to your needs.

Your motivation or reason why you move should be because it brings you joy, fun, ease and makes you feel good. Not because your loving partner, family and/or friend told you, that you need to for health reasons, or you felt the need to suddenly fit into those swimmers for summer. If you feel good upon moving regularly, you will look good.

Sudden (acute) excessive and/or intensive exercise can peak your cortisol levels (high stress), which can lead to inflammation, injury, suppressed immune function and abdominal weight gain. Yes, weight gain!! Once your strength, endurance and overall fitness increases overtime, you can gradually increase the intensity of your movement. Only because your body craves it, or that you find this challenging and fun.

As we age our muscles start to deteriorate and our focus in our movement should incorporate strength or resistance for our muscle maintenance and production. This is detrimental as our muscles stabilise our joints, posture, balance, supports our heart health, manages our weight, increases mitochondrial turnover (energy powerhouse for our cells) and maintains our energy levels.

Restrictions may increase as we age, preventing movement, but if we can identify these blocks, we can discover new ways to move or modify the way we move, particularly focused on strengthening our muscles. Yet, again finding movement that is motivated by fun, the challenge and the love of what that movement brings.

To in the end…feel good in your mind body and soul!