MOVE DAILY
Overview
The basics of movement is the focus of this article. We've included brief descriptions and some videos to support you exploring movement practices that can support you living happy and healthy.
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We've chosen a few movement practices to discuss, yet there are far many more you can explore too. Enjoy!
Fitness & Strength Training
Fitness is your current state of health and well-being. Physical fitness is achieved through proper diet and hydration, moderate-vigorous physical exercise, and sufficient rest to allow your body to recover and enhance your physical abilities.
Put simply, strength training is doing exercises designed to improve strength and endurance. When done properly, strength training can provide significant functional benefits and improvements to your overall health and well-being.
30-Minute Bodyweight Workout
1) Watch this video to learn proper form.
2) Then do the work out in this video.
Other Workouts
Yoga
Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices. Thought to have originated around 3,000 BCE in the Indus Valley, yoga’s original context was spiritual development practices meant to train the body and mind to self observe and become aware of their own nature.
There are now many types of yoga. In the US and most Western cultures we are primarily familiar with hatha yoga or yoga as an exercise consisting of a variety of poses or postures. Here's a glimpse of just a few of the yoga styles offered today:
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Hatha—excellent for beginners and advanced practitioners alike.
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Vinyasa—typically comprised of a series of poses that flow together, creating a sequence that is repeated. You may do more than one sequence in a class.
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Bikram—a series of 26 poses performed on 90 minutes in a sauna-like room.
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Iyengar—a practice of precision that focuses on quality of movement and utilizes props and blocks. Iyengar is often better suited for the elderly and those with movement restrictions.
Qigong
Qigong originated in China over 4,000 years ago. The term qigong translates into English as “life energy cultivation.” You can think of it as a moving meditation. Like yoga, there are many different qigong traditions. Despite the wide variety of qigong options, at their heart they are all a system of coordinated slow-flowing body movements and postures coupled with deep rhythmic breathing and meditation to produce positive physiological and psychological effects.
Stretching
Stretching is a form of physical exercise in which a specific muscle or tendon—or a group of muscles and tendons—is deliberately flexed or stretched in order to improve the muscle's felt elasticity and achieve more comfortable muscle tone. The result is a feeling of increased muscle control, flexibility, and range of motion.
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There are two main forms of stretching: passive and active. Most of us are most familiar with passive stretching. Passive stretching is applying a force to a muscle or area of the body, allowing that area to lengthen over time as we stretch. While passive stretching can be useful in certain situations—like recovering from an injury when you cannon stretch on your own—most of us will get more benefit from active stretching.
Active stretching is just what it sounds like. You are actively moving one of your muscle groups to stretch a targeted muscle or muscle group. Active stretching uses more than one muscle group so it is also often called dynamic stretching.
The next movement and breathing technique we discuss, Foundation Training, incorporates dynamic stretching.
Foundation Training
Developed in 2010 by Dr. Eric Goodman, Foundation Training is a series of body weight based movements and postures designed to reinforce your body’s natural movement patterns.
Foundation Training combines a deep breathing technique—called decompression breathing—with intentional muscular tension and movements generated int the primary joints (hips, shoulders, and knees) to return the body easily to a naturally strong homeostasis.
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Practicing Foundation Training's intentional movement and breathing, most folks experience significant pain reduction, more body-wide comfort, and more strength.
