Brrr-rr-r-r!
Cold day? What if, instead of turning up the heat for your whole home, you choose to warm up just your body? Play the Inside Out Game to fire up the tiny furnaces in each of your muscle cells (the mitochondria, if you want to be polysyllabic about it). Any movement will stoke the inner flame: calisthenics, jitterbugging to your favorite music, cleaning out the attic. Adding layers of clothing is another way to warm up, and another chance for playful movement. Dance and stretch as you pull the sweater over your head, or make a humorous fuss as the second layer of pants sticks to the first one. Then notice that having on more clothes makes moving a little more difficult, and behold! you’re doing even more exercise. Considering that you’re simultaneously lowering your heating bill, I’d call it a win-win version of multitasking!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Pandiculation…?!?
Yes, even pandas pandiculate, with the help of a tree. But perhaps the most accessible example is your local cat. Pandiculation is a full-bodied tensioned stretch, often with yawning, that helps your cat, and you, wake up. Short, deep and spontaneous, this luscious stretch gets your blood moving, which prepares muscles for movement. It’s effective for releasing the stiffness accumulated while being inactive or sleeping. Follow your cat’s example and enjoy its rich sensations the next time you’re en route from sleep/sedentary to up-and-at-’em. Just tense your whole body, push out your fisted arms and legs, and add a yawn for good measure. Maybe it’ll even make you purr!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Dizzy and Ditzy
Undependable balance and quirky brain function–Dizzy and Ditzy–are big topics, and this is a Tip, not a tome. Leaving the hard parts to your doctor, let’s nibble at one corner and notice that these are both possible symptoms of dehydration. Since it is suspected that 75% of the population is dehydrated, it makes me wonder how many of our aging-inspired aches and pains are simply our body asking for water? And since I know I’m one of those 75%, and maybe you are too, I cordially invite you to play a two-part water game with me. Part 1: Learn Your Baseline. How much water/fluid do you drink? For a few days, count and record your water in a way that doesn’t depend on your memory. For example, I set out my allotment, my daily goal, in three jars in the morning. Drinking something other than water is duly noted. Part 2: Raise Your Baseline. Add an extra daily cup or two over the next week. Somewhere along the path, do an online search of symptoms of dehydration, add Dizzy and Ditzy, and see if your body may be responding to being wetter. Hmmm? I wonder if yesterday’s extra water was any part of why I slept so well last night…?
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Sneaking Through The Woods
Walking without making a sound is another way to stretch your walking skills, and is how animal trackers move silently through nature. Put on your soft-soled shoes and your soft eyes and head for the woods! Place your feet silently in three parts to let yourself feel twigs or other potential noisemakers under your feet before you put weight on them. Start by placing the little toe corner softly on the ground, then roll your foot to include the big toe corner. Next, gradually add weight as you lower your heel and shift your weight. (You may notice that this very slow movement adds meditation and balance dimensions to your walk.) Start your practice on an open even path, then add challenge by walking through tall grass or the woods with their unpredictable surfaces; unevenness lets your toes practice discovering where the ground is. For visual “silence”, avoid touching nearby saplings or bushes because a small bump at the bottom of a moveable plant will make the high-up leaves wave wildly, and you will no longer be invisible!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Seasoned Feet
It’s easy to take walking for granted. One foot in front of the other, right? (Yawn!) But fall brings a seasonal change that can change your mind about that. Autumn may start out dry with fallen leaves itching to be kicked and crunched. That makes a simple walk into a dance with its own rhythm instrument. Then it’ll rain (finally). The leaves became sodden and intermittently slippery. The walk becomes more of a mindfulness dance, where consciously planted steps are best supported by slightly bent knees that support a grounded body, and treads on shoes are much appreciated. Next up are puddles, muddy or otherwise, which call for their own kind of splash dance. And just when you’re accustomed to those walking styles, you’ll get to experience winter with its ice component. No more yawning!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Breaking for Business
What can you do with those idle moments while your puppy uses her nose to check out the neighborhood Dog Blogs? Sounds like a great opportunity to stretch your calves, a self-care move that doesn't happen easily during daily activity. Here’s how: Step back with one foot, heel down, knee straight, feel the stretch in the upper calf, right below the knee. Then bend your knee and feel the delicious sensation travel down to your lower calf and ankle. Alternate between bent and straight knee as you enjoy the relief in your lower leg. Repeat on the other side. Since there is a bit of a balance challenge in this stretch, you may want to use the top of your dog’s chosen tree/post for stability. By now, maybe your puppy’s done sniffing and you’re both ready to go on with your walk, both of you feeling more satisfied. Is there an equivalent for cats? Let me know!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
What About The Other Side?
Of course, everyone has a Main side. You grab your first rattle with your preferred hand, which starts building into a habit. But what about the Other side? Is it waiting for you to give it a chance? Try it and see! As an experiment, I started doing crossword puzzles with the Other hand. The challenge: each letter has to fit in its box and be legible when the crossing word comes along. The results: my Other hand gives me awkward moments (without embarrassing consequences) and an increased appreciation for kindergartners who are starting to learn their letters. Also, without fanfare, my brain builds new neural connections in response to the new skill. Then the door of curiosity opened to look for what else was lopsided. For example, which leg goes into your pants first? Which hand habitually reaches into the silverware drawer? Which side of your teeth do you brush first? What else? How about trying the Other? (It’s probably best to explore with a sense of humor!) When you take the challenge, please let me know how it goes.
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
The One For You
What’s the best exercise in the world? The one that you’ll do! And what if that exercise style is also one that suits you EXACTLY, so it gives joy and adds to your feelings of wellbeing over time? I wish there were a magic button to push for each of us to find our One. But no. Instead, we get to do it like a treasure hunt, looking for clues of joy, then clusters of benefits. It is a search that’s worth it. Parkour anyone? Or follow the woman whose eyes glowed when she talked about bench pressing. Two months ago I found kettlebells at an excellent gym close to home–a cluster of benefits that has captured my heart and commitment. Please let me know if/when you find yours!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Breaking for Business
What can you do with those idle moments while your puppy uses her nose to check out the neighborhood Dog Blogs? Sounds like a great opportunity to stretch your calves, a self-care move that doesn't happen easily during daily activity. Here’s how: Step back with one foot, heel down, knee straight, feel the stretch in the upper calf, right below the knee. Then bend your knee and feel the delicious sensation travel down to your lower calf and ankle. Alternate between bent and straight knee as you enjoy the relief in your lower leg. Repeat on the other side. Since there is a bit of a balance challenge in this stretch, you may want to use the top of your dog’s chosen tree/post for stability. By now, maybe your puppy’s done sniffing and you’re both ready to go on with your walk, both of you feeling more satisfied. Is there an equivalent for cats? Let me know!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Everyday Squats
Squats are a thorough exercise for strengthening the back side of your body, but the front-oriented lifestyle we all live makes us neglect them. Hiding your squat practice in your daily activities is a great way to do serious exercise without feeling serious about it. Bend your knees and push out your rear to start. Then as you come up, push down into your heels and squeeze your butt muscles as you straighten your legs. It doesn’t matter how far down you squat, so it can be practiced as you take cookies out of the oven or when reaching into your bookshelf. Softening the knees (a tiny squat) can counterbalance the weight of your torso as you lean forward to brush your teeth or wash dishes. And everytime you get in and out of your chair is the classical time to use the squat deliberately. Just adding a little bit of mindfulness at those moments of lowering and raising your body can give you a great dose of exercise in disguise.
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Do The Twist!
My exercise buddies recently discovered, to our delight, how quickly and effectively dancing The Twist can amp up feelings of vitality. Will you join us? A little goes a long way, maybe even for just a couple of minutes. Serious research on YouTube reveals the rules are: 1. Wiggle hips, 2. Move knees one way, 3. Move arms the opposite way, and 4. Repeat. Yes, it’s that simple! Start out slow and gentle, build up as your body is ready, then think of ways to add movements to make it your personalized full body movement. If you want to get fancy about it, put Chubby Checker on the Victrola, and take a trip down memory lane with both your body and mind.
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Pushing the Edge
What if you wake up one morning with a new twinge in your shoulder from sleeping on it funny. Not good! A natural tendency is to hold the shoulder still so it won’t hurt. Instead, try moving it around gently, in shrugs and circles, to feel the edge of your comfort, where the hurting starts. Practice moving your shoulder to explore the information it has for you. Discover where you feel a gentle tugging sensation just short of pain. Very gently, probe around and sense the shape of that borderline space. Then relax and breathe. Revisiting and exploring your shoulder throughout the day will allow your shoulder muscles to gradually re-decide to release the resistance that was causing the pain. This pattern can also be applied to older aches and pains, maybe even turning around long-held body limitations. Expand your range of motion. Expand your strength. Expand your flexibility. Every expansion includes feeling better!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Chortles and Titters and Grins, oh my!
There are many very serious and provable things that can be said about the physical and emotional benefits of laughter. And you can confirm all that left-brain analytical stuff by noticing what happens in your body when you choose to laugh. It’s easiest to laugh if something’s funny, but you also get the benefit by laughing in a “fake it till you make it” way. There are so many ways to set yourself off. There’s endless comic material available if we choose to laugh at ourselves. Play with raising your Guffaw Quotient by collecting and using your personal funnybone ideas and jokes. Pick your favorite and give yourself the very somber assignment of working yourself up the Titter Scale: move through grin, chuckle, snicker and giggle, all the way up to shriek, snort, whoop, scream and roar. Maybe you’ll even discover the experience of being in stitches, rolling in the aisles, or splitting your sides! And it’s all in the name of improving your health, oh my!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Practical Brain Building
What if you’ve accumulated a whole wad of errands? (Perhaps, like me, you put things off in the heat.) And, of course, you want to do them as efficiently and effectively as possible. So you start to collect a list, adding to it as you think of even more things. Next comes sorting–putting everything in a logical (efficient) order, and maybe combining things. The final preparation is to think it all through, item by item, collecting what’s needed–the keys, the coupon, the shopping bags. Then off you go, enjoying all those (effective) completions. Meanwhile, all this prepping is giving you a quiet bonus. Making a list and checking it twice turns out to be an excellent way to build your brain. Imagination, especially with added movement, builds new neural pathways which means richer mental capacity. Rehearsing and adding details makes the benefit even bigger. And the final reward is that a well-planned project goes smoother, with greater capacity to handle whatever comes up along the way. Multitasking at its very finest!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Surprise Your Mouth!
On the subject of toothpaste pros and cons, my whimsical friend told me she keeps three kinds on hand, grabbing them at random so she can surprise her mouth! How about shaking up a routine day by turning that cute idea into a game for the other senses? Try closing your eyes and opening one of your spice jars–can your nose figure out which one it is? What about tying a scarf over your eyes and exploring the depths of your closet with your fingertips? Or squeeze your eyes shut and put your face in front of a fan, listening carefully to all the nuances of sound made by that artificial wind. Hmmm, these examples all bypass seeing. I wonder how much using our eyes takes away surprise?
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
A Bow, a Curtsy and a Helping Hand
Up and down all day. Moving around is what life is about, or are you making it harder by hurting your back at the same time? It’s easy, when picking up a dropped sock, to lean over at the waist, doing a bow, which makes your lower back take the stress of holding up your bent-over torso as well as returning to upright. How to prevent that distress? Turn that bow into a back-friendly curtsy by bending your knees, even a bit. You can give your back even more relief by placing your hand or bent forearm on your knees as a triangulating prop. Then pick up the sock with your other hand, walk both hands up your thighs and Presto! you’re upright with sock in hand and a happy back!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
A Tree is a Tree
Feed your curiosity and give your senses a treat by examining your environment in a new way. Because of my love of plants, I especially find trees a perfect object for sensory practice. One view of trees is that they are lollipop- or triangle-shaped, like we drew them in kindergarten. Maybe that’s so, maybe not. Just for fun, pick a tree. First, look at your tree from a distance. How closely does it match the lollipop/triangle mindset? Now, stand beside your chosen tree, and look up the trunk into the branches. Do the branches go evenly out from the trunk like spokes of a bicycle wheel? Or does your tree somehow vary from that stereotype? Do the branches call you to climb up? How does the foliage look from the bottom? Then close your eyes and notice your other senses. How does the bark feel? How does it smell today? What temperature touches your skin? Finally, take a deep breath, step back and notice if/how your tree has changed for you.
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
For the Birds
When the conversation goes to bird watching, my woeful/embarrassing ignorance makes me fall silent. I have never figured out how to see those little beings in their big camouflaging world, let alone cipher their features into a name. Luckily someone suggested the idea of listening for bird songs. Hooray! A new way to go at it! On my next walk, I listened, and also tried (badly) to mimic the sound. Besides the delight of it, I also received the benefit of having my attention shift from the omnipresent annoying sounds of the nearby freeway and the ringing in my ears. Then there was the unseen benefit of building new neural pathways in my brain, which has never before been challenged that way. Do you have a stuck place that can benefit from a different sense? How about joining me in playfully trying it? (Or maybe you want to add more structure to your observations by using the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s free Merlin app, which can help with attaching a name to your observations.) And who knows, maybe the closed door of birding has now been cracked open…maybe?
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Cross Pattern? What’s That?
Babies crawl that way, wild and domestic cats and dogs (and many other animals) move that way. Elite athletes run that way. You can walk that way too! “Cross patterning” means advancing one leg together with the opposite arm (or paw). Then repeat on the other side. For humans with two feet on the ground, it means swinging your opposite arm forward as you take a step. Even though you tend to do it naturally, it doesn’t happen if you’re carrying a load. Besides being stimulatingly rhythmic, cross patterned walking builds the bridge connecting the two hemispheres of your brain, which helps thinking happen in a more integrated way. To strengthen this skill, walk around with an exaggerated arm swing, checking that your arms move about the same amount. Or try marching while tapping your opposite fingers on your raised knee. Oh, how about skipping with arms flying!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.
Grapevine Away!
Strengthening leg muscles, an important ingredient in building balance, means working your legs in all directions. In walking, running, biking, and most other life activities, legs move forward and backward. Doing the Grapevine adds strength to the sides of your legs, rounding out their strength. Here's how it works: Moving to the right, step sideways with the right foot. Still moving right, step behind with the left foot. Take another right step with your right foot, and then bring the feet together by tapping the left toe beside your standing right foot. It's four steps, and the words you can say to accompany the steps are "Side, Behind, Side, Tap". Repeat in the other direction. Stabilize with your hands on the edge of the kitchen counter or the bars in the hall if needed. Once you catch on to the pattern, you just might feel like you're dancing instead of giving yourself a good workout!
Suggestion from Mariah Kaye, Senior Fitness Specialist, offering more fitness choices through MoveAnyWayFitness.com.