How To Make Healthy Movement Part of Your Day

As a yoga teacher, I’m concerned about healthy movement on the mat. This means movement that’s focused on working the body in a healthy way, without taking it to extremes. Sometimes, I speak to students who desire to have a great deal of flexibility. In these cases, I share with them the idea that muscle health often lies somewhere in the mid-range, meaning somewhere between both “strength” and “stretch.” This confuses people because often what people think is that they need to be more flexible to ease muscle pain and tension.

In some cases this is true but it’s hardly a hard and fast rule. Healthy muscles that support the body through movement and at rest need to have a good balance between flexibility and strength. Ask anyone who has a LOT of mobility in their joints (sometimes from overuse and sometimes it’s a clinical condition) and they’ll share stories of how this increased mobility presents challenges. The idea that we need to be highly flexible comes in part, from a lack of understanding of anatomy and also social media images that highlight fancy yoga poses where you need a great deal of flexibility to do them.

As a teacher, I made it my passion long ago to teach with a focus on anatomy so I have lots of conversations with students like this. However, I’m also concerned and passionate about showing students how to move healthy OFF the mat as well. Let’s face it; they’re off the mat a lot more than they’re in my classes!

So, to help, I created a presentation which I gave at my live wellness event, “The Bare Bones Yoga Urban Wellness Weekend” which was January 12 and 13th, 2019 and I walked the attendees through the anatomy, the logic and the philosophy I have about showing people how to “move smarter” by understanding not only how the mechanics of the body works but sharing some of these approaches I’m describing here.

To watch the presentation in webinar format, click here. 

Now, a few things: 

• My next live wellness event like this, The Bones Yoga Urban Wellness Weekend” will actually be a ONE DAY format and is Saturday October 5th. Details on the speaker line up and overall format are coming soon but it will be similar to what I offered before with different topics at the presentations, of course. So, if you missed the prior event OR loved the UWW two day event you attended, great! Just email me to be on a special list of people I’ll alert as soon as the Urban Wellness Saturday opens for registration. Email me here.
• If you live in or near Boston, I AM holding two workshops in February and March and you can see those offerings here on my Events Page.

Thanks for reading and please leave a comment with your thoughts!