Self-Care #3 -- Move Your Body

 

Self-Care # 3

Move Your Body

“When it comes to health and wellness, moving your body regularly is about as close to a magic potion as you can get.”  - adapted from a quote by Nhat Hanh

In an effort to not add additional stress to your life, I’m not going to use the E-word in this post!  However, I cannot stress enough how important it is to move your body in times of stress.  Your best options right now are bending, stretching and walking (outside, by yourself, if possible).   No equipment needed. Some wellness experts recommend that you do some movement before 10 a.m. for maximum benefit.  After you do your wake up breathing practice take note of any place that is stiff or achy. Those would be the places to focus your bending and stretching.  Forward bends, twisting at the waist, shoulder rolls, knee bends, toe raises, and side bends would be appropriate.  If that isn’t enough to get you breathing a little faster and increase your heart rate a little; you can do more repetitions, do them faster, or add some jogging in place.

Throughout your day, take a pause, either at a regular break time or when you are feeling stressed/ overwhelmed.  Do a full body scan to find those stiff and achy parts then bend and stretch again with those spots in mind.  When my 86 year old, active farmer Dad found himself confined to the house and his knees were getting stiff, he did knee bends every morning in front of the kitchen stove while he cooked his breakfast eggs. Find opportunities like that to fit movement into your day.  Here is a personal example:  I’m not bugging my landlord to get my garage door opener fixed because I get some extra movement by getting out of the car to open the garage and the bending and stretching I do to open and close it actually feels good. I’m a farm kid who had to open and shut the gate anytime we left the farm! 

 If you want to include the kids in some movement activities, I recommend Bari Koral’s You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh6hKQmd775g6Nd0xi4lT5_qttNTKRVCq

My daughter, who is a massage therapist, sees a lot of people from 25 year olds to over 60, who have limited range of motion, poor muscle tone, and a lot of pain.  She says a lot of it is preventable if you make it a habit to move your body every day. So get moving! Walk, run, dance, bend, stretch.

 A movement habit to practice whether you are a home child care provider or a parent working from home: get up, get dressed and put on your shoes.  This will help in case you have to deal with an emergency (you have to evacuate your home or the dog escapes) and kitchen accidents (you break a glass, drop a knife or hot liquids).  It also allows you to take advantage of extra minutes that may pop up in your schedule to walk around the block or take the kids to the mailbox or run across the lawn.  All movement counts!  For more information about developing habits like “getting dressed to the shoes” and incorporating daily movement into your schedule here is a website to explore: http://www.flylady.net/d/habits-of-the-month/february/ .  This site is about home-organization based on habits and routines. It is based on the book” Side-tracked Home Executives” by Pam Young and Peggy Jones that I recommended in my first post in this series.