Create a Balanced Exercise Program

Many people approach exercise from a fight or flight survival approach.  No blame, this is our current education model.  I watched chickens the other day.  One dominate chicken, when it came time to receive food, pushed all the other chicken out of the way.  In essence the dominate chicken was a bully.  This dominate chicken is living from a pure survival mechanism in the brain which was established by a older evolutionary part of our brain.  Not bad, just out dated. 

Creating a balanced exercise program is all about the Approach, Process and Recovery.  If one of these is off, then we will not experience exercise as beneficial and we will be less likely to enjoy and maintain an active lifestyle.  

The 'Approach' is our warm up or how we begin to sense our body in motion.  Listening to the parts and how they are coordinated together. Sensing our areas of tension or weakness.  What parts of us are playing and which parts are out to lunch? Are we having a fun experiencing of our strength and ability to move and challenging ourselves? Or are we beating ourselves up, programing more self defeating thoughts and creating more suffering?

The 'Process' is the choice of what exercise we do, why we do it and how.   The choice of what exercise to do is the beginning of creating a completely personalized program that is like a fingerprint, total unique.  A balanced, truly, personalized exercise program is based on how you feel first and for most.  Run experiments.  Do a movement, notice the results.  If the movement is done well you will be able to notice the benefit. Aches and pains are not normal, they are signs and symptoms that something is wrong.  We all know lots of exercise "moves" but what do they do?  Slow down and notice your journey before its too late.  

The 'Recovery' is where we analyze the results of our exercise. Integrating and balancing the tensional matrix of our body back to a feeling of relaxed whole-ness .  This includes reestablishing parasympathetic function with breath and stillness, stretches, foam rolling, dynamic integrated movements like Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, and Tai Chi/Qi Gong.

Have Fun finding your Kinesthetic Delight!

Wendy Woods