Six Best Exercises You Never Heard Of
June 7, 2011
As a young dancer training in ballet and modern dance, I didn’t think much about longevity. My body was my musical instrument, and I figured if I got it polished and kept it tuned, it would last me a good long time. Now, at 58, I’m still a performer, dancing with Mountain View’s Academy of Danse Libre, the nation’s leading vintage ballroom dance company and doing a dozen shows a year – some in high heels!
Valerie and Academy of Danse Libre dancing a Ragtime era Maxixe
As a movement coach and educator working with the mind-body connection, I study and teach movement to everyone from little children to the fragile elderly. Along the way I’ve learned some very unique longevity secrets that have helped me and many others to feel great, avoid injuries, relieve pain, and stay active. Here are some of my favorites – some may surprise you!
Stretch in Bed. This most basic full-body yawn is the best exercise you can do before you get up in the morning (or even at night). Babies and animals do it naturally, and so should we. Just flex and stretch this way and that, slowly and lightly at first. Reach in front of yourself, over your head. Fold your knees over your chest and curl up, then stretch your heels away from your fingertips. Wake up the muscles to support the bones, so those first steps out of bed are secure enough to avoid a stumble or fall.
Go to Hawaii. Drain tension and improve posture that’s cramped from too much desk our couch time with a free Hawaiian holiday via dynamic imagery. Sit or stand comfortably with bare feet on the ground. Close your eyes and imagine warm sand beneath your feet. Wiggle your toes, heels and arches in the delicious warmth. Take a deep breath and notice that right behind you is a warm waterfall, splashing softly on your shoulders and down your back. Nestle into that water flow and allow your shoulders to drop into the downward streaming flow of the water. Take another breath and observe your tension drain away as you exhale. Stay there on the beach as long as you like. When you are ready to return from your holiday, just gently open your eyes. You may need to brush some sand from your toes!
Relax your Jaw. Many of us carry tension in our throat, neck, and jaw that can cause headaches, dental and health problems, and wrinkles. Finding a neutral posture for your tongue is a surprisingly effective release for your jaw and throat. Place the top of your tongue lightly up against the roof of your mouth, with the tip of your tongue touching the back of your upper teeth. As you relax into this posture you will notice an immediate release of your jaw tension. Remind yourself to practice this while you are doing your regular exercise or anytime you might be straining.
Lift your Face. Ancient wisdom meets modern exercise with facial yoga that eliminates the need for plastic surgery while building tone and expressive mobility to our faces. Here’s a simple fix. For a sagging throat or jawline, place your tongue in its neutral position, lift the chin, and press upwards with the tongue on the roof of the mouth for several seconds, release, and repeat several times.
Respect your Feet. Ever hear the expression, “My dogs are barking?” Keep your pups quiet and happy with daily attention of movement, imagery, and grooming. My friend, the dancer/choreographer Sybil Shearer (who died at the youthful age of 95!) had a daily practice of circling every bone in her body, slowly, this way and that. While sitting or standing, extend your leg and very slowly and lightly circle your foot around your ankle a few times. Change feet, repeat, and reverse. Try circling just your big toe, or middle toe. Point and flex your foot. Take your foot in your hand and give it a little massage at both the arches, under the toes and under the length of the foot. Make space between the bones with your fingers, then quietly stand. Sensing the connection to the ground through the soles of your feet will help you maintain your balance, posture, and mobility as the years go by.
Dance every day. Music and movement harmonize the energy fields of the body. So turn up the music and just move. You don’t even need a partner. You’ll release those feel-good endorphins, your body will wake up in a new way, and you’ll have renewed energy as well as a boost to your fitness program. If you can’t dance, who’s to know? Run with music, walk with music, sing or hum along. Even if you’re moving to your own drummer, it’s dancing. So, let’s face the music and dance!
Valerie Baadh Garrett, Founder and President, Agile Aging LLC
Valerie is a movement coach, speaker, and Spacial Dynamics® practitioner working in the San Francisco Bay Area.
For more information on the ideas and programs mentioned, please visit:
Men are different. A young woman in one of my seminars retorted, “That’s sexist!” when I made that statement. Well, no. It’s true. Men are different than women. While it’s maybe foolish to make generalizations, that one is true. We heard it from you, too, at our recent workshops on New Sensory Activities for Alzheimer’s and Dementia. “Can you help us with meaningful activities, especially for the men?” Yes.
Meaningful Work in Carpentry
Men need different activities than women, to engage and interest them, help them feel productive, and to interact with the world. Men identify themselves with their work, their career – as much or more than women do – and when that stage of life is over and retirement is upon them, hanging around the house doesn’t suit them. (Just ask their wives!) Where do they go? The garage, the pub, the shed. Why, and what can we, caregivers of the elderly, learn there?
The garage is full of stuff, pieces of stuff, large and small. Worn furniture, tools, parts of projects, things to repair, half-used spirits, paints, garden supplies – objects that were useful and now, maybe not. The garage (or shed) is full of items collected over the years, associated memories, and a sense of the continuity of time. It’s a safe place to putter, to sit and think, to work on hobbies or create new dreams. It’s a space of one’s own. As time goes by, the elder man may live in a group home or residential community. Just how does he find space for himself among the living rooms, foyers, and dining room that he must share with many others, especially lots of women?
If he’s finished with his career, and has lost his safe space, what can help build a man’s sense of himself? If movement makes the man, then meaningful movement, connected to life, can help him connect – to himself, others, and the community. When we think historically of “men’s work”, we think of farming, building, forging, animal husbandry – important, practical and valued work from our hands and bodies, for our basic needs as a culture. Can we get creative, and re-create these essential and valued movement activities for today’s men, especially as they age?
The “Men’s Shed” movement in Britain and Australia can teach us a lot, and give us inspiration to adapt new spaces in our retirement homes and care communities to meet the special needs of the men we love and care for as they age. A men’s shed is a designated place for older men to gather, meet, and work together on community projects. Carpentry, woodworking, metalworking, and crafting are shared activities in these community spaces.
How can you create one? If space allows, a full-size out-building of a small or large shed, garage, or barn is ideal. In small spaces, a designated table or corner within an existing structure or activity area can suffice with work surfaces and materials that can allow sorting, sanding, simple project-building, and sharing a tall tale or two while “shouldering” or just sitting in companionship with others.
Shouldering is a verb I made up to describe the familiar experience of sitting, standing, walking, or working side by side with another person. If you’ve had teenagers in your life, you may have found that some of the best conversations you’ve had together happened during car rides. If you’ve needed to have a difficult or delicate conversation with someone, you may have invited him or her to take a walk with you. Why? That sitting/standing/walking side by side allows free conversation without the intensity of facing one another and looking (and being looked at) directly. It’s less personal, and so we may feel a bit more free, less inhibited, in speaking out loud.
For many men, putting their shoulders together side-by-side into a practical work project allows companionship and socialization in a comfortable, non-threatening way.
How To Implement a Men’s Club or Men’s Shed Program
Schedule it. Put it on your Activity or Community Calendar, and find a space to designate for shouldering activities.
Plan it. Additional themes of sports, cars, politics, geography, machinery, inventions, games, history add spice and new flavors to the mix.
Man it. Find a male staff member or volunteer to facilitate the sessions if possible.
Make it meaningful. In Gloucestershire, England, a men’s shed project for men over 5o to refurbish tools to be sent to Africa was sponsored by a local charity wanting to engage retired men who are at risk of isolation. Within our own communities, we can be inspired to create toys for children or animals, garden planters and risers, small stools. For those with dementia, provide a safe environment that allows sorting of materials, interesting and unusual containers and lids, and safe tools and materials to handle, build, and wrap with.
Make it green. Consider natural materials to enrich and engage the senses. Raw wood, cloth, sheep’s wool, sandpaper, soil, plants all contribute to sense of touch, smell, sight, self-movement, vitality – essential for healthy living and aging.
For more information on Men’s Sheds, visit this link.
Good luck, and let us know how it goes!
Valerie Baadh Garrett
Agile Aging
The Mind’s Eye – Imagery for Wellness
May 4, 2010
You are standing on the warm sands of a beach in Hawaii, looking out over the gentle waves. Underneath your toes you feel the sand, and when you look down, you see that the sand is a beautiful pale green. As you step forward into the small foamy wavelet, your toes leave tiny prints in the wet sand. The water is warm, and the waves are very gentle. You enter the water to your ankles, to your knees, and feel the warmth penetrate your skin, your muscles, to your very bones. The water reaches your waist, and you hover there, enjoying the buoyancy. You take two more steps, and the water softly rises to your breastbone, to your heart. Your arms float gently, effortlessly, across the top of the water. You are poised, balanced, suspended lightly on your feet, sensing the slow ebb and flow of the watery forces around and even through you…
This experience is an example of an image I often use with clients and classes to create warmth, balance, and ease. It works, but just how?
Imagery is the art and science of creating imaginations or visualizations. It is often used as “mental practice” or “mental rehearsal” by athletes and performers, and by others learning or practicing a new skill. Imagery along with physical practice has been shown to increase success in performing a movement or sequence of actions by up to 35%, whether you are a car mechanic putting together an engine, or an Olympic skater preparing for competition.
For those recovering from serious illness or trauma, imagery can be a powerful tool for health and healing. Studies of stroke patients using “motor imagery” have pointed to significant benefits, with imagery being viewed as a “back door” to accessing the body through the mind. Stroke patients have been helped with walking, other activities of daily life (ADLs), and in using robotic limbs, all through the power of their imaging.
Consistently, patients who worked with imagery in addition to physical therapy or movement practice showed greatest improvements. Likewise, people with severe pain have been found to benefit from “graded motor imagery” – imagery practiced with movement in a sequential progression. Studies of patients with spinal cord injuries show possible benefits, while those of Parkinson’s Disease patients are controversial (some are helped, some not). Other areas of applications of imagery for healing include asthma, heart disease, and cancer as well as substance abuse.
For seniors and caregivers of the elderly, the news is also good. Imagery has been shown to be valuable in improving balance and stability, two important factors in maintaining mobility and preventing falls.
Using our imaginations is not just pretending. Our bodies often can’t tell the difference between an actual experience or an imagination of one. Studies show that our nerves respond to our imaging as though we are actually doing the activity, to a degree. That means that the movements are actually practiced by the body, without the body moving. And, when we practice imagery along with actual movement, we get more practice and build new and stronger pathways. For example, an imagery and strength study by the Cleveland Clinic showed that strength improved 35% for the group that used imagery together with strength training versus the group that did strength training only!
For our general health, we can using imagery to create calm, energy, or healing responses. We can also use vivid imaginative pictures to give direction and changes of quality to our movements. Eric Franklin, who has developed an extensive practice in imagery called the Franklin Method®, offers imaginations for dancers and others to activate new gestures in the way a movement is done. We can imagine our arms as wings, our knees as springs. Jaimen McMillan, founder of the Spacial Dynamics® approach to movement education and movement therapy, uses imagery in simple, profound exercises that help to heal the emotional and physical body, with very practical applications as well. For example, while chopping carrots, rather than pushing down on the knife one can imagine a magnet on the other side of the cutting board, drawing the knife downwards. Instead of strain, one feels ease.
In my Agile Aging – Senior Wellness program, imagery is a vital component. Every “exercise” is actually a movement sequence or activity AND imagery. Rather than the mechanical “turn the head this way and that,” one follows the arc of a rainbow from this side to the other, for example. This approach takes time and practice, both to teach and to learn to follow and build the inner pictures, but the benefits of imagery are huge. It’s fun, it’s colorful, it’s connected to pleasant experiences in nature, and it’s effective. One elderly participant described a situation when she almost fell while walking her little dog. “But just as I started to lose my balance I remembered [a specific image from the class] and it worked! I stumbled a few steps but I didn’t fall!”
By using the mind’s eye, the body and soul can move in new and stronger ways – to enhance a feeling of well-being, maintain strength and mobility, emphasize our connection to nature, and give suggestions for a new approach to moving through all the days of our lives – with confidence and ease.
Now, back to our green sand beach and stress-free Hawaiian holiday – in our imagination, of course!
Valerie Baadh Garrett
Visit me at http://www.agileaging.org
References
Cowan, T, Fallon, S, McMillan, J. Healing the emotional body from The Fourfold Path to Healing, 2004, pp 41-86, 363-422, New Trends Publishing.
Dickstein R, Deutsch JE. Motor imagery in physical therapist practice. Phys Ther. 2007;87:942–953.
Franklin, E. Dance Imagery for technique and performance. 1996, HumanKinetics.
Arthritis and the Mind – A Holistic Approach to Healing
February 4, 2010
Hip Pain is Hot!
The hip ache starts when I’m 52. I’m tossing and turning at night, trying to get comfortable, like a rotisserie chicken. First, on my belly, then my side, then my back, then the other side, and the turning starts again. My husband teases me that I’m cycling all night, but he’s not laughing. Finally, there’s relief with a pillow between my knees, and I fall into a deep sleep.
Arthritis. Who, me?
I managed to keep fit enough to still be a high school PE teacher in my 50s. I first notice the aching hip after an occasional ballet class. My strength seems OK, my flow and balance are still there, but something is weakening in the joints, something I only notice at night.
This was my first serious sensation of aging. Sure, I’ve had grey – rather, silver – strands for a long time now, and real wrinkles join my laugh lines along with that nasty jowly sag I hate. But this ache in my hip was not vanity, this was palpable pain. It hurt and disturbed my already fitful sleep and I wanted it gone, now.
So I began to study my movements in general and the field of arthritis medicine in particular. This is what I learned.
• The body doesn’t last forever. Bones thin, muscles atrophy, strength fades, even for me.
• Our own individual movement patterns, including poor posture, can and will create stress and strain (as well as strength and stability) that can actively break the body down, over time. The longer we live, the longer time we have to be healthy, and, yes, the longer time to become decrepit. Our lifestyle choices help determine our fate. It’s a constant work in progress, to keep active and fit, and to delay the decay.
• Arthritis can have many causes. Mine, I felt, was from a lifetime of dance, training my “turnout” and straining the hip joint. New studies show that, after 45, excessive exercise (emphasis on “excessive”) can cause arthritis. Even wearing athletic shoes as regular footwear increases the likelihood of arthritis in the knees!
• Arthritis is painful. As we age, we lose the fluid and movable space between the bones at the joints, and the bone rubbing against bone causes pain, swelling, stiffness and, ultimately, limited mobility. Limited mobility is bad and leads to, well, death.
• Pain medication is available. From herbal remedies and rubs to serious narcotics, folks will use whatever works to give relief. What works for me? What’s the most helpful yet healthful?
As a movement therapist, I began to look at these phenomena. What can I actively do to heal the current problem, correct it and anything like it that may arise in the future? What if I consciously began to move, sit and stand in a new way? Could I create space in that hip joint? Could I reduce the swelling and achy feeling through my movement itself?
In my practice with Spacial Dynamics®, a somatic approach to understanding movement, I know that the space surrounding my body is alive and full of living forces that help and even enable my movement. These ideas are core principles in my life’s work, and form the basis of my movement coaching and mentoring.
What about the spaces between the bones of the body? Could those spaces come alive as well? And, would a result be less pain and stiffness?
I experimented with myself and the damn hip. What if, instead of pressing my back towards my leg – in a hamstring stretch, for example – I actively opened the hip? I closed my eyes and envisioned the hip joint. The head of the femur, the curve of the acetabulum, expanding space between them. In doing so, I began to actively move the other way, stretch the leg away from the hip, rather than squeezing the leg into the hip in deep flexion. Space grew instead of strain. From the outside, I looked as though I were doing a common hamstring stretch, nothing fancy or different.. In my reality, I was moving quite differently, actively opening the space. This new way of thinking and moving was actually the opposite of what I had been doing my whole exercising and dancing life!
I changed the way I moved in that hip. From sitting to standing to dancing, I try to create the image of space moving where aching used to live. I still put a pillow between my knees much of the time while I sleep. Even a small pillow seems to release my hips and lower back at the same time, and it feels softer and cozier than my own knees pressed together.
When I bring this concept to my Agile Aging exercise classes for seniors, they are interested right away. Everyone has a bit or a lot of arthritis somewhere, or knows someone who has. We’ve discovered the space in our necks, our jaws, our hands, our feet, our knees and our backs. We’ve gotten stronger and more flexible without strain. We laugh and dance and ask questions and share stories.
And, we are learning how these new ideas can work in our everyday life, how this new idea of space can help us with our daily chores and with getting around without falling down. We are aging with agility and grace, with a bounce in our step, a smile on our face, and, for me, the reality of pain-free space in my hip.
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