How To Be Well: Move
This week we are going to be diving into movement, the third pillar that I feel is absolutely necessary to be well.
Now, I use the word movement instead of exercise because I don't want anybody out there reading this to have a negative connotation with the word exercise and think that to be well, you have to go to a gym, you have to get on the treadmill, you have to lift the heavy weights and do all those crazy machines to have a healthy body, because that's not true.
Movement is what’s key. I'm actually going to take a chapter out of a great book that I highly recommend, and it's called How to Be Well by Dr. Frank Lipman. I'm going to highlight a couple of spots in his book that he brings up. I think just an absolutely essential look at why movement is so important for our bodies and for a wellness practice. A big one that he talks about is connection with other people. Again, it's not just exercising. If you love group exercise, if you love going to the gym with your friends, then please by all means do so. And…that comradery between people who are doing a movement practice is just as important. The whole community piece is just as important and actually feeds a part of our soul that also helps our body reach a state of wellness. Connect with your friends and family and loved ones and get out there and do something that moves you.
Another important piece to movement through wellness is doing something that you love. If you don't like the gym, if you don't like lifting weights, if you don't like the treadmill, if you don't like running, don't do it. Find something that you love to do. Maybe it's yoga, maybe it's badminton, maybe it's hiking, anything that gets you out there and gets you moving. Now, I'm going to give a recommendation that I found in another book, and I will be highlighting this book at a future date, the book is called Burnout by the Nagoski Sisters. They're actually talking about movement from a stress response standpoint, that to complete the stress cycle, we need to move our bodies. A great tip that they give in the book for a person who just absolutely cannot get themselves out to “exercise” is to lay in your bed and starting with one muscle group at a time, thinking from your toes and your feet all the way up to the top of your head, tensing that part of your body, holding it tense for a second or two and releasing. If you do that from the top of your head all the way to the tips of your toes, it should take about 30 minutes of this tense and release posture while you're just lying in your bed. This is going to at least engage the muscles, it's going to get the blood flowing through your body, and it's going to get some movement, and it's going to help complete the stress cycle, which is a very, very important part of our lives.
So, coming back to Dr. Frank Lipman's book on how to Be Well, his book brings up an important part of disease prevention that movement adds and that is by increasing a protein in our body called myokines, which actually are anti-inflammatory and help prevent disease. Not only is movement going to get your blood pumping, it's going to keep your heart healthy with cardiovascular health, but it's also going to promote comradery if you are connecting with friends and family and loved ones, but it's also going to improve your immune system. We all too clearly remember the pandemic and just how important keeping our immune system healthy is. Focusing on movement, getting out there with your loved ones for a movement practice in your world is just going to make it all the better for you to prevent disease.
Dr. Frank gives a recommendation in his book in the movement chapter that I thought was absolutely brilliant. He talks about one great way to increase movement in your life without having to take an extra 30 or 60 minutes out of your day to go take an exercise class is to leave your car a few blocks from the grocery store or any destination that you're going to, and just walk that final few blocks. If you are going to go get groceries and you know you only have to pick up maybe one or two bags full and it's not going to be too difficult to carry, and you wouldn't need to take your shopping cart with you, park three blocks away, walk the three blocks to the grocery store, do your shopping, walk the three blocks back, and that right there is going to give you a good 10 to 20 extra minutes of movement in your life, and then he also says that cross body movements like walking (swinging your right arm to your left as you step forward) you have a little rotation in your spine, and you have that cross-body movement, which stimulates the information between the two hemispheres of your brain. This stimulates brain activity, reduces brain fog, and gets the blood circulating which is so important.
The last thing that I want to call attention to from Dr. Frank Littman’s book is what he calls a micro session. This doesn't have to be a 30-minute workout or a 60-minute workout or a two-hour workout, with a 15-minute drive each way to and from the gym. A micro session is not a long process. You can do a 10-minute workout in your office or before you climb out of bed in the morning. And then you can do another 10 minutes later in your day, and that could be something like doing a Tabata workout. Or you could do 10 squats, 10 pushups, and do this for 10 minute. Put on a playlist that you like, and 10-minutes should be about three songs on your playlist. Do that twice a day, and you've got 20 minutes of movement under your belt where you were probably going to just sit around anyway. If you're watching tv, do simple exercises during the commercials (if you still watch commercials these days). I know with streaming these days there aren’t often commercials, but if there's a commercial on, do some squats, do some pushups, do some sit ups, do these simple basic movements, which we all know how to do. We know how great they are. It's going to get your heart rate up for a couple minutes and do that 20 minutes throughout the day and you'll be all set and ready to go.
So again, this was the third out of the four pillars of how to be well, and we will hit up the last pillar in my next post.
Get out there, get some movement, come up with some creative and simple ways to move, maybe play with your kids, kick the soccer ball around, do something with the ones you love and your friends, get that comradery and go out there, move, get the blood flowing, and as always: be well!