The Balance Blueprint: Movement

In this episode, we dive into two main categories of movement and why they are important to integrate into your life.  Short movement breaks help to maintain good energy flow, keep your joints lubricated, and help you feel better.  Long movement practices enhance overall vitality and build capacity.  Finally, we talk about the importance of functional movement for longevity and reduced risk of injury.  Key elements of a functional movement practice are: 

• strength,
• stability,
• mobility, and 
• adaptability.

Transcript

Recording Started

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hey everybody, welcome to Center of the Podcast. I'm your host, Leslie Braverman, and I'm sharing holistic content that reconnects you to your most centered self, that place within you that is energized, knowing, and uplifted despite the chaos and demands of life. It's that place within you where you can become the portal of possibility. Today we're continuing our little mini-series on the balance blueprint, and I want to dive into movement today. Movement is such a key way to enhance energy and find balance in life. I'm sure that everybody listening has some sort of movement practice that they love. And I want to talk just briefly about the science behind movement. It's just a super important, well-documented way to release endorphins and balance the nervous system. We activate the mind-body connection and activate neurotransmitters. And we can really just embrace that power of doing and moving in a way that feels familiar to us and comfortable to us, even if we're doing something that is brand new, right? We get into sort of a mode of like, okay, I'm moving my body. And it's such a natural thing, whether it's walking or running, biking, weightlifting, doing a variety of yoga styles. It doesn't matter what you do. It's just that idea of being in your body. And that inwardness and connection to your soul is part of what you experience in movement that feels so good. When the soul incarnates into the body, this is the metaphysical, obviously, the soul gets really compacted into this physicality because the soul is huge, enormous. It's all that is. And when it gets kind of smooshed and packed into the body, one of the ways that the soul loves to express is through movement. And it allows that soul to expand and to allow the mind then to expand and be open. And all of this is such an important part of being balanced. So let's look at movement a little bit from the lens of longevity. While I've been athletic my whole life, postpartum injuries that were undiagnosed really did impact movement for me in a big way. And so I really had to do a deep dive into figuring out how to both heal and then what movement was best for me as I was coming into this new phase of life. And so what I've learned and studied and experienced with clients is there are basically two types of movement. And the first type we're going to dive into is short movement breaks. We all know the benefits of movement, but we don't always know the kind of detrimental effects of sitting. So the studies that have come out recently are stating that we need to move or take movement breaks every 15 minutes to an hour. And this can feel like a lot, especially if you are working and really focused. Often taking a break at a 15-minute mark is going to be a huge impact on your day. So the reflective questions to ask yourself when you're sitting a lot is you know, how does it feel when you sit for long periods of time? What's your energy level? And how do your joints feel? And that's going to give you a personal clue as to when you need to take breaks. I notice for me, I like to take breaks about every 45 minutes to an hour if I'm doing really focused sessions, like when I was writing the book, or if I have back-to-back clients, I really do need to get up and move. And I do have for you on my YouTube channel, I have some longevity, like a daily movement. It'll hit range of motion, it'll hit that ability to just get into each part of the body in a very short dose, right? We're like kind of talking about micro-dosing movements instead of thinking about movement as just something to do after or before the beginning of your day. Or you know what I mean, at the end of the day or beginning of the day, or you know, sometimes we talk about weekend warriors that are only getting big movement practices on the weekend. But we really do have to keep the body fueled. It's a nourishment. So it's like movement nutrition in the same way that nutrition is for the body. And then the longer movement practices, these are the things that you, you know, you love. Like what brings joy? What do you love? What have you always done, or what are you interested in doing and adding into your life to really enhance your vitality and build capacity? That's how I think about longer movement practices. They're just giving you energy and they may not feel like it at first as you're building your capacity, but long term they will give you that vitality you've been looking for. And what I always say to clients is that, and again, like I found for myself, is the biggest game changer in my life has been adding functional movement in. And functional movement is really just this movement in a variety of ways that gives you this balance of strength, stability, mobility, and adaptability. And it's really through the lens of longevity, longevity, and lower rates of injury rather than you know something that you're doing to, you know, complete a 5K or to, you know, meet some other goal. But functional movement, I think, is the thing that has been the biggest game changer for myself and all of my clients because this ability to move in a variety of ways versus just doing what you've always done, meaning moving forward and backward, walking, hiking, you need to get in that blend of diagonal movement and side-to-side movement. We really, I can just go into it a little bit. We have three planes of motion. And this is a lens, this is our science lens. So we can move sagittally. That sagittal plane is this plane of moving forward and back. And that's the one we use most often in our movement practices. And then side to side, this is frontal plane. And we don't do that a lot, but you know where we do it a ton is like in the kitchen or doing chores. And so that's why it's really important to move functionally with intelligence in a practice so that when you do it in life, it comes more naturally and more safely. And then the third plane is our most complex plane, it's called the transverse plane, and this is when we rotate or twist. And again, we do this in life when we're not thinking about it. So having a practice where it's done adaptively and intelligently to promote safety when we do it in life, right? How many people on this podcast right now have talked about an injury when they've gone to take their shirt off? Or they wake up in a really twisted position and all of a sudden their knack is out. This is the stuff that I'm talking about. So if we get into a practice of building functional movement into our life, then all of the other things that we do, it comes more naturally. So if you don't have a functional movement practice, there are a bunch of different ways you can add it in. There are, of course, fitness classes that do functional movement. The style of yoga that I teach, lit yoga, is the whole practice is core and functional movement on the mat. And it's so powerful. And I really think this is what is gonna pull me through, you know, the next 80 years. I I figure I'll live that long. So there's no limits. So that's what I love, and I find the most vitality and capacity by keeping that practice in my life two, three days a week and then mixing it with what I love. Because what I love is the brings the joy and the repetition and the consistency. And then, of course, the functional movement brings that training into it. So give it a try. And of course, we have a lot of ways to support you. There's the YouTube channel that we have, the longevity practice, the short break on, so you can take a look at that. And then also the modern yoga connection is where I teach yoga, and we have one week past that you can try it out and see if you like it. It's different, very different, because the focus is on this movement in a variety of ways, and it's meant to challenge both the brain and the body and maintain range of motion. So those are the key things that you're looking for is that challenge to the brain, movement in a variety of direction, and also this range of motion. And that's what I really love about the idea behind bringing movement and longevity together is that mind body connection and allowing growth for that expansion of the soul. So enjoy and let me know how I can help you step into that longevity piece with movement.