Your body and exercise. Use it or lose it!
Part of improving and connecting with our mental health we need to improve our physical/emotional and mental strength. My passion is the healing of past traumas that contribute to conditions like PTSD and Complex PTSD and for decades I have done exercise of one type or another to help release stress, tension and oftentimes for distraction (I will explore coping mechanisms on my website).
In the 90s I was in the rented front room of my sisters, wearing a faded tracksuit, an old sports bra and sneakers, dancing to the Cher fitness video. Yes, video! Some of you will have to look this up. Visualise a brick, with some ribbon in the centre, that you insert into a mechanical draw. You starting to feel it?
Fast forward to the noughties and I had become slightly more sophisticated with the Nell Mc Andrew DVD. Imagine a brick. Now compress this into a circle. Actually don’t. We’re missing the point. The image is of me, in another front room, this time at 0600, (working full time and single parenthood!) prancing around and building a drench of a sweat.
I have had the odd gym membership here and there, but all short lived. I was distracted by the men grunting at their reflections, and women topping up make up while doing a stationary jog on the treadmill. No offence to these fellow exercisers, but animal impersonations and glamour don’t help me build muscle. To be fair I doubt it helps them. But each to their own.
Now I have discovered Heather Robertson (Youtube) and she does hundreds of various workouts, ranging from cardio, resistance, and anything in between. The great thing about home exercise is that it is private, and free (obviously it needs to be in your own home, where you pay the bills and own the TV). You can even watch her from your phone!
The motto from me is, if it is supposed to be flexed, extended, pivoted, pronated rotated, supinated, adducted or abducted then do! If it’s a joint, move it, and if it’s a muscle contract it! In a world where everything we could ever need comes at the click of a finger (or contraction, flexion, and extension of an interphalangeal joint if we want to be clinical) we are becoming ever more sedentary. So finish reading my blog and get going!
