Movement is one of the great pleasures of the human experience. We move to live and we live to move. Movement for Well Being advocates incorporating movement into our everyday lives for both the pleasures and the benefits of exercise.

GETTING STARTED

What comes to mind if you think of the things you like to do that combine movement, exercise and enjoyment? Walking? Swimming? Tai Chi? Yoga? Tennis? Kayaking? Biking? Golf? Dancing? The possibilities are almost endless and each of us has at least a few favorites. Take a minute to come up with your own list – it’ll be the activities you enjoy, have access to, are seasonally available at this time of year, and that you can participate in comfortably.

The favorites list will be fluid and dynamic. You can play with adding new things that come up and subtracting things that aren’t working for you.

1. The first step is integrating at least ONE of the activities on your list THIS week for at least 30 minutes.


2. By NEXT week, add another session of your first chosen activity, or add another favorite from you list.


3. By the THIRD week, add a third session.


4. At one month in, you should be enjoying some movement/exercise 3 times a week. Congratulations!

As you move into the 2nd month and beyond, expand according to your abilities and goals. You might move to adding a 4th session per week or bumping your sessions up from 30 minutes to 45. You’re in charge of creating the perfect program for YOU. Trust yourself, customize your program to fit your needs and capacities, and have fun!

RESOURCES

You are the expert on Resources for this one. We, and our interests, and our communities, and our resources are so unique, individual and diverse … the best advice I can give is simply to direct you to your community resources or the internet or your own preferences. Just start. Doing something. That feels good.

MY EXPERIENCE

I’ve been all over the board over the course of my life. From running to swimming to skiing to biking, to kayaking to hiking to walking. From a lot to enough to not enough. These days, hiking and walking are my favorites and I’m going to add tennis this summer and someday, I’d still love to add dancing. We each write our own script here and its all good as long as we’re engaged in the process. For me, the goal to shoot for is a minimum of 30 minutes / 3 x week and enjoy. Why? Because movement is truly an essential part of Everyday Well Being, bringing us the essential aspects of staying aerobically and muscularly fit. It keeps our bones strong and our joints lubricated. It propels us out into our communities in ways that are personally relevant and valuable for each of us. Exercise not only changes our bodies, it changes our minds, our attitudes and our lives.