Hear the Music
Every once in a while I pick up something from a book that adds dimension to what I know in the subjects that interest me most – like the combination of music and movement (exercise).
Right now, I’m reading “Music Quickens Time” by Daniel Barenboim. I was up to pages 21 and 22 before I read anything that grabbed me, and then he wrote, “We can close our eyes but not our ears. Sound penetrates the human body.” I closed the book immediately so I could think about that simple statement. No wonder I believe in exercise to music every morning! The penetration of the music through the body gives me twice as much value as exercise done without music. Not only that, but it supplies enough energy to meet my needs for the whole day because of the penetration from full extensions with isometric control.
And Dr. Oliver Sachs, in his books, frequently says that music has the power to make a person move in ways he or she could not move without it. I personally prefer classical music for movement because of the smooth articulations through the joints, but whatever you like should do it for you.
I have written about the power of music in exercise in previous blogs, and will continue to do so when I tell you other wondrous things that can be done with the combination of music and movement in physical therapy situations.
Now if I could only get people to talk more quietly when they’re walking down the streets of the city with those things in their ears, or talking into a cell phone in full voice. When I realize they’re not talking to me, I feel like I’m listening in on their conversation because I can’t shut my ears.
Winter is No Excuse
It’s hard to get enough exercise in the winter. Even if you’re a skier, skater or snowshoer, conditions for winter sports aren’t always good enough to count on them. The weather can even prohibit daily walking. You could join a gym or use an indoor swimming pool IF you have access to one, but few do, so here are some alternatives that anyone can do.
l. Find a new interest, or start studying a subject you’ve always wanted to learn. Mental stimulation and concentration speed the rate at which the body burns its calories, so you wouldn’t have to worry about putting on extra weight for lack of exercise.
I learned about intense mental concentration from The Amazing Kreskin in the seventies when I interviewed him for a book I did on celebrity exercise. Others have told me the same thing. Working artists also told me that their involvement in making art every day was as healthy for them as regular exercise would be.
2. Start singing every day. It doesn’t matter whether you can carry a tune or not. Most people have a natural urge to sing, and in your own home, no one cares how you sound when you give in to that urge. Singing can be energizing and physically satisfying, but best of all it helps you lift your upper bodies and breathe deeply, which engages and exercises your inner torso. The great opera star, Jan Peerce, told me that he marched in place every day before he sang, bringing his knees up as high as possible, because it kept his circulation in top form. And what about jumping rope?
3. Best of all, make up your own exercises to do every morning before you get dressed. They don’t have to be anything special – whatever warms up your muscles and makes you feel good is what you should do, but do it every day.
And if you need some help getting started try my “Rise and Shine” video, which is a series of seven different exercise segments, 2-4 minutes each, for each day of the week, done to delightful music. I think you’ll like it.
Enough people did when it first came out that it hit #l on the Amazon.com best selling exercise video in 200l.
And it’s still available!
Grandma Ann's Gift
Happy New Year to all my fans and faithful blog readers!
I don’t usually deviate from what I have to say about exercise, but the following email that one of my daughters sent the rest of the family (sister, brother, children, nieces, nephews and me) about Christmas gift spending is family humor and love that I’d like to share. It was a surprise to me to be thanked for nurturing creativity in the family while I’m still alive, and it sort of erased the concern we had for one in our group who lost a job just before Christmas.
It’s a bit of a stretch to say that I believe in peoples’ creativity to find a way to get exercise every day on their own without spending a lot of money (you don’t even have to buy my videos if you don’t have the $$ – you can borrow them from the library). I believe it’s possible to explore your creative instincts and come up with the solutions to most situations.
We had the best Christmas ever, and the one who lost a job has come up with the most creative website I’ve ever seen. Check it out and you should be able to activate your own creativity: www.constructivedisorder.com
Here’s what started it all:
We have all been the recipients of some “special” gifts from Grandma Ann. Those gifts, although we have often made fun of them and wondered just how she reached that “that’s just the thing for”….moment, have been the source for many great mom stories not to mention good heartfelt Christmas morning laughs.
In an effort to expand on and continue a long standing Grandma Ann Christmas tradition, I urge you all to take a moment and in these bleak economic times, look around your house and experience a ‘Grandma Ann, -that would be just perfect for ____ moment’ and experience the joy of re-gifting.
For those of you who have enjoyed summers in the Grandma Ann Making Room, I would suggest you draw inspiration from the many hours she has spent nurturing your creativity and artistic vision and, as “make something out of nothing artists”-in-training, I would like to invite you to enter our first annual Madame Pointsetta competition. (Madam Pointsetta was a doll I made for a granddaughter one Christmas that she cherishes to this day – a masterpiece if I do say so myself.)
Rules of the competition:
Make a gift for someone without spending any money other than the cost of mailing the item to the recipient. Drawings, paintings, artwork of any kind are acceptable. Gifts will be posted on the internet on Christmas Day.
A special thanks to Grandma Ann for the real gift she has continued to give all of us – teaching us to make something out of nothing.
So you guessed it. Grandma Ann grew up in the Great Depression. And my very successful exercise system is what I created in 1950 and perfected over the years when I realized my toes were too long to dance on pointe.
Learn From Watching Others
Emotions are expressed in posture – both sitting and standing - and they interact with breathing and circulation. Here’s your chance to do some research on your own…
The next time you sit in a public place and watch people as they pass by, pretend you’re in your own private laboratory, privvy to observing who’s happy or sad, feeling good or not so good. You should even be able to figure out how those imperfect postures you’re seeing could be adjusted to improve their carriage and lessen the fatigue that’s unknowingly accumulating in those bodies. (I’m guessing you’ve unconsciously lifted and straightened your own sitting position, even though you really sat down to “take a load off your feet” and rest a bit. I know because I’ve caught myself doingjust that.)
Good! We can learn so much from each other.
As you’re sitting there observing the variations in human walking styles, visualize the spine – the inner, mechanical, bony infrastructureof the human body. Even though the perfect outer body position looks like a capital T making a straight vertical line from top of head to the floor, and a straight horizontal line if arms are outstretched, look from the side with x-ray eyes and you’ll see the flexible spine balancing that perfect T through three slight curves – neck, rib cage and lower back, with the muscles doing their job of balancing the curves of the spinal column.
If tension, discouragement, unhappiness and other negative emotions are at work in the people walking by you’ll see a tightly held mouth, facial wrinkles and a slumped upper body – a self defeating, negatively cumulative body expression that’s easily corrected.
It would be intrusive to walk over to that person and suggest that if they lifted their chin and upper body to correct the imbalance of their infrastructure they’d have a happier, healthier day. They’d be offended. And if you walked over to that person and thanked him or her for making it possible for you to learn something, they’d think you were crazy.
But you CAN learn from your observation of other people and apply it to yourself without them knowing. I’m not one to get tangled up in too much technical information, so think of posture, balanced gait and walking posture as basic body subjects, which advertise your mood. Negative “advertisements” don’t send a positive message.
Gravity is constantly trying to take us back down to wherever it is we came from. Maybe the people walking by who are looking at the ground and letting their shoulders slump have just given in to gravity.
Resist! You’ll have a happier, healthier life.
The Posture Slump
Walking while balancing a book on your head used to be something parents would have their daughters do – supposedly to develop good posture. I don’t hear of that any more, but I do know that children, especially teenagers, will be told to “stand up straight,” which usually produces a momentary militaristic, ramrod straight, parade posture that’s difficult to maintain.
I get better results in the classes I teach by first telling people to visualize their bodies as the letter T, with the head balanced on top of the T – a perfect vertical/horizontal symbol that creates an even shoulder line (bi-lateral symmetry) with the vertical line of the T going straight through the body from head to floor, making perfect right angles from front to back.
That’s the visualization. But then I give them the instruction that can maintain that perfect T all day.
“Every morning, as you stand in front of your bathroom mirror brushing your teeth, take a few seconds to psyche yourself up for the day by assuming the mantel of a very important person (which you are).”
As you continue to stare at yourself, inhale and lift your chin about 2 or 3 inches, and you’ll notice you’ve lifted your upper body one to 2 inches, and you’re now staring at a better looking person than you thought you were.
Not only that, but you’ve also lifted any excess weight out of your waistline which, in turn, puts you in a position that makes it easier to resist the accumulation of excess weight in the future.
If you can learn to use your own resources you can self correct, control and improve many negative manifestations of your body. It’s simply a matter of self confidence, which is a lot easier than walking around with a book on your head.
Besides, during the day, when you feel you’re slipping into the “posture fatigue slump” you can silently, invisibly psyche yourself back up with your own reminder that you are, indeed, an important, living person who doesn’t need to walk around with a book on your head to show it.
How far we’ve come from what used to be!
The Internal Body and Kinesthesia
My interest in exercise developed slowly over the first 20 years of my teaching modern dance and pre-ballet to children and the dancers’ stretch exercise to adults. Initially it was the observation that classical dancers live long, healthy lives in good, proportionate bodies because of the style of their exercise preparation – beginning with the slow, continuous stretching from the inside that uses the entire body in positions of full extension. It was the growing awareness that I was functioning in both internal and external body processes that I had taken for granted without realizing.
For instance, say the word exercise to someone, and there’s an immediate vision of movement with muscle flexion aimed at encouraging the development of visible body power.
But coming to the study of, and involvement with, exercise from the dancers’ base, I’m more in tune with Kinesthesia – the feeling of expression of body movement, which leads me to interpreting exercise as more of an internal/external endeavor than a development of the large muscle groups that are so necessary in sport conditioning.
The bridge between mind and body is in the viscera, and the way visible and invisible forces connect for unity through the emotional interaction of music and/or the natural need to express through movement – much like the group dancing done by primitive people.
Think about words like unity, balance and symmetry within the body, and how important it is to be aware of the equalization of muscular effort at the weight bearing points of our structures – shoulders, hips, and knees. Bilateral Symmetry is the way it’s usually expressed. Keep it in mind whether you are a walker, a runner, a gymnasium/machine exerciser or a recreational exerciser.
Am I losing you?
Well, just teach yourself to think of exercise as total body movement and try to mentally connect your inner and outer body before and during whatever you do for exercise, and you’ll get much more value out of the movement. No need to become obsessed by it though; you really need to keep exercise (movement) in its proper place as a natural, daily body function equal to eating and sleeping.
Osteoporosis: Is it really a disease?
For years I’ve had my own theory about osteoporosis but only voiced it to family and friends because I’m not a doctor – although, I did, during the period when women were being urged by the medical establishment to go on estrogen to avoid heart attacks, osteoporosis etc. etc., wonder why the doctors didn’t urge women to exercise and eat right instead. (Pressure from the drug companies, fear of malpractice suits, or just plain acceptance of the fact that many people find it easier to rely on pills than healthy habits?)
There are girls who, in youth, grow tall early, before most of their peers, or they become shy about developing breasts and start slumping in their posture. I can remember them as I was growing up, as well as other girls who started assuming various postural affectations that became habitual as they passed into adulthood. Interesting though, that you don’t usually see girls, or boys, who’ve been involved in athletics and dance with those postural affectations.
Everybody – male and female – starts losing bone mass before midlife, just as we get grey hair and wrinkles. Even people like me who’ve spent a life in dance and exercise, lose height through the spine. So, technically, you could say that everyone over a certain age probably has some degree of osteoporosis. Visualize, though, what happens to the people who grow up with poor posture, when THEY start losing bone mass. Right. They definitely have a problem.
Having been through grade school, high school, and maintained lifelong friendships with many of the same people, I can honestly say I only know of a few people who have “real” osteoporosis and suffer painful compression fractures, and they were all people who didn’t exercise and had bad posture.
These are just observations, but I think my theory has some merit. Think about it. Keep exercising and maintaining good posture. You’ll be glad you did when you reach my age.
P.S. No, I never did take estrogen. I just kept exercising.
P.S.S A body with good posture has an invisible straight line from the top of the head down through the upper body and lower body to the floor with bilateral symmetry at the shoulders and hipline.
Some of My Summer Reading
There was a wonderful book first published in 1937 called, “The Thinking Body” by Mabel Ellsworth Todd. I came across it in the late 60’s when it was re-published by Dance Horizons Inc., Brooklyn, N.Y.
I’ve reread it more times than I can remember, and every time, I learn the same thing, but from a different angle, with a wider interpretation – things about the way bones and muscles work that cause me to think, teach and write about exercise in more literary than scientific ways. That allows me to get closer and closer to the subject of exercise as an allied art rather than a gymnasium type of thing.
For instance, Todd says that “the unconscious is one of the keys to physiology.” Eighty-five percent of our muscle action is used in “vegetative processes” – heart action and so on. That means that we only have 15 percent conscious mental and physical energy to use for thinking and moving.
Not only that, but in times of emergency and stress, that 15 percent can draw from the 85 percent unconscious energy in the body to alleviate temporary danger. Imagine then, that an unhealthy, sedentary body is probably making it harder to maintain that 15 percent/85 percent balance. It’s easy to see that obesity, illness, and other body traumas have to draw on that 15 percent to supply the daily, unconscious body processes needed to survive.
Frankly, I think information like that gives overweight, sedentary people good basic logic they can use to help themselves better their lives.
And what I like to do most in my work is help people to help themselves.
Recreational Exercise: Swimming
Sometimes I think the exercise scientists are too obsessed with sport conditioning as the perfect form of exercise. It IS the best exercise if you’re going to participate in competitive sport, but not everybody is
engaged in competitive sport.
Right now, because we’re into summer, I’m concentrating on summer recreational sport – bicycling, golfing and especially swimming. But the exercise scientists downgrade swimming as good exercise because it’s not weight bearing. (Weight bearing exercise simply translates to exercise forms that are done standing.) But you’re getting your weight bearing exercise walking to and from wherever you’re going for a swim so what’s the big deal?
What the exercise scientists miss in their criticism though is the wonderful, relaxation and therapeutic value of swimming. Also, it’s exercise that uses the entire body; there’s movement from fingertips to toes. Feet flutter kick and arms reach forward through the water, one at a time, and the waistline becomes smoothed out because of the muscle stretch action through the center of the body. But the real value is the stress relief that swimming offers.
If you don’t know how to swim, it’s never too late to learn. And if you don’t have access to a body of water, try your community YMCA. Otherwise you can join the league of pretenders and go swimming on the top of your bed every day, duplicating the action of the crawl stroke (as pictured). Safely supported by your bed, you can even go slowly -since there’s no danger of sinking – and exaggerate the stretching movement of the exercise so that you get a little extra benefit from your simulated swim. With an exercise like this simulated swim session you have complete control, for even though you are trying to extend your stroke to the maximum, there is no danger of muscle strain.
After your phony swim on top of your bed, “float” awhile, fully outstretched, totally relaxed, with a delightful feeling of bouyancy. Then please the exercise scientists with a brisk walk around the block.
GOLF AS AN EXERCISE FORM: Does it do it or not?
Recreational exercise has always been one of my prescriptions for people who want to exercise but don’t want to go to gyms to “work out.” In theory, recreational exercise is excellent because the mind and body are set for enjoyment. Therefore, a person’s physical body is relaxed, and the mind is primed to anticipate pleasurable movement – a better state going in than when you psyche yourself up to run, jog, go to an exercise class or the gym to “work out” with the overhanging tension of sedentary guilt. Such tension can result in misalignment and injury.
When it comes to golfing though, the bending and twisting can strain the back muscles, ligaments and hip joints – unless, of course the golfer is ambidextrous and can switch swing from time to time. I never really thought golfers got a total exercise experience from their game anyway because they rode around in carts, but figured it was a recreational sport done outside in the fresh air, and that was enough to be somewhat beneficial to the body/mind at least. But those golfers who do some warm-up and wind-down stretching to loosen neck, shoulders and back, can avoid some of the strain.
Golfing is basically a sport of horizontal movement. Even though there’s a mid-line twist to the follow through, it still comes down to constant, horizontal motion with a right or left side dominance. (Few golfers
are switch hitters.) There is no (other side) motion to equalize the action, nor is there any vertical movement. To get the maximum exercise value from a recreational sport there needs to be total body action both vertical and horizontal.
If you’re not interested in doing some of the regular exercise routines that the golf pros do to keep in shape, here’s something you can do before and after your game to relax, stretch, and keep you from jeopardizing the back in the twist of the swing:
Standing up straight with feet apart, look upward and reach for the ceiling slow, with alternating arms l6 times, letting your head roll to each side with each vertical arm reach. Each time you do it, concentrate on
reaching high enough to lift the rib cage away from the body to offset the downward gravity pull. Then, with the rib cage still held high, relax, the entire body with the following golfing simulation.
With knees flexed and feet spread shoulder width, head down, weight distributed equally on both feet, hands holding an invisible club, move the legs, hips and arms smoothly from left to right l6 times, simulating the weight shift of a short iron shot. Then reverse the action by doing it from right to left l6 times to reverse the action and equalize the flexibility.
Above all, monitor your consumption at the l9th hole.
