Mindful Movement Patterns

Most of us have lost the ease and joy of doing the things we love.
Over our lifetime, years of poor use of muscles and skeletal alignment have become habitual. We unconsciously and ineffectively use our muscles to grip, tense, shorten, hold or collapse our body alignment etc. while doing day-to-day activities. This has caused us to lose the freedom in our movement we had as children and this has a direct effect on how we currently live, breathe and age.
By becoming more mindful in how we use our body to perform our daily tasks we begin to realize how the poor use of our body may create muscle imbalances and poor skeletal alignment. Mindfulness is the act of being aware of how we are conducting our daily activities that may interfere with efficient and therefore healthy movement.
Through mindful actions, we can release the tension in our muscles and change the poor use of our body that increases our risk of injury, pain and stiff movement. Mindfully, we can become better movers and runners.
Begin to notice how often you catch yourself crossing your knees or ankles while sitting causing leg muscles to unnecessarily lengthen and shorten. What about the daily action of getting in and out of a chair? Do you clench and grip unnecessarily? Does your head pull back and collapse down as you try to muscle your way to a standing or sitting position? Recognize then, how often such default habits creep back unconsciously into your life even though you start being mindful of the actions that cause poor alignment. Imagine too, how it is possible that these default habits affect the way you move throughout the day including the way you lift weights, walk and the way you run.
Start with the simple act of sitting in a chair. Do you sit with excessive tension? Are you straining your muscles and then collapsing in release? Watch below, and clean up how you sit with mindfulness.