Restorative Exercise

What can you expect in a Restorative Exercise class? Alignment is a word that is used in several contexts but a bio-mechanist uses it to describe the relationship of one part of a body relative to another and that part’s relationship to the forces that affect it.

In every day language, how you stack your bones can determine things like the location and volume of load to that bone, resulting in more or less bone density and even different types of loads experienced by the muscles associated with that bone.  

Culturally we share a similar environment and we look at how that environment has literally shaped us, and created similar movement habits and patterns. We are such creatures of our environment that we can only speculate what a human outside of that environment would be like; how much would they move, how would they move, how much of them would move?

Luckily we don’t have to forsake the comforts of our lives to reap the benefits of a more robust movement profile. In Carol’s classes, we look for ways in which our CNS cleverly makes movement efficient by defaulting to patterns we already have mastered, and when we override that default setting our body resorts to compensation, tension or displacement as it struggles to accommodate our new alignment. Over time, as new pathways are forged, more cells are involved, lymph is moved, capillary development and bone growth is triggered, leading to increased health in the individual cells and the individual.  

We run through movements as simple as raising the arms or as complex as walking, with an eye to how we might be defaulting to a pattern that is less than sustainable, or one that is repetitive. We seek an equilibrium in the length of muscles so that joint range is restored and retained through new movement options and skills.  

Other systems of movement are likely to make an appearance in class, always seen through a functional lens and one that is accessible to every body. As a 60+ Dynamic Ager, Carol maintains a focus on strength, mobility, and balance, and will ensure that you know how to apply the exercises either with bolstering, scaling or modifying the movements.