Stand and Energize
By Lesly Levy, APOGEE Director of Pilates and Pilates Programming
If you’re standing for a few minutes—in a line at a store or airport or in your own kitchen—use the time as an opportunity to strengthen your core and energize your body and spirit. It’s all too easy to become leaden and lethargic when you’re standing and waiting. Here’s a simple exercise that will create length, lift and openness and boost your vitality.
Align your body. Stand with your heels together and toes slightly apart, then draw your legs together, hugging the midline of your body. Adjust your body so that your heels, sacrum, top of your pelvis, bottom of your ribs and the tips of your shoulder blades are aligned as if you were standing against a wall.
Lift and lengthen. Lift your abdominals in and up, starting with the lowest part, as if you were zipping up a tight pair of jeans. Feel your tailbone lengthening toward the floor. As your abdominals lift, allow your ribs to soften, your chest to open and create length in your spine, through the top of your head. As your spine aligns, you should feel a lightness through the crown of your head.
Breathe. As you breathe, think about filling the back of your lungs. Allow your lungs to open, and feel the length and width of your spine, from front to back and top to bottom.
Turn. Inhale, and look right, then look left; bring your head to center and exhale. Repeat, looking left first. Do two sets.
Lift, lower and extend. Use your powerhouse (abdominals, thighs and buttocks) to float your heels two inches off the floor as you inhale. Hold for a count of three, then exhale and lower, keeping your head in the space where it was. This should feel as if you are stretching in two directions, up through the crown of your head and down through your heels.
Now relax and enjoy the awareness you’ve brought to your body and mind!
Learn more ways to turn on the calm in your life in our Unwind workshops, starting in January 2011.
Tags: alignment, Holiday health, Lesly Levy, standing exercise
