Maggie Downie, Author at Personal Euphoria: Pilates & Fitness Classes in CT

About Maggie Downie

Thank you for giving your time to stop and read my blog. I hope it encourages you to keep moving. Move and the body will be happier. And when you're moving you can hike, run, swim in Jell-O, race over non-Newtonian fluids, travel the world or build igloos--if that's your thing. If not, you can watch me do it. This is just a spot to try and feel good about life.

Kill them with kindness

Christmas brings extra cooking, cleaning, decoration, wrapping and visits with friends. All good stuff, but all fit into a short period.

December is always a stressful month. As much as I love Christmas, it adds a lot of extras that all have to fit into one month of the year. Much of this past December I felt like I was constantly fumbling a football. I couldn’t get anything right. Overall, I laughed it off and saw it as comical, but I have no doubt some people I work with may have been frustrated when I was making mistakes or not responding to emails.

The Monday before Christmas I decided to get my act together. I was going to make a master grocery list and go to the grocery store one time for the following two weeks. With calendar and recipe book in hand, I recorded everything I could possibly need for baking, house guests, and cold winter days. It was a fail. I ended up going to the grocery store every day that week for something I’d forgotten.

In addition to groceries, I was trying to get a copy of the Wall Street […]

Kill them with kindnessMaggie Downie2018-02-14T15:55:44-05:00

Instructor Highlight Rebecca

Rebecca

We have had a number of instructors join our team, so we thought it would be worthwhile to help you get to know them with a little instructor highlight. Currently, Rebecca teaches for Personal Euphoria in Wethersfield on Tuesday nights and Rocky Hill on Thursday nights.

The Questions & Answers:

When you aren’t teaching what are some of your favorite ways to move?

Dance and Zumba!

What song motivates or picks you up the most?

“Handlebars” by The Flobots. This song came out the year I graduated high school, and always remained on my personal playlist. It can be perceived as having dark imagery, but it’s a reminder that anything is possible whether it’s used for good or evil. I still love that heavy, driving beat.

Favorite Food?

Anything using avocado

Time you normally crawl into bed?

Never soon enough, it seems!

What skill would you like to master?

Pressing up into a handstand.

What would be the most amazing adventure to go on?

For me, photographing new born seal pups in the Arctic! They’re so cute!

Favorite season? Why?

My favorite season is fall. It’s as if nature is revealing her canvass of colors then.

Best advice you’ve ever gotten?

“By failing to prepare, you […]

Instructor Highlight RebeccaMaggie Downie2018-02-14T15:58:37-05:00

Finding happiness

Being in motion on a long hike makes me happy. Here I am at a camp on Mt. Kili.

Figuring out and finding happiness has consumed me lately. I’ve been reading a lot about it. What makes us happy? As far as I can tell, what makes us happy is a series of contradictions. You need a stable government, unless you live in Mexico and then apparently you are happy without one. Earning more than $70,000 per year supposedly doesn’t lead to greater happiness according to statistics, except that in the very specific places where people are the most happy individual income is higher overall. You need freedom, but one of the happiest towns in the United States has a lot of restrictions.

In all my reading and research I can pinpoint four things that seem to truly make people happy—good relationships, volunteering or doing good for others, a sense of purpose, and your perspective.

Here are just a couple tips, using the four points above as a reference, to try and increase your happiness quota:

Get together with good friends at regular intervals. Have a monthly dinner club, or book club, or […]

Finding happinessMaggie Downie2018-02-14T15:58:45-05:00

12 Ways to Keep New Year’s Resolutions

Movement can be playful!

It’s all too common. We make our New Year’s Resolutions to get and keep moving with exercise routines on Jan 2nd and by February we’ve forgotten all about it. So how do you stay motivated? Here are some tips for keeping active longer. Different suggestion work for different people, so figure out what it is that motivates you!

Keep Moving Tips

• Make sure a class or gym you register for it close. The closer it is to you home, the more likely you are to do it.
• Find a seasonal activity to love. Maybe swimming in summer or cross country skiing in winter.
• Meet a friend. You get to visit and move. Plus you hold each other accountable.
• Make sure it’s fun. You won’t do it if you hate it. And movement can and should be fun.
• Only allow yourself to watch TV if you are moving. So you can watch if you get on the bike, elliptical or get down and do some crunches.
• Agree to at least 5 minutes of movement a day. More often than not once you get started you’ll do more, but if […]

12 Ways to Keep New Year’s ResolutionsMaggie Downie2018-02-14T16:00:57-05:00

Ornament history

The tree on the corner of Church and Main in Old Wethersfield.

I love Christmas time. My family is fun to spend time with. Tradition is comforting. Getting gifts for family, though a bit overwhelming, is mostly fun. My favorite part of the season is taking moments to just stop and observe. I love to sit in my living room with a hot cup of tea or hot chocolate or hot tea with chocolate and stare at the tree. I love to turn off all the lights and stare at anyone’s tree. Which sounds a little creepy, but normally only people who know me let me in their house to stare. Seeing all the houses aglow and the lights in yards and along streets makes the cold days better. I wish people left their lights on until mid-March. This from a girl who doesn’t put any Christmas lights up, but once someone has, they really should let them linger longer.

The Ornament:

This year as we decorated our tree, a tradition I love, I thought about how ornaments began. The Christmas tree came from Germany, and not surprisingly so did the ornament. If […]

Ornament historyMaggie Downie2018-02-14T16:03:51-05:00

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