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.

DIVVY Bike Chicago Style

Julie comforts me after surviving the DIVVY bike.

Last month I referenced riding my bike with my friend Julie in Chicago. When I went to link to this story, I realized that I’d never posted it. So here’s a plank story from about three years ago that never got it’s moment to shine. In re-reading it, I also realized that in last month’s blog I clearly over-estimated the time I was riding the DIVVY bike. That’s how awful my experience was:

So I’m visiting my best friend Julie in Chicago and she asks me if I’ll ride the DIVVY bikes with her to a barbecue. DIVVY bikes are basically like zip cars. You can rent them in different parts of the city and return them to stations throughout the city.

Now I am not the greatest bike rider. And I’m nervous riding my bike on the road in suburban Connecticut, but google claims it will take 21 minutes to get from Julie’s house to the barbeque and Julie claims it will take over and hour by bus, so I agree that even if I’m really uncomfortable, […]

DIVVY Bike Chicago StyleMaggie Downie2018-02-14T16:48:12-05:00

Exercise of Life

We can exercise, which I highly recommend, but it’s hard for one hour a day of exercise to unravel eight hours in a chair. Even if your day isn’t spent in a chair, however you spend most of your time will start to be reflected in your body. In addition to making specific time to move every day, considering your body in space throughout the day can help you feel better in your own skin. Check in at different moments. If your back hurts when you are doing something is there a simple change you can make to relieve the pain? If you neck hurts can you make a subtle adjustment? Exercise yes. But make movement and noticing your body during simple movement the exercise of life.

Try to notice your body in the following scenarios:

When you brush your teeth, do your shoulders crunch up to your ears?

While washing dishes does your pelvis bump up against the sink?

When you bend over to scrunch your hair, do you tuck your tailbone?

When […]

Exercise of LifeMaggie Downie2018-02-14T16:49:03-05:00

How Egypt Opened the World for Travel

A friend asked me recently how I decide where to go on vacation? From the beginning, I’d always enjoyed social studies and history class in school, but my freshmen year of high school when I took Western Civilizations with Dr. Dan Kelly, I fell in love with history. I knew then that I wanted to teach history at the college level and see the pyramids. I’m a graduate school dropout so teaching history never came to fruition. I left the PhD program in Early Modern European History with a focus in gender and sexuality almost as soon as I started. But less than a year after leaving graduate school, I was in Egypt at the pyramids with Matt. Our time in Egypt opened the world up.

It was two years after September 11^th and our families were pretty worried about our safety. I was concerned. Egypt seemed like a scary, intimidating place from back home, but once there it wasn’t. I was more afraid driving on the skinny, one lane, cliff-edge roads of the Dingle peninsula in Ireland than I was in Egypt. That didn’t […]

How Egypt Opened the World for TravelMaggie Downie2018-02-14T16:49:38-05:00

Could My Bed Cause Back Pain?

A made bed in our house is a very rare occurrence.

No matter how old you are, when your back hurts you feel ninety. Joe Pilates said, “If your spine is inflexibly stiff at 30, you are old. If it is completely flexible at 60, you are young.” I don’t normally suffer from back pain, but a few years ago, I had an ache in my low back that wouldn’t go away. Nothing calmed it. This was especially frustrating since I teach Pilates and I pride myself on knowing what is going on in my own body. I understand a lot about what causes pain and how movement can help unravel it. I stretched, massaged it, and did exercises. They were the right things to do, but nothing helped for a prolonged period. Nothing stopped the chronic pain.

I’d been dealing with the problem for a couple months when I went to visit my best friend Julie in Chicago. Before my arrival, she mentioned taking a bike ride or doing a program that was like P90x. I told her that was […]

Could My Bed Cause Back Pain?Maggie Downie2018-02-14T16:52:02-05:00

Plank Story: Underwear Expert

This is not my first plank story about underwear. I am not an underwear expert by any means, as you are about to learn. We have very close friends who live on a street with the name Dusty Bottom Lane. They once bought Matt a pair of Duluth underwear—definitely the best underwear in the world. (I don’t sell for them, I just know Matt speaks very highly of them.) One day Matt had to climb up into the rafters of our house to hang a curtain. He went up wearing only in his undies. He came down, wearing his Duluth boxers and a layer of dust all over his bottom. I laughed and suggested that: “We have to text a picture of your dusty bottom in the underwear they gave you.” Without missing a beat Matt responded: “We are not sending anyone a picture.” Fair enough. I get that.

So instead I just sent a text: Matt’s bottom is dusty from climbing up in the rafters in his Duluth undies. He won’t let me send you a pic so neither can you see the underwear you got him or his actual dusty bottom. SEND

Then I immediately started repeating, “Oh, […]

Plank Story: Underwear ExpertMaggie Downie2018-02-14T16:54:53-05:00

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