Call Today! 860-748-7574|maggie@personaleuphoria.com
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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.
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Forest Bathing

Last week some of the Personal Euphoria instructors went forest bathing. I didn’t know what to expect. Really, it has a terrible name. For me it brings thoughts of nudity, a bit of hokeyness, or potential images of cleaning the forest with sudsy bathwater. I know it’s none of those things, but the name does the practice no real service. My basic understanding was that it was meditating in the forest. Knowing that trees make humans feel better, I thought this might be a good excursion. It was.

We met at Pleasant Valley Preserve in Lyme, CT (a location I can’t recommend enough if you haven’t been there). This is a quiet treasure near the southern border of our state. We walked slowly through these beautiful woods, took deep breaths, did gentle stretches, and sat or wandered in specific areas—all guided by Regan Stacey. She invited us to hone into all our senses and encouraged us to explore. It was always an invitation to do something, not an order.

Forest bathing is not hiking. I’m one of those hikers that likes to move. I like to get to the top, to the view. […]

Forest Bathing2022-07-30T22:21:29-04:00

Squats and Lunges safe for the knees!

A number of people are afraid to do lunges and squats because they think the moves are bad for their knees. If you have knee issues, you may need to modify, take precautions, or starts slow and small, but you don’t want to cut lunges and squats out of your exercise routine. We need to keep those muscles strong because we squat and lunge in many practical ways throughout the day.

You squat to get off the toilet, up from a chair, in and out of the car, to get down and up off the floor. And if you want to lift something heavy using your legs and not your back, you need to be able to do a deep squat (otherwise your back is still very involved).

So let’s talk about form so that we can do these moves safely:

Basic Squat:

  • Legs hip distance apart. That might be closer than you think. It’s where your femurs (bones in your thighs) come into your pelvis, not where you’d put your hands on your hips.
  • All ten toes pointing forward.
  • Then crease at your hips, stick the butt out and let your torso hinge forward holding a neutral spine—trying not to […]
Squats and Lunges safe for the knees!2022-07-09T15:50:05-04:00

Treadmillls are for Torture!

You may already consider the treadmill a torture device as you walk or run on the spinning band beneath your feet getting nowhere fast. You’d be right. The original treadmill was designed as a form of torture. Called a treadmill, it looked more like a Stairmaster.

By the mid 1800’s nearly half of all prisons in England had treadmills. They didn’t look like today’s treadmills. Instead of a spinning band, small steps rotated as prisoners stood side-by-side, separated by a partition to create a sense of solitude, and rotated the wheel of steps. Sometimes these machines ground corn, other times the prisoners just cycled through the air. Often they spent 7-10 hours a day on the treadmill.

British author, Oscar Wilde (author of the Importance of Being Earnest) was imprisoned for two years after being convicted of sodomy and was forced to walk the treadmill for up to 6 hours a day. He died a few years after his release, but not after petitioning to reduce cruelty in prisons.

United States prisons also used treadmills with a New York penitentiary liking the treadmill so much they bought more so as not to be limited to […]

Treadmillls are for Torture!2022-06-20T12:46:44-04:00

Senior Summer Challenge

Attention Class of 2022

Personal Euphoria is excited to announces our KEEP Moving Challenge:

One student from the graduating class of 2022 will be awarded a $500 scholarship.

To participate you must:

• Create a Free Account at Personal Euphoria
• Take On-Demand Fitness Classes for FREE between July 1st – August 31st, 2022
• Use code CLASSOF22CHALLENGE to take classes free (for 2022 high school graduates only)

The scholarship will be awarded to the participant:

• Who took the most classes from the Personal Euphoria on-demand channel between July 1st – August 31st, 2022.
• The award is conditional on the full-time enrollment of the winner in an accredited U.S. college or university.

Rules & Stipulations:

• Participant must have graduated from private or public high school in the U.S. in 2022.
• Participant must register for classes at the Personal Euphoria site and use code CLASSOF22CHALLENGE to take fitness classes.
• Participant must complete each workout video for it to count.
• More than two workouts per day will not be counted.
• The free access code will only be good until August 31st, 2022 when the challenge is complete.
• In the case of a tie for the most […]

Senior Summer Challenge2022-06-13T13:17:50-04:00

Plank Form

I always tell people to KEEP MOVING but one of the best exercises you can do involves no movement at all. I’m talking about planking. Planking may seem like a fad when world leaders are doing it (remember Canada’s Prime Minster Trudeau planking on a desk?) and the world record for longest plank is over 9.5 hours. But the research on the benefits of planking is so significant that the US army swapped out sit ups for planks this year!

Benefits of Plank

What they found is young recruits flinging themselves up and down to crank out as many sits ups as possible were injuring their backs, using other muscles besides their abdominals, and basically by-passing the ab muscles. (I should note: sit ups don’t have to be a bad exercise when performed with proper form, but at superspeed it’s hard to do them properly.)

In plank, no other muscle is going to pick up the slack. Your abs are going to do the work, or they are not. According to research, planks activate more ab muscles and engage them more intensely than sit ups. So, you build strength, definition, and endurance. […]

Plank Form2022-05-21T23:04:36-04:00
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