moving

Keep Kids Moving This Summer!

Your kids are home from school. You’ve played all the board games you can. And, maybe it’s even a rainy week. What can you do to burn off a little of that excess energy building up in both you and the kids? KEEP MOVING, of course.

You probably have items in your home that can help create a playful, imaginative workout. Here are some ways to help kids stay active with household items:

Painters Tape

Put a strip on the floor—young enough kids can use it as a balance beam. They won’t be balancing, but they can try to walk along it and stay on the line. You can make it straight or zig zag it.

If you have a hallway, use painters tape to turn the floor into a hopscotch. Swap a bean bag for the rock you’d use outside and now your child can hop their way down the hall.

Or, in the hallway, put tape at different intervals and different angles to create a “Mission Impossible Laser” hallway. Your child has to try to get from one end to the other without touching the tape. This one is easy to make easier […]

Keep Kids Moving This Summer!Maggie Downie2023-06-21T17:05:02-04:00

Family Fitness – Fun for the Whole Family!

This is a great time of year to start a family fitness routine because with kids heading back to school we all tend to get back into a schedule after summer vacation. If you are looking for a family fitness routine your whole family will enjoy consider keeping it simple, incorporating variety, and looking for fun ways to move.

Simple

Probably the most basic way to incorporate movement with the whole family is to plan a walk after dinner. You could do this three, five, or seven nights a week if you are feeling ambitious. It would help instill great habits.

In case you’re not sure you could convince your whole family to walk every day, here are some other ideas. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty more and you can come up with anything and try new things daily or weekly, depending on how often you want to move with your family.

Play a Game

You could always use the technology kids love and play a game. The Nintendo Switch has boxing, bowling, and dance games you can play that will keep you moving. Or go old school and pull out a game like twister.

Bike Ride

You can take a […]

Family Fitness – Fun for the Whole Family!Maggie Downie2021-09-14T23:03:26-04:00

Move More

Just me trying to get my feet behind my head and stay relaxed at the same time.

I love to move. I’m always looking for ways to move more throughout the day. This month on a whim I’ve been doing an Instagram challenge to try a different, assigned yoga pose every day. Some of the moves feel great. Other days I look at the way I’m supposed to contort myself and I just laugh. I haven’t been able to get my feet behind my head since I was six months old.

Most days I play with movement. I have some monkey bars and I experiment with what I can do with them. I try to feel what my clients say they feel on certain exercises. While taking a walk, I check to see if my butt is involved in each step. When I breathe, I experiment with where I can send my breath. When watching television, I roll around on Yoga Tune Up balls. Movement is a game for me. Discovering what, where and when can I fit movement into my day makes me happy. I enjoy the challenge.

To some degree this […]

Move MoreMaggie Downie2018-05-04T09:57:18-04:00

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

Just Get Started

I went to Waterford High School, where I think I was lucky to have a number of really good teachers. One of my favorites was my junior year English teacher, Gail Dimaggio. She set up classes like Socratic seminars and asked us to think about what we were reading. It’s hard to teach someone to think, but that typically seemed to be her goal. One of her regular reminders was to “just get started.”

She told us that starting is always the hardest part, but once you start to write a paper the doing gets easier. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were wrong. It’s not the waiting that’s the hardest part. It’s the starting. Mrs. Dimaggio was right. There are […]

Just Get StartedMaggie Downie2018-02-14T17:44:43-05:00