Movement and gentle exercise
By Deborah Casey 26/10/2022
Standing, sitting, mobilisation and mobility are essential to fulfilling the activities of daily life. Motion of the body has many benefits. This includes:
building stronger muscles
improved posture
flexibility of joints
weight management
improved circulation and oxygenation of blood and tissue infusion
moving freely outside, in sunshine, increases vitamin d. Additionally getting outside and walking by riversides, through woody glens all improve mental and emotional health.
exercise such as yoga, chi kung, Tia chi all improve the subtle energy of the body.
Immobility and lack of movement leads to lose and lax musculature, poor posture and reduced oxygenation of the tissues. In addition, the lack of oxygen to organs such as the brain and heart lends to poor cognition, memory and slowed thought process. The lymphatic system depends upon movement for the flow of lymph around the body to specific target areas to remove waste from the system.
Regular, daily movement ensures improved health. Improvements are incremental and takes time to be noticed. Movement should include stretching, weight bearing load and cardiovascular. Swimming, walking and light gym workouts are some examples of good overall movement strategies to add to daily living practices.
Disabilities can result in lack of movement. For example those affected by medical mesh devices experience significant pain; unrelenting and unremitting. Mesh can cause untold damage to nerves, organs and cause symptoms that could be described as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and arthritis. Heat treatment can be a useful application pre and post exercise and it is suggested exercise be slow, gentle and conducted with care. One woman was discovered to have had a mesh implant migrate and embed around her ureter! MRI scanning does not show up mesh devices and so there can be many symptoms but without surgical procedure it is impossible to know where the mesh is and what it is doing to the body hence care to be taken.
A full health assessment is necessary where disability is noted to ensure safety in application to any modality of movement. Always begin and end with warm up stretching and cool down stretching, finalising with a rest on a yoga mat with lying pose.
