Mobility at work

Recently I had the pleasure of giving a joint mobility seminar at one of the government departments - Environment Canada - where a friend of mine works. A frequent participant at my workshops, this friend is a now strong advocate of mobility training and she did all the planning and administration for this workshop. It was such a great experience to have 20 people sign up (16 people responded on the first day it was advertised) and attend this workshop. Space was limited to 20; also, as an instructor, this was a manageable number. We created a waiting list for those who did not get in to this session.

Because this workshop was being held during the lunch hour, time was limited to 75 minutes, the time usually allotted to yoga classes or aerobics. This shorter format was new for me as I have done 2-3 hour workshops in the past, each on upper body mobility and lower body. Given the time constraints, I focused on providing a brief background and some of the benefits of mobility practice, as well as the underlying principles, most of which in fact apply to all physical skill development, not just mobility practice.

The principles are:

1. Intuition – you know best. Our bodies are hard-wired to communicate problems, if we would only listen to them and act upon those hunches.
2. Universal - Everyone will develop in a universally predictable pattern moving from recovery to coordination to refinement – e.g. locomotion (sit, crawl, stand up, walk)
3. Incremental – you must have baby steps to ensure development is permanent. Progress must be gradual in order to be permanent. Don’t rush.
4. Personal – we each develop in our own unique timing. E.g. various joints will progress differently compared to someone else.
5. Sophistication – simple to the sophisticated. Human nature progresses from the simple to the complex, from the general to the specific. KISS principle only applies to the beginning of any skill. If you continue at a simple level, you become bored, stop adapting, and reach a plateau in your development. Repetitive stress injuries also occur from doing the same thing too often.
6. Holistic – Progress from the head downwards, from the center to the periphery. This is how we progress from infancy. To reclaim and refine your pain-free health and longevity follow this pattern in your practice.
7. Integrative – we need to integrate our breathing, movement and structure, in order to get into flow. Injuries, stress, restricted movement, even fear, all seek to disintegrate our breathing, structure and movement.
8. Compensation – limited mobility, aches, pains, may not be the source of the issue. It may actually be on the opposite side of the body. Aches and pain may be some compensation for a hidden issue on the other side of the body.
9. Symmetry – we must explore our body in symmetry to get into flow. We do this through complementary movements. Forward/ backward, left/right, up/down. Mirror a painful movement: if it hurts to move one way, move the opposite way. Move to the tension not through tension.
10. Fun – do not add or increase the pain. Enthusiastically explore the movement. Enjoy what you’re doing.  Explore this as your personal physical odyssey. If you have pain in your body, adding pain is not going to help.

After this, we went through the Intu-flow system of mobility exercises, working from the head down, and the center to the periphery. We then spent a few minutes on a balance drill which most participants being yoga people executed very well. Then I gave several exercises for practicing breathing with movement. These were unusual and caused some chuckling but it was all fun. We finished with a couple of movements intended to test the mobility of the hips and the shoulders. These gave participants a better idea of what they needed to on.

I was amazed at how much we were able cover in such a short time. If you would like this kind of seminar to be brought to your place of work, please contact me. Even 60 minutes would suffice. This sort of system is recommended for everyone but it's especially useful to office workers and anybody who spends long periods sitting in front of a computer. Participants will absorb what is useful and have exercises they can take away and practice on their own before, during or after work.