To celebrate the body with the joys of total fitness and wellness might just be the answer to longevity!

It is proven that aerobic exercises provide our muscles, organs, joints and tissues with oxygen and vitality. You feel healthy, rejuvenated and balanced when you exercise regularly. Moreover, once you get into a workout rhythm, your body wants to keep moving. The key to successfully keeping up a routine might be to enjoy movement and exercise, to fall in love with your vibrant and healthy body. Choose what you love to do!
Here is a new look at some movement and fitness therapies:

Aerobic exercises
To have a body workout routine doesn’t have to be complicated. Running, swimming, dancing, walking and jogging are simple enough exercises, which are easy to do and hardly require any skills. You can easily fit them into your calendar, anytime. No props are needed and no class schedules to attend. Take that Sunday morning walk on the beach or in nearby nature and alternate walking with jogging, do it naturally and playfully. Watch your breath while you are moving and enjoy your body to become alive.

Dancing – Vitality needs movement and flow
Dancing as a way of exercising the body with total abandon ranks real high for me in terms of how I naturally want to move my body. This doesn’t require dance classes or ant particular skills. Just play your favorite music, close your eyes and move the body to the rhythm of the music. Make sure to create some empty space in the living room or other large area in the house and be aware of the space around you. If you are concerned about bumping into furniture, open your eyelids just enough so that you can notice your environment. Enjoy the dancing without being concerned about how you look or perform, this is just for you!

Yoga
There are many different styles of Yoga to choose from – Ashtangar, Iyengar, Hatha, Bikram Yoga, Power Yoga, just to name a few. “What is best for me?” might be a good question to ask.
Traditionally, a Yoga scholar is somebody to exercise discipline and develop an ability to watch the mind. Yoga can be a rigid regimen. What everyone knows is that in order to meditate, quiet the mind, to be able to sit still, it is helpful to have a healthy and relaxed body. This is achieved with specific body poses (Asanas), exercises for cleansing the body (Kriyas) and through awareness of breathing (Pranayama). The mental aspects of Yoga (Yama, Niyama) also require awareness around realizing the consequences of one’s actions.
So Yoga is not about achieving and mastering the ultimate ideal pose shown to you in a video or in class by the teacher, it is about your ability to hold those poses at your own pace, so not to hurt your body. Breathing properly with guidance from the teacher is a most important aspect of Yoga and eventually Yoga can help you to achieve a state of calming, relaxation and precious moments without worrying and thinking too much. Yoga is known to be beneficial for relaxation, high blood pressure, strengthening of muscles and joints and  to get to a sense of peacefulness and meditation.

Swimming – Take a new look!
Swimming is completely underrated as a way of exercising the body. I love everything about it: the freshness of the water engulfing my body, the quiet determination of the movement through the water, the rhythm of breath required – it all feels so calming, refreshing and, after all, works out every single muscle in the body. As a massage therapist I can’t stress enough, that a regular swimmer has both, relaxed and toned muscles throughout the entire body.

Hiking
I appreciate hiking for being able to explore nature, to explore the Bay Area I live in, for new hikes. There is no age limit to hiking if you don’t have any disabilities, it doesn’t cost anything other than fuel to drive to your hike. Hiking is a great vascular workout and very relaxing, it is fun to do alone, with children or a friend. Hiking provides me with a sense of contemplation, joy and calmness. Life is good!

Remember to take good care of this precious body and celebrate it with joyous movement, now and always!