The ability to understand how our body moves in relation to our environment is essential for health and well being as we age.
I love getting curious and researching topics like this one. It’s about how exercise makes a tremendous difference in whether we live well at any age or succumb to the disabilities of old age.
This week we will work with agility drills and may feel clumsy, uncoordinated, and self-conscience while we exercise. However, persevering with the exercise, we know we will eventually “get it”.
But what are we “getting?” Body awareness, of course!
Body awareness in its physical embodiment is a combination of the following:
- INTEROCEPTION: The sense of the internal body state; heat, cold, warmness, itch, fullness, emptiness, etc. It gives us the ability to understand our emotions and assess our levels of stress or fatigue.
- PROPRIOCEPTION: The ability to understand where our limbs are in space. This awareness tells us how far to reach for an object or how far to step out to avoid hazards in our path.
- SPATIAL AWARENESS: The ability to be aware of how we move in our environment. Understanding our relationship to the objects and being able to navigate a change of position in relation to those objects. For example; calculating distances, speed and placement to know what can and can’t be reached when we stretch out our arm.
Body awareness is taught through play as young children, and comes into full strength for most people by age 16- 18, then starts to decline, slowly at first, then faster as we advance in years.
I’m sure it’s no surprise to learn as we age, body awareness in all three key areas declines. But did you know that ageing is NOT the major contributor to loss of body awareness?
The most significant contributor to a decrease in body functioning and acceleration of aging is…
DRUM ROLL PLEASE!
Premature aging is caused by a lack of movement! In other words, a lack of exercise!
We all know we need to exercise for a healthy body, but that is not good enough. We need to actually exercise to the point of elevating our heart rate.
Aging is a matter of time, and now is the time to do what matters – Daily Exercise! An exercise workout doesn’t have to take hours to be effective, it can be just a 9 minute daily workout.
Get started with daily exercise with our WELLth program, go to the link below for more information and to get your FREE beginner 9 minute cardio, core and strength workout.
Live well with Health and WELLth!
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