Why Active Recovery?

My family and I are on a one-year climbing road trip and so this has brought us to many beautiful places and has landed us outside almost every day all day with a great community of people who are climbing and hiking and outdoor enthusiast types. I really have my husband to thank for supporting me with this. We have no child care. We haven't had any child care in 10 months and he has gotten up early and stayed up late with me to refine these practices and to be my best critic so I really have him to thank. So a day in the life of our family trip our year-long family trip we wake up all together in a 76 square foot space and the kids need food right away so that usually I'm getting up and rocking into cooking right there two feet from the bed and then right after the kids eat we need to get outside because part of being on a year-long outdoor trip with your kids is that their stamina increases exponentially so if you don't get them outside right away they pretty much bounce off the walls in a small space so right away we're outside and we stay outside until dinner and sometimes we're even outside for dinner. I'm surprised actually that it's worked we've been able to stay in a really small space have very little possessions and that's been really wonderful and supportive for us and also I can't say that I'm not looking forward to having a bigger space and letting them run around and having a kitchen but all in all it's been a really expansive and blissful experience for our family to be outside and have less stuff so definitely two things that are super important to us. When I'm not on the road I live in a small mountain town near Banff, Alberta so maybe you've heard of that it's in the heart of the Canadian Rockies in Canmore and I work at a studio where most of my people most of my community are active outdoor people ranging from 20-somethings to 80-somethings and this kind of practice these practices that we're doing in the seven-day challenge are the practices that those people just love and so this is really my forte is to work with you in this way so I'm excited to share. Active recovery is generally a movement session that's active you're moving your body but at less intensity than you normally would in whatever activity is that you do. Recovery is really allowing your body and your nervous system to unwind from the activities that you do and rest and allow the parasympathetic nervous system to kick in so you can heal your tissues and really relax your mind and hit the reset button. So I'll give you the example that's most potent for me in my life right now I'm a climber I spend a lot of time hanging from my fingertips on rocks and that can put a lot of strain on my neck and shoulders and so I would use really any of these practices but mostly the practices that target the neck and shoulder area and the spine maybe right after I finish the activity I would do the practice and then allow that to be the unwinding phase of the activity that I have for the day and then really not do that much after the practice hydrate fuel and rest. So everybody is different I'm not sure if you need that much rest or if you need a lot of it I think I see different people having different aptitudes and bandwidths for activity and needing rest but in my own athleticism and in my own practice I can't go at a hundred percent all the time maybe my body could but my mind can't I just tend to burn up and fizzle out and so in order to rest my mind I really need lower intensity and almost to embrace not doing anything that's been so healthy for me and I think it's been a big transition for me also from my 20s into my 30s and just a natural progression of I just don't have that kind of energy anymore and it's really nourishing for me to fill myself up with low intensity and long pauses and lots of rest. I have a love affair with therapeutic pressure work I've been practicing yoga for a little over 17 years and when I started being introduced to rolling and pressure work and the idea of rehydrating my tissue that way I just fell in love because I just love the deep sensation of it I feel like it's really giving me a release and I don't always have time for a massage and then I love the idea of that flush through my tissues the ability for everything to start sliding again and to start moving in a healthier way and it's also really relaxing for me so the aftermath of the pressure just is a full body release for me and I'm hoping that you can feel that as well from practicing yoga almost every day for the last over a decade in many shapes and forms I've definitely noticed a shift in my body the balance of flexibility and mobility and strength have really transformed my body it's been really important for me to balance those two so maybe you'll find that you have a tendency towards one or the other and then to keep that in mind my mind has become more mobile my mind has become more flexible just by being able to tune in to the present moment so that's been by far the biggest benefit but my body has also completely transformed and I've never had back pain and I definitely attribute that to yoga these 30-minute practices are designed for post activity so they're not that active however you do move a little bit but my idea was that after the active part of your day you would do one of these right away when you were still warm and still kind of glistening from your activity and then you would rest and reset with these practices my sincere hopes for those who are participating in the challenge are that you feel good in your body that you have a chance to unwind from the stresses of daily life that you're increasing your capability for happiness and ease and freedom in your body in your mind and also that maybe you make a habit of yoga a practice that has supported me so much in my life and I can't imagine really my life without it and so I love to share that