You may know that I hate gyms and I do bodyweight exercises and rebounding to keep fit. So I want you to know the absolute best exercise you can do for all around fitness – the king of exercises. It is squats. On my exercise list I use door squats for beginners so that they are safe for older sedentary women. But you can soon graduate up to regular freestanding squats and then go on to more powerful Hindu squats.
Squats will strengthen your legs but also your back and give you better balance. You will feel more powerful from your core. An exercise program I subscribed to recently said that if there was only one exercise you had time to do then it should be hindu squats.
Back in the day, when I was a Feldenkrais practitioner, I was taught that a person’s ability to squat was the best reflection of their overall fitness. Most people over the world squat every day. It is the way they sit, and certainly the way they use the toilet.
But westerners have lost that easy ability to settle down comfortably close to the ground. I think that loss has a lot to do with our lack of balance as we get older. Moshe Feldenkrais always taught that a person should be able to leap in any direction at any moment to be safe. Squats, repeated daily, give you this power in your legs and spine to move quickly when necessary.
Since it has been proven that it is actually not the thickness of your bones that prevents fractures in your older years, but the ability to avoid falling, it is worth a few minutes a day to brush up on the skill of squatting.
I was showing a neighbor the way to practise hindu squats the other day and she immediately discounted it by saying she had never been able to squat, even as a child. ANYONE can learn this. It is a natural thing for any body to do. It may be hard at first, your thighs may hate you, but persist. When you can do 25 squats in a row you are on the way to true power in your body.
The exercise program I was talking about wants you to do 200 a day. I think that is excessive and boring. But you could do 25 twice a day and then three times a day, before meals perhaps, and see your vitality and power soar.
Hindu squats are the best for doing the 25 in a row because you use your breath and arms to help build momentum. If you want to learn these go to youtube and put hindu squats in the search engine. The breath is out on the way down and in on the way up and you move fast enough to get a breath exercise at the same time.
These are a real life-changer. If you are in fear of your bones giving out on you then commit to doing this and see how much better you will feel in 30 days.
Enjoy,
Pam