Take 5 and hit the floor!
THE BENEFITS OF LYING ON THE GROUND
Does your day feel like one long Zoom or maybe your day is one long Zoom or you struggle to get out of your head as there are so many thoughts whirring around? Try hitting the floor, OK, well not literally but lying down flat on your back can do so much for your nervous system.
When you lie on the ground you give you body sensory information that says 'I'm supported', it's a great way to re-calibrate between meetings, at the end of the day or at the start of a Pilates class. Try it for 5 minutes, lie on your back, breathe slowly and feel the physical contact your body has with the floor. Do you feel better?
Our autonomic nervous system has 2 branches, one that keeps us alert and heightens our senses, this is the state we are in when we are under a stress response or about to go into a big meeting - known as our parasympathetic nervous system and the other is one that tells us we are safe, calm and free to relax - this is our parasympathetic nervous system or rest and digest mode.
As you might imagine we want a balance of both but often this is not the case, especially when you throw a global pandemic into the pot.
We can spend our whole lives in our fight and flight state which can be detrimental to our overall health and wellbeing. In this state of underlying tension, stress and heightened nervous system response we are unlikely to find the lasting change that we may want for our body and movement. For example, if you have been suffering from lower back pain for years and at the same time have been existing in a fight and flight response it's unlikely your body will come out of this pain cycle.
At Lauren Hilton Pilates we know that the mind and body are one, we can’t be fully well in our body if our mind is under tension and our minds cannot be well if we have pain and tension in our body. Often all we need is to be encouraged to slow down, notice what we are experiencing in our body and mind and to simply sit with it. In both classes and 1-2-1s we’ll start lying on our backs and just take stock so that we know where we are, those moments of presence in mind and body may be just want we need to change patterns of tension in our body or mind that no longer serve us and ultimately will help us to find fully body health.
Get in touch if you want to explore some mindful movement in your body or let us know how it felt to take 5 and hit the floor! We offer group classes at our studio, online classes, Lauren Hilton Pilates At Home, pre and postnatal Pilates, private tuition.
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