What it is:
Fitness is the practice of specific movements to develop the body’s skills and capability in the following categories:
Cardiovascular endurance
Cardiovascular training enhances the heart and lungs ability to sustain activity over time. It allows you to improve at endurance activities such as walking, running, swimming, cycling, or dancing.
Muscular strength
Strength or resistance training develops strong bones, muscles, and fascia. It is important for the body’s structure to have sufficient support to maintain proper alignment. Good strength makes daily tasks and athletic pursuits easier and less likely to cause injury.
Flexibility
Optimal flexibility or mobility is important to maintain proper body alignment, to perform daily tasks, and to engage in athletic pursuits.
Healing properties:
The body requires sufficient daily movement to be healthy. Most people associate fitness with weight loss, body shaping, or athletic performance. While important, fitness is much more fundamental. Basic body processes depend on physical movement to function optimally: digestion, the immune system, even our brain and our emotions are measurably healthier when we include movement in our everyday life. Our joints and muscles depend on movement to receive the lubrication and cell nutrition they need to work as they should. Being fit makes us less likely to suffer from many ailments. It also allows us to engage in a greater range of activities and live the life we want. Modern living typically doesn’t require much movement, so we need to seek it out and make movement a choice.
Although regular movement is natural and essential, exercise-related injuries are common. It is important to know how to select appropriate exercises, and to progress from easier to more advanced options. In addition to exercise science, the Aston® principles of movement are central to Eve’s approach to fitness and exercise. These concepts give us the guidance needed to perform exercises in a safe and effective manner. They emphasize finding neutral alignment as a starting point to movement, using ground reaction force as a counter to gravity, discovering how body segments can move cooperatively, and maintaining the inner volume of body segments to avoid compression. When we move with greater skill, exercise becomes not only safer but more enjoyable too.
When we experience pain or dysfunction, such as back or joint pain, specific exercises are often an important part of healing. Some exercises can help loosen and lengthen areas of the body that are too tight and shortened. Other exercises help build the tone needed to create support and maintain our alignment.
You may benefit from fitness training if:
- You would like to learn how to exercise using the Aston® principles to increase effectiveness while reducing the risk of injury.
- You are experiencing pain or you have sustained an injury. Specific exercises may be recommended as part of the recovery process and to prevent recurrence of the problem.
- You understand the value of an active lifestyle and would like the expertise, support, and accountability of working with Eve on a regular basis.
- You have experienced changes in your body from receiving bodywork and would like to be able to sustain those changes by learning exercises that help maintain your new alignment and function.
- You would like help in reaching specific athletic goals.
