Loss of mobility is one of the major challenges of aging. This can be due to disease or accident. More often it results from a life-time of poor movement habits. I see this every time I watch crowds of older adults. Struggling to simply walk around. This eBook-based training program, designed to improve aging mobility, is derived from years of personal experience of body movement work and athletics. It's effectiveness is demonstrated by my ability to continue to enjoy Ironman training in my seventies. The eBook is linked to carefully selected, online instructional videos, and other valuable material for improved body awareness. Body meditation for optimal movement is not about physical exercise. It is not about making strenuous efforts. It's about awakening your body-awareness. It's about learning to quietly listen to your body. Body meditation is about learning to listen to the power of silence. Modern technology has not helped with this listening process, You need no tools, apart from patience and quiet, to carry out these simple, and insightful, exercises. Designed to take you back to the ease of movement you enjoyed as a youngster. My body-awareness journey started over 30 years ago. I was studying the Bruce Lee fighting style, Jeet Kune Do. The underlying philosophy of this martial art was simple: Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own. I applied this philosophy during the development of the Body Meditation Course. Body-awareness training saved my life in 2010. It contributed to my self-diagnosis of a large abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). I was treated with an AAA stent graft. Thus the name of my blog, Athlete With Stent. Body-awareness training also carried me all the way to the Boston Marathon, in 2009! As I started to run distance, for Ironman in my late 50's, I had lots of problems – running-induced injuries! Three knee surgeries woke me up. It was time to change the way I moved. To stop injuring myself. I studied different running styles, and changed to a low-impact approach. With this new running style, and Feldenkrais training to cure a knee issue, I proceeded to qualify for this most widely known of all marathons. It was a blast. It was all due to simple changes in the way I moved. The success of Feldenkrais, led me to study other body movement techniques, with great instructors. The body-awareness training methods, that permitted me to create this course, have included Yoga (2 years), Pilates (1 year), Gyrokinesis (1 year), weight training (10 years), Feldenkrais (5 years) and Continuum (2 years). Each one added new skills to my body movement inventory. What is Body Meditation? It's a carefully selected set of easy exercises, designed to awaken your sense of body-awareness. To help you learn to listen more carefully! The changes are easy to make, and easy to apply, once you open your mind to the power of this simple method. You can do them anywhere. In the grocery line or waiting at a stop light! They rapidly become a valuable part of your life! Relevant vignette: I was meeting a friend for lunch, the other day! A good friend, of many years, same age as myself. As I approached our table, where my friend was already sitting, he said, "Kevin, I can always spot you in a crowd. You don't walk normally!" I sensed that his was a veiled criticism. "I'm weird!" He continued, "When you walk, you swing your shoulders back and forth. For balance, I guess? Why don't you walk like other people?" The simple matter is, I do walk normally. As my body intended.
