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Archive for reclaim health

Everyone Can Dance

Posted by Abby Lentz 
· September 28, 2010 
· No Comments

I fell in love with this video immediately, although I must admit, I have no idea what’s being sung about!

The important thing for me is that the left foot never moves — why you may ask, is this important?

Thanks to Ginger's Brother!

Well, if you can’t stand and dance with this Cat, the anchored left foot is the key to knowing that dancing is still possible for you. Even if you’re in the office or bed bound.

Push yourself away from your desk — move out so you’re sitting on the front half of your chair, being sure your weight is still well supported. Plant that left foot and move everything else, the arms the head, lift that right foot.  Switching your feet from right to left as needed — just be sure one foot is always on the floor for stability. Can’t lift a foot yet? Then lift your heels or just move the arms, body and head. Try to get the arms higher than the heart as much as possible.

Find the beat, find the fun in moving. Add some of your own moves too, but don’t forget to breathe. If you’re bed-bound, just pulse your legs and feet bringing the arms up as high as you can, moving the head with an attitude.

See how long you can dance. Each time, try to dance just a little longer until you can do the song all the way through. Don’t like this song? Do the movements to one of your own favorites.

This is especially fun if like me your chair is a ball and adds extra bounce to the tune.

After you’re finished your dancing, place both feet on the floor, rest your arms in your lap and close your eyes. Take a few integration breaths and notice your body. Your heart beat, the moisture on your skin, your muscles’ reaction to moving in so many different new ways — the smile that’s now found its way onto your face.

I hope you’ll be dancing with the Cat today and many other days!

As always, let me know how this works for you or if you have any questions / suggestions. It’s good to share, because none of us are in this alone.

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Categories : Awareness, Breath Work, Heart Health
Tags : breathing, Dance, reclaim health, well-being

Life by the Numbers

Posted by Abby Lentz 
· September 1, 2010 
· No Comments

Often when I talk about the work that I do — teaching obese and overweight people yoga —  I use the phrase that doing yoga can help you reclaim your health. I believe that yoga as a tool for health is overlooked by most people of size because the general concept and current images of yoga seem to be for the already thin and fit. I know everyone can do yoga, regardless of size or circumstance. Yoga is a doable and sustainable launching point for a healthier body and lifestyle.

I talk about reclaiming your health on Better TV (click to watch)

However, I always leave the other steps to reclaiming your health up to you. Following your own path — doing what works for you. But as the Universe would have it, I decided to share what reclaiming  health looks like for me.

I had wanted this first blog entry to be a dancing cat video, to be light and cheerful, but my own recent circumstances have pointed me in a different direction of a more serious nature. So for this first entry, I want to share about my life as I’ve been living it by the numbers.

Those numbers being my weight, the 3 little digits that add up to be what I’ve used in the past to measure so much of who I am.

I’m a avid journal writer. I started writing about what’s up in my life in 1975, before I moved to Austin as a young wife and mother. Because of that, I can tell you what I’ve weighed at any time in the past 35 years. Moving to Austin, March 1976: 153. Read More →

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Categories : Heart Health
Tags : athlete, Journaling, marathon, numbers, ornish, reclaim health, tv

It’s a Small World Afterall

Posted by Abby Lentz 
· August 19, 2008 
· No Comments

With the internet the world seems be to shrinking and expanding all at the same time. I grew up in a very small town in Maryland, Tall Timbers, where only 35 lived year round at the time. It’s a beautiful place on the Potomac River so most of the houses were built to be summer retreats and not for full time residents. We were lucky however, my dad was a tugboat captain so we lived there year round. He pushed oil barges up to D.C. and back again to get the winter fuel to the big city.

Now, in D. C. thanks to the closeness of the internet an internal communications advisor at the British Embassy contacted me about reprinting my how to do Office Yoga for their wellness newsletter. He works just blocks away from my first home away from home after high school when I moved to Washington to become a telephone operator. Yes, it was 1967 and I held and matched cords to flashing lights, but that’s another long story. He also asked me to sent a note on the benefits of yoga. My reply follows.

Read More →

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Categories : Awareness, Yoga Off the Mat
Tags : benefits, breathing, reclaim health, well-being
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