Building Balance In Your Body & Life - by Susan Jane McCulley

COURSE

Building Balance In Your Body & Life

With Susan Jane McCulley

In more than two decades of teaching thousands of bodies, I’ve seen balance as essential to health, injury prevention and successful aging. Yet, it’s one of the most neglected and avoided skills. Balance, in the body and in life, is not a solid place we arrive at but a practice, a process. Physical balance is essential for healthy, comfortable, graceful movement at any age and mental, emotional and spiritual balance is essential for a wholehearted life. A strong sense of balance in the body allows the nervous system to relax and be responsive to the environment rather than in alert hyper-vigilance. Dynamic physical balance allows our bodies to be resilient and less prone to injury. What’s more, building a practice of balance in the body allows us to feel for and cultivate balance in all aspects of our lives. Building balance allows us to move with confidence and grace through a variety of both familiar and unfamiliar situations. Whether it’s the uneven, rocky surface of a hiking trail or an uncomfortable interaction at work, this course supports a calm and curious response to whatever is happening. A familiarity and even comfort with the sensation of being off balance makes it easier to get back to center in all circumstances. This course provides a full exploration of all aspects of building balance and takes previous injuries and current fitness levels into account with adaptable and flexible practices. You are invited to practice where you are - literally and figuratively. The course allows home practice with a few simple props. Those just beginning a balance practice may spend longer with the earlier lessons and all participants are encouraged to go back to them as needed. Importantly, there is no expectation about how quickly one should progress. In fact, continued integration and circling back through all practices is the WAY of building beautiful balance. This Course offers 22 practice lessons, 4 journaling lessons and 4 integration lessons to help all bodies improve balance, mobility, and strength in the context of mindful awareness Balance is a verb. It’s something we do. Let’s spend the next 30 days building beautiful balance together. Music by Bensound


Meet your Teacher

Susan Jane McCulley has been a mindful movement teacher, coach, and writer since 2000. She is the creator of The Age of Becoming: Embodied Practices Empowering Women Over 50 community which offers free movement practices and workshops, connection and community, and more. A Nia Black Belt Instructor, she particularly loves teaching embodied awareness to people of all abilities and experiences, in groups of all sizes (both in-person and online). Susan is passionate about supporting people as they connect with the inherent wisdom of the body and take their practice into life. She has two illustrated books, "Buddha Cat: Learning Awareness, Presence & Self-Care from a Teacher Who Sometimes Barfs on the Bed" and "Octabusy: Letting Go in a Sea of Doing."

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30 Days

881 students

4.7 stars

15 min / day

Body Image

English


Lesson 1

Course Introduction & Balance Check-in

This session features an introduction to the course on building balance in your body and your life. The lesson introduces each of the four course sections: Finding Foundation, The Wonder of Walking, Practical Practice, and Flirting with Failure. It also includes a balance check-in practice.

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Lesson 2

Finding Foundation: Releasing Tension With Self-Massage

The first lesson in the Finding Foundation section creates more flexibility and relaxation in your feet, ankles, and lower legs with self-massage.

Lesson 3

Finding Foundation: Making Space For Foot Flexibility

Finding Foundation continues with self-observation about your shoes, your sitting, and walking habits. Using a prop of a rolled yoga mat or towel, a yoga block, or half foam roller, we'll also do a lower leg lengthening practice.

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Lesson 4

Finding Foundation: Foot Strength

This Finding Foundation lesson builds strength in your feet. The movements of toe splaying, picking up stuff with your toes, toe lifts, heel lifts, and strong toe yoga all energize the more than 100 muscles in your feet. For this practice, you'll need a prop: a sock, a small towel or t-shirt.

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Lesson 5

Finding Foundation: Foot Mobility

This lesson – the fourth in the Finding Foundation section – focuses on foot mobility. You'll learn the movements of Skiiing, Circling, Toes In and Out, Top of the Foot Stretch and Mobile Toe Yoga to create more movement inside your feet. You'll also practice mobilizing your feet with the use of a tennis ball or any small, preferably soft ball.

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Lesson 6

Finding Foundation: Leg Strength

In this lesson, we’ll explore finding foundation by focusing on leg strength.

Lesson 7

Finding Foundation: Review & Integration

In this lesson, we’ll review and integrate all the Finding Foundation practices we’ve done together.

Lesson 8

Finding Foundation: Rest & Journal Prompts

In this last lesson of Finding Foundation, we’ll focus on two important and often overlooked aspects of the practice: intentional rest and expanding our awareness beyond the body.

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Lesson 9

The Wonder Of Walking: Slow Walk

This lesson begins with the Wonder of Walking section, which explores walking and stepping as an integral part of balance. In particular, Lesson 9 expands your awareness of walking and the balance every step requires.

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Lesson 10

The Wonder Of Walking: Side & Backward Walk

This lesson continues the exploration of walking – this time in directions other than forward.

Lesson 11

The Wonder Of Walking: Uneven Walk

This lesson explores the dynamic experience of walking on naturally uneven surfaces.

Lesson 12

The Wonder Of Walking: Chaos Walk

The Chaos Walk builds both the physical strength and range of motion needed for balance and also builds the range of movement options and possibilities.

Lesson 13

The Wonder Of Walking: Stepping Up, Down & Over

Lesson 13 explores the combination of strength and balance that it takes to step over, up, and down steps and obstacles.

Lesson 14

The Wonder Of Walking: Review & Integration

In this lesson, we’ll review all the Wonder of Walking practices with the intention of integrating them into your daily movement.

Lesson 15

The Wonder Of Walking: Rest & Journal Prompts

This final lesson of the Wonder of Walking focuses on intentional rest and expanding our awareness beyond the body.

Lesson 16

Practical Practice: Movement Snacks & Balance Basics

Lesson 16 is the first in the Practical Practice section. This lesson introduces using what I call Movement Snacks to focus on movement rather than exercise. The lesson also looks at the basics of balancing on one foot.

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Lesson 17

Putting On Pants One Leg At A Time

In this lesson, we’ll learn the Getting Up & Down From the Floor Movement Snack and play with the practical practice of putting on (and taking off!) pants.

Lesson 18

Practical Practice: Putting On Socks

In this lesson, we’ll learn a core and leg-strengthening Movement Snack, talk more about the power of small habits and do the practical practice of putting on socks.

Lesson 19

Practical Practice: Putting On Shoes

Lesson 19 includes both a surprisingly powerful core-strengthening Movement Snack and the Practical Practice of putting on shoes.

Lesson 20

Practical Practice: Balance While Doing Other

In this lesson, we’ll learn more about habit change and continue Practical Practice by integrating balance into other things we do.

Lesson 21

Practical Practice: Review & Integration

In this lesson, we’ll review and integrate all the Movement Snacks and the Practical Practices we’ve done together so they are fresh in your body and mind.

Lesson 22

Practical Practice: Rest & Journal Prompts

In this final lesson of Practical Practice, we’ll focus on intentional rest and expanding our awareness beyond the body. We begin with a restorative, sense-centered meditation to allow you to ground, relax and open your body and mind. After the meditation, I’ll offer six prompts for you to apply practical practice beyond the physical to other areas of your life.

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Lesson 23

Flirting With “Failure”: One Leg Swing & Introduction To Movement Snack Stacks

This lesson begins the Flirting with “Failure” section in which we’ll practice movements that intentionally push the edges of our balance ability. We’ll also build on the Movement Snacks we did in Practical Practice and create Movement Snack Stacks!

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Lesson 24

Flirting With “Failure”: One Leg Swing Across The Body

This lesson explores the idea of Earthquake Architecture, introduces another movement snack stack and the flirting with "failure" practice of One Leg Swing Across The Body.

Lesson 25

Flirting with “Failure”: The Impact Of Vision & Head Position On Balance

In this lesson, we do a Movement Snack Stack that moves from standing, to the floor and back again, learn more about proprioception, and practice with the impact of vision and head position on balancing.

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Lesson 26

Flirting With “Failure”: Balance With Qualities

In this lesson, we’ll do another movement snack stack that plays with three balances near the floor and we’ll flirt with failure with a one-leg balance engaging different qualities.

Lesson 27

Flirting With “Failure”: Place Down & Pick Up Something From The Floor

This lesson explores the Salutation to Balance Movement Snack Stack and we flirt with failure as we pick something up from balance.

Lesson 28

Flirting With “Failure”: Review & Integration

In this lesson, we create our own Movement Snack Stack and review all the Flirting with "Failure" practices we’ve done together.

Lesson 29

Flirting With “Failure”: Restorative Meditation & Journal Prompts

In this final lesson of Flirting with "Failure," we’ll do an intentional, restorative rest and take some time to expand our awareness beyond the body. As we talked about before, deep rest and an expanded vision of the practice are essential in order to embody our learning.

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Lesson 30

Final Integration: Building Balance In Your Body, Your Life & Beyond

And now together, we’re balancing on the edge of what comes next. Now that you have the information, the practices, and the experience, the next step is to embody and integrate your balance practice into your life. Making a plan to integrate balance practice into your life.

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4.7 (3)

Recent Reviews

Leanne

April 9, 2022

Enjoyed this course and the perspective it brought that is so needed to find balance and be ok with failure. I find myself approaching how I do things differently now and with more curiosity / experimentation.

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