The Movement Miracle

#1 Bestseller! From Canadian fitness pioneer, bestselling author and PBS star Miranda Esmonde-White, the definitive Essentrics stretching and strengthening book, designed to keep your body strong, mobile and pain-free whatever your age. Miranda Esmonde-White's fitness revolution began with a simple insight: many exercise programs, including the ones she used to teach at her own studio, actually cause injury and prematurely age the body, bulking muscles and restricting joints. Throwing out the idea of "no pain, no gain," she studied how we are actually designed to move, creating a program that stretches and strengthens all the muscles in the body in a balanced way, enhances the full range of motion of every joint, and unglues stuck connective tissue. The result is Essentrics, a groundbreaking practice of gentle movement, respecting the muscle chains and joint mobility of the body, that scientists from Harvard, Adelphi and McGill universities have validated as a way to keep us strong, flexible and fit for life, as well as providing immense benefits for brain and digestive health. Where her previous bestsellers, Aging Backwards and Forever Painless, focused on anti-aging and pain-relief, The Movement Miracle is the Essentrics bible. In beautifully shot illustrations, twelve models who range in age from their twenties to their late sixties—all of whom have benefited from the program—demonstrate 100 sequences of gentle movements that can be combined to meet the needs of everyone from office workers to elite athletes. Another section of the book concentrates on posture, teaching us how to counteract the harmful impacts of sedentary living and too much screen time. The revolution Esmonde-White offers us all: only twenty-five minutes a day of gentle movement, following the Essentrics formula, will radically change and strengthen your body, relieve you of pain, replenish your energy and keep you young, no matter your age.

A ground-breaking guide to understanding how aging happens in our cells and how to maintain and repair those cells--and roll back joint pain and muscle loss at any age--through gentle, scientifically designed workouts based on Classical Stretch and Essentrics, developed by the author and star of PBS's Classical Stretch series. It's never too late to slow down, or even reverse, the effects of aging. The human body is designed to function for the full length of its life--and with gentle, full-body flexibility and strengthening exercises we can look and feel tremendous, vibrant and active at any age, and well into our senior years. After all, the body is the world's most efficient self-healing machine. And yet, remarkably, many of us neglect the single most important system in the body--the one that makes all the others work--the muscular system. The typical message we get as we age is that we can move less and should take it easy--exactly the wrong advice. Surprisingly, fitness enthusiasts often do as much harm to their bodies as people living sedentary lives. For example, yoga instructors get tennis elbow or carpal tunnel syndrome from daily stress on wrists and elbows; Pilates instructors suffer pectoral and tricep muscle atrophy and even professional athletes grow overweight and suffer countless ACL, meniscus and disc injuries. Ligaments are virtually ignored by most exercises routines and yet joint health is essential in order to remain active. But these afflictions don't happen overnight, and with Aging Backwards we can slow or prevent their onset, and often reverse their symptoms.

'This book is pretty life-changing – encouraging, optimistic, rich with information. It got me off the sofa.' Jeremy Vine 'This is such a lovely, ambitious, fascinating book. Essential lockdown reading. It allows us to reimagine our world and our bodies: we can move more.' Dr Xand van Tulleken, TV presenter 'Truly uplifting' Chris Boardman What is the 'miracle pill', the simple lifestyle change with such enormous health benefits that, if it was turned into a drug, would be the most valuable drug in the world? The answer is movement and the good news is that it's free, easy and available to everyone. Four in ten British adults, and 80% of children, are so sedentary they don’t meet even the minimum recommended levels for movement. What’s going on? The answer is simple: activity became exercise. What for centuries was universal and everyday has become the fetishised pursuit of a minority, whether the superhuman feats of elite athletes, or a chore slotted into busy schedules. Yes, most people know physical activity is good for us. And yet 1.5 billion people around the world are so inactive they are at greater risk of everything from heart disease to diabetes, cancer, arthritis and depression, even dementia. Sedentary living now kills more people than obesity, despite receiving much less attention, and is causing a pandemic of chronic ill health many experts predict could soon bankrupt the NHS. How did we get here? Daily, constant exertion was an integral part of humanity for millennia, but in just a few decades movement was virtually designed out of people’s lives through transformed workplaces, the dominance of the car, and a built environment which encourages people to be static. In a world now also infiltrated by ubiquitous screens, app-summoned taxis and shopping delivered to your door, it can be shocking to realise exactly how sedentary many of us are. A recent study found almost half of middle-aged English people don’t walk continuously for ten minutes or more in an average month. At current trends, scientists forecast, the average US adult will expend little more energy in an average week than someone who spent all their time in bed. This book is a chronicle of this very modern and largely unexplored catastrophe, and the story of the people trying to turn it around. Through interviews with experts in various fields - doctors, scientists, architects and politicians - Peter Walker explores how to bring more movement into the modern world and, most importantly, into your life. Forget the gym, introducing quick and easy lifestyle changes can slow down the ageing process and even reverse many illnesses and increase mental wellbeing.

Drawing on her groundbreaking anti-aging movement principles, bestselling fitness expert Miranda Esmonde-White walks you through 6 ways to rejuvenate your body and mind, paired with 30 days of stretching-and-strengthening workouts that effectively reverse the aging process. Miranda Esmonde-White has already given us the Bible on movement as a way to reverse aging with her New York Times and Globe and Mail bestseller Aging Backwards. But getting started on something that will change your life is always the hardest part! The Fast Track to Aging Backwards is Miranda's master class on how to begin her healing, revitalizing and scientifically endorsed programme of stretching and strengthening--and how to make it stick. First she outlines, step by step, 6 ways to change your attitude to aging and reverse its effects, from describing helpful small changes to your daily routine that will help you form new habits; to how to find the balance between moving like the Tin Man and flopping like the Scarecrow; to showing that for maximum painfree living, our bodies need a gentle approach to exercising that is all about respecting the way our bodies are designed to move. As Miranda says, "Relaxation is the new strengthening." Exclusively for this book, she has also created 4 workouts designed to carry you every step of the way through the first month of her programme, targeting every part of your body. Laid out with clear instructions, black-and-white photos and insider's tips on how to make every movement count, these workouts will give you the edge you need to quickly achieve your best results. The Fast Track to Aging Backwards is a countdown to a healthier and more youthful you.

What is the work that miracles do in American Charismatic Evangelicalism? How can miracles be unanticipated and yet worked for? And finally, what do miracles tell us about other kinds of Christianity and even the category of religion? A Diagram for Fire engages with these questions in a detailed sociocultural ethnographic study of the Vineyard, an American Evangelical movement that originated in Southern California. This movement is known worldwide for its intense musical forms of worship and for advocating the belief that all Christians can perform biblical-style miracles. Setting the miracle as both a strength and a challenge to institutional cohesion and human planning, this book situates the miracle as a fundamentally social means of producing change—surprise and the unexpected used to reimagine and reconfigure the will. Jon Bialecki shows how this configuration of the miraculous shapes typical Pentecostal and Charismatic religious practices as well as music, reading, economic choices, and conservative and progressive political imaginaries.

Describes how the author, an NPR commentator and professional writer who was born with spinal muscular atrophy, was expected to die in childhood but who with the support of a growing disability rights movement became one of the first students in a wheelchair to attend Harvard.

Shawn Phillips is an internationally respected strength and fitness expert who has helped athletes, celebrities, and tens of thousands of others over the past twenty years. Now he’s sharing his fresh approach to fitness with everyone. Strength for Life is an easy-to-implement program to help you get in fantastic shape, enjoy abundant energy, and maintain a lean, strong physique–not just for 12 weeks but for the rest of your life. Let’s face it, with the demands of family, work, and life, many of us simply don’t have the time to stick to a rigorous workout schedule. Through his own life experience, Shawn Phillips has recognized this challenge and risen to it, literally reinventing fitness with a results-oriented program that you can embrace even with your hectic schedule and do either at home or at the gym. Homing in on the idea of building mental and physical strength rather than just sculpting your body, Shawn has pioneered a technique called Focus Intensity Training ™ (FIT), which uses the mind-body connection to yield incredible results. The program features • a workout plan that can take as little as 35 minutes a day, 3 times a week • illustrated exercises with clear step-by-step instructions • 3 workout phases–a 12-day Base Camp pre-training period, a 12-week Transformation Camp, and a year-round continuation plan geared to keep you going strong and vibrant for the rest of your life • a simple eating plan to fuel your body for optimum energy and performance–one that will free you from dieting forever • goal-setting exercises to help you achieve lasting motivation and reach your loftiest visions It’s never too late to get in shape. If you’re in your twenties or thirties, Strength for Life will show you how to achieve peak levels of fitness year after year. For those forty and beyond, you can look forward to recapturing the energy and vitality you thought you had lost. By following Strength for Life, you will make yourself stronger, leaner, sharper, and more confident. As Shawn writes: “Strength is about being more, doing more, giving more. It’s not just surviving; it’s thriving. And most important, strength is about having a reserve, a deeper, fuller capacity of body, mind, heart, and soul.”

Start waking up to your full potential every single day with the updated and expanded edition of the groundbreaking book that has sold more than two million copies. “So much more than a book. It is a proven methodology that will help you fulfil your potential and create the life you’ve always wanted.” —Mel Robbins, New York Times bestselling author of The High 5 Habit and The 5 Second Rule Getting everything you want out of life isn’t about doing more. It’s about becoming more. Hal Elrod and The Miracle Morning have helped millions of people become the person they need to be to create the life they’ve always wanted. Now, it’s your turn. Hal’s revolutionary SAVERS method is a simple, effective step-by-step process to transform your life in as little as six minutes per day: - Silence: Reduce stress and improve mental clarity by beginning each day with peaceful, purposeful quiet - Affirmations: Reprogram your mind to overcome any fears or beliefs that are limiting your potential or causing you to suffer - Visualization: Experience the power of mentally rehearsing yourself showing up at your best each day - Exercise: Boost your mental and physical energy in as little as sixty seconds - Reading: Acquire knowledge and expand your abilities by learning from experts - Scribing: Keep a journal to deepen gratitude, gain insights, track progress, and increase your productivity by getting clear on your top priorities This updated and expanded edition has more than forty pages of new content, including: - The Miracle Evening: Optimize your bedtime and sleep to wake up every day feeling refreshed and energized for your Miracle Morning - The Miracle Life: Begin your path to inner freedom so you can truly be happy and learn to love the life you have while you create the life you want