As a special bonus for 'Blue Monday', wellbeing specialist Justin Eade of Glimpse ~ Moving Well shares 3 quick tips for making the most of a walk. He explains why time outside is so beneficial to us - no matter how short - and how a gym ball can help soothe a crying baby!

Bringing together more than 25 years of experience with mind-body practices and holistic health research, Justin is also a nebosh accredited occupational health and safety specialist.

He offers tailored and accessible workshops on topics like better sleep and rest, stress and anxiety, digestion, energy levels, joy and relaxation. These can be bespoke to your personal needs and interests and delivered on a 1-2-1 or group basis, either in person or online.

Simple embodied practice & ideas to help people achieve a good work (and family) life balance.

LEARN MORE:

1. You can learn more about Justin and his work here: Glimpse Moving Well
2. Twitter @glimpsei / Facebook / Pinterest.
3. Get in touch: justin@glimpseinteractive.co.uk / +44(0)7946519835

If you enjoyed this episode, please share, rate and subscribe. It really does make the difference in helping others find it – which means helping more parents in need.

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Email: bluemumdays@gmail.com

MUSIC by Joseph McDade

Thanks Vix for inviting me to do this for Blue MumDays.

Really exciting opportunity.

Congratulations to everyone who's already a parent or recently become

one -amazing, deepest respect.

Many blessings on your futures.

I'm going to focus for a few minutes on something that most parents and

new parents do manage to do every day that supports their health and

wellbeing, 'cause that's an area that I've focused on for many years, and

that's to get outside for a walk.

So it doesn't just have to be when you're out walking the pram.

It can also be when you've got some time to yourself,

perhaps through some downtime.

Even if it's 20 minutes, you can just escape, get out the house

and do something for yourself.

The focus really on that is getting a little bit more from that opportunity.

Much of this people know already.

That's the way I look at it, is that we know this stuff instinctively.

If you've been alive, you've been doing all these things anyway.

It's just sometimes there's a little bit of extra science that helps to motivate,

and so I'm gonna share three focal points really, three kinds of techniques.

The first one being that as soon as you do step outside the air outside a building

generally is about five times better than the air on the inside of a building.

So really the quality of the air, the vitality as it were, of the

air for want of a a better phrase.

If you're in a very polluted area, obviously getting to the park or the green

space where the area is clean, it's quite important to really get that benefit.

When you're out, you can do a few things.

Like there's a technique in traditional Qi Gong and Tai Chi and so on.

I think it's called wu-wei, but it's basically in, in out.

So you're taking two in breaths and then an out breath.

So I'll just run through it now.

So you'll just be like,

so two through the nose and then one out through the mouth.

Or you can do all through nose.

What that does is it just basically as everybody who's ever done Wim Hof

knows, it starts to create that extra bit of oxygen intensity in the body,

and there's a lot going on with that.

One of the things that's happening when you're in a natural space, when you're

in a park or a space with trees is that those trees and plants, they give

off these things called phytoncides.

Phytoncides are the natural airborne chemicals that trees and plants give

off to protect themselves from insects and from disease, but they also have

many benefits to humans as well.

And it's really the foundation of forest bathing research in Japan.

I won't go into all the benefits, but there are multiple benefits.

One example would be its positive impacts on blood pressure.

So there are the phytoncides when you're near the trees.

If it's been raining or there's any running water or the air is nice and

damp, as it were, you are getting the benefits of the increased negative ions.

Again, outdoors, there are a lot more negative ions than

inside a house or a flat.

Negative ions, again, I won't go into deep science about it, but it's

really the sort of supercharged air.

So effectively we're looking at things like the air molecules and

the electrons and so on in the air.

If you were to go to a typical flat that's been with the windows closed,

you would measure, say a cubic area, cubic sort of meter, and you'd

find a few hundred negative ions, and these things are good for you.

They're really vital or vitalising.

If you were to go to a beach with crashing waves, you would find

thousands of negative ions per cubic.

So that's one of the reasons where you come back from a walk.

Crashing wavy beach and you just feel amazing, that palpable unmistakable

feeling of wellbeing and exhilaration that you feel that sort of vitality so

you can get quite a bit of that just from going on a walk after it's rained.

You could go during the rain, but anytime when you're getting like

water and the atmosphere together, that's where you're getting the

extra amounts of these negative ions.

Yeah, so that's one thing.

Just taking deeper breaths, maybe just really focusing on that you are

charging up when you're outdoors.

You're getting the kind of multiple benefits of really vital,

energised air, shall we say.

Number two would be to make that extra little point of focus on nature

connection, so that might be tuning into one or two or all of your senses

as you might be pushing a pram or out for a stroll and just noticing.

We do it all the time, but noticing branches and leaves and birds swooping.

It could be something simple like the clouds, just the movement of the

clouds on the shapes that you see, but just that extra connection to nature.

Creative connection, a sense of timeless connection.

One of the reasons that we connect so well with nature is that we've grown up with

it throughout our ancestry and our past.

So we trust nature, we depend on it, basically, but tuning into the sense.

It can be the smell, it can be the sound of the breeze and so forth,

running water, but just paying that extra little bit of attention.

And then a third tip, really, again, on getting the most out of a walk

would be just this idea or this reality actually that movement is medicine.

Movement is one of the most vital things that any human being does for

their health and wellbeing on a daily.

You could probably list in excess of a hundred benefits of a, of a walk.

I'll give you three examples.

So every cell in your body benefits from movement.

So the mitochondria in the cells benefits from movement, a little

bit like a sort of dynamo.

Every time you go walking, if you're using your feet, obviously on the ground,

if you are walking physically different, obviously if you are a wheelchair

user, but if you are walking on your.

You are stimulating those reflexology points and actually

points in the soles of the feet.

So quite a dynamic thing to be happening, but it's not something we

often focus on when we're on a walk.

We're just plodding along.

But actually all that stimulation and impact to the feet, to the soles

of the feet has multiple impacts and benefits that spread through the body.

And then the third one just to focus on for a minute, would be

the synovial fluid, which is the natural lubricant in the joints.

It's like a kind of egg yolk, and it's there throughout the body in all the

joints, but it's released and stimulated, and it increases when you move.

So when you go for a walk, your hips, your knees, your ankles, your arms

and so on, it's starting to increase that and that can help reduce pain.

And it's just really described as the body's natural lubricant,

which is probably an easy way to remember that you're getting a

benefit from moving rather than being stuck on the sofa, for instance.

So yeah, not missing that daily walk is probably the best bit of advice, you

know, just the light that you're getting, the natural light, the air, and so on.

It's really in.

I'd probably say it's one of the top things that I would recommend for

any anybody, particularly new parents who've got those extra channels.

My one more little bonus tip, this is the one I used to say to everybody years

ago, which is the gym ball is one of the best ways to help a crying baby.

You got your crying baby on your.

Perhaps with your papoose or just holding in your arms.

If you sit on that gym ball, you can basically create a nice bouncing action,

but you don't get knee pain and exhaustion that you would eventually after doing

this for half an hour with a crying baby.

So you can quite happily do this 10, 20, 30 minutes or even an hour

and you can kind of move and so on.

But you are supported, so it's good for you as well as the baby

will generally stop crying once you've started to bounce in rhythm.

So yeah, that's my sort of extra tip.

I think the NHS should give every new parent a gym ball.

Thank you so much for having me.

I hope some of this might be useful.