A Simple Stretch You Can Do Anytime, Anywhere (Video)

We know that food is our medicine. But movement is also our medicine. We have tremendous power to create health and cure disease through how we move in our bodies, all day, every day.

These aren't striking statements in East Asian tradition. Tai chi and qi gong are built around an understanding that movement is healing, and how we move both leads and creates how we feel. We can make ourselves injured, even sick, with how we move and don't move. We can also heal and prevent disease with how we move.

Wherever you are, you can get yourself relaxed and feeling good. You don't need a yoga room or special equipment. Right where you are, right now, on your own two feet, is perfect. Just follow these three steps:

1. Relax. If you're going to move, you want to be movable!

Trying to move from a stiff and tense position is no fun at all. Worse, it leads to injury and allows stress to make a home in our bodies. So to begin, relax enough that it's easy to move every inch of you, just by moving from your belly, and letting the rest of your body go along for the ride. (You'll get to practice this in the video, below.)

2. Breathe deep. When you breathe much deeper than normal, you feel much more than normal.

From feeling, you get to hear all the things your body is telling you, in every moment. Your body is a chatterbox! When you join that conversation, you jump into the driver's seat, and become your own best healthcare provider.

3. Move easy, all day.

Now that you're relaxed, movable, and can feel your body, connect it all together. Respond to how you feel with how you move. This is addictive! So keep doing it, again and again, in everything you do. It doesn't take much, you just have to do it. A few breaths and some simple moves will get everything you've got moving easily as one connected happy body.

You might think, That couldn't possible lead to anything big! It's just too easy!

Try it. From moving, breathing, and feeling you, a chain of events begins that just might be the most powerful set of life changes you'll ever experience.