restore: (ri' stôr, t. verb) to give back, return; to put back into existence or use; to bring back to a former or original state. Synonyms: repair, renew, recover, rehabilitate, revive, recondition

I am a certified Restorative Exercise Specialist (c-RES) with a program called Nutritious Movement, and Restorative Flow is rooted in this perspective. It is, hands-down, my favorite class to teach—if I could teach only one class for the rest of my life, this would be the one. Nutritious Movement is as close to an owner's manual for our bodies as we can get, in my not-so-humble opinion. It offers a clear, precise framework around what movement actually means—and here's the most important part: within our very own bodies. If we really want to do something about our tight hamstrings, or achy feet, or weak core, we need to have more precise definitions about what these things are and how these things function, not just as as an exercise, but how we use (or more likely, don't use) these parts in our everyday activities.

We might do things called the Hundred or Single Leg Circle in Pilates, or Warrior I or downward facing dog in yoga, or we run, or we lift weights, or we move through life by walking, sitting, pushing, pulling, lifting things, putting them down again, with little understanding about how we are doing these things. Each of these bigger movements are comprised of many smaller movements: have you ever thought about your feet and ankles in yoga's Warrior series? Or your pelvis in Single Leg Circle? Or your glutes when you run? Your hands and wrists in a plank? Turns out, those smaller movements have a significant impact on the larger ones, for better and/or for worse.

In Restorative Flow, we get curious. We have fun. We dismantle big movements into their smaller parts, and explore and examine how these smaller parts are working individually, within our own bodies (feet, ankles, hands, wrists, hip joints, knees, spine...). We work toward restoring the strength, flexibility and most important, the resilience, of these forgotten but very essential parts.