Just Bust a Move

Counteract all that slouching and slumping and even— brace yourself—aging by improving your flexibility and range of motion. You’ll reap the benefits for years to come.

- DANIELLE GROEN

Christine Felstead teaches yoga for runners, and emphasizes alignment and increasing the range of motion in the body. The key for all stretches, she says, is to breathe. “When holding each pose, inhale and exhale through the nose. Breathe deeply to feel the breath expand the back and side ribs, and hold each pose for five to 10 breaths.”

Everyone knew Christine Felstead was a runner. She was out there four or five days a week. She logged upwards of 150 kilometers each month. She’d even knocked off a pair of marathons. Plus, it was clear she was a runner from the way she moved: In the morning, she’d hobble to the bathroom, where a long, hot shower was required to straighten out her spine; in the evening, out for drinks, she struggled to pull herself up from her chair. By 2001, after 20-odd years of solid running and creeping stiffness, Felstead finally had an awakening. “It was hard to say I didn’t want to run anymore because it had become such a big part of my identity,” she says. But she was barely in her 40s. “I didn’t want to keep waking up feeling like I was 95.”

You don’t have to be a marathoner, however, to suspect your body might actually belong to a nonagenarian. So many of our daily activities, from driving to desk-sitting to doom-scrolling on our smartphones, serve to keep us static; throw in 19 months of a global pandemic, which left most of us clenched like hell, and it’s little wonder we’re all achy and tight.