Movement at Work

Bring intentional movement into your workday with targeted exercises.

Spending eight or more hours a day sitting or standing at a desk is a major contributor to chronic pain, stiffness, fatigue, and stress. Movement at Work: Your Guide to Pain-Free Productivity provides you with a solution to this problem—moving throughout your workday.

Movement is good for the body, but with constraints on time and space, it can be challenging to incorporate meaningful movement into your busy workday. Movement at Work provides a variety of exercises, breathing practices, and visualization techniques to break up long bouts of prolonged inactivity with both physical and mental breaks throughout your day. The book features the following:

• Over 75 exercises and movements to ease pain, alleviate stiffness, and build strength
• Try It Out activities to make use of the ideas about improving posture, mood, and range of motion
• Personal storiesfrom real people who have incorporated exercises from the book
• Guidance on implementing techniques from the book
• Postural considerations for work requiring sitting or standing
• Simple plans to help cope with stress
• Practical sequences of 5 to 10 minutes, 10 to 20 minutes, and 30 to 45 minutes

The book explores the biomechanics behind the movement strategies to not only improve your body awareness but also help you understand why these techniques work. Navigating the book is easy, with color-coded tabs to help you quickly find the movements you need. Using the Franklin Method and functional movement approaches, you’ll find a multitude of ways to add movement and reduce stress without taking up lots of time.

Movement at Work offers a realistic, accessible way to incorporate intentional movement into your long days. Take back your workday with movements designed to help you move more, ache less, and work better with purposeful breaks.

Earn continuing education credits/units! A continuing education exam that uses this book is also available. It may be purchased separately or as part of a package that includes both the book and exam.

Audience

Individuals who stand in one place or sit most of the day, either in an office or at home. Human resource and worksite health professionals looking to create movement programs.

Part I. Posture and Pain
Chapter 1. Posture Is More Than Sitting Up Straight
Chapter 2. Your Posture and Breathing Are Connected

Part II. Move With Ease
Chapter 3. Head, Neck, and Eyes
Chapter 4. Hands and Wrists
Chapter 5. Shoulders, Chest, and Upper Back
Chapter 6. Lower Back
Chapter 7. Hips
Chapter 8. Legs and Feet
Chapter 9. Core

Part III. Alleviate and Integrate
Chapter 10. Shake It Off
Chapter 11. Calm It Down
Chapter 12. Ease Pain With Practice

Alison Wesley believes in making movement accessible, creative, enjoyable, and functional. She started her company, Movement at Work, in 2008 as a way to help people incorporate movement where and when they work. Wesley has coordinated and assisted teacher trainings in the Franklin Method, an evidence-based approach to movement education. She is the coauthor, with Eric Franklin, of Understanding the Pelvis: A Functional Approach to Yoga (published by Human Kinetics). She shares ongoing yoga and movement classes virtually through her online studio and with organizations such as the City of Portland, Guide Dogs for the Blind, eBay, Kaiser Permanente, Oregon School of Massage, and Schnitzer Properties. She also coleads in-person, hands-on cadaver dissection intensives as well as online experiential anatomy courses through EmbodyU. When she’s not diving into movement, anatomy, or philosophy, you can find Wesley writing and producing work like her film, The Mural, and her solo musical albums; singing with her choir, Nocturne; salsa dancing; learning Spanish slowly; spending precious time with her one-of-a-kind husband and stepchildren; or training the family’s two wildly spoiled German shepherds.

“Movement at Work translates the science of movement and postural correction into simple, practical strategies anyone can utilize in their work environment. This comprehensive guide helps the reader counter the negative effects of prolonged sitting and workplace stress, making it possible to work healthier.”

—Mike Baer, MSPT, Orthopedic Certified Specialist

“Whether you spend all day at a desk or you’re a fitness instructor or health coach who works with clients in the workplace, Alison Wesley’s Movement at Work is the functional movement guide you’ve been waiting for. Each chapter provides innovative, easy-to-apply ideas to help increase physical activity and decrease stress in as few as five minutes. Alison is an expert in body alignment and teaching, and she provides clear, creative explanations for every posture and movement. So much more than stretches or an exercise strategy, Movement at Work will become your go-to resource as soon as it arrives.”

—Katrina Sarson, Communications Strategist and Program Director at Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University