Human Movement - Greek Alphabet series

Jag’s Body Shop is a laboratory and a healthy playground for movement. The purpose is to enjoy being in a body and to explore our human potential. A very important aspect of Jag’s Body Shop is called Human Movement.  Not structured or protocol driven, it is movement done for fun and pleasure and can also be used to facilitate loosening, stretching and strengthening, improve balance, flow, and energy and develop graceful coordination by learning and practicing simple skills. It uses little to no equipment and is meant to be practiced anywhere at any time that’s convenient. Jag has been practicing this technique since he created it out of necessity following a bad shoulder injury in 2008. And starting May 2020, he is making it possible for you to practice Human Movement with Jag online.

Human Movement begins by putting on music (if desired) and just starting to gently explore whatever movement you feel inspired to do that day. It is important that you pay attention to how each movement feels and how it is affecting you physically mentally and emotionally. Only do movements that interest, intrigue, entertain, and please you. Stop when you feel done. I usually tell myself I’ll move to at least three songs and I often do much longer than that. Occasionally I won’t even finish the three songs. It isn’t necessary to accomplish any goal except to improve the way you feel.  It is ok to be very gentle if that’s what you need, and if it feels good it is ok to be very vigorous. It is good to challenge yourself to learn new movements or practice old movements or just to wiggle around like a child or a puppy.  Through this approach we develop gracefulness, ease, relaxation and self control, which comes from practicing gradually and always having fun while learning.

Jag records his own Human Movement practice sessions and makes them available for purchase to use at home. They range between very gentle to fairly intense and anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour in length  check out the list below to see clips from each video on his YouTube channel: Jag Justjag. The full versions of all of those videos can be used over and over again for $15 via Venmo or ApplePay. Look through the video teasers and contact Jag with the title you’re interested in. Get any three at one time for $40

Jag is also available for online personal training which entails half-hour video chat coaching sessions and custom-made videos for home practice.

Ready to start? Use the name @jagzu to pay via Venmo.
I can also accept Apple Pay
Questions? Contact Jag at jagfit@hotmail.com for more details or to inquire about availability for training.

AVAILABLE VIDEOS
This is the Greek Alphabet Series

Omega is about 32 minutes.  I was pretending I knew how to box. I was a wrestler in school; I’ve never taken a single boxing lesson. But today I played as if. The workout starts with five minutes of “jump rope”, then five minutes of “speed bag”, three minutes of “jabs”, five minutes of “hooks”, four minutes of “uppercuts” and then finishes with ten minutes of cooling down, mobility and stretches. 

Psi is about 13 minutes and very gentle. It’s intended to be done first thing in the morning or anytime your body needs some healing. I was sore and stiff from an intense day and my goal for this session was to relax, stretch and feel good. 

There is no structure except that I was aware I wanted to move each of my joints. This was accomplished but I didn’t go in any particular order.  

Chi is about 27 minutes. It’s fairly high energy and pretty simple. The focus was to get sweaty and out of breath, so I used about six or seven minutes to warm up with quick and playful spontaneous movements then went into a structured section. When I designed the session, I didn’t realize how intense it was going to be. The only equipment I used was a yoga mat and at one point I used the wall to lean against in a handstand. After the structured section, I did some yoga like stretches and then sat still for a few breaths before getting on with my day. 

Phi is a low key mobility session followed by a brief super slow workout. The full video is 12 minutes. The mobility session is mostly standing so a good choice if you don’t want to get down on the floor but do want to loosen up or warm up or increase energy. The super slow exercises are using the concept of “time under tension” to get a full workout by doing one exercise so slowly that it fully taxes the muscles. It is deceptively challenging to move slowly enough to make the single repetition take longer than a minute. My goal is to work up to 90 seconds, but on this day I could only do around 50 seconds. 

Upsilon is a gentle mobility based warm up. Great for when you’re feeling stiff or sore. It’s about 19 minutes and leaves me feeling energized and ready to face the day 

Tau is a vigorous session focused on increasing metabolism. It is a HIIT session using the Tabata protocol. The moves are based on gymnastics, wrestling, yoga and calisthenics. Several variations are shown for each movement. This type of session leaves me glowing and feeling like I did some serious work. 

Sigma is a two-part video. The morning session is about ten minutes and takes place in my home. The focus is on flexibility. I apologize that I was using the phone as both camera and speaker so the music is incredibly loud. I won’t do that again. 

The second part of the video takes place at a local park where the focus is on practicing some advanced human movements that challenge me. There is no music playing in the park section, so if you had turned the volume down for the first part, you can turn it back up again to hear the park ambiance. 

Rho is about 25 minutes. It’s a split session; 10 minutes in the morning practicing Nia 5 Stages (River loves that practice and tries to join me a couple times) and in the afternoon I spent about fifteen minutes pretending I knew how to do Tai Chi. Of course it is all just fun spontaneous playful Human Movement. 

Pi is a 23 minute video focused on mobility and flexibility. It’s mostly simple movements without being too strenuous but also occasionally holds some delicious stretches. This is a spontaneous session. 

Omicron is a thirty minute session focused on stability. After about ten minutes of flowing yoga-like movements, it goes into a series of four positions held for thirty seconds with thirty seconds rest between positions. The positions are intended to challenge and improve strength while stationary. The basic positions are squat, hang, plank and side plank. A wide array of variations are shown.

Xi is a 21 minute video. It’s mostly vigorous anaerobic exercise but I’m playing music so I also can’t help breaking into dance often. I was using a free version of Spotify so there are also occasional commercials. I use the pull up bar in this one but it’s still mostly body weight exercises. 

Nu is what happens when I do yoga in the style of Human Movement. You may recognize some version of tree, dancer, chair, triangle, warrior, dog, camel, gate, split, butterfly, happy baby, abdomen vacuum seal, fish, bridge, corpse, plank, eagle, lion and rabbit poses but you may also notice that I take lots of liberties and make playtime out of it. 

Mu is about 23 minutes and fairly athletic. It uses six songs from the original Broadway cast recording of Bill Whelan’s Riverdance. The moves are inspired by Debbie Rosas, Athletic Nia routine Firedance, and combine dancing, calisthenics and martial arts.

Lambda is a run-through of my newest work, the Hope routine. It’s mostly done, but still needs some polishing, tweaking and adjusting. But this is what I have now. It is presented in the silent fashion, so you will clearly hear the music and see my movements, but I am not giving instructions or pearls. 

I talk for the first eight minutes about how the Hope routine got its title and what Hope means to me. Then I talk about what is developing for me as a focus and what I’m using as a muse to get me to that focus and intent. So here is Hope. 

Music by Maya Jane Coles, Laar, Alex Cortiz, Jain, Yello, Banco de Gaia, Kid Koala and more. 

Kappa is a spontaneous movement session. I had a list of calisthenics movements I wanted to include and I took my time to organically find each movement coming out of flowing and dancing to the music. The video quality is low but the sound is good. I almost deleted this video due to the low resolution but as I viewed it, I didn’t find the low resolution prevented me from seeing the moves, so I decided to keep it as part of the program. This is a longer one, at about 42 minutes. 

Iota is a full 50 minute workout. It starts out with some spontaneous warm up movements and then goes into a HIIT style session using a Tabata protocol for six different exercises. My dog, River, usually stays in the corner or on his box while I’m working out but today he decided to lie between me and the camera. He’s in the foreground the whole time but never blocks the view. 

Theta is a gentle session in response to what my body was feeling after working so much on two vigorous songs for my Hope routine. I spontaneously took care of my body while jamming to some Widowspeak. The session lasts about 22 minutes. Then, I figured I should include those moves that my body craved into the routine. So then there’s an additional ten minutes where I was test driving my new inspiration for the last two songs, the FloorPlay cycle of Hope. 

Eta is a peek into my choreography process. I wasn’t happy with what I was doing for two songs from my newest routine, Hope. I spent the entire session going back and forth, re-doing those two songs over and over. I put together five repetitions of a Yello song “Hawaiian Chance”. It is a high energy song. It is literally the climax of the routine, so today’s session was quite vigorous. It’s about 21 minutes. 

Zeta uses five songs from my Hope routine playlist. Each song is about five minutes and I do one activity per song with as many variations as I can come up with. I do Nia Five Stages to “Kama Kum” by Banco De Gaia; gymnastics warmups to “Tilinko” by Laar/Zoohacker; lunges to “Spring Arrives” by Azam Ali; ape to “The Earth Dance” by Hugo Kant; and bug to “Funk Me Up Baby” by Alex Cortiz. 

Epsilon is a high energy dance and gymnastics romp. Mostly spontaneous but at times I’m exploring choreography inspirations. Whenever I wear my leopard spots, I feel like a circus acrobat so that is reflected in my approach today. I was interacting a little bit with the furniture just for fun. 

Delta is about 25 minutes and mostly on the floor. It only uses the pull-up bar for about fifteen seconds so it’s misleading that it shows up as the thumbnail. It starts with about five minutes of dance and then is a fairly high energy demonstration of as many variations of five basic exercises as I can think of in about four minutes each.

Gamma is about 13 minutes and pretty intense. I spend about a minute each on some body weight movements interspersed with a little free mobility. 

Beta about twenty minutes of flowing to the music with an emphasis on gymnastic style FloorPlay. It uses a massage table at the end but the things I demonstrate can be done on a bed, couch, bench or many things. And I also use some yoga blocks in the last few minutes to practice stability, which could be done on some books or anything. 

Alpha is about 15 minutes of spontaneous movement playing a lot with the slippery feeling of the blanket on a wood floor. If you don’t have a blanket you could wear socks and cotton sweats to get the same effect. At times, the blanket serves as knee pads by bunching up beneath me when I kneel. I’ve also heard of people replicating the slippery feeling by placing a large garbage bag down if they have carpet. Placing a towel between your body and the garbage bag improves comfort and give you a bit of the knee-pads effect as well. 

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