Looking to improve your physical and mental health? Take a look at our top picks on Kanopy, from how to practice meditation to preparing healthy meals.

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Exercise and movement

How to Boost your Physical and Mental Energy

How to Boost Your Physical and Mental Energy offers a step-by-step curriculum for tapping into those hidden wells of energy and injecting your life with a much-welcomed jolt of vitality—that joie de vivre we all wish we had. Taught by Dr. Kimberlee Bethany Bonura, a highly acclaimed fitness and wellness consultant, these 12 accessible lectures serve as a toolkit for a more energetic you. Dr. Bonura shows you a series of practical exercises that will increase your energy in the short term, and you also learn how to make a personalized blueprint for long-term success

Watch How to Boost Your Physical and Mental Energy →

Foundational Fitness

Using only simple exercise tools and a yoga mat, discover how to get a well-balanced, 30-minute workout that incorporates both strength training and flexibility. Complete this workout session two to three times a week (along with gentle cardio) for a well-rounded exercise routine to keep you fit as you age.

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How Exercise Helps with Chronic Pain

Study after study has shown that exercise releases endorphins, improves blood flow to the brain, reduces fatigue, improves sleep quality, and even helps build emotional resilience. But what's the most significant issue in developing an appropriate exercise program for a person with chronic pain? Moderation. Moderation. And more moderation. Learn why.

Watch How Exercise Helps with Chronic Pain →

Core Strength and Balance

Maintaining core strength and balance is essential for maintaining our physical independence as we age. In this session, focus on a series of yoga and Pilates exercises--performed both in a chair and on the floor--designed to improve your posture and strengthen the muscles in your core and back.

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Pilates Essentials

Certified Pilates Instructor Lindsey Jackson has a unique teaching style and makes Pilates accessible, easy to follow and entertaining whilst bringing all the known benefits of a strong core, abdominal and back strength and a calmness of mind.

She includes a warm up to prepare your body, a workout for all at multi levels, and a calming relaxation. Lindsey teaches a mixed gender class, illustrating 3 levels to suit different abilities. Her knowledge of health, fitness, yoga and Pilates fuses effectively, producing this holistic program for beginners and improvers.

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Jane Fonda's Low Impact Workout

One of the most popular programs of all time. Designed to jump start your metabolism and improve your overall physical fitness without being hard on the joints and muscles.

Watch Jane Fonda's Low Impact Workout →

Functional Fitness: The Crossfit Craze

This documentary takes a raw and introspective look into the world of FUNCTIONAL FITNESS, illustrating what this growing trend is all about. An inspiring film that explores how this fitness phenomenon has enhanced the lives of so many people.

Watch Functional Fitness: The Crossfit Craze →

Food and nutrition

The Everyday Gourmet: Making Healthy Food Taste Great

"Healthy" food doesn't have to taste bland and boring. Instead, learn how to use healthy ingredients and seasonings, particularly of international cuisines, to enliven your diet and keep the pleasure in cooking and eating with this course taught by a nutrition instructor and a master chef at The Culinary Institute of America.

Watch The Everyday Gourmet →

Thinking Healthily: Weight and Nutrition

Yo-yo no more: Patients who used CBT to manage their relationship with food and exercise showed decreased weight, decreased body mass index, decreased waist circumference, and improved eating habits. Use the core behavior change principles from previous lectures and apply them to healthy eating and exercise habits.

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Care and Feeding of the Brain

You can optimize your brain function by paying attention to three key habits: what you eat, how well you sleep, and how much you exercise. Ponder the science behind this three-pronged approach to caring for your brain, and come away with helpful tips you can apply to your own lifestyle.

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Diet, Health and the Power of Words

From “superfood” to “pink slime” to acai, the media exerts a powerful effect on our concepts of food, diet, and health. Learn how to differentiate between nutrition-related scientific statements and marketing statements. When does the desire to eat whole, healthy foods become an unhealthy obsession? What role does the media play in influencing those choices?

Watch Diet, Health and the Power of Words →

Meditation and mindfulness

Practicing Meditation

Taking the mindful approach a step further, Dr. Bauer provides you with an insightful examination of meditation. In addition to reviewing the multitude of benefits that meditation can provide as both a coping strategy and a preventive measure, Dr. Bauer walks you through a number of steps you can take to help establish a successful meditation session so you can make the most of this practice.

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Practicing Mindfulness

In recent decades, science has confirmed that meditation, when correctly practiced, offers lasting benefits for your physical, mental, and emotional health. Gain a clear understanding of the essence of meditation—and how best to practice it—in 24 lessons filled with guided exercises, principles and techniques, and more.

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My Year of Living Mindfully

In the midst of a global mental health crisis, millions of people have turned to mindfulness. But does it actually make us happier and healthier? In a world-first experiment, journalist Shannon Harvey recruited a team of scientists to put mindful meditation to the test. But what began as a year-long self-experiment soon became a life-changing experience.

Watch My Year of Living Mindfully →

Everyday Yoga

Draw on the poses and routines presented in the course to develop a personalized yoga routine that will work for you in the everyday realities of 21st-century life. Keep sight of three principles: Breathe deliberately, move in non-habitual ways, and pursue mindful awareness.

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Chair Yoga

For those of us with limited mobility, yoga on a floor mat can seem like an activity that we're better off skipping. But in this fun exercise session, you'll discover how you can still perform basic yoga routines to work your whole body--all from the ease and accessibility of a chair.

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Mastering Tai Chi

These 24 half-hour lessons, taught by an International Master Tai Chi Instructor, take you deeply into the practice, focusing on a routine known as the Yang-style 40-movement form. Known as moving meditation, tai chi is part exercise, part relaxation and is accessible to everyone, regardless of age of the current level of physical fitness.

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