Wellness Tips in Italiano

by Brian Alcamo

Oddio! These past few weeks have been shocking to everyone. Thanks to a certain virus, many of us are stuck at home trying to flatten a certain curve. Staying home might not seem conducive to practicing a language or maintaining your well-being, but we promise it is. Learning Italian, or any language, is one of the best ways to stay sharp and give your brain a workout. But what about your body and soul? Try combining a linguistic challenge with some exercise or a mindfulness practice to spice up your language learning and your pursuit of wellness. Here are some of our favorite online resources to get you started!

Physical Wellbeing takes a two-pronged approach. The first is healthy eating, which is a topic so large that we don’t have the time to cover it in this post (keep your eyes on the JP Linguistics blog for that one!) The second is exercise.

Exercise: If you’re looking for a workout video in Italian, you’re in luck! It turns out that Italians exercise just like you and me, and they have the twenty minute Zumba promotional trial workout to prove it. There’s also FixFit, a mobile application and YouTube channel with over 1,000 workout tutorials to choose from. If Instagram is more your speed, feel free to give Paolo Fontana a follow. He’s a trainer at Barry’s Milan, and has an Instagram Story Highlight called “Quarantine 🔥” with an at home workout in Italian. Train your glutes and your imperative conjugations tutti insieme! 

Here are a few vocabulary words to get you started. 

• Allenamento = workout

• Riscaldamento = warm up

• Rilassarsi = to cool down 

• Sudare = to sweat

• Allungare = to stretch

Emotional Wellbeing: One of my favorite techniques to better my emotional wellbeing is a good ole mindfulness meditation practice. Popularized by apps like Calm and Headspace, this is a great way to learn how to work with the ebbs and flows of your personal emotional tapestry, during or not during a global pandemic. 

If you want to learn a little bit more about meditation in general, check out YouTuber’s Marcello Ascani’s meditation journey, or Alice LifeStyle’s “Iniziare a Meditare”, (and her comprehensive accompanying blog post, for people who prefer to read their Italian). In addition, here’s Dr. Filippo Ongaro's take on why meditation is fundamental to personal growth. His channel is filled with videos that span the spectrum of wellness education, so check it out for other types of content not related to meditation.

Here are some important words to get your meditazione italiana up and running down and sitting.

• meditazione guidata - guided meditation

• inspirare* = to breathe in

• espirare* = to breathe out 

• respiro* = (n. m) breath

• lasciare = to let (since you’ll be letting a lot of thoughts drift away!)

*Lingo Lookout: You’ll notice the root “spir” in a lot of words that have to do with meditation. That’s because “spir” is the Latin root for “breath,” and meditation is all about the breath. In English, you can find the root in words such as “spirit,” “conspire,” and “aspire.” 

The internet is filled to the brim with videos geared towards helping you get and stay as fit as you can be. Coupled with the allenamento mentale of practicing your Italian listening skills will help keep you motivated educationally and energetically. We at JP Linguistics also want to take the time to send love to everyone who’s battling the coronavirus, and say a big grazie mille to healthcare professionals across the globe.

Practice these words with our quizlet set.

(Thumbnail Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash)