very valuable ability to reason from cause to effect.
WHY? By increasing the oxygen to our brain we increase our mental function. The oxygen is carried in the blood, and exercise can increase the oxygen levels by 25%. Oxygen laden blood leaving the heart is bright in colour and full of health for mind as well as body.
All through this series making choices is a major part of the process of restoration. If we can reason that what we are currently doing is harmful, and see that the way to change things is to live differently, then that is a very positive decision. So exercise can actually help us decide more intelligently about how we will live our lives. That has to be a bonus in a pattern of total health. |
Movement is essential for the human body. But somehow we find it so hard to build into our everyday lives. Each year fitness clubs open, leisure centres entice us with good offers, swimming pools attract us, but then our motivation goes and all the good resolutions get crowded out. Deep down we still know that we should be exercising our bodies, for our hearts and general health.
The only successful way to exercise consistently is to build it into our way of life, and not make it something special that requires changes of clothes, showers, or going out in the evening when the body is asking to rest.
Be honest - have you been happily out of puff today?
LOOK AT THIS LIST. What could you do everyday?
Walk with the children to school.
Walk to the shops.
Walk the dog, (or even someone else’s dog!) at a brisk striding pace.
Turn a piece of your garden into a place for vegetables.
Get an allotment.
Help others in your area with their gardens.
Take people with a disability swimming every week.
Did you notice something?
These are all non-competitive, or helpful to someone else, or provide a chance to talk to the children or take you among growing things of nature. So much exercise involves competition or pushing against records, or there is embarrassment about how you will look to the others. To make your mind and body happy and functioning, is the main purpose of the additional movement - not to provide stress while you do it!
THE SECRET. Do not tell anyone what you have chosen to do, so you do not think of it as an exercise programme. Make it just part of living. Working physically hard in a garden is especially satisfying. The reward is a job done, something productive accomplished, with something to look forward to. Any exercise which achieves this, as well as increased pulse rates, is true exercise.
HERE IS ANOTHER KIND OF EXERCISE. We have already spoken about appreciating things of beauty in nature, or being kind, and giving affection. When did you last have this type of exercise on a regular basis? This aspect of our lives needs to be developed too, in order to experience real, lasting, deep down health. This will show you how.
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1. Discover the warmth and fun from sending a gift to someone that you know they will like - without putting your name on it. You will not expect any thanks back then. It will just have been done for the pleasure!
2. Find something of the season, a flower, a cone, or a shell and draw it, then colour it in. It may not look like the real thing, but you will have had the opportunity to discover the small details of its colour and shape and texture. If you do not have any colouring things, buy a small pack of coloured pencils from the newsagent.
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