I think...

Mindfulness does not have to involve sitting in a lotus position in a white room decorated with a single flower in a bowl of clear water.  It can, of course.  But for those of us meditationally challenged, I offer some other ideas for stilling the monkey mind.

Repetitive cardio.  The rhythmic motion of swimming, biking, running can have the same effect as a rocking chair on a baby.  We settle.  We breathe.  We relax.

Coloring.  There is a reason this has become trendy.  We give our brains just enough to do that the monkey mind slows down and rests in the moment.  Drawing, knitting, and some kinds of writing also fit into this space.

Singing.  Mindfulness has an intimate relationship with breath.  It is challenging to sing without breathing deeply.  Bonus points for doing it in the shower.  Extra bonus points for crazy dancing, falsetto, or costumes.

Cleaning.  Creating beauty and space outside ourselves can often create the same inside.  Clutter in our heads keeps us from focusing on the essentials.  Clutter on our desks can do the same.  Also, life is better with less dog hair.

Cooking.  Tactile practices like cooking bring us into the body.  The colors and scents and textures of cooking feed us before we even eat a bite.  Best results in cooking come from paying attention to the details, which is another way of saying focus.

Do what works.

Friday Exercise: Skullcrushers

Everyone likes sexy triceps, especially as the weather gets warmer and our arms come out of their sweater hiding places.  The Amazing Stickie is no exception, so she enjoys adding skullcrushers to her routine.  She also likes to say “skullcrushers.”

Despite the name, there is no actual crushing of skulls involved in the exercise.  Stickie lies on her back on a bench (in bench position on a stability ball is also a good version that adds more challenge) with a weight in her hands.  Barbells work well for this.  A single dumbbell held at the ends or goblet-style also works.  She raises her arms directly over her shoulders.  This is the start position.  As she inhales, she lowers the weight toward her skull by bending her elbows.  She lifts the weight back up over her shoulders on the exhale.

It is tempting to do this exercise by moving at the shoulder joints, but that is cheating.  The goal is to get the triceps to do the work, so Stickie ensures that she uses only her elbows to move the weight.  She usually does three sets of ten to fifteen repetitions.

Thursday Book Report: Rolfing

Rolfing: Reestablishing the Natural Alignment and Structural Integration of the Human Body for Vitality and Well-Being by Ida P. Rolf presents an interesting take on the question of body and mind.  She invokes the “sound mind in a sound body, “ essentially insisting that the mind cannot be sound when the body is out of whack.

What I wanted out of the book I found:  close observation of alignment and discussion of underlying structure.  She states the problems of current culture as expressed in our bodies well:  forward heads, rounded shoulders, aching backs, dysfunctional hips and feet.  Whether her plan for correcting the issues is correct, I do not know, but the discussion is interesting.

Also, if it takes an entire chapter to answer the question of whether the process if painful, the answer is yes.

Count to Four...

Four reasons to do Pilates:

It sweats the small stuff.  When we do big movements with heavy weights, we are paying attention to the big muscles.  Pilates doesn’t ignore them, but it brings the attention deeper, to the stabilizers, the balance muscles, the little shifts that create symmetry and grace.  Taking those Pilates lessons back to the weight room can transform a workout when it is time to commune with the barbells.

It creates space.  We spend so much of our lives crammed.  We are stuck in cars.  Our shoes pinch our toes.  Our pants are too tight.  There is not enough time.  Pilates works to lengthen our bodies, to tease out the compression.  We can move with flow and find there is plenty of space after all.

It is harder than it looks.  We can rise to the challenge and find that our bodies like it!

It is about breathing.  We breathe or we die.  Pilates makes the not dying work better.

Shower the people...

Who loves you?  Who is there for you?  Who makes you tell the truth and sticks around to hear it, no matter what it is?

Maybe those seem like strange questions for a fitness post, but they are important.  We can’t do it all alone.  Sometimes this is obvious, like when we try to bench press more than we can and we are stuck there, pinned under a heavy barbell (Public Service Announcement:  Do Not Do Heavy Lifting Alone.).  Sometimes it is less obvious at first, like when we are eating an entire carton of ice cream because no one else is home and it has been one of those days.

Figure out who your people are.  Spend some time taking care of them.  They are crucial to your health.

Run, run away

In a perfect world, I would never be grumpy.  Until the world becomes perfect, I have cardio.

I know a lot of people who tell me that they are too tired to walk or run or bike or otherwise move.  I understand.  I am sometimes one of those people.  The thing is, I do it anyway.

I may bitch and moan about how tired I am, but almost always by the time I’ve been walking or riding or swimming for five minutes, I am smiling again.  Some of it is chemical, no doubt.  I love endorphins.  But there is also the psychological benefit of Doing Something instead of hanging around just letting things fester.  Bonus points for going outside.

Friday Exercise: Medicine ball slams

The Amazing Stickie likes exercises that serve multiple purposes.  Medicine ball slams work the whole back of the body, demand coordination, and raise heart rate, all at the same time.  For bonus points, on days when Stickie feels frustrated, she can imagine that the things that are frustrating her are in front of her on the floor and smash the heck out of them.

She begins holding the medicine ball over her head.  Because medicine balls are not all that bouncy by nature, it requires a pretty good slam to get it to hit the floor and bounce back up to where it can be caught.  Stickie uses her arms and back to slam the ball down and her knees to get low enough to catch it as it rebounds.  She will often do thirty slams at a time, or, for a switch, slam the ball for a minute at a time between other exercises for a cardio burst.