Know thyself...

Bodies are wise as well as smart.  We notice the smart parts more often, like when we still remember how to ride a bike after all those years or when we manage to catch the toddler’s ice cream cone before it hits the floor without thinking too much about it.

The wise parts require a little more patience.  Our bodies do, in fact, tell us what we need.  This does not mean that when we open the fridge and see leftover pie it is our body’s wisdom that makes us take it out and eat it.  Sure, our body reacts to the idea of pie, wants pie, loves pie.  The body also knows that too much pie means misery later.

The wisdom of the body speaks slowly.  Those first five minutes of exercise can feel like a new terrorist interrogation program.  We can spend all of high school having a Coke and a donut for breakfast and get only minor warnings from the body about that not being the best possible idea.

Listen in.  Listen deep.  Listen long.  We may find that we exercise longer and eat less.  We may realize that, really, our body would rather go to zumba than yoga, or lift weights in the morning rather than the evening.  We may discover that blueberries are the food of the gods and that we can live without eating kale ever again.

What do our bodies know?

Independence, day two

The long weekend is over.  We’ve watched the relatives explode and the fireworks blossom, or the other way around.  We have returned to our roots, cooking things over fire and eating onion dip.  We might be slightly sunburned and we were up too late.

What do we do next?

It’s tempting just to roll over and push the snooze alarm.  We can have leftover brownies for breakfast.  We don’t need to work out; we walked thousands of steps cleaning up after the barbecue, after all.

Nope.

Put on those tennies.  Get in the cardio.  Lift something that isn’t a beer.  Eat the leftover fruit salad instead.  Declare your independence from the post-holiday blues.

Celebrate American heroes

It’s a holiday.  Go celebrate freedom and exercise your civil rights.

(Real blog post tomorrow, as usual…)

Friday Exercise: Bench Rows

Bench rows are a great exercise for the back of the body.  Stickie also likes that she has to use her core for stability since she has to work one arm at a time.

To begin, she puts one knee and one hand on a bench.  She ensures that her spine is long and her head is in line with the rest of her spine as if she were doing a plank or pushup.  Her other foot remains on the ground.  In her working hand, she holds a dumbbell.  Taking care to keep her shoulders level (the working shoulder tends to drop when the dumbbell is at the bottom of the movement and tends to hike up at the top), Stickie exhales to lift the dumbbell up toward her armpit.  She feels like her shoulder blades are sliding toward each other.  Then she lowers the weight back toward the floor.

As usual, two to three sets of ten to fifteen repetitions should do it.

Thursday Book Report: Our Pristine Mind

Wanting to be happy seems to be a universal human trait, at least most of the time.  (We can make exceptions for our 13-year-old selves, who occasionally glory in the misery of it all…)  How to go about being happy, however, appears to have a more… multiplicitous… sort of existence.

One possible answer is provided by Orgyen Chowang’s book Our Pristine Mind:  A Practical Guide to Unconditional Happiness.  Chowang provides an approach rooted in Buddhist practice.

What I found interesting in the book was the contention that meditation can and should go beyond mindfulness.  Admittedly, many of us could do with more mindfulness, however we manage to achieve it.  Going beyond that place to Pristine Mind may seem daunting.

There is much to think about for anyone with an interest in meditation.  I am not sure I would describe the book as “practical” myself; the reader will need to do some work to parse out the actual practical steps to follow.

For me, the book touched on issues that are beyond the scope of a simple book report; I may get around to writing a more in-depth piece on that stuff or I may not.  For the purpose of this post, I will say that the book seems to be worth reading, if somewhat of a slog.

The pelican has nothing to do with the topic, but it is cool, right?

I happen to like to cook.  I think this is a good thing, since I also like to eat and eating happens multiple times a day.  Cooking is one of the most beneficial things we can do for our health.

To clarify, cooking is not about throwing a prepackaged dinner in the microwave, even if we put it on a real plate afterward.  It is about chopping up vegetables and slicing fruit and choosing seasonings and herbs.  While there are many advantages to cooking, I will focus on three.

One:  it gives us control.  When we are doing the cooking, we have the power over how much sugar, salt, and fat we add or omit.  We don’t have to worry about colorings and preservatives.  Heck, we can even leave out the cilantro, just because we don’t like it (or double the amount if we do…).

Two:  it saves money.  Processed food costs more because the food processors have to add energy.  Cooking our own food saves on packaging costs.  The farmers who grow our food do not need to recoup the costs of the huge marketing campaigns they have mounted to get us to buy the Super Branded Snack-o-Rama Food of the Month in the New Improved Cheese and Bacon Flavor.

Three:  it increases pleasure.  Homemade food generally tastes better.  Also, there is the sensory pleasure of cooking:  the smell of herbs, the sizzle of hot pans, the colors of fresh vegetables.

Give it a try.  It’s good for us.

Don't play hurt

I do not like it when famous sports figures play through injuries.  It sets a bad example.  And I am, unfortunately, as subject to the influence as anyone.  A lot of fitness has a “suck it up” mentality when it comes to stuff that hurts.

I am not talking about soreness.  Soreness is a good thing.  It tells us that we have been doing what we need to do to grow.  I’m talking about pain.

When we are injured, the first thing we need to remember is to stop doing what we were doing that hurt us.  If the injury happened in some sort of freak accident way, that is simple enough.  (You know the joke.  Patient:  Doctor, I hurt my leg in three places.  Doctor:  Don’t go to those places!)  It is more challenging if the injury comes from repetitive stress.

RICE is the acronym for home remedies.  Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation.  Ibuprofin is not bad either.  None of these things substitutes for professional help.

This is where massage therapists, chiropractors, physical therapists, and doctors come in.  Don’t be afraid to consult them.  They want us to be well!

And after all those folks have fixed us up, we can work with our trainers to correct the form issues that cause our injuries in the first place. 

But don’t play hurt.  It isn’t worth it.