Go play outside.

The sun has come out!  Here are some good things about that:

• Trees.  Going outside shifts our perspective, especially if we can spend some time in nature.  Forest bathing is a thing for a reason.

• Vitamin D.  Many of us don’t get enough of it during the winter months.  As we age, our ability to synthesize it from sunlight also decreases.  A little sun time can do wonders for our well-being (and then put on the sunscreen so we don’t die of skin cancer).

• Changing up the routine.  The view from the elliptical trainer rarely changes.  When we can pick a different bike ride or hike or walk or run, we wake up our bodies and our minds.  We have to adapt to new routes and changing terrain.

Go play!

Holistic (yep, I said it)

I’ve been complaining about the continuing education course I just finished pretty much from the time I started it.  It’s integral to my learning process.  The complaining does not mean that I don’t find value in continuing education; in fact, continuing education is one of the things I like best about my profession.

Fitness, as I have said many times, is not something we do at the gym for an hour a week with a trainer.  It is much more holistic than that (yes, I have special dispensation to use that word, granted because I lived in Berkeley for 20 years).  Fitness is what we eat for breakfast, who we love, how we walk the dog, what we do about that problem knee, and how we slept last night.

What I bring to my clients’ fitness journeys is everything I know.  Some of that is about the continuing education I’ve done in nutrition, corrective exercise, Pilates, behavior modification, weight loss, blah blah blah.  Even that degree in English comes in handy.  Being a parent doesn’t hurt, either, and my work in nonprofit programming has surprising applications.  We all bring our whole selves to the gym and in an ideal world, we leave with our whole selves feeling better.

We can do this.

Moral Fiber Is Also a Metaphor...

This may come as a shock to some of us:  exercise does not have moral value.  Our culture tries to argue differently—muscular Christianity, anyone?  How about the character-building function of team sports?  Then there are all the people who feel, obscurely or overtly, that they need to confess to me (because I am clearly some kind of high priestess of the fitness cult…) that they haven’t run or stretched or lifted, or, even worse, that they don’t happen to like running or stretching or lifting.  (I am not a high priestess of anything.  If I were, I would automatically absolve everyone.  We’re all trying our best.)

There are many fine people who love exercise.  There are even many fine people who become finer people because of what they learn about themselves while exercising.  And then there are people who are less fine people who also love exercise.  Insert your favorite famous sports star sex/violence/corruption scandal here.  It is not usually the exercise that makes the difference.

Exercise is also not a punishment.  We do not need to give ourselves forty lashes on the treadmill because we had a piece of cake at someone’s birthday party.  We do not need to atone for our sins, real or imagined, in sweat.

This is not to say that exercise does not have value.  Of course it does.  It is one tool toward making healthy bodies and minds.  Let’s make our exercise more of a plow and less of a sword.

Let’s work out in love.