Drive

Because I am a very lucky human being, I don’t drive much.  When I do end up spending a lot of time in the car, either as a driver or passenger, I get to—appreciate?—afresh what driving does to the body.

We are not made for sitting for long periods.  Without constant vigilance, our spines slump, our heads fall forward, our shoulders round.  Our hips feel tight from the constant flexing.  And all of that happens without accounting for the tension of traffic.

Nothing makes me miss my Pilates equipment more than a road trip.  However, even without spiffy, expensive, bulky equipment, it is possible to be kind to our bodies.

One way is to use a couple of cheap tools.  A hook-shaped “point-pressing stick” from the dollar store can help release tension in the shoulders and promote world harmony.  A tennis ball, lacrosse ball, or yoga tune-up ball under one side of the behind at a time can release hip pressure.

Regular attention to stretching/yoga/Pilates in the rest of our lives also helps.  Our strong cores and long muscles not only prevent a lot of the postural chaos of driving, they train us to relax almost automatically by stretching when we arrive if not on the journey.

Also:  breathing.  If deep breathing doesn’t come naturally, we can turn up the radio and start belting it out.  At the very least, it will make us laugh, which is probably the best tension reliever ever.

Sometimes art is a workout...

Workouts come in many shapes.  We are familiar with the kind that involve running or hefting handily-shaped barbells and dumbbells.  Sometimes workouts involve lifting seemingly innumerable boxes of heavy things, like when we move, or running up and down stairs all day, like when we speed-clean the house.  Both the familiar and the unusual workouts count, assuming we meet certain criteria.

It has to involve sweat.  If we aren’t getting sweaty, as I mentioned last week, we aren’t working hard enough.

We have to get breathless.  We want our hearts to work.  That’s where the endurance benefits come from, as well as the mood-enhancers.  We want to use our work to train our bodies to recover quickly from stresses, and that means providing our bodies with controlled and appropriate stress.

We need to be (a little) sore later.  Soreness means we worked hard enough.  Please note:  we are not talking about major pain or injury.  If we feel a bit stiff and sore the next day, we know we have done the right amount of work to challenge our muscles.  We can stretch them and then give them some time to recover and get stronger.

So, hit the gym or clean out the basement, whatever works for today.

Monday Workout!

This week’s workout features kettlebells!  If kettlebells aren’t available, use a dumbbell instead.  The format is 30-20-10.  Do 30 repetitions of the first exercise in each set, followed immediately by 20 repetitions of the second exercise and 10 of the third.  Rest between each set of three.  Repeat the entire cycle three times.

Kettlebell swings      30

Kettlebell twists      20

Kettlebell figure 8s      10

Plyojacks (or regular jumping jacks, or modified jacks)      30

Squats      20

Pushups      10

Lunge punches      30

Stability ball bench press      20

Bench dips      10

Friday Book Report: Full Catastrophe Living

So usually I finish reading the book before writing the book report.  Having been away and having to get things back together from being away, I am a little behind and should have chosen a shorter book.  I am about halfway through Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book, Full Catastrophe Living:  Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness.  It is awesome.

I chose to read it because it kept coming up as a major resource for mindfulness in all the other stuff I have been reading.  The book outlines Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MSBR), which is used in hospitals and medical centers.  It is both practical and inspirational, laying out the tools and the evidence for mindfulness as a way of life.  I am looking forward to reading the rest.

One caveat:  the book references a companion CD program of guided meditations.  While the book can be used without the CDs, I personally wish that I had bought both at the same time instead of waiting (somewhat impatiently now) for the CDs to arrive.  Once they do, I will be embarking on the eight week program.  Anyone want to join me?

Drip drip drop...

Let’s talk about sweat.  Our culture doesn’t really like it much.  We have products to help us reduce its smell.  We have products to reduce its very presence!  We all try to appear calm, cool, and collected.  We have saying about how we do not sweat; we glisten or glow.

I’m not going to go into the physiological purpose of sweat.  It exists.  I am more interested in sweat as a marker for our brains.  Sweat is a good indicator that we are working hard enough at our workouts.

If we can float through our workouts and come out the other end without needing to wipe our brows, we are not going to make a lot of progress.  Ideally, we work out hard enough that a shower is not only a pleasure but a public service.  Let’s get drippy.

Garbage out...

Many times when I set goals, I find that I keep adding things.  I am encouraged to do this by the zeitgeist:  in just minutes a day I can become thin, flexible, smart, sexy, and have perfect eyebrows!  My house can be pristine, my children creative, and my meals organic, free-range delicious.

Maybe so.  That kind of thinking has its place.  But I would like to suggest a slightly different idea.  As I looked over what I wanted to accomplish on my list of goals the last few times around, one way to summarize all of them was:  Keep Taking Out the Garbage.

Things might be different at other people’s houses, but in our house, things make it to the wastebaskets really well and then nothing happens.  One more can can cram into the recycling, right?  I’m kind of in a rush… I can empty the bathroom trash later.  And then things overflow and I get cranky and it is just totally unpleasant.

Taking out the garbage makes space.  It makes a pleasant environment.  It builds community, smells better, and improves morale.  And that is just in the literal sense. 

In the metaphorical sense, we can take the garbage out of our eating habits.  We can drop the waste out of our schedules.  We can remove the ideas that hold us back out of our minds, leaving us with a nice clean basis for what we really want to spend our time and energy on.

Take out the garbage and find the treasure.

Start again...

I’ve had some setbacks recently, physical and personal.  Sometimes things get tough.  I had to miss some workouts, modify others, and even flaked on some.  I didn’t always make the right food choices.  That is just what happened.  Now is the time to start again, to assume what Buddhists call Beginner’s Mind.  In case you find yourself in a similar situation (thank you, Arlo), I offer some thoughts about what to do and how to shape this new start.

What to do:  Just get started.  At breakfast, choose the food that will truly nourish your body without overloading it.  Go to the gym and lift one thing and then maybe another.  Go outside and walk a block, or pedal around the block, or go up and down the front steps a few times.  Go easy, go small, but go.

How to go:  On purpose.  Treat yourself with the hard love you would extend to a child or a best friend.  In the same way that you would make sure that your dear one brushed his or her teeth for his or her own good, get yourself to eat and move like you should.  Be loving, but be firm.  And then tell yourself you did a good job.