With my New Year may I have a new ME straight up with a Twist?

You got it…here it is.

(from a recent talk to an open minded group of boomers)

     I had a little of a tough time choosing what to bring to you this evening at this talk because there is so much to expand on with regards to the industry that I am involved in which is under the catagory of health & fitness.  I am going to propose a bit of a paradigm shift for this New Year as part of what I’d like to share with you. The shift begins with the word choice to describe what it is that I am so passionate about and the idea that I’m here to share. If there is one there is only one thing that I’d like you to remember about tonight from this let it be this:

Healthy bodies create better solutions for their future and, the whole idea of wellness is feeling good about yourself and doing well for the self in many dimensions. 

The one proven natural, dynamic piece that statistically shows to create positive changes in how we feel physically, emotionally, mentally and how we fit into the spirit of this world really is MOVEMENT. And that is where the shift begins with that word….because every single system in our body benefits from this…not just the information that you are bombarded with over and over about ‘getting in shape’. My objective is to open up the ‘fitness scope’ a little wider and share with you what it means to move more today and every day that has nothing to do with “exercise”.

The state of the fitness industry from the view that I share with other like minded professionals in this broad industry, is blown beyond proportion of what the roots of health, wellness and physical education actually are and can be for you.

At this time of the year especially, we are hearing the same repeated stuff, the same buzz, telling you what you need to do and showing those apparently ‘glamorous results’. We are flooded with advice, articles, ‘new studies’, formulas, & solutions from many sources including personal trainers that supposedly get you results, rather than you getting your own. 

The end product of promoting movement that includes feeling good about yourself, your body and successfully aging is that you as a healthy and aware body emerge from a relationship with your environment, not as a separate thing that you do to the body.

A large step toward creating this future is bringing awareness and mindfulness and meaningfulness into what you are choosing to do with regards to creating a sustainable future of health & wellness..

What would be so pleasing and a great take away for all of you is to remember that movement, free-form play and the relationship of how you include this in your life is your key to health, wellness and longevity.

 The way that I have chosen to open up the fitness scope is to share with you the idea of what it may look like from the inside of your body if you have developed any sort of relationship with your couch… the attached is what I call ‘the body swamp’.  Virtual swamp 2010   This is a depiction of what it may be close to when we are not mindful of the importance of integrating regular movement.   From a biologist point of view the word ‘fitness’ actually means your relationship with the environment. Looking at this depiction, it would even go insofar as your internal environment. Perhaps the primary reason that exercise is so powerfully therapeutic is simply b/c it moves our metabolic juices. It’s kind of like using our muscles to pump the system, our system(s) to keep it juiced and fresh.

Without being at all technical, the swamp depiction applies to 5 major systems that we refer to often:

1. Immune/Lymphatic system: protect me and help cleanse me.
2. Neuro-Muscular System: controls and directs movement
3. Musculo-Skeletal System: provides form, stability & movement
4. Cardio-Vascular System: the pump & its circulation
5. Digestive & Elimination System: absorbing what we need and getting out the waste.

There was a recent article in the WSJ called “the Hidden Benefits of Exercise”…proposing that even moderate exercise can boost the immune system and protect against chronic disease.

Well, I’ll be darned. This is not new. It is just material that they can put in print in January to get you to see it…again.  The same stuff. No matter what personal trainers, or articles from the WSJ or NYTimes or even the Journal of the American Medical Association or The American College of Sports Medicine or any supportive material that I could have brought with me tonight all tell you what you should do, what you need to do, what ‘works’ based on yet another study.

Some larger organizations are beginning to refocus the national message on PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, which truly can have a much larger impact than getting fit to lose weight or for aesthetic reasons.

We are born with bodies to move and along the way we often times stop or lessen our activity or go completely gangbusters and compete in all sorts of contests.

Whatever happened to the ‘middle distance’ or the middle ground?

 What do you want to do with your body in this lifetime?

What strength do you need to keep you sharp? 

Having well- established, simple endurance allows you to stay in the experience of life more successfully.

 And that brings me to the point that: Success can be measured, not by the results but rather by the interaction.

What is your relationship with that interaction and with your environment?

One of the most practical solutions to fitness is to find your middle ground and become an adaptable being.  This alone provides 2 things:

1)      the wearing away at one end is less likely = you won’t suffer in the swamp from being a couch potato and  your super human workout addiction will less likely lead to an pained body from over doing it often.

2)      For the sake of your health, you’ll become a more resilient person as you seek the middle.  Recilency is huge.

We as Americans strongly believe that we need our health in order to do things.  Clotaire Rapaille does a brilliant job in bringing this to light in his book, “The Culture Code”.  So, it stands to reason that if we are strong enough to act, then we are healthy. We want to be able to complete our mission which involves some sort of action. Truly, there is more to health and wellness than not being sick.

And here we are back to that word: MOVEMENT.

MOVEMENT confirms that we are alive and that makes us feel healthy.

Let’s approach that from its opposing end: loss of movement.  Losing our ability to move makes a huge statement about our health and it allows that possibility to creep in that we may experience a permanent change towards being less mobile and that our health many never return.

I felt the need to go down that path because it makes a very dramatic statement about that frightening possibility that could doom us, and yet so many of us choose to simply not move.

Opening up the fitness scope from the point of view from what I want to share as a physical educator is about changing the culture of fitness.  Reduced to the ridiculous it is simply said like this:

STOP doing what makes you stuck, stressed, drained and sick and…

START doing what nourishes, strengthens, cleans and encourages the body to do what does best!

…take this Inoculate Self and put it somewhere simple to remind yourself of that simplicity.

Movement/exercise/fitness if I may use all of those words together in one lump sum is not a separate thing that you do to your body. Our health is beyond the body.  Our health is about the relationship and the engagement and the meaningfulness of this conversation.

We have taken the word ‘exercise’ to a level that sometimes sits on the same shelf as paying taxes= you do it but, you don’t really want to, or dislike the fact that you have to, or you cheat and find ways to get around it to pay less, IF you make it look right.

We have extracted exercise and ripped it from its natural place in our life, which really is all about the movement- we have taken it out of context and made it either a grueling have to, or addiction, competition, an answer, a solution, a promise.

How about if…

You think about it as a way to inoculate yourself….use exercise and movement to help prevent disease and give yourself a fitness vaccination.  Many people are readily available for that shot of chemicals that will vaccinate them from the flu…it’s passive, they need not do anything, and they’re told it will help.

BUT… how about if you exposed your body to all sorts of movements that are every which way but tight and boring?  And then later, when that sort of exercise or memory of movement comes up your body has ‘seen it’ and you have a better chance of moving through it; rather than it biting you. 

THAT is the adaptable body.

 THAT is the middle ground

And, that could be the antidote to what we need in our life.

If you Build Your Reserves and Act Now you may very well Save Yourself Later.

The shift here in using the idea of movement is that we can make large advances if we view what we do with ourselves with regards to movement in a bottom up build; rather than a top down system. 

The bottom up refers to the reserves that you build over a period of time that accumulate towards your total health & wellness NOW and longevity in your future. 

Verses…

A top down system that says ‘this is what I have to do b/c they say that it is good for me and it will help me to lose weight and protect me from becoming diseased… I will schedule a time for it…I’ll count the minutes, and check it off the list’.

I tend to scribble outside the lines and in the last few years I have taken a huge turn in the way that I impart the message of movement to the folks that come into the studio.  It started as an idea…as anything does, yet the idea began to ring louder of sensibility, practicality, fitting into the functionality of living, and the realization that health is not something to be pounded into the body with desperate haste.

It ought to be something that can be lived throughout life, every day, as we take our time and we integrate this aliveness into all of our experiences.

It really is about being involved in the process itself.

That is where I believe that the fitness industry is quite out of order.  Rewards and punishments are distractions that take us away from that real transformation — it is better to set your sites on the journey. And therefore as I have learned from Exuberant Animal, there are no sticks, there are no carrots here in the idea that I am sharing with regards to movement.

For sure, these days, we are saturated with high tech, digital devices that can make things faster, easier, done for us and delivered yesterday.  Even as so far as the machines that we are inundated with in the health clubs or sold on QVC, or the smaller devices that we wear on our wrists and help us keep track of our progress, really  lead us away from being in our experience.

The message here again is Unplug, Disconnect, Open the door and Get out.  Even if it is too cold and unpleasant for you to go outside, still disconnect and find ways to move that you can integrate into your daily life. I have included this as well 25 ways to move more everyday!

And,  the idea of being random, asymmetrical and unbalanced make it even more of an integrative learn.  t is a chance to explore a different relationship with our body, each other and our environment. Rarely if ever do we move in real life like the machines that we use or the countless number of repetitions and sets and personal best records that we set for ourselves.

I encourage you to include all crazy sorts of mismatched movements into your life for the purposes of creating something that is different, something that adds to the positive-ness of your daily routine… and, include playful ways of being open ended in your movement; be spontaneous and change things around often without reason.

All of these ideas will surely add another dimension in helping you create better solutions for your future in terms of health/fitness and wellness.

You are the only one that can bring that about for yourself. You have a choice to change the culture of your fitness and engage with your world in a whole new way.  When you change our bodies, we change the world and how we live in it.