Chapter 2 - How Well Do You Know Your Body?
How well do you know its moods or its needs? Do you listen when it needs rest? Do you know what kind of movement is good for you? There are movements, which promote emotional freedom to strengthen your body and engage your mind while there are some that deaden your senses and dull your feelings. Do you know the difference?
How well do you know your mind? Do you give it a rest and allow thinking to subside in favor of being peaceful? Or do you have constant thoughts always plaguing you and driving your mind and your life?
Body wisdom is when you not only know the difference between positive health practices and negative ones, but you also constantly strive to promote the positive ones in your life while weeding out the negative ones.
After having cultivated my own vision of the role of exercise and its application to our lives, I have developed a lifestyle health program to address many of the challenges we all face such as:
Using the transformational nature of exercise to promote our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health
Exercise is a Powerful Tool of Transformation
I believe exercise to be a powerful tool of personal transformation where we apply our time, energy and focus to improving, strengthening and enhancing not only the efficiency of our bodies but also how we use them. This enhancement helps to maintain and increase personal health (including self-image), quality of life and lifetime longevity. The problem however, is the definition of exercise as personal transformation has gotten lost in the shuffle in favor of America’s penchant for the quick fix.
Unfortunately, current trends in our society have placed huge (and negative) stressors upon our body images, resulting in a daunting number of complex and overly structured fitness programs, which represents the boring repetitive, linear and life-meaningless exercises the field of bodybuilding has passed on to us.
Additionally, our daily lives are so full of stress and tension from being constantly bombarded by the advertising machine’s constant affirmation “To want is better than to have,” searching and yearning for Mr. or Ms. Right (and not finding them). Most of us struggle with the burden of costly living expenses while living in an over-stimulated mental society and a world constantly in strife and turmoil. This lifestyle causes a great deal of aches, pains, headaches, overly used (and misused) prescription (and illegal) drugs, obesity (in all age groups, but especially alarming in adolescents who are setting themselves up for a lifetime of ill health) and the prevalence of disease.
America’s greatest strength is our constant motivation to push forward. However, the price we pay for this is a great deal of physical, mental and emotional tension.
I believe, current fitness is truly represented by the treadmill, spinning our wheels and going absolutely nowhere!
The challenge we now face is to have fitness become more than just a chore on a checklist that we undertake just because scientific studies reported by the media support this method of health improvement.
I believe the evolution of fitness must now rise to include other elements of personal development providing powerful and long lasting conscious individual change, growth and personal responsibility. The power that lies in physical training is, we can create any program to represent aspects of our lives that requires improvement.
In other words, programming exercise routines can be made to specifically promote certain attributes that you might want in your life. Strength, power, and endurance are the obvious ones, but did you know that you could also use exercise to strengthen your ability to commit, improve intimacy, increase personal integrity, promote your success and increase your dedication towards your life goals? After all, what good is health if you don’t use it to improve your life?
Different Perspectives Creates Transformation
In the following chapters, we will examine many aspects of life here on planet earth including what fitness is, what being human is, and what exercise can be. All I ask of you is to keep an open mind. All we have is our individual and unique perspectives and the hopes that by sharing them we can help each other see things differently.
I believe internal change is a shift in perspective where you can look at something you previously thought you understood and view it in a completely new way. This new perspective empowers you to approach your life in a different way and change your old reality into something that fulfills you.
Let’s begin with the premise that the cornerstone of looking good is feeling good. Well-being is an individualist concept and begins with self-exploration and learning what works best for you.
We are constantly told that exercise is the most effective method to improving our health. While there is substantial truth to this, most people do not focus on using exercise as a means of connecting to and improving how your body functions. The more familiar you become with the particulars of your body, the smoother it will run. Although weights, reps, sets, classes, and cardio are methods by which you can improve your overall health, the greatest benefit exercise imparts is an increase in self-awareness.
Body Awareness is the Key
Body awareness is a continuum where you learn the specific languages of your body and know when it needs rest, food, to move, to be active or to sit still. This self-awareness promotes health and reduces the need for outside (and expensive) health intervention.
As a health professional, I have spent numerous hours improving my clients’ ability to use their body with increased awareness. When a client leaves a session, this body awareness provides them with more energy, improves mental clarity, increases physical fitness and health, and prevents injuries.
Why Do People Exercise?
Answer A –To look good.
What they really want:
If we look deeper into the need to look good we connect with the core desire to feel good about oneself. Unfortunately, our ability to feel good about ourselves is tied to the values of our society.
Answer B – To be healthy/fit.
What they really want:
Being healthy can mean an assortment of things to many people. I believe it is the ability to have an active life style free from painful physical limitations.
Within this scope, I believe health means adequate: physical strength, cardiovascular endurance and daily energy (depending upon your lifestyle). Additional but less obvious goals can include: increased confidence, a clear mind along with personal and spiritual growth.