Exploring what is fitness

By Christopher Foster

What is fitness? For me, it covers the whole gamut of body, mind and spirit. It’s being true to myself. It’s honoring the impulse to give my best into life and do my best to get proper exercise and nutrition. Not to mention sleep.

Some people could care less about fitness. Some obsess about it. And some, like me, try to follow a middle way. I was sitting at my computer just now when I realized I had been sitting without any movement for nearly 2 hours. I was getting older by the minute, feeling crankier by the minute.

Taking a short break to do a favorite chi kung exercise quickly replenished both my body and my soul

I got up and went into the living room, and performed a Chinese Chi Kung exercise I’ve always loved called “Touching the feet with both hands reinforces the kidneys and loins.” You start in what the Chinese call the Wu Chi, a basic standing exercise. Then raising your arms to the sides to shoulder height, you bring your arms forward and bend at the knees, lowering yourself halfway down as if beginning a full squat.

When I reach the half squat (sometimes further) I hold it for a moment and then straighten up, circling my arms around behind me and over my head to rest in front of me at shoulder height where they began. It’s one of the “Eight Fine Exercises” or Ba Duan Jin developed by the ancient Chinese. In two or three minutes I was invigorated from head to toe.

What is fitness? I agree with guitarist Stone Gossard, of Pearl Jam, “I think if you exercise, your state of mind – my state of mind – is usually more at ease, ready for more mental challenges. Once I get the physical stuff out of the way it always seems like I have more calmness and better self-esteem.”

Your body is your best friend — learn to love your body and listen to it just like long distance runner Haile Gebrselassie

What is fitness? It’s learning to respect our body and listen to it. As Haile Gebrselassie, the Ethiopian long distance track and road running athlete, said, “I will always listen to my coaches. But first I listen to my body. If what they tell me suits my body, great. If my body doesn’t feel good with what they say, then always my body comes first. ”

Though an ordinary mortal, I too try to listen to my body. My body is my temple. It is so good to me, so loyal and faithful and loving — let me not take it for granted. Let me not ask of my body more than it is able to give.

Basically, besides walking for half an hour a day — the standard medical advice for maintaining a reasonable level of health — I very much enjoy strength training. It’s a passion. And what I love about it is that my body enjoys it just as much as I do. Putting it another way, my body loves feeling strong. Mind you, please be aware that I do not have bulging muscles (though JoAnn very sweetly says sometimes when she takes hold of my arm, “Goodness, you feel strong.”).

How resistance training helped me overcome severe depression and discover the joy on the other side of despair 

I began strength training at a gym 10 years ago, and I’m not sure I would be here if this were not so. I was in the early stages of a severe year-long clinical depression when I signed up at the gym. I’m convinced that maintaining my resistance training schedule throughout my illness — though I reduced the weights a little for awhile – helped me stay sane and not give up as darkness covered my face.  It also helped me think of myself as strong even though I wasn’t feeling strong.

Are you kidding? I was dealing with a ton of buried trauma. I’m 6 feet, and my weight plummeted to 128 lbs. at the worst point of my illness. Strength training, I believe, was a primary reason I was able to recover from my illness and find the joy that I now know always exists on the other side of despair.  Incidentally I was prescribed Paxil but it actually made things worse and I finally threw it away.

Introducing a new approach to losing weight and getting fit – without cardio

What is fitness? With two thirds of the US population now obese or overweight, I was interested to read about a new approach to fitness called Turbulence Training, developed by Craig Ballantyne, a certified strength and conditioning specialist. He asserts that while the mainstream fitness media still insists that aerobic exercise is a great way to lose weight, recent research does not support this view.

He quotes a recent study by the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, in which subjects aged 40 to 75 were instructed to do 60 minutes of aerobic exercise per day for six days per week for an entire year.

“Given the amount of exercise, you’d expect weight losses of 20 or 30 pounds or more,” says Ballantyne. “Well, the surprise findings showed the average fat loss for female subjects was only 4 pounds for the entire year, while men lost 6.6 pounds of fat over the year.

“That’s over 300 hours of aerobic exercise to lose a measly 6 pounds of fat.”

Turbulence Training combines high intensity interval training and resistance training 

What is fitness? Well, what Craig Ballantyne has done  is develop a new approach to fitness that uses a combination of high intensity interval training and strength training instead of traditional cardio for better fitness, fat loss and body sculpting.

“I lost 14 pounds this month and the weight is just falling off me,” says one testimonial at Ballantyne’s site. “My wife says I now look like when we first met and I still have more to go. I can fit into my old jeans again which is a big deal for me. I just cut back on starches and bread and do your routine 2-3 times a week.”

Incidentally, Australian Professor Steve Boucher has discovered that interval training increases hormones called catecholamines, which can reduce appetite, among other fat burning benefits.

For more information on Turbulence Training please click here. I’m very interested in this program. If you decide to give it a try please let me know how it works for you. I hope you enjoyed this post and I’d love to hear your own thoughts or experiences on what fitness means to you.

Picture credit: thienduong_tinhyeu1100 (This post contains affiliate links.)

What is fitness? Introducing a pioneering plan to get fit and lose weight is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

“Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don’t seek to grasp it with your mind. Don’t try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still.” – Eckhart Tolle.

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” – Matt. 6.6.

I surrendered to my own being this morning for half-an-hour. 40 minutes actually. It wasn’t premeditated at all. I was finishing up my breakfast; JoAnn was quietly working at her sewing machine. The urge came up out of nowhere, or so I thought at the time, the same way an urge from within summoned me from the busy streets of London when I was a young man of 22 and said, “Go to British Columbia.”

I sat down in my comfortable chair in the living room with the most pleasurable feeling of anticipation filling me from head to toe. I noticed soon after I sat down a rabbit had appeared on our little patio and was happily eating crumbs of bread that I had put out for the birds earlier this morning.

There was no effort involved. There was simply the profound relief of leaving my thoughts outside the door, so to speak, rather like in the old time Western movies when a cowboy was asked to leave his guns at the door of the saloon.

Most of the time I kept my eyes closed. Sometimes they were open, as I enjoyed watching the rabbit and the little family of sparrows that our regular visitors to our patio. I felt the peace of my own being enveloping every single cell and nerve and tissue in my body. It was like sinking gratefully into a warm, magical pool in which the outside world and its cares simply evaporated.

Once in awhile a thought rose up to the surface of my mind, but it didn’t stay, because the experience of opening myself consciously to this invisible presence was a bit like having a massage. I relaxed totally. I felt all resistance to life draining away. Concern for circumstances vanished. I realized that this presence in which I was luxuriating with such bliss was the very source of healing and health and well-being – not only for my body but also for heart and mind.

It was an experience of the most profound and intimate love. Nothing going on except a man sitting in his chair. But I do not know what could be more exciting, or more fulfilling.

I bask in the glow still, and in the awareness that this “love affair” with the timeless can deepen and grow each coming day. I’m sure that I will want to spend a little time each morning and each evening engaging in this time of communion. From eternal Being I came into this world — this is where I shall return.

I said at the beginning of this post that the impulse to spend a few moments in this way before going to my office seemed to come out of nowhere as I was finishing breakfast. But as I thought about it later, I realized this was not the case. Last evening, as I was writing in my journal, I wrote: “Let Being increase, let form decrease.”

How quickly my intention manifested itself. But perhaps I should not be surprised that life likes to move quickly as it goes about its remarkable, mysterious work.

I’d love to share any of your experiences along this line. My love and best wishes to all who may read these words.

How quickly an intention can manifest is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age