Health Can Occur on Weekends Too

The post How Strong Is Your Arm? - Readers Find Out tells how true fitness does not mean doing a bunch of exercises, then returning to slouching, criticizing, smoking, harming others, and putting damaging things in your body. Fitness is making the many aspects of your life clean and healthy. A reader (who I know to be a good person) wrote:

"Something that I find helpful for people around me and for myself, is to start with setting a milder goal. Like promising yourself you'll only eat sweets during weekends. Many who plan to stop cold turkey can't live up to that and end up feeling bad about themselves all of the time. That's not healthy either. ;-)"

I would not say the same about heroin or binge drinking or hurting the weak. I would not teach a child that it is ok to have unsafe sex or drive drunk, as long as it is "only a little" or only on weekends. Doing something you know is damaging or wrong (not just eating some sweet fruit or small amounts of jaggery, or honey if you are not vegetarian, but junk food that is damaging to body and environment) is not solved by limiting it to weekends.

"Feeling bad 'all the time'" because of it is also not a healthful strategy. Knowing something is not right is useful to change your behavior. If you feel bad and do not change your behavior what are you accomplishing? Don't use it as an excuse to continue unhealthful things just so you don't feel badly.

A useful plan is to think. We teach children not to drink automobile coolant, no matter how sweet it tastes. Pools of coolant on the ground have poisoned many animals who come to drink the sweet stuff. It is sweet as a sugary drink, but damaging to put in your body.

Posts on how to strengthen your health as daily mindset:

• How Often Should You Be Healthy?
• Grate Christmas
• Thanksgiving Health
• Mischief is Not Good Exercise - Halloween Ahimsa
• Fast Fitness Friday - Strong Spirit
• Healthier Heart
• Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food
• A Little Good Exercise, a Lot of Bad Food - Overweight Still No Mystery
• Which Ancient Exercise Gives Focus and Concentration?

A book to learn healthy ways for all activities, from meals to exercise to daily life - Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: mind, nutrition, spirit, stress

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Tax Preparation Health

Taxes are due April 15th. Piles of papers, forms, schedules, receipts. Readers have asked how to be healthier while working at the desk, and how to keep their cool during tax preparation.

Several readers asked how to stop neck pain when looking down over deskwork. Reader John M, specifically asked "How do you suggest someone look down (to look at a chart etc at work) without pushing the (herniated neck) disc out more (or aggravating symptoms)?

Three photos above show tilting the neck forward and/or jutting the chin forward. Holding the head forward of the neck and body is a major source of upper back and neck pain. The "forward head" is hard on the soft tissues, the joints of the vertebrae called facets, and the discs of the neck, and is a major overlooked cause of "upper crossed syndrome." The forward head is just a bad posture, and easy to stop. It is not necessary to jut the neck or chin forward to look downward.

Check how you are sitting right now. Are you letting your neck hang forward, are you jutting your chin forward, or are you pushing or rounding your neck and upper body forward? Instead, keep chin in, loosely and gently. If needed, bring your chair closer in closer to the desk and lean the upper body back instead of rounding your lower back against the chair back and leaning the upper body forwad.

To look down comfortably - tip chin down in relaxed straight position instead of jutting the head and neck forward. That is healthy positioning for everyone - injured or not. No need to lean or hang the head or neck forward, or round your upper back to look downward.

More posts with quick techniques to feel better during desk work:

• Stretch upper body in your chair - Tax Stretch
• Stretch and relax upper body - Quick, Feel-Good Upper Back and Chest Stretch
• Stretch and relax lower body - Quick Relaxing Hip Stretch
• Stretch and relax your breathing - Do Breathing Exercises Work?
• Stretch and relax your spirit - Fast Fitness Friday - Strong Spirit.

Labels: disc, facet joints, fix pain, holiday, neck, posture, sitting, stress, upper back

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Grate Christmas

Readers have been asking about overeating, drinking, not having time to exercise, and overstressing on the holidays. Is it unavoidable? How can you resist things that are bad for you. Of all times to mark an occasion that is meaningful to you, that marks endings and new beginnings of a new year, celebrates thanks, a rite of passage, a national day of remembrance, a day marking something holy to your highest beliefs, the reflection of a new things coming, that day is the time to be free of baggage. Of all times to do simple, healthful actions for yourself and others, this is the time.

After the fuss of the holidays, then what? After the smiles and gifts, where are happy times? Where are your resolutions? The rest of the year is also the time to check in on loved ones, sweep the floors of a shut-in, and do healthy actions. At a funeral, everyone is there helping. The next week, the survivors sit alone. On Western Christmas, cars stop at the steam grates to give mittens and treats to the homeless huddled to keep warm. The rest of the year, cars pass without stopping.

On Christmas, most of the grates are empty as the city programs sweep up homeless for day-long programs. Each year before and after Christmas I cook thick vegetable soup, bake fresh loaves, pack up, put on my Santa hat, and head out into the weather to the grates.

We know many of the guys. I make food for them the rest of the year, or we go in the convenience stores to pick up things for them when the store won't let them in. My dinners cast steam curls upward. They chuckled, "Heh heh it be Saaaan--tah." We squatted down with them and unpacked dinner. I gave out toothbrushes as presents. They smiled angelic toothless smiles. They asked me the weather report, which called for storms, but I told them it didn't smell like storms. The air smells different somehow when it is going to storm.

The photo is Paul who worked as a Western-style Santa when we helped at a center. Little girls ran to sit on his lap. So did big girls. Many men too. At almost 7 feet tall, Paul has enough knee-space for everyone.

Christmas is not over. Eastern Orthodox Christmas will be in almost 2 weeks, since the Julian calendar date of 25 December is January 7. Armenian Orthodox celebrate Jan 6. On lunar calendars, there are the Festivals of Light of Devali and hanukah.
The winter solstice, Yalda, Saturnalia, Karachun, Kwanzaa, Yule, "Mother Night or "Modresnach," and Shinto Tohji-taisai are also celebrated around this time. There are festivals of appreciation, such as the Purnima. Islamic New Year of Muharram will be January 10th.

Be happy, be healthy. Is it not hard. It is not expensive. It is not stressful. Breathe. Stretch. Happy Holidays.

Labels: holiday, spirit, stress, weight loss

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Fast Fitness - Stabilization During Speed and Directional Change

Here is Friday Fast Fitness - a fun, real-body skill to improve stabilizing your spine, knee, ankle, and foot (and hopefully everywhere else with good positioning) while having fun.

Have a pillow fight standing on one foot:

1. When one partner has to touch down, change feet.
2. When the other loses balance, game over.
3. Swing fully without letting your lower back arch on the swing. Keep neutral spine.

No score, just the big desire to practice again and improve functional balance, stabilization, and have fun from movement.

To practice this solo, swing a pillow on your own. Use a progressively heavy object, such as a ball on a rope, dumbbell, kettlebell, and any household item. Breathe. Have fun.

Labels: balance, children, fast fitness, neutral spine, partner exercise, speed, stress

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Thanksgiving Health

Every year at Thanksgiving, some of my students are far from home or without a family to visit. We invite them to our little house for a warm meal on cushions by the fireplace.

We tell them the food is vegetarian and we sit on the floor without Western-style furniture. Some suddenly remember an uncle in Boston they'll visit. This year we're pleased that a former student is flying from Japan to visit after studying with us here years ago.

This is the link to last year's Fitness and Health as a Lifestyle for Thanksgiving to help holiday lifting, carrying, cooking, cleaning, and preparations. Here are more easy fun Thanksgiving fitness-as-a-lifestyle ideas:

• If you're traveling far for holiday visits, here is Exercise and Stretch for Long Travel Sitting.
  
  
• Sitting on the floor with good positioning is healthier than in chairs, and gives a built-in hip stretch. Done in rounded positioning, it is the same as bad sitting in chairs. Use Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise.


• Vegetarian and vegan food makes a full, healthy, good tasting Thanksgiving feast. It does not have to be strange or spartan. Avoid unfermented soy in powdered protein drinks, bars, and textured vegetable protein. It is not as healthy as promoted. Real food gives protein, and is healthier. See Is Your Health Food Unhealthful? and Get Muscles for Christmas.


• While standing to prepare food at the counter, put your shoulders back with chin loosely in and hip tucked to neutral - photo example in Fast Fitness - Homemade Sports Food. Then your neck and back will not hurt during cooking.


• Even if you need to hurry to prepare and clean, remember to be happy that you are well-off enough to have things to prepare and clean.


• Have kids help, rather than stressing to do everything alone while they miss the discipline, good habits, and exercise of helping you. Make it fun to be together.


• Instead of hunching shoulders and rushing to get the cooking done, straighten, breathe, and use each stroke of washing and cutting as a meditation.


• Get free bending and spiritual exercise by cleaning closets to donate clothing to warm someone in need. Every year Paul and I stand with a clothing bag in city alleys near the shelters. Extra large homeless women take Paul's extra large shirts and jackets. Squirrelly homeless men pick out my small jeans. They smile jagged-toothed smiles at their new clothes. We enjoy listening to their stories and sharing warm home-baked food with them.


• Laugh until your cheeks hurt.
  


• "Before eating, give thanks to the food" - Arapaho Native American proverb.


• When possessions break, give thanks for having possessions, which is more than much of the world has. When your faucet leaks, give thanks that you have running water. When we lived in Asia, we walked down only two flights to a bathroom then climbed back two flights with a jug of water for cooking. People in many places in the world walk miles just for the privilege of digging for food and carrying heavy water pots back. That gives perspective on Westerners who easily eat much and exercise little, and believe only the most minor contributors to weight gain - Metabolism - How to Lose Weight and Save Money.


• There are groups of mountain monks in Japan, who, after going to the bathroom, give thanks because everything worked. Learn to give thanks for all the little things and big things.


• Get rid of an enemy this Thanksgiving. Abraham Lincoln explained: "Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"

We are fortunate to have food, and cushions, and a warm fire, and friends who visit from afar. Thank you readers for using my work to make your lives better. You are my gifts.

More on the exercise of living happily and giving thanks in Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: children, holiday, posture, spirit, stress

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Grunting and Exercise

Grunting in the gym made recent news. A member was forcibly removed from a gym when others complained. The article told of factions arguing who was right if grunting and other loud vocalizations when exerting for exercise were helpful or needless annoyance.

Exercise is supposed to be healthy and build discipline of mind and body. Antagonism and disputes are not healthy for mind or body. Moreover, both sides have missed the point.

Breathing out, either quickly or slowly in coordination with effort can help. It can be done silently - by exhaling without vocalizing. You can have both, the exhale and the peace. This quiet but forceful exhalation practice is used in many high exertion fields from martial arts to warfare to meditation.

Fighting ninjas were legendary for both focused effort and silent tactics. No sense making a war cry until it was needed for its better purpose - to increase tendency to submission by the other party on the receiving end of the cry. In other words, to be scary.

For exercise, focused exhalation can increase acceleration at specific points of the move to increase power. For heavy moves, it can help lessen increases of pressure in the chest cavity and blood vessels, depending how it is done. Sometimes, people put so much pressure into the exhalation that they increase internal pressure instead of prevent problems. Done either quickly or slowly, it can be used to strengthen the move by including expiratory muscles. Often in martial arts and yoga classes, we (teachers) use noisy breathing just to remind students to breathe at all. It is a cue until they remember to breathe on their own (quietly) instead of holding their breath.

In the war dances and drumming in many countries, in martial arts, and in meditation arts, a concentrated exhalation coordinated with effort is variously called kiah, kiai, hihap, battle cry, and other terms. Each school is certain that their own different translation and beliefs about these terms is the "right one." The exhalation can be vocalized in a short yell, a loud breath, or silent. In group efforts, from martial arts to hauling sheets on tall ships, to chain gangs, to exercise classes, it helps unify mood or keep cadence. Done without coordinating effort, it is called yelling, and sometimes it is just vocalizing in corny ways.

More about breathing, the kiai exhalation and exercise for any sport are in the book Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: breathing, circulation, martial arts, strength, stress, yoga

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Mischief is Not Good Exercise - Halloween Ahimsa

The third harvest is here in the Northern Hemisphere. The Hunter's Moon is bright in the sky.

The last harvest of fall is a time of endings and beginnings. More than a commercial holiday of destruction and gruesome death, the approaching winter was historically a time to reverently mark departure of the living and life-giving fields, and be thankful for the harvests they gave. Revering of elders was observed in analogy.

The first and most important precept of thousands of years of yoga and martial arts is ahimsa. Ahimsa means non-violence, non-harm, non-destruction. Ahimsa was reaffirmed in recent times by the Mahatma Gandhi, and in the West by Martin Luther King, Jr. In all the classes I teach, I remind the students that ahimsa is something you incorporate in all your actions. Don't harm yourself by sitting in injury-producing bad slouching. Don't harm yourself with bad exercise. Don't harm yourself by destructive thoughts and actions. Don't harm yourself with unhealthful food and drink. Don't harm yourself by hunching your shoulders to stress through preparing meals, when you can relax your shoulders, straighten your back, breathe, and use each stoke of washing, cutting, and preparing food as beautiful meditation in the same amount of time. Don't harm others with spiteful words, deeds, and thoughts. Don't cause others fear or pain. Don't cause yourself fear and pain.

In many of the countries where we have traveled and lived, lovely short public service announcements occur daily with kind messages of doing good. Television and radio commercials are paid for with no other purpose than to give specific positive examples of helping each other for a better world. Where we have lived in the US, continuous messages of spiteful and worse behavior are common as entertainment.

Several centers in your brain process self-control. They need exercise like anything else. Studies of imaging these brain centers in people who overeat, showed that with retraining, the centers changed in level of activity when pictures of food were viewed. "Exercising self-control" is more than an expression.

Children, and even adults, need consistent positive examples. It is good and crucial exercise. It is easy to destroy, and takes (but also gives) energy to be good. Instead of "Mischief Night" tonight, do good. Instead of spending money on destroying property with thrown eggs and toilet paper, have fun learning a healthful recipe that you can enjoy for years to come. Learn to stand on your hands safely. Paint or draw a picture of a good wish. Talk about how it can come true. Design and construct inspired homemade costumes. Help the community. Volunteer at a shelter. Exercise your spirit. Develop a fun, beautiful positive public service announcement for your home, or a commercial project, that reminds to uplift spirit and behavior. Teach a child something. Don't wait until they are already doing bad. Teach them consistently, before they know to do either, so that they will more often know to choose good and why.

The average American spends nearly $15 on Halloween candy - more than $1 billion total on unhealthful refined sugar and hydrogenated fat candy - just for Halloween. This is not parental love. It is the same as giving them cigarettes or addictive drugs. Change that. Parental love is giving them beautifully functioning self-control brain centers. Halloween story and ideas in Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food.

Positive behavior is too important to leave up to only the schools, the entertainment industry, the government, the Internet, the home. We all add ahimsa.

Many chapters of ideas for happy bountiful living are in the book Healthy Martial Arts.

Labels: aging, children, holiday, martial arts, mind, nutrition, performance enhancing modality, posture, spirit, stress, yoga

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Getting More From a Hip Stretch

This post tells the Hip Stretch story started with Inspirational Ivy in August. In that post, Ivy tells how she used healthful body mechanics to fix a serious and extended attack of sciatica and foot drop the year before. Several posts since, have given fun updates. Here is the fun that the Hip Stretch started:

Feb 2006, Ivy from New Zealand wrote to me,

"My hips are tight, particularly the right side that being the side I had the severe attack of sciatica. I have worked so hard on my hamstrings and my "dropped" foot, the bonus being that I am winning. Now it is time to put the same amount of work into my hips."

I figured Ivy would start with the Better Posterior Hip and Piriform Stretch and a few of the other hip stretches in my books, then apply them for daily life by crossing one ankle over the other knee for putting on shoes, shown at right, described in Ancient Shoe Exercise for Hip Stretch and Balance, and that would be that.

In August 2007, she wrote,

"I am jumping for joy. No, I haven't won a million dollars.

"After having been doing the posterior hip stretch lying down for the past 21 months twice a day, I can now do the same stretch sitting. My hips have always been so tight and there was no way that I could get my ankle across the knee - this has been my goal and I have done it. I have to be honest, I have not got it to perfection, that being my next goal. I wonder if that will take another 21 months. It just shows that a little persistence pays off in the end. I trust that all is well with you."

Twenty-one months - what a dedicated learner. It was a joy to work with enthusiastic Ivy. I wrote back saying it should not take so long, and asked if she did the stretch standing up to put on shoes and socks to make it real life, not an artificial stretch. Ivy wrote back,

"I have tried standing to put my sox on and cannot quite make it YET (note the yet), that will come. I do, however, ensure that I always stand to remove my sox, and the like. Also to put them on except for the sox. I also stand when I moisturize my legs and feet - I do this so as to improve my balance."

I wrote back encouraging putting socks and shoes on and off while standing. The point of stretching is healthy function, not to "do a stretch" just to have a greater range. The benefit is from applying the stretch to ability to stand steadily on one foot and have muscle stretch and length to put on shoes standing .

Four hours later Ivy wrote back:

"Wow, I did it. I have just returned from a 30 minute walk, did some lunges as a further warm up and thought I would give it a try. I cheated, instead of shoes, I used slippers - I thought it would be easier. Tomorrow I will try shoes.

"Dr Jolie, you are my inspiration, you asked if I could do it and that set me a challenge. I must NEVER SAY CAN'T. As you are probably aware, I am a very motivated woman, however, there is no one to spur me along - you have done that and again, I can only say a huge thank you."

The next day this arrived,

"I am very pleased with myself. I just needed that push. As I said yesterday, I must never say can't again.

"Again, all I can say is a huge thank you. A huge hug from me."

Readers, stand with safe balance to dress. Send me your fun photos, mpegs (short computer video) and stories of using healthful range of motion for daily life.

Original story and updates:

• Inspirational Ivy
• Inspirational Ivy II - Beating Foot Drop and Sciatica, and Getting Healthier
• Good Life Works Better Than Bad Ab Exercise
• Farm Work, Lifestyle Exercise, and Preventing Overuse Pain

Ivy is a great-grandmother! (and a pretty great person too). She says,

"I guess I am very much like my late father who was a quiet achiever who used to tell me to 'stand tall and be proud of who you are' - I pass this advice on to my kids all the time."

Labels: balance, hip strength, leg stretch, readers inspiring story, sciatica, shoes, spirit, stress, stretch

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Lifestyle Fitness for Kids Through Gardening

"Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration." ~ Lou Erickson

Involve children in gardening at any level. Getting outside to dig, bend, stretch, think, and create in the fresh air is health as a lifestyle - improving physical skills, knowledge, confidence, cooperation, discipline, caretaking, and purposeful activity.

"What this country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds." ~ Will Rogers

A few weekends ago, the Philadelphia City Gardens Contest ran final judging. Husband Paul and I are judges. I don't know much about horticulture, but Paul does, and I am good at holding the clipboard and getting dirty.

Each judging team travels to gardens all over the city, grouped according to garden purpose. There might be community vegetable gardens in the city's most blighted areas, flower gardens grouped according to size, or mixed use individual or group gardens. Gardens are judged for many points including health and variety of plants, whether natural or inventive bug and weed control is used, and interesting use of materials. In past years we visited a garden in one of the most difficult areas of the city, which had made neat container gardens from tires dumped in the area. Another garden gleaned trash from the street to help clean the neighborhood, including a bathtub and vacuum cleaner, reborn in the garden with painted smiles, streaming vines of flowers, posed like characters at a tea party. We met 90-year-old ladies who tended their garden in dresses and church hats, teaching neighborhood children self-respect instead of vandalizing, and to reap what they sow, and share what they harvest for healthier neighborhoods.

"Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar." ~ William Wordsworth

Last year we judged the city's Children's Community Gardens. Here are some of the stories to give ideas and inspiration for yourself or community:

Miss Vanoka Morris Smith and the kids of the Blaine School Strawberry Mansion were a shining example of showing kids how to be fit in body and mind, with teamwork and love. There were no treadmills or artificial exercise. All the kids involved got real fitness as a lifestyle. These inner city kids were well-behaved, disciplined, and educated. Each knew every plant, and information about them. The all-organic garden used heirloom seeds, vegetables, pollination by bees and butterflies, rotating beds to promote soil health, and complementary plantings to combat harmful bugs. They painted garden scenes on plant beds, picnic tables, and the tool shed. They learned discipline and got exercise and dignity by keeping all the areas clean.

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." ~ John Ruskin

At the Urban Nutrition Initiative in West Philadelphia, Debbie Harris's high school students created a health and life-enhancing school-wide program of cooking and nutrition that they call "personal and social change through food." Students get to keep the proceeds from their Farmer's Market, learn healthy social structure, get a high amount of functional physical activity, and the educational message that "Vegetables are cool."

"The philosopher who said that work well done never needs doing over never weeded a garden." ~ Ray D. Everson

St Paul's Church on Stenton Avenue began reclaiming a garden from a neglected site to encourage children to have reflection and contemplation outdoors. The garden joins their columbarium (low wall containing parishioners ashes), along with physical activity – a "prayground." They plan to incorporate garden plants and themes with their Sunday school teachings: kids will plant their prayers, and they will build small climbing apparatus with 'eight fruits of the spirit' on each of the eight rungs. Like life, their garden space is a work in progress.

"There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling." ~ Mirabel Osler

At the Beacon Summer Program at St. Sulzberger School, Crystal Martin teaches 8th graders botany using the garden and microscopes to see leaves and bugs. Built in a flood prone area, the garden is divided into three distinct "watershed" systems - country, suburban, and city - with different drainage systems. The different drainage clearly teaches the effect on the garden – three distinct garden looks and conditions result. Corresponding wall murals teach the crucial message of balancing need for water and drainage.

"Gardening and laughing are two of the best things in life you can do to promote good health and a sense of well being." ~ David Hobson, The Mad Gardener

Get inspired and think how you might like to get started. Young children can learn responsibility by having their own area near your shared area.
Babies can sit with you and play in the dirt. On a small level, children can start with sprouting mung beans on a plate (posts to come will show how) and plant a windowsill of seasoning herbs for healthier cooking. Older children can grow healthful chemical-free food and flowers for the table and instead of unhealthy offerings at bake sales. They can learn that good posture during movement is healthy, natural, and good exercise. Get library books on composting, small building projects, organic gardening, and beautiful use of space. Learn the simple elements of a Japanese rock garden or Zen garden, called karesansui. Use healthy bending with one foot in front of the other (how to lunge) and feet side by side (how to half-squat and why it is great). Breathe. Smile.

"We plant seeds that will flower as results in our lives, so best to remove the weeds of anger, avarice, envy and doubt, that peace and abundance may manifest for all." ~ Dorothy Day

Labels: children, gardening, lunge, mind, spirit, squat, strength, stress

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Fast Fitness Friday - Strong Spirit

If someone cuts you off on the road or in a line and pushes ahead of you:

1. Smile, nod, and wave them ahead.

They may be on their way to the hospital. They may have just lost their job, their mother, their child. It may be their last day on Earth. They may be a lump who doesn't know goodness. Show them.


They insulted you? Smile, nod, and wave them ahead.
It was never between you and them. It is between you and your Highest Spirit.

Labels: fast fitness, spirit, stress

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Independence Day for Fitness

Today is Independence Day in the United States. The Declaration of Independence was drafted in June of 1776. Signing began by July. The paper itself didn't grant independence - work continued until independence came a few years later. After getting the idea to do something, the next thing is to take action. Here are ideas for a life free from things that are unhealthy - pain, unhealthful food, and exercises that reinforce bad habits:

Freedom from junk food:

Instead of soda, put a red sweet pepper in a food grinder. Cut about an inch of fresh ginger root and add through the grinder. In about 30 seconds preparation time you will have a sweet, cool, red, slushy drink with an exotic tang of ginger. Healthy and good tasting.

Instead of refined sugar sports drinks, put a peeled whole cucumber into the food grinder or low speed blender with a whole kiwi fruit. It will make a sweet, cool, slushy, green drink.

Instead of processed peanut butter and refined sugar jelly, put fresh raw nuts and apple slices into a grinder, mill, or chopper. In less than a minute of preparation time, you have a sweet nut butter that you can spread on fruit slices, carrots, and other good foods. Try walnuts, almonds, other fresh raw nuts, and experiment with different fruit combination to make different sweet creamy fresh nut butters.

For more recipes, Healthy Martial Arts has an entire chapter on nutrition.

Freedom from overeating

Just as you can't go through red lights every time you just feel like it, or hit someone any time you just feel like it, you don't just eat anything you feel like it at any time. That is unhealthy. Some people say any denial is unhealthy. That is like saying you can just wet your pants when you feel like it. Self-control is cleaner in body and spirit:
Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food
A Little Good Exercise, a Lot of Bad Food - Overweight Still No Mystery

Freedom from unhealthy drugs and medicines:

Masses of products crowding store shelves claim to fix this and cure that. Millions of dollars are spent. The products seem dazzling, but much is hype and many produce unhealthy effects. Then more dollars are spent on more pills and products for the new problems caused by the medicines. Many prescribed medicines cause new problems that can be avoided. Stop the cycle and save yourself time, money, and unhappiness. If it is not healthy, it is not health care:
Teen Dies After Using Muscle Soreness Rub
Human Growth Hormone
Is Your Health Food Unhealthful?
Stomach Acid Drugs Increase Osteoporosis and Hip Fractures

Freedom from physical pain and injuries:

At the Special Operations Medical Association conference two years ago, it was released that 62% of our American injuries in Iraq are "Disease Non-Battle Injuries"(DNBI) - not from combat or supporting operations, but occurring in the gym. At the ACSM conference last month, a research study reported that their American military units had 17% DNBI injuries. I asked them how they kept their numbers so low. They replied that the number was for evacuations - injuries so serious they required removal from the base. Some of the most common exercise and stretching practices are not healthy. It is not that they are not good for some people or that they are overuse or done "wrong" - they are inherently bad movements. The same high injury rate is happening to fitness and yoga and Pilates instructors and students. I wrote about this in Welcome to the Fitness Fixer. Here are some specifics on why and what to do instead:
Why So Many Aerobics Injuries?
The Stretch You Need The Least
Sitting Badly Isn't Magically Healthy by Calling It a Hamstring Stretch
Safer Overhead Military Press
Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy?

Freedom from neck pain:

Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain
Nice Neck Stretch
Breasts Causing Upper Back Pain is a Myth

Freedom from mental pain:

Healthier Heart
Exercise Your Sense of Humor
Which Ancient Exercise Gives Focus and Concentration?

Freedom from crunches:

Abdominal crunches are a popular exercise, but they are not healthy. This is new and different information, I know. Crunches "work" your abdominal muscles, but not in a healthful or beneficial way, whether done sitting or standing or using a machine. Crunches also train rounded bad posture that you know is unneeded and unhealthy when sitting or standing that way in real life.

The idea that strengthening the abdominal muscles stops back pain is a myth. Many muscular people have pain. They do their crunches, then stand and move in the overly-arched spinal posture that is the hallmark sign that the abs are not even being used, and which creates one major kind of chronic pain: Fixing the Commonest Source of Mystery Lower Back Pain

Crunches do not automatically make you use your abdominal muscles to position your spine to support your back. You do that on your own: What Abdominal Muscles Don't Do - The Missing Link.

Neutral spine has a small inward curve to the lower spine, just not a large one:
What is Neutral Spine and Why Does Sticking Out In Back Harm?
Aren't You Supposed To Stick Your Behind Out to Sit Down or Do Squats?

The simple act of standing and doing all your activities and exercise without letting your lower spine overly arch, and instead keeping neutral spine, uses more abdominal muscle involvement than doing crunches: Using Abdominal Muscles is Not Tightening or Pressing Navel to Spine.

Functional abdominal exercises use no forward bending: Abdominal Muscle Exercise - Better, Different, Not What You Think

The book No More Crunches No More Back Pain The Ab Revolution explains a healthier better way to use and exercise your abs (114 illustrations 124 pages). I have a number of copies of the new 3rd edition expanded to give to military personnel as gifts. Contact me to send one (free) to someone you know, to keep our guys healthy.

Independence is Healthy:
This post included links to a few past posts about being free of unhealthy things. Click the labels below each post for more related posts. Keep the things you do, eat, and think healthy. If a medicine is not healthy, it is not health care. If an exercise trains injurious body mechanics, use the time for healthier exercises that are more fun. There are better, healthier ways. Be free.

Labels: abdominal muscles, drugs, fix pain, holiday, injury, neck, nutrition, performance enhancing modality, spirit, stress, upper back, weight loss

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Fitness is Getting Out and Living

Readers, you are all great people. Feel good about yourselves. I appreciate all the e-mails how you're using the ideas in this blog, my website, and classes to stop years of pain, get back to doing fun things, or try healthy fun for the first time. You all can do extraordinary things even if you don't know it or think you are doing anything right now.

Some of you have written me about your lives. I have notes from people biking across continents and crossing the arctic using my training info. Notes from soldiers stationed in harm's way who stopped their back pain while carrying packs and during operations. Astronauts. Circus performers. Olympic wrestlers. Ultramarathoners. Competitive lifters who went on to increase personal records after being told by top physicians to give up lifting because of shoulder, elbow, back, and knee injuries. Concert musicians. Survivors of cancer and abuse. A runaway who went back to school because of the blog. A student who quit an unhealthy job. A man who could not lift his own children because of obesity, who used fitness as a lifestyle of bending and playing with his children to get to healthier weight. Readers Ivy and Zoe and MMLash let me tell a bit of their triumphs on the blog. Mim, Kate, Kathy, Julia, PhatMac, Eddie, and a few others helped with their success stories in the comments. The rest - too shy to post their stories? I understand that this blog attracts an independent intelligent bunch. It's not boasting, but educating and inspiring and helping others when you write. If you are not sure what to write, just e-mail me telling me what you tried, how it's helping, and we'll develop it.

You don't have to climb a mountain to be featured. Just getting out of bed is an Olympic sport some days. Stopping pain, making your daily life healthy movement, feeling good again (or for the first time), and having your life back *is* climbing the highest mountain.

Next - a reader trains to swim across the Cook Strait of New Zealand.

Labels: readers inspiring story, spirit, stress

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Exercise Your Sense of Humor

A woman walked up to an old man rocking in a chair on his porch. "I couldn't help noticing how happy you look," she said. "What's your secret for a long happy life?"
"I smoke three packs of cigarettes a day," he said. "I drink a case of whiskey a week, eat fatty foods, and never exercise."
"That's amazing," the woman said. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-six," he said.

There is a Buddhist saying that laughter is the language of the Gods. Like every other skill, your sense of humor needs exercise to be healthy and be strong. Exercising your sense of humor also seems to be key to keep you healthy and strong. Increasingly, medical studies show positive medicinal effects of humor and laughter. In reading them for this post, many were numbingly humorless. I looked around some local medical fitness programs and gyms where people are exercising for health, and everyone looked miserable. Then you have people like my Mom, a professional dancer. One of the classes she teaches is tap dance for senior citizens. She named one of her lively groups, "The Clogging Arteries." Another is "Tapaholics Phenomenous - We Do More Than 12 Steps." Josh Billings (pen name of humorist Henry Shaw) summed it up, "There ain't much fun in medicine, but there's a heck of a lot of medicine in fun."

Exercise your sense of humor to reduce unhealthy stress and daily troubles: Don't argue with an idiot; they'll beat you with experience. Don't stress to be punctual; there may be no one there to appreciate it. Be like Santa Claus; only visit people once a year. Reduce stress on the road by peacefully ceding way to others. Joe Louis, boxing heavyweight champion, explained why he did not hit a motorist after the motorist abused him following an accident, "Why should I? When somebody insulted Caruso, did he sing an aria for them?"

Earlier this month, the Health Observances blog from our HealthLine editors posted April is National Humor Month. Before April is over, see how you can make your life, your home, and your exercise healthier with genuine fun. For a post on helping your heart with happiness, see Healthier Heart.

"Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine." - Lord Byron

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Labels: holiday, mind, performance enhancing modality, spirit, stress

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Do Fun, Not Exercise

Today I took a break from a study we're doing, to do the Leg Stretch That Strengthens Arms in yesterday's post. It is a good exercise that you can do quickly.

A pile of assorted scientific utensils fell out of my pockets, along with pens, rulers, scribbled data notes, a telemetry battery, the roster for a new class starting tonight, and - strange for a scientist - an amount of money in the form of a few coins.

I have long taught to shift weight while holding a handstand to progressively strengthen arms until you can walk on your hands, and to stand balancing on one hand. The idea is to work so that you will be able to do it. Today I was reminded how practical it can be.

Here is a new fun exercise while standing upside down on your hands - shift weight to stand on one hand and retrieve objects on the floor with the other hand to stuff them back in your pocket.

Of course, everything will fall back out. Then you laugh upside down and pick them up again. This will last through a good exercise session. My hat also kept popping off, another good exercise to get back on while upside down. If you need to shoo pets away from your face, all the more exercise. Be safe. Have fun.

To get started doing handstands in a safe, controlled manner, see Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener. It is an excellent upper body and core strengthener and balance trainer.

Labels: arm, balance, strength, stress, stretch, upper back

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Tax Stretch

The tax filing date is coming in a few days in the United States. Bending forward over a desk is a common source of sore neck and upper back.

A nice stretch for the upper back is to stretch back.

Stretching back reduces pressure on (unloads) the discs. A little about why bending forward loads the discs is in Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix and Are You Making Your Exercise Unhealthy? Stretching back also is nice for the muscles.

Keep it simple. Breathe. Don't stress.

Labels: fix pain, holiday, neck, stress, stretch, upper back

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Healthier Heart

Scorn, anger, name-calling. Not good for the heart. The best warrior wins without hurting others or himself.

The Thais call it "jai yen" - cool heart. The secret is to not make anger a negative force. They keep kindness in their voice. Jai yen is central to Thai social and business interaction. It illustrates the mind and body of the experienced warrior. Jai yen is part of Muay Thai boxing training. In Thai martial arts, respecting teachers and elders is foremost. Every fight begins with the Ram Muay, a spirit dance to show respect and thanks to parents, and ask blessings from the Kruu Muay Thai - the teachers. In Japan it is "fudoshin" - unchanging heart. A person with fudoshin is more stable and light-hearted when things happen that they don't agree with.

How do you get good at being heart-healthy? Practice it like exercise. Unlikable things happen every day, so we all have the good luck to get much chance to practice. It's healthy exercise. In the novel Shogun, James Clavell, wrote:

"To think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral down into ever increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that discipline - training is about."

Discipline is the mental exercise of self-control to direct your behaviors. With discipline you brush your teeth everyday, and do exercise, and refrain from bad habits, and breathe and smile when someone is rude. The other person may continue injuring their own health with negative behavior, but you won't sadden yourself and injure your body with the unhealthy chemicals generated that can hurt your health and heart. If your kindness and understanding calms and comforts the other person, that is twice healthy. Breathe. Get outside in the sunshine every day. Be happy.

Labels: circulation, fix pain, martial arts, spirit, stress

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Muay Thai Monks on Horseback

E-mails have come in since I posted that we were on our way to the Monks on Horseback in the northern Thai mountains. Readers wanted to hear about our stay.

We live in Asia part of each year. We traveled north to visit our friends and teachers who are relatives and former teachers of the Phra (monk) Kru Ba Neua Chai who heads the monastery. Our friends live in the village of Baan Mai Kom, not far from there, close to the Burmese border. We took the bus north to there. There is no station - the driver dropped us on the road after dark, and we walked into the cool night to the mountain.

Nearby in Myanmar (Burma), drug traffickers from ethnic and government groups move vast amounts of opium and heroin, and more recently, methamphetamine, into Thailand for local and world distribution. For generations they have torn through villages, murdering adults and forcibly recruiting children into their militias. Drug use in the area further damages and destabilizes families and lives through drug illnesses, kidnapping, prostitution, and land control.

Drug wars, shooting, bombings, terror, international involvement and dollars have not stopped the destruction. The Thai monarchy, caring for the welfare of all involved, started a program for poppy growers to have income from other crops and industries beside opium. Thai soldiers in the region asked local monks to combat the drug menace by taking dharma (duty to behave righteously) to the hilltribe villagers. One monk was Kru Ba, a former soldier and Muay Thai (Thailand style martial arts) champion, known to boxing fans as Samerchai, and graduate of Ramkamhaeng University in Bangkok. To serve his land better, he became a monk. Another Thai man who wanted to do good gave the monastery a horse. Kru Ba took in more horses and orphaned hilltribe boys, and ordained the boys as nen (novice monks). Many of the nen had seen their families murdered by drug guerillas. Kru Ba taught the nen discipline, calisthenics, caring for the horses and other living things, the life of doing and saying good, and Muay Thai martial arts.

Soon more fully ordained monks and nuns became part of the monastery. Then Kru Ba started new monasteries. Today he has 10 monasteries in the northern hills. Except during periods when monks observe certain restrictions, they train Muay Thai outdoors, in the jungle, or in their thatched boxing ring each early morning and night.

Khru Ba and the monks and nen ride through local areas to show traffickers and locals they can stop contributing to drug addiction. Khru Ba says, "When we meet the Wa (one ethnic group involved), I try to engage them in dialogue, 'Why do you do this?' I ask them. 'How would you feel if these drugs were being consumed by your own sons and daughters?'"

On occasion, Kru Ba has used his Muay Thai to protect his nen and the monastery. As daily training, they incorporate the discipline of doing good into the physical discipline of their training. Kru Ba says, "Boxing for me is something which frees the body and releases the soul from barbarianism. When I box I use every single part of my body and my mind. Buddhism teaches you not to harm or take advantage of people which some may find to be in direct opposition to an aggressive looking sport like boxing. For me, boxing helps me to become a better Buddhist. I learn to control my emotions. I find beauty and peace and stillness in boxing. I get rid of my animal instincts and control them to the point that they become beautiful, an art form for sport, for education, for the discovery of truth. The word "Thai" means freedom and when I practice Muay Thai I feel free - free from my emotions, from anger."

A documentary made on the lives of Kru Ba and the nen has been called, "a heroic undertaking to create a better world." See more on www.BuddhasLostChildren.com. I will post more in the future about our part there.

Labels: drugs, martial arts, spirit, stress

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