Just as a car is meant to be driven, the body is made to move.
A research study at Duke University shows that a thirty-minute brisk walk or jog three times a week works as well as antidepressant drugs in creating feelings of well-being. Throughout the day, even wiggling your toes can reconnect you to your body and relieve some tension! It is a physiological fact that exercise releases happy-making endorphins into the bloodstream. While so many of life’s events happen without permission, exercise is a specific thing that can be done whenever, and however, you feel like it.
Here are three golden thumb-rules:
1. Do something you enjoy. If going to the gym is repulsive to you, forcing yourself to do it is a mental punishment. Perhaps dancing, tether ball, dart-throwing, tennis, hiking, yoga, biking, climbing a tree, or Frisbee golf will offer the benefit of psychological enjoyment in addition to circulating the blood.
2. Everything counts. The five minute walk you do take is better than the five-mile run you don’t take. If you’ve been sitting for an hour, crouched over a computer screen, get up and do a little jig. Stretch your back.
3. Never go three days in a row without getting some type of exercise. Skip a day, or even two, but by day three find a way to raise your heart rate.
If you’ve haven’t tried it, Pilates is great for core strengthening and toning with exercises that teach awareness of breath and body alignment. Here’s a ten-minute Pilates workout for you: http://livewellucsd.blogspot.com/2009/09/10-minute-pilates.html
Read more about exercising happiness at http://www.extrahappiness.com/happiness/?p=603
A research study at Duke University shows that a thirty-minute brisk walk or jog three times a week works as well as antidepressant drugs in creating feelings of well-being. Throughout the day, even wiggling your toes can reconnect you to your body and relieve some tension! It is a physiological fact that exercise releases happy-making endorphins into the bloodstream. While so many of life’s events happen without permission, exercise is a specific thing that can be done whenever, and however, you feel like it.
Here are three golden thumb-rules:
1. Do something you enjoy. If going to the gym is repulsive to you, forcing yourself to do it is a mental punishment. Perhaps dancing, tether ball, dart-throwing, tennis, hiking, yoga, biking, climbing a tree, or Frisbee golf will offer the benefit of psychological enjoyment in addition to circulating the blood.
2. Everything counts. The five minute walk you do take is better than the five-mile run you don’t take. If you’ve been sitting for an hour, crouched over a computer screen, get up and do a little jig. Stretch your back.
3. Never go three days in a row without getting some type of exercise. Skip a day, or even two, but by day three find a way to raise your heart rate.
If you’ve haven’t tried it, Pilates is great for core strengthening and toning with exercises that teach awareness of breath and body alignment. Here’s a ten-minute Pilates workout for you: http://livewellucsd.blogspot.com/2009/09/10-minute-pilates.html
Read more about exercising happiness at http://www.extrahappiness.com/happiness/?p=603
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