Seniors, Why You Should Get Some Exercise!

It’s great for your mind as well as your body

One always hears this advice, “Get some exercise into your day!”, from friends, television programs, magazines, the doctor – for example, to walk for 40 minutes every day – but really, why should we exercise, especially if we consider we don’t need to?

Well, as a senior who exercises (yes, I do!) I can tell you that if a morning passes and I don’t get my body’s joints rolling and my limbs stretching, with my breath opening a little more than enough to just stay alive, I just don’t feel right.

It’s as if I need that expansion of my body to feel a reaching out and stretching of other parts of my being, such as my mind. My mind reaches out further in its creativity when I exercise.

By taking care to disperse any energy stagnation, to melt the energy blockages – yes, I know, a very technical and rather dramatic description! – in my body, my mind also expands.

Of course, the oxygen we take in has some part - even a great part I’d say - to play in the awakening of the nerve synapses in our brain.

By the way, a few months ago I read a scientific report explaining that a small appendix in the middle of our brain responsible for memory is greatly stimulated and enhanced by oxygen intake that only exercise could adequately provide. It even went on to claim that this function in our brain, when sufficiently nurtured, acts to prevent us from getting Alzheimer’s disease.

You might have heard the words body/mind? These are not two separate aspects of ourselves, or rather when we consider one we find the other is deeply related, connected and influenced by it. We cannot escape this intimate, even symbiotic relationship in ourselves.

It’s only man’s mind that has made these different compartments that are getting slowly recognized as being rather closely interrelated.

In fact, more and more, Western medicine is – albeit timidly and cautiously - coming to accept this deeply intertwined relationship of our being.

In reality, body is nothing but gross mind, and mind is nothing but subtle body.

But the ancient Chinese have known this for a very long time – and rather fortunately for everyone, this tradition has survived the centuries and has been preserved.

Their understanding is coming from a standpoint of ‘vital energy circulation’ and this sentence: “The reality of body is of an uninterrupted flux of energy flow” encapsulates what holistic health is, rather than dissecting, separating and giving names like body, mind, spirit, emotions etc.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know we have to have a language and use words we all agree on and we cannot all talk in terms of energetic principles of Chinese medicine!

But for the sake of our personal understanding, we may consider the reality of ‘Wholeness of Being’.

Simply put, I’d like to say that exercise gives us all the physical benefits our doctor tells us it does, but also greatly contributes to the expansion and growth of our mental energy, nourishing the high spirits from which creativity is born.

Again, to put it simply, the mind needs the energy of the body to function at its best.