We don’t all want to be healthy, but most would definitely choose to be happy! It is, of course, our inalienable right to pursue it to all ends of the earth…or at least to those fake lines in the dust we call borders.
One of the best ways to assist your happy-level is to maintain good health. It’s hard to be happy when you’re in pain or have a stomach ache or feel tired all the time. It’s difficult to be happy when your plans of fun and productivity in this world seem thwarted by your body. It’s difficult to live your life the way the ‘12-year-old you’ pictured you would…when you’re not healthy.
There are HEAPS of different aspects of life that can affect your health: physical, emotional, spiritual, genetic, bad luck, fortune cookie without a fortune inside…just to name a few of the obvious.
This blog will address just a smidgeon of the physical and help you figure out if what you’re doing is ‘sustainable activity’ that will benefit your health, and therefore, your happy-level! Since my last three overwritten, poorly edited thought explosions onto the keyboard discussed topics related to food, we’re gonna leave that subject for today. In this blog adventure, I’m going to discuss physical activity, it’s relationship to happiness, and how you can make it a sustainable part of your life (how’s that for an end of paragraph summary sentence, Mrs. Bredfelt would be so proud).
Movement is an amazing thing. We’re meant to do it. Every day. It gets our blood pumping, which loosens up our muscles and other tissue. It keeps our joints mobile and it keeps our spines from being in the wrong place for ages upon ages (sitting). Movement decreases tension and stress, causes hormonal releases that make us happy if not ecstatic, and makes us feel alive!
So, why do we sit all day long? Perhaps Corporate America, television stations (also corporate America), automotive companies (also corporate America), and Facebook (less corporate America) could answer that one, but I’m just not gonna go there.
Because we sit all day and/or have jobs and/or lifestyles that require little to no movement beyond the rise and roll out of bed maneuver, we (this is the collective westernized human race ‘we’) need to actively insert movement into our lives in order to gain or maintain any semblance of health …and therefore happiness.
*or we could all quit our desk jobs and join the occupy movement or become physical therapists, both great endeavors.
There are many different kinds of movement and activity that can help to promote good health AKA good happiness. There’s aerobic movement (activity that raises your heart rate and keeps weight down), power, speed, and resistance type movement (activity that strengthens your muscles), flexibility type movement (activity that helps your body gain/maintain movement), functional movement (activity that has another purpose aside from health), and random movement (activity that comes out of nowhere, eg. a yawn with stretch, a yahoo with a jump, a head turn when you hear something approaching, or that damn lil’ twitch below your eye that won’t go away).
All of these types of movements are important and good and healthy (except maybe that eye twitch thing) and should be given credence and opportunity. They all need balance and ample time. It’s like the yin and yang thing for movement, only there’s way more pieces to this movement puzzle and they all need to fit. Perhaps it’s more like a rubix cube.
We all need cardio/aerobic movement. It strengthens our hearts, increases our metabolisms, keeps the pounds off, and makes all other activities feel just a bit easier. But cardio need not be jogging, cycling, or swimming (though those are FANTASTIC types of cardio), it can also be walking or dancing or hard core leaf raking. Have trouble committing your time to the Nordic Trac? Then don’t. But, try some of these tricks to slip cardio into your day:
When you walk somewhere, anywhere, walk FAST! Whether to the grocery store, inside from the parking lot, or across your office, move it!
Whenever possible, take the stairs, up or down. Take two at a time if you dare! Add an extra floor whenever possible.
Every time you go to sit down or stand up, do 60 seconds of mini bum over the chair squats, it’ll get your heart rate up, your quads burning, and your friends trying it too.
Whenever you’re doing something repetitive, try to increase the speed (as long as it’s safe and you’re not at an iron foundry)
Power, speed, and resistance activity are also key components to the movement…cube, let’s say. These types of movement increase strength and muscle mass, which are important to all functional activity and help prevent osteoporosis and many orthopedic conditions and injuries. Most people attempting to integrate this type of movement into their lives might lift weights at the gym, complete sprints on the track, or buy a Bowflex. But there are other ways of gettin’ yer speed on!
Try sprinting distances you already planned on walking (unless you feel like focusing on your cardio . This could be heading into work from your car (plus bonus points for making people sniff the air to rule out a fire), across the lawn to retrieve the trashcan, or up the stairs after grabbing something from the basement. Skipping works great too, but is far more challenging with a backpack or briefcase.
Bring jumping back into your life. Jump rope, jump over the cracks in the pavement, jump over your dog (more points if you have a Great Dane). This one is easier if you have kids because people will assume your kid conned you into it when really it’s the converse.
Whenever you take the stairs (because you’re thinkin’ now, it’s cardio time) jump up the first flight or do 10 up and back jumps at the first step.
If you’re standing and chatting with someone, do heel raises. Body weight is grand resistance! If you’re standing and waiting or on an elevator, do squats, wall push ups…or jump
Next up from the Rubik’s cube of balanced movement is flexibility. Flexibility is so freaking important to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injuries of all shapes and sizes. And while yoga class is an epically grand option, there are others (you might have guessed huh?)
Every time you take the stairs, before or after your jumps and extra floor-climbing, let your heel hang off the back of the step and stretch your calf OR prop your heel up on the step, lean forward (keeping back straight of course) and stretch out your hamstring.
When standing, in an elevator, office building, grocery store line, ATM, whatever… pick any stretch under the sun (calf, front and back of the thigh, side stretch, arm stretching overhead, anything)!
When sitting, straighten your legs out in front of you one at a time without allowing your back to slouch, also stretch your arms overhead.
Basically, if you’re still or standing or waiting, stretch!
Next up on the chopping block: functional movement. Functional movement includes every time you use any muscle or bend any joint in order to complete a task. This includes walking, reaching, lifting, leaning, stairs (who’d have guessed?). This type of activity we don’t normally think about as exercise, but it is movement and when it comes to movement, the more the merrier (hence the happiness). There are oodles of functional movements that can be great movement and activity! Try to sprinkle one or two onto your days, particularly those that don’t have many other kinds of movement!
Yard work: raking, shoveling, mowing (extra points for cool designs in the lawn), digging, planting, mulching, pruning, trimming: get outside and move!
Gardening: weeding, tending, sewing…the seeds that is. Just watch your posture and check out my blog on tips and stretches for gardening.
Unloading the dishwasher, bend your knees to squat down each time you extract a dish and you’ll have done some mini squats!
Carry your groceries to the car if you can avoid using a cart. Park far far far away, almost to Neverland, follow the first star to the right and straight on till morning.
Ignore office efficiency and integrate standing and moving across the room as frequently as possible, to the printer, fax machine, adorable receptioni…err, shredder.
Be aware of how much you move throughout the day, keep your body busy, move to accomplish as much as you can!
If you need ideas for functional movement activities, check EcoJaunt.org. There are heaps of productive ideas ready to be undertaken!
Last but not least, we have random movement. There are no tips on random movement. Yawning and stretching feels good, turning your head towards a noise is a survival response, and the eye twitch thing we could all live without…
and still be healthy AND happy.
So remember, if you want to be happy for the rest of your life, you should put some movement into your life, go from my personal point of view, move some more and it will benefit you! (extra points for making this your personal musical mantra
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