Do you feel at ease in your body?
Is it a good place to live in?
If you feel there is room for improvement of your well being, then you can take some very easy measures to attain this.
You see, we’re all imprinted with the idea that exercise requires effort and stamina whereas in fact, viewed from another angle – the holistically-oriented one – very gentle, very easy exercise can induce stamina, vital energy which feeds and helps develop mental and emotional well-being, as well as physical health.
In my thirties and forties I used to go and jog in London, anywhere, along the streets, down the towpath by the river Thames, in the park, etc.
Now I am in my early 60’s and I can not remember exactly when, but eventually I stopped jogging as I gave more time to practicing exercises I was learning in my Tai Chi and Qigong training.
So I made time for these and gradually forgot about jogging, it lost its appeal. Although I’d really enjoyed and benefited greatly from it, feeling an overall ‘high’ after 30 minutes of gentle running, I then began to experience another, more widespread, overall influx of well-being by training in these other methods.
I’m getting to the point of this article:
Physical health can be gently and gradually arrived at by practicing the simple exercises the Chinese know so well and that you can see them perform in the parks in China till a very advanced age. They do tend to live longer, thanks to these methods (and also due to their general diet).
(So, I’d just like to mention in passing that their food is less rich than that of our Western world and therefore easier on the body, better balanced, lighter and less of a strain on the system, making it easy for the organs to cope).
Anyway, for many generations these people have known how to perform some simple exercises that keep them in the best possible health.
I have learned these exercises in my trainings, most of them are extremely easy and do not require us to make any strenuous movements, only to put our attention on what we’re doing and apply some very easy breathing technique easily accessible for everyone.
Some can even be performed by chair-bound people, who get the same beneficial results.
These exercises, performed regularly, can actually help you to live longer and more happily than you might have believed up to now.
For more psycho-physical exercises, join our membership for our ezine here which gives you free access to exercise videos and audios. Francoise Bonhoure is a qualified Seniors Exercise teacher for Over and Under 50’s! She also promotes her own Exercise program: The 6 Simple Sounds.