In my sitting for three hours at the Red Cross table as a
blood drive volunteer on what turned out to be a slow day, I recently had an
opportunity to put into practice my theoretically-beneficial, self-invented
exercise routine I call "Conscious, Slow-Moving Exercising." I
managed to keep my body continuously moving much of the time, even though, to the casual bystander,
it probably looked like I was simply sitting and doing nothing out of the
ordinary. There was little else to do, as an all-day snow storm had made the roads icy and very few people were able to make it out to donate blood.
The latest medical research shows that extended periods of "inactivity"
are very bad for you.
Determined to do more than just sit still for my three-hour shift, I
found it to be not that difficult to maintain a degree of almost-constant motion
and to keep my body always moving, if only just a little bit.
So that I would not appear to be actively exercising and
thereby look strange to passersby, I alternated strategic large movements with
almost imperceptible tiny ones. I tried to look natural. I stood up and walked
a few steps at least once every twenty minutes, pretending to look down an
empty aisle to see if I could spot a friend, or to peer out the front window to
see if it was still snowing. I leaned down and stretched out over the floor,
not as a person exercising, but as one who had just dropped a pen and was
reaching to pick it up. I sipped from my water bottle, which I kept on the
floor behind my chair so that I would need to move a bit more to fetch it and
return it to its place. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, folded and unfolded my
arms, shifted in my chair from side to side, turned to look over my shoulder, first on one side, then the other. I straightened my spine and lifted the top of my head
straight up, then lowered my chin to look down at my fingernails. I reached across
to the far side of the table and picked up a brochure, then held it up to
"read," all the while taking turns tensing my arm, shoulder, and back
muscles. I flexed my feet, slowly, and tightened my calves, my thighs, my
buttocks, my side, abs, and everything else, slowly, so as to be unnoticeable.
I also moved, one at a time, each of my muscles all over my
body, in almost imperceptible slow-motion circles, lengthening stretches, and
tightening contractions. I practiced muscle awareness, moving the focus of my
attention to each section of my body in turn, beginning with the muscles at the
tip of one pinkie toe and moving from toe to toe and then to the foot, ankle,
and upward. I made sure to account for every single muscle and move it at least
once per awareness rotation.
I did not move quickly, which would have made me look antsy
and nervous. I relaxed and moved slowly and casually.
What I did not do was to remain seated, stationary in one
position, glued to my cell phone, moving only my thumb muscles in typing or
scrolling, as I am wont to do when passing time playing games, browsing the
internet, or participating in social media. One could argue that such time is
not wasted, as it exercises the mind, but the entire body must be actively
engaged in order to avoid the physical "inactivity" that has been proven
so dangerous to one's health. Yes, it is ok to play with the phone, but it is
important to multi-task and play with your muscles at the same time.
I did all this mini-exercise easily and almost effortlessly,
staying in motion, whereas if I had been at home and not trying purposefully to
keep moving I would have had no trouble at all remaining perfectly still,
except for my typing fingers, for an entire three hours, and longer.
I think of my skin, and then of all the stuff inside my
skin. That's the stuff I want to keep in motion, to keep it healthy. In high
school chemistry class, when we wanted to cause a chemical reaction, it helped
to shake things up, to stir the mixture to make the elements physically touch,
thus sparking a chain of events altering the individual components and creating
something new. Inside my skin, if I keep in motion all of the elements, some of
which are liquid, some solid, then good and necessary chemical reactions are
likely to keep happening. The amount of motion does not have to be vigorous to
be effective in causing good chemistry to happen, it just has to keep things
flowing and moving around. I think of my blood bringing nourishment and
carrying away waste products to each cell in my body. If each cell keeps
getting a fresh supply of blood, the body stays in better health.
There is research that says that moderate and vigorous
exercise is good for you and research that says that physical inactivity is bad
for you. There is a happy balance somewhere which probably includes
mini-exercise, and science may work on that one next.
For now, I plan to keep things inside my skin in motion as
often as possible and think healthy thoughts, to continue to remind myself that
it is important to avoid inactivity. It's easy to do!