The Come Alive Project

Category: Exercise

  • Energy Bite 157 – Stay Young with Cross Lateral Movement

    Ever wished there were a perfect exercise to stimulate your mind as well as your body? Could cross-lateral movements be the answer?

    Years ago I first encountered a program called the Brain Gym. Part of the program revolved around right and left brain stimulation through cross-lateral exercises. Since I first learned of it, the entire concept of cross-lateral exercise has evolved to include not only learning stimulation for young children mostly, but also some work has been done in the area of getting older.

    As we age, the mental attributes of creativity, focus, memory and alertness will diminish. Current thinking seems to suggest that we can keep these attributes alive through cross lateral exercise. The thinking is that because the left brain controls the right side of the body and the right brain controls the left side of the body, cross lateral exercise will aid in the connectivity of the two sides of the brain to stimulate and join together the cognitive and motor functions of the brain.

    How do we do cross-lateral exercise? Imagine a line from the top of the head down through the centerline of the body to the ground. Do exercises that bring your arms and legs across that centerline. Here are some examples:

    • Arm swings. Swing your arms from side to side. Touch your right shoulder with your left hand, then swing your arms in the opposite direction touching your left shoulder with your right hand. Keep it up for ten swings per side.
    • Lie on your back with your arms extended out to your sides, legs bent, knees up, feet on the floor. Lower your knees from side to side. After a while, as you lower your knees, swing your top leg out to touch the opposite extended hand. Then do the same thing on the opposite side. This is good for the range of motion in your hips, too.
    • Cross body crunches. Lie on your back with you knees up, feet on the floor, arms behind your neck (don’t pull on your neck). Lift your upper body into a crunch and touch one knee with the opposite elbow. Do the same on the other side.
    • Brain Yoga. My wife’s gym class instructor teaches the “brain yoga squat”. Cross your arms and grab the opposite ear lobe between the thumb and forefinger and pull. Lower your body in a squat, as far down as you’re comfortable and come back up. Repeat for a series of five or more up to twenty at a time.

    Those are samples. There are a ton of cross-lateral exercises that you can do at any time during the day to stimulate your brain. Put your imagination to work.

    So be good to your body and mind at the same time. Whether you exercise or not, It’s good to do cross-lateral movements of some sort to stimulate both sides of your brain as you get older. It is a good way to keep your mind active and alive. Give it a try, and then keep on doing it — every day. You’ll be glad you did.

    Thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 110 – Capacities to Manipulate the Environment Directly

    Do you live in your own home?  Do you buy your food at the grocery store?  Do you do the things that will make or keep you physically healthy?  If the answer is yes, then you have demonstrated your Capacity to Manipulate Your Environment Directly.

    That ability to “manipulate” your environment is the 6th Attribute in this series of 12 Attributes of Human Functioning that Michael Murphy wrote about in his book The Future of the Body, and discussed in the much more reader friendly book, The Life We are Given, by Michael Murphy and George Leonard.

    What does Murphy mean by Environment?  He defined it, in an early TV interview, as: “physical spaces and the way they influence the way we think, and interact with the world; how natural and man made environments influence human behavior, and how we can manipulate those natural and man made environments to adapt to our evolving wants and needs.

    He includes our own bodies and minds as part of the “environment”, and goes on to write about how we change our physical internal and external environment as a means to evolve.  He uses the term “exceptional functioning” to see into the future as to how we, as humans, will continue to evolve.

    In simple terms, how we manipulate our minds, bodies, activities and surroundings, will determine how we live now, and how we will evolve and live in the future.

    Murphy suggests that even lower animals can manipulate their internal and external environments.  Beavers build houses of sticks and mud.  Bears hibernate in caves in the winter.  Some animals will grow thicker fur in the winter to protect them from the cold.

    Humans control their own internal and external environments on a much higher plane.  We build mansions, automobiles, fly at 35,000 feet above the earth, and some even leave the earth’s atmosphere for a while.  Humans learned to use fire for cooking and for warmth, and now we use electricity and gas for the same functions.  That’s evolving by manipulating the environment according to Murphy.

    Physically, we learn to take care of our bodies , . . or not.  If we do, we feel good, stay slim, and live longer as a rule.  If we don’t . . . well, you know.  We have evolved from foraging for plants, nuts, berries and vegetables, to buying prepackaged food at the grocery stores.  Sometimes manipulating our environment is called “progress”.  Sometimes it’s not.

    As we age, we begin to lose some of the control over where we live and what we eat, and sometimes our ability to drive and stay mobile and independent.  But we can do things for ourselves, physical and mental, that will allow us to control where we live, how we eat and how we get around for much longer than just a few short decades ago.  We have the ability to “manipulate” our personal environment so we live longer, healthier, and happier lives than at any time in history.  It’s up to each of us to do the “manipulation” that will keep us around longer, and to get the most from The Life We are Given.

     Thank you for reading.