The Come Alive Project

Tag: senior fitness

  • Energy Bite 394 – Laugh for Physical Stimulation and Mental Healing

    I have been going back through older blog articles, starting from the beginning, nearly a decade ago, to pick to choose articles that would fit into a “collection” of the best ones. These would then be edited and compiled into the form of a book. Yes, a book. It wasn’t even my idea. A number of readers suggested that I do it. So, I am.

    I came across this article/essay from September of 2016 and thought it would be a good fit for right now. So with a little rewriting, and a bit of editing, I repeat this old essay. I may even include it in the book.

    Laugh for Physical Stimulus and Mental Healing

    “Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.” There’s a lot to that statement.

    Laughter releases chemicals into your body . . . feel good chemicals.

    Laughter exercises your abdominal muscles, your diaphragm, your solar plexus, and that point just below your navel where all movement begins. It strengthens and stimulates that entire area of your body. It can make your voice more powerful and will lift your energy level upward. It feels good to laugh.

    And that’s just the physical aspect. How about the mental side?

    Laughter changes your mental state and your overall attitude. How can you feel bad when you are laughing? How can you be depressed when you are laughing? And just think, comedians are paid a lot of money to make you laugh.

    When you laugh, you are nice to be around. When you cry or complain about life, people want to leave you alone. Laughter brings happiness and joy, albeit temporary, to yourself and to those around you.

    Who or what do we laugh at? We laugh at things we find amusing or funny. We find irony in life’s complexities, and we laugh at them. Best of all, we laugh at ourselves, and often that’s the best laughter of all.

    THE REALITY IS . . . Laughter is “feel good medicine”. The more you do it, the better you feel. It is physically stimulating and mentally healing.

    Laugh a lot!

    Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this article, please forward it to a friend and tell them they can get my weekly articles and essays at www.thecomealiveproject.com  

  • Energy Bite 392 – Aches, Pains, & Injuries

    My wife, Edie, was at her gym class this morning and told me that after class, a few of the “ladies” got together to chat. Their topic was injuries, aches and pains. My wife said that one of the women was rubbing her hip to help with an ache, another was complaining about her knees, and my wife mentioned that she was headed to an appointment with a Physical Therapist to work on her injured shoulder.

    All of the women are in their seventies and had just finished a fairly intense twice a week, one hour class. All these women are generally healthy and fit.

    I have breakfast once a month with an old High School friend. We both exercise regularly, me at a local Health Club and he at the “Y” where he is a board member.

    Our breakfast conversations often begin with a recitation of our respective aches and pains and our most recent adventures with our doctors. We are both in our eighties and are generally healthy and fit.

    The point is that exercise will not relieve you of all the aches and pains that come with getting older. No matter how healthy and fit you are, aging will still take it’s toll in aches and pains.

    Injuries too, are easier to come by as one gets older. Have you ever reached for something on a high shelf and felt a sharp twinge in your back or shoulder? Maybe it stayed with you for a while?

    Or have you ever been walking and suddenly twisted your ankle on an unseen rock or tree root that shouldn’t have been there? It takes a while for the pain and discomfort to go away, doesn’t it?

    Even a very fit, strong, flexible and mobile person is more susceptible to injury as they get older. Our bodies are built that way. All Seniors, no matter how fit, are highly susceptible to falling, with a broken bone or other serious strain or sprain as a result. Injuries from falling are the most frequent reasons for Seniors to visit Hospital Emergency Rooms.

    But here’s the good part. Fit people recover faster. Fit people heal faster. And fit people don’t get injured quite as often or as seriously from the same incident that might be disastrous to an unfit or sedentary person.

    Our exercise patterns will change as we age, but the overall benefits of exercise are still there. We have more energy and enthusiasm and tend to enjoy life more vibrantly than the unfit. We tend to live a little longer and a lot better. While the cigar smoking, bourbon drinking, passive centenarian will always be around, the old expression “the survival of the fittest” still rules.

    So, to stay fit, to recover from injury faster, and to tolerate your aches and pains more easily — KEEP YOUR BODY MOVING! It will continue to pay off for as long as you live and you will most likely enjoy your life a little better.

    Thank you for reading.

  • Exercise Lite – Simple Things

    One of the ongoing buzz phrases you hear a lot is “too much sitting”.  It’s true, sitting for long periods of time behind a desk, in a car or on an airplane, can be dangerous for an older person.  Too much time spent on a couch watching endless television can be deadly.

    Try a couple of these movements and stretches while you are watching TV or working at a desk and you will get a little bit better blood circulation through your muscles, joints, ligaments and tendons. If you breathe deeply while you do them, you will reap enormous benefits.

    Move your ankles forward and back fifteen to twenty times, and then rotate your feet at your ankles in a circular motion ten times in each direction.  It loosens up your ankles and gets the blood circulating in your lower extremities.  It’s not particularly important for a younger person, but for an older person, it can be very physically stimulating.  As we get older, we sit more and aren’t on our feet nearly as much as the younger set.  So, we need a way to circulate the blood as well as activate the muscles, joints, tendons and ligaments in the outer parts of our body.  Open and close your toes as wide and as tight as you can for ten or fifteen times.  Do the same with your fingers.

    A couple of minutes of that and similar movements a few times a day is something you need to at least stimulate a little circulation, and you can do it while you’re reading the paper, when you’re watching “the box”, or wasting (I mean spending) your time on Facebook.

    I used to call exercises like foot or ankle rotations and other similar exercises, “wuss exercises” until I realized how valuable they are after sitting in the car for long periods, or writing at a desk or table for and extended amount of time.

    “Squirming” is another example of an “exercise” that can help keep your body circulation process going. Twyla Tharp, the famous dance choreographer now in her 80s, wrote in her recent book, Keep it Moving, Lessons for the Rest of Your Life: “A wriggling movement – squirming looks like what it sounds like, a worm moving. It is formless physical effort, the vaguest of movement inside your skin.”

    Try doing shoulder shrugs while you’re sitting.  Lift one shoulder at a time toward your ear.  Then rotate both your shoulders forward and back.  Try raising one arm over your head, and then the other, bending sideways slightly in each direction while you are sitting at a table or desk.

    These movements don’t really do much to get the heart beating any faster but they do stimulate joints, ligaments and tendons, and even the local muscles.  Give these moves a try and see if they don’t refresh you a bit.

    You don’t have to do them in public when you think other people will stare at you, unless you’re comfortable in your own skin, and don’t mind other people knowing that you take care of yourself.  I’ve stopped letting the “wuss exercise” label hold me back, and I feel a lot better during the day as a result.

    Doing just those simple moves alone will not get you fit.  They will help your circulation, mobility and overall well-being.  They should not replace a regular exercise program, but are simply things you can do short term to keep your blood circulating and your joints loose.  Give them a try while you read this article. You’ll feel better.

    Thank you for reading.