Because I get bored stiff with doing exercise, I am always on the lookout for some easy way out.
The Five Tibetans were my favorites for a while, then the yoga ball. But both showed their propensities for inducing harm: The Five Tibetans gave me some lower back pain. The yoga ball made a kink in my neck. Both cases are probably brought on myself, by overdoing it.
But I found an exercise that is not harmful (at least not as of now) AND does not even take up any extra time. Unbelievable? Because you do it while you brush your teeth.
Easy: Stand on one leg while brushing your teeth. Change legs in the middle.
In the beginning, I was very wobbly. But I found focusing on the crease between leg and buttock, improves stability. Over about a quarter of a year, I have been getting quite good: I can lift my leg to a horizontal stance without toppling over.
This exercises, of course, your leg muscles. It also tones your pelvic musculature – without being as boring as Kegel exercises. By extrapolation, I would think that it will help lowering high blood pressure – as walking on pebbles or uneven surfaces has been proven to do exactly this. It think it has to do with using muscles, period.
And the most important effect: It works on the balance center in your brain. Elderly people are dying often from falls. So we need to maintain as much balance as we can.
Especially, if it is just a simple habit added to the twice-daily chore of brushing your teeth!. It turns out that standing on one leg has the same exercise effect as walking for forty-five minutes. Amazing, huh? Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Breast Health – and Breast Beauty
October 22, 2010
Remember the movie “Persepolis?”
My favorite scene was when the granddaughter asks her Iranian grandmother why she still has so beautiful breasts, at her age. The grandmother divulges her two secrets:
1. Wash your breasts with cold water every day. That can be part of a cold shower at the end of your warm one. Or you stand in front of the sink and wash your breasts with a cloth and cold water – about a dozen times.
2. Put jasmine flowers in your bra and carry the scent around you all day – it makes you feel beautiful.
I love that advice! From my experience, I have a few more bits to add for better breast health and more beauty:
3. Eat a diet high in fresh vegetables, with low meats, no dairy and little sugar.
4. Avoid all milk and dairy – they are causing breast pain and breast cancer. They contain growth hormones. Growth hormones are unnecessary and harmful beyond the infant stage.
5. Do not wear a bra at night. Your skin needs to breathe and your lymph needs to circulate. – Don’t wear a bra if you don’t need one.
6. For the same reason, do exercise: Let your arms swing. Brest cancer seems to occur more often in the left breast. Since 85 percent of people are right-handed, it stands to reason that we are not moving enough lymph around in the left breast and get less toxicity removed than on the right side (that is just a theory of mine – don’t listen if it doesn’t convince you).
7. Don't smoke or drink.
8. Find out if you are gluten-intolerant. Nearly all cancers are higher in celiacs than in non-celiacs.
9. Drink enough water – room temperature or warmer. Never ice-cold. Read More
Movement for Beginners
September 25, 2010
The idea is to recapture the joy in moving you had when you were a child. Suggestions:
1. Walk 10 minutes every day – rain or shine, snow or ice. Bundle up and go outside. Stay in only if there is a danger of falling on ice. In that case: Bundle up, open the window wide and march in your room for ten minutes.
2. The 2-minutes exercise: Have an egg timer and any exercise machine you’ve got: stationary bike, treadmill, nautilus – doesn’t matter. Don’t go out and buy one. Dumbbells will do, or stepping stairs, or expanders. At the least, you have two books or two water-filled bottles in the house and can use them like dumbbells. Put the egg timer on two minutes and start. Do your movements in beauty and grace, open your joints, enjoy every second of change in your body, feel and savor the new sensations. DO it every day – NO excuses. – Afterthought: if you insist on buying a machine: buy a used old-fashioned rowing machine – they are the best.
3. Enroll in a yoga class.
From here everything will come in its own way and at its own pace. Read More