Sophia says at RevGals: I just got back from an 8 mile bike ride down the beach boardwalk near our home, and was struck with the number of people out enjoying physical activity. Runners, other cyclists, surfers, swimmers, dogwalkers, little kids on scooters....
It's easy to lose track of my physical self-care in the midst of flurried preparation for a final on-campus interview Monday for a college teaching position in the Midwest (prayers welcome!) and the family move that would accompany it. But each day that I do make time to walk or ride my bike it is such a stress reliever that it is well worth the time invested!
So how about you and your beautiful temple of the Holy Spirit?
1. What was your favorite sport or outdoor activity as a child? Reading in a tree. Reading in a tree house. Playing freeze tag with neighbor kids.
2. P.E. class--heaven or the other place? Hated it, always. They had us do a lot of things that were meant to introduce many sports, but I disliked most of them a lot...not being very good at them naturally and thus being picked out last for teams...and things like gymnastics, balance beam, and uneven parallel bars - just seemed scary & dangerous. N0te that I never took gymnastics independently (as did SO many of my peers - Nadia Comaneci was training in our city after all!) so I was starting from zero with a jr. high body and a rather high center of gravity!
3. What is your favorite form of exercise now? Walking or Jazzercise, sometimes yoga
4. Do you like to work out solo or with a partner? When solo, that is, walking - just me. No IPOD, I like to listen to the birds, cicadas, squirrels, sounds of my neighbors around me.
But gyms and videos on my own don't work for me. I like to join a class that is all working together toward something.
Here's a Jazzercise video that gives you an idea. Note that all these people are wearing long pants, but then there is SNOW outside...we almost all wear shorts in the summer and one of the things I like best is, there's no mirror in the room and you can wear whatever schlumpy t-shirt you happen to dig up. Very few people are there to prove how great they look - they are there to have fun and work out.
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5. Inside or outside? Both - though these days if I'm outside it is EARLY or LATE. We are to reach at least 103 today! :P Down East, here I come, with my leather jacket!
Bonus: Post a poem, scripture passage, quotation, song, etc. regarding the body or exercise.
This isn't regarding exercise, but it reflects some of the work I am doing with my one wild and precious body right now:
I took a narrow bed.
I held my elbows to my sides.
I tried to step carefully
And to think softly
And to breathe shallowly
In my portion of air
And to disturb no one
Yet see how I spread out and I cannot help it.
I take to myself more and more, and I take nothing
That I do not need, but my needs grow like weeds,
All over and invading; I clutter this place
With all the apparatus of living
You stumble over it daily.
And then my lungs take their fill.
And then you gasp for air.
Excuse me for living,
But, since I am living,
Given inches, I take yards,
Taking yards, dream of miles,
And a landscape, unbounded
And vast in abandon.
You too dreaming the same.
--Naomi Replansky
