Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (174 page)

Try this: Recall a time in childhood when you were outside playing— skipping, jumping rope, swimming, or throwing a ball just for fun. Or perhaps you remember dancing—twirling around till you fell on the ground dizzy. Play with this memory in your mind for a while, and feel how it felt. Smell how it smelled. Feel the sun or wind on your face. Feel how good it felt to move your body with joy and energy, stretching it to its full capacity.

When you are ready, bring yourself back into the present. Begin moving your body the way you used to. See how it feels now. Be in your body. Enjoy it, appreciate it—experiment with moving it. Did any type of movement come to mind as something that felt really good? What was it? How could you incorporate that into your life now?

HOW MUCH ANDWHAT KIND IS ENOUGH?

In October 2008, the government’s Health and Human Services Department released the new Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, based on the first thorough review of research conducted on physical activity and health in more than ten years.
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The guidelines give you lots of flexibility, giving you a total amount of time to shoot for each week instead of a certain amount of exercise per day. You can parcel out your exercise into stints of at least ten minutes at a time, which allows you to fit in many short activities that add up (like taking the stairs at the office) instead of committing to a longer workout. The guidelines also give different suggestions based on the intensity of exercise you prefer. There are two basic options:

Two and a half hours a week of moderate exercise, defined as activity that’s easy enough to allow you to carry on a conversation, but not so easy that you could sing (such as brisk walking, water aerobics, ballroom dancing, or gardening).

One hour and fifteen minutes a week of vigorous exercise, defined as enough exertion so that you can only say a few words at a time without stopping to catch your breath. This includes activities such as racewalking, jogging, swimming laps, jumping rope, or hiking uphill with a heavy backpack.

The recommendations further suggest an additional two days a week of muscle-strengthening activities, such as weight training, push-ups, sit-ups, or heavy gardening.

The expert panel that designed the guidelines noted that such regular physical activity reduces the risk of early death, coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, colon and breast cancer, and depression. The panel also noted that the suggested program can improve cognitive ability in older adults as well as the ability to engage in activities needed for daily living.

Step Two: Make a Commitment to Move Your Body

Commit to moving your body in some way or in some form three to five times a week for twenty to thirty minutes. Make exercise as simple as possible for yourself. For me, that used to mean keeping the NordicTrack all set up in the family room and keeping my weights arranged on the floor, ready to go—I didn’t have to do any elaborate setup. I didn’t worry about leaving it out all the time; after all, the house was for me to live in, not to look perfect in case company came. Sometimes I used to go to a gym, especially when traveling. But most of the time, I preferred to be home. Now that the children are gone, I have a room I’ve converted into an exercise studio.

Commit to doing an exercise program for one month. Within that time your body will probably come to look forward to exercise. If you drop out for a while, let yourself know that you will get back to it when you can. Don’t spend a minute beating yourself up. Better yet, make a fitness pact with a buddy. Then on the days when one of you wants to opt out, the other one can cheer you on. Peer pressure can be very healthy.

Step Three: Learn How to Breathe Through Your Nose

Go slowly. Learn the yoga routine Salute to the Sun and go through it to learn how to pace your breath. (For full instructions, see the book
Body,
Mind, and Sport
[Three Rivers Press, 2001] by John Douillard, D.C., Ph.D. The postures can also be found online or in many yoga texts or videos.) Don’t exert yourself beyond the level at which you can comfortably keep your breathing steady through your nose. If you’re already a regular exerciser, you’ll notice that it will probably take you three weeks or more to get back to your former level of achievement while breathing properly. Take your time. Once you’ve trained your body to use oxygen efficiently, you’ll find that you’ll soon be running farther—or walking faster—with less exertion than you ever dreamed possible. Your rib cage will also become much more flexible and your breathing more efficient. Note: You’ll need to take tissues with you when you breathe in and out through your nose because this form of breathing will really keep your nasal passages and sinuses clear and draining. Especially when you exert yourself, you’ll be doing what Dr. Douil-lard calls “Darth Vader” breathing—short, forceful exhalations through the nose that clean it out very effectively!

Step Four: Watch Out for Self-Sabotage

One of the most common reasons that women stop exercising is that they do too much too soon (ad dictive behavior). Having been out of shape for three years, they vow that they’ll run three miles a day for a week and get in shape fast. A much better approach is to do less each day than you are capable of—at least for a while. This will give your body the message that it can trust you to take care of it and not push it to exhaustion. Your body will get the idea that exercise is fun! Dogs love to go for their walks—and we would be just as enthusiastic if we followed our instincts as well as animals do.

If you never push yourself, on the other hand, and always do less than is expected or needed, then you need to push past your current limit. It’s good to know your body is capable of the long haul when necessary. Don’t ever use exercise as a way to beat your body into submission or to punish it for not looking perfect. (Anne Wilson Schaef once said that she thinks addiction to self-abuse is probably the most common addiction in our culture, and I would agree.)

If you hate your exercise program and have to manipulate or force yourself into doing it, you’ll just build up resistance. You’ll eventually quit or manage to get injured, or you’ll make the exercise program into an external authority controlling you—and you’ll sabotage yourself to get out of doing it. So make sure you’re doing something you like!

Step Five: Enjoy Yourself

When one of my former patients was an art teacher in her forties, she started going to a gym for weight lifting. She had a great time pumping iron. Newly divorced and on her own, her muscle strengthening reflected the strengthening she was doing in other areas of her life as well. She began to look and feel wonderful—and powerful. She was living proof that exercise releases naturally occurring substances called endorphins, which are related to morphine and the other opiates. It naturally produces a feeling of well-being.

Recall that a sheath of connective tissue known as fascia encases every muscle, organ, and nerve in our bodies like a tight sweater. When you move your body consciously, you are stimulating every cell in a positive and healthy way. When you don’t move regularly, you are setting the stage for physical restriction, disease, and pain. If you want to truly flourish, you simply must exercise regularly—starting in childhood and continuing until the day you take your last breath. David Spangler said it well: “Our body creates our soul as much as our soul creates our body.” I couldn’t agree more.

19
Healing Ourselves, Healing Our World

If you bring forth what is within you,
What you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
What you do not bring forth will destroy you.

—Jesus, in
The Gospel According to Thomas

The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the
problem; they’re the solution.

—Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

W
e have now arrived at what shamanic astrologer Daniel Giamario calls “the turning of the ages.” Everywhere we look, all over the planet, old, outmoded, unsustainable ways of thinking—and living—are dying. Dozens of studies have documented the fact that our thoughts can and do affect others in profound and measurable ways. Since 1975, for example, thirty-three studies have been published in peer-reviewed journals reporting that the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program and its advanced variant, the TM-Sidhi Program, when practiced by various groups meditating twice per day, have been associated with a measurable decrease in the number of violent crimes, suicides, terrorist attacks, fires, and conflict in the areas being studied.
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The late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the TM movement, predicted that when 1 percent of the population changed their fields of consciousness through meditation to the degree that they had greater coherence (sort of like the tight focus of a laser beam), then we’d see a measurable positive effect on society as a whole. At this time in our history, the human race is waking up. We are rapidly approaching that critical 1 percent of people who have raised their consciousness. This changes everything.

One of my thirtysomething colleagues recently wrote the following: “I have been feeling like I am in a psychic battle with some other energy or presence these days. It doesn’t exactly feel like my mom or dad, but it’s connected to them. Maybe it’s an ancestral energy of fear and darkness. It feels like a battle I have no choice but to win. I don’t know how to explain it.” I know exactly what she is describing.

From time to time I have had the very vivid experience of entering a place inside myself that I call “the pain of women.” The first time it happened, at an intensive with Anne Wilson Schaef, I felt my con sciousness going backward in time, as layers and layers and centuries and centuries of denial peeled away. My entry into this process was when Anne said to me, “You’re so tired,” and then suggested I lie down on a mat to see “what comes up.” Having a woman, a mentor at that time, acknowledge my tiredness instead of demanding more sacrifice was one of the most profound experiences of my life. At first, as she sat with me and told me to stay with myself, I felt how strongly my body resisted feeling what I was feeling. I experienced how good I was at pushing down my tears and getting on with whatever I had to do. But eventually, as Anne suggested that I simply stay with myself, I felt my consciousness go backward through all the times when I had never rested: when I’d had my children, during residency, during medical school, during college, during high school. Backward, backward, through my childhood— “Don’t ask for a lighter pack, ask for a stronger back,” I heard my mother say. And I wept for myself and for that part of me that so needed rest. When I had finished crying all the tears that I had never cried for myself, I began to weep for my mother—for all the times that she had not been allowed to feel or to rest, for all the pain of her own childhood, for all the times she was up all night with a sick child, for the endless grief of losing two children.