(movement)
“The movement is the medicine” It’s a turn of phrase I like to use, partly to justify/ encourage myself just to get out a little more.
Sometimes, most times, it works well. I try to walk a little further, I make the effort to get the bike from the shed, I just make time to go on the rowng machine and do the “bendy stretchy excerises” that I hope might help keep me mobile into my “golden years”.
I note with (barely supressed) cynicism, that most of the public advocates for daily working out, are not, apparantly, doing a concentrated sedentary (shift) job indoors on 10-11 hour shifts with a hour commute on either side. (A situation I have none to blame for but myself).
However, as I sit scowling at the keyboard, I suspect that the long hours and rolling shifts, simply make the need for “activity” all the more important.
A regular turn of (poor sleep) nights into (hectic) days, gives no time to decompress and little to step away from eat-sleep-work-sleep-eat for simple “movement”.
But I am minded of a quote, which I will ascribe to the Dali-Lama (wild guess);
“You shoud meditate 30 minutes every day, unless you don’t have time, in which case you should meditate for an hour…”
I suspect the sentiment could be applied more broadly, and that being more pro-active in that particularly challenging cycle of my shifts, would pay considerable dividends with; mood, intransigence, grumpyoldmanness, ingratitude.
Using half an hour at ( another) keyboard – no I am not jogging – may seem like a poor choice, but there is also another kind of movement, perhaps just as important. The movement of thought, the creation of mental space, the chance to take a thing out of your head and look at it for what it is.
I’m privileged to have a space to do that.
Next week on IaDL : Something banal …or …a supernova?
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 