Health: the Big One

[SB Wang]

These are the two questions children always want to know about you :age & income. Say you worth:
10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000...
You know that, the health is the first one, the others are zeroes.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...6/mswv6_01.htm
So what are your creative ways for fitness?

[Julie Deane]

I have a dog. I walk her. When she makes me feel really guilty, I walk her more than the absolute minimum.

[Claudemir Bonfim]

Everyday I do 100 push-ups, 20 pull-ups, abdominals, run 5 miles, NOT!

And to add insult to injury, I love pizza, lasagna, etc...

[SB Wang]

Yours are very good examples.
Hua Tuo is a famous physician of the Han Dynasty who is so widely respected that his name and image adorn numerous products (e.g., as a brand name for acupuncture needles and for medicated plasters). He is known for the early qi gong exercise set known as the frolics of the five animals, in which one imitates the actions of tigers, deer, bears, apes, and birds; these practices were later incorporated into various health promoting martial arts practices, such as taijiquan.
http://www.itmonline.org/arts/huatuo.htm
http://www.itmonline.org/docs/huato.htm

[Richard Bingham]

Originally Posted by SB Wang

exercise set known as the frolics of the five animals, . . . apes . . . health promoting . . . practices . . .

Thank heavens this thread isn't another tirade about the perceived dangers of turps and lead white!

I don't "monkey around" with exercise . . . (that's a joke) but I know I should. This summer, I had to take back a small acreage of hay, and ended up moving a 1/4 mile line of sprinkler pipe three times a day. Great exercise, but I admit I'm not "into" seeking it out if it's not imposed like this.

I do find that I paint better if I interrupt studio sessions with more physical activities . . .

[Vianna Szabo]

When I am walking I like to entertain myself by identifying everything I see by value, temperature, and intensity, then try to mix the color in my head. The only problem with this is that I become so involved with my color mixing that I fail to notice how far I have gone. By the time I "come to" I'm several miles from home and have to back track. Keeps me in shape though!

Vianna Szabo

[Steven Sweeney]

Originally Posted by Richard Bingham

This summer, I had to take back a small acreage of hay, and ended up moving a 1/4 mile line of sprinkler pipe three times a day.

This is the last place I would have ever looked to find someone who had, as we called it, "moved pipe." My summer chores in the late 60s and early 70s included 12 quarter-mile lines that had to be moved by about 2 p.m. every day. I ran the whole distance, half-hour per line. Stout, Anderson, Wade Rain and Rain-Bird are tradenames on the tip of my tongue, nearly 40 years later. I never didn't have a pipe wrench on my belt. $1.35/line when I started, $2.10/line six years later, when I switched to three times the wage in sawmill work to pay for college. Now a long climb of steps leaves me wistful, if not winded. The green chain at the mill is . . . oh, never mind. The mills are gone now.

The sentiment expressed in this thread, about keeping the physical form in shape to support the creative form, is valid. I really, very much hate working out, but love having worked out, so I give it 25 minutes every single day at 4:30 a.m. Otherwise, if I sidle up later that day (after cubicle hours) to the easel like Jabba the Hutt, that's the caliber of work I'll do, and we know what happened to Jabba. If I've had a workout and breakfast (and two other of my four ideal essentials, best left unmentioned here) by 8 a.m., there is nothing I can't accomplish in a given day. But without that physical exertion straight away, I'm in first gear all day, oily sludge in the crankcase and clutch slipping.

Thirty minutes' worth of attending to the physical health will give you three, clear, extra hours of acuity and productivity every day. You'll waste thirty minutes in the next 24 hours just casually, aimlessly surfing the Net. Choose differently, for a different result.

[Laurel Alanna McBrine]

These days, I like to walk and listen to books on tape. I also try to do mind/body stuff like pilates/yoga type exercises with the occasional step class and weight training session thrown in.

I have a blog re: health/fitness/living well. Stop by and leave a comment!

That said, my favorite food is chocolate.

I know I feel much better and get more done when I am exercising and eating well on a regular basis.

Lately I have been seeing a Doctor of Chinese Medicine, who does some accupressure massage and acupuncture. I walk out of there with my muscles relaxed and my mind calm. Hey, I grew up on the west coast!

As a young person, I didn't move pipes, but I did mow a lot of very big lawns at $2 a shot

[SB Wang]

Laurel:
Yes,You are young. Your name and your future are close to "laureates".
Half of Chinese-American Nobel laureates were born in the Year of the Rat. Effort alone is not enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_C.C._Ting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_T._Lee
His father is a famous artist:http://www.tzefan.org.tw/ehome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu


http://mgi.blogsome.com/2007/12/29/y...famous-people/
George Bush is not one of them.


*******************************
The Olympics 2004
by James H. Lee Jr.

The Olympics is for champions who

[SB Wang]

ROBERT PINSKY: The original Olympics of ancient Greece included familiar events like footraces and wrestling, as well as races in horsedrawn chariots and mule cars. The poet Pindar wrote many odes in 476 B.C. Pindar compares the games to the elements:

Water is supreme, and gold
Like fire at night stands out
Among all the subtances that heighten human pride--
But if you want to celebrate
Greatness in games, O my soul, you'll find
No brighter star in the vastness of space
Than the sun, no contest more glorious
Than Olympia--
http://www.rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/PindarOlympia.htm
http://www.olympic.org/uk/utilities/...&MediaType=vid

English translation (literal)
ANTHEM OF THE GAMES

Ancient immortal Spirit, pure father
of beauty, of greatness and of truth,
descend, reveal yourself as lightning here
within the glory of your own earth and sky.


At running and wrestling and at throwing
illuminate in the noble Games