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.

[SB Wang]

Richard, Vianna:
I thought about several different replies, names such as Surikov, Menzel, were in my head. Please read Mao's "Swimming":
"Now I am swimming across the great Yangtze,
Looking after to the open sky of Chu.
Let the wind blow and waves beat,
Better far than idly strolling in a courtyard. Today I am at ease.
'It was by a stream that the Master said-Thus do things flow away!''

http://www.oa18.com/read/poem/mao/mao_e/swimming.htm

On Mao's poetry:
"Mao's poetry exhibits a spirit of boldness and power, weaving together history, reality and commitment, and going beyond the limitations of time and space. When writing about history, he kept his sights on reality and lets history encompass the sequence of events; writing about reality, he posited the possibility of a better world in the future; and when writing about ideology, he based it on facts and deployed myth and imagination within a framework of realism. Mao Zedong advocated a method of literary composition that combines revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism, and his poetry was a synthesis of his theory and practice.

Bold transformation of myth and literary quotations are a distinct feature of Mao's poetry. His poetry also radiates sweeping and colorful derivation, like in Spring in a Pleasure Garden (Snow), which described grand and beautiful imagery, and The Moon over the Qin Bower (the Loushan Pass), which was meant to portray a brutal battle scene. What people garner from the poem, however, is a fig with deep colors and elegant structure. The use of colors in poems not only made tangible the poet's feelings but also deepened the reader's grasp of the poem. Mao was good at using simile and "evocation" in his poetry, as when he compared a hawk's acumen and vigor to a revolutionary's keen insight and generosity, or, a plum blossom to the common people's nobility. "

Steven:
4 o'clock of morning is the best time for exercise, for it's the vulnerable time for human hearts.
Early stirrer will steal a march on the rest of us.

[SB Wang]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Summer_Olympics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Highsmith.jpeg

[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