I played basketball for the first time in about 10 years last week.  I was really sore the next day, but I had a great time and played better than I thought I would.  What I did particularly well was shooting free throws, making about 70% of them.  Considering it had been 10 years since I had played, I was happy with that. 
 
Shooting free throws is meditative, as is walking.  Yoga and formal meditation classes get all the attention, but any repetitive activity which focuses the mind is meditative.  In the Anglo Catholic religious tradition, we use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer which has a communion liturgy with the same prayers repeated in every service, most of which I know easily by heart after 2 years of saying them.  This is meditation on spiritual matters.  The anxiety, worry, sadness and / or obsession move to the background during the liturgy, and during the basketball game or the walk.

In the Western and Christian tradition, we have not fully understood or utilized the capabilities and resources that our rich heritage and tradition give us to live a healthy life.  Neglecting the Sabbath is one perfect example, but that's a whole different essay.  Meditation is unfortunately often seen as an exotic eastern thing.  Most Westerners either never do mediation because they think it's weird or they become overly dogmatic and think you have to become a buddhist or go to yoga classes to meditate.  I know yoga very well, and could easily teach yoga, but I don't particularly enjoy yoga classes and find them too rigid, long, and boring for my tastes.  And yes, some of the classes are too cramped and the people really can be weird.  I do yoga stretches on my own and with clients, but it's just not my thing.  If you like it, by all means continue to do it, because it's very good for you.  

Walking offers us another method by which to meditate.  Instead of "emptying out", let us meditate on the beauty of the created world as we walk.  The ancient Psalms speak of the same thing:

Psalms 24:1
24 This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

What better mantra or theme could there be to a walk than that?  Rejoice.  Let's clear the mind and focus on how great it is to be walking and to be alive.  Let us meditate by "filling up" while we get rid of the stress, at least temporarily.  The Dali Lama was once asked by a fawning group of American millennials, clueless and self-loathing about their own culture, what spiritual path they should take.  His ironic answer- embrace your own Christian traditions.  He's right.  Let's bring back the pilgrimage!

The benefits of meditation are:

• Increase in the hormone GABA, which relaxes the arterial walls and promotes relaxation in general
• Increased ability to focus
• Decrease in anxiety, depression, and obsessive thoughts
• Improved mood
• Improved memory retention
• Conflict Resolution

 
I’ve written before about how much fun it is to be a “flaneur,” a man on the streets, meaning someone who goes for strolls and enjoys the street life.  The unfortunate thing about America is that it’s not built well for this.  When I was in England this summer, I took 15-20 mile walks every day in London, Bath, Cambridge, Oxford, and Cornwall, all beautiful, relaxing, and meditative.  I hiked some of the ancient pilgrim paths in Cornwall.  15-20 mile walks sound long, but it didn’t seem like it at the time. 

As the attached photo from Oxford illustrates, there are scenic rural paths everywhere in England and ample opportunities to walk in cities and see interesting things, especially if you have a raincoat.  In America, you might have to be a little more creative because our culture is built around the car.  Drive to a park to walk, or walk midday from where you work.  Or walk around your neighborhood to eat, and then walk home.  Walkability is something I support 100% and many cities are retroactively adding this in now.  Greenville, SC, Huntsville, AL, Chattanooga, TN, and even Columbus, GA have been working on walking and outdoor projects.  The Belt Line in Atlanta is probably the best thing the city has ever done.  
 
Walking is meditation.  It clears your mind.  Leave your phone at home and head out.  Take a break from the required cynicism and give it a chance.  Don’t even create a plan.  Just walk and clear your head.  Look at all the big oak trees, the flowers, or the clouds.  Say hi to people you pass and stop and talk if you want to.  No goal, no time limit, no destination.  Breathe as you walk and take it all in.  Try not to think too much, just enjoy what you’re doing.  I like to use a mantra or prayers sometimes when I walk.  Or focus on deep breathing and nature. 
 
To truly get a good, intense workout, do some intervals every week, but that’s a different conversation.   Walking has a different goal than exercise.  Walking is done for enjoyment, for your mental health, and even for your spiritual health.  The essence of the spiritual life is the fundamental fact that life is a gift.  Being alive is a gift.  Get out, walk, and enjoy the gift of life.   

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When you build muscle, several things happen:

• Your resting metabolic rate goes up.
• Your insulin levels even out.
• Your energy levels fluctuate less.
• You’re stronger.
• You have less body fat, which is a type of poison to your body.
• Nutrients you eat are directed towards your muscle.
• Nutrients you eat are directed towards your brain. 
• Your weight stabilizes or decreases.

 
Focus less on long workouts and tracking calories.  Obsess less about your diet in general. 
Focus on building muscle with intense and shorter workouts.  Focus on maintaining muscle.  Lift weights 2-3 days per week for 30-45 minutes.  You’ll be much, much healthier if you focus on having fun and being playful in the gym, but also working hard to build muscle because muscle is medicine for your body and brain. 

Have a great week.  See you in the gym!

P.S. Check out some of the free PDFs I made for you:
http://www.scottgodwin.net/free-e-books.html

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Consciousness is suffering.  – Fyodor Dostoevsky
 
Living requires suffering.  More accurately, living is suffering.  Once we acknowledge this, the suffering gets a little easier.  It sounds a bit cliché but to do anything meaningful, we must suffer some.  To be free we need to suffer the right way. 
 
The kind of freedom we are sold by the mass market throws us back on our animal instincts, into an enslavement to the instinctual self, or what Freud called the “Id”.  We are more than animals, we’re human.  Being human requires doing something different from what animals do. All acts of human creation are painful, because they disrupt the status quo, and the instinct to exist at the lowest common denominator of existence.  Creative acts are acts of courage and love if done right. 
 
To love at all is to love some things more than others.  To truly love anything or anyone, we must prioritize our efforts. We can find freedom and life through suffering for the right things.  What I mean by suffering is doing difficult things.  To write a book, have a good marriage (I am told), have a good business, run a marathon, become a good dancer, love God, or to learn to play an instrument, we must suffer the pain of both a) discipline and the b) elimination of the ego.  We must be willing to hurt a little, and to accept the necessary pain for a new type of ecstasy, better known as joy, a covenant of accountability to something bigger than our immediate self. 
 
Of course, in the pilgrimage of life, most of us are trying to do this the best we can.  But when we remember frequently that all true living requires at least some suffering, we can prepare ourselves, steel ourselves, and strengthen ourselves for the difficult road ahead.  We won’t be surprised when the challenges come.  We can fast to build discipline for weight loss or to beat all sorts of addictions, we can study other heroic people and try to emulate them, we can practice being humble so that we’ll have the courage to try something new ourselves, and we can encourage other people along their path.  We can journal or talk to a friend about the problems we face, so we can grow from them.  These are just a few examples of preparing. 
 
Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of Roger Scruton, the popular British philosopher.  One of the key themes he keeps coming back to is the conflict or duality between the object (material) and subject (conscious being).  We know we ourselves are physical, material objects, but we also know that we are subjects, more than material objects, which creates our suffering.  This is the essence of the fall.
 
We are spirits, souls, an “I”, who is conscious and capable of meeting with other accountable subjects, other “I’s” in a transcendent space of free will that can’t be completely described but must be created, negotiated, and experienced together.  Like a beautiful painting must be seen and a beautiful symphony must be listened to, our lives are more than just a random occurrence of cells and tissue.  A community that nurtures health is like a great work of art in that intentionality and accountability to both ancestors, the living, as well as future generations, meet within the context of a group of people bound together. 
 
We are more than objects, and we must be willing to reach beyond and suffer a little to really live a good life. 
 
This is where we may find beauty, goodness, truth, and neighbors.  This is where we may meet God.  
 
“We’re all in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars.” –Oscar Wilde

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I’ve heard them all, and I’ve even used a few of them before.  What’s your excuse? 
 
You’re tired?  You’re not feeling well.  Your dog is sick. You had to go to a party.  You didn’t get any sleep. 
 
You really don’t like doing that. 
 
You will do it next week. 
 
Your back hurts.  Your leg hurts.  Your foot hurts.  Your stomach hurts.  Your head hurts.
 
You need to learn how.  You don’t know what to do.  You don’t want to do it wrong.
 
You’re afraid.  You’ve never done that before.  You don’t know what they’ll think of you.
 
You can’t do it.  It’s too hard, to difficult, and too complicated.  It takes too long.
 
Your elbow hurts, neck hurts, or ankle hurts.   You’re having dizzy spells.
 
You’re hungover. 
 
You’re going to, but not right now. 
 
It’s too expensive.  It’s too cheap.  It’s too simple.
 
You need to do this instead.  You don’t have time.
 
You still don’t have time.
I still don’t have time.
We still don’t have time.
 
It is truly amazing what we will come up with to avoid tackling problems we need to tackle and doing things we should do and want to do.
 
After all, it takes so much time.  One of Newton's 3 Laws of Motion is the Law of Inertia- an object in motion or rest will stay that way unless acted upon by an outside force.   This is the way your physical body works too.  You have to make it work with willpower, and overcome the tendency to not move.  
 
Sometimes, we take one first step in the right direction, and then another, and another, and things change for the better little by little.   And every step gets a little easier than that first one.