Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (39 page)

If you do exercise, be aware that it’s not enough to simply sit all day and exercise before or after that long stretch spent in a chair. New research shows that if you have a sedentary job, even if you work out for an hour, all that nonstop sitting increases your risk of cancer, diabetes, stroke, and heart disease—and increases
your risk of dying in the next three years by 40 percent.
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You have some options, however. You can sit on an exercise ball with or without a holder supporting it (I’m doing that right now!), or set a timer and stand up every 15 minutes to stretch and move (even standing up and sitting right back down can be very effective). You can also use an adjustable desk that lets you go back and forth between standing and sitting. In the future, we’ll probably have holographic computer “screens” that we can interact with using our bodies, hands, and voices. There are already devices that allow you to do this to some degree. Until then, if you’re sitting for long hours every day, you need to find ways to get up and move regularly while you’re working—as if you were a squirmy child!

Everyone has different physical abilities, but too many of us learned in childhood that movement meant competitive sports. Often, we have been judged according to sports skills that aren’t synonymous with fitness at all. There’s nothing wrong with a baseline of strength and flexibility, but even today schools’ standards of fitness are based on acquiring boot camp skills, not moving the body in rhythm or exhibiting flexibility, balance, grace, or sensuality. The same standards are found in the larger culture too, which is why so many women end up hating “exercise” and give up on finding ways to move their bodies.

For a long time, moving my body to get exercise wasn’t very joyful for me. I associated exercise with trying to fit into a family where everyone, including my mother, played competitive sports. Whether we were hiking, skiing, or playing tennis, movement always seemed to be about winning a game, keeping score, or conquering a steep hill. I went along with everyone else, and I enjoyed zipping down a mountain or hitting a tennis ball occasionally. But overall, none of these activities was satisfying to me. I’m very glad that I grew up in a family in which fitness was an important part of daily life. However, like many women, I found it took me many years to discover the physical activities that are truly satisfying for my particular body, mind, and spirit. Too many women spend decades feeling guilty that they aren’t “exercising” and unaware that there are forms of movement that feel natural to them—forms they’ve forgotten about, in many cases.
By returning to the movement that simply makes them feel good, they can get the “exercise” they need to be healthy.

To maintain a healthy, flexible body for life, you need a joyous expression of your life force that gets your heart pumping and your bodily fluids and chi circulating. You don’t have to join a gym and work out on a stair machine while staring at a 24-hour news channel, or join a competitive sports team—you only need to do that if that’s what your heart is telling you to do. There are many options for movement. What you need is a sustainable form of it. It has to be fun and it has to work for your body given your physical state. If you’re not moving your body regularly, you need to start identifying ways to do so that get your juices flowing. If you’re moving your body regularly but experiencing pain or finding it hard to motivate yourself, then your form of movement has to change.

No matter how many calories or how much fat it burns, how good it is for your heart, or how much muscle it builds, if the way you’re moving is not something you enjoy, you’re eventually going to run out of willpower to force yourself to do it. The more stress you’re under, the more quickly you deplete your willpower reserves. Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., author of
The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It
(Avery, 2011), has written extensively on willpower being a limited resource that has to be replenished regularly.
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It’s when you’re the most stressed out and pressed for time that you most need to have fun moving your body. So let’s throw out the word
exercise
altogether and talk instead about how you are going to move your body joyously, like the divine goddess you are.

THE PLAYFUL, DANCING GODDESS

As I’ve already mentioned, one of the ways that I and millions of other women love to move joyously is through dance. In the U.S. when I was growing up, a girl just didn’t ask a boy to dance, which meant most girls did everything they could to signal to a boy, “Pick me!” A friend of mine remembers the joy of growing up in a place where the girls gave up on the boys who
weren’t into dancing and simply danced with each other, with no social stigma. She has a middle school–age son whose experience is very different. He says at his school dances, the girls ask the boys; it’s the boys who wait to be asked. The fact is that many of us need to leave behind the strict ideas we grew up with about how men and women dance, along with the fear of being judged.

Dance is a part of every culture around the world. It’s the way we connect with our pelvic bowl, which is why the power structure in a dominator society tries to control who dances and how they dance. When we allow our bodies to dance with wild abandon and joy, we nourish our spirits and help our brains and hearts experience optimum health. In my tango group, we’ve given up on all those rules about who gets to dance. Everyone dances with everyone—men with men, women with women, men with women. We don’t assign roles by gender or height. Some women have awful memories of getting stuck always having to lead in partner dancing in classes simply because they were on the tall side, and they don’t want to repeat that experience—so we don’t make them. We just dance.

Dancing is good for your brain and cognition. A major longitudinal study of people over age 75, conducted over a period of 21 years by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, looked at whether activities from playing cards to swimming to doing housework affected cognitive ability. Almost none of the physical activities had any effect on dementia rates except for one: partner dancing, which lowered the risk by 76 percent. No other activity came anywhere near being as effective at protecting people from cognitive decline!
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Let’s look at why that is. For one thing, it’s fun to dance if you’re not afraid of people judging you or of being imperfect. And we’ve established that joyous living is good for brain chemistry. Also, dance, especially with partners, is a way of moving that’s both creative and responsive. If your partner suddenly cues you to dip or twirl, you have to quickly adjust your own movements. Studies on dance and cognitive abilities suggest it’s the need to make rapid decisions while dancing with a partner that makes it so effective in keeping our brains sharp. Learning new moves supports the health of the hippocampus, a structure in the
brain associated with learning and memory that becomes damaged when you have Alzheimer’s. So when it comes to dance, going through the motions of sequences you’ve already mastered won’t cut it; you have to move in novel ways. In other words, go ahead and do “the Robot,” but don’t do it robotically—be spontaneous with your moves, and do it with a partner!
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Dance is also social, and we know sociability is health protective. Researcher Patricia McKinley of McGill University in Montreal has found that Argentine tango in particular helps with sociability and mobility.
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Dance also helps with balance and coordination, which often falter with advancing age. This happens in part because we stop moving in new ways and in part because of the accumulation of dense fascia, which builds up over time when muscles are used in limited ways. When balance deteriorates, people often walk staring at their feet to prevent tripping. You don’t want to end up doing this. There are many ways, including dance, to regain good balance as well as coordination. Argentine tango is particularly good for all these skills.
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More and more, video games are starting to simulate dancing, including dancing with partners, although the spontaneity and physical touch aren’t there as they are in real dancing. They can be a part of your joyous movement mix, especially if you use them with other people. Make them part of family life. Bring them out when you’ve got friends over. Play some music to get yourself moving. Music inspires us to move our bodies pleasurably. With some pieces, you might feel the need to sway your hips, while others might get you doing specific dance moves that work out your arms, neck, lower back, and so on. Check out some online videos of people dancing in different eras and remind yourself of all the ways you’ve moved your body and could move it again.

MOVEMENT FROM AND FOR THE HEART

Although your brain uses more energy than any other organ in your body, it’s your heart that’s the biggest generator of electromagnetic activity. Move your body and your blood and fluids circulate, your heart muscle is worked out, and you get into shape
and foster heart health—that’s the idea behind aerobic exercise. But the heart is more than just a self-propelled muscle the size of your fist. Your heart is the center of your emotional expression, and what it sends out can be felt by those around you. And this is most likely why partner dancing is so effective at maintaining physical prowess. It is quite literally two hearts in two different bodies, moving as one. Twice the joy. Twice the pleasure. And, I admit it, twice the vulnerability when you’re first learning.

You’ve heard the phrases “Her heart just wasn’t in it” and “She’s all heart.” Our hearts thrive when they’re not being controlled by others. And they’re powered by Divine Love, the most powerful healing force in the world. Say this regularly: “Divine Love manifests in my heart now.”

One of the more sustainable ways to get movement is to make it heart centered. Move to music you love, as in the dance we’ve just discussed. Exercise in nature can open your heart chakra, making it easier to get out and move. In the summer, I love to take my yoga mat out onto the back lawn and do Pilates under the oak trees overlooking the tidal river there. Find a movement partner or a group of people willing to bicycle with you, hike with you, or play golf with you so that the activity is social and enjoyable. Take a class with a friend. And honor what makes you happy and what doesn’t. I’ll hike a steep mountain trail as long as I don’t have to spend the night in a tent, sleeping on a surface that doesn’t support my bones and joints the way I like them supported. A woman I know says she “doesn’t do mosquitos,” so she does outdoor exercise at times other than dawn and dusk in the summer when the mosquitos are most active. Whatever it takes to get your heart pumping with excitement and full of the joy of movement, go for it and don’t apologize to anyone. And while you’re at it, give yourself permission to spend money on exercise gear that makes you feel strong and like a “real” cyclist or dancer if that helps you emotionally connect to the activity.

Movement doesn’t have to be confined to long, scheduled sessions. Move your body throughout the day, whether it’s taking a little dance break or lifting some free weights or doing some stretches or yoga moves while you’re watching television. A mini-trampoline, also known as a rebounder, is great for getting
weight-bearing exercise and getting your lymph fluids flowing. It also applies g-forces to your whole body with minimal impact on your joints, making it very effective for combating the effects of “weightlessness”—sitting. You can get one with a handle for stability if you like. When I was pregnant with my second daughter, I regularly danced on the rebounder to Donna Summer singing disco songs. I got a good, safe aerobic workout, and a daughter who came out of the womb loving dance and movement!

You can also swim, which is a marvelous way to reconnect with your breath and with water. Swimming in a natural body of water is ideal. Failing that, you can try to find a pool that’s cleansed not by harsh chlorine but by ionization or salt. Make swimming a delightful sensory experience if you can. Swim in the sunlight, with music playing over the pool’s loudspeakers, or just enjoy the sound of your body moving in the water, the seagulls overhead, and the far-off chatter of people on the beach. In some spiritual traditions, water represents deep emotion and the mother force. In fact, goddesses were often associated with rivers and lakes. Swim laps if you like, but also dive in and out of waves, do somersaults and handstands, and frolic like a fish or dolphin in the mother energy of the water. In this way, your whole body gets movement. And if you touch the earth by doing handstands or stepping on the floor of the ocean, lake, or river, you are grounding yourself on Mother Earth. Even walking on the beach, especially if you do it barefoot, and looking out across the water at the horizon can be very calming and an enjoyable form of movement.

In fact, walking is a great way to move if it feels good to your body. There’s nothing like a good walk with friends, talking and laughing and looking at the scenery—and walking alone can clear your head and put you back in touch with your body and spirit. Paul Dudley White, the famous Boston cardiologist who brought the first electrocardiogram (EKG) to the United States, used to walk and bike along the banks of the Charles River in Boston regularly. He was fond of saying that he had two physicians: his right leg and his left. I couldn’t agree more. On average, regular exercise adds seven healthy years to your life. So when someone tells me she doesn’t have time to exercise, I always reply that being dead seven years prematurely really eats up a lot of time too!

FASCIA FACTS

One of the most amazing innovators when it comes to the integration of movement, muscles, mind, body, and spirit is Bob Cooley, author of
The Genius of Flexibility: The Smart Way to Stretch and Strengthen Your Body
(Touchstone, 2005). After being hit by a car going 70 miles an hour while he was crossing the street, Bob suffered a broken pelvis and many other injuries as well. The usual physical therapy, massage, and orthopedic surgery didn’t help, even though Bob already had a background in anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics. It was through his own experience of trying to get comfortable in his hurting body that he discovered how to change fascial patterns in the body through resistance stretching.