kaolin fire presents :: thoughts :: physical breaks
2000::Sep::10
five minutes out of the day isn't much. that's what I try to tell myself. There are a lot of five minute time segments in the day. Still, I have trouble taking time for physical breaks, the sort that clear the mind, tune the body, invigorate.... make you happier about yourself. For me, that's jumping jacks occassionally sprinkled with pushups and stretching. I need the stretching a lot more than the jumping jacks. I do the jumping jacks a lot more often. I don't do anything too terribly often. Why can't I???
I don't know. There are different answers, depending. For jumping jacks... they're more than five minutes, because they have far reaching repercussions. If I do two minutes of jumping jacks, I smell like a stale horse. That means if I'm going to be interacting with people at any point, I'm going to need a shower. I have long hair. Ten to twenty minutes for a shower and then a few hours to dry hair. That's a lot of time for a slight exercise. Though it's worth it if I'm *not* going anywhere with several sessions inbetween.
Stretching hurts... that's the idea, at least, right? It hurts and there's little for me to do except think about the pain. Counting doesn't work in the same way as aerobic exercise, because it's a very different sort of exertion. I have a lot of trouble making it mindless. I've tried reading while stretching, and I think that helps some, but it means I enjoy the book less -- I keep adjusting because of the pain and then remembering I'm causing the pain on purpose and squirming back into position. Stretching pains are not ones I've learned to phase out -- except in the immediate sense if I'm actually stretching to climb something -- where I need to flex for a short bit and then unflex.
And pushups just aren't that useful for me. Anyone thinking of chopping up my breast and feeding it to the neighbors? Might as well keep it lean so it's not worth the effort ;) and my biceps seem to stay a constant semi-large on their own.
