Exercise and Play

Quite often, when our children return from afternoon play, they look exhausted, and ready for a nap. That is the most accurate description, and quite the truth. Play is hard work. It is exhausting to the mind and body of the young person, and plays an extremely important role in helping them to become productive, healthy citizens.
The role of exercise and play in a young child’s life provides them with many benefits. Exercise of the body is an important part of keeping the young body fit as it grows into an adult body. When we reach adulthood, if we have had the benefit of exercise and play, we tend to continue that habit into our adult years.
What else is to be gained from the opportunities that play affords? We often participate in organized sports, coordinated play times, and are a member of a large group during all of these activities. Play on this level teaches us how to interact with our peers, develop camaraderie and perform as a team with other players. These skills are absolute necessities in today’s business world. But what else is happening here, during this time of play and exercise?
What we learn in body language, coping skills, and the interaction of the mind and body during our interaction with others, is invaluable. When we learn these skills well, we not only learn how to interact with others, we learn how to interact with our self. Interact with our self? That seems like a pointless exercise, but it is an all important part of maintaining our health and wellness. There are times that our bodies try to tell us things about our physical or mental condition, and we simply refuse to listen. If we have learned how to listen to others around us when they attempt to point out a need or desire, we have a useful tool in listening to ourselves. This often can mean the difference between optimal health, and creating an unhealthy situation.
What else do we learn? We learn what our physical and mental limitations are. During play, you see children and young adolescents push themselves to the very limit. But as children, we are better able to distinguish between a real limit versus what society deems our limits. As a child, or young adult, the pressures of the world do not weigh on us as they do when we are adults. We are better keepers of the temple at ten, than we are at twenty. We are still very in tune to what our body tells us, because it is our true master as a child. As an adult, we have let outside influences master our body and mind, and dominate our time.
As you can see, the benefits to be gained during our exercise and play time as children, is a benefit to us for the remainder of our lives. Too often, we adults forget the importance of exercise and play and the principles that are to be learned from time spent in these activities. We want to rush our children into their daily responsibilities, forgetting that their chief responsibility during the younger years is the play and interaction of young minds.

Rex Shell

Metabolism: Can We Control It?

The body’s metabolism is a unique process for each individual person.  No two people metabolize food at the same rate therefore no two people have the metabolism.  We all use our calories at different rates, with different results.  Our metabolism, like our fingerprints is unique to each of us.  But the need to understand and accommodate this metabolism is an issue that we all face.

The dictionary defines metabolism as the sum of all biochemical processes involved in life, or the sustaining of life.  In application concerning our health, metabolism is related to the intake and use of food.  In reference to the case in point it is our ability to utilize our food to the fullest extent.

Right now, the greatest results in raising our metabolism come from exercise and building our muscle mass, while reducing our body fat.  Adding more muscle to the body, in turn causes us to burn more calories, and this helps to elevate our metabolic rate.

            Our metabolism functions also depend on how well we have taken care of our nutritional needs. Some people have really high rates of metabolism.  In other words, when they consume food, their bodies burn it up almost as fast as then consume it.  Then there are those of use who use our food intake so slowly, as to not even notice that we’re burning calories.  These people who burn quickly are often slim and trim, the people who burn more slowly are the people with a tendency toward obesity.

  For years, people have sought ways to raise the metabolic rate.  If you can raise someone’s metabolic rate, you are then better able to control the burn of calories, especially for overweight or obese people.  This would make the goal of better or improved health a much easier reality for those people.  Efforts to date have produced very little results.  There are foods that we can consume that naturally raise our metabolic rate, but not to a great extent.  What we need is a way to directly alter the rate.  We need to be able to raise our metabolism to a point where we can actually see a benefit.

            This is where the effort to stay physically fit and active provides tremendous payoff. Over the course of your life, if you stay active, exercise, and maintain optimal health for your muscles, you will see a tremendous difference in the rate that your body metabolizes food.  As people age, their metabolism quite naturally slows down.  The greatest way to prevent this from happening is through exercise and staying fit.

            The best way to date to control our metabolic process is through proper nutrition, daily exercise, eating the foods known to have an effect on our metabolic rate, and plenty of rest.  The metabolic process can be indirectly controlled by the methods we just discussed.  Direct control is not available, to date.

            I believe through careful analysis, exercise, and attention to each person’s unique needs, we could bring about a more natural balance of the metabolic burn vs. the calorie intake. To a level where optimal health and weight control are in equilibrium.

Rex Shell



Fitness of the Mind

Meditation, an exercise recommended for everyone, but especially those of us with hectic, stressful lifestyles, is defined as an engagement in contemplation, especially of a spiritual or devotional nature.  Meditation has been shown to relieve stress, and promote overall good health, by simply reflecting upon our day, and finding happiness within ourselves.  This and other mind exercises help us to keep our mind fit, and functioning at top performance levels

Our spirituality and meditation practices are the tools we have available to keep our mind as fit as we keep our bodies.  The mind is a complicated and versatile machine, but it can become overwhelmed and unable to function correctly, if we don’t take the time to keep it cared for.

Our mind has varying levels of operation, known as brainwaves.  As we pass through the different stages of our day, we enter various stages of brain wave activity.  The brain uses this tool as one way to allow us time to rest our busy mind, and cope with all the pieces of information we’ve received, a way to kind of “mind file” for the day.

When we don’t give adequate time for these processes, or we simply don’t get enough rest, our mind cannot maintain its state of fitness, just like our bodies aren’t capable of fitness if there is no chance to rest and replenish.

Modern alternative medicine and holistic healers believe in the power of the energy that flows through our bodies; this energy radiates from our mind as well.  It is believed to be the chief from of transportation for our body’s nervous system to carry out communication.

Breathing techniques, music, aromas, and candle therapy are all ways we utilize the opportunities to reflect on our day, allow our mind to rest and replenish itself for further use.  But are these methods keeping us mentally fit?  Yes, but they don’t work alone.  The absorption of new information, new opportunities to learn, and creative play provide our mind the stimulus it needs in order to stay fit and functioning.

The onset of many age-related mental disorders occurs because we haven’t taken the time to keep our mind youthful, and involved in new learning.  Learning new things forces our mind to form new neural pathways.  We need those neural pathways for the transmission of information from the body to the mind, or with our ability to form new memories.  If we don’t exercise the mind, we lose the fitness.

We must remember over the course of our daily routine, to make time to maintain mental fitness, as we strive to maintain physical fitness. The nice thing about the whole process is that, as we go about accomplishing these tasks, quite often the opportunities for preservation and care are interchangeable.  We can help to quite our mind as we take our twenty minute walk.  Or we have the opportunity to build muscle strength as we meditate.

Often just the opportunity to listen to music will allow our mind the chance it needs to relax and regroup.  It’s not always the most formal of occasions that we find an available chance to reflect and listen to that inner voice.  It can be in the middle of the day, with the wind blowing through your hair, and the radio turned up really loud!

Rex Shell