Autofitness: Maximum Fitness with Minimum Effort Part 1
Filed under: Essays — arlene @ 3:37 am
Getting your blood up
This is just a form of waking up and its better than blindly groping for a cigarette or reaching for the coffee cup some loving husband or wife has brought.
While still in bed, we stretch like a cat.
Extend your arms above your head and stretch your feet out. Now extend your fingers and stretch your toes as far as you can. Now tighten your fingers and bend your feet back as far as you can. Hold it for a few seconds and repeat four times. If you tend to get cramps when you stretch do not point the toes while stretching, but keep the whole foot pulled back. Breathe easily, but deeply, with each movement and, at the same time, concentrate on your whole body and in particular your muscles.
Now that was not too bad and you are ready to get up.
I find that a great number of people even in their twenties have back problems — problems for which there seems to be no cure but at best temporary relief.
As we get older these problems are increased by the normal wear and tear. I have, therefore, decided to keep this in mind with our daily exercises as I do not want anyone to further injure themselves in our standard exercises.
Sit up and face the day
According to our fitness and the condition of our backs we are going to sit up.
Start by raising your knees with feet on the bed. Now place your hands on your thighs and slowly move your them, without force, toward your knees and hold this position for a few seconds — this will slightly raise your head.
If you feel any strain on your neck put your left hand behind your head as support and, at the same time, roll onto your right side, slip legs over the edge of the bed and using your right elbow and then your right hand raise yourself to a sitting position. If you get up toward the left side of the bed then reverse the arm movements.
Now that you are sitting on the edge of the bed with your feet on the ground, slowly stand up, without any help from your hands, and with your back as straight as possible.
Again here you may find you need to support yourself with your hands behind you. If this is so, try to slowly, from day to day, use the arms less until you can stand with the legs alone. Now you are standing up at your bed, something you have been doing for years withoutmy help! You have also consciously exercised various muscles and, at the same time, given yourself a chance to see how fit you are and how it can be developed.
Walk tall
Now we begin to move around our bedroom. Probably the most important thing in our mobile life is posture. How do we hold ourselves? So many of the difficulties we have with our backs, with our lungs, with our legs – and many other things – come from a bad initial posture – it’s good to have a look in the mirror at this time and, after the shock to straighten up.
People, as they grow older, tend to get smaller. That makes sense in that we are continually fighting the force of gravity. This was, of course, increased the day the first monkey stood up on its hind legs. But we do not have to curve our backs and push our heads out so that we put an even greater strain on our muscles and our frame.
Walk in an erect way with the head held high, chin tucked in, the tummy muscles pulled in and the shoulders back and low. It 1.5.’ far more relaxing!
