From Resistance to Resonance:
Redefining Exercise for Personal Well-being
There is a difference between working out and exercise, and I bet by the end of this you will see that for yourself and you may even be ready to try again.
Is it just splitting hairs to make a distinction between exercise and working out? Well, lets see, splitting hairs is useless, has no benefit, and would be excruciatingly difficult, if not impossible. So let’s see if I’m splitting hairs to make this differentiation.
Exercise is defined as the act of putting into use, action, or practice, while a workout is defined as a session of vigorous physical activity. Both have their place, but for the general population, and I’m guessing that’s who you are, exercise is a more reasonable choice most of the time. You could even say we are already in a regular state of exercise, given the definition is the act of putting into use, in this case, our body. This typing is exercise. Its action, its practice. This thinking in order to type is exercising my mind. It is beneficial to a degree.
What if we then take those same examples and make it a workout. What if I put my hands through a vigorous session of activity. We do that too, 8 hours of typing, that’s a workout! How many of you are benefitting from that? Carpal tunnel, tennis elbow, wrist issues, arthritis, and many other problems arise out of that. What if I put my mind through that vigorous session of thinking, planning, strategizing. It is fun and rewarding to a degree. But have you ever experienced trying to go home and be playful with kids or affectionate with family after a long hard day of that, where there are still loose ends left to tie? It’s hard to shut it off. It’s hard to get back into your body. You’ve worked out so much in your mind, you’re disconnected from your bodily sensation, from the calm and relaxation that comes from a balanced use of the mind and body.
Exercise can be seen as a balanced level of use, it can be applied to anything and everything. I can put movement into action or use, just as I can put relaxation into action or use. I can exercise my ability to calm, just as I can exercise my ability to enthusiasm or effort.
Yet if I workout my calm, that doesn’t even make sense, but if it did, what would that be, depression? It is funny, but serious too. What if I workout my enthusiasm, would that be mania?
Working out is fine in some respects, but if we applied it to other areas it is absolutely absurd. Maybe it is absurd in some of the ways that are currently acceptable too. What is the benefit of running extreme distances, or lifting extreme weights? Olympic athletes testing the limits of human ability, striving to be the best in the world. It is amazing to witness that. I bet it is amazing to experience the wins and our human capacity. Yet, we see it is wrought with problems by the ill effects it has on many of its participants. Injuries, drugs, and severe mental breaks when the high wears off, or the career ends.
In the most basic of ways, it is the difference between balanced and extremism. Once you are practiced in the extremes it is hard to learn balance. Once you are worked out in the extremes, it’s hard to exercise balance.
In this way, exercise is not hard to incorporate into life, it IS life. We have trouble incorporating it into life when we think it is working out that we should be doing. Often we don’t want to do that, we don’t like to do that, and we avoid it. So if we look and see that exercise is lovely. It is simple. It feels good. It doesn’t require you to be an athlete. It works for anyone in any state and can change and grow right along with your changing body and mind.
So am I splitting hairs? Is making that distinction useless, or impossible. You tell me. If you feel a little softer to the notion of exercise, where previously you felt a lot of resistance to it, avoidance of it, defeat around it, then it was a worthwhile conversation. I invite you to discover that you really love exercise when it is done with meditative awareness to experience the joy of having and being a body with a mind that when used together to benefit your experience of life, is a wonderful gift that I’m sure you’ve been missing.