005 - Exercise as if living in nature

Mother Nature explains that the guidance to "exercise as if living in nature" means to walk a lot, run a little, dance, and lift heavy things often. These activities were common in nature and helped condition the body. However, in modern life, these activities can be seen as metaphors. Dancing can be any activity with diverse movements, while running can represent sustained endurance activities. Both have unique benefits for the heart. Sustaining a raised heart rate through exercise helps condition the heart, improves blood vessels, and increases energy. Moderate intensity exercise is recommended, where you can still hold a conversation. No pain, no gain is not necessary for good health. Lifting heavy things, as people did in the past, is important for physical well-being. Going to the gym is a good option, but using the body and moving things around can also achieve this. Welcome back to our conversations with Mother Nature. Over the past few weeks we've been discussing with Mother Nature her guidance for vibrant well-being. Last week we discussed diet, which can be an emotionally charged subject to say the least. This week we're looking at a similarly provoking topic, exercise. This third rule is called exercise as if living in nature, which might have you thinking that we're going to be strapping down to our loincloths and swinging through the trees. Well luckily for you, this is an audio only podcast, and luckily for me, this kind of exercise in nature is not quite what we had in mind. Instead we're going to try and help you reframe what exercise really means to the well-being of the human body, and help you find ways to bring your own passions to your physical activity. Loincloths are entirely optional. So without further ado, here's my uninterrupted conversation with Mother Nature. Hello Mother Nature, welcome back to the show. Thank you Chris, it's nice to be here. So we've been gradually working our way through the five guidelines for well-being, and gaining a little bit of your reasoning for suggesting them. We've spoken about the governing rule of maintaining a sense of playful curiosity in our well-being journey, and life in general for that matter. We've also spoken about the importance of living slowly and prioritising our sleep. And in the last episode we spoke about diet, how simple we can make it, and how it weaves its way through all the five guidelines. This week we're going to talk about your third rule, to exercise as if living in nature. I'm really curious to see where this one goes, because let's face it, very few of us live in nature these days. So could you start us off with what you mean by exercise as if living in nature please? Of course Chris. When I gave the guidance to exercise as if living in nature, I also expanded on that by saying the following. Walk lots, run a little, dance, and lift heavy things often. Once upon a time, this is how you lived in nature. You walked every day, often eight to ten miles or more in search of food and water. Sometimes to catch an animal, you ran after it, tiring it out so it was easier to capture. You rarely ran just for the sake of it though. Very often you had ceremonies that involved hours and hours of dancing, which kept you fit for running, and life was very manual for men and women alike. So you lifted heavy things many times each day. Therefore, to exercise as if living in nature is to walk a lot, run a little, dance, and lift heavy things often. That makes sense now. Our body was conditioned in strength and fitness through these four common activities. But when you think of our modern human life, I feel the urge to say, well, that's great, but what if I don't want to run or lift weights or go to the gym or dance classes? How does it all fit in then? Well the beauty of being a human is that you can think creatively. So today you can think of these activities more as metaphors, a metaphor that describes the types of exercise that condition your body. Oh yeah, you did say as if living in nature, didn't you? Exactly Chris. So dancing, for example, can be anything that involves lots of diverse movements and gives you a sense of pure joy to do. Interesting. So if I was to play tennis, for example, you could consider this as dancing around the court, moving forwards, backwards, sideways, reaching up and down, etc. You've got it. Tennis can very much be thought of like a dance activity. Dance is simply joyful and diverse movement. That could apply to tennis, climbing, yoga, soccer, gymnastics, tai chi, martial arts, or whatever you find fun. You name it. If it's joyful to you and has lots of diverse movement, then as far as I'm concerned, you are dancing. I love that idea. I guess even riding a mountain bike through the forest could feel like a dance. Very much so. If it feels like a flowing dance, then it's a dance. But you could also use running as the metaphor for endurance activities like cycling. How so? Running isn't for everyone. As a metaphor, it can be analogous to any activity that causes you to sustain a raised heart rate whilst not having a wide diversity of movement. So swimming, cycling, hiking, spin classes, roller skating, they all fit into this category then. That's right, Chris. You're getting it. If it keeps your heart rate up for 30 minutes to an hour or more, then you're exercising as if running in nature. OK, I'm getting it. You're saying that to run as if living in nature means to do some kind of sustained endurance activity. In that case, can I ask you about nature? Are running-type activities more beneficial than dance-type activities, or vice versa? No. Each form of activity has its own unique benefits, but they also have some overlap with each other too. Running and dance both condition the heart, for example. Running, however, keeps that heart rate relatively even, which has unique benefits. Dance activities allow the heart rate to go up and down, which is good too, but dance's main benefit is in the variety of movement and the social interaction associated with it. Interesting. So what kind of benefits does sustaining a raised heart rate give you? Well, it specifically conditions the heart. Like any other muscle, the heart can grow and shrink based on the usage it gets, so asking it to pump a little harder helps to keep it strong. You'll also benefit from more flexible veins, arteries, and blood vessels, which wards off the possibility of heart attacks. Additionally, you develop more cells called mitochondria, which help you make energy. All this together makes endurance activities, like running or cycling, give you more overall energy when practiced often enough. Okay. So we gain energy from things like food and sleep, but we also gain energy from exercise. Yes. Although exercise is an energy expense at the time of doing it, as you recover over the following few days, your body makes the adaptations we mentioned, giving you more energy to exercise more easily next time. Got it. It's like climbing the stairs. The person that takes the stairs most often finds them easier to climb than the person who takes the lift most of the time. If you spend energy on exercise, you'll create more energy reserves and find that everyday tasks are less taxing. You got it. Thanks. And do you need the heart pounding out of your chest for an hour or more to gain a benefit? No, not at all. In fact, these benefits that I listed come most easily at a moderate heart rate. Okay. To give the listeners an idea about what you mean by moderate, can you give us an example of what it might feel like? Sure. At a moderate heart rate, you should still be able to hold a conversation. You would just need to catch your breath about every 15-20 seconds to keep it going. So, if you can speak freely, like you're at a coffee shop, then you're exercising at too low an intensity. And if you're struggling to say just a few words at a time, then your intensity is too high. I often say it like this. You can hold a conversation, but you don't really want to. Perfect. At that intensity, exercise is not a great effort. It can be enjoyable, and you're getting a great deal of benefit out of it. So, it sounds like that's the end of the no pain, no gain way of thinking, then. Well, think about it for a moment. Nothing else in nature subscribes to that adage in order to be abundantly healthy, does it? Why should you? That's very true. So, we've discovered so far that dancing activities include anything with diverse movements, which is good for coordination, agility, reflexes, and really having fun with exercise. And running-like activities are less diverse in their movements, but they enable a sustained raised heart rate, which helps condition the heart, vascular, and energy production systems. I think that's all beginning to make sense now. So, this leaves us with walking and lifting heavy things. Let's cover lifting next, and we'll finish with walking. So, what do you mean by lift heavy things often? How does that play into our physical well-being? Imagine this. Until very recently in history, life was very manual for both men and women alike. A hunter-gatherer woman would fetch water and food and carry it several miles back to camp. She'd also dig for the starchy roots of plants. She would sharpen a large, strong branch of wood and repeatedly lift and pound it into the dirt, slowly digging down to the roots of that plant. Try doing that yourself, and you'll soon realize how strong a woman can be. Men and women dug for food, shifted rocks, butchered and moved heavy animal limbs, climbed trees, built mud huts, and much, much more, all in a day's work and without any machinery to help. Suffice to say, people lifted heavy things often. Wow, when you put it like that, it makes me realize just how capable the average person is. Yes, even the kids were extremely strong. Yeah, I had first-hand experience of that. In my early 20s, I went on a hiking trip to Peru with some friends. We camped out in the mountains, and these kids would just turn up out of nowhere. Kids of all ages, like from maybe 6 to 14 or 15. We'd always end up playing games with them, and somehow we ended up having an arm-wrestling competition. The 12-year-olds could hold their own with us, but the 14, 15-year-olds could rip your arm clean off. Well, they weren't lounging on the sofa watching Saturday morning TV like you were doing at that age, Chris. Yeah, you got me. I know, they were in a field with an ox and a heavy wooden plough. OK, let's get back on topic. So, when you say lift heavy things often, what does that mean in the modern world? For example, does that mean that we all should go to the gym? Well, yes, the gym is a great place to lift heavy things. But did you notice that people of old didn't do reps of bicep curls? No, they just used their body and moved things around. Exactly. My advice for today is to lift and carry as often as possible, rather than using equipment to lift everything for you. So, if I was to interpret that, might I suggest carrying groceries to the car rather than pushing them in the trolley, for example? Or lifting a heavy load of washing or a vacuum cleaner up and down the stairs? Or washing the car with a bucket instead of a hose so you can carry it over? Maybe regularly dig or weed in your garden if you have one? Or carry a heavy load in your rucksack to work rather than try to minimise it? All great suggestions, Chris. See how you're lifting heavy things often now. The more you shy away from day-to-day manual labour, the weaker you become. Doing so will make everyday objects in your immediate environment a challenge as time goes by. That's the key, isn't it? Use it or lose it, as the saying goes. And this is important for women to understand particularly, right? Absolutely, Chris. As women age and go through menopause, they weaken faster than men, particularly in their bone density. By having a life where you actively seek to lift and carry every day, you are much less likely to develop osteopenia or osteoporosis. Yeah, in fact, if you were to develop osteopenia, for example, then weightlifting is actually what's recommended. This is such an important takeaway. Women evolved to be immensely strong. Just think of the archetypal African woman carrying a gallon or more of water effortlessly on her head. It didn't just appear they're balancing a weight on its own. She filled it, lifted it above her head and gently lowered it down into place. Then lifted it back down to the ground a few miles up a rutted dirt track. Now just think, that's all whilst talking and laughing with her friends. These slender women are stronger than we can even imagine these days. Yes, and it's a very important observation. You're all more capable than you think. So let's finish this conversation off with a quick discussion on walking. Why do you say walk lots? Because it's so good for you. Walking can be a social connector, enabling conversation to flow easily. It gently mobilizes all your joints, giving them a massage and easing stiffness and pain in most people without restrictive pathologies. It can get you into that moderate heart rate we spoke about, building your fitness and energy reserves. And finally, it can improve people's mental health, because it gives you time to think, become quiet and be somewhat meditative. Wow, that's a lot of benefits from something that most of us can do easily. And the mental health part of it is so important to recognize too. I read a great book by a guy called Jake Tyler, called A Walk from the Wild Edge, where he credited walking for bringing him back from his deepest depression. Yes. Walking, and particularly doing so in nature, can have profound benefits on your physical and mental well-being. OK, so we've covered many different ideas here, and it's starting to feel a bit like a full-time job bringing all these exercises into our life. And to be fair, when we see exercise through the lens of our wild ancestors, it actually was their full-time job. So how can we bring exercise into our modern busy lives, especially if it doesn't come naturally to people? That's an excellent question, Chris. I'm glad you brought it up. First of all, walking and lifting heavy things are the two most important exercises you can do with very little effort at first. They can both fit right into your life without changing much at all. So I guess you're saying use the car less or park it further from the shops, take the stairs rather than an escalator, meet your friends for a walk instead of a coffee, and take every opportunity to lift and carry anything that's around you. You're getting it. And if you want to add more purposeful or structured walking or weight lifting, then go for it. This will just increase the benefits. OK, that makes sense. Just be as active as possible each day. And if you have time, find a structured exercise plan that works for you. So you've spoken about walking and weights here. What about running and dance-type activities? Well, both of these activities aim to get you out of breath, which not everyone likes to do. So my advice is to do whatever activity you enjoy most. Getting out of breath is better if it brings you joy. So run if you enjoy running, dance if you enjoy dancing, play tennis or badminton or netball or swimming or basketball. Whatever you think might bring a little fun to getting out of breath. There we go. And remember the governing rule. Playful curiosity. Try making a list of activities that you feel might bring you joy. Then go have a play with each of them. Some you'll enjoy, some you won't. So just continue the ones that you do. Brilliant. I love that because it brings an opportunity for adult playtime in your exercise. OK, this has been an intense conversation so far, so maybe it's time to do a summary. OK, let's see what you've learnt. You can think of nature's guidance to exercise as if living in nature as a metaphor for physical well-being. One that helps to bring purpose to why we might exercise in different ways. So, walk lots. Walking has the greatest benefit on physical and mental health. It conditions your heart, it enables social interaction, it massages your joints, it relaxes and resets the mind. Run a little. This means to do any form of movement that evenly raises the heart rate for 30 minutes to an hour. This will strengthen your heart, create flexible arteries and give you more energy in the long run. And remember, it doesn't have to be intense. So, go for a jog with a friend and show your way round. Now, by using the word dance, we mean diverse, joyful movement. Anything that makes you bend, reach, skip, jump and smile will do. You'll condition your muscles, joints and your heart in the process. And finally, lift heavy things often. Yes, you can join the gym. That's certainly the ultimate expression of this guidance. But taking every opportunity to lift, carry and do things that feel effortful for your muscles throughout the day-to-day life is beneficial too. So, don't discount the simple opportunities to enable a stronger body. When it comes to choosing what exercise is right for you, then first think about what might bring you joy. Exercising for the sake of exercising doesn't have to come naturally to you. Having to do so is only a very recent part of our evolutionary history, actually. So, use joy as your motivator. Get curious about what activities you might enjoy and go play with them. This way, you'll find out what you like and what you don't. Maybe a new physical activity will alleviate stress in you. Maybe it provides an opportunity to hang out with your best friend and make new ones. Maybe it's an opportunity just to laugh a little. And think about it. Anything you could possibly choose will fit into at least one of these four categories. So, whatever you do, you're fulfilling nature's guidance too. The physical benefits should just be the icing on the cake if you come at exercise as a chance to express joy in your life. A beautiful summary. Well done. Thank you, Melanatia. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Next week, if it's okay with you, I'd like to talk about your fourth guideline for vibrant wellbeing, socialising in the company of others. How does that sound to you? I look forward to it. Okay, great. I look forward to speaking to you soon. Bye for now. So, there you have it. This is a big topic and one full of strong opinions across the internet. Now, clearly, there are deeper levels that we can go to on this topic. But I wanted you to first grasp the underlying reasons these four categories for exercise are important to health. I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments. So, please, share them if this platform that you're listening on allows you to do it. As always, you can learn more on my website with our free course or through the personal coaching that we provide. It would be my pleasure to offer you some deeper, more personal insights. But for now, remember, your health will emerge quite naturally if you allow Mother Nature to guide you. Copyright © 2020 Mooji Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved. No part of this recording may be reproduced without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.