PW Series, Part 3 : Energise your body

by The Crazy Colombian on May 20, 2008

in Health & Fitness, Peaceful Warrior Series, Reflection

karatekick_deriv
Image: Derived from Karate Kick by kaibara87

Wel­come to the third instal­ment in the Peace­ful War­rior Series, a col­lec­tion of arti­cles inspired on a week­end sem­i­nar by Dan Mill­man. If you’re new to this series, you may want to start by read­ing the pre­vi­ous arti­cles.

Last time I explained the Law of Bal­ance and how to apply it in your daily life. As we closed that arti­cle, it became obvi­ous that fol­low­ing some of the rec­om­men­da­tions would take a lot of energy, so I promised to share with you the secrets of ener­gis­ing your body. By read­ing this arti­cle, you will learn how to stop leak­ing energy, and how to put more energy back into your life.

Are you lucky enough to have devel­oped the habit of reg­u­lar exer­cise? If not, this arti­cle will also intro­duce you to an exer­cise rou­tine that will develop your strength, sup­ple­ness (flex­i­bil­ity), sta­mina and sen­si­tiv­ity, all with a daily invest­ment of as lit­tle as 5 min­utes. Does it sound too good to be true? It is good, and it is also true, so don’t stop read­ing; we’re just about to get started!

Stop leak­ing!

You may recall the story of the man who stood on a mountain-top and cried up to God:
“Fill me full of light“
A voice thun­dered down from the heav­ens,
“I’m always fill­ing you — but you keep leak­ing!“
– excerpt from Every­day Enlight­en­ment by Dan Millman

It is no secret that we need to put energy into our body to make it func­tion, and that we spend energy when­ever we do some­thing. What we fail to realise is that we also spend energy when we are not doing any­thing. How can this be? It is a result of the Law of Grav­ity, which con­stantly pulls us down; this means we are always using some energy to stop our bod­ies from falling on a heap into the floor.

Luck­ily our body’s design is very effi­cient, and min­imises the amount of energy required to achieve this. Unfor­tu­nately, most of us have chronic bad pos­ture, which means we don’t make the most of our body’s design.As a result, we end up spend­ing far more energy than what we require to sim­ply stand still!

If you think this doesn’t sound right, I chal­lenge you to lie down on the floor, bring your trunk (as when you do abdom­i­nal exer­cises) to a 45 degree angle from the floor, and hold that pose for as long as you can. How long did you last? Prob­a­bly no more than a few sec­onds, a minute at most. Sit­ting or stand­ing in a hunched back posi­tion is a mor sub­tle way of expe­ri­enc­ing the same effect — you are hold­ing your body at an angle to what it’s nat­ural stand­ing posi­tion is. The worst part is that once you get used to bad pos­ture it feels nor­mal, so acquir­ing proper pos­ture will need con­scious effort and more energy than sim­ply con­tinue hav­ing bad posture.

If you want to stop leak­ing energy every sec­ond of every minute of every hour of every day of your life, pick up your local clas­si­fieds and look for mar­tial arts classes, Alexan­der tech­nique con­sul­tants, Feldenkrais insti­tutes or Mitz­vah tech­nique prac­ti­tion­ers. Do your­self a favour, and enrol in a class start­ing today. Like all good invest­ments, the energy you spend recon­di­tion­ing your body to sit, stand and lie down with appro­pri­ate pos­ture will be paid back with com­pound inter­est as you reap the rewards of a more ener­gised life.

Move­ment economy

“Socrates,” I said “There’s a light shin­ing around your body. Where does it come from?”

“Clean liv­ing,” he grinned. Then the bell clanged and he went out to make some­one laugh, under the pre­text of ser­vic­ing a car. Socrates dis­pensed more than gaso­line. Maybe it was that aura, that energy or emo­tion. Any­way, peo­ple nearly always left hap­pier than when they had arrived.

It wasn’t the glow­ing, how­ever, that impressed me most about him; it was his sim­plic­ity, his econ­omy of motion and of action. I hadn’t truly appre­ci­ated any of this before
– excerpt from Way of the Peace­ful War­rior, by Dan Millman

The excerpt above from Dan’s best-seller Way of the Peace­ful War­rior describes Dan’s won­der at Socrates’ aura of energy, and its asso­ci­a­tion to what he describes as econ­omy of motion and action. Truth is, we all waste a lot of energy in totally unnec­es­sary move­ments and actions. We often don’t think about what we are about to do, and so we end up doing, undo­ing, and redo­ing many of our daily activ­i­ties. How many times did you walk back and forth between the bed­room and the bath­room this morn­ing as you kept remem­ber­ing some­thing else you had to do or get?

To improve econ­omy of move­ment, all you need to do is be more present in the ‘Now’. By increas­ing your aware­ness of the present moment, you lower your chances of for­get­ting some­thing or doing it wrong , which means you will spend less time and energy com­ing back to do what­ever it is you were doing all over again. Liv­ing in the present is there­fore a habit that will allow you to use your pre­cious life energy in a Spar­tan way, and use it opti­mally in your daily life. Just like becom­ing wealthy can be achieved either by rais­ing your income or low­er­ing your expenses, becom­ing ener­gised can be achieved by increas­ing your energy lev­els or by low­er­ing your energy require­ments; Econ­omy of move­ment helps you by doing the latter.

Put more energy into your body

The sec­ond way to increase your energy lev­els is by putting more energy into your body to start with. There are 3 tech­niques that can help you achieve this: Eat well, have a good rest, and exer­cise reg­u­larly. Hardly earth shat­ter­ing ideas, right? We all have heard them count­less times before. Yet it can be chal­leng­ing to develop these habits as part of our lives. If you want more prac­ti­cal ideas on how to achieve all of these goals, read on.

Get­ting enough rest

Accord­ing to a 2006 sur­vey by the US Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol (link), an increas­ing pro­por­tion of adults in the USA get 6 hours or less of sleep on a reg­u­lar basis. My intu­ition tells me we would have observed the same results regard­less of the survey’s loca­tion. Sleep­ing less than 6 hours of sleep will count for most of us as sleep deprivation,and have a sig­nif­i­cant impact to our phys­i­ol­ogy and energy lev­els. The cells of our bod­ies quite lit­er­ally heal and replen­ish them­selves dur­ing sleep; dis­rupt­ing our sleep pat­terns cre­ates a bar­rier for this crit­i­cal function.

There’s a few things you could try if you are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties get­ting a good sleep every night:

 1.Go to bed at the same time every day
Have you’ve ever trav­elled across time zones and expe­ri­enced jet-lag? Our bod­ies oper­ate in cycles, and when you change time-zones, it dis­rupts your nat­ural bio­rhythm. Once that hap­pens, your body will need some time to adapt to the new cycle.
That feel­ing of grog­gi­ness you feel when jet-lagged is not that dis­sim­i­lar to the feel­ing of drowsi­ness after a late night out. You might think that that hang­over feel­ing is all due to alco­hol. Truth is you’d still feel groggy and with no energy even after stay­ing up till 3 AM with­out drink­ing a drop of alco­hol; even if you slept it in to 11 AM (Trust me, I talk from expe­ri­ence!) Break­ing our body’s cir­ca­dian cycle will impose addi­tional energy require­ments on you, and will make you feel more tired than usual. If you want to ener­gise your body, stick to the same rou­tine as much as it is prac­ti­cal: go to bed every night at the same time.
 2. Avoid caf­feine after 4 PM
If you’re a hard-core cof­fee drinker you’re prob­a­bly think­ing ‘I’ll skip this one, cof­fee does not affect me that way at night’.But as my wife expe­ri­enced once she got preg­nant with our first son, caf­feine has a sig­nif­i­cant impact in our abil­ity to have a good night of sleep even when we have got­ten used to the addic­tion of caf­feine.After only a few weeks of chang­ing her cof­fee habits due to preg­nancy, my wife finally accepted that not hav­ing cof­fee in the after­noon allowed her to sleep much bet­ter. If you think this was all due to the changes her body was going through due to preg­nancy, think again; she reported the same results months after hav­ing our first baby. To this day, she has sworn off cof­fee in the evening, and sleeps bet­ter than ever before (except when my snor­ing keeps her awake, but that’s a dif­fer­ent story!).
If you don’t believe this will effect you, just give it a try ! Cut down on caf­feine* after 4 PM for a week, and main­tain a log to mon­i­tor how well-rested you feel when you wake up in the morn­ing. You will be sur­prised by the results.* Please remem­ber that caf­feine is present in cof­fee, tea, and most soft drinks, so avoid any and all of these after 4 PM. If you enjoy the sooth­ing prop­er­ties of a cup of tea every night, try herbal teas such as camomile tea or lemon ver­bena. These drinks will give you the relax­ing ben­e­fits of tea, with­out hav­ing an adverse impact on your abil­ity to get a good night of sleep
 3.Estab­lish a rou­tine to ‘wind down’ before you hit the sack
You will have noticed that when you’re play­ing a hard game of ten­nis (or any other sport), your heart will con­tinue pump­ing furi­ously even after you stop run­ning around. Our bod­ies have built-in mech­a­nisms to ensure tran­si­tions in our activ­ity and energy lev­els hap­pen in a smooth and gen­tle man­ner. The same prin­ci­ple applies to the tran­si­tion that hap­pens when you go from being awake to falling asleep. You can not expect to be really active just before going to bed, and then lie down to imme­di­ately fall asleep .A good rou­tine to get used to for fin­ish­ing your day is to turn the TV off; turn on some sooth­ing music; have a glass of milk or a hot cup of herbal tea; brush your teeth, and get into your pyja­mas. If you’re in a rela­tion­ship, you can then spend 5 or 10 min­utes shar­ing your life with your part­ner; just make sure you stay away from rant & raves about that inci­dent with your boss that made your blood boil! If you’re sin­gle or liv­ing alone, sim­ply take a few min­utes to reflect on the day; do some visu­al­i­sa­tions; med­i­tate; or sim­ply spend some qual­ity time with your­self. After this you will be ready to hit the bed for a long, com­fort­able night of good sleep.

You are what you eat

If you want to ener­gise your body, you also need to be mind­ful of what you eat. We said ear­lier that to increase your energy lev­els, you can either increase the energy you put in, or reduce your energy require­ments. You quite lit­er­ally put energy into your body through your mouth (that’s what food is for!), so make sure you fol­low some of these guidelines:

 1.Make your meals more colour­ful
To increase the range of nutri­ents and vit­a­mins you take in every day, make sure you include all sorts of dif­fer­ent food groups in your diet. In other words, eat a healthy, bal­anced diet. Yawn.…. I can hear you mov­ing on to the next point as I repeat obvi­ous, old & tired advise. But stay with me; there’s a bit more to it.
In an age where con­ve­nience out­lets make it increas­ingly easy for us to throw our diet out of bal­ance in one sin­gle stop, you must become more vig­i­lant of whether your food choices are bal­anced or not. This does not mean you have to eat car­rots for lunch, nor am I advo­cat­ing that you diet (which, after all, has been med­ically proven not to work — link ) I am not sug­gest­ing either that you don’t indulge in some yummy food. What I am rec­om­mend­ing is that you take a bal­anced approach to it.This could be achieved in many ways. For exam­ple, you could fol­low the Food Pyra­mid prin­ci­ples rec­om­mended by the US Depart­ment of Health & Ser­vice (link):

  • Empha­size fruits, veg­eta­bles, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products;
  • Include lean meats, poul­try, fish, beans, eggs, and nuts; and
  • Make it low in sat­u­rated fats, trans fats, cho­les­terol, salt (sodium), and added sugars.

Or you could try hav­ing a protein-heavy day fol­lowed by a carbohydrate-oriented one. As long as your daily choices are not too extreme (cau­tion: do not try a diet of only choco­late on any given day!), I encour­age you to exper­i­ment, and find your own balance.

I really want to make sure you under­stand I am not advo­cat­ing to take the plea­sure out of eat­ing and turn it into a con­trolled, robotic exer­cise! In the words of Okami*, author of the blog Cin­na­mon Sun­rise:

Food is here to be enjoyed. It is here to be colour­ful, inter­est­ing and to replen­ish us. Half a cel­ery stick and a piece of let­tuce is not enough. It is much bet­ter to eat lots of var­ied foods and exer­cise, than it is to restrict calo­rie intake and remain sedentary.

Aim for opti­mum health, not opti­mum weight.
– Excerpt from her arti­cle about ‘How to be a woman’

And remem­ber: we’re all dif­fer­ent, so what works for oth­ers will prob­a­bly not work for you. So start your own exper­i­men­ta­tion, and find your own way of mak­ing your meals more colour­ful & healthy.

 2. Choose your vices care­fully
My name is Diego, and I am a Choco­holic. Over the first 30 years of my life I devel­oped an addic­tion to choco­late, and ate it com­pul­sively with an obvi­ous impact to my waist line! Over many years I tried to stop ‘cold turkey’ and have no choco­late at all, ever again. A few years ago, how­ever, I realised that I love choco­late and there is no point in try­ing to ‘fix’ my so-called addic­tion; Given the health impacts of my denial/binging cycles, I have finally under­stood that I am a lot bet­ter off to man­age my addic­tion, and ensure I eat my choco­late on small amounts (dare I say bal­anced?).
These days, I make sure I don’t have choco­lates within my reach through­out the day, but I allow myself to eat a small piece of choco­late at home for desert every sec­ond day or so. This rou­tine allows me to indulge on my vice, yet con­trol it so that it does turn into a rabid ani­mal that takes over my healthy eat­ing habits.
My rec­om­men­da­tion to you then is to be real­is­tic, and allow your­self some small indul­gences. Think through your vices care­fully, and make sure you under­stand the impact to your health of still indulging in them, albeit in a con­trolled manner.
 3.Be present while you eat
If you eat your food while in front of the TV, put a stop to it right now! When you don’t make eat­ing a con­scious activ­ity for which you are fully present, bad eat­ing habits will creep with­out you even notic­ing it. Be present when­ever you’re hav­ing food, whether from main meals or in between. Develop the skill to under­stand your body sig­nals; If you lis­ten care­fully to your body, it will tell you when it needs more food, and when you need to stop eat­ing. If you make a habit of putting your fork and knife down between each mouth­ful, and you become more aware of your breath­ing as you mas­ti­cate your food, you will increase your abil­ity to lis­ten to your body talk to you. Fol­low these sim­ple yet pow­er­ful tech­niques, and you will find your­self mak­ing health­ier choices while you eat, and enjoy­ing a more ener­gised life.

Exer­cis­ing regularly

For a more com­pre­hen­sive dis­cus­sion of this topic, I encour­age you to read my pre­vi­ous arti­cle Do you have trou­ble devot­ing reg­u­lar time to exer­cise? If you want more ideas that will help you increase your chances of start­ing a reg­u­lar exer­cise activ­ity and stick­ing with it, here are a few more tips for you:

 1.Find a work­out that works for you
We’re all dif­fer­ent, and so we all need a dif­fer­ent work­out. Are you sin­gle, time-rich, and inter­ested in devel­op­ing a mus­cu­lar body? The best work­out for you will be dif­fer­ent than mine, a middle-aged time-poor guy who is inter­ested in achiev­ing ade­quate strength & flex­i­bil­ity. The amount of time you have; your goals for exer­cis­ing; and the activ­i­ties & sports you enjoy will all help you deter­mine what is the most appro­pri­ate work­out for you. Get the help of a per­sonal trainer at your local gym and he will be able to design an exer­cise rou­tine that suits your needs, goals & taste.
 2.Cre­ate reg­u­lar time for exer­cis­ing
One of the sin­gle, most frus­trat­ing rea­sons why we don’t stick to exer­cise rou­tines is lack of dis­ci­pline. The law of iner­tia says that to change the course of action of a mov­ing object, addi­tional force must be applied to it. Our will power is no dif­fer­ent. By cre­at­ing (and pro­tect­ing!) reg­u­lar time for your exer­cise rou­tine, you are apply­ing some force that will help you over­come the iner­tia to keep doing what you’re cur­rently doing (e.g. not exercising).
 3.Develop an exer­cis­ing habit
If you rely on your con­scious deci­sion mak­ing to stick with an exer­cise rou­tine, you are set­ting your­self for a tough time . A chain is as strong as its weak­est link, so if you have to rely on mak­ing the deci­sion to exer­cise every day, there will be days when you will be feel­ing too sick/tired/demotivated to just do it.
To develop reg­u­lar exer­cis­ing into a habit, I rec­om­mend you com­mit to an exer­cise rou­tine (any rou­tine will don!) at the same time every day for the next 36 days. By the end of this period, your mind and body will have got­ten used to the rou­tine , in the same way that you are used to the idea of brush­ing your teeth every morn­ing. For more tips on how to develop this impor­tant habit you may want to read Leo Babauta’s recent arti­cle 13 things to avoid when chang­ing habits.

Exer­cise that works: The Peace­ful War­rior routine

The Peace­ful War­rior Work­out is an exer­cise rou­tine that uses a com­bi­na­tion of move­ments from mar­tial arts, cal­is­then­ics, yoga, gym­nas­tics, dance, and fit­ness train­ing. Devel­oped by Dan Mill­man, this group of 14 exer­cises will take as lit­tle as 4 min­utes of your day, and can be adjusted to suit your body and fit­ness level, so it can be done by nearly any­one regard­less of level of fit­ness, age or size.

This exer­cise rou­tine takes a bal­anced approach to ener­gis­ing your body by work­ing all major mus­cle groups, start­ing at the top of your head, mov­ing through the rest of your body all the way down to the bot­tom of your feet. Your chances of incor­po­rat­ing it as a part of every day of your life are higher than most other work­outs. Why? Because the work­out is sim­ple, effec­tive, acces­si­ble and fun. I know, because I have been doing it every day since I started it in Novem­ber 2007 (with 3 excep­tions when I was too sick to get out of bed).

If you want to learn this fan­tas­tic rou­tine, you have 3 options (listed in order of effec­tive­ness, from the least to the most effective):

  1. Buy Dan’s book Every­day Enlight­en­ment, where he describes (with pic­tures) the what and the how of this rou­tine on chap­ter 3.
  2. Get a copy of The Peace­ful War­rior Work­out DVD and prac­tice along with Dan’s instruc­tions for the first cou­ple of days
  3. Book your­self into one of Dan’s sem­i­nars, where he will walk you through the work­out and pro­vide some coach­ing to achieve proper breath­ing (very impor­tant) and form (absolutely critical!)

If you want to see what the work­out looks like, click here to go to Dan’s web site, where there is a link to a short video. A word of warn­ing though: Do not attempt to learn the work­out from that video! There is a lot of infor­ma­tion that is impor­tant for the proper exe­cu­tion of the work­out that you could not pos­si­bly learn from that short video clip; You could really hurt your­self if you decide to save the money required to buy the book or DVD and just try to do the exer­cises from the clip.

Prac­tice a lit­tle, ener­gise your­self a lot

So this is it. To ener­gise your body, all you need to do is stop leak­ing by adopt­ing econ­omy of move­ment and good pos­ture; and put more energy into your body by sleep­ing well, eat­ing prop­erly, and exer­cis­ing reg­u­larly. Whilst hardly earth-shattering knowl­edge, if you put a lit­tle bit of this advice into prac­tice every day, you will quickly expe­ri­ence a notice­able increase in your energy levels.

In the next arti­cle of the Peace­ful War­rior Series, I will describe how to use your body wis­dom (a.k.a. intu­ition), and intro­duce you to some tools that can help you tap into it. Stay tuned, and see you next time.

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Tagged as: Dan Millman, Energy, Fitness, Health, Lessons, Life skills, Peaceful warrior, Peaceful Warrior Series, Review

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