Mindful Exercise, A Bridge Between Yoga and Exercise
Order Cheryl’s first book and CD, Mindful Exercise. Mindful Exercise is a practice, not a program. The difference is that a practice is a process, which has its own natural unfolding that cannot be manipulated. Mindful Exercise offers a workout and a “work-in” experience, which cultivates moment-to-moment awareness through the breath and movement. Mindful Exercise asks the reader to pay attention to the experience of exercise as it is each day, without the need to compare. Mindful Exercise presents seven spiritual practices, one for each day of the week, with illustrations of their corresponding exercise trios. A specific format for this twenty-minute practice is also presented, and a CD is enclosed that describes how to execute each exercise.
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ENDORSEMENTS
Mindful Exercise returns the human body to its rightful place – a continually unfolding, ever-present domain of self-knowledge.
~ Saki F. Santorelli, Ed.D., Executive Director, Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Mindful Exercise is a wise and integrated approach to training the body and the mind that has compassion and authenticity at the core.
~ Ronna Kabatznick, Ph.D., author of The Zen of Eating: Ancient Answers to Modern Weight Problems
Mindful Exercise offers a breakthrough process toward wholeness and well-being.
~ Patricia H. Berne, Ph.D. and Louis M. Savary, Ph.D., co-authors of Prayer Medicine, Building Self-Esteem in Children, and Kything: The Art of Spiritual Presence
Excerpt from
Mindful Exercise, A Bridge Between Yoga and Exercise
Performing vs. Being
In the past, you have probably focused your workouts on a particular set of fitness goals, motivated primarily by your desire to change the physical appearance of your body—sometimes even loathing that appearance. You were expected to do more each workout, because the belief was that more is better. Focusing solely on the physical aspects of your being, you have either written or followed exercise programs that prescribed frequency, intensity, duration, mode of exercise, and rate of progression. Behavior has been measured with words like adherence, compliance, and persistence. It seems that we have mastered the workout aspect of exercise, but we haven’t figured out how to balance it with the workin aspect. Mindful exercise provides an opportunity to move out of performance and into a place of being in your body. Weaving mindfulness and spiritual practices into the exercise experience, you move from a program to a practice. And within this practice, you need time for your own individual gifts to flow forth. This is only possible when you are in a place of “non-doing.”
In a culture that praises multi-tasking, it’s impossible to imagine a state of “non-doing.” We call ourselves human beings; however, a more accurate label might be human doings. In our stress-producing culture, we need now, more than ever, to give ourselves permission to allow non- doing. Whether we spend a few minutes paying attention to the breath or enjoying a sculpture in the park, we need time to just be. Mindful exercise provides this place for being—being in the body with whatever thoughts, feelings, and sensations are present. This way is quite different from counting repetitions and pedaling within our target training range. Mindful exercise invites you to leave performance for the places in your life where you really need to perform, and allow the time you set aside for exercise to be a place of nourishment.
