Exercise Programs For The Healthy

Lesson 98 - Exercise Programs For The Healthy

Why We Should Be Vigorously Active

Life Is Activity

Life is characterized by activity. Death is exemplified when all activity ceases. Hence the quality of life is determined by the activity level of the organism.

Quality of Life Is Determined by Vigorousness, Intensity, and Extent of Activities Cultivated

If life is worth living, it’s worth a lot more if lived at its highest possible level. For comparison, picture a sloven hillbilly who lives a life of indolence with a bottle of whiskey as his foremost companion. On the other side of the coin, consider an engineer who has a home, a wife, and children, who plays tennis and other active games, who has cultivated many arts, appreciates great music, and is involved in guiding his children to useful and active lives. Those who care about themselves, those around them, and about the kind of world they live in are obviously the kind we admire whereas those who are making no contribution to the world are despised.

Thus you should undertake to encourage those whom you counsel to get involved in vigorous activities, especially constructive hobbies such as gardening, orcharding, flower-growing, etc., that absorb and develop a person culturally while at the same time eliciting a lot of vigorous physical activity. Physical activity is, in itself, constructive for it adds zest and quality to life as little else can. The enormous benefits outlined in this lesson will make that readily evident to you.

Fitness Essential to High-Level Health and Well-Being

While we can be fit without being healthy, we cannot be healthy without being fit. Anyone who tells you they’re healthy very likely means they’re not suffering from any prominent pathology. But, if they’re not fit, it is obvious they’re not healthy. And, as a rule, anyone who fancies him/herself as being healthy really is not. Hence it is incum- bent upon you to determine the fitness and activity levels of your clients. And, likewise, to inspire your clients to undertake the activity levels necessary to achieve high-level fit- ness. This, in conjunction with other practices you’ll move them to undertake, will build high-level health.

The Enormous Benefits Of Exercise And Vigorous Activity

General and Specific Fitness Equip Us for Life

Becoming fit means developing the ability to do things. When you train yourself for a few tasks, your ability to master other tasks becomes much easier. When you become physically fit, it becomes easier for you to become skilled in areas other than those of your specific training.

As the joys of life derive from our abilities to perform easily and efficiently, it be- hooves us to undertake those steps to become fit generally as well as particularly. When we become generally fit, everything becomes better. It has been pointed out, as an ex- ample, that an unfit person is a much poorer sexual partner than a fit person with high energy and endurance. A highly-capable person makes him/herself happier by making his/her partner happier.

Just as learning to play one musical instrument makes it all the easier to learn to play yet another, so, too, becoming fit equips you to master other areas of living with com- mensurately less effort.

Truly, the broader our areas of mental and physical fitness, the more life becomes a joy to live.

Increasing Capillary and Lymph Circulation

Good capillary and lymph circulation is essential to complete nourishment, muscular development, high energy, thoroughgoing detoxification, rejuvenation, and greater men- tal powers.

Vigorous exercise is capable of conferring a plethora of benefits. This is accom- plished in many ways. But the machinery that contributes to enhancement of body fac- ulties is rehabilitation of the body’s circulatory system.

It is said that the average person of 35 has already lost about 60% of his/her circula- tory ability; at age 60, about 80%! This is bad news, of course. But there is a bright side: Most of us can regain most, if not all, of our circulatory potential!

We have within each of us about 60,000 miles of tubing that circulates about six quarts of blood. Most of this is in the form of capillaries, some so small that red blood cells must pass through in single file. Inactivity causes noncirculation of blood through these tubes.

All cells are bathed in lymph fluid. The circulation of the lymph depends upon blood circulation and body activity. The poorer the blood circulation, the poorer the lymph cir- culation. Likewise, the more pronounced and forceful is blood circulation and the more vigorous the body movements, the greater the lymph circulation. Lymph circulation is necessary to bring nutrients from the bloodstream to the cells and, likewise, to take away cellular wastes from the cells to the veins.

You would do well to study the circulatory system so that you can better understand the enormous benefits of sustained, vigorous activity at least once daily to thoroughly ventilate the system with oxygen, to re-establish full circulation and maintain it for some six to ten minutes. It usually takes about six to eight minutes of continuous, vigorous ac- tivity such as jogging, swimming, biking, hard walking to achieve full circulation. And, of course, if the powers of life have declined, as it has in most of us, especially those whom you’ll serve, it will be necessary to guide clients upon a gradually-accelerating course of vigorous exercise that will again rejuvenate the circulatory systems, both blood and lymph. Both are simultaneously benefitted upon exercising. And, as you’ll discover, the reinvigoration of the circulatory system is the key to a flood of other benefits.

When you exercise vigorously, you place a demand upon your body for coping. More energy must be created and more wastes must be removed, for increased metabo- lism calls for more nutrients, especially glucose and oxygen, and faster removal of waste products, especially lactic acid and carbon dioxide. The brain causes the heart to pump faster to cope. More oxygen is processed from air by the lungs, passed to the arteries and circulated to the capillaries along with other nutrients. These are, in turn, passed through the capillary walls to the lymph and thence to the cells. The cells, in turn, pass their in- creased load of wastes back to the lymph which is passed on to the venous system which carries them to the lungs for removal (in the case of gases such as carbon dioxide) and thence to the liver and kidneys where more wastes are removed. Finally the blood is pumped back through the lungs for new supplies of oxygen. And, of course, liver and other organs have recharged the blood with more needed nutrients.

I hope this impresses upon you the absolute desirability of intense, sustained, vigor- ous activity for a period of from 20 to 30 minutes at least once a day and, preferably, two or three times daily. Not only can this take the form of jogging, swimming, or biking, but vigorous play as in tennis, badminton, basketball, etc. Heavier resistance exercises, of course, develop strong musculature as an additional benefit.

Not only should you indulge body rejuvenating exercise on a daily or twice-daily basis to make yourself exemplary, you should also profoundly inspire and motivate your clients to undertake an exercise or vigorous activity program. Only fasting and a change to a raw diet of mostly fruits can have a more dramatic impact on your clients’ lives than the “magic” of a strenuous activity program.

Maintenance of Life’s Faculties at High-Functioning Levels!

Exercise enhances your thinking power, revitalizes your body, and helps you to ap- pear perpetually youthful! Exercise enables the body to revitalize itself and perpetuate a youthful condition into advanced years. An observer who went to Hunza stated that the women there appeared to be no more than 40 even though 90 years of age. And men of ninety were as active as 25-year-olds. What he was really saying is that Americans of 25 to 40 are in the conditions of ninety-year-olds! The Hunzas are very active and hard- working people.

To be sure, the best exercise program can be sabotaged by unhealthful practices. Thus fasting, a raw food diet consisting mostly of fruits, and ample sleep are crucial es- sentials in creating and perpetuating a youthful agility, ability, and appearance well into later years. Even conventional-living people who regularly exercise maintain youthful qualities as well as fitness into their 50s and 60s. Especially do we note this in tennis players, dancers, and other athletes who keep up their athletic activities. The virtues of exercise seem to prevail even over other practices that undermine well-being and health.

Vigorous exercise creates the physiological capacities necessary to the successful conduct of all physiological processes. When operating optimally, there is almost no at- rophy or loss of faculties or functions over the years until a natural death ensues. After all, the deer dying naturally was jumping and running like a youngster right up to the end.

By Developing and Using Energy, We Always Have an Abundance of Energy

More energy means more charm, better relationships, and altruism. Energy is the coin of life. As you’ve learned from the series of lessons entitled HIGH-ENERGY METHODS, you can order your life and program the regimen of your clients to be grad- ually more active until potential is realized.

The body tends to overcompensate or overdevelop to insure ability to cope with the demands made upon it. How many women, and men can start weight-lifting after sev- enty and win prizes? How many men and women can start running at eighty and win marathons? The truth is that most can achieve high performances if they set themselves to the task no matter what the age. As long as there’s the spark of life, there’s much un- realized potential. It merely has to be trained or developed.

Once the body has met the demands made upon it—as long as the correct regime of life is followed—we’ll always have energy to spare. We’ll have the energy to do the things that indolence and atrophy unfit us for. Once you have energy to spare, you’ll find yourself going out of the way to help others.

You’ll have the energy and disposition to spruce up, to be more voluble and expres- sive, to be better reasoned, in short, to be more attractive and charming. Exercise and other essentials of life properly observed can create the energies necessary to transform a grouch and a slouch into a live wire and lovable person. People who have lots of ener- gy do favors for others, whereas those who have little of it must conserve it by resisting the demands of the world upon them.

When you boast a smile instead of a growl, you’ll be appreciated and loved, es- teemed, and looked up to. This immense benefit will stand you and your clients well if a vigorous exercise program and its life concomitants are appropriately implemented.

Through Vigorous Activity We Develop Strength and Stamina!

Just as the body becomes an organism generating more energy when the demand is made for more, we can also immensely enhance our strength and stamina. We can en- dure much longer without tiring or fatigue. We can face trying circumstances and cope with them easily and more facilely.

The principle of overcompensation or overdevelopment again comes to the rescue of those who adopt exercise as a way of life. You’ve witnessed or read of others who start- ed lifting weights, even at advanced ages, and increased their ability to lift progressively heavier weights. You’ve read of, or witnessed, those who started running and progres- sively lengthened their time and distance until they attained marathon status.

You can do this too! And so can your clients! I count among our students some who were hopeless cripples by all standards, yet who started doing the exercises they could do and progressed until they ran and speed walked even though they still limp or exhibit the vistiges of their disastrous accidents.

Staying power arises because we are not burdened by a toxic system and because we develop greater energy-creating capacities. A clean and efficiently-operating organism has great endurance capabilities. Likewise, strength develops when a demand to cope with strenuous tasks is made upon the body.

Vigorous Exercise Develops Ability and Agility, Vigor and Vitality

Once you’ve started performing varied activities, your ability to perform yet other activities becomes all the easier. For instance, training to play certain instruments devel- ops nimbleness of the fingers. Should such a musician then decide to learn typing, it is much easier than for a nonmusician. Moreover, speed and accuracy are also more easily realized.

Once you’ve developed fitness, your exuberant energy and ease of doing things translates into an agility that will surprise you. Perhaps you’ve felt lethargy and a disin- clination to do things with flair and vigor. But, when you have energy to spare and in- creased abilities, you tend to do things with emphasis and embellishment—you do things with a flair that wins admiration, if not envy, from others.

The more vigorous your activities, the more vigor you’ll have, for, in a word, vigor is a, combination of energy, vitality and stamina. The same principle of overcompensa- tion works to advantage in every area of your life.

Vigorous activity also enables your body lo rejuvenate or revitalize itself. Vitality may be characterized as roughly equivalent to nerve energy—the amount of nerve ener- gy you have available to drive your engines with!

Exercise Results in Better Posture and Profile

People with lots of energy tend to walk with their heads high and their bodies erect. Those who have little energy tend to slump so as to expend as little energy as possi- ble in activities. As you already know, debility breeds debility, whereas goodness tends to beget more goodness. Thus the constructive role of exercise or vigorous activity be- comes obvious.

When you have the energy to expend, you use it for ends that serve you better. And, in using energy, you maintain the basis for its enhanced creation, thus insuring the better usage you have made of it.

With more energy and an improved personal disposition, you will walk prouder, pre- sent an erect and confident profile to others and, as a result, be better respected and ad- mired.

When You’re Fit, You Devote More Time to Those Around You

By devoting time to others, you’ll be appreciated more. Under the heading of altru- ism and better relationships we treated this aspect of an exercise benefit. However, this redundancy should be reinforcing.

With increased energy we are not reluctant to spend it in behalf of those with whom we’re involved in life. We’re more willing to do those little favors that take our energies, but, in reality, become investments in others. Inasmuch as humans are naturally altruistic

being gregarious and cooperative in nature, your investment of time and energy helping others is usually well rewarded. Even if not, you’ve still the satisfaction of doing good deeds. Good deeds are performed for the pleasure of doing them, not necessarily with a view to future reward. In this world and time, however, most are imbued with little ener- gy and an invidious attitude that disposes them to rip off those around them rather than contribute to their better well-being.

You’ll be kind and considerate when you can afford to be! When being good to oth- ers involves an expenditure of energies you don’t have, you’ll tend to conserve them through defensive devices, some of them being withdrawn-ness, grouchiness to those who penetrate your wall with disagreeableness to all that threaten to make an inroad up- on your energies or resources.

Having an amiable disposition is a virtue born of health and all that it encompasses. Even if it rewards you not, it is wise to be as human as you can and forebear the eccen- tricities of others with a philosophical understanding of where they’re coming from.

Detoxification and Body Purity Are Achieved Through Vigorous Exercise

As you know, accelerated activity calls for increased blood and lymph circulation. The role of these two liquid transport systems is to insure delivery of nutrients (supplies) where and when needed and, as well, to take wastes away to the organs of elimination.

When circulation increases to meet an increased need for nutrient distribution to cells and the removal of their wastes, there are corollary benefits that are noteworthy. In a per- son with morbid materials in the system extraordinary to those generated by the activity itself, the increased circulation carries these out also. The body’s tendency to do more than it has to in order to satisfy a need (the principle of overcompensation) works to our benefit.

Thus, sustained vigorous and strenuous activity of a few minutes or more accom- plishes extraordinary body cleansing, thus unburdening us of previously uneliminated wastes and toxic substances. As poisons in the system are almost exclusively the respon- sible factors for debility, low energy, disease, and suffering, exercise thus bears benefits far beyond making us fit. Exercise or vigorous exertion keeps the system vital by keep- ing it unimpaired by the ordinary and extraordinary morbid materials that accrue from normal wastes and our predilection for ingesting unwholesome food and drink.

I like to think that daily vigorous exercise of a few minutes is the equivalent to a day of fasting though, to be sure, an occasional day of fasting plus exercise delivers incon- ceivably enormous benefits.

Bouncy Buoyant Feelings Result from Vigorous Activity

Performance is effortless and easy without noticeable flagging or fatigue. With sup- ple musculature and ample energies, you’ll find it a snap to breeze through your days. Quite literally, you’ll float! There’ll be a grace and springiness to your step that, perhaps, you’ve witnessed in athletes.

Without burdensome and impairing toxins within, activities will be untir- ing—without fatigue. Though other life essentials properly met are essential to this state, exercise or vigorous activity is the biggest key.

Vigorous Activity Eliminates Internal Conditions that Give Rise to Qualms, Worries, and Stress

Studies and researches have amply demonstrated that a regular activity program dis- poses us to less worry and fears. We become better able to cope with stressful situations. Stressful situations do not drain us nearly as much when we’re healthy and fit as when we’re already in a drained condition. The person who can cope does not wither on the firing line as much as the person who is not equipped to handle highly-demanding situations. What little nerve energy an unfit person has is quickly exhausted in emotionally- upsetting situations, whereas individuals who have made themselves fit through exercise and healthful practices are ready for anything.

Most stress and worries arise from unstable and uncomfortable internal conditions that drain the body extraordinarily of nerve energy. These drains exhibit as fears and worries—fears that the demands of work and society cannot be successfully met.

Exercise, by keeping us fit and cleansed, does not dispose us to worries and qualms. It enables us to handle most stresses “in stride”.

Because Exercise Occasions Extraordinary Body Cleansing, Less Sleeping

Time is Required for Regeneration of Nerve Energy

Yes, exercise helps our bodies to detoxify and thus it takes less sleep to regenerate nerve energy. Moreover, sleep is more efficient, that is, it is deeper and accomplishes its purposes more surely and more quickly.

In lesson 15 we learned about the role sleep plays. We learned that a morbid body is a disturbed body that squanders its nerve energies needlessly trying to cope with the dis- turbances to well-being occasioned by poisons within. The body thus struggles to eject them. But, with a constant stream of them being introduced into the body and, being unable to cope with the needs of ordinary waste elimination, the body becomes progres- sively more toxic until it initiates a “crisis of elimination” which we call a cold, flu, her- pes, or other affection.

Exercise is salutary in keeping the body cleansed. When the body is pure—when it is freed of enervating factors, it does not squander as much nerve energy. Nerve energy not wasted does not have to be regenerated. Thus less sleep is required.

Further, an undisturbed body can achieve deeper sleep levels for longer periods. The deeper the sleep, the more nerve energy the brain can generate within a given time.

You can reduce the time you need for sleep by a vigorous exercise program. As a result you’ll have more time for self-improvement, vocations, and avocations.

Vigorous Activity and a Cleaner Internal Environment Reduce Libido (sex drive), But Increase Sexual Capability and Intensity With Enhanced Enjoyment

Better sexual performance makes the sexual partner happier which, in turn, makes you happier. The more fit you are, the greater your capability of having a more exhilarat- ing and satisfying sexual relationship. The sex act makes a heavy physical demand upon the body and its faculties. Fitness of a high order enables us to discharge the act with vigor and sensitivity. On the other hand, the demands are so great on the unfit that they frequently expend so much energy as to lose the blood supply to maintain an erection or become so exhausted as not to be able to continue. One of the foremost complaints of men I meet in the older brackets, even some relatively young (40s), is impotency. While impotency is primarily due to nerve impairment from toxicosis, it also stems from inability to execute due to insufficient oxygenation, insufficient blood supply, or other factors which a fitness program will remedy.

For those who complain of sexual inadequacy, both female and male, a Hygienic regime involving heavy exercise usually proves a boon.

A toxic body usually has its sex drive immensely heightened. This drive becomes psychologically imbued, especially in this day and age of sexual acculturization when one’s sexual ability is a measure of one’s stance in the world. When the body is toxic, there is an exaggerated “urge to merge” because the survival mechanisms of threatened organisms are intensified, including the reproductive faculties. Once this toxicity is de- creased or removed, the organism normalizes and the sex drive is consequently lowered.

In the pasture a bull can be with 25 cows and pay them no mind. However, if one cow comes intoestrus (heat), there’s hardly a fence that will restrain the bull. In humans

living naturally rather than under the condition of sexual acculturization where sex is recreation rather than procreation, libido in the male becomes attuned to female recep- tivity which, as a rule, is accentuated only by the ovulatory period.

In your practice, you’ll come across many who are impotent, and even young men who are sterile. While I do not advise that you try to “deculturize” their intellectual dis- position toward sex, I do suggest that you guide them to wellness and fitness in which case sexual faculties are usually rejuvenated—often with a vengeance! But, as their con- ditions improve and their ability to perform improves, there is a lessening of sex drive for the abnormal conditions that gave rise to a gnawing “urge to merge” no longer exist.

There is frequently renewed bliss in marriages where one or both partners have pre- viously become incapable and/or indifferent to sexual interaction. Just as a low-ener- gy individual tends to defensive mechanisms that make him a slouch, a grouch, and unaltruistic—energy-conserving measures—so, too, does a sexually-crazed (accultur- ized) individual tend to refrain from acts he desires, but fears he cannot execute success- fully.

You do not have to bow to the abnormal sexual compulsions that inhere in our com- mercial world and in a toxic populace. I suggest that you guide everyone to the highest level of health and fitness possible and let nature take its course. It’s the rare person who is fit and healthy that will exhaust himself in pursuit of the pleasures of sex.

Those Who Render Themselves Healthy and Fit Have a Better Self-image and More Pride, But Tend to Less Ego Exhibition

As a chess player I’ve met many self-styled chess experts who “talk a great” game. When I attended my first chess tournament, I was intimidated by one who talked such a fine game that I was sure he’d take the tournament.

Imagine my surprise that, in the fourth round we were paired as undefeated players. I felt beaten in advance to have drawn this player. However, when we sat down to play, I found that we were playing in the open with visible pieces and equal opportunities. We played along standard book lines for perhaps fifteen moves when he made a move I deemed extraordinarily weak. However, not being sure, I pondered my next move for nearly ten minutes under such side (and snide) remarks by my opponent to observers and passersby that “that move has him floored”. I could find no merit in the move despite my extensive considerations. So I made the move that occurred to me almost immedi- ately when he made it, having explored all the lines he could muster in response. As a result, his game collapsed and he resigned within ten moves. This game proved to be an illuminating lesson to me:

People who talk a good game are bragging. If they can play a good game, they let performance speak for them rather than words.

In my fourteen years in the health field, I find that braggarts and boasters frequently fall flat on their faces under firing line conditions. I have employed hundreds of people and those who do a snow job on telling you how great they are usually do not begin to live up to their self-billing.

The point is again, that performers let their works speak for them, whereas jawboners substitute words and snow jobs for performance which is often mediocre.

Once you’ve achieved a high level of capability, that will become well-known. You don’t have to “blow your horn” about it. With greater capability you develop more self- reliance. With self-reliance you have a better self-image and this “pride of self” radiates to others as dignity and self-respect. You don’t have to “put on a front” for self-aggran- dizement. You can enhance your situation in all aspects by honest effort.

Exercise in conjunction with a healthful regime will strikingly upgrade your perfor- mance levels. Once you have the confidence that you can more than hold your own with others, you’ll let your deeds speak for you rather than vain braggadocio. Your image of

yourself will be so good that you’ll be content to impress others with the results you get through performance rather than with words.

Improve your image through vigorous activity. Implore your charges to do likewise for the benefits of physical activity are innumerable and, as yet, still uncharted.

Vigorous Activity Results in Better Functioning of All Faculties Including,

Most Importantly, Mental Faculties and Emotional Well-Being

A self-assured person is calmer, more self-disciplined and has great emotional poise. That well-being and sharper thinking comes from an exercise program is not new—research has shown that executives who regularly exercise vigorously, are more decisive and effective in directing others. Mental sharpness underlies the ability to think things through logically and formulate better courses of action.

It has been said that a sick body has a sick mind. Likewise, an improved body im- proves its mind also!

Your great thrust is to arouse in your patrons a desire for exceptional betterment. Inspire in them an envisagement of an ideal condition for themselves. Build in them a belief that they can realize the ambition thus engendered.

Then goad them into action to undertake the course necessary to realize their wishes. You’d be surprised how effective you can be with others.

The key to achievement is the ability to perform the acts requisite to the result envi- sioned. Exercise (and the Life Science mode of life) will excellently equip your clients emotionally and mentally to realize the high goals you’ve inspired in them.

Regular Exercise Begets Perpetual Feelings of Exhilaration and Well- Being

Without inferring that, exercisers or the vigorously active are tranquilized zombies, I assure you that the regularly active do live in perpetual highs!

It has been well established that, after a period of running or vigorous and continuous activity, the body secretes noradrenalin or norepinephrine. This secretion occasions what is roughly the equivalent of what is popularly termed “second wind”. In my own case I must run at least a mile or carry on steady work for at least ten to twelve minutes before I get “warmed up” and my work becomes effortless. I sort of float along at my work, being almost indefatiguable. Further, I am more sensitive to those around me and tend to be more cognizant of their needs. My thinking is sharper and more facile.

If I fail to exercise for a day, a relative dullness sets in though I’m still energetic. The second day without exercise does not cause untoward circumstances, but the inspired high is gone. Still energetic as usual, I no longer have the floating sensation. After two days of lapse without exercise, it is a chore to do my chinups, weight lifting, pushups, and other routines until I’ve “warmed up” again.

Recently an article appeared in most newspapers nationwide as follows: PUMPING IRON CAN HELP SHED THOSE BLUES! “Nonaerobic exercise, such as weight train- ing, is just as effective as aerobic exercise in lifting the blues away, according to a new University of Rochester study. Forty-one moderately-depressed women were randomly assigned to three treatment groups. In the first, participants ran on an indoor track four times a week for 30 minutes. In the second, they worked out with weights on a Univer- sal gym for the same amount of time. In the third, they didn’t exercise. At the end of the eight-week program, running and weight training were significantly more effective than no exercise in relieving depression, says assistant psychiatry professor Elizabeth Doyne.”

Exercise, as you can see, causes the body to “drug” itself harmlessly, but helpfully, to better enable it to perform. The benefit of daily exercise for 20 to 30 minutes is thus established.

A Vigorous Exercise Program Builds Greater Mental Powers and Alertness

Increased problem-solving ability results from exercise. More oxygen to the brain helps it function better. Less toxins in the brain enable it to function at a higher level.

While I have stated that all faculties improve when an exercise program is observed, I still feel it wise to enumerate as many of those improvements as possible.

Experiments conducted by fasting students in a class resulted in sharply-improved mentation, class participation and higher grades. Likewise, experiments with students who were given an exercise program slowly improved their grades over control students who did not participate. Both experiments were conducted in Chicago, one by Dr. Anton Carlson and the other by Thomas J. Cureton.

One of the most notable mental improvements in those students who got into an ex- ercise program was alertness and greater ability to solve problems. Likewise, executives attest that they can solve business problems easier because of their exercise programs.

Exercise Quells Food Addictions

Of especial interest to those who are overweight is the fact that the urge to eat can be smothered by a short run, jumping jacks, or other vigorous exercise for six to ten min- utes. Even genuine hunger, which is rarely experienced by most Americans, is overcome and deferred for a while because of exercise. However, when hunger then comes, it is more intense.

Vigorous Activity Increases Capacity for Vigorous Activity

The more you exercise, the more you’re able to exercise up to a point. Because of the body’s propensity of exceeding the “demands made upon it in developing abilities and capacities, we’re usually able to go a bit longer and exert a little harder with each succeeding exercise session.

A Vigorous Activity Program Enables Us to Have Better Personal Control

Yes, we’ll be more controlled of self and faculties. Precise and accurate perfor- mances increase productivity and quality of production. Precision performers are less likely to have accidents and miscues.

While Involved in an Intensely Vigorous Exercise or Activity Regime, You Will Be Better Able to Face and Cope with Stressful Situations and Individuals

Perhaps Dr. Hans Selye demonstrated more graphically than anyone the power of exercise even though he made his experiments with rats.

He took four groups of rats. The first group he called his “fat cat rats” because they were permitted to loll around and eat all the food they wanted. No problems were posed for them at all. The second group also had all the food they wanted, but they were put on a vigorous exercise program. The third group was fed only every other day, but per- mitted indolence like the first group. The fourth group was fed only every other day, but was put through a rigorous exercise program like the second group.

Then he started putting these rats through the stresses faced by humans. They had horns blaring, machines clanking, mazes to run, and vigorous activity to undergo to avoid contrived or obvious threats of calamity.

The result: Within 30 days all the fat cat rats were dead! Rats from Groups 2 and 3 had started dying. But, after 60 days, all the rats in group 4 were still going strong!

This demonstrates most dramatically the benefits of abstemious eating and vigorous exercise, especially within the context of a helter-skelter hustler-bustler society.

As an Active Person You’ll Have More Poise and Stable Emotions

Your face will exhibit a smile instead of a gloomy expression. Hostility and intoler- ance will disappear. The ability to cope breeds self-confidence and a happy disposition.

When you have ample energy, strength, and endurance to fulfill your basic needs and a surplus to spare, you will be self-reliant. The ability to cope is developed concomitant with increasing energy levels, stamina, and fortitude.

When you are master of yourself and are aware that you can further improve yourself or prepare yourself for anything, you’ll be happy. And happiness generates an amiable, radiant disposition, overcoming a low-energy, energy-conserving attitude of parsimony, reluctance, and grumpiness in conducting your relations with others.

You become more outgoing, helpful, and socially aware rather than demanding. This makes the difference between being appreciated and unappreciated by those around you, the difference between being popular and in demand and being deprecated and avoided.

Regular Exercise Overcomes Constipation and Establishes Regularity

Constipation is a national disease with over 90% of our people suffering from it chronically or occasionally. Exercise is a great boon for these people. However, a raw food diet of mostly fruits with adequate sleep and a regime that touches base with other life essentials are also mandatory.

Your Nerves Will Be Steadier, Hence You Will Rarely if Ever Experience Edginess or Nervousness

Nerves are irritated by body toxins, giving rise to unsteadiness, tics, twitches, muscle spasms, muscular constrictions, etc. When your body is cleansed, that helps a lot. Mus- cular rejuvenation helps make muscles more responsive to the exact commands of the nerves. And, of course, when not irritated, the commands of the nerves are voluntary and correct as received from the brain instead of being defensive reactions to a toxic envi- ronment.

Your Senses Will Be More Acute and Accurate

Your thinking will be sharper, clearer, quicker, and more correct. Your decision mak- ing ability will be greatly improved with decisions that are more appropriate and pro- ductive of intentions. Your judgments will not only be better ones but, in time, exalted which will earn you admiration.

Yeah, yeah! Exercise, self-mastery, and a healthful disposition will produce these qualities in you.

Exercise Enables the Body to More Quickly Heal Itself in Many Conditions

Exercise helps overcome pain and physical problems. When the body is required to cope with new demands, it tends to correct those problems that impede the performance demanded. Try and try again! Keep on trying and you’ll find yourself mastering move- ments and tasks that seem impossible at the beginning.

An Exercise Program Helps Overcome and Reverse Degenerative Conditions

Degenerative conditions are remedied by exercise even though it cannot resuscitate lost, deranged, or damaged organs. However, it will develop residual faculties in many cases to compensate for lost or impaired faculties.

Regular Exercisers Have Better Digestion

Digestive problems will be quickly overcome if dietary improvements are also made.

Exercise Will Eliminate a Headache

If a headache is being suffered, a brisk run of ten to twenty minutes will so detoxify the body and cause the secretion of so many pain-killing substances as to cause its disappearance.

The Elements Of A Well-Rounded Activity Program

A well-rounded activity program brings into use the entire body musculature, some 700 in number, from head to foot.

Stretching

Our day should begin with stretching! After a night of rest and sleep, the musculature should be slowly brought back to active status. There are hundreds of little things to do that stretch various body muscle systems. Undertake to learn stretching exercises so that you can use them daily, especially upon awakening. A book on hatha yoga is useful for discovering stretching exercises.

Warming Up

Stretching is for awakening musculature and, indeed, the brain, bringing it to a high state. Warming up consists in doing very light exercises to get the body minimally oxy- genized and operable.

Intensifying Activities

Warming-up exercises should be heightened to the level of vigorousness and stren- uousness. For instance, if we jogged 100 yards or so, did some squats, situps, etc., to warm up with, we might intensify activities by jumping jacks, a short sprint, pushups, chinups, or something that takes advantage of the warming and puts a heavier demand upon musculature.

Jogging, Running, and Sprinting

These are all constructive exercises. It has been said that two-hundred yards of sprinting is worth a mile of jogging. However that might be, I feel that both are good. I end a two-mile jog with a sprint of perhaps a quarter mile for, after the first mile plus I can sprint with abandon, whereas I cannot go but a short distance at the beginning.

Biking, Hiking, and Swimming

These exercises are elective as are others. Exercises chosen should suit one’s incli- nations and abilities. Exercises will widen your activity horizons in any event.

Weight-Lifting or Resistance Exercises for Strength and Weight Gain

Everyone should be put on some resistance exercises to greater or lesser extent. Legs, arms, and body musculature generally develop rapidly under weight-lifting with arms, legs, and body through squats, etc. Pushups and chinups are especially good at developing the upper torso while weights on the shoulder while doing squats produce general body musculature otherwise.

Coordinative and Training Exercises

Not only should you have a varied regimen of exercises, but you should adopt ex- ercises that coordinate the whole body. For instance, skipping rope is not only a good warmup exercise, but it does marvels for developing body coordination. There are many other coordinative activities which you should cultivate in yourself and clients.

Accelerating Activities for More Benefit in Less Time

As mentioned, intensified activities such as jumping jacks, sprinting and faster pac- ing or regular exercises place a greater demand upon the body that causes the same ex- ercise benefits to accrue in a fraction of the time. It bears repeating that perhaps a few hundred yards of sprinting is worth a mile of jogging though, to be sure, a jog should be accelerated to running and huffing and puffing all-out sprinting at the end. An intense, continuous demand upon the body for six minutes or more generates the many benefits heretofore cited. Of course, it is advisable to precede intense sustained activities with 15 to 20 minutes of stretching, warmup calisthenics, and moderate exercises such as swim- ming, jogging, and biking.

Gardening and Constructive Activity

While all vigorous activity is constructive if it does not injure, there are some that are very beneficial. Gardening, which creates a food supply, is soul-satisfying as well as physically/mentally constructive. I suggest that you and your clients start gardening, orcharding, and beautifying your grounds as much as possible. Remember, even indoor gardening is constructive, for plants remove some aerial poisons while reoxygenating the air.

Hobbies and Work that Keep Us Vigorously Active and Fit

There are many hobbies that require much and varied physical exertion, especially shop work involved in making things. Your and your clients’ inclinations will dispose you to a hobby. Keep in mind that a hobby should never be permitted to substitute for exercise. It should be in addition! Both the hobby and the exercise go better with each other.

Games to Play for Exercise of Self, Mate, and Friends

Few exercises are as beneficial as social exercises. As gregarious beings, humans thrive best while interacting with each other. Thus games like tennis, badminton, volleyball, baseball, and other vigorous non-contact sports are ideal forms of recreation. Play that meets both physical and social needs has a certain advantage over solo efforts

though, to be sure, solo efforts permit of cogitation and reflection that build character and strength of purpose.

Questions & Answers

Will exercise correct hiatal hernia?

A hiatal hernia is an opening in the diaphragm that permits organs on either side to protrude through. In Dr. Shelton’s book, Exercise, we learn how to cope with abdominal hernia very slowly through graduated exercises. I don’t see any rea- sons why relaxed musculature of the diaphragm should be any less responsive to an exercise program. Over the years I’ve received letters from individuals who were once overweight and said that the drastic weight reduction experienced in under- taking a Hygienic regime of raw diet and exercise also overcame their diaphragm problems. How long have you had this problem?

Nearly three years.

How much do you weigh now?

242.

Are you willing to undertake a raw food dietary and exercise program kicked off with a fast to help restore normalcy?

If that’s what it takes.

How do I get my four-year-old son to be active? He’s way overweight, being nearly 70 pounds. We have no neighboring children. He just sits and watches TV all day long, eating freely of his father’s snacks. What should I do?

I suggest that you unplug the TV and remove father’s snacks. I suggest that you and/or your husband take the youngster for walks, play ball with him, and other- wise get him involved. It might even pay for you to transport him to the nearest children’s playground where he can participate actively with other active children, though, to be sure, at that weight he’s in no condition to do more than walk. I sug- gest that you put him on an all-raw diet of mostly fruits as well as take him for walks. That, more than anything, will help him lose weight to the point he can be more active. What he needs more than anything is parental participation as well as identification with peers. Praise for activity accomplishments will encourage him to win more praise. There’s much you can do. Explore your circumstances. A ruin- ed child bespeaks parent failure. I’m happy you want to remedy this situation, and I’m sure the desire will give rise to a solution.

You sound like exercise will create Utopia for us. I’m about sixty pounds over- weight. I’ve read lots that says exercise would help me get down to a normal weight and that would be heaven for me, but I’ve heard very little about all the other good things you say. Aren’t you putting us on just to get us to do this thing?

All the benefits I’ve spoken of have been gleaned from researches and pub- lished literature during my past 14 years as a student of the health scene. And I’ve experienced many of the benefits cited for myself. Why should I lead you on? Why not try a vigorous, regular exercise regime and find out for yourself.” Open up your ears and eyes to those who do. You’ll be surprised that, indeed, exercise is one of the primary keys to a personal Utopia.

Can I lose weight by exercise alone? How soon can I expect to go from 227 to 125?

Yes, you can lose weight by exercise alone, but there are many considerations. First, if you exercise extensively even without a change of diet, your hunger will be considerably lessened as a result; you’ll lose weight not only because you eat less, but because you’ll burn up more calories. However, I doubt that you’ll ever lose 102 pounds unless you get to the point where you’re exercising at least two hours per day, something you can do. And then it takes more than a year. I’ve read of a case where a meat-and-potato-diet gal lost over 125 pounds within a year-and-a- half and became a marathon runner as a result. But it’s better to edge your diet over to more and more raw foods in conjunction with your exercise program. All raw will occasion drastic weight loss without much regard to your exercise program and food intake, though an exercise program and lowered food intake are always constructive.

How do you expect me to exercise if I never feel like it? You’ve said that you really shouldn’t exercise if you feel against it. I never feel like it.

I’ve said that exercise makes you feel good. I’ve said that old practices make you feel progressively worse. How do you expect to feel like exercising unless you start exercising? Just start exercising regardless of how you feel. Do it because you know you must. Start off by fasting for a week or two. Go on an all-raw diet. Start walking vigorously and work that up to a jog, and then punctuate it with running and sprinting. The first thing you know, you’ll be looking forward to those daily stints. You’ll find your exercising period to be moments that give you some time to cogitate, and you’ll discover you’re cogitating more intense and productive while out jogging and running, even just walking. That which activates your body tends also to activate your mind. Do it and you’ll be rewarded. Don’t get roped in on a “which comes first, chicken or the egg” deal. Just do it because you know you have to force yourself to.

What you’ve said means everyone could become a real super person. If that’s true, why isn’t exercise pushed by the powers that be in this country?

If you’ve read the media, you find that the powers that be advise you to see a physician before undertaking any exercise program. And a physician is as likely as not to advise against it. Further, there’s lots of adverse publicity about exercise and lots of pooh poohing of it. But, also, there’s much publicity and much urging to exercise. Exercise is getting a better and better press. But there are many factors that militate against exercise, notably the sick diathesis that derives from your debilitating and slavish addiction to energy-draining foods. Pushing junk foods is far more profitable for industry (the powers that be) as a whole than pushing fitness. After all, the junk food industry; the medical trades; the drug industry; the liquor, beer, wine, soft drink, cigarette, and other industries constitute a powerful quorum that despoils us. Enlightened consumers don’t patronize them and an exercise program scuttles them. Perhaps that’s the reason only about a third of the country is active.