Exercising… the Fun Way

Looking at the great, colorful pictures put on my Facebook page by my ever helpful colleague-blogger Nina about the various foods known to help avoid or dissolve kidney-stones, I noticed at one end a picture of a nice slim woman running, or jogging, somewhere outdoors in the glorious light of a sunset or sunrise, representing the title put under it: ‘Exercise’.

It made me smile, for it made me think of the kind of exercise I do have in my own inconspicuous manner, at odd times and in ways that probably make my night-watchman think I am slightly nuts: for although I exercise also in the mornings right in bed when waking up, and exercise again at any time during the day, for example while sitting at my desk blogging, it is mostly at night that I give myself the full fun of

night that I give myself the full fun of ‘exercising’, by dancing, dancing, dancing to my heart’s and my body’s content. There was a time when I could also really swim, particularly on my back (you can stop and just enjoy floating, whenever you like) but at the moment the waves and currents are too strong for me, it is very rare that I can have some real swimming as part of my daily exercising. So dancing comes especially handy as an anytime recreational activity for my body.

It must look rather strange, seen from the outside through the windows, that not so young lady, all by herself, whirling around in the almost completely dark space of the living-room, the only audible sound being usually some occasional clapping of hands, for nowadays, rather than bothering to put

English: Howard Shore at a book signing at the Barnes & Noble near Lincoln Center, New York. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

some real music on, I most often just sing whatever old tune I used to dance on with passion and brilliance between the Eighties and the Nineties, when I was still attending the parties organized here or there in Auroville.

Earlier, in the Seventies, there was nothing of the kind yet, as we barely had any electricity anywhere yet, and everybody’s main activity all day long was digging holes in the hard laterite red earth, bringing compost and carrying buckets of precious water to precious seedlings, plus often running after an especially daring famished goat or cow eager to devour anything that was trying to grow – by the end of the day most of us could think only of falling into whatever bed we had, and sleeping!…

But with the more diversified activities that did start out later on, parties became part of Auroville’s life all right, several specific places becoming the favored spots where the new generations, including many merry toddlers, would dance away a good part of the Saturday night, rubbing elbows with all the first-comers who were already seen of course by the younger ones as the ‘old’ generation…!

At some point in time I realized I could have as much fun, and even more, dancing on my own, without needing to go anywhere else but in my own home, free to start and to stop at whatever time was really convenient for me and good for my body; I could play any type of music I liked to dance on, even if it wasn’t in fashion at all, like flamenco or samba, or the biguines from Martinique, or the ever varied rhythms of the beautiful score composed by Howard Shore for ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy from Peter Jackson. Every kind of possible mood is there, expressed with exquisite exactitude in melody and beat, the body can attune itself to that whole range of ways of being and experience every nuance of each of them as it expresses that inner experience through outer movement.  When I can be again focused full time  on my Conscious Evolution activities, I will include dancing on this music as part of the exercises for the participants in my workshop on ‘The Lord of the Rings’, it will be a great experience for them too.

And for those who want to do my ‘Cellular Awakening’ workshop, dancing in that free but very varied way, on such a special music, may also bring about a direct experience of the cells’ own way of dancing on that music, and enjoying it thoroughly, as happened to me recently while having my daily dose of ‘exercising’; they may want to participate in the new evolutive step, but for them it had to be the fun way: the most important thing was the joy of dancing, which didn’t include anything like the duty or obligation or hard work of ‘exercising’, but only the pure joy of happy movement on beautiful and inspiring music. Then, and only then, was the so-called ‘exercising’ truly beneficial for them, and for my health.

I thought I should share with you all this extremely important piece of information, straight from my body-cells, dancing…

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