Those of you that follow my dieting blogs will know that I have started going to the gym. Like many newcomers to the gym I have many excuses I would like to use not to go. I am trying to get around this by going first thing in the morning before work. This morning started as all other sessions on a bike for thirty minutes. I like to challenge my body and like to achieve a little bit more each time I go.
Eight minutes in and my heart is racing and I can barely catch my breath. I have a number of stressful things in my life at the moment and I suspect my resting heart rate before I started was a long way above normal. For days I had done almost the same as today’s target so I knew the strain I was under was not the exercise. I closed my eyes and cast my mind back to when I woke this morning. I always start the day with a gentle dropping of worry bead stones down the cord. I concentrated really hard on the slow pace of the worry beads. I started to feel better, I smiled as I realised my head was moving from side to side as I immersed myself in the memory of the worry beads. My heart rate started to come down and the exercise was just the normal challenge once more.
I finished my bike routine and started my sit ups. I do two hundred a day, which might sound a lot, but they can be done in less than ten minutes which is not that long to be exercising. I got half way through the first set of thirty and suddenly realised that I was doing them much slower than normal. The slow rhythm I had found on the bike was still with me. Those of you who do sit ups will know that the slower you do them the greater the effect and the more painful. I may have been getting an excellent stomach workout but I was relaxed and my mind was distracted by the worry bead memory. My two hundred probably took 50% longer than normal but I was not in pain. What I did have was a nice feeling of a tight stomach.
Worry bead thinking is definitely on my menu for exercising in future. Why not try this out yourself?
Kevin
The English Worry Bead Co.
www.englishworrybeads.uk
