@Disco Dancing Queen While I can appreciate all of the exercise that you do, for many people 4 hours a day is unobtainable. You must not have a job or family members to be able to spend that much time exercising.
I have family. I have family with disabilities. I am involved in dementia care. I have friends. I am doing almost full time work hours in volunteering at the moment. This week I was involved in providing 300 meals for disadvantaged people who are either homeless, disconnected from community or fleeing domestic violence. I also took part in a public education program. I taught. I also did all the things that I need to be doing for my recovering.
When visiting elderly dementia family - I always walk up the three flights of stairs. I walk around the floor.
Actually once you get into the swing of things it is not too hard to do it at all. You do have to be disciplined and focused. And over time you build up exercise buddies to exercise with. Everyone knows I am up for physical activities. Friends invite me to see their band, because they know I will immeditately start dancing, and my enthusiasm gets everyone up dancing. Even when I got for dinner, we get up and dance together at my friend's place. I have met a lot of people who are committed to as much movement and exercise as possible. If I am going for early morning exercise I sometimes wear my gear to bed, to make it out of bed in the early morning.
For instance today: One hour early morning walking 5.30am - 6.30am. (Often my partner comes with me.) Yoga or pilates exercise for lunch. Or if that is not their activity level - stroll with friends. Walk with loved ones and friends - or choose an exercise activity to do with friends and family. I go to see a friend and we go for a bush walk, do weeding around the property or head off to a yoga, pilates, dancing, gardening, etc, activity. If you give up TV or being online too much you can get a lot of movement into your day. It doesn't have to all be classes or structured activities. If I have to leave by 5.10am I get up and do 30 minutes of Mindful Movement before I leave the house. Came home tonight and we took the dog for a walk together. So instead of watching TV together we walked together.
Do I always do 4 hours exercise? Hell no! But it sure beats the hell out of having a 30 minutes walking exercise and skipping that. I will do at least one to two hours of movement every day. When I am teaching I walk around the room. I get my students out of the classroom. I move and do whatever exercises I can do in that moment.
Meetings - do it whilst moving, walking, or another physical activity. Even sitting on a ball and stretching whilst in a meeting gets movement into your day. If you have a meeting whilst kayaking in the middle of the lake - no one can hear you and it is quite peaceful.
When I do watch TV I pull out my yoga mat and do gentle stretching, rolls, lie on my yoga bolster, sit on my ball and engage my core muscles, play around with the other exercise gear stored near the TV for easy access and reach.
I wonder too if exercise has become a way of avoiding?
Not for me. I do a lot of physical exercise whilst doing other things. I was on the stall for four hours today. We danced to the bands and the swing dancers for half an hour, and kept standing and moving most of the rest of time.
In fact the exercising that I do is way out of my comfort zones, as I am having to respond to people who want to become closer and know me better. It is not easy. Yoga is about feeling your body - the last thing I want to be doing. But if I don't do it I won't learn how to be in my body.
At the beginning, I started really small - 5 minutes each way, from my home and back again - a yoga class once a week - exercises at home.
The research shows more physically active students are at the beginning of the day the sharper their cognitive abilities. There are so many ways to sneak movement into your day.
My sympathetic nervous system was formed in trauma, stress, anxiety and depression. I have no former personality, internal structure or emotional regulation, before the trauma, to refer to - I am rebuilding myself from the most basic level.
I have had chronic pain most of my life. I have suffered from profound somatisation. I don't have the money or time to do a year's inpatient to get on top of all my issues. So I read research, I join up websites like SuperBetter - setting clear and discernable goals, I work out what I need to do to learn to be in my body. I have not lived in my body during this lifetime. I have been mostly dissocated, derealised or depersonalised. Most of the time I was re-enacting my trauma continuously. So by setting my goals and bumping up my activity levels, and monitoring how it is going, I am creating my own inpatient program. It might not be what anyone else in the forum needs to do for their recovery, but it is what I need to do for my recovery. I lived for decades with all the excuses, I avoided anything to do with my body. I had CFS, etc, etc, etc. So I keep on doing all that I am doing, because unless I can be in my body and understand what is happening in my body, I can't be present in a room with someone else. To do what I need and want to do, I need to be embodied. I need to be in my body and feeling emotions in real time, so I can respond instead of reacting. So I do what I need to do. But I don't avoid other parts of my life, that is for sure. I am working very hard in every area I have identified as important to my recovery and healing.
I certainly don't let "excuses" get in the way of completing the activities and exercises that I need to be doing for my body.
I ask myself how much better do I want to be before my therapy session? So I put in the hours because I don't want to engage in just 30 minutes for my recovery this week and be only 30 minutes more healed by my next therapy session. I want to be ten or plus hours better by my next therapy session. Some weeks I get in thirty hours of work on my recovery, which is more in the form of doing employment related activities as well as doing Mindfulness.
What I do might not work for anyone else on the forum, but it works for me. I find doing the hardest thing for me to do, really pays off over time. Anyone can incorporate a lot of movement, exercises, and whatever works for their body into their day. It is about building up new habits. I am willing to put the energy in to create and sustain new habits.
