I dare you to make
EXERCISE FUN

Exercise Fun? I can just hear you thinking that those two words don't belong in the same sentance, never mind standing right next to each other. But they do and they can.

The problem is that we get the message that getting fit is s-e-r-i-o-u-s business when it doesn't have to be! I think it’s about high time we exercised our sense of humour when it comes to being active. We need to ditch seriousness and lighten up.

I love this wisdom from ‘Duck Soup for the Soul’, by Swami Beyondananda:

“You must practice FUNdamentalism, the accent being on ‘fun’ - not to be confused with FundaMENTALism, which emphasizes the ‘mental”.

Now if we could do that on a regular basis - wow, we'd fun and laugh our way to better health!

Research from Graz University, Austria found that when one group did only movement exercises while the other did ‘laughter’ yoga, the mood of both groups improved but noticeably more so in the laughter group who also lowered their blood pressure and recovered from strokes better.

You only have to look at the “grimace and bear it” faces or hear the talk about how “I’m doing this because I have to” to realize that for the vast majority of people exercise isn’t the fun it once used to be.

You wanna see what I mean? Look at children during active play – there’s laughter, whoops of delight, and their eyes and faces are alight with excitement. Well the good news is that there is a solution to hating the word ‘exercise’ – let me tell you how I know.

How did exercise fun become no more?

Playing and dreaming apparently don’t. We learnt that when ‘growned up’ people play it’s called ‘childish’ –something we soon learnt isn’t a good thing. We learned that if we’re too ‘jumpative’ then we get into trouble or we get medicated.

When actually it’s not that children are too ‘jumptive’ (or active), it’s just that as aduts we’ve become to ‘stillative’ (or sedentary). We take golf carts when we can walk, escalators instead of climbing stairs and drive to drive-thrus. It surprises me that our dear pharmaceutical industry hasn’t yet come up with pills for under-jumpative adults – just like we have pills for supposedly over-active children.

We need to make exercise fun again. Think of it as body fun.

Now admittedly, it’s not quite the same as needing air, water and food because we can live without it, but play has multiple benefits. Active play is fabulous for fitness, health and well-being. And it’s always healthier to be active and fit than not and it’s always healthier to do things with laughter and enjoyment.

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