After doing yoga for a few sessions, way back when I first started to experiment with yoga practices to see if I like them or if they made me feel any better or helped to change up my hum-drum workout routine, I started to wonder what the word, or term “namaste” meant, at the end of many yoga sessions, when the instructor bows their head and has their hands in prayer position in front of their chest.

Well, turns out there are some different interpretations of the meaning of namaste, but they all mean generally the same thing, of course it’s a good, peaceful meaning that tries to bring hearts and souls and minds together, and bring peace to the individual.

The whole idea behind namaste is an acknowledgement of oneness with eachother, with the earth, and with the universe, and we all know too well how this meaning and the basica idea that we were all created from the same “materials” gets lost in translation what with the news today being filled with murder, rape and people treating other people, and animals, cruelly.

Not to get off on a tangent, but I do believe that yoga nd meditation can help us get back to the basics and enjoy others and enjoy ourselves more, and have more of an appreciation for people and the diverse personalities they offer, no matter what their baggage or personality flaws.

Namaste, as determined in many writings, means, simply, “I bow to you”, as a way of honoring others and recognizing that we are all equals and deserve equal respect. It is a way of saying that no matter what your financial status, your history, your family’s stature, or where you’ve come from, we are acknowledging that we are all equal spiritually.

As determined by Deepak Chopra, a notorious author of metaphysical ideas and self help, has given the meaning of namaste as “the soul within me honors the soul within you”. Again, the same basic idea that we all honor one another for what’s inside, our eternal souls, not our egos and other extrinsic factors that do not make up our true spirit.

So, when you say namaste, you are honoring another person. Try doing it silently in your head the next time someone makes you mad, it actually helps take away anger and replace it with acceptance and forgiveness, and then you are not wasting so much time on negative thoughts and energies.

My boyfriend was just telling me about a very interesting theory he heard on a satellite radio show, the Ron and Fez show, who has on a guy who is postively fascinating to listen to and seems to know a little about everything under the sun, a guy they call Mike the Teacher. I’ve listened to the guy before, and he knows about pretty much everything, especially the fascinating details about why he thinks drummers live longer than ordinary people.

I know, you’re probably trying to think of the correlation, as I am, and it’s not quite there, but he says that it’s because drummers are used to using their upper arms, which is not something that the human race is used to doing any more, unless your profession allows for lots of upper body movement, or you happen to be a frequenter of the gym and upper body workouts.

Now, what this has to do with your longevity, I’m not exactly sure, but it may have something to do with the fact that our heart is housed in our upper body and the circulation may not be as good for those of us that don’t use our upper bodies all that much, or it may be something completely unrelated. Mike the teacher says that if you notice, babies do not have any upper body strength, and this renders them virtually helpless, but again I’m not sure what this has to do with longevity.

So I went and looked it up on good ol’ faithful google to see if I could find anything on why this theory about drummers living longer actually works. And what did I find? Absolutely nothing, I typed in “drummers live longer” and nothing, and also tried variations of that phrase, then I tried, drummers and longevity and again found nada. If anyone has any theories or knows of any published studies, we’d love to know, since this totally relates to fitness!

I know, weird title for a post, right? But if you’ve read up on bowel irregularities such as IBS, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and other issues with the bowels not moving frequently enough, you may have come across one of the theories that is connected to constipation in people, and that is that people who are too sedentary, or in other words who do not move around enough, are often more prone to constipation. It makes sense if you think about it, because if you sit all day, you are not really “getting things moving” as they say.

I remember a couple of times in my life where I was bedrested for a while due to a surgery or some other factor out of my control, and it always seemed that I would be constipated and have bowel movements that were not “easy” to pass because they were not adequately moved around so they could pass through easily.

There are also other theories that you are not stimulating enough water through the bowels, since bowel movements rely on water to soak into the fecal matter from the bowel walls, and that inactivity also only aggravates this condition. Sitting for long periods of time or older people who are put on bedrest and are only allowed minimal movement are often prescribed laxatives and/or other medicines that help to loosen stool to help it move throught he bowel and digestive tract more freely to produce pain free bowel movements.

Maintaining healthy bowel habits is just another reason for working out and staying in shape - heck, just getting up and moving around a lot will do a world of good for the health of your colon and intestines, as well as for other parts of the digestive tract, all of which benefit from regular activity.

I really didn’t know that this was a major problem overseas, but apparently the thin - like anorexic thin - model craze has gone way overboard in France, where I typically like to think of them having a healthy attitude toward weight and eating.

The craze has gotten so out of control in France, where fashion reigns supreme and women are keenly aware of the way they dress and look, that the government there has proposed a ground breaking bill that would make it illegal - that’s right ILLEGAL - to support or otherwise incite extremely low body weight.

This means that websites, television, fashion shows, and magazines will not be allowed to use extremely thin models or otherwise promote women who basically have close to zero body fat and bones sticking out everywhere. The awareness that thinness in the modeling and fashion industry has become a bigger problem lately came when a Brazilian runway model died of anorexia related complications.

The really sad thing is that France used to be looked to as an example for the rest of the world for not only it’s fashion savviness, but also for the way it’s citizens eat, which promotes a very healthy body, heart and lifestyle while not overdoing it . Heck, there’s a reason why almost every diet book you read cites France and their eating habits as a great role model for healthy living and eating right, and in moderation. Americans have taken some pages from that notebook, and tried to modify theirs to emulate France’s.

One look at runways shows that the waif look hasn’t died down, and France is trying to change the ideal to a more realistic one, where women are not putting their health in danger by staying too thin and barely eating anything, and get more healthy ideals up there for young women to look up to. I say this type of thing is long overdue. I’m not a fan of government intervention, but in this case I think it really is in the public’s best interest and needs to be regulated.

I just got my first jog in, outdoors of course, for the spring season. It’s April, and here in Ohio, it seems we are all going a little stir crazy since we’ve been cooped up for another long winter. And of course, we got all of our worst snow for the winter season at the end of the winter, so we are all ready to break out the bikes, boats, skateboards, rollerblades, and other outdoor fitness equipment and accessories, and get outdoors where the air is fresh and we can hear the birds singing again.

Well, just a few days ago, I seized the opportunity for my first spring jog because it was gorgeous outside. It was sunny, almost tipping seventy degrees but not quite, and the birds were out in full force. It’s amazing the difference when the sun comes out around here. You feel a certain buzz and chatter in the air, as if everyone was in hibernation for a year and now they’ve all come out to bask in the sun and inhale the fresh air deeply and appreciatively.

I was no different! I put on my sunscreen and sunglass, pulled on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, and got my jogging shoes on. I headed down a road that I’d never been down before since we just moved here a short time ago, to investigate what it looked like on foot. It’s amazing how different things look when you’re not whizzing by them in a car, isn’t it? The level of detail you notice, even just if you’re fast walking or jogging, and not leisurely strolling, is amazing.

Since I haven’t been for a jog on uneven terrain (aka, not a treadmill), for a while, I decided to take it slow and started off at a very slow pace, alternating jogging with fast walking, swinging my arms as well so I could get upper and lower body in, as is usual with my jogs and jog/walks. I’m always amazed at how quickly you lose the ability to jog, because I got winded very quickly and had to turn to walking quickly. I’m also always amazed every season at how quickly my endurance builds up again. I guess I attribute that to muscle memory, it’s really true what they say about that I believe.

However, I did get very sore unfortunately, and had to jump in the infrared sauna we purchased pretty quickly after since my legs had a lot of lactic acid built up in them. It quickly soothed away my aches, but I do have about one more day of recovery still since my quads are really hurting. I only went jogging for about a half hour, but my muscles haven’t been exposed to that particular type of resistence for a while, so they may take a little while to recover. I’ll just do yoga for a little while until they get better.

My boyfriend and I have recently gotten a far infrared sauna installed in our basement, and we really purchased it because both of us have problems with both our necks and backs due to car accidents and other unknown injuries. Before purchasing our sauna, I had done a lot of reading about the different types of saunas available on the market today, and came up with two basic types.

The first is an “old school” sauna that uses normal, circulating heat to heat the cabin to very high temperatures and heat the surface of your body with a dry heat to produce perspiration.

The second is the infarered sauna, which also uses high temperatures to heat the body and soothe muscle and joint pain, but instead of heating the outside of your body, infarered heat waves have (supposedly), the ability to penetrate the tissue a little more deeply and are therefore supposed to be able to provide a little more relief from muscle and joint stiffness.

After reading about the two, even though the infarereds were typically a bit more expensive, I decided that for my purpose of muscle and joint pain, we should go with the infared type of sauna. This way we could use it at night after a long day of sitting at work and stiffening up, and after workouts to help loosen up our muscles from the vigorous activity.

So far, so good. We love it and we’ve had it for not even one week. We’ve been in it every night, and it does appear that it’s helping both of us with our forever-tight muscles and loopy backs. More to come on this as we hopefully discover more and more health benefits from the infrared sauna.

We just completed a post on cardio exercise and how important it is to really focus on this often overlooked and dreaded part of working out. Well, one of the things we notoriously do during a good cardio session is we sweat. A lot of people, including myself, don’t like to sweat a whole lot unless it is because we are working out, because it shows us that we’re working hard, and we usually correlate that with “melting fat” off, or burning fat off.

Well, is it really important that you sweat when you’re working out? Does it really make a difference in how intense your workout is, and whether you are burning off excess calories, and hence fat? Some people even crank up the heat on purpose because they think sweating will help them burn off more.

While it is true that when our bodies temperature gets higher, we burn more calories, working out at higher temperatures can actually be dangerous. We put ourselve at risk for heat stroke and passing out, and some people may even be putting their hearts at danger if they have pre existing conditions. Fitness specialists insist that everyone sweats at different rates.

Some people may sweat just from walking up the stairs, while some may not sweat until they are a half hour into an intense cardio workout. So, they say, the level of sweat does not really serve as a good measure for how effective a workout is. They say that what really determines it is your heart rate, and how far above the normal heart rate you are.

You may want to look into what your target heart rate is by approaching someone at your gym at the front desk so they can calculate it for you, since this is the measure by which you would figure out how effective some form of exercise is for you.

Yep, that’s right, a video game, aka the demise of children and adult’s desire and enthusiasm to get outside or off the couch and go get some exercise, may actually be one that is responsible for getting more adults and children moving. The Wii, by a video game maker that seemed like it might have been all but beaten by the likes of the Xbox and other fierce competitors in the world of video gaming, has brought a revolutionary aspect to the world of gaming, which traditionally involved a whole lot of sitting and inactivity by its devotees.

The Wii uses an interactive theory where the user actually has to move in the motions that it wants it’s virtual character to go in. I’ve actually played two games on the Wii gaming system so far (I don’t own one, this was at my boyfriend’s parents home, who own the system), tennis and bowling. Both of them actually required extensive use of your arms, which had the controllers strapped in sort of to your hands.

You had to make sweeping motions with your arms/hands to get the character to make the necessary moves to knock down the bowling pins and to make the tennis racket connect with the virtual ball. I must say, it was fun. Only problem with those game is they don’t get your legs moving, but as I understand it there are also pads that you can play games on where you move your feet as well available.

Not bad entertainment, plus you also get a little exercise, like you do with that Dance Dance Revolution game as well.

Everybody has an area personally that they can improve upon. The New Year is upon us and the time is right to make our self improving New Year’s resolutions. When making a resolution, it’s great to set your goal high, whatever it may be.

While it’s admirable to set your standards high, remember to balance your personal goal as realistic and attainable. For example, if weight loss is your resolution, don’t set your goal at an unrealistic loss of 100 pounds. You could set your goals at healthier eating habits and realistically expect to drop a few pounds per week and set a more achieveable goal.

If your resolution should be to achieve physical fitness in 2008, you should, again, be realistic. Perhaps, your fitness goal could be to become more toned or increase your endurance. Setting your ideal for the buff body of a 21 year old could be doomed to disappointment if you are in your fifties or sixties.

Research different methods to stay with your New Year’s resolution before delving into it. People trying to achieve weight loss along with improved physical fitness can consult with their physician and have a diet and exercise program in place to get their results.

People wanting smoking cessation for their New Year’s goal can analyze different methods for this challenge. Besides quitting cold turkey, there are support groups, nicotene patches or gum, hypnosis and medications such as Chantrix to help you make this healthful change.

A buddy system can help you stay with your New Year’s resolution. Choose a friend or relative with a similar goal to work with for the social network and emotional support. Remember, if you get off track with your New Year’s resolution, be kind to yourself. Get right back on track and persist until you’ve met your improvement goal by year’s end.

The list of self improvements for New Year’s are endless. They can encompass completing your education, improving finances, better family relationships, or cessation of drinking alcohol. Whatever your resolution is, they are set to make ourselves a better and healthier person, both physically and mentally.