The body and the mind are connected. You know this. The mind can make the body do things, and the body can make the mind feel like doing things. The body is a chemistry lab and the mind responds.
When we keep the body healthy with what we eat and how we move and sleep, we’ll have more energy for an active life. Some of us run. Some hit the gym. Some have fallen in love with a sport. Sometimes when you are active to make things better, you get hurt and make things worse for a little while. Of course, a sedentary lifestyle has not-so-temporary negative effects.
I ride motocross. It’s been important to me for 22 years. Twice a week usually and most often on the same technical track. 23 jumps per lap, 40’, 55’, 85’, 35’, etc.
Every time I rode my bike this year, I’d pay the price. My neck would hurt for days or a week afterward. Not a sharp pain, but a discomfort; like I had a ball in my throat. The whiplash from last year’s Baja 1000 race at mile 200 had my neck out to the left according to an x-ray taken ten days later. I had battled this injury all year. I had been to the chiropractor so many times and he did a great job. But still, it persisted.
One day when I had not been riding for a month, and my neck seemed to be getting a bit better, I jumped on a used bulldozer I bought to see how it pushed. It was 15 minutes. That’s all. But that’s all it took. My neck…ughhh. That’s when it hit me. The turning! All the brush hogging; all the track grooming on the dozer…and the tractor with the box blade on the back – I was turning my neck like an owl to the right to look behind the machine. On days I wanted to go easy with the riding, I’d spend much more time grooming the track for the other guys. It was the grooming that was killing my neck much more than the riding.
Figuring this out was important. The race was coming around again. The biggest race of them all…
Glad to be here
It took me 33 years of traveling many roads of this world to finally understand why people praise God with their labor or a food offering left on the altar because they need to show a sign of love. I think this is true in your case and in many others. Life is a miracle.