Some things one can do to enhance your bet self both mentally and physically is to keep your energy flowing and moving.  Keeping moving in one way or another can reduce the process of what we know or call  “aging” in both body and mind.

Increasing your movement increases your stamina and confidence in your ability to take care of yourself thus increasing your freedom.  Improving your balance through repetitive motions that many sport, dance, or yoga offer helps with right left /brain hemisphere balancing to reduce stress and it will also help you be more flexible as well as keeping your metabolism active.

The idea is movement helps keep your body’s internal functioning moving better and keeps your mind and memory sharper.  Movement can help prevent falls, accidents, improve digestion, improve sleep, it reduces the chance of cancer and high blood pressure and may prevent stiffness and many aches and pains that seem to sneak up on us.  Over all the idea of keeping your body in the movement to  feel better is not new,  nor is it  ever too late to start moving.  .

A good reminder to motivate your self can be to remember one of Newton’s law of physics,….

“A  body in motion stays in motion.”

The post Use it or Lose it, your best self as you age. appeared first on NWA Marriage and Family Therapy.

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

-Picture credits:

Westwind Studios
Hand Crafted Web Design
http://westwindstudios.net

The post Kindness (Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952) appeared first on NWA Marriage and Family Therapy.