Life and Spirituality

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ballet-Ballerina-1853.jpg M odern life style, especially in cities has become such that one can get by with little physical exercise. It was never so in the past. About half a century ago, some walking, in the very least, was part of daily human routine. That is how the human body has evolved over thousands of years.   A life without physical exercise is unnatural to the human body. It may have sad consequences on human well being and the fact that some do not realize it is because they have got used to their new sadder compromised state of being and do not notice. Just a simple exercise of half an hour a day for five or six days a week and some more that involves bending or stretching can improve matters a lot. About an hour a day for five or six days is better with some days involving more - two or three hours - gardening or a hike in the countryside is great. Consider activities like fixing, cleaning, gardening, planting trees. One

Fifteen month old Golu  (my god grandson) on a walk in, Nainital Dist. My daily newspaper – the Times of India – that is truly daily here in India, unlike when I lived in Canada and the daily newspaper took a holiday every Sunday, as any sensible human institution should, has a very sensible weekly page on health issues that I read with much interest. Today’s page reported the effects of exercise on longevity from a recent collaborative study between the Brigham and Women’s hospital and the National Cancer Institute in Washington. I presume Brigham is a man and therefore the study applies to men just as well as women although I fail to understand why the Brigham and Women’s hospital has excluded all men except Brigham, from its nomenclature at least, if not from its corridors. The study reported that just 75 minutes of brisk walking per week resulted in an increase of life expectancy by 1.8 years whereas 450 minutes of brisk walking was associated with a gain of 4.5 years.