7 Ways to Add Exercise to Your Daily Routine

What is healthy living? - we need to keep up a routine of regular exercise for body and soul, accompanied by a good diet.

Life seems so busy! Personally I would like to be able to get out into the countryside every day for fresh air and the breath of nature in my lungs - to find refreshment for my soul such as on the day I took this photo. But I don't have the time.

So how can we fit daily exercise into our routine? Here are some ideas to try:

1. Warm up for the day with gentle exercise - I have morning stretching exercises that I aim to do every morning: the perfect time for this is straight after I get up, while the kettle is boiling or my toast is in the toaster. Each day I also repeat a balancing exercise which is to stand on one leg like a flamingo for at least one minute, and then switch to the other leg. To make good use of the time you can do this while you are brushing your teeth - just make sure you don't spill toothpaste down your clothes!

2. Pause for meditation before you start your day - maybe you will be at work or maybe you have other things on your agenda. Before you start, find a comfortable place to sit down and close your eyes, and focus your mind on what your achievable priorities are for the day: this is exercise for your soul, because it sifts out what is important to you and what is simply a distraction. If you believe in prayer, use this time to pray - but even if not, set yourself goals for the day which prioritise the things which are most important to you. We cannot achieve all of our life goals in a single day, but we can focus on realistic steps which align with our life priorities.

3. Give your brain a workout - your heart and your brain are the main ways that your body and soul are connected to each other. So if you don't have a mind=taxing day with work or other responsibilities, keep your brain active in different ways and at regular intervals, whether it is through a crossword or a sudoku or alternative forms of brain exercise. If you keep your brain healthy, you are helping your body and soul to stay healthy too.

4. Go for a walk - normally I am working from home but even if it is only for a short time in my lunchbreak I find it refreshing to get outside into the fresh air and stretch my legs. If you have time, a jog or a cycle ride is of course even better exercise - but walking is under-rated, especially if you can get away from local pollution and walk fast enough to speed up your heart rate. Even if there is not much greenery on your walk you can still focus on the beauty of the sky and the horizon, and if you are lucky enough to have the time, you can find a corner of nature where you have never been before to gaze on what you see.

5. Look for ways to give something to someone else - this does not have to be money, since it could be giving someone your attention to listen, or your time to help, or a word of encouragement for someone who is down. When we give something life-giving to others, even in a small way, this flexes the muscles of our soul and strengthens our capacity to be more life-giving the next time. Just as giving to charity is always one way to remind ourselves that there are others in more need than us around the world, giving in every way also helps us in our own soul to know that we are not empty people, because we do have something available and valuable to give to others (even if it is not money). Sometimes the most important thing to give is the hardest, such as forgiving someone in your heart for something you think they have done which was not in your interests, but in a case like this it is also the most freeing thing you can do for your own soul.

6. Input positivity into your thoughts, which could be through reading or listening materials of different kinds. If you are able to replace negativity in your mind with positive thinking, this is the best possible food for your soul. There are various books or podcasts which market themselves as self-help, which you may find strike a chord with you, or my own recommendation would be to visit an online Christian bookshop and choose a book which introduces topics from the Bible and explains why some of the great themes of reading the Bible are the best food there is available for the soul in the whole world.

7. Get on an exercise bike - it is of course great exercise to be able to go to a gym. But I love my exercise bike at home because it gives me chance to exercise two birds with one stone: both body and soul at the same time. I can watch or listen to something which is of positive or relaxing input, for example a TV show or YouTube on my tablet - and as a bonus I also find that I can keep going for much longer with my exercise if my brain also has a focus in this way.

   There are lots more ways to exercise both body and soul - and I don't even imagine that I would be able to list everything possible if I tried.

   But what I do want to remember for myself is that we always have the time and opportunity every day to find ways to build ourselves up, no matter how busy we are. Even within our daily routines we can make time to remember our body and soul.

About Dan's blogs:

I don't expect everyone to agree with everything I write - but hopefully my blogs do give readers something to think about.

Throughout my own life I have found that it is good to be challenged on the views I have held at different times, and the worldview that I now hold: we cannot hold to strong and effective values if these do not have solid foundations. So one part of the reason for my blogs is to help people examine why they hold the values and views that they have. This is a part of my training as a Life Coach, which is to enable clients to see ways in which their lives align with their own values and ways in which they don't - not to try to persuade others to align themselves to the Life Coach's worldview.

After all, no one should want to make the world full of clones of themselves - that would remove all the beauty of the diversity which is the hallmark of our incredible mind-blowing and unfathomable universe.