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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >I just knew you were going to be a smartass James.. I just knew it! ;)

Glad to be consistent.

> 
> >So, James, tell me how you would go about losing 50 pounds with
> stretching, flexibility and weight training exercises over the period of
> a year's time? 


 Well, you usually have to buy my course of 28 motivational CD's but since I 
like you, I'm going to tell you the secret right here.

Recall my take on the use of money on the homestead where I opined that we 
are conditioned by our current culture to reach for money for every problem.  
BUT if we examine almost any situation there will be a money way to address 
it 
AND a non-money way.  Always go for the non-money way.

Then let there be no surprise that my answer to you is that in every 
homestead task, project, or daily and ordinary goings on, there is always a 
stretch 
way to do it and a non-stretch way.  There is a movement way to do it and a 
non-movement way.  Culture and society indoctrinates us that the stretching 
and 
moving is bad, always bad, sort of a personal failure and we should without 
deliberation and even without conscious thought choose the non-stretch and 
non-movement way.

So due to lack of movement, lack of stretching, and most of all, lack of 
mindfulness of those things, we become old, seized up, and inflexible far 
before 
out time.

This is a true story.  Back when the tribe was somewhat younger, we 
frequented homeschool meetings.  Most of the parents showing up were women 
though not 
all.  There seemed to be no women of medium build in the group.  All were 
either slim, nubile women or rather obese.   I observed.  The meetings were 
most 
often held at parks.  The thin women would bound out of their vehicles, whip 
around to the other doors and helf the children disgorge from their seats.  
They 
would flitter about makign sure all the food and books and all sorts of 
things 
they'd brought were in order, and then they would get together in a gaggle 
and begin the most amusing animated talking.  Arms would flail about 
illustrating every word, they were constantly shifting from foot to foot and 
doing a sort 
of dance all the while.  When a mother would pick out that peep or sigh from 
their particular child from out of the joyful cacophony as only mothers can, 
these women would flash there in an instant and then in the second instant be 
back doing that animated interpretive dance on how to make a chocolate cake 
... 
buring up far more calories in the describing of it than they were likely to 
consume in eating it.

The other women were a study in non-movement.  They would get out of their 
car and go to a bench in the fewest number of steps possible.  Then they 
would 
sit there like Buddha the whole time, often three hours or more, and never 
move.  When they spoke or opened a bag or folded a coat, it was done with the 
least possible movement imaginable.  When they heard their child cry out, the 
called for the child to come to them.

When it came time to police the area before we left, the thin mothers would 
be flitting between the table and the trash cans often making a separate trip 
for every exta little bit of debris they'd notice.  The large mothers 
contemplated what was before them silently and without any movement at all 
until 
finally when the non-movement way of things was clear to them, they made one 
trip, 
on trip only, to the trash cans.  Or else sent their children to do it.

This is my opinion, although I have good reason for holding it:  A regularly 
scheduled time and routine of stretching and exercise is doomed to failure, 
especially for the homesteader.  Look about you and find examples and 
paradigms 
of the success of it.  They are rare if they exist at all.

Rather though mindfulness be aware that in your every day life there is a 
movement way and a non-movement way to do everything,  there is a flexibility 
way 
and a non-flexibiltiy way.  Said examination of one's bias will reveal that 
we are conditioned to the unconsciously choose the non-movement and 
no-flexibility way.  The trick, says I, is to change that and when given a 
choice (and 
there is almost always a choice) choose the movement way to do something and 
the 
stretch way.

When Herself had just had a child, she was horrified to find herself a 
ponderous seven or eight pounds overweight and she had a prounced case of 
sciatic 
nerve that many new mothers use as an excuse not to move a muscle.  When she 
did 
dishes, she stood at the sink and did a sort of hula dance the whole time.  
Within a short peroid of time both the pain and the pounds were gone.

There as a study (no, skeptics, I don't have a link) where office workers 
were given identical diets and then for half of them an extra 200 calories 
were 
slipped in unawares.  Some of the workers with the extra calories gained 
weight.  The others were observed constantly fidgiting and squirming in their 
chairs 
whereby they burned up the extra calories.

You mentioned Tai Chi of which I am a great fan.  But working toward doing 
the full form in a formal way will get you nowhere.  Tai Chi is based on five 
prinicples (in Chinese culture, everything comes in fives)  slowness, 
lightness, 
clarity, balance, and calmness.  To get the benefits of the principles of Tai 
Chi, they must be incorporated into your everyday life.  The time to practice 
"Grabbing the Bird's Tail" is not during a formal, set aside Tai Chi time, 
but rather then you are folding clothes,  'White Stork Flaps its Wings" when 
you 
are picking up things from the floor, "Needle at the Bottom of the Sea" when 
you are picking beans, "Carry Tiger, Push Mountain" when you are sweeping.

People who visit here want to try their hand at the luddite's tasks.  They 
grab the buck saw in a fury and mithlessly hack at the wood with an 
expression 
on their face that they would rather be anywhere but there and a look of 
total 
relief when that piece of wood is done.  We who live this life on a daily 
basis, don't do that.  Sawing requires slowness, lightness, clarity, balance, 
and 
calmness.  It is the sharpness of the saw that cuts the wood, not your arm 
and 
shoulder.  The blade is rocked forward on the push stroke and leaned back on 
the pull stroke in a rounded circuit of motion.  When the piece falls with a 
'tock', there is a tiny pang of disappointment that the dance is over.  
Hoeing, 
cutting with a scythe, pitching hay, spading garden beds, stooping to weed, 
spliting wood, washing dishes, chopping vegetables all have their mirthless, 
jerky, tense way of getting done.  OR they have a graceful, rounded, flexible 
way of being done.

So we can choose to get up every day and sigh within at the tasks we have to 
do on the homestead and bemoan our advancing age and every shadow and 
prospect 
of infrimity.  We can look for the way of doing things that assuages and 
flatters that point of view. Or else we can look at the opportunity for 
strength, 
flexibility, balance, and 'wa'.   We can experience TaiChi-like balance and 
rounded movent of splitting wood with an ax or else deteriorate while the 
hydrolic wood splitter does it in an inelegant way.  

In Dinsey's Mulan the chorus of one of the songs says it:

We must be swift as the coursing river
With all the force of a great typhoon
With all the strength of a raging fire
Mysterious as the dark side of the moon


So I will suggest to you, Bev, that my recommendations are not 'vague' at 
all.  They are mysterious.