Take Care of Yourself

I was in an airport waiting with a colleague a little while back. We started talking about exercise.
He could not believe how much I worked out and trained.
He said to me, “been there, done that”. He was a police officer for ten years and he kept himself in shape back then. He said he seen no point in putting that kind of pressure on himself now.
“For what”, he said, “why?“
He turned to me and said “you and I are both going to die. It doesn’t matter how much you exercise.”
“sure,” I said back. “but who said I wanted to live forever? Its not about living longer, its about living better.”
It so happened we had a couple of hours to wait for the airplane, thanks to the Winnipeg weather, so we had a good chat about quality of life.
I wont go into the long version but essentially, for me it works like this…
Exercising is the foundation. You keep your heart and lungs in shape with cardio work and you keep your muscles in shape with strength training. This doesn’t mean you need a gym membership, how you choose to accomplish cardio and strength is a personal choice with lots of ways to achieve this.
Next my martial arts training sit on top of my basic physical fitness. Practicing, analyzing and looking for ways to improve. From there I expand out to the mental and spiritual challenges that are part of a well-rounded martial arts student. This flows or should flow into your everyday way of living.
The basics of exercising and training give me the discipline mechanism to make other things in my life happen. Keeping yourself in shape and in training keeps the stress levels balanced and the self-confidence and self esteem in tact.
My thoughts, you cannot separate the body from the mind and heart. They all need to be nourished and maintained.
If you take care of yourself you can look forward and expand outside of yourself, this affords you the capacity to take care of others.
Anyways, that was my lecture to my colleague and its also the lecture I give to myself on a regular basis when I ask
“why am I doing this?”

JC Masterson, Silent River Kung Fu, Alberta, Canada