I’ve been a little busy in the background for a while now, programming, refining, testing. The result is my first program written for Linux. It’s called Sitquietly, and it’s a simple meditation timer.

You can see its’ page along the top of my site, I’ve been using it for my own meditation sessions, I think it works well enough to be shared out. I hope to get it into Ubuntu Universe as soon as I can, and I’ll be continuing development of it as I have a few things planned, including selectable chime sounds and maybe even background music. I certainly need to develop the online help and may even throw in a few basic meditation exercises to get people started.

Please give me feedback and let me know what you think, enjoy!

A post over at abarefootman started me thinking about our apparent inability to see what’s in front of us. This is true at any time, but more so in the field of exercise and the “body beautiful”, never did a term merit quotes so much!

We already have everything we need for fitness, we’re fully equipped. You have a body capable of exercising and, most importantly the willingness to do it. The fancy gyms are not really needed, they’re very nice to have, but not vital.

But going beyond that, I keep seeing new equipment, new supplements and nutrition bars, shakes and powders. It’s as if fitness has been turned from something to be enjoyed, into something chained down with a kind of performance anxiety, with the inference that you’re not doing it right unless you’re using this or that gadget or supplement. Part of my attitude stems from my old backstreet gym days, when it was just you and weight. But also from my time at Tai Chi, there can be no gimmickry there, it’s just you and the form.

Indulge me, try the following exercise with me. Close your eyes, allow yourself to breathe normally, be still for a few seconds and relax. Imagine your time in the gym, think of the machines, the supplement bars and drinks, the merchandising, all of it. Give yourself permission to let it go, one thing at a time, empty the gym in your mind.

Look at what’s left. Your motivation, the fact you enjoy it, your desire to improve yourself. Without these things, the rest of it is a lie.

Here’s an interesting article on BBC News. The idea of St Georges’ Day being a bank holiday seems to be gathering some steam. You can find a petition here on the Number 10 website.

I like the idea behind the petition:

“England needs a national day of celebration. A day when all the English - regardless of colour or religion - can recognise what binds us together.”

The author is right, we DO need a day that brings us together as one nation.  I’ve said before, it’s important for us to reach past our differences peacefully, I believe it’s the only way we’ll have a future worth living in.

After some thought I’ve turned on comment moderation on Quiet Watercourse.

This stems from a view of mine that it’s not enough to have Freedom of Speech, you have to acknowledge the responsibility that comes with it. This is what I’ve considered for some time to be just as desirable, “Responsibility of Speech”, Buddhism covers this as part of “Right Speech”.

Why do I consider this important? I’ve seen it in my personal life, someone exercises their “freedom” to speak and causes hurt and pain with absolutely no regard for the consequences, I’ve had to deal with the hurt (not just to others) and I know. So far there have been no problems, I couldn’t be happier, and I certainly won’t be making a habit of deleting comments. But I do consider making a stitch in time to be a good option and I really don’t want Watercourse to be a cause of hurt or pain to someone in the future if I can avoid it.

I went back to the gym today, for the first time in over week. I’m not completely recovered from my cold, which combined with my absence, hampered my performance.

I would fail on certain reps, and thinking about it later, I was reminded of something in Lawrence Leamers’ bio of Schwarzenegger. The notion is that a body like Arnies’ is built one rep at a time. Fair play, but I think to bring a little Buddhism in here, it’s also built by being in the moment.

You have to be present during each rep, not just doing them mechanically, but almost like a form of meditation. The middle path is the best way to take, not total balls to the wall but a more moderated approach, don’t rush. When I felt a tendon in one of my forearms complain during an exercise, I backed off on the weight. Buddhism teaches us to try to take a wider view, thinking about it fitness is also built outside the gym, diet and rest are critical factors and we forget them to our ruin.

The observation that both exercise and Buddhism happen in the moment is an interesting thought, I look forward to seeing where this leads!

Well, it’s been a gorgeous afternoon and I decided to do something I’ve been intending to do for some time, I took my camera and paid a local attraction a visit, in this case Haden Hill park. This is a local park in Old Hill, which includes Haden Hill House parts of which date from the Tudor period and also a newer nature reserve which is home to Pipistrell bats and Tawny Owls among other species.

I’ve been off the gym with a heavy cold for the last week or so. I’d been planning to drop another workout or two into my routine, but after reading this article on the BBC, I’m not so sure.

So it looks like a lot of folks are addicted to exercise, with too much of it being very bad for you. Even from my earliest days, 15 years ago in back street gyms, I was always taught to take rest days. I know that a part of the early body building lore was training every day, but even back then there was dissent.

They’re right, too much exercise will pound you into the ground, you need to give your muscles time to recover and your energy reserves time to replenish. I feel I should add that this is an important consideration in any activity, not just exercise, if you check the dates on my blog entries, you’ll see that I occasionally take breaks from posting, for exactly this reason.

Coming back to philosophy, both Taoism and Buddhism consider moderation to be of top importance. I think this quote from the Tao Te Ching is relevant here, it’s usually held to go a lot further than just speech:

Sparse speech is natural
Thus strong wind does not last all morning
Sudden rain does not last all day
What makes this so? Heaven and Earth
Even Heaven and Earth cannot make it last
How can humans?

Chapter 23, translation by Derek Lin, provided courtesy of Truetao.org.

I stumbled across this story on BBC News Online.  Now, I’ll admit to having Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of the people I hold in high regard and this story is another example of why.  Among the qualities I admire about the Oak is his positive, energetic, approach to things and his refreshing candour.

He’s right, the environmental lobby does have an image problem.  You have to stop telling people about what they’re going to lose and give them a positive picture.  It’s a strange approach really, approaching what is a very positive mission (saving the planet) by focusing people on what they will lose, by trying to guilt trip them.  You need to take an approach that will turn them on to what you’re trying to achieve, not off.  He’s right, it’s time to make the environmental lobby sexy.

I’m going to revisit the topic of a previous post, I intend to make a habit of this when I think I have a bit more to say on the matter.

Many systems, be they religious, secular or whatever have people who will hold that only a system must be “authentic”, for example, I was taught Cheng Man-Ch’ing style Tai Chi. This is quite a controversial style, as it was derived from the Yang family style without their authorisation. So it can be argued to be not “authentic”. Yet the man who taught me is undeniably effective in applying it, it is most certainly effective, I know he’s sparred and competed with it.

So why push this concept of authentic? I feel it can be a combination of ego on the part of the student, not just of martial arts, but also of religion, and clever salesmanship of their ‘brand’ on the part of the school/church. But also of the attractive desire, to pass the responsibility of deciding what we believe or know to be effective to someone else, and to have the reassurance of a collective.

Let’s think about that a minute. If you do the freethought thing, criticising and deciding for yourself, you always have to face the distinct possibility of being out in the cold, out on a limb, or under fire for heresy. Cheng Man-Ch’ing did his own thing, and the results are still controversial today, never mind the flak Darwin drew for thinking outside the box.

Maybe it is easier to keep your head down, but without people who are prepared to wander off into places marked “Here Be Dragons” and make their own way, we’d probably still be sitting in caves.

I keep coming back to that old comment of Arnold Schwarzeneggers’ “Everything I learned, I learned in the gym”. I’m starting to see how that works.

I did Bodypump on Sunday, for those of you who haven’t done it let me explain. You have a series of musical tracks lasting for 2 or 3 minutes each, you exercise one part of the body to each one. For example, you have a back track, a squat track, biceps track, etc. On Sunday I failed to complete the Biceps track, even though I knew I could do better, today I only missed 1 rep, which is my normal slowly improving performance.

What was the difference? On Sunday, my thoughts were running along the lines of “I can’t do this anymore, I have to stop”, I get that a lot as I find Biceps to be the hardest of all the muscle groups to work. On Sunday I listened to those thoughts, tonight I didn’t. It brings it home how much of what we do is in the mind, we often frustrate our own best efforts with a negative stance. It also brings out a good point I read in a Buddhist source recently, you and your thoughts aren’t the same thing. You are the part that observes your thoughts come and go, whether you listen or not is your choice to make.