"Walking is man's best medicine." -Hippocrates
I love this RSA on preventative medicine (the video is embedded below). It frames 30 minutes of activity a day (primarily walking) as the single most important thing we can do for our health. And it doesn't have to be done in 30 consecutive minutes. An even more astonishing frame is that only one hour of activity a week can cut our risk of heart disease by almost one half. Activity can help diminish the effects of depression, anxiety, arthritis. It's amazing.
I don't know about you, but this rocks my world. Time is one of the most precious commodities in my life, and to know I can create my own medicine by simply walking for approximately 30 minutes per day feels like a gift, and such a relief. You don't have to compete in a triathlon to heal yourself. You can if you want to, but you don't have to.
For those of you who can't walk, talk to your physician about adaptations. Activity is by no means limited to waking, or legs, for that matter.
Life offers us so many small ways to heal our wounds and come back to ourselves that doesn't require anything more than what we already have. It seems like magic -- real magic.