If You Don’t Use it, You’ll Lose It – Mind and Bodywork

Honestly, I think that it’s one of the most significant folk wisdoms around — if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.

It counts for almost everything in life; a car, your tools, a house, your body, your mind. Things in life need to be used or else they perish, degenerate, become “rusty” and will stop to function as they should.

But there’s more to it than “use it.” It’s also about maintenance. Maintenance involves oiling the car and your tools, painting and airing the house and opening and closing the doors and windows, and feeding the body and mind.

Maintenance is important and indispensable, but you also need to use things well. Only maintenance isn’t enough. Eating healthy is one thing and then using the energy it supplies is another thing: walking, running, climbing, breathing clean air, spending time in Nature, thinking, learning, mental challenges, and so on.

If you don’t use your muscles they become weak, which in medical terms is called atrophy. If you don’t move your body to the max, you become stiff and lose range of motion. If you don’t use your mind you become dull, static — death.

Using your mind is not only doing that Sudoku game every day. It’s using your mind in various ways; reading, solving puzzles, research, talking. The same counts for the body — walk, jump, bike, climb, take massage therapy, swim, engage in gardening, and stretch your body.

If you use it, you’ll not lose it. Being seventy or eighty can make you feel forty, yes, even being more fit than forty. I’m not joking — I’m fifty-five feeling like thirty-five. And when I was thirty-five I felt like a hundred years old.

I changed things. You can change things too. It’s never too late to feel much better again. It’s a miracle. The miracle of moving your body and mind — with intensity and regularity. It changes you. In the good sense of the word. Just try it.

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