2-3주 전 The Creative Brain on Exercise 라는 제목의 기사를 읽고 또한번 뛰어야겠다는 결심을 했었다. 꼭 나의 창의력을 위해서보다는 그냥 건강한 정신력과 체력을 위해서. 그래서 뉴욕 가는 비행기 안에서 하루키 무라카미의 What I Talk About When I Talk About Running 도 읽어 보았다. 33세 이후로 매년 마라톤을 대비하며 매일 최소 5-10 마일은 뛰었다는데, 난 일주일에 3마일도 참 힘들구나.

이 기사에 의하면 운동/조깅은 뇌의 움직임을 자극해 창의력을 향상시킬 뿐 아니라 두려움, 긴장감도 정복하는데 도움이 된다고 한다. 나로서는 운전하는 두려움을 극복하는데 유용한 tool 이 되길 간절히 바란다. . .


[전체기사]


For more than thirty years, Haruki Murakami has dazzled the world with his beautifully crafted words, most often in the form of novels and short stories. But his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2008) opens a rare window into his life and process, revealing an obsession with running and how it fuels his creative process.

An excerpt from a 2004 interview with Murakami in The Paris Review brings home the connection between physical strength and creating extraordinary work:

When I'm in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit, and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long--six months to a year--requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

Murakami is guided by what the great scholars, writers, thinkers, and creators of ancient Greece knew yet so many modern-day creators have abandoned.

The physical state of our bodies can either serve or subvert the quest to create genius. We all know this intuitively. But with rare exceptions, because life seems to value output over the humanity of the process and the ability to sustain genius, attention to health, fitness, and exercise almost always take a back seat.That's tragic. Choosing art over health rather than art fueled by health kills you faster; it also makes the process so much more miserable and leads to poorer, slower, less innovative, and shallower creative output.

As Dr. John Ratey noted in his seminal work Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (2008), exercise isn't just about physical health and appearance. It also has a profound effect on your brain chemistry, physiology, and neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to literally rewire itself). It affects not only your ability to think, create, and solve, but your mood and ability to lean into uncertainty, risk, judgment, and anxiety in a substantial, measurable way, even though until very recently it's been consistently cast out as the therapeutic bastard child in lists of commonly accepted treatments for anxiety and depression.

In 2004 the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published a review of treatments for generalized anxiety disorder that noted thirteen pharmaceuticals, each with a laundry list of side effects, but nothing about exercise. In response, NEJM published a letter by renowned cardiologists Richard Milani and Carl Lavie, who had written more than seventy papers on the effect of exercise on the heart, eleven of them focused on anxiety. That letter criticizes the original article for omitting exercise, which, the writers note, "has been shown to lead to reductions of more than 50 percent in the prevalence of the symptoms of anxiety. This supports exercise training as an additional method to reduce chronic anxiety."

Ratey details many data points on the connection between exercise and mind-set; among them the following:

• A 2004 study led by Joshua Broman-Fulks of the University of Southern Mississippi that showed students who walked at 50 percent of their maximum heart rates or ran on treadmills at 60 to 90 percent of their maximum heart rates reduced their sensitivity to anxiety, and that though rigorous exercise worked better. "Only the high intensity group felt less afraid of the physical symptoms of anxiety, and the distinction started to show up after just the second exercise session."
• A 2006 Dutch study of 19,288 twins and their families that demonstrated that those who exercised were "less anxious, less depressed, less neurotic, and also more socially outgoing."
• A 1999 Finnish study of 3,403 people that revealed that those who exercised two to three times a week "experience significantly less depression, anger, stress, and 'cynical distrust.'"

Ratey points to a number of proven chemical pathways, along with the brain's neuroplastic abilities, as the basis for these changes, arguing that exercise changes the expression of fear and anxiety, as well as the way the brain processes them from the inside out.

Studies now prove that aerobic exercise both increases the size of the prefrontal cortex and facilitates interaction between it and the amygdala. This is vitally important to creators because the prefrontal cortex, as we discussed earlier, is the part of the brain that helps tamp down the amygdala's fear and anxiety signals.

For artists, entrepreneurs, and any other driven creators, exercise is a powerful tool in the quest to help transform the persistent uncertainty, fear, and anxiety that accompanies the quest to create from a source of suffering into something less toxic, then potentially even into fuel.

This is not to suggest that anyone suffering from a generalized or trait (that is, long-term) anxiety disorder avoid professional help and self-treat with exercise alone. People who suffer from anxiety should not hesitate to seek out the guidance of a qualified mental health-care professional. The point is to apply the lessons from a growing body of research on the therapeutic effect of exercise on anxiety, mood, and fear to the often sustained low-level anxiety that rides organically along with the uncertainty of creation. Anyone involved in a creative endeavor should tap exercise as a potent elixir to help transform the uncomfortable sensation of anxiety from a source of pain and paralysis into something not only manageable but harnessable.

Exercise, it turns out, especially at higher levels of intensity, is an incredibly potent tool in the quest to train in the arts of the fear alchemist.

Still, a large number of artists and entrepreneurs resist exercise as a key element in their ability to do what they most want to do--make cool stuff that speaks to a lot of people. In the case of artists, I often wonder if that resistance is born of a cultural chasm that many artists grew up with, where jocks were jocks, artists were artists, hackers were hackers, and never the twain would meet. For more sedentary solo creators, historical assumptions about who exercises and who doesn't can impose some very real limits on a behavior that would be very beneficial on so many levels. On the entrepreneur side, the excuse I've heard (and used myself) over and over is "I'm launching a damn company and my hair's on fire. I don't have time to work out." The sad truth is that if we make the time to exercise, it makes us so much more productive and leads to such improved creativity, cognitive function, and mood that the time we need for doing it will open up and then some--making us so much happier and better at the art of creation, to boot.

Excerpted from Uncertainty [5] by Jonathan Fields by arrangement with Portfolio Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc., Copyright (c) 2011 by Jonathan Fields.


(Source: fastcompany)

뚜렷한 계획 없이 마음을 비우고 배를 채운지 일주일 정도. 몸무게를 재 보고 기겁을 했다. 그리고 언젠가는 양 많게 느껴졌던 미국 1 serving 을 손쉽게 먹어 치우는 내 모습을 기억한다. 어쩐지 3바퀴 뛰는 것도 힘들더라니...


57에서 금년말까지의 목표가 53이었으나 현재는 60. 미국으로 돌아와 대학시절의 건장한 체구로 돌아가는 것 아니냐 했던 우리 엄마의 걱정이 현실이 되어 가는 구나.


그런 와중에 접한 아래 기사.


"Get Your Brain in Gear" 대목이 특별히 마음에 와 닿는다.



...

Run and Walk Faster for More Results

Shift your walk or run into high gear and you'll be stronger, leaner, and more confident in just 30 days.

Text by Sarah Bowen Shea

You walk or run because it keeps you fit, lifts your spirits, and gets you where you want to go. But you hardly ever think about picking up your pace. That's for people who want to win races -- or are really late for an appointment. Or is it? Our bodies crave a challenge; they're actually designed to become healthier and more efficient with increasing levels of physical difficulty. "To get fitter, you need to ramp up your routine," says Fabio Comana, an exercise physiologist with the American Council on Exercise. "Moving faster works your heart, lungs, and muscles, making them stronger." If that sounds intimidating, know this: "People think speed has to hurt, like mind over body. But it's more like merging your mind with your body so you can tune in to the way you're moving and feeling," says ChiRunning creator Danny Dreyer. "It's not about pushing yourself until your gums bleed."

On the following pages, we bring you expert strategies and tips for increasing the limit on your personal speedometer. Get ready to pull out all the stops and ask yourself, "How fast can this baby really go?"

I found speed on the brick-red surface of our local stadium track, keeping pace with a pod of five other brown pony-tailed women. We are all in our mid-40s, with kids, jobs, and a bad habit of relishing topics like irritable bowel syndrome and the difference between age spots and skin cancer. We had been lured there one at a time by another member of the group crowing about how going faster could make us fitter, or out of nostalgia for childhood relay races, but probably more to refuse that creeping unsettled sense of, "This is it?"

I haven't always been fast, or if I was, I never knew it. For years I ran for exercise, signing up for the occasional race, but was content to stay right in the middle of the pack. I definitely had no idea that getting faster was not only possible, but also pleasurable.

When I'm really moving, my pumping arms look almost robotic, veins bulge in my neck, and my expression is downright menacing. I feel exactly the way I look. As we circle around the track in some higher math combination of 100s, 400s, and 800s -- race laps interspersed with recovery laps, all miraculously adding up to exactly five miles -- the world falls away. Heavy breathing, foot strikes, and deep warmth silence any pain.

I can't recall the last time I used my body so completely, pushed far enough to see what's there for the taking. What if I tapped my deep reserves in other realms; what could I do then? The harder you go, the harder you can go and want to go, and the bar just keeps moving. Go ahead and move, bar. I'm coming.

Speed Up Your Walk

The key to going faster when you walk isn't just increasing your effort -- it's adjusting your technique so you can sustain the momentum, says Dreyer, whose ChiWalking and ChiRunning methods draw on the principles of tai chi. A common mistake is overstriding, stepping too far out in front in an attempt to speed up. This sends shock waves up the leg, stresses the joints, and may even result in hip or knee problems. Another blunder? Pushing too hard off the back leg, which can strain your Achilles tendon and calf muscles, Dreyer says.

Adopt this approach instead: Lean forward at the hips, keeping shoulders directly over them (don't bend at the waist), then pull in your belly and tuck in your butt to engage your abdominals. "When you're walking really fast, you should feel it in your lower abs," Dreyer says. They're your power center; when you're aware of them, it means you're drawing your energy from the right place. (And since you're working them at the same time, you're strengthening your core.) Focus on keeping steps small and quick, about 140 to 160 strides per minute. Think about your foot rolling through each step, heel to toe. If you want to walk faster, swing your arms faster (it works!). "Your legs will do what- ever your arms do," Dreyer says.

Start with Spurts
Get more comfortable with speed by doing interval training -- essentially, pushing the pedal to the metal for anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes, then returning to a moderate clip (called recovery). Shorter bursts of intensity teach your legs how to turn over quickly; longer intervals (five minutes or more) nudge your overall fitness level higher, strengthen your muscles, and ultimately raise the bar on your speed. By alternating sprints and recovery, you improve your heart's ability to pump more blood with each beat, making it more efficient. You also get a metabolism boost.

Get Your Brain in Gear

Even if the body is willing, the mind may need some coaxing into the fast lane. "Plenty of mental obstacles can hold people back, such as fear of failure or of injury," says David B. Coppel, Ph.D., a clinical sport psychologist at the University of Washington and a member of the American College of Sports Medicine. But you can think your way out of slow-mo mode. Try these techniques from Coppel; they work for elite athletes and they'll work for you, too.

Breathe Deeply
While you're putting on your sneakers or doing your warm-up, inhale and exhale slowly. You should feel your belly rise and fall with each breath, the way a baby's does, says Coppel. This will help propel you along by upping your oxygen intake, calming your mind, and improving your focus during your workout.

Watch Yourself Fly By
Before you set out on a walk or run, visualize in detail what it feels like to go faster: See the sweat beading on your forehead, imagine the smell of fresh-cut grass, hear the wind in your ears and the sound of your own breath, and even feel a leg cramp or two. "This helps make the experience real," he says.

Have an Out
Your workout should feel tough, but it shouldn't hurt. If you notice an increase in pain or discomfort, it's OK to ease up and reassess. You may have lost your form or pushed just a bit too hard. Slow the pace for a few minutes and try again. If things don't improve, stop for the day.

Speed Up Your Run

Just as you wouldn't begin weight lifting by bench-pressing 100 pounds, you don't hit the ground running at warp speed. You have to go farther before you go faster -- which is why Dreyer recommends building a strong foundation: You should be able to run at a slow to moderate pace continuously for 30 minutes, at least twice a week, before you ratchet up your rpms. Then add in brief bursts of intensity. Think of running not as pulling ahead, but as an easy, controlled fall, Dreyer says. "Stay light on your feet, as opposed to pounding into the ground, and keep knees and hips moving smoothly," he says. Tilt your whole body forward, engage your core, and let gravity do the work. Kick your legs back behind you, and pump your arms from the shoulders, not the elbows, for increased speed. Be sure you're not clenching your jaw or hunching your shoulders -- two common mistakes runners unconsciously make that creates discomfort. And above all, Dreyer says, relax. "It's true: The less tense you are, the faster you will run."

30 Days to a Faster You

Whether you're a walker who's flirting with running or a runner looking for a challenge, the following plan, from coach Christine Hinton (therunningcoach.com), will help you improve your speed and overall fitness -- not to mention torch calories. Aim for four 30- to 40-minute sessions every week on nonconsecutive days. Start each with a 5-minute warm-up (a brisk walk or an easy jog), and end with a 5-minute cooldown.

To Walk Faster

WEEK 1: 2 min. Brisk walk | 2 min. Normal pace | Repeat 5 times
WEEK 2: 3 min. Brisk walk | 2 min. Normal pace | Repeat 4 times
WEEK 3: 1 min. Very brisk walk | 1 min. Normal pace | Repeat 10 times
WEEK 4: 2 min. Brisk walk | 1min. Normal pace | Repeat 7 times

To Run Faster

WEEK 1: 30 sec. Fast pace | 2 min. Moderate pace | Repeat 8 times
WEEK 2: 1 min. Fast pace | 2 min. Moderate pace | Repeat 7 times
WEEK 3: 5 min. Fast pace | 5 min. Moderate pace | Repeat 2 times
WEEK 4: 10 min. Easy pace | 10 min. Very fast pace | 10 min. Easy pace

Go Team!
Exercise buddies can push you to perform at your best. Some of the models here are members of New York-based running groups Athena Track Club and New Balance Central Park Track Club. To hook up with a club in your area, try the Road Runners Club of America (rrca.org), or connect with a virtual community like anothermotherrunner.com.

Form Fixers

These exercises from trainer Joe "Iron" Matalon (joefitnessworld.com) will help streamline your form.

Arm Swings
Tones muscles around the shoulders and improves range of motion
Try It: Bend arms between 45 and 90 degrees and swing them forward and back as fast as you can 30 times.

Jump Squats
Trains the fast-twitch muscles
Try It: Place feet hip-width apart and lower into a squat. Jump up, raising arms overhead. Repeat 5 times.


(Source: wholeliving)