Get Off Your Butt and Dance!

I find it too easy to get caught up in work, sitting at my desk with shoulders hunched, my back, my legs, my neck screaming for relief. I'll stretch every now and then, but at the end of the day my body feels like a contracted ball of fatigue. Every muscle is twitching with eagerness to get up and move. Exercise is sooo very important in our every day lives. Doctors and scientists are telling us the benefits of exercise as if they are just discovering this, but in fact Jewish people have known about the importance of physical movement for over thousands of years. In the second century, Rabbi Akiba taught that there are "248 postive Mitzvot in the Torah, corresponding to the number of parts of the human body. Each and every part of the body shouts to the person: 'Do a mitzvah through me; the benefit will be that we will live and you will have a long life'." (Midrash Mechilta, Ki Tetze). Rabbi Akiba was a very active man and did not spend all his time sitting at the desk studying Torah; he went out and taught and interacted with life.
Take a walk. It doesn't matter how fast you go. Feel the blood pumping through your heart, bringing that life-giving blood into every cell in your glorious body. Open your eyes and ears to the beauty around you. Let your arms swing, knifing through the breeze, creating your own power wave. If a butterfly's beating wings can effect change on the other side of the world (according to quantum physics!), imagine what your swinging arms will do. Think of all the mitzvot you can perform with your arms, legs, eyes and ears. Get out and dance!

One Hundred Blessings

In Judaism, we are told to say 100 brachas (prayers) each and every day. The reason is to remember that the Creator is responsible for our lives and has a hand in everything we are. Rambam says one can recite a Bracha to express pleasure for food or drink, or just before you are to perform a mitzvah, or to give thanks, express praise, or for a request to always remember the Source of All Blessings. Check out http://www.aish.com/literacy/mitzvahs/Lively_Introduction_to_Blessings.asp for more information! Before you jump in and say the blessing, pause and consider what it is you about to offer the blessing for.... do it with intention!
I often take things for granted or complain, such as about the achiness in my body, but then need to pause and realize that at least I can move my body and am in decent health and say a bracha for that.