Exercise for the Mind

Today's post was inspired by a quote from a recreational therapist I interviewed, for a future post I am working on about fitness and mental health. Urbaine Lesperance, a case worker with Mental Health Addiction Service Simcoe County, said about fitness and mental health, "to me, [what is important] is overall [health], even if it's half an hour a day of your time that you do something you enjoy - whether it's [playing a sport] or reading [some of our clients can't perform physical activities for various reasons] - it relieves that stress and those negative thoughts."

Aha! Reading as fitness for the mind. Sometimes we can forget how important it is to exercise our minds. To sit still and read a good book. So for tonight's post, I leave you with quotes from 10 books I randomly pulled from the shelves of my little library. Yes, actual books, not quotes lifted from web sites. Although I have nothing against that, I just felt like going the "old fashioned" route for a change. My challenge to myself was to find  inspirational quotes about wellness, either mental or physical, from old literature to modern day fiction and non-fiction, in a reasonable amount of time. Here goes:

Wise Words to Exercise One's Body & Mind

1. Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. (Sir Richard Steele, 1672-1729)
2. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. (All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum, 1986)
3. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front the only essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862)
4. It was going to be a long day with another thirty-five kilometre walk to Muxia ahead of us. (Confessions of a Pilgrim, Sue Kenney, Simcoe County author, 2007)
5. Do not be afraid of going slowly, only of stopping. Confucius. (Zen: One Day at a Time, Herve Desbois, 2002)
6. Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like the muscles of the body. Lynn Jennings, three-time World Cross Country Champion. (Kara Goucher's Running for Women, 2011)
7. Know that big trees are little trees that kept going. (Things Trees Know, Douglas Wood, 2005)
8. He that would thrive Must rise at five; He that hath thriven, May lie till seven; He that will never thrive May lie till eleven (The Mother Goose Treasury, Raymond Briggs, 1966)
9. Most of what I know about writing fiction I learned by running every day. (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami, 2008)
10. The self-renewal process must include balanced renewal in all four dimensions of our nature: the physical, the spiritual, the mental, and the social/emotional. (7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Miniature Edition, Stephen R. Covey, 1989)