Case Study - Exercise

“Energy begets energy, Jeremy”, I said to my teen client slumped on the couch in my office. We were discussing how he keeps wanting to exercise but somehow it falls by the wayside when he views it as part of a mile long “to do” list called his life!

Jeremy is in great shape. At 19 there’s barely an ounce of fat and his muscles are quite taut. He’s one of those kids who can get away without exercising and remain thin and healthy looking. So the typical motivation that inspires many to exercise simply isn’t there.

Ironically, our discussion was at that moment focused not on exercise but on how little he gets done in his life. When Jeremy looks at his “to do list”, he becomes so overwhelmed and so sure that he can’t get it all done that he ends up doing nothing! This includes, unfortunately, his exercise routine—which while not necessary for staying thin, is very necessary to help him break out of his blocked feeling/thinking flow and get on with his life!

I assigned Jeremy a one week homework assignment. Put only one thing on his “to do list”—that being exercise. Other than waking up, the only other thing he had to do was one hour of exercise. Once he accomplished that, when he arrived home he could do anything else he wanted to—but the only thing he HAD to do was to exercise. By the time I saw him next week—he would have exercised 7 days in a row.

When Jeremy arrived for his next session, he was smiling. He said to me, “You’re very tricky, you know that?” and I smiled. “What me tricky? Whatever do you mean?” I laughed! Sure enough, Jeremy had done 7 days of exercise—along with a lot of others things on his to do list. What he discovered was the power of exercise to impact not only the body—but the mind and spirit too. Starting his day with exercise was an easy item on the “to do list”—and it also helped him clear the fog and fear that he typically experienced first thing in the morning when he looked at the mile long “to do list” and groaned at its impossibility knowing full well he’d never be successful. Now, successful at exercising and with his mind cleared and open after 45 minutes of aerobic exercise pumping his cells full of oxygen, he found the “to do list” much less formidable. So each day a few more things were done.

Every piece impacts the whole. We think of exercise impacting just the physical body, but as Jeremy proves--it impacts our feeling and thinking areas as well. Thus, the energy that exercise begets to our body leads to our mind and spirit too. Jeremy was surprised to find out that; Every piece impacts the whole!