What is Exercise?

To exercise actually means to bring into action. When we exercise, we bring into action our ancestral memories. Our bodies remember that we lived in trees and forests. We need to crawl and climb and run if we are to develop our intellectual, emotional and spiritual capacities. We did not emerge from an austere iceberg of a distant planet, but in the particularities of this Earth and its forests. When we wander through the mountains, climbing and running, our bodies remember those deep patterns of behavior intrinsically tied to all that we are. We tend to think of exercise as losing weight, as trimming off the fat. But to exercise is to enable the body to remember its past, so that it can stretch out with all its intertwined powers of being and thought and reflection.

- p 106. The Universe is a Green Dragon, Brian Swimme

For more background, see:

• The Universe Story
• Thomas Berry