18 August

I’m not an ‘exercise’ person, but am still very active. This long (but brilliant) quote from the great Australian scientist Raymond Dart is the sort of exercise I do, every day, in everything I do. It makes your body work with sublime ease, and the impact on your health is enormous. (Also why I think standing desks are a waste of money.) “Man may be defined as a being who...should be able to maintain without strain the erect posture (or move about with the erect posture) and respire rhythmically through the nostrils, whilst engaged in eating and speech and actively employing his hand with tools. Individuals unable to behave in this complex, and highly skilled, neuromuscular way; folks whose breathing is arrhythmical and not confined to their nostrils as soon as they eat, speak, write or work; people who cannot eat or speak, write or work unless they are supporting their bodies with their elbows, rolling their tongues or lolling against a piece of furniture, have failed to experience the bodily capacities of equilibrated human beings. They have arrested their progress in bodily equilibrium at any one of the numerous stages at which it can be arrested by postural fixation... If a person is squatting, sitting, or standing in an equilibrated fashion, the tensions of the muscles on both sides of the body are equally distributed, each weight-bearing point or area taking spontaneously its appropriate part in the support of the body; and in such equilibrated positions the upper limbs hang freely, or hold implements, or move across surfaces without being employed simultaneously as secondary body supports. Similarly, the head, somewhat forward inclined, pivots freely on the vertebral column; and the musculature of the neck, without displaying any stiffness, pain or tension, freely suspends the jaws, tongue and laryngeal apparatus, so that unimpeded chewing, swallowing, breathing or speech can occur concurrently.”