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Showing posts with the label Anthony Burgess

Don't be idle now

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 "Wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now."     – Anthony Burgess.     "Not how long but how vividly, happily, helpfully you have lived" - Alpha F

Visualization of the letters of the alphabet as a means of timing exercises designed to strengthen the back.

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 Many years ago my back was so painful sometimes I had to roll out of bed, I couldn't "get up", I had to "roll up". My doctor recommended a physiotherapist who taught me some exercises to do, and since then I've had very little back trouble. But. The exercises require you to, for example, "repeat 5 times and hold for a count of 15 at each repetition". And I as I got to do the exercises automatically, my mind would wander and I'd forget how many repeats I'd done and how long I'd been holding the position. The problem was the mixing up of the numbers.  So I solved that problem by counting the exercises with numbers and the "hold for" with letters. So if I had to hold for 10, I'd "count" from a to j . And instead of saying the letters I'd visualize them. Seemed like more fun. But I found to my surprise that some letters were hard to visualize. The first 6 are a doddle, but for the life of me I could not easily