Tag: health

Let’s go for a run

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Not so long ago I have started running, not so much at first just to check whether my everyday habit of biking around the city made me as fit as I had thought. Beginnings were difficult but with time a body gets used to the new physical activities and now I feel I need it to stay fit. I makes a person who normally conducts more sedentary lifestyle, like me, more conscious of her body and just quick-witted and easier to mobilise. Not mentioning wonderful people you meet when participating in multiplicity of events around the city. Even with time limits, I must stick to because of the work overload and family duties which hinder my engagement in more events and races, it still helps relax and just lowers stress to the acceptable levels. Being single and hard working mum this is kind of crucial, even more than having everything done with tip-top perfection.

While continuing this habit I have noticed how much does it improve my performance. It is now very easy to mobilise, I am rarely cold and not catching flew as easily as before. There are many people passionate about this sport, some of them involved much more than myself, and it is hard for me to not share their passion. What is finally the life about? Is it not just about doing what is right and being happy with it? Running is such an easy habit to increase satisfaction and it does not require any special arrangements. Instead of staying inside and worrying, watching TV, following politics, etc, and constantly making myself work as in my case, you go out and spend an hour moving your body and having pleasure out of it. What’s more the consequences are nothing but beneficial.

Some may think that physical health is not as important as intellectual development. In general there are many people who submerged in contemporary culture, with all its benefits and facilities, stopped exercising at all. They are carried or transported without engaging their muscles, they stay sitting, they watch, sometimes read and write, often work too much. Not even mentioning the image of a popular couch potato, for many exercising and doing some sports seem just a simple waste of time. This global culture, which has brought us technological innovations devoid of diversity and so much similar everywhere, has not envisaged negative consequences of some behaviours. There are so many depressions around, people are unhappy, they concentrate on their own value and on themselves so much. The contemporary tools, wonderful as they are, cannot satisfy all our needs. We must care about it for ourselves.

For me running is also another occasion to see sights. In my very short running adventure I have already visited parks in Amsterdam, I run with friends of mine in Vienna’s Ring Strasse and Old Town, which was just great, and I was running around Vatican Hill. I also looked around courtyards and pathways of South Boston. Apart of weekly running in Lodz, I practiced in Hel Peninsula, running at the beach early in the morning is just wonderful, and I run in Krakow’s Planty. Truly wonderful experience all of these runs were, confirms that taking your sport shoes with you when going somewhere makes you see more and in a pace you may easily adjust. Give it a try and you will see yourself.

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Bieg pod Gwiazdami/Run under the Stars, 2.01.2016, wonderful running event in Piotrkowska Street in Lodz, source Gazeta.pl

The Fifth Commandment

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As BBC informs Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski told German newspaper Bild on Sunday: “The previous government carried out a leftist programme there (in the public media). It was as if the world was according to a Marxist model which has to automatically develop in one direction only – a new mixture of cultures and races, a world made up of cyclists and vegetarians who only use renewable energy and fight all forms of religion.”

Behind cycling, vegetarianism, ecology there is a basic care for human health. The understanding should precede implementation of values. This understanding comes together with learning, also with learning about religion. Why the fifth commandment is so hard to accept by the Catholic society? Second grade children, preparing for their First Communion are taught what the Fifth Commandment means, it’s not only about killing directly, it is also about care for health, of a given person and her peers, other people. They are taught this here, in Poland during their religion classes. This is part of this religion, I have been taught the same several years ago.

This is kind of very hard to figure out and accept, for me who has been brought up on traditional Christian values, this lack of understanding of fundamental rules behind Christian faith. The care for nature, for trees, for air, for environment, the respect towards other people life and good-being. Why is all this suddenly wrong? And yet in the name of the said “tradition”. What is traditional in cutting down trees, the plans of which have been just recently announced for Puszcza Białowieska? Why smog and environmental pollution, which are the consequences of cities stacked with overwhelming cars’ presence, should suddenly be understood as traditional Polish values?

Why building in the areas endangered with flood has suddenly become available, while it is obviously unethical and dangerous for human beings in case of inundation? Because flats may become cheapper? For whom and for how long? Vast, unbuilt river valleys are necessary to protect neighbouring settlements from floods. When constructing there, backwater from rain sewage has no place to gather and deluge gets further, produces more damage. This is one of the easiest rules in urban planning, the one which saves a lot of money if properly understood, e.g., successful planning in Bogota, started with creation of urban parks in all the river valleys.

On the other hand conciseness being one of the major features of sustainable and efficient towns, it requires proper care for human’s environment. Being close reduces travels and costs of building and maintenance of infrastructure. It enables walking and cycling, which do not produce fumes and keep people healthy. Bicycles are cheap, so is walking – our conservative party declares care for pourer people. What has the requirement to own a car to do with these announcements? Cycling and pedestrian traffic should be developed not limited, there are many people in Poland who cannot afford a car and its maintenance. Not mentioning that concise and pedestrian and bike friendly cities are also much cheapper in longer term. They require much less cleaning, they are smaller, there is less infrastructure to maintain and it is better served, the everyday car’s influx not leaving its damaging effects. They continue the historic sites, do not move as in a nomad society, leaving spoilt place behind because they got unusable and polluted.

Why the development of renewable energy became a synonyms of lack of values of secular, Western world? While it is absolutely the opposite, this is the expression of care for our planet, the Earth.  This is just absurd. Why the words of a Head of the Catholic Church mean nothing to politicians who say they represent a party who relies on Christian values? Those are not the recent statements only, they have been an important part of the Church teaching for a while – compare Encyclicals Centesimus Annus, chapter 4 or Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, chapter 5 by John Paul the Second.

It looks like the power of lifestyle, of everyday habit, outruns the thinking, rationality and understanding. The custom is stronger than values, than religion, than anything. The origin of these customs having little with Polish tradition, have polluting cars always being there? Did not Queen Bona bring vegetables from Italy here already in the sixteenth century and is there anything wrong about healthy diet? Are Poles not world famous for their hospitality, always welcoming foreigners, even when they were forbidden elsewhere? Have we Polish not loved our beautiful forests or landscape, having so many beautiful poems on them? Is the stupid recent custom and temporary conflict stronger than values, than religion, than anything. Is this really true? An extremely sad conclusion it is.