When I turned forty years old, I decided that I wanted to cultivate a healthy and strong body for the rest of my life.
I found an unusual exercise book at the Half-Price Bookstore.
In the photos, it showed a muscle I had never seen before.
It was the long thigh muscle on the back of the leg.
I began trying to do the very gentle exercises even when I couldn’t perform them.
I just kept trying out the postures and attempting the exercises.
Eventually, after seven months, I was able to lift my leg to develop the thigh muscle on the back of the leg.
When it finally took shape, I laughed!
I am very short, about 4’10”.
That long thigh muscle on the back of the leg on the much taller model, looked about twelve inches long.
On the back of my leg, it is about three inches long, if that(!).
However, all the rest of the supporting exercises kept toning me and making it easier and easier to move during my rigorous pre-school music classes, a total of twenty-nine years begun when I was thirty-four years old.
When I retired, I was in good shape.
Even though I no longer teach the rigorous schedule I once had, the deep muscle training has remained with me.
I have to revive it from time to time, and I even add on to it.
I have had to learn to eat differently and better to compliment what is going on inside the body with what is going on outside it.
But I am happy and satisfied with the direction I am going with my body.
I am very pleased to be able to say that.
(The book I found is called “Callanetics”, by Callan Pinckney. I even enjoyed the fact that one of her videos featured a short round person like myself! And also her seventy-year old mother.)
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_1_6_hso_sc_smartcategory_2?rh=n%3A4645%2Ck%3Acallanetics&keywords=callanetics&ie=UTF8&qid=1481746095&sr=8-6-acs
© 2016 Kathryn Hardage
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