"Play as if Your Life Depends on It"

     I just completed the book "Play as if Your Life Depends on It" by Frank Forencich.  It is a book about human fitness and health.  He has 3 foci:  primal, functional, and playful. 
     Like it or not, we are all Africans.  Our ancestors originated in the sparsely treed savannas of East Africa before they began their migration across the globe.  Evolution is a slow process....we have the same physical bodies and brains as our caveman ancestors did 100,000 years ago....essentially we are "cavemen with beepers."  We need to be active in ways that honor that caveman ancestry.
     We are animals.  We have a 98% genetic overlap with chimps and bonobos.  And animals play throughout their lives.  They don't count sets and reps, and work at fitness.  We need to make our fitness functional as well as fun, general rather than specific. 
     The good animal is biophilic (loving life).  We are social creatures.  We love nature...we prefer landscapes and parklike settings.  Those natural scenes cause us to relax and lower blood pressure; to recuperate faster from hospital stays.  Contact with trees, dirt, rocks and animals is good for us.  Nature is medicine. 
     There are no specific training regimens given.  He recommends determining your specific fitness goal and then basing your training on primal, functional, and playful activities to reach that goal.  We are primarily bipedal, so being a good walker is an important start. Hiking uphill is great.  Run on trails, jump over rocks.  Touch the earth. Play games.  Have fun.
     He gives organized sports a big "fail".   They weed out most people by the age of 13.  They value winning and eliminating the weaker performers from contention.  They force 2 lifestyle extremes:  the athletic professionals and everyone else (spectators).
     So honor your caveman ancestry.  "Push yourself! There is a carnivore back there, and he is gaining on you."

"Before the High and Far-Off Times, O my
Best Beloved, came the Time of the Very
Beginnings; and that was in the days when the
Eldest Magician was getting Things ready.  First
he got the Earth ready; then he got the Sea
ready; and then he told all the Animals that
they could come out and play."
                                        Rudyard Kipling
                                        "The Crab That Played with the Sea"

"All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us.  Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside.  We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers.  What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream."

                                       T.K. Whipple, "Study Out the Land"