Body, Mind, and Sport

Description

Body, Mind, and Sport is a best-selling book of health and holistic fitness through Ayurveda. It is published by Harmony/Crown in seven languages with forewords by Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova.

Ayurveda holds three primary keys to prevention of disease: exercise with proper breathing, a proper individualized diet, and a lifestyle in harmony with nature. Body, Mind, and Sport covers each of these and more in easy-to-read detail.

Today, eighty percent of Americans do not exercise regularly, and ten million are exercising less today than just three years ago. Yes, people are very busy, but the real reason for this exercise apathy is that they do not enjoy it — people find time to do the things they enjoy. Dr. Douillard teaches people how to enjoy exercise, probably for the first time ever, as well as reap the most important health benefits not available in other exercise programs.

Based on individual body types, certain activities are selected, and the Body-Mind-Sport (BMS) training begins, teaching people how to deal with their stressful lives and jobs from a calm center — the “eye of the hurricane” — using exercise as the training model. BMS research has proven that people can take a meditation state or relaxation state coherent brain wave pattern into maximal level exercise on a regular basis. This means that the elusive “zone” or “runner’s high” is now available to anyone even while walking around the block. This makes exercise fun, euphoric and safe as you learn to listen to your body and discover exactly how much exercise is good for you and how much more is harmful. Most importantly, this calm experience in the midst of stressful situations is carried with you into daily life.

Check out this interview with Dr. Douillard on his book Body, Mind, and Sport: The Zen of “the Zone”: How to Breathe the Right Way When You’re Working Out

Excerpt from the Introduction

As you use the techniques in this book, your performance will soar, while your exertion and your breath and heart rates decrease. You will also learn the history of this unique mind-body experience. The Zone is referred to, in various ways, in the ancient teachings of China’s Tao and Japan’s Zen, but the oldest references come from India, the land of the Veda, where historians believe the original martial arts were taught. I spent over a year there, studying with some of the foremost experts in Vedic knowledge.

This book brings together information from many branches of knowledge. The principles of Ayurveda, the Science of Life, most closely apply, as you will see in Part II.

In ancient cultures, exercise was a piece of a much larger puzzle. The original Kung Fu masters, for example, spent hours not to master the art of breaking bricks but to unleash their full human potential, to achieve what they called enlightenment. In this book, we will go deeply into the original principles of exercise and see how they can help you to consistently produce and exercise high and carry that experience into your daily life. For most people, exercise is entirely separate from daily life; thus it is hard to find or make times for it. I aim to show you how to use exercise as one of the most powerful and enjoyable means of achieving a healthy, happy, productive way of life.

The first step in this program is to determine your individual nature. Each person has a unique psychophysiological constitution or mind-body type. Your mind-body type will be your natural guide to sports selection, diet, the best time of day to exercise, breathing, stretching, and much more. In addition, this book will show you how to adjust every aspect of your daily routine and fitness program to your individual requirements.

The next step in designing your health and fitness program is to choose a level that best suits your needs. To make this book equally useful for both the elite athlete and the person seeking general health and fitness, Level 1 and Level 2 programs have been structured. These programs are offered throughout the book, and from them, you can select the sport, breathing technique, workout design, and stretching program most appropriate for you.

Level 1, which is a prerequisite for Level 2, is for people who are looking for general health and fitness, with little or no concern for performance and competition. Level 2 is for those who are more serious about exercise; this program includes sports and athletic training for both recreational and competitive purposes.