Products for Fitness, Health and Happiness

The Jungle Gym from LifeLine is a fantastic piece of equipment - inexpensive, lightweight, portable, infinitely adjustable, and useful. If the ideal strength regimen includes lots of natural body weight exercises, what do you do when you can’t do some of the basic body weight exercises, like pullups.

Pullups are an awesome exercise. They work the arms and back, and can be combined with various sitting positions to include literally the entire body. The Jungle Gym allows anyone with at least one hand to grip to engage in pullups. Over the months I’ve been using it, I’ve gone from completely assisted to partially assisted, to “real” pullups. Here’s how:

Throw the Jungle Gym over a beam or tree branch, or attach it to any door. Begin with the handles far enough apart so your thumbs come just to your armpits.

Start sitting down slowly, using your arms to lower yourself to a seated position.

Pull yourself back up with your arms, using your legs as much as you need.

Over time, your legs will need to assist less and less, until one day you’ll realize that you can do a complete pullup. The intermediate step is to pull up using the leg assist, then raise your legs up off the ground and slowly lower yourself using just your arms. When you can do a dozen or so of these, it’s time for real pullups.

Just published! Uncle Howie’s Fit Family Gift Guide 2006, a free downloadable guide to giving the gift of health and fitness to friends and loved ones this holiday season.

You’ll learn:

- What every healthy cook wants
- Four cookbooks that can change your life
- The best fitness equipment you’ll ever play with
- Four of the most important books on health ever
- Three great healthy snacks for kids
- The best meditation CDs on the planet
- Great gift ideas for all budgets
- Valuable recipes and tips for a healthier life

Get it here: http://www.FitFam.com/unclehowie/gift_guide_2006.pdf

Sometimes I get the feeling that some meditation teachers have been blissed out for so long, they forget what it’s like to live a hectic life, full of demands and curve balls and stresses. So they say things like, “meditate every day for at least 45 minutes” and “set up a regular practice and stick with it.” Maybe that’s good advice, and maybe I’ll get there someday, but I find that all or nothing thinking like that just defeats me before I start.

Enter Greg Lynn Weaver, spiritual director of the PeaceWeavers. I met him at a New Year’s Visioning Retreat in December 2004, and was immediately blown away by his presence, his kindness, and his ability to “talk meditation” in everyday and accessible language. I bugged him for almost a full year to produce a meditation CD, and finally I drove 12 hours to the PeaceWeavers Thunder Mountain Retreat Sanctuary in Bath NY, recording studio in my trunk. The result is a 2-CD set, Guide to Meditation Practice, that is just amazing.

The first CD explains why and how to meditate, and will provide inspiration and support again and again on your journey. With gentleness, humor, a golden voice, and great love, Greg Lynn will guide you as you get started.

The second CD consists of three 20-minute meditations, all very different.

• The Quieting Meditation relaxes your whole body and puts you into a health-promoting state.
• The Dan Tien, an ancient meditation, teaches you the four phases and five qualities of breath, and allows you to go deeper than you ever thought possible.
• And Breathing into the Roots reconnects you with the earth and grounds you in a powerful and liberating way.

There’s no background music to distract (and eventually annoy) you – just the clear and simple words uttered by one of this generation’s great meditation masters. Greg Lynn trained for 15 years under Roshi Philip Kapleau, and was healing assistant for 10 years to the Buddhist Monk the Venerable Bhante Dharmawara (whom Gandhi called “my physician” and who was the inspiration for the character of Yoda in Star Wars, but that’s another story).

The double-CD set sells for $30, plus s/h. Click here to order from my secure shopping cart.