Manpo Kei

By Paul Salmon, Ph.D., M.S.

It's a well known statistic that between one-quarter and one-third of the U.S. population is physically inactive, and that lifestyle factors, especially physical inactivity and poor diet, are among the leading actual causes of death in the U.S. and may soon overtake tobacco for top honors, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Not surprisingly, everyone from the US Surgeon General on down has been promoting the idea for years that significant health benefits can be derived from relatively modest investments of time and energy.

By now, pretty much everyone is familiar with the basic guidelines for light exercise, which call for 20-30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity, most days of the week, in bouts of at least 10 minutes. This reflects a level of exercise deliberately designed to appear attainable to many people unused or disinclined to being active, and it has proven to be a fairly effective means of encouraging greater activity.

The problem for many people, however is that you have to do something outside the realm of your customary daily routine.  It's great if you happen to like jogging, or gardening or raking leaves. But even if it's something that you enjoy, it still has to be scheduled into an already busy schedule. Most people, especially those in dire need of becoming more active, find it difficult to commit to and sustain a program of regular exercise, at least in part because it's hard to make it an integrated part of one's lifestyle. Instead, exercising or being active becomes just another event to be scheduled into the day along with everything else, without any immediate relevance other than the knowledge that it's somehow good for you.

Such dis-integration poses a serious challenge to being active in the long run, and it is consequently not really surprising that nearly half of those individuals who initiate exercise programs quit within six months. Is there an effective alternative?

I have talked many times in this column about mindfulness, moment-by-moment awareness, and how it can enrich your life by helping you cultivate an appreciation for very simple aspects of everyday life, such as breathing, sitting quietly, eating a meal with care and attention, and so forth. Walking should be added to this list and recommended as feasible, safe (for most people) and healthy way of becoming both more mindful and more fit.

There is increasing interest in walking as a healthy lifestyle behavior that is relatively easy to integrate into one's lifestyle. After all, most of us do at least some walking on a daily basis, and it doesn't require expensive equipment or special skills. About 40 years ago, a movement started in Japan known as Manpo-kei or roughly "10,000 steps to fitness." The idea is that accumulating 10,000 steps on a daily basis (measured using a pedometer) has significant health benefits corresponding pretty closely to those associated with the light exercise prescription. The distance the average person covers in 10,000 steps is about five miles, and relatively few people are active to that degree. But it represents an attainable goal that can be progressively approached a bit at a time, and in a simple way: just get moving!

Walk, breathe, sit: here you have all the basics, brought to us through the influence of Eastern traditions that represent a complementary yin to the yang of our Western ways. Manpo-kei, yoga, meditation, tai chi and other such practices have much to teach us about being connected with ourselves in very simple and basic ways. They offer a pathway to health and fitness that is direct, simple and accessible.

Paul Salmon, Ph.D., M.S., is a faculty member at the University of Louisville, an ACSM-certified health fitness instructor, and a member of KHF's Editorial Advisory Board. You can contact him with comments or questions at psalmon@louisville.edu