Welcome to the end of week four of my seven-week journey to regrasping my sanity in the civilized woods. About three days late this week due to travel and a cold that came with it, but keeping up the momentum I’ve built with an alternating focus on mind and body each week.

Week one was all about the mind. Walking for thirty minutes a day has been good for my body but great for my mind. Week two was all about the body. Getting up and working every day, even if it was housework. It got the muscles moving on a regular basis. Week three was back to the mind. Re-entering the social world and having face-to-face interactions with others.

Week four: back to the body. I added thirty minutes of cardio three days a week. To start. I used to be an avid user of the elliptical before I started to fall off track a few months ago. I even traveled with workout clothes so I could use the elliptical in hotel gyms. The signal came when I started to feel too lazy or tired to go down to the basement and use the elliptical at home.

I did receive suggestions about joining a local gym so I would have a chance to be out of the house and exercise at the same time. But I knew I would not be consistent given the geographical anomaly of living twenty minutes from everywhere. A thirty-minute elliptical routine would easily become a two-hour commitment. Besides, I do not like public showers.

I have had an elliptical at home for almost ten years, and it has been a blessing. I do not have a thirty-minute limit like I would at a public gym. I can close the door and blast Bollywood music on my iPad, using the time to catch up on Indian music. Although I end up watching the same songs from the 90s movies that I grew up watching, with some Dard-e-Disco mixed in.

Not that I plan on doing longer than thirty minutes at a time, but it’s nice to take a few minutes to cool down while I finish watching Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla, or Govinda and Karishma Kapoor, finish another wacky song with wacky music and wacky choreography. Those were the days. Dancing was fun and sexy but not sexualized. Think about it for a second.

But I digress. By the way, that lower back pain I complained about the first week when I started this journey? GONE!!! A big relief to know it was not indicative of something more serious going on back there. Fingers crossed that it will not return, and I can chalk it up to just being idle and sitting too much. At the risk of sounding like an old lady, best to keep an eye on it.

Week five has been back to focusing on the mind. More on that after the end of this week. Thank you for reading!

Disclaimer: This content is neither advice nor instruction, medical or otherwise.