HumanaNatura’s natural exercise program is based on five key principles. We will outline these principles and then discuss how to best implement a personal exercise regimen to fulfill these ideals and optimally achieve natural conditioning:

1. The active human body, when engaged in a natural range of physical activities, will automatically maintain itself at high natural levels of physical and psychological fitness through natural physiological mechanisms. As mentioned before, HumanaNatura calls this process natural conditioning.
   
   
2. A well-designed daily exercise program should efficiently ensure natural conditioning, promoting the immediate goal of enhanced physical and mental health, while being enjoyable to the practitioner and requiring only a modest amount of time each day, thereby ultimately motivating broader health-based learning and action.
   
   
3. A complete exercise program should be balanced to fulfill four complementary physical fitness goals (aerobic conditioning, strengthening, improved flexibility, increased agility or coordination), plus at least two psychological fitness goals (stress reduction and enhanced cognition).
   
   
4. Exercises that emphasize whole body movements are generally the most efficient and effective forms of physical exercise, since they promote natural conditioning simultaneously across large areas of our body, while often requiring significant mental focus and attentiveness.
   
   
5. A comprehensive exercise program should be adaptable to each individual, allowing for increased or decreased duration and intensity based on our overall physical and cognitive readiness for exercise, both on a day-to-day basis and over the course of our lives.

Utilizing these exercise principles, HumanaNatura’s natural exercise program has been designed with two major components:

• Daily Walking – 30 minutes or more of walking or hiking each day
  
  
• Regular Calisthenics – 10 minutes or more, 3-5 days per week

As you will learn in your own natural health practice, daily walking and regular calisthenics are simple, natural, and highly complementary forms of exercise. Together, they are an extremely effective method to achieve natural conditioning and promote high levels of health and fitness in us. The exercises combine to greatly improve our overall physical conditioning and stamina, build new awareness and promote mastery of our physical and emotional health, expand our interaction with and connection to our surroundings and the natural world, and enrich and enhance most other activities in our lives.

Walking and calisthenics each involve natural human movement and are consistent with the natural exercise goals and principles of HumanaNatura. They are highly flexible forms of exercise that most of us can perform throughout our lives, and at many varying levels of duration and intensity. Because of their strong link to natural human activity patterns and inherent efficiency, the regular practice of walking and calisthenics allow us to spend as little as forty minutes a day in exercise and still achieve adequate levels of natural conditioning, and significantly enhanced lifelong health and fitness.

Detailed overviews of HumanaNatura’s walking and calisthenics program are provided in the next two parts of this section of the HumanaNatura program, including step-by-step instructions and photos for our calisthenics workout. Please also see the Resources section of the HumanaNatura website for information on downloading a free workout poster containing all of the calisthenics photos. At any time, if you have either specific or general questions on our natural exercise program, please contact HumanaNatura’s support staff via the Contact Us link on our website.

We encourage you to explore HumanaNatura’s ideas about natural exercise for yourself and see how easily our exercise practices can become an integral and enriching part of your daily life. You will quickly understand the power that a regular program of natural conditioning can have in your life, enhancing your health and fitness, promoting new perspectives and well-being, and increasing your personal connection to others and the natural world around you.

Once you have begun a natural diet, bringing natural exercise to your life is an essential next step in achieving transformative personal health and well-being, and for fostering a new, progressive, and lifelong movement toward ever greater personal vitality and quality of life. In practice, natural exercise proves critical to our success in developing the needed momentum, and the required personal strength and fortitude, to approach the third and most far-reaching challenge in restoring and enhancing our natural health – natural living.

Good luck with the HumanaNatura exercise program!

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