Fit Lit Christian Brown

FIT LIT

Body, Mind and Quill

ABOUT THE COLUMNIST

Quadragenarian fitness model, lifestyle coach and bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Feast of Fates, Christian A. Brown received a Kirkus star in 2014 for the first novel in his genrechanging Four Feasts till Darkness series. He has appeared on Newstalk 1010, AM640, Daytime Rogers, and Get Bold Today with LeGrande Green. He actively writes and speaks about his mother’s journey with cancer and on gender issues in the media.

Breathing, Being, Reading.

BY CHRISTIAN ADRIAN BROWN

I'm unsure whence you're reading today's issue, but here in Canada, the sun wets streets as dazzling as gold, birdsong livens the air and passerby, for the first time in a long time, smile at each other without the obscurement of masks. Summer has arrived (we seem to have fast-forwarded through spring with only a few rainy days), and with it comes a sense of optimism and levity analogous to the season. I hope that a similar air spreads through your community soon if it hasn't already. So dust off your shoes, download an audiobook that piques your interest and get out into all that light and life. Because if there's one lesson from the past two years, we should have learned that life is short, precious and for the living.

Now that you're outside and running around, if you want to understand your connection to the primal drumbeat of your feet slapping upon the pavement, Born to Run by Christopher McDougall is a good starting point. With a combination of journalism, science reporting and first-person omniscient storytelling, you'll find substantive material jammed into a three hundred or so page book. As a result, Born to Run qualifies as essential reading if you're mildly interested in the sports' communities, attitudes, and mythology.

The much-lauded Breath, by James Nestor, stands out as another quick (300 pages) informative and

enlightening read on the connection between our minds and bodies. One of the author's most significant claims is that almost 90% of us breathe incorrectly through our mouths and not our noses. Instead, we should be using our noses, which act as purifiers and humidifiers for the toxins we'd otherwise suck directly into our lungs. Indeed, this critique proves to be one amongst a trove of meticulously researched facts (or impeccably concocted fabrications to have fooled so many experts and critics!). Though I enjoy learning, I hate being "schooled," and each of the books, as mentioned above, does a commendable job of teaching without boring you.

If making a personal and not a professional recommendation, Tina Turner's My Love Story makes for an emotional, aspiring monologue to a long hike or cycling session. While I'm unclear how ghostwriters assisted Tina in encapsulating her life, the inimitable artist narrates her own story. Such narration alone elevates the experience, for you can hear each lilt of pain and triumph in her remarkable voice. She's an incandescent celebrity, a diva who's genuinely earned and inspired that title. Her tale of ruin, rebirth and glory, spanning decades of her life and music, is granted remarkable authenticity through the audiobook medium.

Whatever your choice of fiction or non-fiction picked as the soundtrack to your imagination, your aim should be to get outside, move, think, breathe, and celebrate life. All these states that we've suspended. All these dreams that we've been too buried in a nightmare to dream. No better time than now exists to realize happiness. And if you're stuck on the path to how, I've given you a few of thousands of curated roadmaps meant to inspire, elevate and uplift your potential.

—C 