Part 14 - Restriction regarding physical exercise

Those who take rasa-medicines should not take any exercise, nor should they have recourse to running. Other people should take physical exercise according to their strength. Physical exercise does away with an excess of the doshas; it stimulates power of digestion, and is the best means to removal of obesity. It is wholesome to those who are strong and take meals prepared with clarified butter. It is salutary in winter and spring (in India and the other tropical countries). In other seasons one should take exercise to the extent of half one’s strength, i.e. up to the time when respiration tends to be quicker, and perspiration appears on the eye-brow, the armpits, the nose, and the limb-joints.

The following should never have recourse to physical exercise:—one who has just taken his meal, one who has just had sexual intercourse, patients suffering from cough, asthma, thinness, phthisis or consumption, hemeptosis, ulcer, loss in weight of the body, one who habitually drinks water at dawn, one who is under treatment, one who suffers from a disease due to an excess of pitta or vayu, an old man, and a child (i.e, one who is under 16 years of age). Physical exercise is always salutary to those who suffer from spermatorrhoea and diabetes.

Excessive physical exercise gives rise to cough, fever, nausea, exertion, fatigue, thirst, consumption, asthma of a malignant type, and hemeptosis.

Physical exercise in the form of running (as in foot-ball play) and excessive swimming, especially in the sun in a tropical climate, is especially prohibited in as much as they impair vitality. The maxim that Death runs after one who runs is always to be remembered.