Your arms and legs want to move around.

You've got your laptop on your lap, or you're checking messages on your I-phone, or you're propped up in front of a bulletin board full of stupid meetings. In any case, you're sitting.

While you're sitting, the muscles in your arms and legs are doing nothing. Your fingers are in charge. The rest of your physical body is on hold. For how long?

Does that feel okay? To have your major limbs doing nothing?

Don't you remember when you were a little kid and running and jumping and falling all the time? Don't you remember what pleasure your body used to give you? (Sex, too, though that was much later.) Don't you sense that your arms and legs would love be doing something, anything? Not to be politically incorrect, but what's the difference between you at your desk and someone who's lost the use of those limbs?

It's not natural to let our arms and legs stay immobile for long periods of the day. Our arms are meant for lifting, our legs for walking and running. If we don't give them that kind of exercise every day, it's sort of like not letting our dog out for a walk once a day. Wouldn't you feel kind of guilty about that? The poor pet cooped up all day with no exercise? Well, that's how your arms and legs feel after a day staring at the computer. They want to be lifting and walking, if not running. They yearn to be doing something besides watching our fingers type, for God's sake!

We too often think of ourselves as just part of our computer environment -- typing stuff in, downloading stuff, relaying info to others, playing stupid games during our downtimes -- but we are physical animals, and our limbs want to be exercised! It doesn't have to be time at the gym, maybe just a brisk walk in the park, but our arms and legs -- like tigers or monkeys in the wild or in a cage at the zoo -- want to be doing something!

Have you tried to lift something recently and had a hard time of it? Gotten out of breath going up the stairs? (Took the elevator just to avoid walking up?) Have you tried to un-screw a lid and couldn't do it? You're letting your body down, and it's letting you down. Your body is your super-structure, the underpinning that helps you navigate the world, but it's made up of parts that have to be used from time to time to keep them functioning properly. Your arms and legs, to be exact.

Move your arms and legs every day and, when possible, give them some resistance, either through dumbbells or bands or just, for the legs, jogging. Put some weight on your muscles and joints, and make them get used to it. After a while, as you get stronger, your own body weight will seem like nothing, and you'll move through the world easier and with more confidence.

Once all the hullabaloo about the internet has become just common knowledge -- once we can all connect to anyone at any time of day or night and can share downloaded movies and family photos and personal regrets-- there will still be you and me in our bodies. Our brains will have shifted gears -- into cyberspace -- but our bodies will still require the same kind of old-fashioned maintenance. A workout routine. You can zip your mind up to the cloud, but your body will always need its situps and pull-ups and push-ups or yoga or whatever.

You can e-talk to anyone on the planet, but you're still trapped in your own body. Be sure you take care of it.

Your mind, too, of course, but I assume you're already doing that.

Here are your arms and legs talking: I'd like to kick something now, if no one minds. Anybody got a football? Me, I'd love to hug someone! Who's first? Watch this! I'm going to run to that corner and back and time myself! Okay, everybody stand back: I'm about to do a headstand!

In the necessary race to keep your mind up to speed, don't forget your body. Your arms and legs are just waiting to come out to play!

Who let the dogs out? You, if you're smart.