Happy New You!
The easier and most effective way to change the world, is just to change yourself -- and not, as many ineffective and destructive people think, to change everything and everybody else -- while thinking that changing themselves is impossible and much more arduous and difficult. The world one experiences is largely a projection of the person they are. The healthy person is a person who views the world as one that works -- while those in poor health and condition, thinks nothing in the world works and is beautiful. And so they are constantly trying to change what is into something else rather than accepting the reality of what is -- first.
That will always be the source of their unhappiness -- this attitude that they ought to be changing themselves and the world into something other than it is -- without first discovering what it is. Maybe in that discovery, they will understand why they, and things, are as they are. That is the bias of the destructive force of ideological history -- that things are not fine as they are, that there is a reason things are as they are, and what needs to be done is to first understand what they are -- before trying to change it into something else!
It may be, that things are better than one could conceive and design them to be already. And if not, the very understanding of the actuality of the situation, has more value than one’s wishful-thinking of what he would like them to be, how they should be, which often sends one off on a wild-goose chase one may consume their whole lives in -- before realizing at the end,” I chased the bird in the bush (to no avail) and threw away those I had in hand (one‘s health).”
In this way, many will sacrifice their health and well-being for an idea of “happiness,” they think they should be pursuing -- with the obvious effect on their lives, that it is destroying their life, health and happiness. Still, the culture and institutions around them seem to be encouraging them on in their hysteria to continue in hot pursuit of power, fame and fortune without end. So always, there is simply the unsatiated need for “More,” that keeps them spinning their wheels, and trudging the treadmill of endless striving. They have convinced themselves, that no matter how much they already have, it is not enough, and there will never be enough.
In contemporary life, complacency is not as great a problem as the absence of contentment and fulfillment that can be -- when there is the recognition that too much energy is going towards what can never be satisfied and no energy is being directed to that which would be highly beneficial and productive -- which is what one already has and has going for them. The focus is only on the cup not filled, which grows increasingly infinite -- while the cup full is never allowed to be tasted and enjoyed.
That is the disease of contemporary life -- that no matter how much one has, there is only the need for more, what is not, and never the understanding and appreciation of what is.
That is where one should begin the year, and each day of one’s life, beginning with the present moment.
posted by Mike Hu @ 12:30 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
There are many times and incidences in which a little is all one needs -- and more is not necessarily better but may make things worse. There is even a physical condition in which the body’s natural immune response is too overwhelming, or is never turned off -- resulting in the autoimmune syndromes, in which the body’s defense mechanisms attacks itself, thinking it is an infection or a disease. In computers, an antivirus program may regard even beneficial and productive programs as hostile invasions -- and work tirelessly to defeat them. Organizations might regard anything new as a threat to the status quo and do all they can to purge themselves of this need to evolve further.
A poor human motivation technique is to create deficiencies and inadequacies in others, thinking that is a good way to achieve optimal performance -- when in fact, it creates a culture and personalities that believes deeply in its own inferiority, inability and worthlessness. Some people grew up in that environment and now have senior positions running their institutions -- thinking that what is needed now is a return to the values and understanding of their youth in the ‘60s, as the best of possible worlds -- when the world seemed fresh and open to new possibilities.
But then -- as now -- one can’t go backwards to progress; one has to move forward. The problem of the aged are those who wish to live their lives in the past -- while the life of vitality, lives it moving forward. One is the orientation and culture of growth; the other is the culture of deterioration and death -- which at every moment and stage of life, is a choice.
Health and well-being is fundamentally the proper exercise of choice.
The hot new health news du jour for exercise is the supposed new discovery that obesity is bad for one's eyes and eyesight -- as though anybody ever thought that obesity produced any healthful side-effects. So one more fear, threat and hysteria is probably not going to tip anybody into a New Year's resolution column of jumping on the healthful new you bandwagon. Not only is the threat of one more “wolf” unlikely to change the behavior of those who have become inured to such calls for mobilization, but it reinforces the underlying misperception that poor health is selective rather than the universal experience of failure throughout the body.
So when one notices its effects most acutely in one part of the body, it’s not likely that the whole organism is not being subjected to the disease concurrently. The symptoms just manifest more visibly in one location of general body disfunction. The general affliction is likely to be called an autoimmune syndrome -- as in a broad assortment of symptoms without a specific identifiable cause. That they may all have a fundamental connection to the same cause is not what has become the specialist’s way of viewing human disease -- but remains for the health practitioner to achieve and define.
Health is not just the absence of disease and affliction -- but is beyond that, optimizing human function, performance, appearance, expression, values, choices. Healthy people look healthy as well as have healthy attitudes. It is not just about their heart function -- unless one is a heart specialist. But the reason for the ultimate attainment of individual fulfillment should be something much broader than simpler how fast the heart beats. What is the ultimate expression and work performed?
Is it to beat another to a pulp? Sow division, contentiousness, distrust and fear into society to increase one’s own profits? When many do the same thing, they create an environment of fear, uncertainty and anxiety at every turn -- quite apart from the actual need for it, in contemporary life. So it is in the most prosperous of times, there are vested interests trying to convince us we are on the precipice of the greatest calamity in history. It may be a nuclear attack, a pandemic, falling markets, exploding crime rates, out of control obesity. The constant bombardment of these fears, uncertainties and anxieties are not conducive nor indicative of health -- and so the avoidance of such inputs must be part of the healthy strategy.
That means keeping toxic people and their effects on the periphery of one’s life and consciousness, rather than allowing them to pervade our every thought. In these times, that means limiting one’s exposures to all the imaginable and unimaginable horrors created daily by those who earn a livelihood exploiting such fears, biases and ignorance -- particularly using the mass media, in addition to those sick individuals who get their kicks doing so. There is a problem of the mass media becoming too pervasive in one’s life -- that many isolated and alienated people actually experience their lives in this way entirely -- of distortion, sensationalism, titillation, exaggeration, manipulation and deceit.
The solution is not better mass media but to get out and actually have their own unique experiences of life -- and learn from those experiences. In contemporary society, it is quite possible that everything some people have learned is what somebody else told them is the truth -- and not that they personally discovered these things for themselves, which is really what life is all about, and not what they see on television or read about in the newspapers, even books, schools and the universities. That should not be their prime and exclusive information sources. Their own lives and living is the reality of their existence. The abstractions, generalizations, polls, studies, experts, opinions, partisanship, gossip, speculations, illusions and delusions, waste time they could put to more productive uses -- creating the life they really want to live, and not blaming others, for anything less.
The obvious mistake in developing a lifelong every day healthy conditioning strategy, is to make it an event requiring extraordinary efforts to effect. It should be as easy and as simple as getting out of bed, using the bathroom and brushing one‘s teeth. But not only does such an approach increase the likelihood of compliance, it is superior in both understanding and effects.
This understanding has to be foremost that the objective is NOT to make the heart work harder in increasing the beneficial circulatory effect.-- but in operating the voluntary, skeletal muscles of the body in a manner that aids the heart in the circulatory function, by mimicking the action of the heart muscle -- to go from zero to one-hundred percent contraction! That occurs when by understanding the function of the heart, one trains all the other muscles of the body, to briefly dedicate themselves to this same purpose for a minute each day, as soon as arising from sleep.
Then that very deliberate minute becomes the model by which the muscles will function without deliberate and conscious efforts throughout the day. That model of perfect and efficient functioning -- is imprinted daily into the memory banks of the neuromuscular system. That is a superior concept of conditioning -- rather than the disastrous experience it has become so that people forswear exercise for the time in their lives when they most need it and can benefit greatly from even that little.
That is the great tragedy and travesty of the modern fitness movement -- that they have designed it to be so intrusive, invasive, self-conscious and disruptive to one’s life -- with zero or negative benefits, that most people tune out to the advice that they should and can remain at peak functioning every day of their lives.
It is like learning anything: the conditioning process is to teach one to learn at all times, under any conditions, in all that one is doing -- and not only when the teacher or somebody else is rewarding them for their efforts. That kind of latter learning, really has not much use to anyone, and is discarded by most as soon as they are free from the judgments of others.
One can walk all day and never effect a total muscular contraction/total muscular relaxation phase once -- and it is that specific and particular movement, that has the greatest significance and impact on cellular and organic function. It is the basic control of movement -- WITHIN the body! That is the parameter of discussion that is relevant and not the movement, or even any movement outside the body -- as we are used to measuring it.
And while the heart is an organ of continual and persistent movement until the moment we die, taking a measurement at that constant is not as informative as assessing the movement at the furtherest extremities of the body. That measurement would be of the movement of that which is actually significant to measure -- the movement of blood and other fluids out of that area.
The heart beat, for this purpose, is not the most accurate measure of this effect, as one can produce an unvarying (isometric) contraction that shuts the arteries and capillaries from that flow as long as that contraction is maintained. Such a contraction reduces the holding volume of the tissues -- which increases the pressure within cells and tissues -- forcing fluid out and back to the heart and other organs of purification and excretion. Otherwise, the body becomes a stagnant pool not exchanging nutrients with the environment that sustains, refreshes and revitalizes it.
The relaxation phase of muscular movement from full contraction to full relaxation, allows the heart space to pump new blood into those vacated areas. Thus, the healthful effects of circulation are maximized in achieving optimal functioning, performance and health. This movement of fluids and gases throughout the body is the basic understanding of the healthful effect of exercise -- which is not just dependent on the heart beat and function, but these complementary factors also.
That’s why constant, chronic hypertension is bad for the body -- and not that it is not entirely appropriate, life-saving and absolutely necessary at timely moments in one’s life. Likewise, rest, relaxation and recovery may be what one needs at other periods in one’s life -- but unvaried, or minimally varied, is what we generally regard as the flaccid state of being.
No matter what condition a person is in presently -- they are never entirely without musculature, or the ability of this movement. No amount of walking, running, swimming or any other activity will effect and expand the specific fullest contraction to fullest relaxation -- and do nothing else! It is because the muscles are required to do anything else, that this range of movement is not possible. The devotion and dedication has to be to achieve the greatest contraction alternated with the greatest relaxation as the end in itself! -- as the optimal health benefit.
But it only needs to be done for a minute each day, at the beginning of each day, to achieve its greatest impact and benefit. Otherwise, one never achieves that effect, no matter how many miles one walks, runs, swims, or bikes. It’s not matter of how much -- but how well one moves with this regard and attention to purpose. That is the critical understanding that unless one attains first, most of their efforts will seem random at best.
What was striking in Reagan in his declining years, and I've noted in most people with the dementias, is the lack of head movement and the resulting atrophy of the neck muscles -- indicative of decreasing circulation to an area, in this case, the head, face and brain.
In people of older years in declining health, that seems to be the major marker. So it is that area that needs to be addressed in exercise over every other. The major beneficiary of exercise should be head and brain function -- over every other consideration. The heart is automatic (autonomic); the head (brain) are voluntary movements that don't just benefit because the heart is beating automatically.
Voluntary muscles direct the flow of blood and nervous impulses to an area. Simply being "mentally" active is not enough; there has to be actual, concurrent physical movement of the brain too. One of the great problems of medicine is this thinking that one thing in the body is not related to everything else in the body -- or that the physical and the mental are entirely different systems of operation.
The brain has to integrate "physical" exercise -- and the muscles have to integrate "mental" exercise as essential components of total health. The integrity of health is only as good as its weakest link. It is that fragmented, compartmentalized view of human functioning that is a large part of the problem in aging that they are helpless to address with that conventional view.
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