The Meaning of Health and Well-Being
Contrary to what any professional health care provider demands you believe, every individual is their own primary health care provider -- because nobody exists just to tend to the health care of others first and foremost. The reason they are in health care as a profession, is for their OWN health and well-being, and can share that expertise with others if they have immense talent in that area. However, a few, as in every profession, confuse their own self-interest for everybody else’s self-interest, and so every consumer has to be minimally on the look out for such abuses of trust and confidence. That’s just the way the world is -- and there are no good guys and bad guys just because they put a certain letter(s) after their names.
Health care providers work better for some than others. A few people, as with anything, may be better than the “professionals” -- whether that is car mechanics, computers, or physical therapies, writing, etc. -- depending on how well they know their subject, and how they learned it. Some people will pioneer the field even if they have no degree in it. That’s how inventions and innovations come into being -- individuals challenge the known to discover the unknown.
Every field of study and discovery has those similar issues -- of what is known by most people, and what is the cutting edge of discovery. The advantage most have over the professional (health care provider) is that nobody should know them better than they know themselves -- while the professional’s advantage is that s/he should have a broader range of experience and exposure -- although a few specialists will have us believe everybody has the problem of their specialty. So it is not just the consumer/patient who may overprescribe and overdiagnose.
Some people will insist that every problem can only be solved by hiring a lawyer -- or voting for a certain politician or party. Others think the accumulation of knowledge (information) is enough to protect them against all injuries, diseases and risks. That is the greatest problem, fear and anxiety in an age of information -- but that also opens up many areas of study to many more people than used to be involved, and so breakthroughs of insight can come much more rapidly and abundantly -- if everyone is allowed to think on these matters, as peers -- and not merely reinforcing the cult of the experts, which is merely the old pecking orders and status quo -- of which the medical subculture along with the military is the most bureaucratic.
Oftentimes, the bureaucracy gets in the way of the understanding -- and it is the understanding rather than who pays the medical costs and insurance that really is the health crisis of any society. So while a few may go astray in consuming too much time obsessing over all their afflictions, many more will actually find the knowledge and information that will relieve them of those anxieties.
Undoubtedly there are always abuses and addictions with anything -- including knowing too much. But I think most people can handle thinking for themselves -- and then finding the best of the professionals to assist them, as being the object and objective of their lives.
posted by Mike Hu @ 11:45 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
The major problem with the "popular" fitness and conditioning model, is to designate and relegate these activities into something other and apart from every aspect of one's thinking and activities.
For the last several decades, people have been taught by rote rather than insight -- because rote allows the many things to be unrelated and unconnected to everything else -- while insight looks for the universal (unifying) principle that runs through all phenomena. That allows a lot more people to call themselves "experts" -- while not really being so, in the sense of one who discovers these truths for themselves and the rest of those pursuing these same inquiries.
Instead, many just go to school learning only what others "teach" them as all that can be known. Then when the problems arise, persist, or are exacerbated by their "expertise," they think that all that is required is MORE of that expertise, rather than another way of looking at the situation that actually solves the problem -- rather than that of their own (un)employment.
Nowhere is this more true than in the obvious results of the present fitness paradigm -- that more effort with the old (primitive) understanding, is what is needed. Obviously, that doesn't work, or there wouldn't be more obese and out of shape people daily.
As I have pointed out to the deaf ears of those unwilling to listen, the problem is foremost, the wrong understanding of effort, results, and assessment, and when the understanding makes sense, no extra ordinary effort is necessary. The world (body) is designed to work (well), but in the conditioning, people are taught to work against themselves, to make it more difficult for themselves, to increase the resistance -- rather than reduce it.
No athlete trains himself to make his action more difficult; the objective is to find that "groove" by which that effort is non-existent, requiring as little expenditure as possible -- to achieve the greatest result. He is not naive enough to simply think that the more effort and hardship he produces, ensures his peak performance.
For that reason, the fitness paradigm (model) for the last 35 years at least, increasing workloads, and all the unpleasant side-effects, is telling people it is the wrong thing. But they still have to learn the right thing. When they do, they immediately recognize the difference and why it makes sense and therefore requires great effort NOT to do!.
The desire of every body, is to experience "flow," or what some call "being one with the universe" -- which means rightly understanding everything else and going with that flow, moving with it.
One of the most impressive displays of this is in that ancient Chinese practice of tai-chi, which when done properly, looks like people in nature, wafting in the wind.
Even more importantly, is that same kind of movement happening within the body -- manifesting the outer. Understanding only the heart action in this, rather than the comprehension of the totality, is to create a division that creates the resistance that is the problem.
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