Within and Without You

One sees so many articles that proclaim that exercise is even good for the brain and brain functioning -- but no direct way to achieve that, by making exercise (increasing blood flow to the brain directly), as though it is a taboo or forbidden subject to consider.

I remember once discussing head movement with a prominent researcher in dementias who was all set to counter the notion that simple, thoughtful and self-evidently effective movements, might be the key to reclaiming the connection of mind and body, and did everything possible to demonstrate how producing “whiplash” by obviously dangerous, sharp and violent movements,” were not to be advised -- as though that was what I was suggesting.

I said that fullest articulation of the vertical and horizontal axes at the neck through slow deliberate movements, required the engagement of all the muscles in the body as the key to operating all the muscles of the body as though they were one, and as such, was the most efficient and ingenious design of (human) evolution that merely required us to observe that intelligence, and utilize it.

In many discussions of the traditional sort, there is this mention of exercising to “muscle failure” as though it was indeed a failure occurring only within the muscle -- rather than a signal from the brain to desist because the operating environment of the brain had reached a deficiency that didn’t allow energy to be expended on any other activity without jeopardizing the total resources and state of the body.

The body has to protect the brain foremost -- because that is the greatest insurer of its survival -- beyond any other physical activity or achievement. It means nothing, and will not be allowed, that one can sacrifice the brain and its functioning, for any other accomplishment. However, very slowly and deliberately, we can undermine and impair that functioning, if we have no awareness of this concept of total body functioning -- including the brain along with every other capability to respond.

That is how the body is designed to work -- and not just in the piecemeal understanding of everything unrelated, unconnected, unaffected by everything else. Many even (still) regard that the primary, if not whole functioning of the brain is to produce conscious thought rather than this total awareness beyond the categories and labels of conscious thought -- which is called in higher discussions, the function of the “big brain,” and not just the small petty mind cultivating its own ego -- as its highest expression of intelligence.

Beyond any spoken language and culture, is the universal language of the body that communicates and transcends this process of thought and operating out of memory -- in preference to reading life and intelligence directly as it is happening all around them -- and within them.