Life Style, Tai Chi and the Art of Change...
Life Style injury and illness prevention is a touchy subject for most as it infers we may not understand the effects of our habits and patterns associated with habitual accumulations or un-checked deficiencies. Life Style is a general term that can be understood as a working relationship with Balance/Change/Movement. Coincidentally, these three words are the essence of the Internal Practices of Tai Chi/QiGong/Yoga. The Life-Style Change Arts of these health learning management systems are the deeper understanding of "mind/body" fitness. The oral and written teachings associated with Internal Arts is the current "missing component" that ties and de-mystifies the connection of the art & science, connecting the benefits associated with Life-Style Changes.
When we examine the effects of habits associated with accumulations, we find that moderation has been replaced with states of wanting, that often lead to addiction patterns. This "objective view" is a primary element of our innate survival intelligence and is based on direct sensory-feedback from our bodies experience of any type of excess or build-up. First, when we consider this, our memory can easily relate to feelings that all of us share, with respect to excessive states, such as:
- over-eating can result in a "stuffed" or over-full feeling
- Tension/stress can result in a over-charged or energy build-up feeling
- overly sensitive can lead to dramatic emotional displays
- over-thinking leads to thought build-up/confusion
So, a few common examples can give us a general understanding of how accumulations lead to more excessive conditions.
Second,when we look at the other side of the spectrum, we can begin to understand how deficient conditions also create imbalance:
- sedentary or laziness causes more tiredness and slowing of circulation
- shallow breathing slows cellular regeneration, and deprives bodily oxygen needs
- depression symptoms include introverted behaviors and mental/sensory shut-down
- unbalanced nutrient intake causes weak blood
These are examples of shortages causing general weakness or "deficient conditions".In review, Life-Style intelligence understand at an instinctual level how build-up or accumulating conditions create excess or over-load. In reverse, our innate intelligence also includes the understanding that conditions of lacking create systemic weakness. The third instinctual understanding of the Life-Style Change Art is the link that creates "looping conditions". This illuminates how excessive behaviors create deficient conditions and gives us the "missing puzzle piece" that allows us a working relationship with changing imbalances to states of fluctuating balance. The third understanding can be seen in conditions like:- over-work leads to exhaustion
- over-thinking leads to mental shut-down and hair loss
- excessive refined foods leads to poor blood (hypoglycemic or diabetic conditions)
- over-eating leads to heart weakness
- strong emotional states cause tiredness
When we develop a connection to "what is happening and what we are feeling", we take the first steps towards working with balancing, flexing with change and the role movement plays with energy or Life-Force. This is the essence of preventive illness and injury and the core of a working relationship with the instinctual foundation of Life-Style Change Arts.
In summary, a simple example like "When I over-eat, I feel over-full", gives us working parameters for how to balance and how to change. Our senses feel the discomfort or imbalance, our new guidelines for working with moderation validate our feelings of imbalance, and our in-born intelligence gives us a number of possible/logical solutions. Change is now in full support and can begin in a slow and trackable way. "How to change" is the art and science of balance in progression and reflects the movement associated with making changes that last over time. We need to be gentle, but firm, responsive and not reactive, attentive but not over-vigilant, adaptive and able to adjust and modify without the fears associated with change and discomfort. Change/Balance and Movement are the playground of our in-born adaptive nature...we may experience and experiment without fear as our way and birth-right in this life. Live a life with no regret, live your life, trust your feelings and experiment to gain experience.