Body Mind Mastery, page 7
If you’re like most of us, your body is probably out of line, deviating to some degree from perfect vertical alignment. This misalignment can be a result of childhood accidents, incorrect movement patterns and compensations, occupational or sports imbalances, even emotional traumas that created stored tensions and shortened muscles.
Aggressive people often hold their heads or chins slightly forward because of chronic tension and shortened muscles in the back of the neck. If you injured an ankle years ago and began to favor it, you may have caused compensatory reactions up through the knees, hips, and shoulders. Some people follow a pattern of holding the belly in or pulling the pelvis back, each causing misalignment in gravity.
These or similar postural imbalances result in chronic tension. Energy is wasted, since muscular effort is constantly required to hold the body up. Postural imbalance is a major source of energy drain.
Chronic physical tension may go unnoticed, since you become accustomed to it over the years, but it results in a continual sense of discomfort, with shifting and fidgeting, nervousness, and even emotional irritability. When our body feels uncomfortable to live in, we have no other place to go.
Many systems of massage, exercise, and manipulation can aid your conscious efforts to realign your body. If your connective tissue has become shortened as a result of chronic tension, trying to have good posture will do little good, because as soon as you relax, the shortened tissue will pull the body parts into the habitually misaligned position. In many cases, therefore, deep tissue work and chiropractic manipulation can make a positive difference. While massage uses pressure and stroking to temporarily relax and release chronic tension, deep tissue massage works with lengthening the fascia or connective tissue around the muscles, for more lasting results.
Conscious Exercise
Unlike most outer-directed sports and games centered around points and scores, conscious exercise is inner-directed — specifically designed for overall balance and the well-being of the body, mind, and emotions.
If you’re very strong but inflexible, hatha yoga, dance, or other forms of stretching practice will serve to extend your range of motion. On the other hand, if you’re naturally flexible, specific strength-building exercises will better serve your overall balance through muscular control and joint stability. Our bodies respond naturally to well-balanced and regular exercise.
HANGING: BALANCING GRAVITY’S CRUNCH
Without gravity, you’d soon become a mass of mush, without muscle tone, with weak circulation of blood and lymph, totally susceptible to any unusual stresses on the body. The field of gravity is the great developer, a twenty-four-hour exercise laboratory. Astronauts must exercise or create artificial gravity to avoid weakening bones and muscles.
On the other hand, gravity’s pull can also be debilitating. You are being compressed all day; the vertebrae are pressed, one against the other, with only small pads between them, and your feet bear the great burden of your entire body weight. Gravity compresses your joints hour after hour.
The simplest way to balance gravity’s crunch is to hang every day. In the morning and evening, grab hold of a bar or solid door sill, or make a simple hanging bar that will easily support your weight. Hang for ten seconds to a half minute. Feel the joints opening, the spine gently stretching out.
Resistance to Change
Our bodies, like our minds and emotions, have a tendency to resist change. We settle into certain patterns of movement and behavior — called “psychosclerosis,” hardening of the attitudes.
Such resistance is related to Newton’s law of inertia and momentum, which states, “A body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted upon by external force.” Equally true, a body in balance tends to stay in balance, and a body out of balance tends to stay that way, too, unless acted upon by an outside force.
Any change, therefore, requires an initial period of discomfort, until the body adjusts to the new demand. The discomfort may be mild in some cases, like the hunger pangs you feel when you improve your diet, or it may be more severe, as in the withdrawal symptoms of quitting a drug habit. In any case, symptoms are signs of the body readjusting; they will pass.
This initiatory period of change may last from one to six weeks, or even longer. Unless the desire to change remains strong, body and mind tend to return to old, familiar patterns. It takes time — from three to six months — for old habits to become obsolete. By the end of that time, you’ll have adapted to a new pattern. In a sense, you’ll have found a new way of life.
The laws of process, balance, and natural order all point to the obvious: You absolutely can reshape your life patterns and body through insight, direction, and energy — when mind and emotions work under the dominion of the will.
Feeding the Physical Self
Your body is fed on many levels — through sunlight and fresh air, through peaceful environments, through affection and energy from friends and family, as well as through the food you eat. All these factors are equally important for us to thrive as a complete human being, but the food you eat has a great influence on your body’s shape, function, and talent. These are important principles to remember:
• How you eat is as important as what you eat.
• Emotional calm, proper eating habits, and eating at the appropriate times and places are as important to consider as the food itself. That doesn’t mean we have to become nutritional scientists. Even young children will choose by instinct the proper combination of foods for balanced nutrition if offered a variety.
• Precivilized humans ate whatever foods were in season, when they were fresh, without chemical additives, preservatives, or commercial processing. The processing, preserving, coloring, and sweetening that characterize many foods today are practices designed to make higher profits by preventing spoilage and attracting buyers. Whether all this processing ultimately adds or detracts from the quality of the food you eat remains controversial, as one study contradicts another. (The results seem oddly dependent upon who is sponsoring the study.) Most objective nutritionists concede fresh, unprocessed, locally grown food that is in season best sustains vitality. Study the literature, but above all trust your instincts.
• Many experts know a lot about the nutritional value of various foods, but you are the expert on your own body. Nutritious food like whole wheat bread may not be good for you if you happen to be allergic to wheat gluten, for example.
• The reason so many of us need reshaping in the first place is because we tend to eat too much of what we don’t need and not enough of what we do need.
• Notice the difference between what you want and what you need. Pay attention not just to how the food tastes but to how you feel after you eat it.
• Many athletes find they feel better — lighter, with better endurance — by eating less meat, less animal protein. The belief that an athlete (or anyone) needs lots of protein is a myth. Every protein-related health problem in medical records relates to too much protein, not too little. If you consume sufficient calories and a variety of foods, you will get plenty of protein. The world’s top endurance athletes eventually learn that a normal diet with a variety of foods — focusing on whole grains, vegetables, and fruits — gives them a winning edge in sport and life.
John Robbins, author of the classic book Diet for a New America, helped dispel the myth that athletes need meat. He describes athletes like Dave Scott, of Davis, California, who won Hawaii’s legendary Ironman Triathlon a record four times. Many consider Dave Scott the fittest man who ever lived. Scott is a vegetarian.
Sixto Linares, also a vegetarian, broke the world record for a “double Ironman” — in one day — by swimming 4.8 miles, cycling 185 miles, then running 52.4 miles. Robert Sweetgall of Newark, Delaware, the world’s premier ultra-distance walker, is another vegetarian. So is Edwin Moses, a Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year.
You might not expect to find a vegetarian in world championship bodybuilding competitions, but Andreas Cahling, 1980 Mr. International, is a vegetarian, and has been for over ten years of competing at the highest international level. Robbins cites a great many other examples of sports champions in many fields who do not eat meat.
In college, while recovering from a serious motorcycle accident, I stopped eating meat. I was the only one of my teammates who even considered such a “radical” course. My coach assured me it was just a fad; my doctor told me I needed meat to help my leg recover. But my dietary change felt so right that I trusted my instincts. A year later, as one of the strongest gymnasts in the nation, I helped lead my team to the National Collegiate Championships. Now, thirty years later, my coach tells me he’s eating less meat.
Although you may not choose a completely vegetarian diet, if you simplify your diet in the direction of fresh, natural, unprocessed foods, pay attention to your instincts, your body will become more sensitive, and you won’t need me or anyone else to tell you what you should eat. You’ll begin to want to eat just what you need, instead of needing to eat everything you want.
It isn’t easy to eat well; it isn’t always convenient. You therefore have to clearly understand how your dietary patterns affect your life. But knowledge isn’t enough, as evidenced by those of us who are in poor health from eating what we know we shouldn’t have. You can sensitize yourself by paying attention to what you put into your mouth and how you feel afterward. Then act on your understanding.
In addition to diet, we also need to balance our habits of posture, breathing, and rest if we are to achieve optimum vitality. This vitality in turn gives us the power to develop our physical talent.
The Four Ss of Physical Talent
Physical talent is composed of four primary qualities, each of which begins with the letter S: strength, suppleness, stamina, and sensitivity. When we call someone talented, we are pointing to these four key elements. Most learning blocks encountered in games, music, dance, or martial arts, are related to a deficiency in one or more of these four aspects of physical talent.
As you develop and integrate strength, suppleness, stamina, and sensitivity, you raise your potential — you become more talented. We often call talented athletes gifted, as if they were given their prowess as a birthday gift.
Although your genetic makeup does contribute toward your overall potential, preparation and work have a far greater influence on talent than genetics. At birth you have potential; what you do with it is up to you. I’ve seen many gifted athletes fall by the wayside because of lack of desire, interest, and direction. I’ve also seen athletes that few people would call gifted go on to develop high levels of talent and success; in other words, they changed themselves from slow learners to fast learners by elevating their levels of strength, suppleness, stamina, and sensitivity.
Let’s take a look at each of the four Ss to appreciate your current, and potential, levels of talent. Before you do, however, it’s essential to understand the master key that unlocks all four of these fundamental building blocks.
Relaxation: The Master Key to Physical Talent
The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.
— Bruce Lee
There’s a story about a man who continually sought more energy and light in his life. Finally he climbed a sacred mountain and cried up to the heavens, “Fill me full of light!”
A voice thundered down through the clouds, “I’m always filling you, but you keep leaking!”
One of the worst things about tension is that it leaks energy.
Relaxation, in contrast, enhances strength, suppleness, stamina, and sensitivity. By the end of this chapter, you’ll understand how and why.
Studies of efficiency in movement carried out at several universities showed that people tend to waste effort and create unnecessary muscular tension in even the simplest movements, such as lifting a fork, holding a book, sitting in a chair. Not only did the subjects use more tension than necessary, they also tensed muscles that were unrelated to the movements being made.
Now, as your body gets used to relaxing — in stillness and motion — you more easily notice tension as it begins to develop, and you have the power to release it. This represents a giant step on the path to body mind mastery.
Relaxation is the best single indicator of your well-being. Your degree of relaxation across the three centers — physical, mental, and emotional — precisely reflects your alignment with the natural laws. Physical ease is a mirror of the relationship of body to mind. When you are truly relaxed and centered, the mind comes to rest, the emotions flow clearly, and the vital body surrenders itself to nature’s flow. All feels right with the world, because all feels right with the body.
Your ability to relax reflects your willingness to trust.
— Anonymous
Most of us have carried subtle tensions for so many years that we’ve forgotten what real relaxation is. Rather than a temporary state achieved by dissipating knotted energy, it is a continual enjoyment of muscular release and high energy at the same time.
It does little good for me to advise people to relax until they know what relaxation feels like and they become aware of the degree of tension they carry.
TESTING FOR RELAXATION
Ask a friend to lift your arm as you endeavor to let it hang limp. Notice whether or not you unconsciously help your friend lift your arm, or whether your arm is totally dead weight. Do this experiment with a friend, and you’ll notice how some people, as a result of chronic, unconscious, and energy-wasting tension they carry with them all day, cannot let their arms relax, try as they might.
A relaxed arm should shake like jelly when someone takes your hand in both his or her hands and shakes vigorously. If your arm is lifted and released, it should drop to your side instantly. If you carry a lot of tension (as many older people do, having stored it over the years), the arm may even stay in place for a long moment before dropping.
If the preceding exercise helped you become aware of the chronic tension you carry, the following exercise will provide the means to release it, over time, by creating an experience of profound relaxation.
“When you cannot see what is happening, do not stare harder. Relax and look gently with your inner eye.”
— Lao Tzu
DEEP RELAXATION EXERCISE
Lie on your back on a carpet or mattress, and loosen any tight clothing. Have a friend read the following instructions to you, or else record them yourself and play them back. Once you know the steps and your body gets accustomed to this state, you can easily go through the process anytime, even in a few minutes.
Be aware of the body’s weight. Breathing slowly and naturally, surrender to gravity. Notice the floor pressing up against the body and the body pressing equally down into the floor.
Put your attention on your feet … imagine they are very heavy. Feel the skin heavy, the bones heavy … the whole body becoming heavy.
Feel the deep, profound heaviness spreading up into your lower legs and through the knees, releasing all the muscles. Feel the lower legs heavy … the skin heavy, the bones heavy … the whole body becoming heavy.
Feel the heaviness continue into the thighs and buttocks. Feel all the muscles of the thighs release and the buttocks relax, feel the skin heavy, the bones heavy … the whole body becoming heavy.
Let the pleasant heaviness sink deep into the lower back, releasing … and continue into the upper back, around and under the shoulder blades, along the spine … releasing … heavy. Let the muscles of the upper back and neck and shoulders sink into gravity’s pull … skin heavy, bones heavy … the whole body heavy.
Let go of the upper arms … the elbows and lower arms … feel the heaviness all the way to the fingertips … skin, bones … the whole body … heavy.
Feel all the muscles of the neck … front, back, and sides … release and sink to the floor … skin, bones … the whole body heavy.
Now the entire body below the neck is heavy, totally relaxed. If you feel any tension left anywhere, let it go, and become twice as heavy.
Now, as I name the areas of the face and scalp, feel them as heavy, and let them go with gravity … skin, bones … the whole body … heavy.
Feel the scalp release … all the muscles of the forehead … around the eye sockets … the cheeks, letting go … the muscles around the nose … the mouth and jaw, all releasing … the chin, and around the ears.
Now your entire body is in deep relaxation. Energies flow through the body freely, revitalizing, healing, rebalancing.
Notice your breathing. Imagine you’re floating gently, on your own warm, private ocean. On inhalation, feel yourself float slowly up, and on exhalation, float back down … feeling the well-being of total relaxation.
Imagine the blood coursing freely through the body, nourishing it. Feel the energy of the body, vibrating within the cells.
Feel the peacefulness of relaxation. Notice how calm the mind is in this moment — and how open your feelings are. The next time you experience any emotional upset, let the body relax into this pleasant state.
Imagine yourself walking, with this same feeling of release … using only the muscular effort you need, and no more. Feel the lightness and effortlessness of running … or playing your favorite sport with the same relaxed grace.
As you feel this state, know that you can return to it at will. Now begin to increase the depth of your breathing. Ending with three gigantic breaths of energy, open your eyes, and sit up. Stretch like a cat.
Consummate athletes and artists in every field have attained an ease of movement through efficient use of muscles. Dynamic relaxation is the foundation of all physical talent. Now let’s examine the four building blocks of talent, beginning with strength.
Strength
Nothing is so strong as real gentleness; nothing is so gentle as real strength.
