Accumulating the Wealth of Health
We can look at Health is a similar way as accruing a savings account. Having a growing Health Savings Account is about making regular deposits or doing things that support vitality on a short, medium and long term basis. Using the analogy of money, we could say that having a “change jar” (where we throw our spare change) is similar to making small or regular daily changes such as health eating choices or remembering to consciously breath (using the whole torso; front, back, sides) long, slow full and deep. Other variables to be aware of include getting regular proper rest, and becoming aware of eating before the blood sugar drops and returning to a more whole food diet.
Adjusting to age-appropriate physical activity is a learning process, gaining the ability to adjust oxygen levels, invigorate blood circulation and balance energy use-age takes long term attention and priority. Posture basics are another form of health standards, and learning to sit up naturally, is learned and earned when you are spending many hours in a chair (yes, slouching in very burdensome for the bodily systems). There are many slight and very do-able shifts we can make that impact our health and self care; becoming aware of the habits that “take from us” is a starting point. Willingness and sincerity are needed to make gradual alterations as we experience the very direct link that is the core of health and wellness.
When we make changes, becoming regular about them is part of the next challenge and moves our awareness into the “ inner framework” of self-managed health care. Gradual experience and the mini-changes we make along the way are the core, small hurdles teaches us to return to our adaptable nature and maintain deeper levels of knowing ourselves.
It is not easy to learn that forced change will not last and is a unnatural contrivance. The process of reaching an inner agreement is the only true solution…and this will take time it before we experience efficiency. It is the natural standards that are the basis of mind/body/spirit union.
We can allow ourselves to make slight shifts in our daily awareness & activities about health, let the natural benefits be experienced and the inclination to feel better comes without resistance or opposition. When we “react”, and use “contrive reasons for changing our lives so we can be healthy”, it does not work. Using the example of taking on a radical change in diet, we can fore-tell the coming of inner resistance and how it play out. Fortitude cannot last into medium and long term benefits as we can only fight with ourselves for so long before we have to surrender; can’t win a fight with yourself, some part of yourself HAS to lose. But let’s say you don’t “stop doing whatever it is that is deemed bad for you,” and you instead decide to be very honest with yourself about what it is that is feeling imbalanced. You can now begin to take a slow and steady approach, which may need support, revamping and course corrections along the way. This is a first step. The second step is just not to forget the first step, that’s all, just don’t forget, then continue doing the simple little things that help you, the recent changes that are very do-able. This begins the forming of a foundation, and it is important to remember that ‘Incremental amounts of effort & progress in the face of “difficult times”, is the key that separates momentum from stagnation’.
After an undetermined and fairly moderate length of time, you will have some new good “Health Saving Habits”, netting you some new levels of self-knowing and the things that you want to change will seem different, less attractive. Allowing change to occur is the lost natural art of change as it relates to daily-rhythms, not fixing or contriving change, but following the release of something that is no longer useful to you. The slow, patient way is really the fast-track to shedding what no longer makes sense or it not useful anymore. Our long term changes come with deeper levels of inner alignment and agreement; where duality becomes unity.
Michael Vasquez
Director / Transformation Arts
www.transformationarts.org
Michael Vasquez, lineage instructor, has been a practitioner of the Internal Healing Arts since the age of 16. He began his formal training with the Martial practices at the Kido Institute, Santa Fe, NM, where his training & teaching included classes in: Ji Do Kwan, Tai Chi, Yoga, Chi Gung, Soft Style Kung Fu. The natural development of the practice moved from “external” to “internal”, from martial to healing & health.
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