THE BODY: Abundant Health (Part 2)
In all of my years as a fitness instructor and
Personal Trainer, I have witnessed numerous changes, tendencies and trends,
some of them going back and forth countless times. In each workshop or course
we attend we gather different points of view, and what may be fabulous to some,
may be terrible to others. We must, therefore, use our own discerning
capacities to define how we are going to deal with all of the information we
obtain from all of the diverging trends.
The same goes for the areas of medicine and nutrition.
Some say that this is good for you, others say it is bad. Some say “don’t eat
that, it is terrible for you”, then others come and say that that is actually
the healthiest food you can ingest. Some say it is necessary to be vegetarian,
others a raw foodist, others recommend a hiper-proteic diet as the best… Fomulas
upon formulas towards the very same aim – being healthy and looking good.
Amongst all of this, what truly serves you?
It is simple. The more you love and take care of
yourself, the more aware you are of your own choices, choosing that which makes
you feel good with and within your body. This happens at all levels, be it
related to physical exercise, or nutrition, or even your healing process. If you
are in tune with your body, you feel when it is necessary to go to the doctor,
when it is necessary to resort to medication, which in turn has a much more
effective result, because you take the medication from a point of conscious
choice, respecting your body’s natural healing mechanisms, knowing that
medication serves the sole purpose of aiding your body’s natural healing
intelligence.
One point I would like to enhance is that your body
only reflects pain, discomfort or dis-ease when there is some sort of imbalance
within you. That imbalance has its root at an emotional and mental level (or
even spiritual, even though the spiritual level always has its effect on the
emotional, mental and physical levels).There are many books which you can
consult about the metaphysical nature of physical imbalances. These will help
you understand the inner cause of your discomfort. Your body communicates with
you constantly. The question is: do you listen to it? If you don’t it will
surely speak louder and louder until you listen.
Anyway, you can also live your entire lifetime without
giving your body’s warnings much heed, believing that diseases simply happen to
you and that there is nothing you can do but place yourself in the hands of
health professionals, not knowing that you are your own Health Personal
Assistant and Health professionals are nothing but a precious aid in case of
need, but all in all you are your own healer!
At the end of the chapter about “The Dynamics of Abuse in Everyday
Life”, there a few suggested books on The Metaphysics of Health. They are very
easy to consult and anyone can gain a new perspective about whatever is causing
them discomfort, and thus resolve the root cause, rather than just masking the
effects/symptoms. The body is yours, so it is no one’s fault. The cause is
always within you, which makes things much easier to balance, since they are
within your grasp.
It was with the help of this inner dive towards the
causes of my physical ailments that I eliminated some conditions usually considered
chronic such as a dysfunctional gall bladder, sinusitis, hay fever, chronic
lower back pain, constant flus, tonsillitis, pharyngitis and laryngitis, as
well as several allergies. It goes without saying that I also have the
testimonies of many other people who also eliminated diseases such as
hypertension and hypotension, asthma, hyper and hypothyroidism, digestive and
bowel ailments, fibromyalgia, both benign and malign tumors, all sorts of aches
and pains, etc, etc, etc.
The most peculiar aspect of this metaphysical concept
of health, is the fact that even seemingly accidental physical ailments derive
from something within you. For example, we break bones when at that moment
there is some aspect of inflexibility at some level in our lives. Therefore
sprains, dislocated joints, cuts, bruises, burns and other accidental ailments,
also have inner causes which you can review, gaining a conscious overview of
what your body is trying to tell you. This, in turn, provides a huge
enhancement to your healing process, leading it to be much faster and easier.
I shall now give you my own example of how my
relationship with my body has evolved, in order to better illustrate this theme
and bring it closer to every day life.
When I went into fitness it
was because I love to move and dance, love music, but maybe, above all, it was
to format my body. I suppose, looking at this more carefully, that most people
have this need to have control over their bodies, in order to conform to the
generally accepted pattern – therefore, in order to be accepted, acknowledged,
loved, appreciated, wanted, needed and so on.
Though the main excuse may
be health and general wellbeing, or even having fun and socializing, I would go
so far as to say that the main real reason is the need for acceptance, to
conform to what is expected from us, and what is said to be good for us, not
necessarily what we feel good with and about (which mostly we have no idea
about because we seldom stop to ask ourselves what it is that we actually like
and feel is good for us – in communion with our body’s needs). This of course
at a general, basic level, before we become aware of these nuances.
Well, continuing. In my
particular case, I used to be hyperactive and a workaholic! Of course now I see
I just used this so as not to stop and feel, because feeling also brought me
pain. Though at the time I didn’t realize that feeling could also bring me all
I ever needed and had dreamt of!
This is also the main
reason for hyperactivity in general. It is a constant state of not being
present, of being out of the body, out of the present moment, out of life. Which
means this is a form of self-abuse, an unloving act towards ourselves.
Having to control the
amount of calories ingested and consumed, the right shape for each part of the
body, the right heart rate, the right blood pressure, the right lung capacity,
the right aerobic endurance, the right strength, etc etc etc.These are all
forms of control which use up a huge amount of our energy, because the energy
we use is nothing more nothing less than where we focus our attention.You
direct your energy towards what you focus on and vice versa.
This is linked to the
eternal search for an utopic perfection, always trying to get further, to be
better, to look better, which in turn does not only happen in relation to the
physical body. In human form the notion of perfection is unattainable because it
is in itself a fallacy. It sustains the notion that there is something that is
perfect which we shall never achieve but keep on trying to. So the actual
concept of perfection loses its foundation totally, for all in all everything
is already perfect, when seen out of the box of so called perfection.
Anyway, back to the body. I
over-trained and achieved an almost perfect body, because it is always almost
perfect, we are never satisfied with what we have when we are in this frame of
mind. But on the inside (joints and ligaments and so on) it was slowly
deteriorating, the better I looked on the outside, the worse I felt on the
inside! What a daft game! So much so that I had a lower back pain crisis for
several months and even then I kept on overtraining and taking painkillers not
to feel the pain. There came a time when the doctor looked at an x-ray of mine
and said “your spine (discs, vertebrae) is in a state of deterioration as if
you were about 60 years old(I was only 30!), you must do something about this”.
That made me stop and look at my life and think about it. That’s when I decided
I had to change my physical activity to something much softer and drastically
reduce the amount of it as well. That’s also when I started to meditate and
search for something more than just the physical body.
Nevertheless, I was still
dissatisfied. Now my body was not the shape or weight I wanted it to be anymore,
and there was so much to plough through inside of me that it seemed impossible
that I would ever get anywhere. Little did I know there was nowhere to go!!!
That there was actually nowhere else to be than exactly where I was at that
moment. I was still going outside of me in search of my Self, so as not to be
in the body I did not accept. I did it through my various spiritual practices,
alienating myself from being here and now, always in search of something better
elsewhere in the Universe.
There was also a lot of
energy feeding going on, as I let myself be abused by others in many ways, both
at work and at home, and then of course perpetuated the cycle by doing the same
with others in my own way.
What is energy feeding, you
might ask? It is the simple act of removing energy from others, through the act
of drawing attention, of the victim and abuser game, which are in turn one and
the same thing. This game presupposes that others have something that we do not
have but that we need, which also occurs in the inverse proportion. Thus, we
require each other’s attention in the most creative ways that one could ever
imagine, always seeking acknowledgment and acceptance. In the same way that we
give others what they seem to be lacking, just to obtain their approval. So, they
get our attention and vice versa. This takes place in many different and subtle
ways. After this chapter, and as a follow up to this one, there is a short
chapter named “The Dynamics of Abuse in daily Life”, so that this theme can
become clearer, for it is of utmost importance when referring to abundance, or lack
of it.
Let’s move on…
I proceeded with my inner
search, for what I wanted to know, above all, was who I truly was!
One day I was told I had to
love myself. Of course I had already been told but there is a difference
between being told and listening and understanding, and being told and just
getting a vague notion of something. This time I had understood. This
understanding came with the Conscious Breath.
It was huge leap out of the
general concept that taking care of oneself, loving oneself is selfish but it
made a lot of sense to me. I realized how much I rejected my body and had been
doing so all my life, even when it was in “perfect” shape. There had always
been things to correct, parts I didn’t like or accept about my body.
When I began this process of
loving and accepting myself, everything changed. The way I do exercise, the way
I eat, the way I feel and the way I see myself. I have finally understood that
there is no such thing as a correct weight, a correct shape, a correct body type,
a correct size, a correct fat percentage, a correct physical condition, a
correct food…
When we start loving
ourselves the body promptly responds. Our health improves naturally, we choose
foods that feel healthy to us, and no two people are the same in this. We choose
activities that make us feel loved, cherished, well. This is true well being!
And if a person feels they are overweight, the
extra unnecessary weight just sheds off naturally and effortlessly. Because
when we truly love ourselves we do not make unloving choices so all that we do
is totally healthy and appropriate for us and us alone. Therefore, this does
not mean one will achieve the weight which is recommended in any fixed chart.
It means one will achieve the weight that feels comfortable for one’s own body,
and little does it matter whether it fits into the charts or not. We are all
unique.
We also do not allow
ourselves to be fed on, energetically speaking and we do not abuse others
either because we use our energy efficiently and we know how to produce and
multiply our energy moment to moment, with ease and grace.
Actually, excessive weight
is a form of protection from the outer world, of protection from abuse (energy
abuse), so we create a sort of shell/armour. The funny thing is that this very
same “armour” calls other people’s unsolicited attention and puts us in the
public eye, when what we really wanted to achieve was hiding from the world.
Duality is this constant tug of war between what is and what seems to be,
between what we think we want and what we get.
So even though I don’t have
six pack abs anymore I love and accept my body more now than ever before and I
don’t really care about how much I weigh or what size I wear, it doesn’t really
matter at all. What does matter is that I am truly healthy and free of pain.
And if I eventually get ill, which I hardly ever do, I know it’s time to stop
and rest and let the body take care of itself. And of course I use the
opportunity to see what lead me to that illness or pain. When I feel the body
is asking for some sort of medication to help in the healing process; I also
take heed of that appeal, keeping it as natural as possible, though. The body
has its natural processes of detoxification, be it physical, mental or
emotional toxins. Diarrhea, vomiting, flus, infections, are all natural forms
of detoxification which free us from stagnant energy and allow our bodies to
revitalize. All we have to do is accept the body’s natural wisdom and respect
it, with much gratitude. Allowing the healing process to take place, and
accepting that the body knows how to heal itself, is undoubtedly a very simple
formula towards living a healthy life.
Now I can enjoy being in
the body for the pure pleasure of working out in whichever form feels good to
me, and I can eat for the pure pleasure of Being in the body, I can hug and
kiss and dance and make love for the pure pleasure of being in the body, I can
just BE for the pure pleasure of BEing HERE, IN THE BODY!!!
I also have to mention in
this chapter about the body, that it is possible to live entirely on energy
itself, from the air, the sun, from life itself, without ingesting any food or
drink at all. There are thousands of people nowadays all over the world, who
live like this. They are the breatharians, the solarians, the aquarians or the
pranarians and what they have in common is the fact that they live their lives
free from the need to ingest food. They generate their vital energy from the
energy of nature itself – from the air, the sun, the earth, the plants, from
love.
Living without food is not
a pre requisite for enlightenment, it is simply a way of life, but a very free
one, I must say. These people are not skinny, for the most part, they have
amazing energy, they practice regular exercise, they sleep very little, because
they don’t need to. It is the combustion of food that makes us sleepy, most of
the time. They are, upfront and foremost, people who do not have a thread of
doubt as to their body’s capacity to sustain itself and they are totally free
from the belief that it is food that nourishes us, and that liquids are
indispensable to our survival. These people are not living in survival mode at
all. They have a complete reverence for life. Their surrender to their divinity
is complete as well. They are living in total trust.
It is, therefore, possible
to live without even eating or drinking. Do I mean by this, that it is possible
to eliminate hunger in the world? No.
And why not? The reason is
very simple. For us to depend entirely on “prana” or vital energy to live, we
need to be entirely aware and awake. It is necessary for one to meditate,
breathe consciously, love oneself completely, praise life absolutely, respect
the body totally, accept and trust the divinity within us and everywhere
unconditionally. If the slightest belief that it is necessary to eat in order
to survive persists, then, one will die upon stopping the ingestion of food.
The societies around the
world that suffer greater hunger and lack, live in survival mode. It would
hence be unconceivable to them, that they could survive without food. It is all
a question of awareness.
Am I saying that it is
recommendable to stop eating and drinking? Not at all. Actually, never do so
without getting very well informed about the process, and if you ever decide to
go ahead with this, never do so without being accompanied by someone who can
guide you through the process, with responsibility and awareness of its intricacies.
What I mean to point out
with all this, is that we can be as free as we choose to be! And that our body
is capable of truly amazing and miraculous feats! Trust it! Love yourself, for
you deserve all of your Love.
Coming up next:
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário