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Using Your Body To Strengthen Your Mind
Steven Barnes
For thousands of years, physical disciplines like yoga, Tai
Chi and Sufi Dancing have been said to increase mental and
spiritual powers. If this is true, how might one explain this,
and even better, how can we use this fact, practically, to
enhance our lives as artists, business people, parents, and
partners?
First, we have to strip away the mysticism from the activity.
Not that these activities have no esoteric aspect, but rather
that we have to approach them on the most down-to-earth level.
The higher the tree, the deeper the roots. The taller the
building, the deeper the foundations. If you want to soar,
be certain that your tether is strong. So we need to start
with a simple, physiological explanation (if possible!) and
then suggest a way that this ties in to advanced artistic
accomplishment, relationship skills, intellectual clarity,
and spiritual growth.
My own enlightenment in this regard came from studying the
work of Coach Scott Sonnon, the first American martial artist
to train in the former Soviet Union. While there, this brilliant
man met Russian sports and performance scientists who had
been studying indigenous health system in the Ural Mountains
for a century. There, they found movement and wellness concepts
equivalent to anything in China or India. They shared many
of these concepts with Sonnon, and invited him to share them
in turn with Americans. Over the years, Coach Sonnon has created
hundreds of books, videos and essays on his interpretations
of this core knowledge.
Perhaps the single most important in terms of Body-Mind is
what he calls the "Flow State Performance Spiral." In order
to relate this breakthrough thinking in such a short essay,
we'll have to condense considerably:
1) All physical technique is composed of three aspects: breathing,
movement, and structure.
2) Each of these aspects is controlled by the other two (breath
is created by movement and structure, etc.)
3) Stress "dis-integrates" this structure. In other words,
when you are under stress, the physiological signs will manifest
in your breathing rate or shallowness, your posture, your
muscle tension. This is why lie detectors work!
Before he died, Hans Selye, the creator of the "stress" concept,
said that he had misspoken himself, that it is not stress
that hurts us, it is strain. Stress is the pressure we are
under. But strain is the degree to which that stress warps
us out of true.
Stress is not the enemy. In fact, when handled healthfully,
it is the primary trigger for growth. So the key is to avoid
strain.
Let's skip around a bit to a truth about artistic and intellectual
pursuits: your ability to utilize your intelligence, education,
skills or talents will be in direct proportion to your ability
to maintain "flow" under stress. Or to put it another way,
in life, we are rewarded for how much stress we can handle
without folding. Writer's block, for instance, is nothing
but a poor reaction to performance stress.
Combining these ideas, what we have is that mental and emotional
balance under stress leads to excellence. Combine this with
the fact that learning to cope with physical stress develops
skills that are tremendously applicable to the mental arena.
The most vulnerable portion of the "Flow State" triad (breath,
movement, structure) is breathing. Proper breathing will be
degraded by stress before you can detect it in posture or
muscle tension. This is one of the reasons breath control
is addressed in most religions and spiritual disciplines,
whether this is through pranayama (yoga), exercise, hymns,
ritual prayers, dance, or sacred postures.
A good yoga teacher, for instance, will place the student
in a posture sufficiently extreme to force total concentration.
When the student learns to relax and focus, that posture becomes
relatively easy, and a more extreme posture is given. The
point is to teach the student to monitor their own internal
process. Fine martial arts or breathing meditation teachers
use similar techniques.
The student learns to recognize the early signs of strain,
and to dissipate them. NOTHING in life creates more stress
than lack of oxygen, and learning to remain calm in the midst
of oxygen debt will teach you to remain calm when the children
are screaming, when your boss is on the rampage, when someone
cuts you off on the freeway.
Or when you have a writing deadline, or when insecurity and
fear hammers at the door of your resolve.
Deliberately practicing a physical discipline to enhance this
quality of calmness and centeredness, while simultaneously
working toward goals balanced in body, mind, and spirit, exposes
you to the currents of life while helping you develop the
skills and strategies necessary to excel. This, over time,
leads to excellence, even in a purely mental arena.
There are numerous disciplines that will teach proper breathing
under stress, and this article has listed a few. If you wish
to reach your maximum potential as a mental, spiritual, and
emotional being, seek one of these techniques out, and integrate
it into your life. It is one of the best investments you could
ever make in your future.
Steven Barnes is a bestselling author and performance
coach who has lectured on storytelling and human consciousness
at UCLA, Mensa, and the Smithsonian Institute. He created
the Lifewriting high-performance system for writers and readers.
www.lifewriting.biz
and www.lifewrite.com
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
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