Alleviate • Rubbing – SRS

If beating is a stern father, then rubbing is the loving mother who gives us a soft hug and kiss before leaving our room. They both love us but in a different way.

To describe it in this way because as the name suggested, rubbing is the movement we do on our body, especially in those more sensitive areas, like wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, etc.

We cannot forget our joints. They connect our bones so we can leap the stairs, pass the ball. Although they’re tough, they still require our attention and love. Indeed, these joints areas play an important part on our mobility, now and more crucial in the future when we age.

*The difference between Massaging and Rubbing, for me, is that rubbing is a more gentle, less power approach, although they overlap a lot.

But sometimes rubbing isn’t enough for a larger part, so we need to knead.

**Unlike Rubbing concentrates on a smaller part, like the first two pictures have shown, kneading, is a good way to target a larger area, like a whole forearm for instance. That’s their difference in my opinion.

We don’t want that sudden-hidden-sharp-painful feeling emerges every now and then when we age, just because right now we don’t pay attention to them.

All we need to do is to rub/knead around the designated area, to feel what’s happening in there.

Have you ever wonder why some people look so young?
Rubbing is one of their secret weapons! They rub around their eyes, their head, in front of the mirror consistently, for example.

Besides rubbing and kneading though, we should touch ourselves more often. Letting our hands wandering on our skin, so we can discover more about our body ( Best to do it during shower time!), finding out where the pains are. This way, we can be well-connected with the body.

So how much power?
Soft. But you can gradually increase the power as you feel more comfortable. Let’s take a look at the power chart:

Normally, 1~4 is good enough. For the later numbers, 5~7 depends on how much your body can take and if it’s effective for yourself. Normally we’ll use tools like yoga foam roller to reach higher power so we don’t waste our energy. (For example, we lay down with the roller under us so it’ll do the job itself, with the appropriate power we use against to. This’ll be discussed in Massage article.)

When to implement?
Better in the morning or before bed. But whenever you feel the sudden urge, do it.

For how long?
1 ~ 10 mins. ( on single or multiple areas)

Tips for during it:
– Use breathing when you do deeper parts of sensitive areas. A calmer state is needed to feel better and tickle the fear in the process.

– And give a few seconds to pause after you’ve done, so your body can recoil back from “the efforts you just put in”.

– Make sure that’s the real target area. Sometimes they might be deceptive, so keep looking for the origin of the hidden pain. Then rub them.

– These methods can be accompanied by a towel, oil or other materials as long as you think is needed.

The goal? 
– To rub it till it gradually subsides the painful feeling.

– To simulate/revitalise the area to a point where it can respond to you by you feeling them. Like you sit down and want to feel about your knees, without touching it. How does it feel? That’s what I mean by feeling them. So you can constantly engage with your body.

A quick re-cap on the methods of this article:
There are rubbing, kneading and touching we’re looking at.

Before you leave…:
** Obviously if the pain level is different, which is “pain pain” rather than “nice, healing pain”, like real pain, please stop it. Any doubt, consult your doctor before taken any action. Happy rubbing :D

Alleviate • Beating – SRS

The ancient Chinese conceptualised Qi as the basic element to construct our universe and suggested it’s everywhere. They believed Qi had the essence like gas attribute, with no color, form, taste, and invisible, which could also be interpreted as energy or power.

When zooms in to living-thing, this energy will flow and circulate inside a body, to give life to a being.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) believes that Qi can be classified according to its different functions, characteristics and movements, which are –  Yuan Qi 元氣, Zong Qi 宗氣, Ying Qi 營氣and Wei Qi 衛氣.

Each class helps regulate the complex functions of a body through “five viscera and six bowels” via different pathways. When any part of a body is clogged, regardless of which organ, system, or pathway, the “Qi” is unable to flow freely.

Beating, one of the alleviate methods, acts as the external force to help regulate the Qi at certain degrees, while relieving our tightened areas from “Work”. It’s a super simple method for us who need a quick fix.

So before diving into “Beating”, let’s take a look at what “Qi” actually is.

Qi, also known as “Chi”, is vital and continuous. It keeps flowing regardless of how strong or weak. But the factors, such as environmental changes, personal emotional status, digestion, day & night cycle, and more, will have their impacts on the qi flowing.

Wait, it sounds like everything will affect or at least relating to our Qi! Yup, it all goes back to the philosophical side of Qi. As we now know there is a view that Qi is one of the fundamental substances to construct this universe, so everything within this universe is the result of qi movements and changes. So basically, we’re all connected.

This energy flowing inside our body, we need to actively regulate it from time to time through exercise, diet, and other regulating methods, to minimise/change/or adapt the impacts coming from both outside and inside of a body. Harmony, and Balance are the main goals and tenets in TCM of “Keeping the qi flow smoothly”.

Alleviate System is designed to do that.
In a more concrete sense, it means alleviating the “pains” and staying healthy.

While sicknesses won’t be healed through “alleviate system” because it’s more of an inside job in general, the system helps the participant relieving muscle pains, reducing stress, becoming more flexible, and keep us reconnecting with the body. These will contribute to preventing sicknesses creeping on our back and strengthening our bones structure, while becoming a calm, mindful individual. we live a stress-free and healthier life as a result.

So coming back to Beating. We can use either fist or hand to hit/smack our body of any part, with appropriate power. Here is an example of me using the fist:

*Notice that this method is for short, temporary relief. For long term benefits, it should be combined along with other “alleviate methods”, and proper diets, good health care schedules with consistent efforts, and so on.

So when to implement?
– Whenever you need a quick fix for tightening areas.

For how long?
– From seconds to minutes, depending on how much your body needs to go for. *You’ll naturally know the length as you progress.

Tip(s) for carrying out:
– Use your back muscles so you feel less tired.
– Sore muscles, (due to overwork on muscle trainings for instance) best not to use “beating” while appropriate massaging and stretching are recommended.

The goal:
– To release the tension, but knowing it’s just a temporary method, you need [Massage] and [Resting] to tickle designated areas.

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@This blog provides general information and discussions about health and related subjects. The information and other content provided in this blog, or in any linked materials, are not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. To learn more here.

Photo by  James Maxfield, Jason Leung on Unsplash

Work • Exercise • Moving (2) – SRS

Now that we get a hang of it, we can discuss ways to enhance the efficiency when we’re in “motion”.

1) Use the back of our muscles.

Basically, whenever we use our muscles, we think of using our back muscles to help or complete the task.

Here is the situation:

Suppose there is an apple we want to grab it from the table.

Usually:

1) See the apple on the table

2) We think: I want to grab it.

3) Grab it.

What it means by using the back muscles:

1) See the apple on the table

2) Think I want to grab it

3) Think of using the back (trapezius, scapula, back of the arm areas), feeling them, to reach out

4) Then the back of the muscles reaches out and grab the apple

CAN YOU FEEL IT? It’s weird! But Yes, it’s real. Now you’ve just unlocked another BIG part of your muscles. And the best thing is, you can exercise your back muscles without worrying if you’re doing them correctly because you’re literally using them!

It’s super simple but many of us don’t have its concept, at least not being taught at the PE lessons. Even stretching isn’t the emphasis in the classes anyway. Primarily, we focus on our front muscles to do tasks daily.

Not training/exercising and alleviating our back muscles properly, it leads complication in the future. The most obvious case is “back inflexibility“. It’s the origin of back pains.

What we see from this picture, you might think, wouldn’t it be the person who relies on too much of his back muscles, so the “bad” posture occurred?

Well, my guess is this, the person doesn’t know how to use his back muscles and has been relying on his front muscles to do tasks. If someone doesn’t know how to feel and train the back muscles, who can’t train the front muscles well too.

Without proper, longer, actual exercising to balance the muscles in proportion, the back muscles can become a big chunk of something. Regarding this picture, it’s painful for this man to do more dynamic movements that out of his boundary, like doing pull ups 10 times for instance.

However, there are more complications/scenarios relating to why bad back posture occurred. Therefore, we don’t need to waste time thinking of it, we just aim for getting fit, being healthy, loving what we do, everything else will be fine.

If you’re in the “back inflexibility” stage, it’s difficult for you to feel the back muscles as it’s too stiff and rigid. The best advice is to alleviate them first, by massaging for example.

Now we have this “using the back of our muscles” concept, we can apply it to walking. Thinking of using our back pelvis while we walk. How does it feel? Keep on experimenting, we want this concept to become the second nature to us. So when we do exercises next time, we are very competent and improved.

2) Using our voice

A lot of times, we would just do things. Focusing on the things, and we stay quiet. But to improve ourselves faster, especially on our own, it’s helpful to use our voice as the guide from time to time.

It might sound weird at first – talking to myself? Cj are you crazy? – Please bear with me, speaking to ourselves helps us break deadlocks and generate more ideas. Solutions will surface.

 – I: Using Our Voice Is About Being Conscious 

Our voice is acting a second gateway after the initial decision or idea has been made inside our brain.

It might be good you think, with a brilliant idea you just thought of. But when you say it out loud, your voice may raise a different opinion giving you another perspective that, you’ll re-think the idea again. This is what I called,” the second gateway guardian”.

It’s especially important when we get stuck at what to improve. Talk to ourselves this:

• Do I need to exercise or improve this part? What for?

Simple questions to ask ourselves out loud help us being conscious and think deeper during the session.

 – II: Using Our Voice Helps Us Stay Focused

Sometimes we might just lose track of what we doing. Maybe it has been doing the same thing for too long in a session for example, or maybe we’re just numb for what we do. Especially when we feel a little tired during exercising. When we feel losing track of the things we doing, we use our voice to take us back.

Talk to ourselves all of sudden, like, ” Oh, are you tired now? Do you need a rest? Some water perhaps?” No need to wait for the mental energy finally decides something for us, we go around this process by talking to ourselves. Our brain will adapt. Sometimes I like to think my voice is my coach.

3)  Speed control

In the previous article, I talked about stability and balance are greater than speed. In this article, speed is what we focus on. We need to feel and know the fastest and slowest speed.

Knowing the speed limit of ourselves, we can set up plan and target on what to improve. For instance, if taking slow is hard for us during training, then we need to improve more of our endurance. Notice that, being fast or slow in speed changing, does not mean to lose our form. Our form should be maintained throughout any situation, which therefore it comes back to stability and balance.

And if we haven’t developed our form yet, don’t do speed. Just focus on developing a good, solid form first.

Testing and re-testing our speed from time to time will help us stay on track of what we doing. Regular exercise can improve to a professional level if we can gain speed control and be passionate about training, about self-improvement.

 

 

 

 

*I’d like to shoutout to my crewmate, Change, who shared this wonderful “Using The Back Muscles” concept to me in the first place.

Photo by Richard R. Schünemann on Unsplash

Work • Exercise • Moving (1) – SRS

If moving is the essential rhythm for humans to dance a song, exercising is different instruments that add on to make the song great.

Exercise is a way to allow our body to mobilise certain movements that we regularly won’t do. For example, would you suddenly do a handstand out of the blue just for the sake of it?

The benefits are varied and rewarding with exercising, such as reducing the risk of heart diseases, managing blood sugar and insulin levels, improving our moods.. just to name a few.

With two types of exercising – “individual exercise” and “ group exercise”, this article will center on “individual exercise”.

To maximise the impact on each training session, while avoiding getting any injury, there is a solid three phases we’ll look into, and stick with them. Sometimes, good old fashion ways are safer for us to go on much longer.

This way, we don’t need to think about how to have a good training session, but rather, focusing on how to improve the overall within the hours of training each time.

No matter how short a session is, the frame shall remain to avoid injury.

The short explanation of each phase:

1) • Warm-Up • Stretch • Reconnect
Warming up: Our body has to be warm enough for us before doing more of consecutive dynamic movements, to avoid any unfortunate injury.

For me, I usually play music when I warm up, so I can move with the rhythm slightly back and forth. First, it doesn’t get bored easily while warming up, and second, I can get into the flow in dancing.

Well, if you’re not a dancer, no worries! Suppose there is no music, then repeat certain movements LIGHTLY, and combining with stretching for several minutes to allow the body to be ready.

To Reconnect, not only to your body but also the surrounding. Imagine you’re competing at Olympics. Unfamiliar with the place when there is time, it’ll be a shortcoming for you in the game even if you’re a top-notch athlete. At ease with a calmer mind needs a clear map to become.

2) • Getting Into, Keeping It Up
Getting Into: After warming up, we will be focusing on the spot and completely ignore anything outside of the place, like our job, relationship, and anything else. It’s more of mental training and needless to say, all the top athletes are having the same mentality. They just love being in the moments.

Keeping It Up, is a more of an abstract concept, so I use my dancing training to describe it, hope you can understand. After warming up, I’ll keep a speed of energy throughout the training session, no matter how slow. So even when I take a break zipping some water, I’m still engaging.

To get to more technical, I use music as a frame, so the speed of my whole can be changed within. No matter how slow or fast, I’m in control of my speed, adjusting it whenever however I want. The feeling, is like the energy is persevered and they’re always ready for me to go on more. If you know what a Qi is, I’m fully aware of my Qi and engaging with it, in the sport mode.

Other than the abstract sense, Let’s take a look at something more concrete and inspiring. During sporting, we continue with the cells’ production, of which, they can only specifically activate through the sports training. To mention our cells because when in doubt, we can use active breathing to slow down and keep our head clear. We all have “back-ups” who are fighting their lives for us too! :D

Stable and Balance > Speed is a sub-category of Keeping It Up. Indeed, stability and balance in our exercising are far more important than speed, getting the job done.

Frankly, we want to enjoy the process, not rushing to the result. Many have failed to realise this simple concept, ( I was once fallen into this speed > balance trap too). If the time limit is not restricted, using lightning speed to complete all the tasks we set out to, our body just doesn’t have enough time to learn what we just did.

An example will be the same as our body needs time to digest the food we consume. But unlike digesting food, our body learns much faster from physical training, with the placeholders like ‘muscle memory’ or ‘ movement thinking’.

Stability means to keep a speed in the background, the same with the “Keeping It Up” concept. And feeling the balance will train our brain and muscles to achieve the best improvements, in which, they’ll reflect onto our movements respectively.

3) • Cooling Down (with breathing technique)

Now we just have a nice, sweaty training, and it’s time to cool off.

Actively breathe in and out will help us pause, slow down, and the ability to think clearly. As soon as we remember our breathing, we come back to our inner center. We actively step back and oversee the whole situation again. That’s very helpful when in competition.

The mindset for cooling down:
There will always be some areas that need to improve, but remember we need balance. There is no point overdoing something for one session only ( Unless you only live till that midnight!).

We all like to push over some limits but stop is stop. Tomorrow is another day. DO our best, and listen to the endurance of our body, how much we can take. We go hard and play smart. Exercise is good, but rest-well is also important. Less mindless thinking helps.

Doing it alone, we can reflect and concentrate more of course. I like practicing alone honestly. However, combining self-training and group training from time to time is the best way for the improvement of one subject because, without other examples or differences from our own, we might lose track of it.

Bottom line is, our body needs to be always ready for any changes and there will always be room for improvement and learning by an exchange.

 

 

Photos by Chuttersnap, Roman Samborskyi, Alora Griffiths, and Michael Shannon from StockSnap, Istock, Unsplash.

Work • Regular Work – SRS

This article is to identify what categories as Regular Work and how we should be aware of them to adjust our health planning.

24/7, 365 our body is functioning. We move all the time. Our best friend, heart, is the best runner in the game. Through moving, we live, create, learn, and revitalise. Something we have been designed to, and we’ll keep it that way. A temporal energy generator and carrier if you will.

Regular Work refers to our daily basis that, anything we don’t need to sweat but using our energy actively working on something.

For example, we sit in an office, working. We commute from one place to another. We chat with our friends. We take strolls. We wait for the street light to change. While we’re being the executive of our daily routines, our internal bodies, among with trillions of cells, are working actively to keep us in check.

Besides physical, internal, and external dealings, our mental – active thinking – is categorised to Regular Work too.

Notice that our bodies are a huge mechanism that it only does what it says. When something is missing, they refill. When something is too much, they use or take them away, simple as that. It’s our thoughts and actions that affect these systems doing. Here is an example:

Many are trapped by “eating” as rewards.

We’ve all been there and it’s totally understandable.

There is nothing wrong with that since we break down the carbohydrate to organic compounds such as glucose for energy use biologically speaking. After an intense working of mental problems, we tend to consume “food”, and some of them might contain lots of sugar, as rewards. Though there are lots of foods that contain more sugar than we realise. 

Why this matter? Because our bodies only need so much for a day before passing an excessive amount. We need other nutrients too!

Although sugar is part of the essential components to us, without some proper ways to distribute the extra basic organic compounds of sweetness, they will find their resting place within our bodies.

There are lots of different scenarios, and this is just one of them why some of us gain weights after a while. So if somebody who isn’t active in doing exercise already, then they need more mental energy to re-wire the neurons in constructing exercise paths.

However, doing exercise does not necessarily equal to reducing blood sugar level magically.

To understand it more thoroughly, our stomach digests the food by mixing with fluids (acids and enzymes). During the process, the carbohydrate (sugars and starches) in the food breaks down into another type of sugar, called glucose.

Our cells need glucose along with amino acids (the building blocks of protein) and fats for energy. It’s the main energy source for our bodies.

Both intestines absorb the glucose and then release it into the bloodstream. Once in it, glucose can be used immediately for energy or stored in our bodies for later use. But here is what gets interesting. Our bodies need insulin ( a hormone produced in the pancreas) to use or store glucose for energy. Without insulin, glucose will stay in the bloodstream, keeping blood sugar levels high.

In type 1 diabetes, the body doesn’t have enough insulin. The immune system attacks and destroys cells of the pancreas, where insulin is made.

In type 2 diabetes, the cells don’t respond to insulin like they should. So the pancreas makes more and more insulin to move glucose into cells. Eventually, the pancreas is damaged and can’t make enough insulin to meet the body’s needs.

Phew, there are quite a few words to visualise there. But now we understand why we need sugar and how sugar is being used, we can then move on to why it related to exercise.

Exercise helps increase insulin sensitivity, so our muscle cells are better able to use any available insulin to take up glucose during and after activity.

When our muscle cells contract during activity, other cells can take up glucose and use it for energy whether insulin is available or not. It’s like a door we open by doing exercise. Of course, the actual effect depends on the duration of physical activity, body condition, and so on. Balancing the blood sugar level is crucial in this aspect.

With that being said, some people don’t do exercise often but they’re still healthy. It’s due to the good balance of insulin and other regulating factors we haven’t discussed. Nevertheless, exercises have astronomical benefits that everybody knows!

To mention sugar, mental energy used, and how our bodies work, because when we look back to our regular work schedule, our lifestyle, we can now weed out some of the bad habits or unnecessary activities.

Living a simple life would be ideal. This way, we can avoid sickness or hidden problems inside us years down the road.

Everything should be in one’s moderation simply put.

We can do whatever, however long with anything. But if we feel that things are getting out of control, it’s better to stop and rethink a little.

Sometimes, I like to think of our body is like a highly complex functioning machine that even a step we take for standing up from a chair, our body is operating busily with many internal systems to make it work. But we don’t realise. We just eat that ice-cream pancake, sitting under the shaded umbrella on the side of the road, chilling noisily with friends. A big pair of sunglasses is hanging up against the sunny afternoon.

 

 

 

Photo by Lukáš Rychvalský from StockSnap
Photo by Burst from StockSnap
Photo by Natasha Connell on Unsplash

Self – Regulating System

 

Our delicate body constructed by trillions of mini networks working tirelessly to keep us functioning. In our sleep, the tissues will grow and repair. So if we merely treat our body as a container that helps us move around and complete tasks, we undermine what it is capable of.

A lot of times though, we don’t need to get deep about every single term of which amino acid is doing. We simply trust them. But we do need a system in place, for us to visualise and redirect our energy, so the internal mechanisms can regulate better and take us to a healthier path.

Self-Regulating System designs to sustain, maintain, and improve one’s health with easy-to-understand concepts. It is more of a visualisation for you to incorporate and tune your schedules to a healthful path.

So let’s begin. This system consists of a cycle with three categories as we can see from the opening picture. We can loop within the cycle because our health path is that simple.

Here is the mindmap style of SRS in details:

Work
There are two main categories in the Work section.

We’ll explore and identify their aspects with suggestions, leaving the readers to come up with better planning for themselves to achieve a better health lifestyle.

Alleviate
This part of the system aims to relieve our pains from the work category. There are 7 ways to do it.

Seeing from the words above, they’re quite self-explanatory. I’ll get into details with each of them in the coming articles. These methods will help us to relieve the tight muscles, back pains, and more! Providing a way to target the sensitive areas like knees and elbow joints, the alleviate path is good for us to reconnect our body in a softer, relaxed way after hours of “working”. A perfect cycle for self-care.

Heal
First of all, I’m not a certified doctor. I only share what works for me and hopefully, it can help the communities too. If you need professional medical advice, please consult your doctor!

Under this section, I’ll talk about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Ear Acupuncture. They are more of a natural approach to healing in my opinion.

The good thing about TCM and Ear Acupuncture is that we don’t have to be sick to access them. Regular Ear Acupuncture helps inner circulation flow better. This section’s writings will offer an insight into the TCM system.

What a bless to live in this technological era we can access to different knowledge to gain wider understandings. We can always see for ourselves to decide what’s best for us.

And that’s it. A sustainable system here for us to keep fit and stay healthy. But the same as everything else, it requires our energy to make it happen, which is why redistributing the energy constantly is important.

*This introductory article on SRS is a part of the ongoing series and will be completed the publication within 2 months. So stay tuned for discovering.

Do you have your own system in place? What is your system like? Let me know in the comments! Thanks for reading.

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This is a follow-up article in which I promised to share this system. Sorry for the LONG wait (nearly a year lol!), and thank you for your patient!! I have been focusing on writing the mental side of health as I thought they needed to discuss regarding the current ongoing social issues.

2020 has all been crazy and what a bumpy road we have been riding on. Now I have an urge to get this system out to share for the hope that more people can get better health. We can all be healed and stay healthy regardless of what that is.

A little backstory if you like to know how I developed this system:

This system I developed when I had eczema a few years back. It was awful and it grew on me every inch of my skin, almost literally! Very itchy and the yellow fluid kept on bleeding out from the injured areas.

After months of healing through TCM with various methods, I came back from hell. Since then, I had to focus on self-healing part and not letting the sickness to make any come back. So this SR System came to life when I tried to record and organise the ways I used my body as well as how I went on about dealing with the usual daily basis between maintaining health.

As this system has been helping me since then, I want you to get the benefits too, and may you find wellness within.

 

*Special thanks to Jady, who is an experienced excellent TCM doctor helped me through some darkest times.

Photo by Foodie Girl from StockSnap

Positive Outcome

It almost doesn’t need the energy to think a negative result;
“Oh, it’s not gonna work.”
“Forget about it.”
“This is going nowhere.” 
“I don’t think I can.”
“I should just give it up because it’s not gonna happen!”

Pause for a minute and think how often you’ve thought the result is gonna be bad so you either don’t take the action or you go ahead and in the end the result is, indeed, bad.

Without expectation in something is a good thing, though if you wish for something, wouldn’t you want the result to be good rather than bad?

While there are times you will give up something for the better, they, by no means, deter you to think negatively. It takes an effort, both positive belief, and right action to achieve a positive outcome.

If you believe the outcome is gonna be positive, there is already fifty percent of the outcome moving towards the way you want it to be. The optimistic belief has been used by successful people since the dawn of the human race. Take the recent figure, Bill Gates is a classic example of having a positive belief in everything he does.

The preparation, the networking, the skill you have and such are the variables on the other side of the belief. But these are mechanical. Everyone can learn a skill, does a well-prep, or expand their social circle, though the mindset is what matters the most because it will shape your attitude, vision, and ability towards the things you do.

There will be doubts. A lot of doubts along the way to stop you from listening to the inner voice tells you what are the right things to do. The positive outcome concept is positive thinking a step further. Meaning that you’re not only to think positively, but you’re in the action taking progress, focusing and believing in your vision.

Imagining you’ve dressed up, before entering to that door, for a deal you’ve poured months of efforts in. Upon to that crucial moment, you doubt before you twist open that door, a tiny but negative thought – I don’t think I can make it – the chances are, you don’t have enough confidence for yourself and it will lead you to get hold of any negative impact you might receive during the session and it will enlarge it by your doubting thought, so the result turns out might not be good for you as you walk out that door.

Let’s rewind. Before you twist the door open, you take a deep breath and say to yourself – I can make it. It’s gonna be good. – Your body and mind will adapt your thoughts and as you go along the session, whatever the negative impact you might receive you take it as a grain of salt. Because now you’re focusing on the positive outcome, your energy isn’t focusing on the negative impact. So the result will follow upon your thinking and your state of being.

In fact, if you just look around the world right now, our belief is so powerful that it makes everything you see possible. Never underestimate yourself.

This concept isn’t limited to decision making, nevertheless.

Any disease, infection, or cancer can be healed by using a positive outcome concept in one’s life.

First of all, there is a fine line between self-created and get affected. Both are unfortunate, whilst the positive outcome concept can help them to get the hard time passes, being able to identify the cause will help to shorten the time of healing. Take disease and infection for example, as Covid-19 is spreading across the world, there are people, unfortunately, get transmitted, there are others self-created a highly similar illness on their own through prolonged problems they have been having.

While the whole situation can be explained through the vast knowledge of Buddhism, it may be too much to digest for now.

Down to the fundamental level, as we all familiarise the law of attraction concept, the fear of something is the invitation to the fear of the thing you fear for. Some people are too afraid of something, like wondering if they would catch a disease or years down the road would they get any cancer. Their doubts and worries will keep on creating imagery inside their head, like a bad loop they aren’t aware of, and so their bodies finally respond.

Your invitation send out in various forms depending on your state of being. Some people might be lonely and want to get the attention of their family or friends, some people might have guilt over their bad habits ( ex. smoking, drinking ) and want a restart, some others might want to end this life. These sorts of thought, the negative ones, will send out to the universe and somehow it will respond in a way you never thought of. You might not aim to have a disease, but it will take disease to complete your wish. The bottom line is this, you don’t necessarily, explicitly ask for the illness to come to your body, they will look for the invitation of sorts. Therefore, any prevention measure you feel like taking it to fortify your castle, do it.

Many of the viruses and bacteria are moderate or even non-violent. But the invitation will render a living opportunity for them in this physical realm, so they take the chance. Consequently, when they live in one’s body, the intensity of growth and the energy of the cause itself are truly depending upon the host’s thinking and belief.

The positive outcome belief, with natural healing methods and the right medicines, can cure any sickness as we all have this healthy self-regulating system. The positive outcome of thinking is part of the system. You don’t need to lie to yourself you’re happy anymore, here is the reason, because now you know living healthily is already a true blessing in this life.

The positive outcome is a concept for you to achieve abundance in all aspects of your life. This game of life is very easy and simple to crack, although it takes a lifetime to play.

 

 

 

Pictures by Matthew Brodeur, Marcos Paulo Prado, Robert V. Ruggiero from Unsplash

Stretch it up!

There are many poses with different variations for you to choose from. Sometimes we might get confused by the overwhelming selection. Therefore, before stretching we need to develop our stretching system. Because everybody has their own needs and conditions, I’m using body parts as the foundation layout so you can develop upon according to your lifestyle.

Using the body parts as the segment, we will always pay attention to our body as it’s how we access to the system, and in return, it will tell us where we need to train and areas to release the persistent pains, and being able to quickly adapt the changes from our work, body, and time conditions.

Before we dive into the case study, there are three types of connective tissues inside of our body that worth to mention. They are muscles, tendons, and ligaments. These soft tissues are basically responsible for body movements.

Muscles, as we’re all familiar, are specialised tissue for contraction and relaxation in a simple sense.

Tendons are the tough, white, connective tissue that attaches muscles to bone. Although they cannot contract themselves, they’re strong and stiff, with the remarkable ability to store and release energy for your force production.

So when you move your bone, you contract your muscles, but it’s not your muscles pull on the bone, is your tendon. All the force goes through the tendon, which is why they have to be incredibly strong.

Ligaments are connective bone-to-bone tissue, some are white, sturdy and inelastic, others are yellow and elastic. They serve to support the internal organs and hold the bone together. Their primary goal is to stabilise.

Now, exercise and activity can strengthen muscles, tendons, bones, and ligaments through a process known as remodeling – the breakdown and growth of new tissue. But when tissue breaks down faster than it can build, injuries occur.

So where the pains are?

For people who work in retail or hospitality, standing is a must-do bodywork. Some workers might need to stand for hours before they could get some rest. The resting is a temporarily pause but lacking enough time for the body to recover. So, in the long run, the frequently used muscles will tense to almost rigid. Specifically, we’re looking at the lower back, thigh, calf and the rest of the leg. Too dense that the tendons would overwork, with no proper relaxation and allowing time for recovering, the mobility in each part of their muscles will be limited by discomfort. This is how an inflexible body affects a person.

Another situation is people who are working in an IT, finance environment, the office will be their workspace. Sitting on a chair and maintaining a few used-to postures throughout the day, so when they get home the tensity of their muscles start kicking in like a debt bill but they’re too tired to do anything. Normal resting does not have enough time to fix the cause. they’ll need extra effort to ease the pain. The common muscle problems are shoulder, elbow, wrist, and the whole back.

The least example is farming and fishery. Although the outdoor environment is pleasant, workers need to bend a lot in between their tasks. Like checking the soil or utilising the equipment, they don’t realise the strain on muscles will steadily creep on their back if they don’t enact sooner. The familiar body problems are the lower back pain, and, not being able to stand straight properly.

The problems we have mentioned above are commonly known as overuse injuries. Regardless of how simple some postures are, combining with enough intensity, duration, and frequency, they can make some serious damages to the tissue.

Obviously, every job has its advantages and disadvantages. This article is to bring awareness of the cause rather than scaring you away from not doing anything. As we can identify which postures doing are hurting us, we can find the solution.

To prevent injury occurs in the first place we need to keep four tips as a reminder in the stretching system:
– Rest when you feel pain or overly sore
– massage tightens areas to release tension
– Gently stretch
– Proper rest

If it’s seriously injured, I suggest you seek professional help. Although we might have a common sense of what the normal procedure or treatments are, it’s always better to have someone’s else opinion on the problem that you’re encountering.

This stretching system can be formed only we understand that Massage takes away fifty percent of its own. Like the Tao symbol, only stretching as one element isn’t enough to sustain the system itself. Massage is the relaxation part of the stretching system, which I’ll cover in the next coming articles.

Now we get to the fun part of creating a system for our body health! Grab a pen or computer, we gonna go for a little mental processing!

There are four steps involved.
discover the problem
Find the solution
Set goal
And create a realistic timeline for our expectation, I’ll provide examples.

Ask questions:
What problems I have right now?

Example:

What poses can relieve pain?

Example:

(If you’re unsure about which poses will help, don’t worry. I’ll cover them soon.)

For the Goal setting part:
1)What benefits will you get by reaching a goal?
2)What drawbacks will you get by not reaching a goal?
3)What efforts will you make to achieve your goal?
4)How will you know you’ve achieved your goal?
5)What first steps will you do to achieve your goal?

Example:

Realistic timeline ( for visualisation)
In 3 months
In 6 months
In 1 year
and so on..

Example:

By having a clear, structural system for yourself, it is an assertive way you’ll make a strong commitment to and stay within. I hope this article helps you develop a stretching habit and love stretching as much as I do.

I can do any exercise!

People avoid doing exercises because it takes a lot of time and physical efforts. The statement is true, however, if you know how to use mental effort to reduce the height of the mountain, you will climb to the top soon enough.

To reduce the height means scaling down to the acceptable amount of work you can take once at a time. To climb a 16 metres high wall indoor, you would guess how to reach the ring.

This is where the progression stage comes in. As easy as it sounds, you break down the task to digestible amounts, be comfortable with each stage before moving onto the next phase. Remember, the wall will always be there, or you can find another wall to climb, therefore, there is no need to rush the process. The goal is to get to the top. Speed is another matter.

For people who have suffered injuries, examine your state of being when picking up a sport. Take 0 to 10 as an estimation of comfort, if anything below 6 I would suggest you take it easy for now. Though it doesn’t mean giving up entirely. Getting back to the game slowly and keep on picturizing yourself doing the sport, so your body will heal faster according to your mental anticipation. Don’t loosen up the fire.

Somehow the fear of using your body might be unassailable, you can start doing stretching to reconnect your body as an alternate approach. Try and do yoga. The meditation and movements of stretching will certainly help you overcome some of the hurdles. At least it worked for me.

Be rational about your injury, no need to add extra emotion on the bruises, like a disappointment. Injury is a fact, disappointment is the feeling you created to express your state of feeling. It does no good in healing at all.

Okay, so how to make exercising easier and attainable?

First, we need to set the right mindset, then we will be practical.

Three mindsets you need before going to the progression stage.

– Don’t get too serious, relax!
Ask any top athletes, they will tell you the same thing, relax. Remember that you do it because it’s fun.

Being serious is just a mode, relaxation should enact in your mind and body whenever you do the sport. One thing to test the relaxed state of you is that can you smile on the spot? When you get too serious, your mind will likely narrow to certain parts for your execution. While it helps in some ways, It usually skips the flexibility in thinking. Especially when you’re feeling discouraged! Don’t fall into this trap.

Please kindly tells yourself that it’s okay, it’s just a game. If there is winning or losing, doesn’t matter! As long as you’ve given out 100%, try the best you can to achieve the end goal, everything else is secondary. It’s all about having fun in the process.

– Imagine the fun, joyful outcome, rather than bitter ones.
It’s almost too easy for all of us to imagine something bad as the end of the result. But it takes effort and faith to imagine a good one. Confucius says – he who says he can, and he who says he can’t, are both usually right. Isn’t true?

The outcome partly depends on your thinking towards. Remember the world is sharped by your imagination and perspective? If you think the class will be boring before going there, having unsatisfactory images in your mind, the class will very likely to be as boring as hearing a long dull speech. We all have been there.

If you can think a joyful outcome, you’ll likely to end one. You would then love to go back again. Why only thinking about the negative ones when you can think better?

To subconsciously motivate yourself to achieve something, you need to imagine the positive outcome. Not even for tuning your brain thinking better, but also you love a good, happy experience rather than going to the gym, having an ‘another day, another set’ thinking.

– Understand that you control the speed, Always
Many of us thought that increasing speed will help the learning process better. Like, the faster you read, the better you will get, right? It may work for some people, but not for others.

In actuality, speed and learning are two separate matters. Take rock climbing as an example, how fast you reach to the top is one goal, how can you reach to the top is another goal. Once you’re able to travel comfortably, the speed will increase itself because the patterns you created in climbing its wall are thickened every time inside your brain and muscles.

The Progression Stage

Anything you can accomplish if you can visualise them in the progression stage.

I’ll be using rock climbing, assuming everybody has done it, as an example for you to get a better idea of how to go through the progression stage. Though you can apply this system in any other sport.

One thing keeps in mind that all systems are pointless if you don’t put into work. When you start the workout, remember this, less talking, more doing.

1) Define Your goal, Set Smaller Targets Under It.
It can be as big as Everest mountain, but you need to be very practical and persistent. The formula to the achievement is the same and the time limit on the project is entirely up to you.

Rock climbing for instance:

The goal: A 17 metre wall.

Set smaller target 1, smaller target 2, smaller target 3 and so on under it. The targets are changeable as you progress. I have attached two examples in a document for your reference. Besides exercising, there is much more going on in life, like work, gathering, family union, etc. The list goes on. So be flexible but determined on your fitness evaluation.

2) Learn The Knowledge Of Its Field
For example, in climbing, you would need to know which parts of your muscles are doing the work.
Get a blank paper.
Take guesses.
Then check your guesses.
Correction.

You have just learnt groups of muscles that will be carrying out for the task so you are very certain what to train. Easy.
Make it fun, so you will continue to improve your climbing knowledge, not only physically but mentally. Also, consult the experienced or professionals to gain their perspective in climbing and technical knowledge. Making friends with common interests, why not?

3) Stretching
this is so important I have to make a stage for it. The progression stage is the stages that you keep on going back and forth. It’s not finishing the first stage then moving onto the second, forgetting about the first one. First, second, third are the orders, but these stages should be the combination of all time when your body can unlock them.

Going back to stretching, if you’re not flexible, like rising your arms straight up to the ceiling is strenuous enough, needless to say, you have to re-take baby steps. The range of your locomotion in stretching is the range of your mobility in action. Therefore, stretching is essential in doing any sport.

4) Learn The Poses And Hold
You want to maximise the effectiveness of climbing with less energy used because you’re focusing on quality instead of quantity. Are you flexible enough to step one foot on one side and the other on another side? Do you have the inner strength to pull yourself up? Are you able to hold on those crazy small rocks and still have the power to go higher?

All Actions base on poses. Knowing what kind of poses your body will likely be doing, hold them to train your inner strengths, like doing yoga poses. Remember breathing. It will help you stay focus.

You should be very comfortable with the poses you need, so you can work on the climb motions. ( You can certainly do both, this way, you’ll train faster and your body will adapt the power of resistance better. But be realistic about your self-limit.) Remember, resting is as important as exercising.

5) Track Your Progress
This is something I wish I’d known earlier. Tracking your progress not only providing an absolute clear visualisation, but also allowing you to adjust the smaller targets anytime to achieve the bigger goal. Grab a piece of paper, or a tracking app if you like, draw out a few lines and lists, giving the overall percentage of your current process.

You don’t need to be so precise, as I know some people do. I usually have a rough draft so I know how far away I’m from the finish point. No need to stress over the progress if you can’t meet the target. Remember we talked about flexibility? As long as you’re true to yourself, missing a few targets it’s fine because you know you’ll get back to them. Sometimes it’s okay to pause, to wait, to let your body adapt.

6) Embrace The Correction Process
Don’t treat it as a ‘Damn it, I have to do it again.’ thing. The correction process is the game-changing tool in sport, basically in anything. Try and film your actions, to see what you can improve. Filming yourself while doing the task is like having a mirror for your correction. Don’t be embarrassed about it, nobody will see those clips but you, expect you share. But pretend that someone else is watching, so you’ll be pushing yourself, trying to give 100% effort.

Alternatively, find friends or experts for their advice on improvement. When you’re the one who is doing, you will always miss out something in the process because it’s the first point of view nature. Having others to watch on the side and listen to their suggestions afterward might help you improve faster. But be aware of good and bad advice. Good advice you note them afterward and put them into practice next time. Bad advice you can discard them after showing the appreciation to the person of their time watching.

If you never correct yourself from doing the incorrect forms or techniques, you either end up getting an injury or not being able to advance the next level.

Combining these six methods, you will get in good forms, correct techniques in climbing. Frankly, the correct form and technique are what you need in doing a sport, so you don’t get injured. Keep on practicing, you will be able to hit the ring of 17 M wall in no time.

After achieving it, then what?

Reward yourself! Then set another target and encourage others to do exercise. It is a memorable journey worth to spread. Share the experience with others so you might spark up their interest in exercising. They might not be able to get your enthusiasm right away, but you will inspire them into sporting. And one day, who knows? they might come back and say thank you, that you open their fitness door.

Do you like this article? I would love to hear about your fitness milestone and goal! I’ll go deeper about stretching and a few health areas in the future. Share this article if you like, and don’t forget to subscribe for more health and fitness sharing. Thank you for reading!

Images by Free-Photos, OpenClipart-Vectors, Michal Jarmoluk, 7163893, Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

Get better health, Now!

Many of us are too busy running the windmill, neglecting to hear what our body need. Some know about the importance of doing exercises, but they think they would pick it up later on when they have more leisure time. Though the right timing will never come until they decide it is. Others think that body resting is what they truly need after a week of demanded workloads. While body resting is essential, the appropriate amount of exercises is also necessary.

Work balancing is another topic, some want to get back to the athlete routines but the previous injuries still haunting them. Therefore, before we get to the benefits of doing exercises, we need to identify all the old injuries and work on them.

Take myself for instance, I have a bone sticking out of my shoulder from doing a breakdancing move. My whole body was in the air for a moment as I was throwing myself to the ground from handstand position. It was too low, so my left shoulder couldn’t pass the ground, it hit through. My shoulder bone moved upward for about 2cm. I was afraid and naive enough to not visit any doctor, thinking everything would be fine. For a month, I couldn’t raise my left arm even to the chest level.

It took me years to overcome the fear and get back to physical training.

If you have any old injury, you have to overcome them by doing physical therapy before going on normal training. You just have to break the fear, get your life back altogether. You can do it. There is no other way around, you either do it or continue living your life like this for the rest of your journey. Don’t worry, helps will always around the corner for you.

I’d suggest you see professionals for their proper advice. If you don’t have money, (like I was), then check out these videos and do them at home. Select the body parts that you’d like to work on from the channel, then spend times on those steps slowly and attentively. The most important thing about physical therapy is that it’s not about the quantity you do, but the process that allows you to feel your muscles, to regain control of your body.

With that out of the way, we can talk about the benefits of doing exercises. Although there are many, I would pick a few.

Doing exercise is a way to redistribute energy from mental to physical. Thinking too much, your clouding bubble giant head is miserable for the invisible handcuffs. Indeed, we tend to think a lot, fantasising the ideal body without actually thinking the in-between, the steps that advance you to that end. Doing exercise is a way for you to understand the difference between thinking and actually doing the task. You picture yourself running for an hour and run for an hour is two different things. You’d need to put on those running shoes, stretching the muscles, waltzing to the run track, then run for the time you set out to.

Another great point is that it will always fit in your schedule. Contrary to many saying – ‘I don’t have time to do that.’ When you develop a good habit of exercising, like cycling for example, you’ll make time for cycling session, no matter how little time you have. Skipping a week or two your body will upset about it as you start to feel uncomfortable. As the workout habit builds up, you’ll be more energetic due to the healthier body regulation. Unnecessary items in your monthly schedule will replace by training because you don’t want to waste the efforts you’ve put in and restart from zero.

Exercise is also a way for you to listen to your body. The only and practical way to hear your body thoughts, feelings, is by working with it. Take swimming, for instance, you’d never know the swimming motion if you never swim, like the water weave pressurizing you as you determined to make to the other side. Once you swim, your body will try to adapt to the environment as you move, it’ll tell you exactly what it can do and what it can’t do. You’d learn to cope with your body, in a different circumstance, other than being in the regulars like standing, sitting, or lying. After the swim, the soreness and complete relaxation will manifest along with the fatigued muscles. It’s a good day. Your body would like to talk to you but only if you’re willing to take action.

Exercising enhances your concentration, being in the moment. Unless you have two brains, you won’t be able to think other things while pumping those biceps to work. You can access the flow state through training, the state that will expand your knowledge and increase the level of concentration. Kill two birds with one stone, why not?

After all, it’s a great fun activity that you’d like to do it again. The sweats dripping out of your sleeves after an hour practicing, you have done something extraordinary. Stepping back for a moment, you’re able to do exercises, it’s the dying wish of some daring to trade that privilege. A blessing I suppose.

However, you need to be cautious about your body endurance, please do not overwork it. Give some times to rest. You have all the time in the world. In the next article, I’ll be talking about how to make exercising easier and accomplishable. I hope this article can motivate you to start doing exercise.

Photos by Jamie Steet, Zygimantas Dukauskas, Tegan Mierle, Ilham Rahmansyah from Unsplash.