health

The Paradox of Fragility and Resilience

by ultrapeg

This week I’ve been reflecting on the ironic – maybe even paradoxical – duality of the fragility and resilience of life.  Life in general, but human life in particular.  Here we are:  minute creatures

“all hurtling through deep space on this tiny rock called Earth.  I mean, really, think about it. Protected from the frigid galactic void of the Milky Way but by a blanket of air, held on the surface by gravity, whatever the heck that is, and here we are.”

That quote came from an interview at onbeing.org with Dr. Ira Byock, professor of medicine at Dartmouth and former director of Palliative Medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

It’s nothing short of miraculous that we survive anything.  We are tossed and torn, ravaged by disease, environmental insults, genetic mutations and all manner of plague.  In vain we try to maintain control over our lives – and the lives of others, our children for instance – yet the vast majority of forces in our lives are beyond our control.  This doesn’t even count what we voluntarily do to ourselves and to each other.  Seems like we are constantly inventing new and “better” ways to kill each other.

Still we continue to survive.  We pick ourselves up, find ways to repair or circumvent the damage and on we go.  Not all of us or all of the time.  And not forever.  But the odds we manage to overcome are quite literally amazing.  We all have stories of astounding feats of survival.  Generally, we have no provable (repeatable) explanation for any of them.  Even in the face of known and certain death, we cling to life:  “To life, to life, l’chaim”, sings Tevia in Fiddler on the Roof, even as he and his family and friends are being forcibly and violently ousted from the home they have known all their lives.

The following is a quote from another On Being interview.  This one with Dr. Sherwin Nuland, author of How We Die, referring to the inner workings of human beings:

“Here are these 75 trillion cells, and every cell has hundreds of thousands of protein molecules in it and they are constantly interacting with one another in what would appear to be chaos. And in fact, if you were to be able to lower yourself into a cell, you’d be terrified because it would seem so chaotic. If it had sound, you couldn’t live with it, it would be so noisy. And yet what is actually occurring is that these reactions are all counteracting threats to the survival of that cell. And I think that there is within the human organism. . . . an awareness of the closeness of chaos.”

Closeness to chaos.  Hmmm . . .  Yet Dr. Nuland goes on to say, “we are greater than the sum of our parts . . . our brains [have] developed a capacity for spirit, for seeking lives of integrity and equanimity and moral order.”

Resilience in the face of chaos.  Resilience despite the fact that we keep coming up with new and better ways to kill each other.  Resilience even when there are others all around us with whom we disagree.  All those disagreements seem kind of silly now, don’t they?  If they don’t, they should.

If you read through these blog posts, you may notice an ongoing thread – namely, ways in which we can at least try to maintain that resilience.  Our lives may be mystery, but one thing we do know is we will be here on this planet for a short time only.  We don’t know what’s going to happen during that time, but we can make some choices about how we spend that time.  If we avoid attaching too much significance to outcomes and just focus on process, we might even have a shot at being happy with our choices.  Following is from a recent Yoga Journal post:

“Think about it—you are capable of balancing the weight of your torso on two long supports, while smoothly transferring this weight from one support to the other, and all while maintaining a constant rate of motion and perfect balance. This simple motion requires the perfect coordination of hundreds of muscles large and small across your entire body. And that’s just walking!

The human body has over 600 muscles, many of which are too small, or too deep inside the body, for us to see. Hundreds of tiny muscles across the body work constantly to maintain our balance, stability, and precision of movement—all vital qualities for a healthy yoga practice.

Take a moment today to appreciate the amazing feats of coordination your body accomplishes in even the simplest of acts.”

Having recently had surgery I am intimately re-acquainted with the remarkable abilities of my own body, despite the abuse I’ve subjected it to.  Just think – I was knocked unconscious, cut open, kept alive by machines, had my insides extracted, etc.  Yet here I am writing this blog – alive and well (relatively, anyway).  Then in addition to those assaults on my body, I am having poison injected into my veins in an effort to kill rogue cells and, so far, I’m surviving that, too.  Pretty incredible stuff.  But it happens every day.  Sure, things go wrong.  None of us are perfect and, remember, we are fragile.  But still we take these chances, venturing into the unknown, because we believe that things can also go right.

So as you make those choices about how to spend your limited time here on earth, perhaps you might want to give some thought to focusing on and building your resilience.  Keeping mind and body strong, whatever that might mean for you as an individual, could be one way to do that.  The effort you make probably can’t hurt and it just might help.  If nothing else, it will bolster your confidence in your ability to handle the many challenges that life is going to throw at you, whether or not you’re prepared.

“Good” Workout Vs. “Bad” Workouts

by ultrapeg

This week I read a post in the Wildmind Newsletter about meditation, but I think the concepts can also apply to our practice of Pilates, yoga or any movement discipline we undertake.  So I’m taking the liberty of paraphrasing:  What is a “good” workout vs. a “bad” workout?  We waste a great deal of time making these judgments and worrying accordingly. The judgment is ultimately not about the workout, but really about ourselves and how we perceive our own efforts and abilities.  Maybe we think a “good” workout is one during which every exercise is performed to whatever specifications we demand of ourselves that day.  So it’s a workout that goes according to some preconceived notion or prescribed plan. But how many things in our lives actually go according to plan?  Or perhaps a better way of looking at it is how often does a well-layed out plan go awry? And what do we do when that happens?  When a workout doesn’t work out, we create stories about how we are not good at ______ (fill in the blank) or this practice isn’t the right one for us, or something similar. But this story is our own invention, so maybe we need to invent a different one:

With a bit more experience (assuming we don’t give up in the face of all those judgments) we may start to think that it’s the effort we put in that defines what is “good” or “bad”. We take into account that the conditions we’re working with change; sometimes they make [our practice] easier and sometimes harder. Imagine you go running. Some days you’re running on flat ground with the wind at your back. Sometimes you’re running uphill against a stiff breeze. The first of these runs is going to feel more pleasant (it’s a “good run”). But which of these runs is going to help you develop more fitness and stamina? The second one, right? So maybe it’s the [workouts] we struggle in that are really the “good” ones . . .

Think about how good you feel when you’ve completed something that you perceive as difficult.  It may take some time and effort to make that happen, but with a little determination you can find a way to your goal that works for you. Try being kind to yourself and have a little patience.  It is rare that anything worth having comes without at least some struggle.  But when you have that “aha!” moment of accomplishment, it is the best feeling!  Dangle that carrot.  You can reach it.

Expanding on the concept of patience with yourself and your goals, here’s something from Yoga Journal’s Daily Insight:

Yoga was originally developed to lead the practitioner to freedom from suffering and to realization of his or her Divine Nature. . .. It can be helpful, though, and even necessary, to set lesser goals along the way. . . These goals can help you to move in the right direction and provide you with valuable mileposts.

On the road to attaining your goals—in yoga and elsewhere in your life—you will inevitably encounter obstacles. Patanjali [recognized author of the Yoga Sutras, considered the guide book to the philosophy of classical yoga) refers to these as vikshepas and enumerates nine of them: illness, listlessness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, cravings, delusion, inability to progress, and instability in maintaining progress. Depending on your nature and the goals you have set, you will run into some of these more readily than others; but sooner or later you will come up against them all. How you meet these obstacles will affect how well you surmount them and what your state of mind will be in the process.

One does not need to understand the Yoga Sutras to recognize these obstacles. We all experience one or more of them on a daily basis.  That’s life!  It’s full of obstacles.  But you don’t have to give in.  Try being as patient with yourself as you would be with a child or a friend or family member that you care about.  We are often so much more willing to give others the benefit of the doubt than we are to allow ourselves the same leeway.

So next time you are tempted to skip your workout because you are worried about how you might perform, my suggestion is to just show up.   To echo a further sentiment in the Wildmind post, I would assert that

any workout “you turn up for is a ‘good’ [workout]. Sure, there are some days it’s easier than others and there are some days you have to put in more effort. But I’d suggest that you regard the [workout] you do as being infinitely better than the [workout] you don’t do.”

If your performance doesn’t meet your expectations that day, chalk it up to experience.  Whether or not you realize it, your body learned something.  Allow your mind to learn something, too.