Enhanced quality of life - the whole picture

[running]

Originally Posted by Gem

Yes will power is a failure because you force yourself to something against your own will. It's really just a contradiction, and ya soon get too tired to keep that going.



True. Perfecting the form is the way to go. That is part of the mind/body training, being conscious of the muscle sensation through the full range of motion. It's important because training consciously and with proper motion is what makes training enjoyable.


True, good posture in meditation is very beneficial in the long run, and after had practiced for a couple of years, it began to push my posture into position which allowed the better flow.


Pretty complicated subject area, but I usually find when I talk about the high spiritual path, people tell me what I say is just for beginners. But really it's for everyone, beginner, advanced doesn't matter. For the beginner it's mostly the agitations in aversion to pain, whereas for the advanced it's mostly the desire associated with pleasure, and in any case, the cessation of that quest for or avoidance of sensation of any type is what I generally speak of. From there we become alert to any slight disturbance to that balance of ourselves, and addressing this is pretty much the key to resolving imbalances that manifest.

people have different expereinces and what they are sensing as far as i can gather. what applys to one doesnt for the other. beginning or having more experience could be irrelevant.

for example i have heard you i believe, not sure, but most everyone here and everywhere else say trying to or wishing to expereince bliss for example is a hindrance.

where as in my expereince the only motive was to expereince it. futhrrmore and more importantly my mind in one way or another would take me there in the process to it. today at any given time i could concentrate and increase the shakti, current, in otherwords the juice behind the bliss. making myself feel more of it.

but i chose not to say hey y'all are wrong. im pretty sure if everybody is saying something it must apply somehow to somebody. so i take the information as we have different experiences for different folks.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by running

people have different expereinces and what they are sensing as far as i can gather. what applys to one doesnt for the other. beginning or having more experience could be irrelevant.

Yes, it's true in a sense, but universal law is not different for different people.

for example i have heard you i believe, not sure, but most everyone here and everywhere else say trying to or wishing to expereince bliss for example is a hindrance.

Not exactly and it's very nuanced so I guess there is no exactly to be said. 'Wish' is a good word, because for example, I have a fundamental wish for the happiness of all beings. If I was somewhat malicious and I often wished harm upon others, tried to hurt people with intents words and deeds, then we'd wonder what is going wrong with me. If I never did harbour such malice, we'd not question an errors in my intent. In the universal sense, although many are quite malicious, we understand that this is their 'impurity', and kindness isn't the dual opposite of malice, but the absence of malicious intent.

where as in my expereince the only motive was to expereince it. futhrrmore and more importantly my mind in one way or another would take me there in the process to it. today at any given time i could concentrate and increase the shakti, current, in otherwords the juice behind the bliss. making myself feel more of it.

Yes indeed, and one can deliberately intensify their radiance of metta (which is that 'universal love'), but not for their personal pleasure - and this marks the difference between 'wish' and 'craving'.

but i chose not to say hey y'all are wrong. im pretty sure if everybody is saying something it must apply somehow to somebody. so i take the information as we have different experiences for different folks.

Yes of course we have different experiences, even though the nature of experience is the same: temporal, impermanent, momentary, changing, substanceless. Hence we see there is 'different experience' but all experience is the same in essence. This is why there is no 'more important' and 'less important' experience, and the neutrality this suggests 'the way of seeing', so to speak. Not right or wrong to agree or disagree, just someone said something out of interest in so saying.

[pluralone]

I'm currently focused on improving the quality of my life from a physical perspective. Meaning, I have health issues I'm addressing. heh

Anyway, first I want to note that I was born with a handful of minor structural deformities and systemic malfunctions that have negatively impacted my health throughout my life.

Currently I have an autoimmune disorder (stemming from aforementioned systemic malfunctions) that manifests as chronic muscular and nerve pain as well as an often debilitating fatigue. I also hurt my back when I was in my early 20s, and now I have spinal stenosis which has left me about 75% numb from the waist down.

Attending to my physical health has included developing better habits (diet, exercise and general productivity), and using certain herbal and dietary supplements.

After a long and intense 'nightmare' period in my life I was entirely shut down emotionally and spiritually. It was a rest period I really needed, but I'm happy that I'm finally pulling out of that now and reconnecting with who and what I am as a living entity. Phew!

I'm not sure I want anything more than support here; I believe I'm on the right path in terms of what I'm doing for my health and well being. I just know that traditionally I struggle during the colder, darker months, so I can use all the support I can get. Just being able to talk about what I'm doing could be immensely helpful.

I'm pretty sure that the new (like, in the past six months) habits I've developed will help stave off or at least lessen the usual winter depression and severe flare ups of the autoimmune disorder, but still. Like I said, I'd like to talk about this stuff, and Gem I think you could be the right person to talk with. Is this anything akin to what you intended by starting this thread?

[Gem]

Originally Posted by pluralone

I'm currently focused on improving the quality of my life from a physical perspective. Meaning, I have health issues I'm addressing. heh

Anyway, first I want to note that I was born with a handful of minor structural deformities and systemic malfunctions that have negatively impacted my health throughout my life.

Currently I have an autoimmune disorder (stemming from aforementioned systemic malfunctions) that manifests as chronic muscular and nerve pain as well as an often debilitating fatigue. I also hurt my back when I was in my early 20s, and now I have spinal stenosis which has left me about 75% numb from the waist down.

Attending to my physical health has included developing better habits (diet, exercise and general productivity), and using certain herbal and dietary supplements.

After a long and intense 'nightmare' period in my life I was entirely shut down emotionally and spiritually. It was a rest period I really needed, but I'm happy that I'm finally pulling out of that now and reconnecting with who and what I am as a living entity. Phew!

I'm not sure I want anything more than support here; I believe I'm on the right path in terms of what I'm doing for my health and well being. I just know that traditionally I struggle during the colder, darker months, so I can use all the support I can get. Just being able to talk about what I'm doing could be immensely helpful.

I'm pretty sure that the new (like, in the past six months) habits I've developed will help stave off or at least lessen the usual winter depression and severe flare ups of the autoimmune disorder, but still. Like I said, I'd like to talk about this stuff, and Gem I think you could be the right person to talk with. Is this anything akin to what you intended by starting this thread?

Yea, I'm fortunate in that nothing wrong with body, but like everyone else I have to live with my lot. We really just make the most of what we got, and develop the mentality of what I can do, leaving behind the mentality of what I can't.

Getting the diet into the mindset of nutrition, well, food is medicine in its own right, and people have been amazed at how healing nutrition really is, especially for the immune system.

Of course I started the thread to foster health in a very broad sense, health of the individual's physical, mental and spiritual aspect, and health of relations in the immediate circle, and health in the broader social society, and health in our social-cultural paradigms and policy, and health in the very structure of our institutional system.

No one is just 'themselves' and we all live socially in a system. So what's healthy is personal and social, and also environmental.

[Gem]

Inspired video of people strength training with various levels of abilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vpHM9bFxJo

[Alice_1]

Originally Posted by Gem

Hello

I recently completed my Certificate III in fitness - the entry level qualification in the fitness industry, and I aim to share my knowledge, both academic and experiential, for the benefit of others. I first joined a gym only 18 months ago, and in that time have experienced significant benefits both physically and psychologically, and on a deeper level of wisdom, hence I am motivated to serve others so they might benefit in a similar way, but as it pertains to themselves.

I first have to start on a negative note and address the huge cloud of bulldust being sold in the name of 'fitness' and 'health', and much of this fallacy is associated with spiritual paradigms. On one side we have the nonsense like 'great abs on my 4 week program' and further nonsense like 'eat my magic goji berry' - apart from all the 'ethical diets' based on spiritual notions of 'compassion'.

Firstly, the health requires balanced nutrition, not magic superfoods and 'alternative herbs'. Secondly, there is no magic exercise program that gets 'instant abs', 'burns belly fat' and so forth. That is all lies, and I call it 'lies' specifically because the professionals selling these 'fads' know better, and they deliberately mislead people. It's a scam, plain and simple.

So to start here in dispelling the fallacies, we can cut the bulldust and start actually looking into the real lived issues of health and fitness. We are immediately aware that it is not a 'health issue' for which there is a remedy, but a lifestyle issue, which is also a social issue, in need of transformation.

So this thread addresses human lives - as whole people within their social-cultural contexts. The whole self as a physical/psychological person as they exist in socio-cultural space.

If any person wishes to discuss openly their health/fitness/mood, I want to do what I can to hear you out and open the wider possibility for an enhanced quality of living.

Thanks for listening.

Totally agree with you! Nutrition and exercises - everything has to be in a balance to be healthy