THE BODY ON AUTO-PILOT
These series of post are mainly my own LIMITED thoughts and experience from practicing Yiquan and should be taken with a HUGE DOSE OF SALT.
After continuous practice of
Yiquan, it becomes very clear that most people exhibit very little awareness of
their body. If we are not even aware of the how our body is feeling, how much
further do we have to go to gain control over the body?
In this fast paced society, our
attention spans are increasingly getting limited. We jump from thoughts to
thoughts with very limited awareness of what’s going on. It’s more of looking
for the next quick fix or gratification. Of course, what’s being said sounds
remarkably like an extract from a ‘self-help’ book … but hold on.
The trouble with such absent
mindedness is that there is no one in the control room of the body. This means
that we allow the body to be on auto-pilot most of the time. Trouble is, most
auto-pilot programs have technicians to recalibrate and maintain both the program
and the planes we fly in. Can we say the same for our body?
From my personal observations,
several symptoms occur from prolonged auto-piloting our bodies. Namely:
1. Bad postures
It starts of benignly enough.
When we’re young and tired, we tend to slouch. It’s relaxing and relieves the
tension in the neck muscles and the body. However, do it long enough and over
prolonged period of time, you’ll develop a minor hunchback. Excessive use of
computers and smartphones, the hunchback will become more pronounced and
problematic over time. And this is just an example. Any type of postures that
does not align with gravity causes muscular and skeletal imbalances. This is
difficult to correct as it’s a problem (and habit!) that accumulated over a
lifetime. More on bad postures here.
2. Yellow to Red zones
Yellow
to red zones are muscles and tendons we actively use in daily life. From young,
we learn to use certain muscles, tendons and ligaments in our bodies.
Unfortunately, it’s common to fail to use the entire body for day to day life. Instead,
we rely and sometimes (over)rely on certain areas of our bodies. I term these ‘yellow’
or ‘red’ zones. For instance, when washing and drying clothes, pay close
attention of which part of the body you tend to use to wring the clothes dry.
Most people use the wrists and fingers exclusively to wring the clothes dry.
But what about the forearms, elbows, biceps, shoulders and chest? Most of the
time, these other parts of the bodies are inactive!
This
might not be a problem when you’re young, the problem will rear its’ ugly head
in middle age. Continuous (over)use of the yellow and red zones, will injure
these parts. Whilst they may heal, we tend to re(injure) them over and over
again. These areas possibly are continuously stressed and never able to relax
completely. That’s because they’re over-active and called to work constantly.
Over time, these areas will start exhibiting aches, discomfort and will
progress to acute pains.
3. Grey to Black zones
Grey to black zones are the
complete opposite of the above. These are areas of the bodies we rarely exercise,
if at all. Due to our lifestyle, there are certain joints, ligaments, tendons
and muscles that we rarely use in our daily lives. For instance, how often do
you raise your hands straight above your heads? Or bend over and touch the tips
of your toes with your fingers without bending your knees?
Constant neglect of these areas
of the bodies causes two major problems. One, because of lack of use, the
flexibility and strength of these areas are negligible. Secondly, over time,
the brain is unable to control these areas of the body at all. For instance,
some people can wiggle their eyes or flex their pectoral muscles. Most of us
cannot. Trouble is, the larger the amount of grey to black zones we have in our
bodies, the weaker and unhealthier we become.
Summary
It’s inevitable that once the
body is on auto-pilot for too long a period, calibration errors and
misalignment occurs. Aches and body pain becomes more pronounced. If this is
happening to you, than the solution is clear! Instead of taking steroid
injections or pain-killers, it’s the body telling you to wake up. You need to
exercise conscious control over the body and find out what’s wrong.